John Cleese takes us on a tour of a laughter therapy practice in India.
Laughter promotes stress reduction, community bonding, stronger immune system... and joy. What a simple solution!
Both humans and mice are particularly vulnerable to noise- and drug-induced hearing loss at young ages.
"The laboratory mouse is a well-established model for human hearing," says coauthor Kevin K. Ohlemiller, Ph.D., research associate professor of otolaryngology. "They possess similar inner ear anatomy and physiology and similar patterns of age-related, noise-induced and drug-related hearing loss."
Ohlemiller worked with Elizabeth A. Fernandez, then a doctoral student in the Program in Audiology and Communication Sciences, to see if loud noise and a low dose of kanamycin would exacerbate each other's effects. Because the first month of life is when mice are most vulnerable to noise and drugs that damage hearing, 20- to 30-day old mice were injected with either kanamycin or saline solution twice a day for 11 days. They were then exposed to 110 decibels of noise for 30 seconds.
Two surprising
findings arose.
First, this particular strain of mice was very
sensitive to noise-induced hearing loss. Significant loss of some
sensory cells in the ear resulted in permanent hearing damage, even
over the short time span.
Second, a regular, low dose of kanamycin completely protected the mice against this sensory cell damage and hearing loss. The protective effect of repeated doses persists for at least two days after the last injection, the scientists noted.
Researchers
plan to use these hearing research findings in a number of ways.
They can map
the genes in this strain of mice to determine what makes them so
noise-sensitive and possibly figure out how kanamycin protects sensory
cells in the ear.
In addition, the findings open up new possibilities
for clinical research.
Learning how kanamycin protects the ear's sensory cells could help scientists develop drugs with similar effects. Medications that protect the ears from damaging noise levels could benefit a wide range of groups, from soldiers to airline workers to premature babies.
Basic Science Research PLUS Clinical Problem & Practice
"This very dramatically points out the benefits
of having basic scientists who can take a clinical problem and find a
result opposite of what we expected," Clark says. "These results not
only energize laboratory scientists and begin new lines of research,
but they also have implications for clinical practice. This has been an
amazing sequence of events, to start a project in a helicopter and end
up under a microscope."
Fernandez EA, Ohlemiller KK, Gagnon PM, Clark WW. Protection against noise-induced hearing loss in young CBA/J mice by low-dose kanamycin. Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology. Jan. 22, 2010 (advance online publication).
Funding from National Institutes of Health and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Department of Otolaryngology supported this research.
According to one of my favorite online health information sources, Mayo Clinic, physical activity is a "best practice" for everyone's health.
Regardless of age, weight or athletic ability, aerobic activity is good
for you. As your body adapts to regular aerobic exercise, you'll get
stronger and your body's organs get more efficient.
Consider these 10 ways that aerobic activity can help you feel better and enjoy life to the fullest.
Aerobic activity can help you:
The researchers see implications for workplaces, retail stores and other organizations that have relied on traditional surveillance and security measures to enforce rules.
"Companies often employ heavy-handed interventions to regulate conduct, but they can be costly or oppressive," said Liljenquist, whose office smells quite average. "This is a very simple, unobtrusive way to promote ethical behavior."
Perhaps the findings could be applied at home, too, Liljenquist said with a smile. "Could be that getting our kids to clean up their rooms might help them clean up their acts, too."
The study titled "The Smell of Virtue" was unusually simple and conclusive.
Participants engaged in several tasks, the only difference being that some worked in unscented rooms, while others worked in rooms freshly spritzed with Windex.
The first experiment evaluated fairness. As a test of whether clean scents would enhance reciprocity, participants played a classic "trust game." Subjects received $12 of real money (allegedly sent by an anonymous partner in another room). They had to decide how much of it to either keep or return to their partners who had trusted them to divide it fairly. Subjects in clean-scented rooms were less likely to exploit the trust of their partners, returning a significantly higher share of the money.
· The average amount of cash given back by the people in the "normal" room was $2.81. But the people in the clean-scented room gave back an average of $5.33.
The second experiment evaluated whether clean scents would encourage charitable behavior. Subjects indicated their interest in volunteering with a campus organization for a Habitat for Humanity service project and their interest in donating funds to the cause.
· Participants surveyed in a Windex-ed room were significantly more interested in volunteering (4.21 on a 7-point scale) than those in a normal room (3.29).
· 22 percent of Windex-ed room participants said they'd like to donate money, compared to only 6 percent of those in a normal room.
Follow-up questions confirmed that participants didn't notice the scent in the room and that their mood at the time of the experiment didn't affect the outcomes.
Cleanliness is next to godliness? Was Granny right?
"Basically, our study shows that morality and cleanliness can go hand-in-hand," said Galinsky of the Kellogg School. "Researchers have known for years that scents play an active role in reviving positive or negative experiences. Now, our research can offer more insight into the links between people's charitable actions and their surroundings."
While this study examined the influence of the physical environment on morality, Zhong and Liljenquist previously published work that demonstrated an intimate link between morality and physical cleanliness. Their 2006 paper in Science reported that transgressions activated a desire to be physically cleansed.
Liljenquist is now researching how perceptions of cleanliness shape our impressions of people and organizations. "The data tell a compelling story about how much we rely upon cleanliness cues to make a wide range of judgments about others," she said.
