What's your problem with this finding? Fine, you can't sell social activity as a treatment so pharma isn't interested, but there is huge amounts of reliable evidence that being socially active helps prevent dementia. Its a pretty easy thing to prospectively measure too.
Put 'social activity' and 'dementia' into Google Scholar and see what you come up with. And do that in future before you start trolling. Some medical science on here isn't all that good, but most of it is pretty sound.
(I should point out that as I post this I am also writing a commentary on risk factors for AD for the American Psychiatric Association. So I do not usually give medical advice, but I do advise the people that do.)
You're right, it is hard. Especially because of the link between low education, underlying intelligence and subsequent occupation and lifestyle. Also, as you point out, the instruments for detecting cognitive decline must be sensitive to eduction, and one current method is to use a educationally-adjusted cut-off on the cognition scales.
Having said all of this the evidence for a link to education after taking all of the above into account is pretty compelling and is no longer disputed. The mechanism for this though is still unclear, and there's certainly no evidence that playing 'brain training' games can in any way make up for it. The current best theory that we have is that people who are better educated have better 'cognitive reserve', by which we mean the ability for the brain to re-wire itself and compensate when a disease like AD occurs.
The previous comments, that smoking causes a 'differential mortality' that biassed the early studies are basically right. The current consensus, based on prospective studies that do not suffer from these problems is that smoking slightly raises your risk of Alzheimer's disease.
Smoking is also a major risk factor for stroke and other vascular disease, that lead to 'multi-infarct' or 'vascular' dementia, which accounts for just as many dementia cases as AD. So to help avoid dementia, give up smoking.
If you want to avoid dementia (who doesn't) then the best advice is to simply to eat healthily and be socially and physically active. The strongest known modifiable risk factors for dementia are poor midlife health (obesity, vascular disease, blood pressure, diabetes etc), low education and low social activity. This is especially important if you have a genetic susceptibility.
That's not true at all. Major tours cost huge amounts of money to move around, and are only used for promotion for the records. Bands don't tour so much these days because more of that promotional money is spent on the videos that they make.
I agree with you though that Radiohead can afford to try this kind of stunt even if it fails, so they're not laying a lot on the line. It'll be valuable for less well off bands though to see if it works.
Of course it's a judgement. I'm also judging you by the replies you make, and you're judging me based on all the evidence available to you. I can't think of a great English writer who has genuinely bad English. Although 'great' is also subjective I guess. Anyway, if they aren't ignorant (probably a better word than stupid) or lazy, then what's their excuse? Why not do it properly?
Also, out of interest, which great authors do you consider to be bad writers?
Strangely enough being able to reproduce (and actually doing it "in nature") is what defines a species, so the ability to interact is the scientific litmus test for relatedness in both of these cases.
That's a very simplistic species definition that falls down in a lot of cases. The best examples are organisms with asexual reproduction, which includes most of life on Earth. Also there are plenty of individual animals who for whatever reason can't reproduce at all. Anyway I'm not even sure what point I was trying to make there.
While you might be able to judge a person's abilities by how they talk or write it is just a measure of their usefulness to you. "More conformity == better" is just your personal bias for better or for worse.
It's not just about judging abilities. Its about judging attitude as well. When I see good English I think the author is probably smart, cares about the quality of what they do and is prepared to invest the time to get it right. When I see bad English I assume the author is either stupid, lazy, doesn't care, or is trying to make some kind of point. Bad English is also hard to read.
This doesn't mean anyone is talking "wrong". Unless you are trying to be silly, you can't really speak your native tongue in any way but the right one!
So effectively we are all speaking different languages, and just happen to understand each other? This isn't such a ridiculous statement, in the same way that we are essentially all a different species, that happen to be able to reproduce with each other.
I disagree about correctness though. The extent to which you conform to correct usage can say as much about you as the clothes you wear, and correctly written English is far easier to read. Think about the difference between well written code and badly written 'well-it-works-so-what's-your-problem' code.
As the influence of global relations (trade, culture and otherwise) expand the differences in usage will likely decrease in public publications and media but increase within subcultures as the psychological need to create a individual/social identity becomes increasingly difficult in an ever more homogeneous world culture.
I'm not an expert but I know they spread diseases and cause food poisoning, mostly due to their fondness for eating rotting food and crawling through excrement. According to a quick Google search they also seem to produce a lot of allergens.
I don't think a cockroach has enough theory of mind to 'desire' to learn. And in any case there's no practical difference between desire to learn and ability to learn if predicting cockroach behaviour is the outcome. Either it will learn or it wont.
With respect to other influences, I'm sure a journal like PNAS wouldn't take the research if it had fatal flaws. They're quite fussy.
