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Source: http://blogcritics.org/video/article/movie-review-wish-you-were-here/
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May 23, 2013 ? Bochum's medics have succeeded in treating cerebral palsy with autologous cord blood. Following a cardiac arrest with severe brain damage, a 2.5 year old boy had been in a persistent vegetative state -- with minimal chances of survival. Just two months after treatment with the cord blood containing stem cells, the symptoms improved significantly; over the following months, the child learned to speak simple sentences and to move.
"Our findings, along with those from a Korean study, dispel the long-held doubts about the effectiveness of the new therapy," says Dr. Arne Jensen of the Campus Clinic Gynaecology. Together with his colleague Prof. Dr. Eckard Hamelmann of the Department of Paediatrics at the Catholic Hospital Bochum (University Clinic of the RUB), he reports in the journal Case Reports in Transplantation.
The parents searched the literature for treatment options
At the end of November 2008, the child suffered from cardiac arrest with severe brain damage and was subsequently in a persistent vegetative state with his body paralysed. Up to now, there has been no treatment for the cause of what is known as infantile cerebral palsy. "In their desperate situation, the parents searched the literature for alternative therapies," Arne Jensen explains. "They contacted us and asked about the possibilities of using their son's cord blood, frozen at his birth."
"Threatening, if not hopeless prognosis"
Nine weeks after the brain damage, on 27 January 2009, the doctors administered the prepared blood intravenously. They studied the progress of recovery at 2, 5, 12, 24, 30, and 40 months after the insult. Usually, the chances of survival after such a severe brain damage and more than 25 minutes duration of resuscitation are six per cent. Months after the severe brain damage, the surviving children usually only exhibit minimal signs of consciousness. "The prognosis for the little patient was threatening if not hopeless," the Bochum medics say.
Rapid recovery after cord blood therapy
After the cord blood therapy, the patient, however, recovered relatively quickly. Within two months, the spasticity decreased significantly. He was able to see, sit, smile, and to speak simple words again. Forty months after treatment, the child was able to eat independently, walk with assistance, and form four-word sentences. "Of course, on the basis of these results, we cannot clearly say what the cause of the recovery is," Jensen says. "It is, however, very difficult to explain these remarkable effects by purely symptomatic treatment during active rehabilitation."
In animal studies, stem cells migrate to damaged brain tissue
In animal studies, scientists have been researching the therapeutic potential of cord blood for some time. In a previous study with rats, RUB researchers revealed that cord blood cells migrate to the damaged area of ??the brain in large numbers within 24 hours of administration. In March 2013, in a controlled study of one hundred children, Korean doctors reported for the first time that they had successfully treated cerebral palsy with allogeneic cord blood.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/vjeUzDiJFyw/130523101822.htm
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BEIJING (AP) -- Two emotionless prison guards watch Ai Weiwei as he eats, sleeps, paces, showers ? and even sits on the toilet ? in the Chinese artist's new obscenity-filled, metaphor-rich music video mocking state power.
The video accompanying the visual artist's single "Dumbass" ? released Wednesday but blocked online in mainland China ? is meant to reconstruct his 81-day detention in 2011, which was part of an overall crackdown on dissent. Ai's subsequent conviction for tax evasion has been seen as punishment for his activism.
"People who are detained suffer traumas, and those who detain us know this very well," Ai said at a video premiere ceremony in Beijing. "This is why we are secretly detained, blindfolded, cuffed, not allowed to meet with lawyers and relatives.
"I had been thinking about how to recover from the trauma. And I came up with the idea of using music to convey a sentiment that is tremendously secret, and private, to the public," Ai said.
After his release, Ai's design firm was slapped with a $2.4 million tax bill, which he fought unsuccessfully in the Chinese courts.
Ai has irked Beijing by using his art and online profile to draw attention to injustices in China and the need for greater transparency and rule of law.
His music video, screeching with heavily distorted guitars, depicts an insensitive, overbearing state power that tramples on individual rights. The Chinese-language lyrics are full of obscene insults, and the video images include animals that have become euphemisms for defiantly circumventing strict censorship.
