The New York Times > Health > Mental Health & Behavior > But Sweetie, You Love Lima Beans: "But about 40 percent of the 336 participants confirmed in later interviews that they remembered getting sick or believed it to be true. Compared with a control group, the believers said on questionnaires that they would be much more likely to avoid eating pickles or hard-boiled eggs if offered them at a party. In another study, just completed, the researchers found that people who were told that they loved asparagus as children were much more drawn to that slender delicacy than those whose memories were left alone.
Proust's reflections on tea and cookies notwithstanding, the earliest experience of taste is as open to tampering as other memories, Dr. Loftus said. If these revisions became permanent, they might affect how and what people eat. 'What we'd like to do now,' Dr. Loftus said, 'is take the students out for a real picnic and see what happens.'"

The New York Times > Health > Cases: Month by Month, a Tiny Baby's Hard-Won Pounds: "You start to ask these questions only when something goes wrong. I chart normal growth for lots of babies from many different backgrounds without stopping to wonder at the complexities that go into those higher numbers on the baby scales, those triumphant points marching up the normal growth curve. And then I come across a baby like this one, who somehow falls right off that curve, and I learn all over again just how complicated the recipe can be that determines what goes into a baby's mouth."

Article: Jaw transplant allows man to chew after nine years�| New Scientist: "A man has been able to savour his first proper meal in nine years after surgeons successfully created and transplanted a jawbone for him.
A jaw, grown on a titanium frame, enabled the man to chew for the first time since he lost his lower jaw in radical surgery for cancer. The functional jawbone was created using a combination of computer aided design and bone stem cells."

Article: Chaotic homes hamper child development�| New Scientist: "Growing up in a chaotic home could be bad for a child's developing mind."

Scotsman.com News - Sci-Tech - Children from tidy homes could grow up more intelligent"IF YOU are the kind of parent who is constantly disorganised, then spare a thought for your children.
Growing up in a chaotic home could be bad for a child’s developing mind, possibly even restricting their intellectual progress, according to new research by child psychologists. "

MSNBC - Inside blueberries, a cholesterol buster: "Aside from being tasty, blueberries have plenty going for them -- including plenty of vitamin C and their position atop a list of 40 fruits and vegetables that contain antioxidants.
The berries keep getting better. A U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist has found in them a compound that appears to be effective in lowering the bad forms of cholesterol, according to research made public Monday."

Article: Weird links with words and colours in the mind�| New Scientist: "This suggests that even non-synaesthetes may have the neural machinery for generating a synaesthetic experience and that changes to the brain might expose them, they say in a forthcoming issue of Perception."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Virtual veins give nurses a hand: "The tactile 3D virtual reality system uses force feedback technology that is usually found in video game controllers, known as haptics.
It could help in learning sensitive venopuncture skills on a variety of hand types, instead of plastic models."

Article: Language may shape human thought�| New Scientist"Language may shape human thought – suggests a counting study in a Brazilian tribe whose language does not define numbers above two.
Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference between four objects placed in a row and five in the same configuration, revealed the study.
Experts agree that the startling result provides the strongest support yet for the controversial hypothesis that the language available to humans defines our thoughts. So-called “linguistic determinism” was first proposed in 1950 but has been hotly debated ever since. "

The New York Times > Health > Fitness & Nutrition > Top Athletes May Be Running Into a Tall Hurdle: Themselves: "But for almost a decade, the Summer Olympics have offered a mysterious exception. In some of the most basic ways imaginable - how fast people can run, how high they can jump, how far they can throw - the march of progress has stopped. The track and field athletes competing in Athens Olympic Stadium over the next week and a half may well struggle to match the performances of their predecessors."

The New York Times > International > Africa > Letter From Africa: Between Faith and Medicine, How Clear a Line?: "It is the very model of a modern regulatory process, with one exception: these doctors are sangomas - diviners, who cure with combinations of herbal potions, readings of scattered bones and second opinions from long-dead ancestors. Disbelievers long pinned them with the offensive label 'witch doctors.' Today's politically correct term is 'traditional healers.'

By any name, they pose an exquisitely difficult question: How does this, Africa's most Westernized nation, accredit as legally recognized physicians a group whose members largely confound empirical Western standards?"

Article: Cannabis extract shrinks brain tumours�| New Scientist: "Cannabis extracts may shrink brain tumours and other cancers by blocking the growth of the blood vessels which feed them, suggests a new study."

