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Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:18:07 -0800

~John F. Kennedy

Newborn Babies May Cry In Their Mother Tongues / Science News

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:46:00 -0800

Newborn babies may cry in their mother tongues
Days after birth, French and German infants wail to the melodic structure of their languages

From the page: "Only days after birth, babies have a bawl with language. Newborn babies cry in melodic patterns that they have heard in adults' conversations -- even while in the womb, say medical anthropologist Kathleen Wermke of the University of Würzburg in Germany, and her colleagues.

By 2 to 5 days of age, infants' cries bear the tuneful signature of their parents' native tongue, a sign that language learning has already commenced, the researchers report in a paper published online November 5 in Current Biology.

Fluent speakers use melodic patterns and pitch shifts to imbue words and phrases with emotional meaning. Changes in pitch and rhythm, for example, can indicate anger. During the last few months of fetal life, babies can hear what their mothers or other nearby adults are saying, providing exposure to melodies peculiar to a specific language, Wermke says. Newborns then re-create those familiar patterns in at least some of their cries, she proposes.

"Our data support the idea that human infants' crying is important for seeding language development," Wermke says. "Melody lies at the roots of both the development of spoken language and music."

Newborns' facility for imitating the underlying makeup of adult speech gets incorporated into babbling later in infancy, Wermke proposes. Earlier research has shown that, from age 3 months on, infants can reproduce vowel sounds demonstrated by adults.

Scientists already knew that, in the final months of gestation, babies can hear people talking, especially their mothers. Newborns prefer the sound of their mothers' voices to the voices of other people, for example. In the days after birth, babies show signs of discriminating the sound of their native language from others and of recognizing when voice-like tones change in pitch.

Wermke's team goes further, suggesting that newborns adapt their cries to melodic patterns characteristic of whatever language they have heard spoken.

She and her colleagues studied 60 healthy newborns, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families. The researchers recorded 2,500 cries as mothers changed babies' diapers, readied babies for feeding or otherwise interacted with the youngsters.

Acoustic measures allowed the researchers to identify 1,254 cries (in this case, a cry is a vocalization produced with a single breath) that contained clear rising-and-falling arcs suitable for a detailed analysis.

Crying down; crying up

German newborns' cries tended to start out high-pitched and gravitate to increasingly lower pitches. French newborns' cries started out low-pitched and then moved higher. Comparable high-to-low and low-to-high intonation patterns characterize words and phrases used by fluent speakers of German and French, Wermke says.

Newborns strive to imitate their mothers' behaviors however they can, in order to attract attention and foster bonding, Wermke proposes. Newborns can readily mimic the musical structure of what a mother says, in her view.

More work remains to be done to confirm that parental talk affects how babies cry, remarks psycholinguist D. Kimbrough Oller of the University of Memphis.

Newborns cry differently depending on their emotional states, which may have differed for French and German babies, Oller says. Mothers of one nationality may have allowed babies to cry longer before picking them up. Or. . ."
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Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:15:03 -0800

"Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges,
but eventually you find a hair stylist you like."

~Author Unknown

Are our beliefs making the placebo lie more powerful for healing?

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:53:03 -0800

Are our beliefs making the placebo lie more powerful for healing?

From the page: ". . . Observed the Wired article: "It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger. The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis."

Medical journals have taken up the alarm because they've discovered that ever higher numbers of participants in clinical trials are reporting `adverse effects' from the sugar pill placebos. For instance, in a Sept. 23, 2009 issue of the journal Pain, four Italian researchers examined 73 clinical trials for anti-migraine drugs in which placebos were used and discovered an increasing number of placebo users claimed adverse side effects. "For example, anorexia and memory difficulties, which are typical adverse events of anticonvulsants, were present only in the placebo arm of the trials." No one taking the actual drug reported side effects, but the placebo users, who had been warned there might be side effects, experienced side effects because they believed they were using the real drug.

A team of German researchers writing this year in the journal Drug Safety examined the results of drug trials of antidepressants, more than 100 of them, and found the placebo users reporting dry mouths, constipation, drowsiness, sexual problems, and other side effects. "Adverse effect profiles reported in clinical trials are strongly influenced by expectations," they wrote, and expectations appear to be growing stronger.

