in case anyone missed it, below is Nancy Reagan's official statement, soon after Obama overturned Bush's ill-informed, and ill-advised ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. sj
“I’m very grateful that President Obama has lifted the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. These new rules will now make it possible for scientists to move forward. I urge researchers to make use of the opportunities that are available to them and to do all they can to fulfill the promise that stem cell research offers. Countless people, suffering from many different diseases, stand to benefit from the answers stem cell research can provide. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to do everything in our power to find cures for these diseases — and soon. As I’ve said before, time is short, and life is precious."
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Do five simple things a day to stay sane, say scientists
I don't know where I got this from, but I saved it last winter and just came across it now. Just in time too! ....'cause things are getting ker-aazzyyy! sj
Do five simple things a day to stay sane, say scientists
Mark Henderson, Science Editor
Simple activities such as gardening or mending a bicycle can protect mental health and help people to lead more fulfilled and productive lives, a panel of scientists has found.
A “five-a-day” programme of social and personal activities can improve mental wellbeing, much as eating fruit and vegetables enhances physical health, according to Foresight, the government think-tank. Its Mental Capital and Wellbeing report, which was compiled by more than 400 scientists, proposes a campaign modelled on the nutrition initiative, to encourage behaviour that will make people feel better about themselves.
People should try to connect with others, to be active, to take notice of their surroundings, to keep learning and to give to their neighbours and communities, the document says.
Its advice to “take notice” includes suggestions such as “catch sight of the beautiful” and “savour the moment, whether walking to work, eating lunch or talking to friends”. Examples of learning include mending a bike or trying to play a musical instrument.
“A big question in mental wellbeing is what individuals can do,” Felicia Huppert, Professor of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, who led part of the project, said. “We found there are five categories of things that can make a profound difference to people’s wellbeing. Each has evidence behind it.” These actions are so simple that everyone should aim to do them daily, she said, just as they are encouraged to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables.
Critics of the recommendation said that the Government and health professionals ought not to be prescribing individual behaviour in this way. “The implication is that if you don’t do these banal things, you could get seriously mentally ill, and that trivialises serious mental illness. What is happiness, anyway? It’s so subjective,” Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, said.
Although the report has no immediate policy implications, ministers will pay attention to it because Foresight is headed by the Government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington.
The project investigated ways of improving the nation’s “mental capital”, which Professor Beddington likened to a bank account of the mind. “We need to ask what actions can add to that bank account, and what activities can erode that capital,” he said.
Among the other issues it highlights is a strong link between mental illness and debt. Half of people in Britain who are in debt have a mental disorder, compared with just 16 per cent of the general population.
Rachel Jenkins, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who led this section of the report, said: “We’ve known for a while there’s a link between mental health issues and low income, but what more recent research has shown is that that relationship is probably mostly accounted for by debt.”
The report advocates more flexible working, days after Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, announced a review of government plans to extend such arrangements.
Cary Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health at the University of Lancaster, a co-ordinator of the report, said: “People who choose to work flexibly are more job-satisfied, healthier and more productive.”
Steps to happiness
Connect
Developing relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours will enrich your life and bring you support
Be active
Sports, hobbies such as gardening or dancing, or just a daily stroll will make you feel good and maintain mobility and fitness
Be curious
Noting the beauty of everyday moments as well as the unusual and reflecting on them helps you to appreciate what matters to you
Learn
Fixing a bike, learning an instrument, cooking – the challenge and satisfaction brings fun and confidence
Give
Helping friends and strangers links your happiness to a wider community and is very rewarding
Do five simple things a day to stay sane, say scientists
Mark Henderson, Science Editor
Simple activities such as gardening or mending a bicycle can protect mental health and help people to lead more fulfilled and productive lives, a panel of scientists has found.
A “five-a-day” programme of social and personal activities can improve mental wellbeing, much as eating fruit and vegetables enhances physical health, according to Foresight, the government think-tank. Its Mental Capital and Wellbeing report, which was compiled by more than 400 scientists, proposes a campaign modelled on the nutrition initiative, to encourage behaviour that will make people feel better about themselves.
