Health Care Resources - Obama, Democrats reassess health care

Abandoning the health care overhaul is not an option, a senior White House official said Wednesday, after President Barack Obama's top domestic initiative took a devastating hit with the Democratic loss of the Senate seat in the state of Massachusetts.

Obama adviser David Axelrod said administration officials will take into account the message voters delivered Tuesday in electing Republican Scott Brown but declined to go farther.

Questioned about the fate of health care legislation, Axelrod said, "It's not an option simply to walk away from a problem that's only going to get worse."

The stinging loss Tuesday cost Obama the 60-vote Senate majority he was counting on to pass the far-reaching legislation. The outcome splintered the rank and file on how to salvage the bill, energized congressional Republicans and left Obama and the Democrats with fallback options that range from bad to worse.

A leading idea involves persuading House Democrats to pass a Senate bill that many of them have serious problems with. Another alternative calls for Senate Democrats to promise to make changes to the bill later on. Some Democrats said their big hopes would have to be scaled back.

The leader of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, refused to acknowledge that as a possibility as she left the Capitol near midnight Tuesday after meeting with her top lieutenants to discuss the way forward. Pelosi and others contend that because Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage under a state law, the upset victory by Republican state Sen. Scott Brown to take Edward M. Kennedy's old seat could not be seen as a referendum on the issue.

"Massachusetts has health care. ... The rest of the country would like to have that too," Pelosi, a Democrat, said. "So we don't say a state that already has health care should determine whether the rest of the country should."

"We will get the job done. I'm very confident. I've always been confident," she added.

Before Senate Democrats gathered Wednesday to discuss their next moves, Majority Leader Harry Reid held out hope for the bill, saying, "There are a lot of different options out there."

Others saw miles (kilometers) of bad road in any direction and suggested that regrouping was in order.

"We shouldn't show the arrogance of not getting the message here," said liberal Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, contending independents had turned against the bill and the Democratic base had lost its enthusiasm. "I don't think it would be the worst thing to take a step back" and turn the focus to jobs, in conjunction with scaled-back health care goals.

Republicans said do not even bother: The election of Brown over the once-favored Democrat Martha Coakley in the Democratic stronghold sent a message that the health legislation should be scrapped altogether. Losing the Massachusetts seat will cost the Democrats the 60th vote needed to overcome Republican efforts to block legislation in the 100-member Senate. Sixty votes are needed to close off debate and move legislation to the full Senate floor.

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele said Americans were breathing "a sigh of relief" over the potential derailing of the health care bill.

"People across the country are saying, 'Slow it down," Steele said Wednesday on ABC television's "Good Morning America."

But David Plouffe, who led Obama's presidential campaign, rejected calls to scrap the bill. "We have a good health care plan," he said on ABC. "We need to pass that. We have to lead."

Senate Democrats were scheduled to meet Wednesday, and a sign of their intentions could emerge then. Obama will have to exert a mighty influence to keep jittery moderates from giving up on the effort.

Democrats do not appear to have enough time to resolve differences between the two bills passed by the House and Senate — and get cost and coverage evaluation estimates back from the Congressional Budget Office as required — before Brown is sworn in.

Moderate Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, said the Senate should not hold any further votes on health care until Brown is seated.

The legislation would expand coverage to more than 30 million Americans now uninsured, while attempting to rein in the growth of health care costs. Democratic lawmakers will have to move in virtual lockstep to enact the bill now, even as Republican opposition intensifies.

That could be too much to ask from rank-and-file Democrats demoralized by losing a seat held in an almost unbroken line by a Kennedy since 1953. Efforts to woo Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe as a convert could increase. But with polls showing voters souring on health care legislation, the president could be abandoned by lawmakers of his own party.

Health Care Resources - Performing horizontal eye movement exercises can boost your creativity

There have been prior clues that creativity benefits from ample cross-talk between the brain hemispheres. For example, patients who've had a commissurotomy - the severing of the thick bundle of nerve fibres that joins the two hemispheres - show deficits on creative tasks. Now Elizabeth Shobe and colleagues have provided the first evidence that creativity is boosted by an intervention designed to increase hemispheric cross-talk.

Shobe's team tested 62 participants on a version of the "Alternative Uses Test", a divergent thinking challenge that involves dreaming up unconventional uses for everyday objects such as bricks and newspapers.

