Actor Jack Nicholson talks to Dennis Hopper, who was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Friday...
Bouys/Getty
...on the same day his doctor revealed in court papers that the actor was terminally ill with prostate cancer. Hopper poses with his daughter at the Walk of Fame ceremony.
Hopper was recognized on the same day that court records revealed his prostate cancer is terminal - and that he is too weak for chemotherapy.
The 73-year-old arrived at the ceremony with a bandage on his forehead, the result of a fall.
His familiar grin was there, and his blue eyes lit up at the sight of young daughter Galen and granddaughter Violet horsing around.
Hopper thanked Hollywood for being "my home and my schooling" and shook hands with David Lynch, who directed him in "Blue Velvet."
Hopper and his fifth wife, Victoria, have been locked in a divorce battle since January.
In a court filing, Hopper's doctor revealed the actor weighs less than 100 pounds and warned that being forced to testify "could threaten his survival."
It appears that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are all one step behind the students of Imperial College London...
University students have developed a computer game that is operated by eye movements, which could allow people with severe physical disabilities to become 'gamers' for the first time, they announce today.
The students, from Imperial College London, have adapted an open source game called 'Pong', where a player moves a bat to hit a ball as it bounces around the screen. The adaptation enables the player to move the bat using their eye.
To play the game, the user wears special glasses containing an infrared light and a webcam that records the movement of one eye.
The webcam is linked to a laptop where a computer program syncs the player's eye movements to the game.
The prototype game is very simple but the students believe that the technology behind it could be adapted to create more sophisticated games and applications such as wheelchairs and computer cursors controlled by eye movements.
One of the major benefits of the new technology is that it is inexpensive, using off-the-shelf hardware and costing approximately £25 to make.
Dark matter, dark energy and now dark flow: it seems we live in an increasingly darker universe, and the current teen fascination with vampires has nothing to do with it!
In 2008 scientists reported the discovery of hundreds of galaxy clusters streaming in the same direction at more than 2.2 million miles (3.6 million kilometers) an hour.
Now the same team has found that the dark flow extends even deeper into the universe than previously reported: out to at least 2.5 billion light-years from Earth.
As you probably know by now, yesterday Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, falsely claimed to the national press corps that his campaign office had been targeted by a gunman in the wake of Sunday's health care reform vote.
Here's a video showing Cantor's claim, explaining why it was false, and documenting Fox's breathless promotion of the tale:
Here's a bit more detail on what happened: an office in the same building where Cantor has an office (it's unmarked and not in his district) was hit by a bullet that had been randomly fired skyward. The bullet could easily have been fired a half-mile away, but even setting that aside, the fact that Cantor had an office in the building was not widely known (it's not listed on his website). Anyone actually targeting Cantor would have picked a different location.
Cantor's tale was an an obvious attempt to give the national media a "Fair & Balanced" narrative that both sides are doing it when it comes to threats of political violence. But that narrative is not true. So Cantor simply lied. Made it up. Saw himself some Tuzla sniper fire. Carved a virtual backwards B into his cheek.
He abandoned any pretense to honesty and accuracy, and demonstrated his utter contempt for the national media by crying wolf straight to their face. And Fox ate it up and spit it right back out at their audience, completely, wholeheartedly, and absolutely uncritically.
Just as Eric Cantor is a liar, this incident shows (yet again) that the crew at Fox News are not journalists.
Dudes from the future! If we're about to annihilate ourselves, next monday would be a good time to stop us... (Come to think of it, if the LHC does indeed destroy us, who's trying to stop us from the future? The surviving roaches? But why would they do that? Seems to me it benefits them? There has to be some more nefarious plot at work here...)
CERN announced that on March 30 they will attempt to circulate beams in the Large Hadron Collider at 3.5 TeV, the highest energy yet achieved in a particle accelerator. A live webcast will be shown of the event, and will include live footage from the control rooms for the LHC accelerator and all four LHC experiment, as well as a press conference after the first collisions are announced.