People should try to connect with others, to be active, to take notice of their surroundings, to keep learning and to give to their neighbours and communities, the document says.
Its advice to “take notice” includes suggestions such as “catch sight of the beautiful” and “savour the moment, whether walking to work, eating lunch or talking to friends”. Examples of learning include mending a bike or trying to play a musical instrument.
“A big question in mental wellbeing is what individuals can do,” Felicia Huppert, Professor of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, who led part of the project, said. “We found there are five categories of things that can make a profound difference to people’s wellbeing. Each has evidence behind it.” These actions are so simple that everyone should aim to do them daily, she said, just as they are encouraged to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables.
Critics of the recommendation said that the Government and health professionals ought not to be prescribing individual behaviour in this way. “The implication is that if you don’t do these banal things, you could get seriously mentally ill, and that trivialises serious mental illness. What is happiness, anyway? It’s so subjective,” Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, said.
Although the report has no immediate policy implications, ministers will pay attention to it because Foresight is headed by the Government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington.
The project investigated ways of improving the nation’s “mental capital”, which Professor Beddington likened to a bank account of the mind. “We need to ask what actions can add to that bank account, and what activities can erode that capital,” he said.
Among the other issues it highlights is a strong link between mental illness and debt. Half of people in Britain who are in debt have a mental disorder, compared with just 16 per cent of the general population.
Rachel Jenkins, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who led this section of the report, said: “We’ve known for a while there’s a link between mental health issues and low income, but what more recent research has shown is that that relationship is probably mostly accounted for by debt.”
The report advocates more flexible working, days after Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, announced a review of government plans to extend such arrangements.
Cary Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health at the University of Lancaster, a co-ordinator of the report, said: “People who choose to work flexibly are more job-satisfied, healthier and more productive.”
Steps to happiness
Connect
Developing relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours will enrich your life and bring you support
Be active
Sports, hobbies such as gardening or dancing, or just a daily stroll will make you feel good and maintain mobility and fitness
Be curious
Noting the beauty of everyday moments as well as the unusual and reflecting on them helps you to appreciate what matters to you
Learn
Fixing a bike, learning an instrument, cooking – the challenge and satisfaction brings fun and confidence
Give
Helping friends and strangers links your happiness to a wider community and is very rewarding
Friday, March 6, 2009
Sometimes solutions are easy.
story below from LA Times.... sj
Obama to reverse Bush policy on embryonic stem cell research
White House sources say key restrictions on federal funding will be lifted Monday. Social conservatives protest that the move will 'aid the destruction of innocent human life.'
By Noam N. Levey and Karen Kaplan
4:24 PM PST, March 6, 2009
Reporting from Washington — President Obama on Monday plans to lift key restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, reversing one of the most controversial domestic policies of his predecessor, according to administration sources.
The move has been widely anticipated by scientists and patient-advocacy groups who chafed at President Bush's 2001 decision to bar federal funding for research on nearly all human embryonic stem cells.
Under the Bush policy, a limited set of embryonic stem cells created before August 2001 could be used in federally funded experiments.
But many scientists said that policy placed significant constraints on research aimed at producing cures for disease. Embryonic stem cells can grow into nearly any type of tissue in the body, and scientists are hoping to learn how to mold them into heart cells for cardiac patients, pancreas cells for diabetics and replacement brain cells for people with Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease.
In changing the policy, Obama may further anger social conservatives who believe that the research is immoral because human embryos are destroyed in the course of obtaining stem cells. Many are already upset at Obama for reversing Bush administration policies that restricted abortion services.
House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said federal funding should be directed to research on stem cells not derived from embryos.
"The question is whether taxpayer dollars should be used to subsidize the destruction of precious human life," Boehner said in a statement Friday. "Millions of Americans strongly oppose that, and rightfully so. Taxpayer dollars should not aid the destruction of innocent human life."
