Type Of Memory Training That Works
April 30, 2008
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We have different types of memory. Researchers have found that one type called fluid memory can be improved by training.
Fluid memory is the ability to adapt to a completely new situation or problem. It is considered important in learning, and high levels are associated with success in both professional and educational arenas. The level of fluid intelligence that a person has was thought to be inherited and generally not taught.
However recent studies have shown that with certain training that fluid memory can be increased. Two groups one with the training and one without were compared in standard tests to find a missing pattern. The untrained group improved as they took the test several times over a period of weeks as they got better at taking the tests. However, those with the training improved much more.
The training was like a more complicated version of kids card memory games. Briefly, on a computer screen the participants were shown squares at different locations. At the same time in headphones there were the sounds of individual consonants. When something presented matched something a certain number of steps back a key was to be pressed. The level of difficulty was continually adjusted individually for each participant, to make it neither too easy nor too hard, and to keep the interest level high.
The type of memory that was being trained is working memory. This is the short term memory that we use for remembering things like telephone numbers.
The training probably helped to focus on the task at hand and block out other irrelevant stuff and multitask.
This increased ability to block out irrelevant stuff is interesting for aging. Since one of the reasons for decreasing memory as we age, is that we become more easily distracted and find it harder to focus on a single thing.
photo credit: Corey (a.k.a. Ten0fnine)
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Popularity: 40% [?]
Medical Symbols May Reduce Prescription Drug Problems
April 29, 2008
A new system has been developed in France of symbols for medical conditions. The idea is that these medical symbols would be in things like drug inserts and descriptions. They would be used for showing things like what conditions a drug is used for and also the potential side effects.
When doctors are prescribing drugs there can be several problems. The most obvious is giving you a totally inappropriate medication. Probably a more frequent occurrence is that the patient might be better with a slightly different drug due to other diseases that they have, or is not warned of side effects.
One problem with drug information for physicians is that it is pages long and quite complicated. Virtually everything known about the drug is put in the doctors pages. This creates a problem since the important information gets lost in all those words. The idea of the symbols is to make certain important points about the drug obvious. These could include things like what disease the drug is used for, major side effects and if there any preexisting diseases that would limit its use. Each disease or conditions would have symbol so that it would be immediately very obvious.
To make up an example. A drug for allergies would have a nose symbol. If this drug was not be used by people with heartburn, the contraindications section would have a symbol the symbol for heartburn, maybe a stomach. If a potential side effect of the drug was headaches then in that section there would be the headache symbol.
If these symbols are gnereally adopted they shuould decrease the number of mistakes and help with better patient education by physicians.
Examples of the symbols in a short article.
photo credit: greg westfall
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Popularity: 59% [?]
Earthquakes Again
April 26, 2008
Probably getting boring for you reading this, but it is getting worse. A 4.7 last night about 1.5 miles from my house. Broke an aquaduct about 1/4 mile away. I had broken glass and stuff from my food cupboard all over the floor, including a cup of curry powder. Yellow, strong smelling powder everywhere. Put chips in a couple of the tiles on the floor. New cracks in the concrete outside my house. Trashed a couple of local supermarkets. I had a lot less damage then some. Irritatingly when it was mentioned on the national news, they said no damage. No damage! Friends have cracks in pretty much every wall, stucco falling off, furniture that fell over, a hot water tank that got loose from the strapping and windows that blew out.
I guess the latest theory is that a new fault is forming. Which means we might get a really big one. Wonderful.
If you want to see what I am talking about, look at the map and the list below of the last 30 earthquakes at http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/120-40.html. Take a look how frequent they are. We are all refreshing the screen quite often. It is like having a house made of jello. I am 4.5 km E of Verdi-Mogul and about 1,500 yds from the 6 km WSW of Reno epicenter.
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Discombobulated By Earthquakes
April 25, 2008
More earthquakes and I am having trouble getting a grip and am really discombobulated. There were several largish ones late afternoon yesterday. Largish, if you are as close to the epicenters as I am. There were 4.1, 3.0, 1.8, 2.9 and then 4.2 in less than 10 minutes, since then there have been well over 100 aftershocks. There has been minor damage, broken windows, cracked roof tiles and lots of artwork falling of the walls. I already had taken down all my pictures, mask collection etc.
The problem is no one has any idea if we are building to a really big one, which is overdue, or this last round has relieved the pressure. The local seismological lab says that the pattern is atypical, so they have no idea.
When the house keeps shaking and you get woken up multiple times in the night it gets quite stressful. It is really hard to concentrate on anything else. Additionally it is so uncertain, you are constantly wondering if, when and how big. It seems to be constantly in your mind. I think we all check the USGS sites more frequently than is healthy.
