The Corpus Callosum

New Premedical Curriculum?

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:44:30 -0500

Harvard Medical School recently completed a review of their required premedical curriculum, culminating with the development of recommended changes. The outcome of this process is reported in an article in the recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. It's one of their open-access articles:

Relevance and Rigor in Premedical Education
Jules L. Dienstag, M.D.

In recent decades, scientific knowledge has changed dramatically, once-settled scientific principles have been replaced by more sophisticated concepts and entirely new disciplines, and parallel changes have occurred in medical practice and health care delivery. In the face of these new realities, medical school curricula have had to adapt. Yet despite these sweeping changes, including the permeation of most areas of medicine by molecular and cellular biology and genetics, requirements for admission to medical school have remained virtually unchanged for many decades...

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How Core Beliefs Influence Behavior

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:29:59 -0500

Many years ago, I was browsing thought the Borders bookstore, one of the earliers ones, on State Street in Ann Arbor, and encountered a book about psychotherapy. It claimed to be a sort of encyclopedia of named styles of psychotherapy. I can't recall the number of them, but I think it was between 300 and 400. That was 20 years ago. I'm sure it is in the thousenads by now.

Of course most of these are merely variations of just a few themes. And most have not been validated systematically.

One of these is called Core Belief Engineering. The basic principles are sound. The only quibble I have is that most psychotherapy will involve changing core beliefs, so there seems to be little point in splitting that off and giving it a separate name.

Probably the name serves to give the approach a certain degree of curb appeal, and prima facie validity.

Anyway, the idea is that people hold certain beliefs that tend to shape their behavior in important, systematic ways.

For example, if a person finds that they keep dating other people who turn out to be untrustworthy, it may be that they have a core belief that no one is honorable in romantic contexts. That belief may shape their behavior, such that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. By being suspicious, hypervigilant, and constantly seeking reassurance, they drive people away. This simply reinforces the belief.

That is only one example. There are many ways that this plays out.

Nowhere is this more evident that in politics.

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46% Swingers

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:28:45 -0500

The Pew Research Center informs us that today's number is 46%. That is the percentage of independent voters who are undecided about their choice for President in the November election in the USA. This is "much higher" than the same statistic four years ago. It is likely that this group will swing the election.

Of course, you could say the same about almost any group, if the election is close.

I noticed this because I was on their site for something else, and noticed the number in the sidebar, in a little box that said:

46%
Nearly half of independents (46%) are undecided or may change their minds.

It did not say what they were independent from, or what they might change their minds about.

Personally, I find the number difficult to believe, so I have created my own poll to check their results.

Today's Political Question
Are You Undecided?

Yes
No
I can't Decide

view results

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Proposed Oil Legislation: Brilliant and Pointless

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:41:01 -0500

The House is considering legislation that would do two things: force oil companies to give up unused leases, and ban the export of oil from Alaska.

It's brilliant because it highlights the absurd fallacy: that opening up more land for drilling would lower gas prices. The fact is, oil companies already have leases that they are sitting on, not drilling on.

Opening up more land for oil leases will not cause them to drill more oil. It'd be like putting more gas in the tank of a driverless car. Putting more gas in the tank will not enable the car to go farther. The car will go nowhere, because no one is driving it.

Bush's response was predicable. It's one of those comments that is either stupid, or a blatant lie:

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Dick Cheney as a Wee Laddie

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:20:09 -0500

This is a photo from a collection of images that were modified using GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program. There is a small collection of such photos at Tech Source From Bohol. This particular image is at a less refined site, that Tech Source linked to.

I made up the name. The original caption on the photo is "Innocence."

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Group Therapy For RLS

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:26:54 -0500

Restless Legs Syndrome has been more in the public eye lately. I understand this is because of aggressive direct-to-consumer advertising. I'm not much of a consumer, so I haven't seen the ads, but people tell me about them.

Whatever you think of DTC advertising, RLS is real, and it is a significant problem for some people.

Years ago, it was discovered that RLS can be alleviated for some people with carbidopa/levodopa. But that was an off-patent medicine. When patented medicines [Requip (ropinirole) and Mirapex (pramipexole)] became available, RLS became an opportunity, hence, the ads.

Not all patients required medication. Sometimes, it was possible to try an underlying cause. Iron deficiency is one example, easily corrected. Others could benefit from lifestyle changes. Quiting caffeine and/or alcohol helped some people. Others benefited from sleep hygiene. But some, particularly those with severe symptoms, do require medication.

It seems that the focus for most people has been on interventions involving medication. But if lifestyle and nutritional interventions don't solve the problem, is there any other nonpharmacological intervention that is worthwhile?

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Happy Meals

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:18:50 -0500

I got twenty dollars out of the bank today. What should I get: two shares of Fannie Mae stock, or four Happy Meals?

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Mental Health Parity

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:47:13 -0500

This post is not about mental health parity. Although it is a very important topic, there is no reason for me to write about it. If you are interesting in the topic, just go read the (open access) Perspectives column in the current NEJM: Shuffling toward Parity -- Bringing Mental Health Care under the Umbrella.

The column is short enough that there would not be any point in trying to distill it any further. But I do want to make a couple of points, including a mild-to-moderate quibble with one of the points mentioned:

Insurers who offer relatively generous coverage for mental health care will disproportionately attract people with mental disorders -- people who have been shown to incur higher costs for health care and mental health care than most other enrollees. Being the best mental health plan in a competitive health insurance market is a losing financial proposition, so insurers may compete to narrow their benefits and avoid enrolling people with mental illness.

These assertions are made with no references to empirical data. Perhaps the references exist, but were not mentioned for the sake of brevity.

My concern, though, is that the assertions are of the sort that seem so obviously true, that it might not seem as though they need any actual data to back them up.

