Waiting room software...

Last week, I was able to be part of a software program which will be played at a Kansas hospital...About 900 people go in and out of the hospital per month there...There will be two touch screens...When one is waiting to be checked in, they will be given a snack and then be sent to one of the two touch screens where there will be an interactive screen which they will hear from the photo on the screen...When they touch on it, they will hear an interview from one of eight people talking about recovery...then they will fill out a report about how they are feeling so that their doctor can view their report...I think it's a great idea and hopefully, after the trial at Kansas, it will be used in other places...

Help! The chickens are chasing me...

I had the wierdest dream yesterday...This band of chickens was chasing me with bags full of grass...And coincidentally, a couple of girls that I had been friends with in Cali contacted me just today...I told my case worker what I went through in Cali, how it wasn't really the guys who made me miserable except for one person, it was the girls...I only had two or three real girlfriends...the rest were ultra-competitive with me and I wasn't even trying to compete...My case worker said it's the way girls are, catty and jealous and don't let a man come into the room...Yeah well, one of the girls who contacted me was the one who made me feel like I wasn't good enough, that I was just a street painter, that I didn't belong in galleries...She kept telling me it was a waste of time for me, that I should do canvasses more, and looked down on my spraypaint...It kept me away from that scene...'Cuz that's what it was, a scene...Trendy girls...I say this as I shake my head...Well, now after reflecting upon all the damage that was done to me in Cali, I am finally over it...I tell all these girls right now to get over themselves...At least I know who my real friends are...

Pot, no C word...

Large Study finds no link between Marijuana and Lung Cancer

The smoke from burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50 percent more of some of the chemicals linked to lung cancer than tobacco smoke. A marijuana cigarette also deposits four times as much of that tar as an equivalent tobacco one. Scientists were therefore surprised to learn that a study of more than 2,000 people found no increase in the risk of developing lung cancer for marijuana smokers. "We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use--more than 500 to 1,000 uses--would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana," explains physician Donald Tashkin of the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead researcher on the project. But looking at residents of Los Angeles County, the scientists found that even those who smoked more than 20,000 joints in their life did not have an increased risk of lung cancer.

The researchers interviewed 611 lung cancer patients and 1,040 healthy controls as well as 601 patients with cancer in the head or neck region under the age of 60 to create the statistical analysis. They found that 80 percent of those with lung cancer and 70 percent of those with other cancers had smoked tobacco while only roughly half of both groups had smoked marijuana. The more tobacco a person smoked, the greater the risk of developing cancer, as other studies have shown.

But after controlling for tobacco, alcohol and other drug use as well as matching patients and controls by age, gender and neighborhood, marijuana did not seem to have an effect, despite its unhealthy aspects. "Marijuana is packed more loosely than tobacco, so there's less filtration through the rod of the cigarette, so more particles will be inhaled," Tashkin says. "And marijuana smokers typically smoke differently than tobacco smokers; they hold their breath about four times longer allowing more time for extra fine particles to deposit in the lungs." The study does not reveal how marijuana avoids causing cancer. Tashkin speculates that perhaps the THC chemical in marijuana smoke prompts aging cells to die before becoming cancerous. Tashkin and his colleagues presented the findings yesterday at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego. --David Biello

A Mother's Touch

Chemical tags attach to DNA and act as stop signs to turn genes off.

Good Parents Can Change Your DNA
By Victor Limjoco (Discover)

Now new research suggests mothering style may have triggered genes that help determine your parenting style.

Columbia University neurobiologist Frances Champagne says that previous research across species showed that maternal behaviors are passed down from mother to daughter.

"So if your mother held you a lot, you will hold your infants a lot," Champagne says.

But she wanted to know whether mothering tendencies are passed on through genetics or experience. Her team studied mother rats that spent time licking and grooming their babies, and others that didn't.

As she wrote in the journal "Endocrinology," without enough licking and grooming, female rats had certain genes turn off, preventing the production of certain hormones key to future mothering behaviors, including estrogen and oxytocin, also known as the love hormone.

Licked rats had a higher production of those hormones, which, in turn, affected behavior when these baby rats became mothers themselves. Champagne says that this combination, genes and environment, pass maternal behaviors from generation to generation.

Champagne notes that maternal behavior is complex and that a mother's touch is just one part of a larger puzzle. But she says that these results highlight the need for bonding early in life. "Mothers are incredibly important," she says. "The quality of care that they can provide to infants is crucial for shaping infant development. And will have consequences for the next generation of mothers and infants."