So some people in the class are much more advanced and educated in this area and may know the answer...so bare with me Im fresh out of high school and feel very intelectually inferior to the rest of you guys in the class!<--thats why i dont talk in class! So my sister works in a group home type thing and she works with, for lack of a better word, the crazies(which is her teminology) And one of her clients who stays there admitted his self there, but says there is nothing wrong with him...but he is kind of in this fantasy world where he thinks that the pop star Beyonce is harrasing him and cheated on him with the president and Jay-Z... and he calling the police on her all the time to get her away from him. He even 'brought' her in to my sisters office to have my sister talk to her to tell her to leave him alone. he even wants a restraining order! for one i dont see how you can effectivly deal with some one like that. But he says that he is fine and not crazy and he wants to go out and get a job and have a wife and kids, but he is blaming Beyonce for holding him back. What my real question is what makes people think like that? What has happened in his brain that sets off these episodes? I want to ask my sister if he has been like that his whole life. Is it possible for people to just have a severe break down that effects them for the rest of there life? What makes people go crazy? Did something go wrong in his development..or what?

So I was just thinking the other day and I was wondering why males are the dominant sex...They are basically in every species right? I mean humans this is pretty much a man run world...the majority of all the extreamly rich people are men. And all the pro sports are mens sports..even if there is a womans version of it, its not as highly publicized or made a big deal about. Also i was watching TV and there was a commercial for a show that this man has three wives, and the wives are ok with that, which reminded me about gorillas, how there is one dominate male that runs the group and fathers a majority of the children. If the roles were reversed, and it was a show about a woman having more than one husband, than I think plenty more people will have a problem with that. It seems more acceptable for men to have other misstresses and for the main woman to be ok with that. But when a woman has more than one lover she is considered a not so nice word. What makes it that males have those types of advantages over women? Sure some would say that God created Adam first and Eve as his partner..but is that really what happened..its all he said she said..and could it be possible that it was the other way around? Why have most women adopted the submissive role when it comes to many things? I dont know, I was just thinking. 

Women's skin ages faster than men's: study

October 3, 2006 05:21:54 PM PST

Women's skin ages faster than men's, according to a German study using a new laser-based technique to measure damage from sun exposure and aging.

The study, published in Optics Letters, a journal of the Optical Society of America, was based on a new technique in which doctors shine pulses of infrared laser light to look at the deeper layers of the skin and measure aging.

The imaging of collagen and elastin, whose degeneration causes wrinkles and loss of smoothness, found that women lose collagen faster than men.

"The dependence appeared to be sex-dependent, with women's skin losing collagen at faster rates than men's," according to the researchers from Germany's Freidrich Schiller University in Jena and the Fraunhofer Institute of Biomedical Technology in St. Ingbert.

Collagens are a group of proteins in the dermis, the connective tissue layer of the skin, and are responsible for the strength of skin. The human body makes a lot of collagen in youth but production declines with aging.

Currently, dermatologists who want to examine a patient's collagen network in the dermis have to remove a sample of tissue and look at it under a microscope.

Authors of the study said this new non-invasive test might one day help in testing anti-aging cosmetic products as well as in the study of skin diseases that affect the collagen structure.

This just came to me Saturday after watching the video in class about those two professors discussing Gender and the Sexes.  I am not sure why this came to me then, but it did.  I was hoping to find an answer in our Human Development book Chapter 1.5, but there wasn't one to be found there.  I do have to say it was interesting to find that the scientific world have tried to explain woman in a male context and that it doesn't work, but I digress..  My burning question and if anyone has an answer to it would be wonderful Who ever made the decision that Blue would be for boys and Pink would be for girls?  Doesn't designating a basic color to a sex mess things up? I am just curious.  You go to the store and you'll find lots of blue stuff in the boys section and lots of pink stuff in the girls section.  What if you don't like pink?  Why couldn't a different color been designated for the sexes like green or purple or orange?? 