“With two beams at 3.5 TeV, we’re on the verge of launching the LHC physics program,” said CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers. “But we’ve still got a lot of work to do before collisions. Just lining the beams up is a challenge in itself: it’s a bit like firing needles across the Atlantic and getting them to collide half way.”
Meanwhile, here's some light music to entertain. Alpine Kat, and her Large Hadron Rap comes from the very heart of the LHC, since in her day job, she's Katherine McAlpine, journalist and webmaster for the Atlas experiment.
A few years back Adrian Sherwood and Doug Aubrey's worlds met and mixed somewhere in North London. A shared interest in noise, silence and a mutual hearing loss, caused by Bombs, Drum and Bass, led the Godfather of dub and Aubrey starting to talk about trying to make a film together...Aided by a few fellow conspirators from On-U-sounds world: Ghetto Priest, Doug Wimbush, Mark Stewart and a passing cat, they produced a short never seen video...until now. The dubmaster and the filmmaker again met recently in Edinburgh and at Graham Fagan's fantastic 'I Murder Hate' event in Stirling and there's now rumour of a major film collaboration for the 30th anniversary of the seminal On-U-sounds in 2011, which will form part of a DvD box set, a work for cinema and who knows even television...? Enjoy !
If I told you that a brand new analog synthesizer existed that costed about the price of a couple cases of beer and was small enough to fit in your coat pocket, I would probably be laughed out of this century. However, Korg seems to think differently, and just announced the Monotron, which is precisely this. Operating as an analog synthesizer the utilizes a ribbon touch surface for the keys, this thing borrows technology that was derived directly from their classic MS-20 synthesizer from the 1990s. The Monotron has nothing more than your basic, everyday controls. It utilizes a single oscillator, one filter, and one LFO which modulates the oscillator signal (essentially, for non-synth people, it uses a waveform to automate it’s volume over a span of time). It also includes an auxiliary input which you can hook anything from an iPod to a Kaoss Pad to even another synth to further mangle up the sound with, and the headphone jack doubles as the line out, allowing you to easily hook up to an amp or recording device.
Although there are other modular analog synth kits out there that are also about as cheap as the Monotron, this package is great for beginners or people looking to tweak sounds without having to fuss with cables or learning curves. More info on Korg’s website.
Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations. In the developing world, these range from the appalling assassination of two related human rights lawyers in Nairobi last March (an armed attack on my compound there in 2007 is still unattributed) to an unsuccessful mass attack by Chinese computers on our servers in Stockholm, after we published photos of murders in Tibet. In the West this has ranged from the overt, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, threatening to prosecute us unless we removed a report on CIA activity in Kosovo, to the covert, to an ambush by a "James Bond" character in a Luxembourg car park, an event that ended with a mere "we think it would be in your interest to...".
Developing world violence aside, we've become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest.
But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive. Some of the new interest is related to a film exposing a U.S. massacre we will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5.
The spying includes attempted covert following, photographng, filming and the overt detention & questioning of a WikiLeaks' volunteer in Iceland on Monday night.
I, and others were in Iceland to advise Icelandic parliamentarians on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a new package of laws designed to protect investigative journalists and internet services from spying and censorship. As such, the spying has an extra poignancy.
The possible triggers:
our ongoing work on a classified film revealing civilian casualties occurring under the command of the U.S, general, David Petraeus.
our release of a classified 32 page US intelligence report on how to fatally marginalize WikiLeaks (expose our sources, destroy our reputation for integrity, hack us).
pending releases related to the collapse of the Icelandic banks and Icelandic "oligarchs".
We have discovered half a dozen attempts at covert surveillance in Reykjavik both by native English speakers and Icelanders. On the occasions where these individuals were approached, they ran away. One had marked police equipment and the license plates for another suspicious vehicle track back to the Icelandic private VIP bodyguard firm Terr. What does that mean? We don't know. But as you will see, other events are clear.
