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Ambient Experience Suites for hospital visits

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

I wonder if the researches pulled a muscle while they were straining to get the numbers to come out just right.

This study makes me happy though, if people have to go through such amazing statistical acrobatics to “prove” that being overweight is inherently unhealthy.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Researches say that a new vaccine that prevents infection by the 2 viruses that cause cervical cancer is promising.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Worst. Cold. Ever.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Well I’m in Maryland visiting my mother. I got here Wednesday night and immediately proceeded to fall on my ass on the ice. I also twisted my ankle pretty bad and after dealing with it for a day, we’re off to the hospital to make sure I didn’t break anything. Also, it’s freezing rain here with everything turning to ice overnight. Fun stuff!

Update:

Well the doctor said no fractures, which is good. It’s just a sprain. So they wrapped it up and gave me crutches. Using them is a lot harder than other people make it look. And also, I was in and out of urgent care in 1 hour which, after going to urgent care in LA a couple of times, feels like a miracle.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Interesting news about the genetics of obesity from researchers

Rebecca Hildreth started dieting in the fourth grade. Now 29, the Woodinville woman can’t recall a day when she wasn’t starving herself — or feeling guilty for eating. She has lost weight at least 20 times, and gained it all back.

“It’s just a horrible feeling,” said Hildreth, who stands 5-foot-5 and weighs more than 300 pounds. “It’s worse than anything else in the world.”

Like most overweight people, she blames herself for lacking the willpower to stay slim.

“Isn’t that what people think?” she asked. “They view you as lazy and undisciplined.”

Scientists in the burgeoning field of obesity research don’t see it that way.

There’s now irrefutable evidence that body weight is largely a function of genes — as much so as height or a family propensity for breast cancer. Those genes are the blueprint for an intricate web of brain chemicals and hormones that regulate appetite and metabolism. In people prone to obesity, new studies show, the system is geared to pack on pounds with exquisite ease while making it devilishly difficult to shed weight.

The findings help explain why diets almost always fail and why gastric bypass and other stomach-reduction surgeries are currently the only way most seriously obese people can slim down permanently.

The article goes on to explain that while diet and exercize can change weight, people geneticially predisposed to be overweight cannnot achieve the same results as people who are not. Researches explain that while social and emotional factors have an affect on weight, body make up and genetics play a larger role.

I’m hoping that more articles like this come out and that people start realizing that it’s not about willpower.

“People who are heavy don’t exercise less willpower than the average person. If anything, lean people don’t have to exercise the willpower that heavy people do.”

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

This is a really, really long article (content safe for work, url may not be) about the Ivy League tradition of taking nude photos of men and women to catalog their physique. The reasons for doing this are not clear, but the article raises many fascinating questions about this country and our society including:

1. Why would students submit to this?
2. What does the issues these photos raise say about power and body image?
3. How did our self image become so tied up in our physique?
4. What does our physique say about us, if anything?
5. How much leeway (and benefit of the doubt) should we give the scientific community?

Sheldon’s dream of reducing the complexity of human personality and the contingency of human fate to a single number is a recurrent one, as the continuing I.Q. controversy demonstrates. And a reminder that skepticism is still valuable in the face of scientific claims of certainty, particularly in the slippery realms of human behavior.

The rise and fall of “sciences” like Marxist history, Freudian psychology and Keynesian economics suggests that at least some of the beliefs and axioms treated as science today (Rorschach analysis, “rational choice” economics, perhaps) will turn out to have little more validity than nude stick-pin somatotyping.

In the Sheldon rituals, the student test subjects were naked — but it was the emperors of scientific certainty who had no clothes.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Sars, this time.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

I wish I had known sooner that all I need is a little product.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Holy Cow. This is so wrong and so funny and POOR GUY!!

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Or… maybe not.

| Posted by: Rita | Link to this post |

This is quite possibly one of the best posts ever. Make sure you read the article it links to (the all caps link). And take a minute or two to savor the beauty of the accompanying picture.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

“There are 70% fewer cases of HIV in Uganda now compared with ten years ago, research reveals. It is a success story that highlights the power of local communities to initiate change and shows how prevention strategies can work.”

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

wink, wink

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

You know, that shmoopy gym for women? The owner uses profits for anti-choice causes.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |