For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 adults in America is in jail or prison, according to a new report released Thursday. The report by the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project said 2,319,258 adults were held in American prisons or jails at the beginning of 2008, which is one out of every 99.1 adults. That's more than any other country in the world. ... One in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, according to recent U.S. Department of Justice data, which also shows that men are about 13 times more likely to be incarcerated than females. However, the data shows, the female population is expanding at a faster pace. ... The report said the United States leads the world in incarcerations, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. full story

That last part is the most telling. The United States has more people behind bars than China. Not just more people per capita, more people period. It's beyond shameful how many people in the "Land of the Free" aren't free.

California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew up rattlesnake skin and smear it on their fur to mask their scent from predators, according to a new study by researchers at UC Davis. Barbara Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior at UC Davis, observed ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) and rock squirrels (Spermophilus variegates) applying snake scent to themselves by picking up pieces of shed snakeskin, chewing it and then licking their fur. Adult female squirrels and juveniles apply snake scent more often than adult males, which are less vulnerable to predation by snakes, Clucas said. The scent probably helps to mask the squirrel's own scent, especially when the animals are asleep in their burrows at night, or to persuade a snake that another snake is in the burrow. full story

These squirrels are amazing: hot tails and perfume!

found via evilgrins:

An "extraordinary" desert creature has been caught on camera for what scientists believe is the first time. The long-eared jerboa, a tiny nocturnal mammal that is dwarfed by its enormous ears, can be found in deserts in Mongolia and China. Zoological Society of London (ZSL) scientist Jonathan Baillie said the footage was helping researchers to learn more about the mysterious animal. The species is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red list full story

Found via dkmnow in _psychmedfree_ and antipsychiatry:

People diagnosed with schizophrenia who are not on antipsychotics are more likely to experience recovery than those taking the medication, according to an American study. Over 15 years, schizophrenia patients not on antipsychotics showed more periods of recovery than those taking antipsychotics, states a research paper in last month’s Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Researchers reported that, after 10 years, 79% of patients on antipsychotics were psychotic, whereas 23% of those not on medication were psychotic. After 15 years, 65 per cent of patients on antipsychotics were psychotic, whereas only 28% of those not on medication were psychotic. ... The research was part-funded by America’s National Institute of Mental Health. full article

While I don't have schizophrenia, these results do not surprise me after my experiences with Geodon, Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel. At first I was a believer. I "felt better" when I took them.

Zyprexa was the first with it's horrible weight gain effects. Then came risperdal, then came seroquel, then Geodon. I was given Haldol inpatient a couple times, the only old school antipsychotic I've been on. It wasn't much different than the newer atypicals.

They all made me "feel better" at first. But, what "feeling better" really meant was not thinking. The major side effect of not thinking when you have mental problems is that you can never work through those problems. Working through problems of the mind requires thought, requires figuring out coping mechanisms and how to break old loops.

I definitely wouldn't say I'm perfect at this point, there's still progress I need to make, but I've made so much progress since I broke free of Geodon addiction. Much of what I'm working through now is the damage done by the psych drugs and not the problems I had initially. The point is, I'm able to improve despite my experience on psych drugs not because of it.

From a post by jeywolf in without_meds:

As if being a tween is not hard enough, scientists now call the years between 9 and 12 a time when girls are especially at risk of getting fat. Girls are more likely to become overweight in those preteen years than when they are teenagers, researchers report Monday in The Journal of Pediatrics. The study did not say why that was and did not examine boys to know whether they face a similar risk. ... Parents should pay attention to creeping waistlines and poor dietary habits, particularly in this age group, said Dr. Denise Simons-Mortonof the National Institutes of Health, which funded the research. ... "It should be cool to be physically active, and attractive," [Simons-Mortonof] said. full article

There you have it. Dr. Denise Simons-Mortonof believes it's vitally important that 9-12 year old girls be "attractive". Apparently she thinks that the drive to meet the media's demented beauty standards simply isn't pushed hard enough on these girls. Surely, with a little effort, the rates of anorexia and bulimia can be doubled.

Researchers have discovered a subtle new difference between men and women -- this one occurring in the realm of eating. Kristen Harrison, a professor of speech communication, has found gender differences related to eating and body image. In the new study of observed eating behavior in a social setting, young men and women who perceived their bodies as being less than "ideal" ate differing amounts of food after they were shown images of "ideal-bodied" people of their own gender. Lead researcher Kristen Harrison found that "in the presence of same-gender peers, certain women eat less and certain men eat more following exposure to ideal-body images -- 'certain' in this case referring to women and men who have discrepancies between their actual body and the kind of body they think their peers idealize," Harrison said. "In a nutshell," Harrison said, "we found that, following exposure to ideal-body images, men who are insecure about their bodies eat more in front of other men, while women who are insecure about their bodies eat less in front of other women." ... The 30 images for the female groups were drawn from fashion, lifestyle and fitness magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Vogue, Shape and Elle. The images for the male groups were from magazines such as Men's Health, Men's Fitness and Muscle & Fitness. ... For example, "If a woman is a regular user of ideal-body media such as fitness and fashion magazines, not to mention television programming featuring advertisements for diet foods and products, she may be moved to abstain from eating several times a day -- even when she is hungry -- resulting in significant weight loss over time." Harrison noted that people thinking about the national obesity epidemic might respond to such abstinence with, "Good! This is what should happen." "But the fact that this happens even to skinny women means that such weight loss could be unhealthy," Harrison said. "Similarly, a man who is vulnerable to ideal-male images due to the presence of an actual body vs. ideal body self-discrepancy may be moved to eat even when he is not hungry, just to reassure himself and other men that he is sufficiently masculine." full article

Shock of shocks!!! You show women images of starving waifs as ideal, they eat less. You show men images of musclebound behemoths as ideal, they eat more. Who pays for this crap? Oh yeah, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I would be very grateful if someone who knows French would translate this. I tried Babel Fish, but the translations there tend not to be very clear and are prone to errors.

Duplessis est né à Trois-Rivières, le fils de Nérée Le Noblet Duplessis, un avocat, et de Marie Catherine Camille Berthe Genest. Son ancêtre paternel en ligne directe, Jean-Baptiste Duplessis, était l'esclave Mascoutin de Louis Gastineau Duplessis, selon les recherches de l'historien Marcel Trudel.

New analysis of the language and gesture of South America's indigenous Aymara people indicates a reverse concept of time. Contrary to what had been thought a cognitive universal among humans – a spatial metaphor for chronology, based partly on our bodies' orientation and locomotion, that places the future ahead of oneself and the past behind – the Amerindian group locates this imaginary abstraction the other way around: with the past ahead and the future behind. Appearing in the current issue of the journal Cognitive Science, the study is coauthored, with Berkeley linguistics professor Eve Sweetser, by Rafael Nunez, associate professor of cognitive science and director of the Embodied Cognition Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. "Until now, all the studied cultures and languages of the world – from European and Polynesian to Chinese, Japanese, Bantu and so on – have not only characterized time with properties of space, but also have all mapped the future as if it were in front of ego and the past in back. The Aymara case is the first documented to depart from the standard model," said Nunez. full article

Time is subjective.

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. full article

With the recent debunking of the marijuana kills brain cells myth, there is now no known health risks associated with marijuana. With the legalized status of alcohol, it is obvious that simply being an intoxicant is not sufficient to warrant prohibition. What is more, alcohol has many well known and verified health risks, is known to dramatically increase violence, and is physically addictive; all of which make it a much more dangerous substance. There is simply no good reason for marijuana to be illegal at this point.

The crazed war on drugs is what has lead to the outrageously high levels of incarceration in the United States. In the in the 1920's United States prohibition of alcohol did not stop people from drinking, but instead lead to organized gangs of criminals terrorizing the inner city streets of places such as Chicago and New York, as well as creating a countryside full of producers and smugglers. Sound familiar? History tends to repeat itself. It's time to legalize marijuana and start focusing on real threats that we face today.