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Climate Change Delusion

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:31:30 -0500

Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital reported, in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, on a case of a person with delusional beliefs regarding climate change.

There is no openly-accessible abstract, (the link to the paywall page is here) so we have to make do with a news report:

We describe a patient with climate change delusion, a previously unreported phenomenon. A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an 8 month history of depressed mood... He also ...had visions of apocalyptic events...

The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of 'millions of people' through exhaustion of water supplies. He quoted 'internet research' to substantiate this. The patient described that 'I feel guilty about it', had attempted to stop drinking... He was unable to acknowledge that the belief was unreasonable when challenged.

This was taken quickly as fodder for thoughtless commentary:

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Neuroscience of Oil Addiction

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:33:30 -0500

There is an interesting and thought-provoking essay at The Oil Drum. It was written by Nathan Hagens, a student at the Gund Institute, University of Vermont.

He makes some errors in the science, and engages in some armchair hypothesizing (see graph above), but the overall conclusions are not affected.

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Compiling Firefox 3 From Source on Kubuntu

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:36:25 -0500

Responding to the innate human desire to have the faster browser possible, I am almost happy with Firefox 3. But not quite. Thus, the experiment: compile from source. This is accomplished as follows:

0. Kubuntu does not come with the packages necessary to build from source, by default. You must install a bunch of stuff first. Fortunately, this is easy. To install the prerequisites necessary to build Firefox from source, open a terminal and type:

apt-get build-dep firefox

1. Download the Firefox source code here.
2. Extract to a suitable place, likely a subdirectory in your home folder.
3. Open a terminal and go to the subdirectory.
4. Run the configure script:

./configure --enable-optimize --disable-tests 
--enable-gnomevfs --enable-application=browser

Note that the option to enable gnomefvs is optional. It allows Firefox to populate the Applications tab in the Preferences dialog box. That actually was one thing that led to me wanting to do this in the first place. Enabling optimization is obviously part of the goal of the project. Disabling tests speeds up the compilation time. Enabling the browser application is required.

5. make
6. make install
7. Find and run the executable. It will be in a subdirectory named /mozilla/browser/app. Assuming that works, then...
8. Flash will not work. To install it, download the tarball from here.
9. Close your browser, extract the files from the tarball, and run the install script. Do this as a non-root user. It will install it in you home folder. You do not get to choose where it installs, but that is OK.

Note that the new program will call itself "Minefield". It will use the same profile that you were using for Firefox.

Is it faster? Seems to open faster. Does it really make a difference? No. Probably that is why Kubuntu doesn't include all the stuff to compile things. Unless you want something more exotic, or have some particular data-intensive need, it does not really make enough difference to be worth it. If there is some customization that you really need, then it may be that compiling from source is the only way to do it. But often that will entail a lot of trial-and-error. You have to really want it, in order for it to be worthwhile.

As far as web browsing goes, most of the delays are due to the network, not your local machine.

OpenOffice, perhaps, might, possibly benefit.

Also, the difference might be more noticeable on a slower computer.

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Artichoke Blossom, Cynara cardunculus

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:37:48 -0500

We decided to let one artichoke blossom, just to see what it looks like. It turns out that it looks sort of like a thistle. That's because it is a kind of thistle. I hadn't known that. The thistle is the national flower of Scotland.

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iScream

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:29:22 -0500

Seems like everything is being made so you can attach an iPod. Shown below is the George Foreman iPod Grill. With 10-watt speaker.

How patriotic is that?

And what are we to make of one of the reviews posted at Buy.com?

I love George Foreman's products! I own all of the grills, and I use them when I have small get togethers. They are great, indoors and out. I usually only use one at a time, since my friends don't really come to my parties. I don't know what that is about. I used the George Foreman iPod Grill just this past weekend. I was outdoors, listening to some Celine Dion and grilling one hotdog. Celine is great with barbecue foods. I also had a small can of baked beans. Anyway, the speaker was way too loud. My neighbors (I live next to a sorority house) called the cops on me. Again. I don't know what that is about.

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LCV Dirty Half-Dozen

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 07:20:09 -0500

The League of Conservation Voters is half-way through the process of selecting the dozen worst environmental offenders in elected office. Each election year, they select approximately 12 politicians to target for their campaign, in an effort to unseat, or deny seats to, the politicians with the worst voting records on environmental issues.

Last time (2006), the "dozen" (actually 15) included:

Senators
George Allen (R-VA)
Rick Santorum (R-PA)
Jim Talent (R-MO)

Representatives
Bob Beauprez (R-CO)
Katherine Harris (R-FL)
J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)
Richard Pombo (R-CA
Charles Taylor (R-NC)
Conrad Burns (R-MT)

All of those listed above were defeated. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM), Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK), Rep. Deborah Pryce (D-OH). Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) were targeted, but won their elections.

Tom Delay (R-TX) and Bob Ney (R-OH) were named as well. They were not defeated; what happened to them is better: they resigned in disgrace.

For 2008, they have named, so far, six politicians:

Five are in office; one is a former Representative who is angling to get back in. They are:

Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
Representative Joe Knollenberg (R - MI)
former U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer (R-CO)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Representative Stevan Pearce (R-NM)
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

This is a reminder that the stake are as high as ever in November.

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US Government Decides To Try Honesty

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:57:32 -0500

At last, they are being honest with us: you have no rights. Attorney General said so. He admitted it. So, at least he's honest. See his picture to the right? Doesn't he look like an honest gentleman? He is.

In a recent interview with reporters, Mukasey stated that it is "necessary to put in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself as it is transforming itself into an intelligence gathering organization."

Now, the AP is reporting some details of that transformation.

Race profiling eyed for terror probes
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
2 July 2008

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