“Brazilian children are being menaced while they sleep by rabid vampire bats that have killed 23 people and bitten more than 1300 since September.

The winged creatures enter people’s homes at night and suck blood from the youngsters’ face or fingers. The Brazilian authorities attribute the large proportion of children attacked – 18 of the 23 killed were minors – to the fact that youngsters sleep more soundly than adults and are less likely to be disturbed by the bats.” (New Scientist)

“The U.S. leads an international parade of six major nations in medical errors, according to a survey by the Commonwealth Fund. Canada was not far behind.

Thirty-four percent of Americans reported at least one of four types of medical errors in the past two years. These included receiving a wrong drug, incorrect treatment, incorrect test results, and delayed test results.” (MedPage Today)

Girl keeps blog on poisoning mother: “A 16-year-old Japanese girl was arrested for trying to kill her mother with rat poison and keeping a blog narrating how her condition deteriorated, news reports say.

The girl, part of an elite high school chemistry club, reportedly admired British serial killer Graham Young and kept severed animal body parts including a cat’s head in her bedroom.” (The Age)

“Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.” — Daniel Lyons (Forbes)

“A tame debate turned controversial Wednesday night when current politics entered the arena as Harvard University government professor Harvey Mansfield and Dartmouth College English professor Peter Travis faced off about manliness in a free society.” (Dartmouth Online)

“…(A) scientific study just published in American Psychologist provides strong reasons to doubt that there are many inborn differences between genders. Janet Shibley Hyde, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has shown that in most cases psychological differences are small or non-existent. It turns out that there is no difference in how good girls and boys are at maths. Girls’ self-esteem is widely believed to nosedive on entering puberty; in fact, that of boys does so as well. In most respects, the genders communicate in the same way — forget all that stuff about men interrupting more and being less self-revealing.

Only a handful of the nostrums of evolutionary psychology survive Shibley Hyde’s scrutiny. It’s true that women can’t throw things as hard or as far; they do not masturbate nearly as much, and are not up for casual shagging to the same degree; and they physically attack others dramatically less often. Taken overall the study shows that, to a very large degree, in terms of gender difference, we do start as blank slates, and it provides one of the strongest ever scientific foundations for equal-sex social policies. But then how could we ever have doubted it?” (Mail & Guardian)

“Some people have a psychological need to keep their distance at all times, even from those who are closest to them. One doctor has identified the condition as personal space phobia.” (Times of London)

“Here are 12 scientifically tested tips on finding Mr or Ms Right.” (Sydney Morning Herald)

“Babies come into the world with a genetic predisposition to favouring pretty faces rather than ugly ones, according to a new study.” (Sunday Herald)

“Concept of perfect beauty varies throughout different eras, but definition still debatable.”

“New evidence has emerged that Neanderthals co-existed with anatomically modern humans for at least a thousand years in central France, a finding that suggests these enigmatic hominids came to a tragic and lingering end.” (News24)

Iodine deficient?: “One of the most mysterious creatures that ever walked the earth was Neandertal, a prehistoric human-like being who first appeared about 230,000 years ago in Europe. Scientists have been debating since the first remains were found in 1856: Was he one of us or a separate species?

Neandertal, who looked very human but was burly and stocky, developed a far less sophisticated culture than Cro-Magnon, the first modern humans in Europe, who emerged about 40,000 years ago. Cro-Magnon apparently existed alongside Neandertal, but no one knows whether they made contact or not, either culturally or sexually. After a 200,000-year run, Neandertal vanished.

No one can say for sure what distinguished Neandertals from modern humans, but Computational Physics and Engineering Division researcher Jerry Dobson has a theory. In an article soon to be published in the Geographical Review, he suggests that Neandertals may have been iodine deficient. A single genetic difference in the thyroid gland, which controls iodine extraction from food, could account for many other differences in bone structure and body shape.

The bones of Neandertal (the spelling scholars prefer over Neanderthal) were first unearthed in Germany but since have been found in inland areas throughout Europe and Western Asia. They reveal numerous similarities to modern humans who suffer from iodine deficiency disorder—in its most severe form, cretinism.

“Distinctive Neandertal traits—overall body proportions, heavy brows and muscles, dental development and wear and propensities for degenerative joint diseases—are identical to those of modern humans suffering from cretinism,” Dobson says. “Whether it was biological—a genetically restricted ability to process iodine—or pathological—a dietary deficiency—I can’t say.”

Considerations from functional imaging: “Having a self is associated with important advantages for an organism.These advantages have been suggested to include mechanisms supporting elaborate capacities for planning, decision-making, and behavioral control. Acknowledging such functionality offers possibilities for obtaining traction on investigation of neural correlates of selfhood. A method that has potential for investigating some of the brain-based properties of self arising in behavioral contexts varying in requirements for such behavioral guidance and control is functional brain imaging. Data obtained with this method are beginning to converge on a set of brain areas that appear to play a significant role in permitting conscious access to representational content having reference to self as an embodied and independent experiencer and agent. These areas have been identified in a variety of imaging contexts ranging from passive state conditions in which they appear to manifest ongoing activity associated with spontaneous and typically ‘self-related’ cognition, to tasks targeting explicitly experienced properties of self, to demanding task conditions where activity within them is attenuated in apparent redirection of cognitive resources in the service of task guidance and control. In this paper, these data will be reviewed and a hypothesis presented regarding a significant role for these areas in enabling degrees of self-awareness and participating in the management of such behavioral control.” (Conscious Cogn.)

“Altering bright light exposure and taking a nonprescription drug: A simple, at-home treatment — a single light box and the over-the-counter drug melatonin — allows travelers to avoid jet lag by resetting their circadian body clock before crossing several time zones, according to new research being published in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. This treatment can also help those with delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS), a persistent condition that results from a misalignment between a person’s internal biological clock and the external social environment.”

“New York University professor and author Mark Crispin Miller says in an interview on Democracy Now!: “[Kerry] told me he now thinks the election was stolen. He says he doesn’t believe he is the person that can be out in front because of the sour grapes question. But he said he believes it was stolen. He says he argues with his democratic colleagues on the hill. He said he had a fight with Christopher Dodd because he said there’s questions about the voting machines and Dodd was angry.” “

“UK biologists spar over whether evolutionary psychology explains why wearing a colored uniform can give sportsmen a competitive edge“. (The Scientist)