U.S. sources told Icelandic state media's deputy head of news, that the State Department was aggressively investigating a leak from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. I was seen at a private U.S Embassy party at the Ambassador's residence, late last year and it is known I had contact with Embassay staff, after.
On Thursday March 18, 2010, I took the 2.15 PM flight out of Reykjavik to Copenhagen--on the way to speak at the SKUP investigative journalism conference in Norway. After receiving a tip, we obtained airline records for the flght concerned. Two individuals, recorded as brandishing diplomatic credentials checked in for my flight at 12:03 and 12:06 under the name of "US State Department". The two are not recorded as having any luggage.
Iceland doesn't have a separate security service. It folds its intelligence function into its police forces, leading to an uneasy overlap of policing and intelligence functions and values.
On Monday 22, March, at approximately 8.30pm, a WikiLeaks volunteer, a minor, was detained by Icelandic police on a wholly insignificant matter. Police then took the opportunity to hold the youth over night, without charge--a highly unusual act in Iceland. The next day, during the course of interrogation, the volunteer was shown covert photos of me outside the Reykjavik restaurant "Icelandic Fish & Chips", where a WikiLeaks production meeting took place on Wednesday March 17--the day before individuals operating under the name of the U.S. State Department boarded my flight to Copenhagen.
Our production meeting used a discreet, closed, backroom, because we were working on the analysis of a classified U.S. military video showing civilian kills by U.S. pilots. During the interrogation, a specific reference was made by police to the video---which could not have been understood from that day's exterior surveillance alone. Another specific reference was made to "important", but unnamed Icelandic figures. References were also made to the names of two senior journalists at the production meeting.
Who are the Icelandic security services loyal to in their values? The new government of April 2009, the old pro-Iraq war government of the Independence party, or perhaps to their personal relationships with peers from another country who have them on a permanment intelligence information drip?
Only a few years ago, Icelandic airspace was used for CIA rendition flights. Why did the CIA think that this was acceptable? In a classified U.S. profile on the former Icelandic Ambassador to the United States, obtained by WikiLeaks, the Ambassador is praised for helping to quell publicity of the CIA's activities.
Often when a bold new government arises, bureaucratic institutions remain loyal to the old regime and it can take time to change the guard. Former regime loyalists must be discovered, dissuaded and removed. But for the security services, that first vital step, discovery, is awry. Congenitally scared of the light, such services hide their activities; if it is not known what security services are doing, then it is surely impossible to know who they are doing it for.
Our plans to release the video on April 5 proceed.
We have asked relevant authorities in the Unites States and Iceland to explain. If these countries are to be treated as legitmate states, they need to start obeying the rule of law. Now.
—Julian Assange (editor@wikileaks.org)
President Obama made a surprise visit to an independent bookstore in downtown Iowa City after delivering a speech on health care reform.
"Well, this used to be my favorite place," Obama said as he walked around the store, Prairie Lights.
Obama looked around in pursuit of a couple of books for his daughters, Sasha and Malia.
Along his way he picked up "No Apology" by Mitt Romney and "Courage and Consequence" by Karl Rove.
"What do you think guys?" he asked reporters, holding up a hardback copy in each hand before setting them back down.
Obama disappeared downstairs for a few minutes and emerged with two books: “Journey to the River Sea” by Eva Ibbotson and “The Secret of Zoom” by Lynne Jonell.
He pulled out five $20 bills to pay the cashier and then offered to pick up the book his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, had grabbed: a large Star Wars pop-up book for his six-year-old son, Ethan.
"It's a little expensive, sir,” Gibbs said to his boss as he handed it over. Obama nonetheless forked over the $37.44 for the book.
"I can handle it,” he said. “It’s for keeping his dad away for too many hours a day.”
"I need more books than that, sir,” Gibbs remarked.
Obama thanked the employees.
