Entry tags:
Science Tuesday - Staph, Therapy, Neanderthals, and the Adirondacks
Well: Germ Fighters May Lead to Hardier Germs
By TARA PARKER-POPE, The New York Times, October 30, 2007
Reports of schoolchildren dying from infections with drug-resistant bacteria are enough to send parents on an antimicrobial cleaning frenzy.
But before you start waging your own personal war on single-celled organisms, be warned. Many household and personal cleaners contain ingredients that could make the resistance problem worse.
( Read More )
Behavior: How to Figure Out When Therapy Is Over
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D., The New York Times, October 30, 2007
If you think it’s hard to end a relationship with a lover or spouse, try breaking up with your psychotherapist.
A writer friend of mine recently tried and found it surprisingly difficult. Several months after landing a book contract, she realized she was in trouble.
“I was completely paralyzed and couldn’t write,” she said, as I recall. “I had to do something right away, so I decided to get myself into psychotherapy.”
What began with a simple case of writer’s block turned into seven years of intensive therapy.
Over all, she found the therapy very helpful. She finished a second novel and felt that her relationship with her husband was stronger. When she broached the topic of ending treatment, her therapist strongly resisted, which upset the patient. “Why do I need therapy,” she wanted to know, “if I’m feeling good?”
Millions of Americans are in psychotherapy, and my friend’s experience brings up two related, perplexing questions. How do you know when you are healthy enough to say goodbye to your therapist? And how should a therapist handle it?
( Read More )
Observatory: Neanderthal Bones Make a Case for Redheads
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, October 30, 2007
An artist painting a Neanderthal portrait would be pretty well stumped. Just bones exist of this hominid species, which lived in Europe and Asia and became extinct 30,000 years ago. So other than some general anatomical features — a large nose and heavy brow among them — not much is known about how they looked.
But by analyzing DNA from some of those old bones, European researchers have helped fill in the picture. Some Neanderthals, they suggest in a study published online by Science, were fair-skinned and redheaded.
( Read More )
Logging Is Part of a Plan to Preserve Adirondacks
By ANTHONY DePALMA, The New York Times, October 29, 2007
ADIRONDACK FOREST PRESERVE — Late in the year, when the campers are gone but the hunters have not yet arrived, timber trucks rule Boreas Road in the heart of the Adirondacks, barging through the morning mists with 70,000 pounds of fresh-cut fir and spruce strapped to their backs.
“That’s one of ours,” said Michael T. Carr, a 44-year-old bear of a man driving a green S.U.V. headed west on Boreas Road as one of the timber trucks barreled eastward.
That is a jarring statement coming from Mr. Carr, who is not a lumber man, or paper company executive, but executive director of the Adirondack chapter of the Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s biggest environmental groups and, since June, the owner of 161,000 acres of highly prized Adirondack wild lands.
( Read More )
By TARA PARKER-POPE, The New York Times, October 30, 2007
Reports of schoolchildren dying from infections with drug-resistant bacteria are enough to send parents on an antimicrobial cleaning frenzy.
But before you start waging your own personal war on single-celled organisms, be warned. Many household and personal cleaners contain ingredients that could make the resistance problem worse.
( Read More )
Behavior: How to Figure Out When Therapy Is Over
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D., The New York Times, October 30, 2007
If you think it’s hard to end a relationship with a lover or spouse, try breaking up with your psychotherapist.
A writer friend of mine recently tried and found it surprisingly difficult. Several months after landing a book contract, she realized she was in trouble.
“I was completely paralyzed and couldn’t write,” she said, as I recall. “I had to do something right away, so I decided to get myself into psychotherapy.”
What began with a simple case of writer’s block turned into seven years of intensive therapy.
Over all, she found the therapy very helpful. She finished a second novel and felt that her relationship with her husband was stronger. When she broached the topic of ending treatment, her therapist strongly resisted, which upset the patient. “Why do I need therapy,” she wanted to know, “if I’m feeling good?”
Millions of Americans are in psychotherapy, and my friend’s experience brings up two related, perplexing questions. How do you know when you are healthy enough to say goodbye to your therapist? And how should a therapist handle it?
( Read More )
Observatory: Neanderthal Bones Make a Case for Redheads
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, October 30, 2007
An artist painting a Neanderthal portrait would be pretty well stumped. Just bones exist of this hominid species, which lived in Europe and Asia and became extinct 30,000 years ago. So other than some general anatomical features — a large nose and heavy brow among them — not much is known about how they looked.
But by analyzing DNA from some of those old bones, European researchers have helped fill in the picture. Some Neanderthals, they suggest in a study published online by Science, were fair-skinned and redheaded.
( Read More )
Logging Is Part of a Plan to Preserve Adirondacks
By ANTHONY DePALMA, The New York Times, October 29, 2007
ADIRONDACK FOREST PRESERVE — Late in the year, when the campers are gone but the hunters have not yet arrived, timber trucks rule Boreas Road in the heart of the Adirondacks, barging through the morning mists with 70,000 pounds of fresh-cut fir and spruce strapped to their backs.
“That’s one of ours,” said Michael T. Carr, a 44-year-old bear of a man driving a green S.U.V. headed west on Boreas Road as one of the timber trucks barreled eastward.
That is a jarring statement coming from Mr. Carr, who is not a lumber man, or paper company executive, but executive director of the Adirondack chapter of the Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s biggest environmental groups and, since June, the owner of 161,000 acres of highly prized Adirondack wild lands.
( Read More )