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November 08, 2005
Women May Enjoy Humor More, if It's Funny
The difference between the sexes has long been a rich source of humor. Now it turns out, humor is one of the differences. Take a look at this article published about a recent study performed by the National Academy of Sciences ... The team studied the response of 10 women and 10 men to 70 black-and-while cartoons, asking them to rate the jokes for how funny they were. While the volunteers were looking at the cartoons their brains were being studied with an MRI to determine what parts of the brains were responding. In large part, men and women had similar responses to humor, using parts of the brain responsible for the structure and context of language and for understanding juxtaposition. In women, however, some areas were more active than in men. These included the left prefrontal cortex, which the researchers said suggests a greater emphasis on language and executive processing, and the nucleus accumbens, or NAcc, which is part of the reward center. Interesting, isn't it? the old NAcc... no wonder Gleib's Wednesday's night show at the Improv is jizzam packed with the best girl-guy ratio in town ...
Posted by chooseto at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2005
Cancer Survivors May Not Get Needed Care
The nation's 10 million cancer survivors require customized follow-up for years that too few now receive, says a major study that calls for oncologists to create a "survivorship plan" to guide every patient's future health care. Promoting survivorship and changing perceptions is at the root of everything our organization is striving to do. Some work is beginning to try to provide that kind of survivor care, sparked by the pediatric cancer community. The Children's Oncology Group, a leading research group, developed long-term follow-up guidelines that say every child cancer survivor should be given an explicit treatment record — complete with physicians' addresses and doses of every drug — to provide every doctor who treats them in the future. And the Lance Armstrong Foundation has begun funding centers at some leading hospitals to focus on specialized survivor care. Monday's recommendations by the Institute of Medicine, chartered by Congress to advise the government on medical matters, is sure to add momentum to those still-fledgling efforts. Among the recommedations:
- Every patient completing cancer treatment should be given a customized "survivorship care plan" to guide future health care.
- That plan should summarize their cancer care down to drug and radiation dosages, cite guidelines for detecting recurrence or new malignancies, and explain long-term consequences of their cancer treatment. It also should discuss prevention of future cancer, and cite the availability of local psychosocial services and legal protections regarding employment and insurance.
- Specialists and primary care providers should coordinate to ensure survivors' needs are met.
- Health insurers should pay for this report.
- Scientists must improve, or in some case create, guidelines on exactly what screenings are needed for different cancers and their therapies.
- Congress should fund research of survivorship care, to assess their needs and provide evidence for quality care.
Read more on the internet at:
- Institute of Medicine: http://www.iom.edu
- National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship: http://www.canceradvocacy.org
Children's Oncology Group's survivor guidelines: http://www.survivorshipguidelines.org/
Posted by chooseto at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)