Administration officials did not provide much detail Friday about the order that Obama plans to sign at a White House ceremony Monday.
One official said the president would emphasize "a return to sound science," a theme that Obama and other Democratic candidates talked about often during last year's presidential campaign.
Eight years ago, Bush cast the restrictions as a compromise that would allow scientific research to continue "without crossing a fundamental moral line by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos." Congress tried to lift his restrictions. Bush twice vetoed legislation to do so.
The restrictions became increasingly vexing for many scientists, who charged that they had slowed the pace of research.
"It was such a disaster," said Julie Baker, a stem cell researcher at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Reversing the policy would give federally funded scientists access to hundreds of newer stem cells that are free of the chromosomal abnormalities and animal molecules that they say make the so-called presidential cell lines essentially useless as potential medical therapies.
Many scientists are also eager to get their hands on the dozens of new lines that carry the genetic signatures of the diseases they study. None of the presidential lines have that feature.
American scientists are no longer at the vanguard of stem cell research, asserts a study published last year in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
In the paper, Aaron Levine, a public policy professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, found that whereas U.S. researchers published 46% of the world's top papers in the fields of molecular biology and genetics, they produced only 36% of the human embryonic stem cell studies.
Obama to reverse Bush policy on embryonic stem cell research
White House sources say key restrictions on federal funding will be lifted Monday. Social conservatives protest that the move will 'aid the destruction of innocent human life.'
By Noam N. Levey and Karen Kaplan
4:24 PM PST, March 6, 2009
Reporting from Washington — President Obama on Monday plans to lift key restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, reversing one of the most controversial domestic policies of his predecessor, according to administration sources.
The move has been widely anticipated by scientists and patient-advocacy groups who chafed at President Bush's 2001 decision to bar federal funding for research on nearly all human embryonic stem cells.
Under the Bush policy, a limited set of embryonic stem cells created before August 2001 could be used in federally funded experiments.
But many scientists said that policy placed significant constraints on research aimed at producing cures for disease. Embryonic stem cells can grow into nearly any type of tissue in the body, and scientists are hoping to learn how to mold them into heart cells for cardiac patients, pancreas cells for diabetics and replacement brain cells for people with Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease.
In changing the policy, Obama may further anger social conservatives who believe that the research is immoral because human embryos are destroyed in the course of obtaining stem cells. Many are already upset at Obama for reversing Bush administration policies that restricted abortion services.
House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said federal funding should be directed to research on stem cells not derived from embryos.
"The question is whether taxpayer dollars should be used to subsidize the destruction of precious human life," Boehner said in a statement Friday. "Millions of Americans strongly oppose that, and rightfully so. Taxpayer dollars should not aid the destruction of innocent human life."
Administration officials did not provide much detail Friday about the order that Obama plans to sign at a White House ceremony Monday.
One official said the president would emphasize "a return to sound science," a theme that Obama and other Democratic candidates talked about often during last year's presidential campaign.
Eight years ago, Bush cast the restrictions as a compromise that would allow scientific research to continue "without crossing a fundamental moral line by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos." Congress tried to lift his restrictions. Bush twice vetoed legislation to do so.
The restrictions became increasingly vexing for many scientists, who charged that they had slowed the pace of research.
"It was such a disaster," said Julie Baker, a stem cell researcher at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Reversing the policy would give federally funded scientists access to hundreds of newer stem cells that are free of the chromosomal abnormalities and animal molecules that they say make the so-called presidential cell lines essentially useless as potential medical therapies.
Many scientists are also eager to get their hands on the dozens of new lines that carry the genetic signatures of the diseases they study. None of the presidential lines have that feature.
American scientists are no longer at the vanguard of stem cell research, asserts a study published last year in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
In the paper, Aaron Levine, a public policy professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, found that whereas U.S. researchers published 46% of the world's top papers in the fields of molecular biology and genetics, they produced only 36% of the human embryonic stem cell studies.
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