Katie Liljenquist is assistant professor of organizational leadership at BYU's Marriott School of Management, and the lead author on the piece in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science. Co-authors are Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Source: Newswise
Our well being. Think safety and joy and comfort food.But politics and economics soon enter the health equation.
Our environment. Remember Love Canal?
Our behaviors. Think "exercise".
Our food and exercise and social connections. Our community resiliency and survival network.
But a study designed by the University of Michigan showed Republicans were less supportive of such policies after reading news reports that people with diabetes got their illness because of social or economic factors in which they live, such as lack of neighborhood grocery stores or safe places to exercise. The social factors increased Democrats' support.
"When people are given the same information they can come away with very different opinions," says Sarah E. Gollust, Ph.D., a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who worked on the study during her doctoral work at U-M.
Increasing public awareness of social factors that impact health may not uniformly increase public support for action because some groups simply do not believe they are credible, authors write.
Social Values Influence Policy...surprised?
"Policymakers and journalists should be aware that social values influence people's opinions about health policy, and certain messages in the media might trigger these values," she says.
The findings contribute to evidence that Americans' opinions about health policy are polarized by political party lines, according to the study.
Gollust designed the study with Paula Lantz, Ph.D., a social epidemiologist and chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy at the U-M School of Public Health and Peter A. Ubel, M.D., professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan and director of the U-M Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine.
Diabetes News and Policy Research
Study participants viewed news articles about type 2 diabetes on the Internet and then answered questions about their opinions on health policy and their attitudes about people with diabetes.
When each viewed an article on the links between social and neighborhood factors and diabetes, 32 percent of Democrats agreed with social factors' role on health compared to 16 percent of Republicans.
Polarizing Information
"If you are more liberally minded the 'neighborhood explanation' can be motivating, but for people who are more conservative politically, that message can backfire and make them even less interested," says Ubel. "The same information can polarize people."
Diabetes was merely used as an example of a common health issue.
Social and Economic Factors ... and Health
While
type 2 diabetes is associated with health behaviors, such as poor diet,
lack of physical activity and obesity, these behavioral factors can be
influenced by social and economic factors such as living in an
unhealthy neighborhood.
Genetic Factors... and Health
Scientists have also identified numerous genetic variants that increase susceptibility to type 2 diabetes.
Non-medical Strategies for Health Care
So why focus on social factors? The goal of framing health matters according to social factors is increasingly used to shift attention to non-medical strategies to improve health. The media also commonly discuss the prevalence of social factors when describing health issues, but few studies have been devoted to whether it shifts public opinion.
Messages in the Media
"The problem is these messages aren't going to have the same effect on all people," Ubel says.
The authors do not suggest that news media avoid reporting on social factors. Rather, advocates who want to mobilize the public to support public health policies might consider disseminating information to the media about both social factors and individual behavioral causes to avoid triggering resistance.
Messaging Options
Tailored Messages for Audiences?
Isn't tailoring messages close to manipulation? Writers and message makers all have to pick and choose what is included and excluded from our final message products ... but blatant manipulation to affect advocacy goals is not in our shared best interest.
"Advocacy groups need to be very careful in thinking about who their audience is and what framing will work best for that audience," Ubel says. "Media should do a richer job of helping people understand each of these different causes."
Authors: Sarah E. Gollust, Ph.D., Paula M. Lantz, Ph.D., and Peter A. Ubel, M.D.
Citation: American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 99, No. 12, December 2009
Funding: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars Program at the University of Michigan and at the University of Pennsylvania, the U-M Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine, and the University of Michigan Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship.
Resources:
U-M Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences
http://www.cbdsm.org/
U-M School of Public Health
Department of Health Management and Policy
http://www.sph.umich.edu/hmp/
Source: Newswise, Inc.
Teachers are 32 times more likely to experience voice problems, according to one study. And unlike singers or actors, teachers can't take a day off when their voices hurt.
Now a new study by the National Center for Voice and
Speech (NCVS) reveals how teachers use their voices at work and at home
and uncovers differences between male and female teachers. Its findings
will be presented at a meeting of the 2009 Acoustical Society of America
(ASA).
Eric Hunter, deputy director of the NCVS, and colleagues equipped teachers with the NCVS voice dosimeter, a device which captures voicing characteristics such as pitch and loudness rather than actual speech. The dosimeter sampled their voices 33 times per second. The researchers analyzed 20 million of these samplings which were collected during waking hours over a 14 day period for each teacher.
Female teachers used their voices about 10 percent more than males when teaching and 7 percent more when not teaching.
The data also indicated that female teachers speak louder than male teachers at work.
"These results may indicate an underlying reason for female teachers' increased voice problems," writes Hunter.
All of the teachers spoke about 50 percent more when at work, at both a higher pitch and a volume (about 3 decibels louder).
Instead of resting their overworked voices at home, the teachers also spent significant amounts of time speaking outside of work.
Me thinks it's time to let the students do some of the talking!
I've picked up bits of studies over the years that report stats hinting that students have very few opportunities to speak in the classroom -- maybe it's time to create some new best practices that are good for the children's development of communication and social skills...and time to give the teacher a rest!
SOURCE: 2009 Newswise, Inc