I guess it is like having temporary (I hope) obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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Popularity: 23% [?]
Salt In Everything
April 24, 2008
Sometimes it is surprising which processed foods contain salt. Tomato paste? It sneakily said 100% natural on the label of the can. In a hurry I just saw the 100% and thought that it referred to the tomato content, not that that it had other stuff in it, including “natural” salt.
I opened the can of Hunts tomato paste and spooned most if it into what I was cooking, put a small dollop in the dogs bowl (*good for a dog) and then licked the spoon. It tasted salty! Why on earth do they feel the need to add salt to things like tomato paste?
Eating a lot of processed foods and/or salting your food gets you used to the taste of salt. Then foods start to taste blander if there is no salt added. Cutting down on salt is difficult, it is addictive. It takes some willpower and time to get used to food without salt. However when you get used to it you realize how salty so many processed foods really are.
There has been some buzz recently about a blog in The Guardian (a daily UK newspaper) that states that the case for reducing salt is overstated. The tagline on the blog was, “Is it time to stand up for sensible seasoning?” She uses three tablespoons in the water to cook vegetables. I am not sure that rates as sensible seasoning.
One of the main reasons for salt reduction being advocated is due to the fact that a proportion of the population develops salt-sensitive high blood pressure. Numerous studies show that for many people who have high blood pressure, there can be a significant drop in blood pressure just by changing their diet to one that contains less salt.
Obviously there are many people who do not have any long term effects from a high salt diet. The body will eliminate the extra sodium in urine. It could be argued that decreasing salt in foods is only to benefit some and not others, and that it has the big brother aspect to it.
However, consider that high blood pressure itself has no symptoms and you might, at this very moment, be developing salt-sensitive hypertension.
*Small amounts of foods like cooked tomato and broccoli are good for a dog, too. Examples of studies, one, two.
photo credit: greefus groinks
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Portion and Wrap To Consume Less
April 22, 2008
Are there things that you wish to decrease your consumption of? Food and money spring to mind? An interesting way to do this may be to divide and wrap things.
A new study suggests that you will consume less, if something is split up into portions rather than presented as one.
In the first of two sets of experiments, participants were given 24 cookies and asked to report how long it took to consume them. Half the participants got all the cookies in one box, the other half received a box with every cookie individually wrapped. The average time of consumption for those who got the cookies together in one box was 6 days. For those who got the individually wrapped cookies it took an average of 24 days (!). I am sure being in a study slowed the consumption of both groups. However, it is quite striking that those having individually wrapped cookies took so much longer to consume them all.
It makes sense that if they are individually wrapped it is much harder to graze. Additionally, to eat a cookie you have to make the decision to unwrap it; there is more time to consider your action.
In another set of experiments, participants were given $100 of fake money in a gambling study. Half got all the money in one envelope, the other half got 10 sealed envelopes with $10 in each. Those with the money divided between 10 envelopes tended to spend less. Again presumably giving the participants more time to consider their action and having to commit to opening an envelope.
So perhaps the thing to do is when you get food that you don’t want to consume immediately is to split it up and wrap it some way in individual packets. I am going to give it a try with chocolate. Money will be trickier to control this way, since we are a credit card society and most of us don’t use that much cash.
The study is described in Science News.
photo credit: stu_spivack
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Tush Cush
April 21, 2008
I have a Tush-Cush on the chair that I normally sit on to use my laptop. It is very comfortable to sit on. I find that my back does not get tired and I do not start to feel pressure on the back of my legs on the edge of the chair, as often happens to me after sitting for extended periods. When sitting on the Tush-Cush the tailbone is suspended over the cut-out so there is no pressure on the base of the spine. The wedge shape really helps with my alignment. It is similar to sitting on a kneeling chair, which I have at my desktop.
The wedge tips the pelvis forward. Recent studies have shown that the optimal position for sitting is with a greater than a right angle between the body and legs. The optimal angle, if the upper legs are parallel to the floor, would be leaning back. However, this is awkward for using a desk or computer. With the Tush-Cush your legs point more towards the floor, so your back can be straight up, perpendicular to the floor. This is comfortable and practical for using the computer, writing, reading etc.
Another plus is that, unlike many other furnishing items, it does not seem to be a magnet for my dogs hair.
They also make a Car-Cush. I don’t drive very much but if I did I would probably get one of these too.
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Popularity: 39% [?]
Dietary Supplements, How Much?
April 19, 2008
Most people take dietary supplements of some kind or other. The majority of us feel that what we do not eat a completely healthy diet and need to compensate by taking vitamins, minerals and other substances. A number of recent studies have suggested that high levels of dietary supplementation may cause some problems. Here are a couple of thoughts.
