Blogs / Discoblog

Given that the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field comes in pretty handy for pigeons, it’s worth asking: Can humans sense it too? Oleg Shumilov of Russia’s Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems set out to answer this question, as Catherine Brahic reports in the New Scientist. After examining the planet’s geomagnetic field activity from 1948 to 1997, he found that it peaked consistently three times a year: March through May, July, and October. A little cross-checking on the data revealed that those time periods coincided with the peaks in the number of suicides in Kirovsk, a city of around 30,000 people in the cold depths of northern Russia.

Thanks to the handy rule of correlation vs. causation, Shumilov’s discovery is a long way from providing definitive evidence that human sensitivity to magnetic field activity equals greater numbers of suicides at certain times.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

The AP reports that the lower house of the French parliament has passed a bill that would criminalize the “public inciting of extreme thinness.” This controversial (and totally unprecedented) law is aimed straight at the fashion industry—designers, magazines, and advertisers in particular—which has long genuflected before the image of über-skinny models as a beauty ideal. (more…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Articles about Internet addictions have been popping up (online) for a while now—along with advertisements for 12-step recovery programs—but the “disease” at first seemed tongue-in-cheek (and, actually, it was). Then, like so many mental illnesses these days, it became over-hyped. The would-be condition didn’t even make it into the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV)—the Bible of the mental health world—which includes everything from narcissism to 14 types of anxiety disorders.

But now Oregon Health Sciences University Psychiatrist Jerald Block wants to make sure Internet addiction gets some recognition. In an editorial in the March edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, he argues that it should be included in the next edition of the DSM, due out in 2012, and laid out the standards of this deadly (no, really) new affliction. If you meet the following criteria, you too might be addicted to the internet: (more…)

Popularity: 5% [?]