Sunday 2 June 2013

NET GLEANINGS 008

Mission to Mars:
'Astronauts on a Mars mission would spend 500 days on the planet and 360 days on the round trip. The first people to make the perilous journey will have to cope with long periods of boredom, the constant worry of returning safely and the joy/pain of each other's company. And according to the latest research into long-duration space travel, they will also endure the sort of radiation exposure that few people of Earth have experienced.'

Specific changes in brain-structure after different forms of child-abuse:
'Different forms of childhood abuse increase the risk for mental illness as well as sexual dysfunction in adulthood, but little has been known about how that happens. An international team of researchers, including the Miller School's Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D., Leonard M. Miller Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has discovered a neural basis for this association. The study, published in the June 1 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, shows that sexually abused and emotionally mistreated children exhibit specific and differential changes in the architecture of their brain that reflect the nature of the mistreatment.'