 Okay if you can't tell I have a hangup about Pink and ruffles and lace to be exact.  I blame it all on being the first born and the first grandchild and being a girl in general and the family thought it would be cute to dress me up in pink, ruffles, and lace and I just hate it!!  You will not find a pink item in my cloest.  Actually you'd be lucky to find a dress in there.  I am a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal.  That's another thing - whoever made the decision that girls wore dresses and boys wore pants?  I am so glad we live in a day and age where girls are not required to wear dresses anymore.  I'd be in big trouble that's for sure.

i wanted to bring up the book Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. This is an amazing book and though there are a few things i don't completely agree with on the whole it puts form to a lot of the theories and questions and thoughts about human nature and religion etc etc. The main focus of the book is "thou art God." I'm not gonna tie this in with Christopher Moore's Lamb with the explanation of the "holy ghost" aka "the divine spark" which resides in all of us. God is everything, in everything, a part of everything right? right ok. so that would logically make him part of us. So what's to say that we aren't him completely? Who's to say that we have control over everything that surounds us? and in saying that i could possibly be justifying our flourishing while we kill other species because they don't have, what is it? imortal souls? something like that. which is not my point. bringing in another book, a comic book actually, Neil Gaiman's Sandman i don't remember what issue or book but there's a part where Death (a cute little punk girl) tells one of her siblings that we KNOW everything. Past, future, present. We have all the questions and answers (no answer is 42, damn what's the question kinda thing) but the reason we don't know/acknowledge that knowledge (god i hate words sometimes) is because there's no way to handle that, it's easier to "forget" rather than be swamped by so much. Kind of like how in Stranger In A Strange Land the main character (a human man raised by martians and brought back to earth) "groks" humans and why they laugh as being, "They laugh because it hurts... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting." shit this is long. ok there are my ideas and thoughts for the moment. out.

annie

ok so i appologize for posting late, i had intended to do it wednesday night before i went to cali but the site was still having problems and some how gave me two things but would only let me sign on to the wrong one. anyways, this is my post on my thoughts on the reading:

• Pg 17, last paragraph. HA! religion is just a crutch! well, in some cases. and don't go all bitchy on my ass it is simply my belief that religion was created by humans who were too weak minded to simply believe in their own beauty and existence. now, on the other hand i do believe in God, and gods, and any deity who's ever been worshipped but i believe that it is our belief that makes them real. if you wanna get into a long discussion email me.
• Pg 25, last line. I really, really, really like the last line: "...healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death."
• Pg 50, first paragraph (not of the interview). WTF so the reason i believe that people should just work that little extra bit to make life better for everyone (responsibility to the world) is a fucking genetic trait that i just happen to have cause i have a vagina? though considering the male and female answers it makes sense. though, why didn't they interview both of them to the same depth? perhaps because men do not commonly like to converse? hmm....

k, i'm done. see you all wednesday ^_^

annie

This recent article in the Olympian provided an analysis regarding the Washington state 10th graders. Gender, race, and income level were all factors...

In relation to gender there were no achievment gaps noted in subject of math. This was not the case in other subjects.

Tenth-grade boys in schools across South Sound improved their performance in reading, nearly reaching the bar set by their female counterparts. But a wider gap remains between boys and girls in writing. "The boys and the girls have improved at a steady pace, but the boys have been behind the girls," said Suzanne Hall, Tumwater School District executive director of student learning. "The girls are still outperforming the boys, but the gap is getting smaller."

link

There seems to be some great information available regarding Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development.

Here is a useful link on the subject matter.

Although there is no general theory of cognitive development, the most historically influential theory was developed by Jean Piaget, a Swiss Psychologist (1896-1980). His theory provided many central concepts in the field of developmental psychology. His theory concerned the growth of intelligence, which for Piaget meant the ability to more accurately represent the world, and perform logical operations on representations of concepts grounded in the world. His theory concerns the emergence and acquisition of schemata—schemes of how one perceives the world—in "developmental stages," times when children are acquiring new ways of mentally representing information.

Link

I am new to the world of Wikipedia and have found it very helpful.  I do have a question about items listed on Wikipedia.  Does anyone know if there are any limitations to the content such as accuracy etc?  As I mentioned, it's all new to me.  I would love to know more about it, especially since it is related to the end of quarter project.  Thanks in advance.     

From Mind Hacks:

ABC Radio's The Philosopher's Zone has just had two special editions on Freud and his relevance to modern day thinking.

