Today we will bring Leo Voogt to his last resting place. He died just one day before his eightieths birthday last Saturday. Shared a pleasant last Christmas with him. He enjoyed having his family around him. He enjoyed it all immensely like always. Will remember him as cheerful, honest, practical, enjoying life and a true friend and father in law. May he rest in peace. Related posts: Good characters make good motivated medical students? Chronotherapeutics what is it good for Diagnosing Depression in Primary Care Good Or Bad? ..read more »

This is an excellent post on MedCrunch, a new kid on the blogosphere. But they're so true I couldn't resist reposting them, for the full story please visit MedCrunch These 5 things are: Always double check Follow and respect guidelines (evidence based medicine vs. eminence based medicine) Training, training, training Do what you can do best and ask others for the rest Respect your collegues A new kind of online magazine covering health, medicine, entrepreneurship and technology all centered around new trends and the challenge of being a physician For more on MedCrunch and their topics, authors please read here Related posts: 10 Things You can Learn from a Digital .....read more »

Neil Pasricha started a blog during one of the darkest periods of his life until now. Not that blogging saved his life but watch the video what made him blog and keep going. Great talk. Neil Pasricha's blog 1000 Awesome Things savors life's simple pleasures, from free refills to clean sheets. In this heartfelt talk from TEDxToronto, he reveals the 3 secrets (all starting with A) to leading a life that's truly awesome. Related posts: Praxis Blog Carnival no. 6 Sharing the Love for the Universe Interview with Gina Trapani on Tim Ferriss Blog ..read more »

If you can predict academic success by personality factors, then med schools should consider including measures of these personality factors during their selection process. Mental toughness and stress tolerance are just two that came up. A recent systematic review looked at prospective cohort studies since 2000 on the subject of medical students’ scores on valid personality tests and objective measures of performance and stress. In all seven relevant and selected studies conscientiousness was the most important personality factor to predict long-term success in medical training. Furthermore, the evidence from these seven studies also suggests that social traits such as extraversion and .....read more »

The Rap Guide to Evolution is Baba Brinkman's comedy rap science show and full-length album, winner of the Scotsman Fringe First Award for outstanding new writing at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe. The Rap Guide uses hip-hop music and culture to communicate concepts from modern evolutionary theory. A grant from the Wellcome Trust has provided the initial funding to make 12 rap music videos based on the album tracks, making sense of artificial selection, sexual selection, unity of common descent, the evolution of aggression and altruism, and much more. Related posts: The Rap Guide to Evolution Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds The Evolution of Gaming ..read more »

Does a lot of friends on Facebook make you happy or does a positive self representation on Facebook make you feel happy. These two important questions were studied amongst 391 college students using Facebook. How does faceook use contribute to happiness? Indeed more friends on facebook increases your subjective well-being. This association was not mediated by the perceived social support from these friends. Happiness from the number of facebook friends could also be mediated by an enhancement of self worth. As in real life their is a critical number of friends and the feeling of social support derived from these friends. .....read more »

Interesting talk from surgeon Charles Limb, MD, an associate professor of otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins. Musician and researcher Charles Limb wondered how the brain works during musical improvisation -- so he put jazz musicians and rappers in an fMRI to find out. What he and his team found has deep implications for our understanding of creativity of all kinds. Thanks Scope, medical blog, Stanford University, an interesting blog, should be in your RSS reader. Related posts: How deep brain stimulation works for Parkinson’s Disease How the brain works The Brain and how it works ..read more »

Dutch Winter from Kasper Bak on Vimeo. When it starts freezing the Dutch go nuts. They're waiting to be able to do some iceskating as you can see in this video. Nice video, well done with good music. Unfortunately this year a lot of snow ruined the ice except for some of the northern provinces in The Netherlands. The ice has disappeared now, may be next month? In the winter the waters around the town of Lemmer in the Netherlands freeze over and everyone spends the next several months blissfully skating from place to place. Related posts: Dutch Design Fashion Architecture Is the dutch kidney .....read more »

In simple terms anhedonia is an important symptom of depression. The DSM IV states that individuals having this anhedonia “may report feeling less interest in hobbies, ‘not caring anymore,’ or not feeling any enjoyment in activities that were previously considered pleasurable”. For the diagnosis of depression either this symptom or low mood is required together with four other features of the disease. Anhedonia is a decrease in motivation as well as reduction in experienced pleasure. Anhedonia has a motivational as well as hedonic aspect. This makes it difficult to translate findings from animal models or other neuroscience research to patient .....read more »

Learned something new about field dependence and field independence. These are individual differences in learning style. There is a difference in how people perceive discrete items within a surrounding field. People at the one end of the extreme where perception was strongly dominated by the prevailing field were designated "field-dependent." Field-dependent learners see the forest. At the other extreme, people were considered "field-independent", if they experienced items as more or less separate from the field. Whereas field-dependent people see the forest, field-independent learners see the tree within the forest. Bomb disposal experts should be field independent whereas anti-terror .....read more »