Another interesting talk about placebo, the placebo effect clearly explained with a magic trick Sugar pills, injections of nothing -- studies show that, more often than you'd expect, placebos really work. At TEDMED, magician Eric Mead does a trick to prove that, even when you know something's not real, you can still react as powerfully as if it is. (Warning: This talk is not suitable for viewers who are disturbed by needles or blood.) Related posts: The placebo effect, dopamine and reward The Placebo Effect The placebo response of transcranial magnetic stimulation ..read more »

From a systematic review of 10 randomized clinical trials: chocolate has blood pressure lowering capacity. Dark chocolate has a high content of flavanols. Flavonoids are the part of chocolate important for health benefits. They can also be found in high concentrations in certain fruits and vegetables. In the context of human nutrition, certain teas, grape juice, wine, various berries, and especially cocoa represent noteworthy sources. Dark chocolate has the highest content of flavonoids compared to the other sources. Besides lowering the blood pressure chocolate containing flavonols also has other cardioprotective properties. On average over all trials chocolate reduced blood pressure. Systolic .....read more »

Lifestyle is the most important factor for medical students in their specialty choice. With specialty choice in this research is meant the distinction between person oriented and technique oriented specialty. person-oriented specialties are considered to be family practice, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and psychiatry, whereas technique-oriented specialties are anesthesiology, dermatology, emergency medicine, otolaryngology, pathology, radiology, and surgery. Medical students are more concerned with entering specialties that provide "controllable lifestyle", meaning a lifestyle in which the physician is in control of the time spent at work and time spent otherwise. Gone are the days that patients, bosses, .....read more »

In this brief TED talk, Robert Gupta, a violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, recounts a violin lesson he once gave to Nathaniel Ayers, the schizophrenic musician featured in The Soloist. His talk is fascinating - and there's a stellar performance at the end (hint: it's an adaptation of J.S. Bach's Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007). Thanks SCOPERelated posts: Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival about Web 2.0 and Medicine The Machine and The Music: This Too Shall Pass Two remarkable music videos: Babies and Robots ..read more »

I am a Web Leopard Fast-moving - Web Leopards like you are adept at getting information from the internet very quickly. Your speed is a trait you share with real-world leopards, which are among the fastest land animals. Solitary - Leopards live alone, fending for themselves in isolated home ranges. Similarly, the Web Leopard likes to go it alone when looking for information, rather than rely on social networks, or other sites where the users create the content. Specialised - Web Leopards are best suited to performing one task at a time rather than multitasking. The real-world leopard is similarly specialised, being perfectly .....read more »

This time the theme is women in science and medicine because March is the month of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month (in the United States). Check it out at Suture for a Living, a lot of very interesting posts.Related posts: The New Grand Round is Up at Dr. Deb Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 52 up at Suture for a Living Grand Round at Pallimed: A Hospice & Palliative Medicine Blog ..read more »

How do married couples perceive the use of the Internet within their relationship? Partners within a marriage mostly share the same values and behavioral patterns. They will probably have the same ideas and attitudes towards acceptable online behavior? They will generally assume that their partners will not engage in cybersex and hotchatting. But men and women differ, they also differ in the use of Internet. Women showing a narrower use of the internet than men, men can use it for blogging, games, photo sharing etc. Women usually use it for either blogging or photo sharing or.... Women are more likely to have lower .....read more »

The younger generation especially students use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace a lot. The use of these sites also has their dangers and problems as mostly described in newspapers and magazines. Newspapers and magazines related to higher education are replete with cases of college students who experienced negative repercussions from questionable activities that were made public online Questionable activities such as racially insensitive remarks, alcohol and dug violations, illegally storming a football field. Repercussions such as expelled from class, called before the dean of students. But how do we help students to find the balance between free speech and .....read more »

A short movie inspired on numbers, geometry and nature, by Cristóbal Vila. Go to www.etereaestudios.com if you are looking for more information: the theory behind the movie, stills and screenshots showing the work in progress. Related posts: Pi-Day and Irrational Numbers Nature Video of David Attenborough on Darwin Putting Numbers into Images ..read more »

How can we extrapolate the feelings of success achieved in online gaming to the real world. Urgent optimism, social fabric, blissful productivity, epic meaning are the characteristics of online gamers that sum up to become super-empowered hopeful individuals. They are people that believe that they can individually change the world, the virtual world, but how to get them to believe that they can change the real world to a better world? That's were this talk is about. Nice games developed. Next upcoming game to save the real world: Evoke. Let the games begin. Games like World of Warcraft give players .....read more »