"You have a wonderful bookstore,” he said, adding that hopefully he’s helping “to make sure everybody has health insurance.”
He then shook a few hands of customers in the store. Someone remarked about the significance of his dropping by the store.
Obama said he hoped so. "It's not every day a president stops by,” he said.
On his way out the door, Obama said the books he purchased for his daughters were “based on recommendations.”
“Of course the question is how they take to them, but I think they’re going to like them,” he said.
A Christian policing group which believes that the power of prayer can catch criminals and keep officers safe from harm has been awarded a £10,000 grant from the Home Office to widen its involvement with local church groups.
The Christian Police Association (CPA) wants members of the public to "adopt a cop" by praying for the safety of local officers as they ply their beats. Subjects that the association says congregations should be encouraged to pray for include "helping officers make on-the-spot decisions" and encouraging them to "resist corruption".
The nationwide organisation, which boasts 2,000 members, claims that there is "circumstantial evidence" to suggest that regular prayer sessions can help reduce crime rates and encourage criminals to make a new start to their lives.
...
Don Axcell, a retired Metropolitan Police sergeant who heads the CPA, told Police Review: "We want people to pray for the police, for example in solving crimes or protecting officers. We want to see the Christian community fully interacting with the service. I think it will break down barriers."
For my own part, I'd rather see that £10,000 backed by empirical evidence. But that's just me.
The Improbable Research blog had this to add:
The 1994 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to John Hagelin of Maharishi University and The Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, promulgator of peaceful thoughts, for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators caused an 18 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C.
"Today sees the publication of a paper by Roger Benson and colleagues on the first Australian tyrant dinosaur (Benson et al. 2010). Thanks to this find, we now know that tyrants did, indeed, get deep into the south. The specimen is, unfortunately, not a complete skeleton or even a partial one: it's a single, 30-cm-long pubic bone, currently known only by its catalogue number, NMV P186046 [shown here, image provided by Roger Benson]. It's from the famous Dinosaur Cove site in Victoria, and its detailed anatomy demonstrates it tyrannosauroid identity. Additional clues show whereabouts the specimen lies within the tyrannosauroid radiation."
Australia might finally be getting its own t-rex! Not to brag, but in Canada, we had ours way before: Albertosaurus, discovered in 1884. Better late than never, I guess...
...and I guess the subtlety of this comment is lost on them!
"Juat a little concerned here, now that we've eliminated ACORN, clearly THE #1 source of America's woes over the last 40 years, what can we do next? I read conservative blogs all day and a few months ago I was clearly given the indication that America was being disassembled brick by brick by ACORN's very existence... So now that America's saved, isn't the fight over? Or do we just need to keep inventing new Ultimate Symbols of Evil to focus the base on and achieve the most important thing for us all, a Republican run everything? Clearly the world didn't figure out the last 8 years we ran things how GREAT a Rep world would be, from the great remodeling work we did for free in Iraq, to the strength of our friendship with such paragons of ethical, humane, and above all AMERICAN ideals as Halliburton, Blackwater, Exxon-Mobil, and the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia?"
Roni Size and acclaimed composer William Goodchild combined their creative forces with the Emerald Ensemble Chamber Orchestra, a Gospel Choir, and Roni's own band, Reprazent, for a unique, one-off performance at Bristol's Colston Hall.
When you see a blanket-covered body shifting uncomfortably ina doorway, hole-ridden boots protruding at one end, matted hair at the other, what do you think? That we don’t have enough houses? That the person in question should get a job? Do you feel compassion or disgust?
The reality is that the filthy, dirt-poor person you’re looking at may well have been abused or neglected as a child. They’ve no doubt been rejected time and again. They’re almost certainly in bad health, physical and mental, and could be addicted to alcohol, drugs or both. If they’re female, it’s likely they’ve suffered domestic violence.