One recent study (J. Nat. Cancer Inst. 99:754-764, 2007) analyzed men who had taken multivitamins more than 7 times per week compared with those who never used multivitamins. Taking the multivitamins doubled the risk of prostate cancer. Only one study, but certainly makes you wonder.
The trouble with looking at the effects of supplementation is that there is a whole range of variables. What does this mean? Here are some examples.
Is the supplement being taken with food (as most should be) or is it being taken on an empty stomach, possibly with something acidic such as fruit juice? When you eat a meal your brain and body signal the activation of a number of processes so that nutrients are extracted from the food and transported out of the gut into the body. So the vitamins etc. taken with food should be extracted and processed by the correct mechanisms. What happens to components of supplements when your body is not expecting them? For most of them who knows?
Is the dose reasonable, or is it way above what is thought to be the recommended amount. When the RDAs are updated they do not change by large amounts. I have some B vitamin tablets, a regular supplement from a large drugstore chain, in which the vitamin B1 (thiamine) is 3333% of the daily value. This means that each pill contains 33 times the recommended dose. If you cut the pill into 30 equal pieces, you could take one piece each day for a month and be getting the recommended amount of B1! It has not been shown that excess intake of vitamin B1 is harmful (yet?). Other vitamins such as vitamin A are definitely harmful at high doses.
Are the ratios between the various nutrient amounts in balance? For example, there has been quite a bit news lately that many adults are vitamin B9 (folate or folic acid) deficient and the health problems this may cause. So some will purchase some B9 pills or consume lots of folate-supplemented foods such as cereals. However, if your folate is high and your B12 is low this combination has been shown to increase the rate of decline in mental agility as we age.
So as with much of life, moderation is often a good course. A well-balanced healthy diet does not hurt either.
PubMed abstract of study.
photo credit: shouldbecleaning
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Lyric, A New Hearing Aid
April 17, 2008
I know several people, who have in the last couple of years, got hearing aids. They all complain about them and seem to have a particularly bad time when we are somewhere that there are multiple sources of sound such as a busy restaurant. Some of them seem to hardly wear their hearing aids since they find them so annoying and useless.
I just read about a new hearing aid called Lyric. This hearing aid seems to solve many of the problems associated with the currently available aids. It is only obtainable in a few clinics at present, but should become more widely available soon.
The new hearing aid is placed in the ear very close to the eardrum. So it is not visible on the surface like current hearing aids, also it is not an implant since no surgery is required.
The Lyric is worn 24 hours a day and does not need to be removed for showering. However, swimming and diving are not recommended.
Since it is so close to the eardrum what it picks up is much closer to what would be picked up by the eardrum with good hearing. Plus since it is so close to the eardrum there is less amplification needed than for the current standard hearing aid, so batteries will last longer.
The volume is turned up and down, and the unit on and off using a magnet and once the battery has died the whole implant is removed with a magnet and replaced with a new implant. The batteries last for up to 120 days.
A spongy layer surrounds the unit, which apparently helps stop build up of fluid and so reduces the chances of infection. The layer also protects the hearing aid from earwax.
The cost is per year including all the units needed and insertion and removal. According to the NYT, for both ears the cost ranges frorm $2,900 to $3,600 per year.
Their website is www.lyrichearing.com
The Lyric and devices like it are going to be in great demand in a few years when the iPod generation start to have hearing loss.
photo credit: theginjaninja1979
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Popularity: 60% [?]
Current Earthquake Swarm
April 16, 2008
If suddenly I stop posting to this blog, it could well be because an earthquake has flattened my house. A swarm suddenly started about 7 weeks ago. Yesterday afternoon while I was working at home there were 7 earthquakes in 25 minutes. The first was a 3.2, and two others about 25 seconds apart, were 3.4 and 3.6. Since my house is about 2 miles from where the majority of this current swarm of earthquakes has occurred, you can’t really miss them. The closest epicenter so far, is about 1,000 yards from my house.
The geologists seem to have no idea if we are building to a big one, which is supposedly overdue. So one question is how much to prepare with an unknown probability of an earthquake? So do I stockpile drinking water? Buy lots of canned and other non-perishable goods? What is over reacting; and what is being prudent? I am opting for a middle course, and have some water but not much food. Other people I know are really getting the bunker mentality. At least since I like to camping and have lots of gear, I could easily camp by the house.
In the shower this morning I am thinking, “If the big one hits now, what do I do if not injured?” Get outside wet and naked in the below freezing temperature?
It does make you start looking at life in a slightly different way.
photo credit: naoki.sato
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Popularity: 26% [?]
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