"This video was not shot for me, and this song, I am not singing for myself," Ai said. "This is dedicated to all those people who do not have the opportunity to raise their voice, who will never be able to raise their voices. This is not just one generation. In the past 60 years there have been innumerable amounts of people who have been killed or sent away from their homes, even tortured to death."
However, web surfers in China are unlikely to see it.
During the premiere, Ai and his assistants posted links to the video on social media and file-sharing sites that are blocked in China, including Twitter and YouTube. They also tried ? in front of reporters ? to post to Chinese sites including tudou.com, but those attempts weren't successful, apparently because censors who review the content before it becomes public rejected the video.
The music video has Ai himself singing the song's explicit lyrics.
"Dumbass" is the first single from Ai's forthcoming music album "The Divine Comedy."
LONDON, ENGLAND - FILE: Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei holds some seeds from his Unilever Installation 'Sunflower Seeds' at The Tate Modern on October 11, 2010 in London, England. Chinese state radio ... more? LONDON, ENGLAND - FILE: Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei holds some seeds from his Unilever Installation 'Sunflower Seeds' at The Tate Modern on October 11, 2010 in London, England. Chinese state radio reported on June 22, 2011 that the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been freed on bail after confessing to tax evasion. Ai was detained on April 3, 2011 and is reported to be in poor health. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images) less? ?Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ai-weiwei-uses-music-mock-135539526.html
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May 22, 2013 ? Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion -- the emotional state of caring for people who are suffering in a way that motivates altruistic behavior.
A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, investigates whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.
"Our fundamental question was, 'Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?'" says Helen Weng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. "Our evidence points to yes."
In the study, the investigators trained young adults to engage in compassion meditation, an ancient Buddhist technique to increase caring feelings for people who are suffering. In the meditation, participants envisioned a time when someone has suffered and then practiced wishing that his or her suffering was relieved. They repeated phrases to help them focus on compassion such as, "May you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease."
Participants practiced with different categories of people, first starting with a loved one, someone whom they easily felt compassion for, like a friend or family member. Then, they practiced compassion for themselves and, then, a stranger. Finally, they practiced compassion for someone they actively had conflict with called the "difficult person," such as a troublesome coworker or roommate.
"It's kind of like weight training," Weng says. "Using this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion 'muscle' and respond to others' suffering with care and a desire to help."
Compassion training was compared to a control group that learned cognitive reappraisal, a technique where people learn to reframe their thoughts to feel less negative. Both groups listened to guided audio instructions over the Internet for 30 minutes per day for two weeks. "We wanted to investigate whether people could begin to change their emotional habits in a relatively short period of time," says Weng.
The real test of whether compassion could be trained was to see if people would be willing to be more altruistic -- even helping people they had never met. The research tested this by asking the participants to play a game in which they were given the opportunity to spend their own money to respond to someone in need (called the "Redistribution Game"). They played the game over the Internet with two anonymous players, the "Dictator" and the "Victim." They watched as the Dictator shared an unfair amount of money (only $1 out of $10) with the Victim. They then decided how much of their own money to spend (out of $5) in order to equalize the unfair split and redistribute funds from the Dictator to the Victim.
"We found that people trained in compassion were more likely to spend their own money altruistically to help someone who was treated unfairly than those who were trained in cognitive reappraisal," Weng says.
"We wanted to see what changed inside the brains of people who gave more to someone in need. How are they responding to suffering differently now?" asks Weng. The study measured changes in brain responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after training. In the MRI scanner, participants viewed images depicting human suffering, such as a crying child or a burn victim, and generated feelings of compassion towards the people using their practiced skills. The control group was exposed to the same images, and asked to recast them in a more positive light as in reappraisal.
The researchers measured how much brain activity had changed from the beginning to the end of the training, and found that the people who were the most altruistic after compassion training were the ones who showed the most brain changes when viewing human suffering. They found that activity was increased in the inferior parietal cortex, a region involved in empathy and understanding others. Compassion training also increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the extent to which it communicated with the nucleus accumbens, brain regions involved in emotion regulation and positive emotions.
"People seem to become more sensitive to other people's suffering, but this is challenging emotionally. They learn to regulate their emotions so that they approach people's suffering with caring and wanting to help rather than turning away," explains Weng.