It's Psychological AND Physical

It's clear that placebos generate real physical effects, a sort of mind over matter, or beliefs over matter, and this response can be negative, as with adverse effects in clinical trials, or positive as these examples illustrate:

---"In cardiology, placebos influence disability, syncope, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, angina, and survival," concluded an article in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (Jan. 30, 2007).

---"There are consistent indications that skin and mucosal inflammatory diseases are strongly modulated by placebo treatments," concluded an article from Swiss scientists in the journal Brain Behavior & Immunity (Sep. 2006).

---The more often placebo pills are administered, the higher the percentage of people who experience healing. A study in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (Dec. 1999) found that duodenal ulcers healed in 36% of patients given a placebo pill twice a day, but in 44% of those given placebos four times a day.

---Writing last month in the journal Science, German scientists reported their discovery that the placebo effect reaches down into the inner workings of the spinal cord. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, they measured the effects of a placebo on the spinal cord and documented how test subjects who thought they were receiving an anesthetic actually altered nerve activity to release a range of natural opioids, serotonin, and other chemicals that relieved the pain.

Finally, consider this finding. Placebos work more effectively in children--twice as effective-- than in adults because children are more trusting and gullible than adults, and they haven't experienced the disappointments that adults have. That's the conclusion reached by French pediatricians last year in a Public Library of Science Medicine review. Most mothers already know this, if only intuitively, having seen that a kiss on a child's `owie,' or a bandaid over a bruise, can trigger or accelerate feelings that soothe and heal.

Propaganda Raises Expectant Belief

Why have placebos become more powerful in adults over the past decade? It may simply be because the public exposure to, and subsequent belief in, advertising propaganda has raised expectations . . . "

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Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:41:32 -0800

g i g l a c h s e e n

The Confessions of Jacob Boehme Index

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:32:03 -0800

The Confessions of Jacob Boehme by Jacob Boehme
Compiled and Edited by W. Scott Palmer [1920]

From the page: "Jacob Boehme (b. 1575, d. 1624) was a German Christian mystic, who, despite humble origins, wrote encyclopedic works detailing a visionary universe, densely inhabited by spirits. Like many other mystics, Boehme saw dualities and trinities everywhere. He believed that there were three worlds: the world of Light, the world of Darkness, and the world of Fire. He believed that heaven and hell overlap spatially. The Devil is incapable of communicating with God, because (as we would say today) he in is a parallel universe!

This book will serve as a gentle introduction to Boehme for curious readers. Note that this work was not written by Boehme, but compiled by Palmer from an 18th century translation of his complete works. Also available at this site by Boehme is a translation of the complete work, The Signature of All Things . . .

". . . THE disciple said to his Master: Sir, how may I come to the supersensual life, so that I may see God, and hear God speak?

The Master answered and said: Son, when thou canst throw thyself into That, where no creature dwelleth, though it be but for a moment; then thou hearest what God speaketh. . . ""
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Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:29:13 -0800

Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:59:47 -0800

Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.

From the page: ". . . The upshot is fewer new medicines available to ailing patients and more financial woes for the beleaguered pharmaceutical industry. Last November, a new type of gene therapy for Parkinson's disease, championed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, was abruptly withdrawn from Phase II trials after unexpectedly tanking against placebo. A stem-cell startup called Osiris Therapeutics got a drubbing on Wall Street in March, when it suspended trials of its pill for Crohn's disease, an intestinal ailment, citing an "unusually high" response to placebo. Two days later, Eli Lilly broke off testing of a much-touted new drug for schizophrenia when volunteers showed double the expected level of placebo response.

It's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late '90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time.

It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.

The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis. The stakes could hardly be higher. In today's economy, the fate of a long-established company can hang on the outcome of a handful of tests.

Why are inert pills suddenly overwhelming promising new drugs and established medicines alike? The reasons are only just beginning to be understood. A network of independent researchers is doggedly uncovering the inner workingsâ€"and potential therapeutic applicationsâ€"of the placebo effect. At the same time, drugmakers are realizing they need to fully understand the mechanisms behind it so they can design trials that differentiate more clearly between the beneficial effects of their products and the body's innate ability to heal itself. A special task force of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health is seeking to stem the crisis by quietly undertaking one of the most ambitious data-sharing efforts in the history of the drug industry. After decades in the jungles of fringe science, the placebo effect has become the elephant in the boardroom.