Until recently, research on homelessness was focused on economic issues and social policy. But gradually psychology and society are waking up to the psychological processes that lead many people to become homeless in the first place. Researchers are trying to pin down how people end up with nothing and how to get them back on their feet. Therapists are listening to homeless people’s stories, equipping them with the skills to cope and move on.
This morning, the Twitterverse was abuzz with mentions of Facebook and syphilis. The Sun published “Sex diseases soaring due to Facebook romps” (according to The Guardian, the original headline was “Facebook spreads syphilis”). So what’s this all about?
Obviously, a website cannot “spread” a sexually transmissible infection (STI) such as syphilis, which is transmitted through vaginal sex, oral sex and anal sex.
Well, apparently a public health official from the NHS commented that young people in the areas most affected by syphilis were 25 per cent more likely to log on to Facebook than young people in other areas of the country. It is also claimed that several of the approximately 30 people in one area who contracted syphilis had met partners through social networking sites, such as Facebook. Unfortunately, it is this notion, thanks to sensationalist journalist practices, that Facebook can spread syphilis that went way more viral than syphilis itself.
Clearly, there could be several other things going on here: maybe these individuals use the computer more often overall, or use a variety of sites to meet people, or else they use all sorts of resources at their disposal to meet people for sex (not just Facebook but also bars, parties, etc). Were these things assessed in the study? It wasn’t mentioned.
Ever since the early days of the internet, various websites have become easy scapegoats for sex-negative claims, such as scary stories about how people meet sex partners through the internet and then bad things happen. However, rarely is the good of the internet mentioned in this regard.
Do websites, especially social networking websites and dating websites and casual sex sites, make it easier for people to find each other for romantic and/or sexual encounters? Of course they do. And this is often a positive thing for those involved and does not always result in STI transmission.
What people often overlook is that these same sites can also make it easier for public health professionals to track a burgeoning epidemic and stop it before it gets out of hand. Before the internet, if you were limited to meeting people at bars, you may have known very little about them if you chose to have a casual sexual encounter with them. Maybe you didn’t even know their first or last name or how to get in touch with them.
However, let’s say you do meet someone through Facebook and then you arrange to meet. A week or two after the encounter, you find that your genitals feel funny or that you have discharge, or maybe you just decide to go in and get tested as you had a new partner recently (good for you for getting tested!). Let’s say that you then find out you have an STI, such as syphilis. Guess what? You can now track down that person, should you choose to (and I hope you do), and let them know that they should get tested for syphilis too.
Facebook and other social networking sites have the potential to make STI partner notification programs that much easier – and that’s a good thing.
Many health departments have partner notification programs, especially for infections such as syphilis, Chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HIV that they are particularly worried about spreading. Often these programs mean that if you test positive for an infection and don’t want to contact your past or present partners yourself, you can give your healthcare provider the contact information of your past/present partner(s) and they will call those people for you. They will NOT give your name but they may say something along the lines of “You have been identified as a possible sexual contact of someone who recently tested positive for (fill in the blank with the STI you tested positive for).” They then often offer STI testing to that individual. Cool, huh?
To me, the bottom line has nothing to do with Facebook. It goes back to the basics.
Get tested for STIs if you are:
- about to have sex with a new partner
- have not been tested since your last new partner
- have had unprotected vaginal sex, anal sex or oral sex with someone whose STI history you do not know
- if you feel you have any other risk factors
- if you think your partner may have had sex with someone else since being with you
- if you just want to know. It doesn’t hurt to get tested for STIs on occasion, even if you are pretty certain that you and your partner are monogamous and not having sex with anyone else.
And let’s not blame Facebook for everything now, shall we?
Russia will begin tests of its new state-of-the-art multi-purpose nuclear submarine Yasen, Project 855, already in 2010. The unique submarine qualitatively differs from all of its predecessors. Moreover, Yasen will become the first submarine, which was entirely built in Russia during the post-Soviet period, Oleg Burtsev, a senior spokesman for the command of the Russian Navy said.
