A Fat Question

Have we heard it often enough? Do we need to hear this 10 million more times to the power of infinity?

EAT A MEDITERRANEAN DIET FOR A HEALTHIER AND LONGER LIFE!

Harvard researchers, studying a group of 26,000 Greek men and women, recently found that merely adopting a few fundamentals of the Mediterranean diet was beneficial. The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, concluded this alone could cut cancer risk by 12 percent.

Simply consuming olive oil in your diet could reduce cancer risk by 9 percent.

The study participants, the Greek segment of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), lowered their incidence of cancer the most when following the traditional Mediterranean diet closely.

Scores of studies have linked health and longevity in countries like Spain and Greece to consumption of vegetables, fish, olive oil and an occasional glass of wine (all while relaxing with family or friends).

According to the American Heart Association, characteristics of a Mediterranean diet include the following:

• high consumption of fruits, vegetables, breads and other cereals, potatoes, beans, nuts, and seeds
• olive oil
• moderate consumption of fish and shellfish and lower amounts of meat and meat products
• dairy products and eggs in low to moderate amounts
• moderate consumption of wine

If most of the fat calories in a diet come from the monosaturated fats in olive oil, then this is significantly contributing to a decrease in the risk of cancer. And, of course, heart disease. Maybe, even aging and intestinal and stomach disorders.

Based on the EPIC study, dietary characteristics of the Mediterranean diet are strongly associated with health benefits. So, how strong is the link with quality of life characteristics, such as laughing more and sharing your worries with compadres?

Could adopting Mediterranean quality of life characteristics decrease a person’s risk of cancer by at least 9 percent, equivalent to adding olive oil to the diet?

Every tiny detail in the living world is a hymn to adaptability: The eye of an insect, the plumage of a tropical bird, the fin of a dolphin, the bone structure of a flying fox, the strategy of a reptile, or the functions of the human brain are all testimonies of adaptation to a life in continual change. Those who do not adapt end up like the dinosaurs.

—Piero Ferrucci, Psychotherapist, Author of The Power of Kindness

SETI is the organization that has attempted to answer the question by exploring the origin and prevalence of life in the cosmos Now, in a radio series, Are We Alone?,  SETI uncovers the science of life here on earth. Recent show topics include the world’s largest particle accelerator and neuroplasticity and the aging brain.

I came upon the site on the public science links at BlinkList.

At BlinkList, I can click on other topics and experts, make friends, and blink some great sites. I’m now trying out the tag cloud feature on my sidebar.

Driving a 2002 GMC Yukon has its disadvantages lately. Filling up the gas tank costs $90 and our version of the truck lacks the cool FlexFuel engine.

Plus, I’m starting to get attitude from Toyota Prius drivers. Yes. These are the same guys who glide through a red light or speed up going downhill to maximize numbers on their mpg gauges.

There is no need to employ such absurd and possibly dangerous nempimaniac driving (from the Japanese word nempi which means fuel economy). Hypermiling has been a trend among hybrid owners, who compete to exceed the Environmental Protection Agency estimated mpg on their vehicles.

The estimated EPA mileage on my 2002 GMC Yukon: 13 city/17 highway mpg.

Reasonable hypermilers claim that anyone can adopt safe fuel efficient driving techniques. Start by driving the speed limit and keeping up vehicle maintenance.

Or… change the dynamics of traffic congestion.

Electrical Engineer William Beaty has been a proponent of the idea that one thinking person in a solitary vehicle can “erase traffic waves” and the toll they take on miles per gallon.

Beaty asserts that changing speed and competing with other drivers for headway contributes to traffic congestion. Plus, the hard stops and jackrabbit starts of aggressive driving are neither courteous nor fuel efficient.

What happens if you increase the gap with the car ahead while driving at a uniform speed? Beaty experimented with gaps in traffic by traveling at an average speed and employing the 2-second rule. Can you see the tires of the car ahead?

“Rather than repeatedly rushing ahead of everyone else, only to come to a halt, I decided to try to move at the average speed of the traffic.” Beaty writes. “I let a huge gap open up ahead of me, and timed things so I was arriving at the next ’stop wave’ just as the last red brakelights were turning off ahead of me.”

According to Beaty, adopting these mindful driving habits makes traffic behind you move more uniformly and smoothly. He claims this productively “eats” traffic congestion and improves fuel consumption for everyone on the road.

See! Even you can make a positive impact in that 1-ton dually!

Hypermiling.com is a Web site that also recommends drivers smoothly and moderately accelerate from stops.

Being the veritable lead foot that I am, I avoid looking at the tachometer. Yet, flooring the accelerator can’t be a smart thing. First, it causes excessive engine rev which increases fuel injection to the cylinders. And, this process tends to decrease engine performance and fuel efficiency.

Can monitoring the RPMs on the tachometer be a scientific way to measure the “calm, uniform, smooth” driving in Beaty’s experiments? What would happen to the mpg on a given vehicle with an RPM limit during acceleration?

What happens if I accelerate from stops while keeping the RPMs just under 2500? How would this simple driving moderation improve my Yukon’s mpg? By 5 mpg? What would happen if I kept the RPMs just under 2000?

We should never adopt a viewpoint where some ideas are 100 percent right and others are 100 percent wrong. Instead, we should cultivate a healthy .01 percent belief in crazy things.