The roots of the placebo problem can be traced to a lie told by an Army nurse during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of southern Italy. The nurse was assisting an anesthetist named Henry Beecher, who was tending to US troops under heavy German bombardment. When the morphine supply ran low, the nurse assured a wounded soldier that he was getting a shot of potent painkiller, though her syringe contained only salt water. Amazingly, the bogus injection relieved the soldier's agony and prevented the onset of shock.

Returning to his post at Harvard after the war, Beecher became one of the nation's leading medical reformers. Inspired by the nurse's healing act of deception, he launched a crusade to promote a method of testing new medicines to find out whether they were truly effective. At the time, the process for vetting drugs was sloppy at best: Pharmaceutical companies would simply dose volunteers with an experimental agent until the side effects swamped the presumed benefits. Beecher proposed that if test subjects could be compared to a group that received a placebo . . . "
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Little Orphant Annie - A poem by James Whitcomb Riley - American Poems

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:37:33 -0800

Inscribed with all faith and affection
To all the little children: -- The happy ones; and sad ones;
The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones;
The good ones -- Yes, the good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones.

Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
An' all us other childern, when the supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,
An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!

Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn't say his prayers,--
An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wuzn't there at all!
An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press,
An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an' roundabout:--
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!

An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,
An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin;
An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there,
She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!
An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide,
They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side,
An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about!
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!

An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!

Little Orphant Annie, 1916
By James Whitcomb Riley

Can cancer cures come from healing hands?

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:47:59 -0800

Can cancer cures come from healing hands?

From the page: ". . . A Visualization Technique

As the lab assistant holds her palms over the mouse, she rapidly cycles a series of images through her mindâ€s eye. These images were generated by personal lists that she and the other lab assistants had prepared prior to the experiment. They each had written down 20 outcomes they wanted in their lives, specific goals that involved other people, their own health, ideal jobs, or mates, or material aspirations. Every item on the list was translated into images that represented the achievement of that particular goal. For instance, if a person had an injured back but wanted to attain back-bending yoga positions, he or she visualized being in that position effortlessly, rather than visualizing a successful surgery to fix their back.

These personal images were then memorized and the assistants practiced cycling them like a continuous movie that used their minds as projectors, a mental loop that could operate no matter what conflicting feelings and emotions might surface. While the cycling of these images went on, the lab assistants tried to feel an energy flowing out their hands into the caged mice.

Fifteen mice were a part of the experimental group receiving direct 'treatments,' while another 15 mice were the control group and received no direct attention after being injected with cancer cells. A third group of 25 mice were age-matched controls and did not receive injections. All three of these groups lived in cages in separate rooms of the animal facility on the Indiana University School of Medicine campus in Terre Haute.

. . .

Defying Conventional Wisdom

Based on everything we think we know or should know about cancer and mortality, all 30 of the cancer-injected mice in both the control and experimental groups should have died. The tumors that normally would grow quickly on their bodies after injection with cancer cells should have crushed their internal organs. Once injected with fatal doses of mouse mammary adenocarcinoma tumor cells, the resultant malignancies should have killed 100 percent of the animals within 14 to 27 days after injection. That is what had always happened before when these cancer cells were introduced into mice during experiments conducted with cancer drugs. The same thing should have happened this time. After all, the only treatment being performed, if we can call it that, was the physical presence of lab assistants trained to project a life-affirming visual imagery into their `patients'.

But what was expected, what was defined as `normal,' did not happen. None of the mice died of the cancer! Every single one of those not sacrificed for autopsies as part of the study, lived out their normal lifespan. Not only that, both the control and experimental groups of 15 mice each experienced similar survival rates, a phenomenon that, while it may sound like a product of error or even fraud, can possibly be explained based on bio-energy fields, or resonance field theories. In other words, a `scatter effect' may occur when healers project their regenerative intentions.

There was something else of interest to report. When some of the fully recovered study mice were later injected with more cancer cells without any lab assistant `treatments,' they did not develop cancer. They had evolved immunity to a disease that is the scourge of humankind . . . "

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