An important factor that the researchers took note of was the participants' handedness. Prior research has suggested that people who have one hand that is particularly dominant, so-called "strong-handers", have less cross-talk between their brain hemispheres compared with people who are more ambidextrous or "mixed handed".

After an initial attempt at the creativity task, half the participants spent thirty seconds shifting their eyes horizontally back and forth. This exercise is thought to help increase inter-hemispheric communication. The remaining participants acted as controls and just stared straight ahead for 30 seconds.

The key finding is that on their second creativity attempt, strong-handers who'd performed the horizontal eye movements subsequently showed a significant improvement in their creativity, in terms of being more original (i.e. suggesting ideas not proposed by others) and coming up with more categories of use. Staring straight ahead, by contrast, had no effect on creativity.

Another finding was that, overall, the mixed-handed participants performed better on the creativity task than the strong-handers, thus providing further evidence for a link between inter-hemispheric interaction, which mixed-handers have more of, and creativity. But it also turned out that mixed-handers didn't benefit from the horizontal eye movement task. It's as if they already have an optimum amount of hemispheric cross-talk so that the eye movements make no difference. This meant that after the strong-handers had performed the horizontal eye movements, their performance matched that of the mixed-handed participants.

The researchers also showed that, for strong-handers, the beneficial effects of the eye movement exercise lasted nine minutes for originality, but just three to six minutes in terms of coming up with more categories of use.

"Our findings may not apply to more unique populations who are characterised as 'highly creative'," the researchers said, "nor can we conclude ... that the thirty seconds bilateral eye movement task will turn an average individual into an artist, poet, scientist, philosopher, actor or sculptor. However, we certainly do propose that the ... eye movement task will result in a temporary increase in strong-hander's ability to think of creative uses for various house-hold objects."

These new findings complement research published in 2008 showing that horizontal eye movements aid memory performance for strongly-right handed people, but impair the performance of left-handers and mixed-handers.

_________________________________

Shobe ER, Ross NM, & Fleck JI (2009). Influence of handedness and bilateral eye movements on creativity. Brain and cognition, 71 (3), 204-14 PMID: 19800726

Health Care Resources - NEGATIVE INFLUENCE AA and DHA milk

The level of consumption Docosahexanoic Acid (DHA), which will endanger excessive body metabolism. For the body of work that had burdened more heavily to remove the essential fatty acid.

Disease specialist Dr. children. Utami Roesli MBA, cite the results of studies conducted in Australia, the United States and Europe, that in the three countries of this region, has not produced the effectiveness of the addition of DHA in milk products and baby food and children, including for pregnant mothers. "So there has been no suggestion to add elements linoleat acid and acid linolenat it into the milk," he said to the media yesterday in

Jakarta

. Further emphasized, as well as fat milk cow, the DHA Feed page. is not a bunch of chain length, so it is still difficult absorbed by the baby's digestion.

Furthermore, he said, because the milk will be consumed this should be made by using hot water to experience the warming process. As a result, the desaturase enzyme activity and facilitate the establishment of the elongase that DHA in the body automatically destroyed. Therefore, Utami, a specialist milk (breastmilk) to remind people, especially the mother of the nation, lest the affected ad milk and food that contains the assistant breastfeeding with DHA It is vital It is vital to improve the intelligence of infants. "Essential fat acid is thus quite contained in breastfeeding, even elements of DHA is quite a long chain of ties is very easy digestion absorbed baby," he said. Therefore, he suggested that breastfed infants since given birth to age 4 months, because the fatty acid breastfeeding also consists of acid arakidonat.

"This means, the content exceeds the elements linoleat acid and acid linolenat."

After four months, he said, the baby can be given

Tempe

which also contains linoleat acid and acid linolenat because the fat ties, including a long chain. Utami explains, after reaching the age of six months, babies can also be given fish, which naturally contains the second fatty acid, without the need to consume milk formula.

Misleading

Chairman of the Board Increased use of breastmilk Saint Carolus Hospital recognizes this, slogan "Four Perfect Healthy Five" since the first valid votes have been misleading the public. "People think food consumption per day is not yet perfect day if not drinking milk. Milk does not mean not important, but not all cake," he asserted again.

He even see the ad milk and baby food and children, who tend to be implemented with DHA following misleading, because producers take advantage of consumer ignorance is indeed not understand the benefits of these additional elements. Meanwhile, the specialist in nutrition Indonesia general public still expressed the content of DHA in milk. Because until this far, have not been done research on the benefits.