The programmes look at two contrasting areas of his wide-ranging theories.

The first is on Freud's contribution to philosophy and the second contrasts Freud's theories of dreaming with modern dream science derived from neuroscience.

The discussion picks out theories which were seminal in igniting research, and those which have not stood the test of time.

For those wanting an almost entirely critical take on Freud, the Times Literary Supplement has a review of a Frederick Crews' new book entitled Follies of the Wise (ISBN 1593761015), which attempts to show that even many of Freud's more popular ideas are fundamentally flawed.

Taking pot shots at Freud is quite fashionable in this day and age. However, as Freud wrote so much and about so many different topics, it is easy to find something to criticise but difficult to dismiss all his ideas at once.

Link to Philosopher's Zone on Freud the Philosopher.

Link to Philosopher's Zone on The Dream Debate.

Link to TLS book review.

I listened to the first radio program about Freud as philosophy. It is rather sympathetic to Freud's ideas, but does bring out some good points. I think of Freud as primarily a philosopher, even with regard to psychology. It is hard to think of it as science, as it seems to really consist of a reformulation of Greek myths and intuition. It is pre-scientific (as all good philosophy is, really), because it provides a starting point, but is a metaphor just like the notion that the mind is a computer. That is a useful concept, and may generate some specific theories, but no one regards it as any more than a metaphor.

Not only is this my first blog but I am needing some help!!!! I order blooms book and it is still not here yet! Is there anything that you can tell me about what was read so far would be a big help until my own book comes???? Thanks!!!!!

So, the first time I found myself cursing G. Bush's name was when I came across news article in the Olympian on May 9, 2002.  Bush and his administration wanted to reverse a federal discrimination policy, Title IX, which outlaws discrimination based on gender.  He wanted to segregate schools to give parents more options in choosing public school.  "It is one more option we think ought to be made available to parents," said Brian Jones, general counsel for the US Department of Education.  Advocates of this say research supports the ideas that single-sex schools offer benefits for both sexes.  "Many boys do better in a single-sex atmosphere without the extraneous distractions of girls," said Sen. Hutchinson, R-Texas.  Unbelievable!  What about the stinky boys in the back of the class who were always making fart noises and spitting spit wads?  What kind of distractions are they?  Thank goodness for the civil rights' groups who stood up and said, "it certainly is not the best way to prepare boys or girls for the world we all live in."  I see school segregation perpetuating the communication problem between men and women.  In my opinion, the way to improve education is to decrease class sizes and increase parent involvement.  Bush can take the $3 million he's offering to schools who choose to segregate and put it back into existing schools.  Let's see how many more elementary schools (take King Co. for example) we will have to shut down before we figure it out.   

I'm not sure if I am understanding Steven Pinker (from the video in class) correctly when he said that sex reversed cultures were a myth. I'm interpreting 'sex reversed' as gender traits that vary from our culture's 'typical' understanding of male and female. In a previous class I took, we studied other cultures where each sex took on the opposite gender traits. Females took on the stereotypical male side while males fulfilled the stereotypical female role. The culture I'm going to use as an example is a primitive society known as the Tchambuli. Margaret Mead wrote "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies" where she discusses how when she and her colleagues studied the Tchambuli society, they "found a genuine reversal of the sex attitudes of our own culture, with the woman the dominant, impersonal, managing partner, and the man the less responsible and the emotionally dependant person." Mead attributes all sex characteristics to being socially conditioned. Also, looking at animals, Bonobos, a primate closely related to humans and chimpanzees, also have a very different approach to gender. With females being in charge and sexually aggressive. Many matriarchial societies seem to exist so I don't know how Pinker can say the idea is a myth. There are also Native American cultures such as the Pokot, Navajo, and Mohave tribes that have very different sexes. How did everybody else interpret what he was saying?