—William J. Beaty, Research Engineer, University of Washington

Que todos tengan un Feliz Dia de las Madres!

I didn’t clean the litter box, because I had to rush to school… I ran out of time… I misplaced the scooper…

He, on the other hand, didn’t clean the litter box, because he is lazy… or irresponsible… or unorganized…

Actor/observer difference (Jones & Nisbett, 1972) is the tendency to explain self behavior as a result of situation or circumstances (external attribution), while perceiving others’ behavior as a result of character or disposition (internal attribution).

The tendency comes from a cognitive bias, fundamental attribution error, (Ross, 1977) which suggests humans prefer to underestimate complex external factors—time, energy, or resources—as causes for others’ behavior.

The bias may arise from a culture that values a particular narrative. We are making others far more culpable for outcomes than they actually merit.

This has even permeated into education. We should all know better.

Yet, we’ve made some overly simplistic generalizations and we’re not asking questions. For example, we perceive there is a link between the quality of an individual teacher (internal factors) and test scores, when the resources and support a teacher has access to (external factors) more accurately impacts student performance.

I’m guilty of this. Eighth grade language arts teacher contributes to a 13 percent increase in students meeting state reading standards at a Title 1 middle school.

Who the heck is he? Gary Cooper in High Noon? This teacher didn’t face the Miller gang on his own!

He was part of a team armed with a good reading program… the best resources… support from parents and administrators…

Because we are all amateur psychologists seeking to understand behavior, the thing to do is question our initial explanations.

Why did we explain the behavior or event in that way?

Contemplate this…

As everyone knows (especially revolutionaries), hierarchy maintains formidable defenses against attack from the lower orders. It has none, however, against abandonment. This is in part because it can imagine revolution, but it can’t imagine abandonment. But even if it could imagine abandonment, it couldn’t defend against it, because abandonment isn’t an attack, it’s just a discontinuance of support.

—Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization

Then, read what Quinn thinks about schooling.

Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, soccer, dance, baseball, martial arts, music, painting…

Parents believe that extracurricular activities develop the cognitive, kinesthetic, and social skills that support children in the classroom. But, we also know they are choices appropriately made by our children based on their interests—what they love doing.

This is certainly not the case for homework. I’ve written previously about the idea that no research shows homework develops anything but stress, conflict, and frustration.

The controversial Alfie Kohn wrote a book, The Homework Myth, that supports the case for eliminating homework. Kohn writes that homework like competition and rewards, is another misguided educational activity proven to offer no benefits to learners.

Social psychologist Harris Cooper has done synthesis on the research which is slowly making an impact on education policy. Cooper’s book on the topic is The Battle Over Homework.

What is the real value in homework? Should we ask whether a homework assignment helps the learner reinforce skills or concepts learned in class? Offers the learner an opportunity to discover more about a topic? Helps the teacher to see whether the learner understands a lesson?

Do learners benefit when teachers make homework assignments more relevant or engaging? Can teachers create better homework assignments for every child, despite differences in home environments?

Or can we do away with homework altogether?

A post about homework at School Zone: “I taught English in California for years and years, and the best homework assignments for my students was simply their reading assignments.”

Research shows that homework reading assignments of 20 minutes per night improve reading and writing, concepts and vocabulary acquisition, and overall school performance. And, reading seems to be the only type of homework touted for its benefits to learners in studies on homework.

People with great compassion for others deserve admiration and respect. Responding to others’ pain, misery, or even ill-will through simple intentions of benevolence… this is more powerful than the thugery or posing of those generally desiring control.

The Dalai Lama, for example, maintains his compassion despite the Chinese government’s repressive response to peaceful demonstrations in his Tibetan homeland. The Buddhist leader can be considered an expert meditator, so why doesn’t he threaten the PRC with the razor-sharp intentions of his focused mind?

The Dalai Lama must have a generous heart, but the answer to his benevolence may rest inside his cranium.

A study published March 26 in the journal PLoS ONE shows that, like the Dalai Lama, we can learn to become more compassionate through mindfulness.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison research team placed 32 subjects, experienced or new to meditation, under a magnetic resonance imaging scanner and exposed them to sounds that evoke empathy. Sounds included a baby laughing, a woman crying, ambient noise in a restaurant.

The researchers discovered significant activity in the insula, the frontal portion of the brain that maps emotional response. In effect, people who meditate cultivate tendencies that are empathic and altruistic.

The study was part of an effort to investigate reflection, self-control, generosity, and other-oriented behaviors typical of mindfulness practitioners.

Neuroscientists have begun searching for clues that link meditation with improved cognitive function and immune response as well as with stress reduction. Mindfulness is also being investigated as a treatment option for disorders, such as ADHD and depression.

Harvard researcher Sara Lazar led a study that found mindfulness practitioners had thicker gray matter in the frontal portion of the brain responsible for attention and sensory processing. UMass Medical School researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn has documented meditation’s positive effects on patients with chronic pain and stress related disorders.

Mindfulness practitioners have claimed since Buddha that loving-kindness can be developed through the practice of meditation. Not only does being present and focusing on the breath have beneficial effects on the physiology of the brain. Now, science is proving that the 2,500-year-old practice can help us learn to be kinder.