Compassion, like physical and academic skills, appears to be something that is not fixed, but rather can be enhanced with training and practice. "The fact that alterations in brain function were observed after just a total of seven hours of training is remarkable," explains UW-Madison psychology and psychiatry professor Richard J. Davidson, founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and senior author of the article.
"There are many possible applications of this type of training," Davidson says. "Compassion and kindness training in schools can help children learn to be attuned to their own emotions as well as those of others, which may decrease bullying. Compassion training also may benefit people who have social challenges such as social anxiety or antisocial behavior."
Weng is also excited about how compassion training can help the general population. "We studied the effects of this training with healthy participants, which demonstrated that this can help the average person. I would love for more people to access the training and try it for a week or two -- what changes do they see in their own lives?"
Both compassion and reappraisal trainings are available on the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds' website. "I think we are only scratching the surface of how compassion can transform people's lives," says Weng.
Other authors on the paper were Andrew S. Fox, Alexander J. Shackman, Diane E. Stodola, Jessica Z. K. Caldwell, Matthew C. Olson, and Gregory M. Rogers.
The work was supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health; a Hertz Award to the UW-Madison Department of Psychology; the Fetzer Institute; The John Templeton Foundation; the Impact Foundation; the J. W. Kluge Foundation; the Mental Insight Foundation; the Mind and Life Institute; and gifts from Bryant Wanguard, Ralph Robinson, and Keith and Arlene Bronstein.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/CY2vql1AGYE/130522160352.htm
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By Barbara Liston
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Thousands of people have protested against the prosecution of an 18-year-old Florida high school senior after her parents launched an Internet petition claiming she was charged with sex crimes only because her lover, a then 14-year-old schoolmate, was another girl.
By late Monday afternoon, almost 100,000 people had signed a Change.org petition or joined a Facebook group called "Free Kate" in support of Kaitlyn Hunt.
Indian River County prosecutor Bruce Colton said on Monday that he would not be moved by the public campaign because he said sexual orientation was not an issue. Colton said Kaitlyn was charged like any other adult for having sex with a minor.
"In most instances, it's a male and a female. But certainly I hope people aren't saying the law should be different because it's two females," Colton said.
Kaitlyn was arrested in February on two charges of lewd and lascivious assault on a minor, a second degree felony. Florida law prohibits anyone 18 or older from having sex with someone aged 12 to 16. If convicted, she would face up to 15 years in prison and be required to register as a sex offender.
Colton said he had offered Kaitlyn a plea deal in March in which the charges would be reduced to child abuse, a third degree felony; he would recommend to the judge a sentence of community control and probation; and he would not discourage the judge from wiping her record clean. The offer is good until May 24, after which they will move toward a July 15 trial date, he said.
Kaitlyn's father, Steven Hunt, of Palm Bay, said the deal was not good enough.
"My child is far from a child abuser," Hunt said, noting that the two girls met when Kaitlyn was 17.
Kaitlyn, who Hunt said participated on the cheerleading and basketball teams and sang in the school chorus, was expelled from the high school and is due to graduate in June through an alternative school setting.
The parents of the other teenager could not be reached for comment.
Hunt said he had tried to resolve the issue through mediation but that the alleged victim's family would not participate, leaving him no option but to go public. Hunt said he believed "100 percent" that his daughter's sexual orientation was a factor in their complaint.
In his Change.org petition, Hunt stated that "Kaitlyn's girlfriend's parents are pressing charges because they are against the same-sex relationship, even though their daughter has stated that this is a consensual relationship."
The investigation of Kaitlyn was triggered by a complaint from the 14-year-old girl's parents after they learned of the relationship at a school basketball game, Colton said.
The girl, who has since turned 15, told investigators about having sex with Kaitlyn in a bathroom at Sebastian River High School and at Kaitlyn's home, and cooperated with detectives by calling Kaitlyn on the phone, according to the arrest affidavit. Kaitlyn admitted to the relationship after her arrest, the report said.
Hunt said his daughter never thought about their age difference in part because he said the 14-year-old was physically larger than his daughter and they played on the varsity basketball team together.
(Editing by David Adams, Toni Reinhold)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/parents-turn-internet-help-daughter-charged-sex-girl-234720631.html
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