I just want to say Yea!!!  I finally am able to log on thanks to our wonderful instructor!!  I am in the midst of fixing dinner, but now that I can get on here I will be creating blogs and answering blogs.  :)

After I read Patty's posting about the taste buds. I found this article in The News Tribune about the display of "Bodies..The Expedition" that is in Seattle through December. It was in the Soundlife Section of the Sunday October 1, 2006 Paper, I have not heard about it before. It is a exhibit of many preserved corpses that show the human muscular, skeletal, respiratory and nervous systems in great detail. At first sight of the photos I was taken aback but then as I read about it more I discovered it is actually something that can be very educational. What I am more surprised about is that this is a huge contraversial world wide exhibit. My thought is, isn't this what scientist have done for years as a way of learning about the human body. What a spectacular way for us to learn about the human body and its functions. What is so contraversial is "Is it Science or show biz"? Personally I think it would be a little wierd to see a skinless body that you are aware was a real person but I can not help but think of how much knowledge we can gain from this opportunity. I would encourage anyone who was interested in this to see News Tribune Website and check it out.

Here is the address for the website to the full story.

The experience of sleep is different for different animals, and different for humans as they age.

• For reasons that are not clear, the amount of REM sleep each day decreases from about 8 hours at birth to 2 hours at 20 years to only about 45 minutes at 70 years of age. - Source
  

• "Interestingly, REM sleep is found only in mammals (and juvenile birds)." - Source

• Adding to the uncertainty about the purposes of REM sleep and dreaming is the fact that deprivation of REM sleep in humans for as much as two weeks has little or no obvious effect on behavior. Such studies have been done by waking volunteers whenever their EEG recordings showed the characteristic signs of REM sleep. Although the subjects in these experiments compensate for the lack of REM sleep by having more of it after the period of deprivation has ended, they suffer no obvious adverse effects. Similarly, patients taking certain antidepressants (MAO inhibitors) have little or no REM sleep, yet show no obvious ill effects, even after months or years of treatment. The apparent innocuousness of REM sleep deprivation contrasts markedly with the effects of total sleep deprivation (see earlier). The implication of these several findings is that we can get along without REM sleep, but need non-REM sleep in order to survive. - Source

• A wide variety of animals have a rest-activity cycle that often (but not always) occurs in a daily (circadian) rhythm. Even among mammals, however, the organization of sleep depends very much on the species in question. As a general rule, predatory animals can indulge, as humans do, in long, uninterrupted periods of sleep that can be nocturnal or diurnal, depending on the time of day when the animal acquires food, mates, cares for its young, and deals with life's other necessities. The survival of animals that are preyed upon, however, depends much more critically on continued vigilance. Such species—as diverse as rabbits and giraffes—sleep during short intervals that usually last no more than a few minutes. Shrews, the smallest mammals, hardly sleep at all.
  An especially remarkable solution to the problem of maintaining vigilance during sleep is shown by dolphins and seals, in whom sleep alternates between the two cerebral hemispheres (see figure). Thus, one hemisphere can exhibit the electroencephalographic signs of wakefulness, while the other shows the characteristics of sleep (see Box C and Figure 28.5). - Source

There are several odd things going on here that leave me with a lot of questions.

After reading the past posts dealing with sleep and health, I started to look at other resources on the subject. With my current sleep schedule of only getting about 5 hours per night, due to work, schedule school and a early bird daughter, I have experienced the increase stress level and mood swings this article discusses not only in myself but with my wife. I just thought some follow up reading might be interesting to others. I cannot really remember the last time I saw eight hours of sleep, I think I will try and do that more often.

The downside of running on empty

Scientists are finding more evidence that sleep deprivation can affect appetite, weight gain, diabetes risk, the strength of your immune system, and even your chance of developing depression.

In 2004, University of Chicago researchers restricted a group of men to only 4 hours of sleep per night. After just 2 nights, the men had an 18 percent decrease in leptin, a hormone that tells your brain when you are full, and a 28 percent increase in ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. These results were reinforced last October by a study of almost 10,000 adults that found that people who slept fewer than 7 hours a night were more likely to be obese than those who got 7 hours of shut-eye. "

Chronic sleep deprivation causes changes in metabolism that produce a state that stimulates hunger," Epstein explains. Sleep deprivation can also affect how your body handles insulin; insulin resistance puts you at risk for weight gain and diabetes.