Article: Sewage waters a tenth of world's irrigated crops�| New Scientist"A tenth of the world’s irrigated crops - everything from lettuce and tomatoes to mangoes and coconuts - are watered by sewage. And much of that sewage is raw and untreated, gushing direct from sewer pipes into fields at the fringes of the developing world’s great megacities, reveals the first global survey of the hidden practice of waste-water irrigation.
And, however much consumers may squirm, farmers like it that way. Because the stinking, lumpy and pathogen-rich sewage is rich in nitrates and phosphates that fertilise crops free of charge, suggests the survey presented at the Stockholm Water Symposium on Tuesday."

Wired News: Turning Slackers Into Workaholics: "Procrastinating monkeys were turned into workaholics using a gene treatment to block a key brain compound, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
Blocking cells from receiving dopamine made the monkeys work harder at a task -- and they were better at it, too, the U.S. government researchers found."

USATODAY.com - CPR, defibrillators as good as medics: "Bystanders performing CPR and using automated external defibrillators (AEDs) save as many cardiac arrest victims as highly trained paramedics — and send more of them home with normal brain function, according to new research out Thursday.
The findings, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, may lead to sweeping changes in the way emergency medical systems across the nation allocate resources, experts say."

TIME.com: How Doctors Help The Dopers -- Aug. 16, 2004: "Every morning, he starts the day by taking two blue tablets, and every night before bed, he takes another, making sure no less than 12 hours have elapsed since the first dose. Since he started taking the pills, he can run faster and longer, and tests of his muscle strength confirm what he already knows: he is getting stronger.
It may sound like the routine of another conniving athlete preparing for Athens, but it's the way an 11-year-old boy in Menlo Park, Calif., is fighting muscular dystrophy. Starting in 2002, the youngster began taking low doses of albuterol, a popular asthma drug, as a participant in an experimental study at UCLA. The lead investigator of the trial got the idea for testing albuterol by searching the Internet for references to muscle-building drugs, which soon linked her to sites for body builders. The body builders had learned about the drug's effect from combing the journals of agricultural science, in which veterinarians frequently reported on the bulging muscles they saw in cattle after injecting them with albuterol. It turns out that the drug blocks an enzyme that chews away at muscle. Beef begat beefcake."

The New York Times > Health > Starting Young in Treating High Blood Pressure: "A study published in May in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that, on average, systolic blood pressures, the top number in the blood pressure ratio, rose by 1.4 millimeters of mercury over the last decade among children ages 8 to 17. Diastolic blood pressures, the bottom number, increased by 3.3 millimeters. The researchers attributed part of this rise to the increasing numbers of overweight children.
The remainder might be explained by the high intake of fast foods among children, said Dr. Bonita Falkner, a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Jefferson Medical College of the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
'It seems like the intake of processed foods has gone up a lot,' Dr. Falkner said. 'And this raises the intake of sodium. The intake of sugar has gone up too because children are drinking a lot more sodas and less milk than they did 20 years ago.'
New guidelines published in the August issue of Pediatrics suggest that doctors start checking blood pressure in children when they are as young as 3."

The New York Times > Washington > Crucial Unpaid Internships Increasingly Separate the Haves From the Have-Nots: "But as internships rise in importance as critical milestones along the path to success, questions are emerging about whether they are creating a class system that discriminates against students from less affluent families who have to turn down unpaid internships to earn money for college expenses.
'It's something that really makes me nuts,' said Cokie Roberts, an ABC News correspondent who spoke out about the problem on Capitol Hill several weeks ago at a gathering of Congressional interns. 'By setting up unpaid internship programs, it seems to me that without completely recognizing it, it sets up a system where you are making it ever more difficult for people who don't have economic advantages to catch up.'"

Article: Smart glass blocks infrared when heat is on| New Scientist: "The glass is coated the chemical vanadium dioxide. This material transmits both visible and infrared wavelengths of light, and normally undergoes a change at about 70C.
Above this transition temperature, the electrons in the material alter their arrangement. This turns it from a semiconductor into a metal, and makes it block infrared light. Parkin and Manning lowered the transition temperature to 29C by doping the material with the metal tungsten."

