Thursday, April 12, 2007

Sex,Love And Drugs

Psychology Today has an interesting article on anthropologist Helen Fisher's theory that SSRI drugs (commonly used as antidepressants) interfere with love and attraction.

SSRI stands for 'Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor' and the group includes drugs such as Prozac (fluoxetine), Seroxat (paroxetine) and Zoloft (sertraline) which all increase the availability of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the synapse - the chemical junction between neurons.

Despite the (somewhat misleading) use of the word 'selective' in the title, these drugs also affect many other types of neurotransmitters to varying degrees - of which dopamine is one.

Fisher maintains that as attraction, desire and sexual pleasure are known to involve dopamine circuits in the brain, these drugs interfere with relationship formation.

This dopamine deficit affects people in a variety of ways, according to Fisher and her research partner, Virginia-based psychiatrist J. Andrew Thomson, Jr. Singles using antidepressants may have a harder time meeting people, because their natural sexual response is dampened. Some researchers believe desire was designed to help people select mates who are genetically suited to them. The spark that ignites on meeting someone new is telling you something: This might be your match. When you miss those signals, your odds of finding an appropriate mate decrease.
For More:http://www.mindhacks.com/

Posted by Ajay :: 4:55 PM :: 0 comments

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---------------oOo--------------- Is Human Compassion Limited For Few?

While a person's accidental death reported on the evening news can bring viewers to tears, mass killings reported as statistics fail to tickle human emotions, a new study finds.

The Internet and other modern communications bring atrocities such as killings in Darfur, Sudan into homes and office cubicles. But knowledge of these events fails to motivate most to take action, said Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon researcher.

People typically react very strongly to one death but their emotions fade as the number of victims increase, Slovic reported here yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"We go all out to save a single identified victim, be it a person or an animal, but as the numbers increase, we level off," Slovic said. "We don't feel any different to say 88 people dying than we do to 87. This is a disturbing model, because it means that lives are not equal, and that as problems become bigger we become insensitive to the prospect of additional deaths."

Human insensitivity to large-scale human suffering has been observed in the past century with genocides in Armenia, the Ukraine, Nazi Germany and Rwanda, among others.

"We have to understand what it is in our makeup—psychologically, socially, politically and institutionally—that has allowed genocide to go unabated for a century," Slovic said. "If we don't answer that question and use the answer to change things, we will see another century of horrible atrocities around the world."

Slovic previously studied this phenomenon by presenting photographs to a group of subjects. In the first photograph eight children needed $300,000 to receive medical attention in order to save their lives. In the next photograph, one child needed $300,000 for medical bills.

Most subjects were willing to donate to the one and not the group of children.

In his latest research, Slovic and colleagues showed three photos to participants: a starving African girl, a starving African boy and a photo of both of them together.

Participants felt equivalent amounts of sympathy for each child when viewed separately, but compassion levels declined when the children were viewed together.
Read more:http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070216_genocide_interest.html

Posted by Ajay :: 4:26 PM :: 0 comments

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---------------oOo--------------- Man With Open Mouth

I like and dislike at the same time Mr.Amar Singh ,like because his straight replies and dislikes because he thinks only he is clean and what other say or speak have bad motive.I also dislike his publicity hungry gimimeck.
IBN took interview of him.Here is excerpt:
In Uttar Pradesh, the heat and dust generated by battle-ready politicians will cloud the people's lives for all of next month. Everyday, a rally is held and visitors literally fall from the sky. Today it’s the turn of Amar Singh, the ruling Samajwadi Party’s General Secretary and friends of the rich and the famous. The overwhelmingly male Thakur audience is the last one on his list for the day.


Anuradha SenGupta: When I see you in functions in Mumbai, when I see you in Delhi, it seems like this world is very far away, isn’t it? This birth, caste-based identity – that is another world you belong to and this is another world – do you feel comfortable in this world?


Amar Singh: I was born and brought up in Calcutta, where the difference is more ideological – Left or Right. Or at the most, it is football based – you are a Mohun Bagan supporter or East Bengal supporter. And inter-caste marriages used to be – long time back – there. Initially when I came and started politics over here, all of a sudden I realised the identity of my caste and community. The name ‘Thakur’ was given to me – this adjective is not self-acquired. If they are coming forward, mainly on the basis of you belonging to one community or caste, you possibly can’t shun them out – at the most you have to educate them.


Anuradha SenGupta: Do you feel more of a insider when are you here, you know, in a small town, dust, heat…?


Amar Singh: I am misunderstood because nobody cares to come and cover these meetings, where I spend most of my time. If once I will be seen with my elder brother Mr Bachchan or my would be daughter-in-law Aishwarya, that will hit the headline of the national newspapers.

Posted by Ajay :: 9:57 AM :: 0 comments

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---------------oOo--------------- H1-B Bomb

TOI reports:A search for ‘H1-B official website’ on Google throws up as the first result a spiteful anti-immigration website titled 'Official Website of the Emigration Party of Nevada.' The front page of this website, sendemback.org, explicitly states its malicious intent.

The message that welcomes a visitor on the site reads: "Are you sick and tired of seeing your country turned into a Third World sewer by immigration? Are you tired of seeing your standard of living drop and our jobs exported to China? Are you tired of armies of H1B workers being imported from India to take what few jobs we have left? Are you tired of having to skip 1 for Spanish and 2 for Chinese? Are you tired of pressing 3 for English and getting a receptionist who barely speaks it?"

The site links to other anti-immigration websites and celebrates Operation Wetback, a project to remove illegal Mexican immigrants from the Southwest. Some images posted on the site might seem amusing, while others are downright ghastly.

That such a misleading site appears right at the top of the search results on Google has irked many. Among them is Anthony Tongbram, a Delhi-based blogger and IT professional. Speaking to Indiatimes, Anthony said: "I first noticed it on an internal forum where a member had posted about it and I decided that something needs to be done."

The reason why the site (and a few other anti-immigration sites) appears on top of Google’s search results is because of search engine optimisation and Google-bombing techniques. Google bombing is a search result manipulation method where a large number of web pages link to a specific page using the same or similar anchor texts so that the site appears near the top in Google’s search results.
For more:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1893221.cms

Posted by Ajay :: 9:52 AM :: 0 comments

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