The new submarine is to be launched in the beginning of May. JSC Sevmash, the company that builds all Russian submarines, is currently busy with making preparations to the landmark moment.
The submarine was named Severodvinsk. Engineers of the company said that it would be quieter and much more powerful than the USA’s Sea Wolf.
Severodvinsk is a twin-hull nuclear submarine with decreased level of acoustic field. The submarine has ten compartments. The cruiser carries an extraordinarily strong complex of arms capable of solving combat tasks with practically any type of modern surface vessels and submarines. For the first time in the history of domestic ship-building, torpedo-launching systems are located behind the compartment of the central station. The new sonar complex Irtysh was installed in the fore end of the sub. Severodvinsk has eight vertical missile-launching systems: each of the systems houses three missiles.
Anti-vessel 3M55 Onix missiles will reportedly become the basic attack weapon of the new submarine. The missile was designed to strike targets at a distance of up to 300 kilometers under the condition of radio-electronic and combat resistance. The missiles are equipped with the system of artificial intelligence and can recognize all electronic images of surface vessels. They destroy the central target in a group, change their tactics and continue to destroy targets on the principle of their importance.
The new submarine will become the perfect weapon for military actions in the distant ocean zone. Official spokespeople for the Russian Navy said that the Severodvinsk would be passed into service in 2011.
Russia also plans to launch the serial production and put into service eight strategic submarines of Project 955, Borei class. The submarines will make the basis of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces after 2018. The Yury Dolgoruky submarine is currently being tested in the White Sea. JSC Sevmash is currently building three nuclear submarines. Each of them will carry up to 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The Russian Navy should have 50 nuclear submarines, Oleg Burtsev believes. Russia now has about 60 strategic, multi-purpose and diesel submarines. The navies of France, Britain and the USA have nine nuclear submarines on constant combat duty.
“We should have two or three nuclear cruisers at sea as deterrent weapon. Other countries must know that Russia is always ready to respond to any attack,” Burtsev said.
"Da Vinci’s is the most well known Last Supper, but it’s joined by more than 50 other noteworthy interpretations produced in the last millennium. The guest list remains the same in the various paintings, and the people stay lithe. But the Wansinks measured the portion sizes in 52 Last Suppers, and found that the bread was 23 percent bigger in more modern paintings, while the entrees grew a whopping 70 percent. As measured against a constant: the apostles' heads. So the trend toward larger portions may have started centuries ago, culminating with the modern, super-sized supper, last or otherwise."
When it came to babies born to crack-addicted mothers, the media went overboard, creating a crisis in the form of an epidemic that never quite was. By contrast, when it came to babies born to alcoholic mothers, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome went unrecognized in the science and medical community until 1968.
Now comes a study on prenatal methamphetamine exposure in The Journal of Neuroscience, headed up by Elizabeth Sowell of the University of California, Los Angeles, with support from both the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA.) The report garnered considerable media attention. “We know that alcohol exposure is toxic to the developing fetus and can result in lifelong brain, cognitive and behavioral problems,” Sowell said in a press release. “In this study, we show that the effects of prenatal meth exposure, or the combination of meth and alcohol exposure, may actually be worse.”
It makes sense that meth might effect the health of unborn children. There is a modest body of research to support the notion. The Sowell study points a finger at the caudate nucleus, a brain region involved with learning and memory. The study showed that the caudate nucleus of the meth-using group was reduced in size. “Identifying vulnerable brain structures may help predict particular learning and behavioral problems in meth-exposed children,” the press release optimistically states. And the potential problem is real enough: More than 16 million Americans have used meth, according to government numbers. An estimated 19,000 of these users are pregnant women.
But is this particular study a definitive one? The icing on the cake? To begin with, the press release from The Journal of Neuroscience admits to a major problem right up front: “About half of women who say they used meth during pregnancy also used alcohol, so isolating the effects of meth on the developing brain is difficult.” Even in cases of meth exposure only, there are a host of negative behavioral factors that often accompany meth addiction (bad nutrition, minimal health care, poor health) that can significantly effect fetal development.