Understanding the meaning behind a person's posture or body movement comes easily to many people and helps guide how we react to others socially. But people with schizophrenia, even those who have mild to moderate symptoms and take medications, are not fluent in understanding body language, according to a University of Iowa-led study that included investigators Nirav Bigelow, Ph.D., Sergio Paradiso, M.D., Ph.D., and Nancy C. Andreasen M.D., Ph.D. The results appear in the April 2006 issue of Schizophrenia Research. Previous studies conducted by Paradiso and Andreasen showed that patients with schizophrenia have trouble deciphering emotion from human facial expressions. However, it was not well understood whether this perception problem extended to other socially relevant clues, said Sergio Paradiso, the study's corresponding author and assistant professor of psychiatry in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. "As we interact with people, we make judgments that we're not consciously aware of," Paradiso said. "If we see a coworker hunched over and don't see his face, we may approach him cautiously because we think something might be wrong and perhaps we can help. We don't see the face, but we glean information from the body language. People with schizophrenia are not as good at extracting this kind of information to guide their social interactions." The study included 14 people without schizophrenia and 20 people with schizophrenia who were taking medication and had mild to moderate symptoms. "Unfortunately, standard treatment for schizophrenia does not appear to be capable of improving perception that helps in being social with others," Paradiso said. The inability to perceive body language also appears unrelated to a person's level of intelligence. "Many people with schizophrenia, including those who are very bright, remain awkward in social situations," Paradiso added. full article

I don't see how they can come to their conclusions from their data. All the schizophrenic patients in the study were on medication. All of them. Antipsychotic medication is well known to cause cognitive impairments, and without studying non-medicated patients it is not impossible to tell if the cognitive problems described are caused by schizophrenia or if they are caused by the medication.

However, the psychopharmaceutical industrial complex strongly discourages studies involving unmedicated individuals that might call into question antipsychotic medications, calling such studies are "unethical". This makes it unlikely there will be true scientific studies on this subject until the current system is replaced.

Found through lady_babalon:

A majority of the medical experts who created the "bible" for diagnosing mental illness have undisclosed financial links to drugmakers, says a study out Thursday. And some panels overseeing disorders that require treatment with prescription drugs, such as schizophrenia and "mood disorders," were 100% filled with experts financially tied to the pharmaceutical industry, says the study published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. ... The researchers looked for research funds, consultancies, patents and other gifts or grants received by members of the 18 separate DSM preparation panels from 1989 to 2004, both before and after their terms. They found that among the 170 medical experts who created the two most recent editions of the manual, 56% had one or more financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. In addition to the schizophrenia and mood disorder panel's links, more than 80% of panel members for "anxiety disorders," "eating disorders," "medication-induced movement disorders" and "premenstrual dysphonic disorder" had financial ties. full article full article

From the perspective of someone who has dealt with the psych system quite a bit over the years, this doesn't surprise me at all.

Will anything change as a result of this report? Not directly. Change in the psych industry has and will only come as a result of external pressures, there is too much money in play and too many reputations on the line for the system to willingly change itself.

A USC review of published research has found no evidence that early episodes of schizophrenia without medication result in long-term harm for patients, casting doubt on the practice to immediately medicate for a year. “The question is whether we should rush to treat early episodes with anti-psychotics, often before a clear diagnosis has become evident,” wrote John Bola in his study slated for publication in the April edition of Schizophrenia Bulletin. Bola said the findings are important because the drugs used to treat schizophrenia can have serious side effects in nearly half of patients, from severe weight gain and restlessness to involuntary movement and adult-onset diabetes ... “There is a lack of good-quality evidence to support a conclusion that long-term harm results from short-term postponement of medication in early episode schizophrenia,” Bola said. “A categorical prohibition against such research should be reconsidered.” full article

Antipsychotics, which are regularly prescribed to a wide range of patients they were never intended for, are often not even appropriate for the patients that they were intended for. A sizable percentage schizophrenics do not even need antipsychotics, and risk a multitude of dangerous side effect by taking them.

It should also be noted that the cult of psychiatry goes so far as to prohibit research that might further show that people can successfully live without psych drugs. Psychopharmacology is about as scientific as Intelligent Design.