Cooling tool helps athletes heal faster / Olympians using NASA-inspired device for injuries: "But the U.S. team competing in the coming days in Athens hopes to have an edge in bouncing back from aches and pains through a device the size of a large toolbox.
The new technology, called the Game Ready system, made by CoolSystems in Berkeley, uses space-suit technology from NASA to help athletes recover from injuries using advanced cold and compression therapy."

Wired News: I, Standard Man: "His creators are still working to perfect Stan's hardware and software, however. Their goal is to create simulated patients that feel and act more like human bodies, down to clammy skin and spurting blood. Scientists dream about equipping future versions of Stan with computerized brains too, but that prospect seems far in the future."

Article: Skin used to transmit key data | New Scientist: "German company Ident Technology has developed several prototypes of a system that transfers a tiny electric current across the skin. One system is incorporated into a pair of safety goggles and sends a signal to a corresponding electric drill. This means the drill only switches on if the operator is wearing the protective goggles."

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Antibody Therapy Halts Early-Stage Alzheimer's in Mice: "Working with mice genetically engineered to develop both plaques and tangles, researchers from the University of California at Irvine injected Ab antibodies into the hippocampus of one-year-old individuals. The results, published in the August 5 issue of Neuron, showed that three days after injection the immune system had cleared the plaque-causing Ab from both the outside and inside of the mice brain cells. Furthermore, the tangles disappeared two days later, bolstering the 'amyloid cascade hypothesis,' which posits that the plaques disrupt the cells' ability to clear faulty or unneeded proteins, thereby allowing tangles to develop."

The New York Times > Science > Environment > Turning Genetically Engineered Trees Into Toxic Avengers: "Dr. Richard Meagher, a professor of genetics at the University of Georgia, genetically engineered the trees to extract mercury from the soil, store it without being harmed, convert it to a less toxic form of mercury and release it into the air."

The New York Times > Health > New Ways to Loosen Addiction's Grip: "Buprenorphine, made by Reckitt Benckiser and sold under the brand name Suboxone, became the first prescription medication for people addicted to heroin or painkillers.
The small orange tablet is available by prescription at any neighborhood pharmacy. It relieves symptoms of opiate withdrawal like agitation, nausea and insomnia."

Wired News: Weapons Freeze, Microwave Enemies: "A few months from now, Peter Anthony Schlesinger hopes to zap a laser beam at a couple of chickens or other animals in a cage a few dozen yards away. If all goes as planned, the chickens will be frozen in mid-cluck, their leg and wing muscles paralyzed by an electrical charge created by the beam, even as their heart and lungs function normally."

Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/03/2004 | Lemonade stand fund is Alex's gift to others: "The Wynnewood child, whose idea to raise money for cancer with lemonade stands went national in the spring, died Sunday. Alex's Lemonade Stands raised $521,000 between the end of May and July 22, said Phil Arkow, a spokesman for the Philadelphia Foundation, which manages the fund. He said that more than $700,000 had been collected so far. Alex's mother, Liz Scott, said yesterday that she expected the fund to reach Alex's goal - $1 million - by fall."

The New York Times > Science > By Accident, Utah Is Proving an Ideal Genetic Laboratory: "SALT LAKE CITY- Utah is justly famous for its big families, with cousins piled on cousins, uncles from here to Tuesday, and roots stretching back to the Mormon pioneer days. And what once appeared to be a regional quirk is increasingly viewed by scientists as something more: a near-perfect laboratory, arrived at by complete accident, for the study of human kinship.
Mormon genes are hot.
Utah DNA is being used for an international study that seeks to identify chromosomes linked to diseases like asthma and diabetes. Other researchers are studying how the genes for left-handedness or longevity or even the ability to taste bitter foods have moved through the Utah gene pool over time. A nonprofit foundation here is compiling a giant genetic database that will try to pinpoint - after a quick swab of a person's cheek for a DNA sample - where the person's ancestors came from."

Article: Why some athletes are injury-prone| New Scientist: "Some sportspeople are more prone to injury than others, despite being fully fit. A new mathematical model of the body shows that these athletes rely on a fixed combination of movements that they cannot easily modify. The discovery might help in spotting injury-prone athletes early on."

Wired News: Canada Music Biz Bites Dentists: "Music played through headsets worn by patients may be considered public performance, too, since multiple patients use the headsets throughout the day, according to Jerry Bailey, a spokesman for BMI. If the office is particularly small, they may be exempt from paying fees for radio."