The study team compared the MRI brain scans of 61 children: “21 with prenatal MA (methamphetamine) exposure, 18 with concomitant prenatal alcohol exposure (the MAA group), 13 with heavy prenatal alcohol but not MA exposure (ALC group), and 27 unexposed controls. While finding “striatal volume reductions,” as well as increases in the size of certain limbic structures in both groups with meth and/or alcohol exposure, the researchers conclude that striatal and limbic structures “may be more vulnerable to prenatal MA exposure than alcohol exposure.” However, that conclusion was apparently reached despite the fact that only 3 of the 61 children under study were born to mothers who did meth, and meth only, during pregnancy. Furthermore, there is significant controversy over brain scan studies that measure gross anatomical changes in the size of specific brain regions, rather than brain region activity based on blood flow.
Is there other evidence for the danger of meth use during pregnancy? There is, but as is frequently the case, some of the best evidence comes from animal studies. A 2008 guinea pig study by Sanika Chirwa showed neural damage to the hippocampus, another region involved in memory, in newborn animals with prenatal meth exposure. Furthermore, the newborn animals showed an impaired ability to distinguish novel objects from familiar ones. In 2006, a study at Brown Medical School, published in Pediatrics , found that newborns exposed to meth during pregnancy were born “small for gestational age,” meaning they were born full-term, but smaller than babies not exposed to meth in utero. According to study author Barry Lester, “Children who are born underweight tend to have behavior problems, such as hyperactivity or short attention span, as well as learning difficulties.” However, Lester added an important caveat in a Brown University press release : “I hope that the ‘crack baby’ hysteria does not get repeated. While these children may have some serious health and developmental challenges, there is no automatic need to label them as damaged and remove them from their biological mothers.”
Similar caution was urged by the authors of a 2009 report in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics: “Efforts to understand specific effects of prenatal methamphetamine exposure on cognitive processing are hampered by high rates of concomitant alcohol use during pregnancy.”
In 2005, an open letter from the Center for Substance Abuse Research at the University of Maryland warned about the dangers of hyperbole, calling upon the media and public officials to “stop perpetuating ‘meth baby’ myths.” The Center argued that “The terms ‘ice babies’ and ‘meth babies’ lack medical and scientific validity and should not be used,” and requested that “policies addressing prenatal exposure to methamphetamines and media coverage of this issue be based on science, not presumption or prejudice.”
Sowell, E., Leow, A., Bookheimer, S., Smith, L., O'Connor, M., Kan, E., Rosso, C., Houston, S., Dinov, I., & Thompson, P. (2010). Differentiating Prenatal Exposure to Methamphetamine and Alcohol versus Alcohol and Not Methamphetamine using Tensor-Based Brain Morphometry and Discriminant Analysis Journal of Neuroscience, 30 (11), 3876-3885 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4967-09.2010 Smith, L., LaGasse, L., Derauf, C., Grant, P., Shah, R., Arria, A., Huestis, M., Haning, W., Strauss, A., Grotta, S., Liu, J., & Lester, B. (2006). The Infant Development, Environment, and Lifestyle Study: Effects of Prenatal Methamphetamine Exposure, Polydrug Exposure, and Poverty on Intrauterine Growth PEDIATRICS, 118 (3), 1149-1156 DOI: 10.1542/peds.2005-2564 Dirk Hanson @'Addiction Inbox'
Eating poppy seeds will not always result in a failed drug test. : The common myth about eating poppy seeds can lead to failing a drug test has a solid foundation in reality, as heroin, morphine, codeine, and other opiates are created from the plants. But Indiana University sheds some light on the reality of the situation, pointing out that only the seeds of opiate poppies cause false positives. For those who have eaten the offending poppyseeds, however, there are ways to determine whether or not the opiate traces come from narcotics or a harmless bagel.