In a study that's still under way, Van Cauter and her colleagues are looking at chronic sleep loss in a group of normal-weight men and women under age 30. Over 6 months, those who slept fewer than 6.5 hours a night were more insulin-resistant than normal sleepers who logged 7.5 to 8 hours per night.

The short sleepers, the study shows so far, need to produce 30 to 40 percent more insulin to dispose of the same amount of glucose. Still other studies suggest that over time, sleep loss may play a role in the development of depression.

The gene, SOX2, stimulates stem cells on the surface of the embryonic tongue and in the back of the mouth to transform into taste buds, according to the researchers. Stem cells are immature cells that can develop into several different cell types depending on what biochemical instructions they receive.

...

"In my laboratory, we were studying the role of SOX2 in the development of the lung, esophagus and the gut in embryonic mice" she said. "We were quite surprised when we accidentally found the gene's role to be so pronounced in the developing tongue."

You can read more at Duke Health.

Aside from this new finding about one of our senses, I found the mechanism that the researchers used to find out this information even more curious. Here is a short description:

Pevny combined the SOX2 gene with another gene, derived from jellyfish, and inserted the combination into the animals' chromosomes. She selected the added gene for its capacity to produce a special protein, called enhanced green fluorescent protein, that glows green when exposed to ultraviolet light.
"When we shine light on tissue from these animals, any cell that is expressing SOX2 will fluoresce, or light up," Pevny explained. "This allows us to directly visualize those areas where SOX2 is active. It is a very powerful tool."

Patty

There are many different ways to approach human development, which is even evident in our introductory text Notable Selections in Human Development.

I'm not just talking about schools of thought within psychology, like the difference between a Freudian psychosexual stages approach and a Paiget cognitive-developmental stage model.

I'm thinking a bit broader. I'm going to use categories that come to mind and give them my own names, although there may be a much better way to say the same thing.(This is tricky, so please excuse the rough outline. Maybe some of these are subcategories of others.)

For example:

Genetic model - Development as a function of genetic programming. We unfold within the set capacities of our specific biology.

Social model - We develop according to what the society we grow up in values and demands.

Environmental model - We develop according to how the environment has acted upon us, both individually and as a species. (An example? Nutrition.)

Self Determination model - We develop according to our choices. We are what we choose to be. These choices occur on both a conscious and unconscious level.

Spiritual model - We develop according to our soul and the moral/ethical choices that we make. (This is an attempt to describe something that isn't necessarily religious in nature, it could be a purely self-imposed and self-taught ethical/moral system or sense of self that is not merely mortal in nature.)

I'm sure there are more. Which ones can you think of? Are there important subcategories that you can think of?

I find that while I'm personally interested in how individuals come to be who they are, I'm even more interested in how individuals come to be different than they are now. The process, for the lack of a better word, of actively becoming.

I'm also personally interested in the interaction of all these elements within each individual and society, rather than looking at a singular model of "explanation" or description. So, this list is to help me to remember elements that go into making a person (rather than looking for a "right" one).

Patty

I watched this on 20/20 Friday night. From my personal experience I found it was pretty close to the experience I've had with my husband on a few points they made:

Attention to detail: They espoused that men don't pay attention to detail as much as women. They put a woman in a room alone for a period of time and then they put a man in the same room for the same amount of time. They then asked each to recall details of the room. The woman went on and on about every detail of the items in the room. The man had no idea what was in the room. Another point they made was that women process information faster. She asks a man a question and expects an answer right away - this is definitely the case with my husband and me.

Verbal Communication: I can’t recall the numbers, but studies were reported that indicated that women communicated verbally much more than me. My personal experience can attest to that.

Nurture: They talked about how women nurture their babies which drew a comparison to last week’s reading. A mother described her experience while breast feeding as euphoric and even orgasmic. On page 5 of Human Development the author states: “The baby’s obstinate persistence in sucking gives evidence at an early stage of a need for satisfaction which…….should be described as “sexual.”

There was an interview by Ben Barres, a world renowned neurobiologist who used to be Barbara Barres, but underwent a sex change. Barres made the statement that it's easier to be male in the science world. While at MIT Barbara solved a complex equation and the professor told her that her boyfriend must’ve solved it. She was the only one to solve the equation, but didn’t get credit for it.