Month: January 2005

What the heck has the CDC been thinking???

They apparently have an AIDS-fighting treatment that, if administered immediately after exposure to the virus, may prevent the person from becoming infected.

While ethical limitations prevent testing the effectiveness of the drug coctail on humans in any direct way, animal model results are extremely promising. (How about a 100% prevention rate in monkeys if given within the first twenty-four hours?)

Up to now they’ve been reserving the use of this treatment for medical personnel accidentally exposed to the virus and

IT’S ONLY NOW THAT THEY’RE RECOMMENDING IT BE USED FOR THE GENERAL POPULACE.

That’s OUTRAGEOUS.

Though it is politically incorrect to say so, researchers have noted for some time that there are differences in the cognition of men and women. Specifically: Women on average have greater verbal ability than men and men on average have greater spatial ability than women. (These are statistical averages. In the concrete, many women have greater spatial aptitude than many men and many men have greater verbal aptitude than many women.)

Why is this?

Well . . .

THIS MAY BE WHY.

It appears that there are significant differences in the grey matter
and white matter of men’s and women’s brains as associated with
intelligence:

Researchers say white and gray matter are both necessary for general intelligence, but they perform different functions. Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the network or connections between those processing centers.

In the study, researchers studied brain scans of men and women who
had identical IQ (intelligence quotient, a measure of intelligence)
scores.

Overall, the
results showed that men had approximately 6.5 times the amount of gray
matter in areas related to general intelligence than women. Meanwhile,
women had nearly 10 times the amount of white matter in areas related
to intelligence than men.

They
say the findings may help explain why men tend to excel at tasks that
require more local processing, such as mathematics, while women tend to
excel at integrating information, a skill used in language.

The
study also showed differences in brain regions between men and women
related to intelligence. In particular, 84 percent of gray matter
regions and 86 percent of white matter regions involved in women’s
intelligence were found in their frontal lobes or front portion of the
brain compared with 45 percent and 0 percent for men, respectively.
Instead, regions throughout the left side of the brain seems to drive
male intelligence.

Y’all will recall (if you live here in the U.S.) all the hubbub about the flu vaccine shortage that happened late last year.

I heard that they eventually scrounged up enough vaccine that they eased some of the restrictions on who should get a flu shot (originally it was just the very elderly, the very young, and those in poor health). I didn’t realize, however, just how much they had now been eased.

Thursday night I was in a local health food store to get some nutritional supplements and, as I was checking out, I noticed a young lady manning a flu shot table. Surprised to see such a table in a health food store, as short as they said they had been on the vaccine, I approached her and asked what restrictions were now in place: Was it still heavily restricted or could just anybody get a flu shot now?

She said they could, unless they had a severe egg allergy (flu shots are cultured in eggs), had had a bad reaction to a previous flu shot, or were currently feverish.

So yesterday I got me a flu shot. Woo-hoo!

If you would like to get one, you might want to get one now.

They’re expecting flu season to really heat up in about five weeks, and it takes two to three weeks for the immunity to build up in your body after you get the shot.

Don’t forget your pneumonia shot if you haven’t had one in the last five years.