Soebagyo Sumodihardjo MSc doctors, nutrition experts from the Medical Faculty of Nutrition Science University Indonesia, Revealed a new side to know it from the media massa. 

When the media found after the opening of the workshop on "Improving Equity and Utilization of Labor Education Graduates in the Health Sector Non-Department of Health and Social an" in Jakarta yesterday, he asked not willing to comment. "I mengkliping new and have not read the literature," he said. He promised to tell this week and then after all the information gathered from various sources.

Child specialist Dr. Sri S. Nasar inform you that the previous summer DHA in humans, as far as this new look experienced people to consume more Eskimoan the fish. It is said that symptoms such as bleeding, similar Rhodri Morgan Rhodri Morgan kebiruan in skin color. "The effect of other new and monkeys found in the mice, but different symptoms"

Health Care Resources - Ten statisticians every psychologist should know about

As psychology students past and present will be only too aware, statistics are a key part of every psychology undergrad course and they also appear in nearly every published journal article. And yet have we ever stopped to recognise the statisticians who have brought us these wonderful mathematical tools? As psychologist Daniel Wright puts it: "Statistical techniques are often taught as if they were brought down from some statistical mount only to magically appear in [the software package] SPSS."

To help address this oversight, Wright has compiled a list of ten statisticians he thinks every psychologist should know about. The list is strict in the sense that it only includes statisticians, whilst omitting psychologists, such as Jacob Cohen and Lee Cronbach, who have made significant contributions to statistical science in psychology.

Wright divides his list in three, beginning with three founding fathers of modern statistics. First up is Karl Pearson (pictured), best known to psychologists for the Pearson Correlation and Pearson's chi-square test. He was a socialist who turned down a knighthood in 1935. His first momentous achievement was his 1932 book The Grammar of Science and he also founded the world's first university statistics department at UCL in 1911.

Ronald Fisher was the author of Statistical Methods for Research Workers, which Wright describes as "one of the most important books of science." Fisher was also instrumental in the development of p values in null hypothesis significance testing.

Together with Pearson's son, Egon, Jerzy Neyman produced the framework of null and alternative hypothesis testing that dominates stats to this day. He also created the notion of confidence intervals. Neyman and Fisher were big critics of each other's theories. After a brief spell at UCL with Fisher, Neyman moved later to Berkeley where he set up the stats department - now one of the top such departments in the world.

Wright also lists three of his statistical heroes: John Tukey of post-hoc test fame, who made major contributions in robust methods and graphing (and who coined the terms ANOVA, software and bit); Donald Rubin who has conducted influential work on effect sizes and meta-analyses; and Brad Efron who developed the computer-intensive bootstrap resampling technique.

Wright devotes the last section of his list to four statisticians who have gifted psychology particular statistical techniques: David Cox and the Box-Cox transformation; Leo Goodman and categorical data analysis; John Nelder and the Generalised Linear Model; and Robert Tibshirani and the lasso data reduction technique.

"The list is meant to introduce some of the main statistical pioneers and their important achievements in psychology," Wright concludes. "It is hoped learning about the people behind the statistical procedures will make the procedures seem more humane than many psychologists perceive them to be."

What do you think of Wright's list? Is there anyone he's overlooked?

_________________________________

Daniel B Wright (2009). Ten Statisticians and Their Impacts for Psychologists. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4 (6), 587-597. [Draft pdf via author website].

Health Care Resources - Extras

Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut:

The bright side of being blue: "The analytical rumination hypothesis proposes that depression is an evolved response to complex problems, whose function is to minimize disruption and sustain analysis of those problems by (a) giving the triggering problem prioritized access to processing resources, (b) reducing the desire to engage in distracting activities (anhedonia), and (c) producing psychomotor changes that reduce exposure to distracting stimuli."

Foreign accent syndrome with a psychological cause?

Nature special on technological advances in neuroscience.

Placebo reduced sadness just as much as alcohol.

Exploring the extent of the deficits associated with congenital amusia (a life-long disorder of music processing).

Vicarious sunk-cost fallacy - or why I keep investing in your failed project.

Female sexual orientation discerned from just 40ms glimpse of the face.

Pregnancy massage reduces prematurity, low birthweight and postpartum depression.

Alternatives to randomised experiments.

Are referees more lenient towards female handball players?