Also, I don't see why a study needs to be replicated before it has any weight. Unless you think there are significant flaws in the first study that will be overcome later, or there has been some dishonesty in the first place. That's what p-values are for after all, checking whether a result was due to chance, which is then a measure of how likely the results are to be repeatable. What would an extra study add except bigger numbers?
The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Presumably they're interested in the effect of the circadian system on memory aquisition and retrival, which is certainly worth studying and probably simailar in all animals, and its far easier to do initial work on insects and then scale it up to mammals.
There might also be direct benefits to understanding cockroach behaviour, since they are a major public health risk in some parts of the world.
Agreed. I'm using it on a new laptop, and its certainly growing on me. It's shiny, it's stable, and it's fast enough, and I haven't managed to break it yet. But then I'm not trying to use older hardware or run anything very intensive, or make it work alongside any other operating system.
Seriously...what's that quote again? "Technologists always question whether they CAN do something, but never whether they SHOULD"...
That's an interesting point. Should the tech guys working on this stop because of its potential misuse by governments? Reading human body language is an interesting AI problem that must also have some legitimate uses. If you were working on this, what would you do?
I did think this about webcams once. We're already bringing online video cameras into our own homes. Would only be a legislative problem (albeit a big one) and not a logistical one to make us leave them on the whole time.
I agree though this wouldn't make me feel any safer. If anything it'll just move crime into the areas not covered by the cameras.
Personally I am never in favor of MORE tax - there comes a point where the government has to try make do with what it gets and try to prioritize and budget accordingly instead of finding new and creative ways to squeeze us for more cash. However I guess that the above is an argument that could be put forward in favor of the tax. And of course they could do it for the children... because not supporting new taxes lets the terrorists win.
I agree with this. The government needs a certain amount of money to pay for stuff - quite how much money that should be is another argument. The issue here is who should be paying, how should the money be collected and whether taxes should be used as a way to encourage or discourage certain behaviour.
I can't think why the internet shouldn't be taxed like everything else. Or at least every other public good. If pensioners have to pay tax on their fuel supplies in winter then we should be paying tax on our internet connections.
Slashdot Mirror
Should I write you a prescription?
What's your problem with this finding? Fine, you can't sell social activity as a treatment so pharma isn't interested, but there is huge amounts of reliable evidence that being socially active helps prevent dementia. Its a pretty easy thing to prospectively measure too.
Put 'social activity' and 'dementia' into Google Scholar and see what you come up with. And do that in future before you start trolling. Some medical science on here isn't all that good, but most of it is pretty sound.
(I should point out that as I post this I am also writing a commentary on risk factors for AD for the American Psychiatric Association. So I do not usually give medical advice, but I do advise the people that do.)
You're right, it is hard. Especially because of the link between low education, underlying intelligence and subsequent occupation and lifestyle. Also, as you point out, the instruments for detecting cognitive decline must be sensitive to eduction, and one current method is to use a educationally-adjusted cut-off on the cognition scales.
Having said all of this the evidence for a link to education after taking all of the above into account is pretty compelling and is no longer disputed. The mechanism for this though is still unclear, and there's certainly no evidence that playing 'brain training' games can in any way make up for it. The current best theory that we have is that people who are better educated have better 'cognitive reserve', by which we mean the ability for the brain to re-wire itself and compensate when a disease like AD occurs.
The previous comments, that smoking causes a 'differential mortality' that biassed the early studies are basically right. The current consensus, based on prospective studies that do not suffer from these problems is that smoking slightly raises your risk of Alzheimer's disease.
Smoking is also a major risk factor for stroke and other vascular disease, that lead to 'multi-infarct' or 'vascular' dementia, which accounts for just as many dementia cases as AD. So to help avoid dementia, give up smoking.
If you want to avoid dementia (who doesn't) then the best advice is to simply to eat healthily and be socially and physically active. The strongest known modifiable risk factors for dementia are poor midlife health (obesity, vascular disease, blood pressure, diabetes etc), low education and low social activity. This is especially important if you have a genetic susceptibility.
However you redefine it, it's still a tautology and shouldn't be used.
I agree with your mother. It makes me slightly furious too.
Of course the optimal strategy is to try to get everybody else to cough up but to pay nothing yourself.
That's not true at all. Major tours cost huge amounts of money to move around, and are only used for promotion for the records. Bands don't tour so much these days because more of that promotional money is spent on the videos that they make.
I agree with you though that Radiohead can afford to try this kind of stunt even if it fails, so they're not laying a lot on the line. It'll be valuable for less well off bands though to see if it works.
Of course it's a judgement. I'm also judging you by the replies you make, and you're judging me based on all the evidence available to you. I can't think of a great English writer who has genuinely bad English. Although 'great' is also subjective I guess. Anyway, if they aren't ignorant (probably a better word than stupid) or lazy, then what's their excuse? Why not do it properly?
Also, out of interest, which great authors do you consider to be bad writers?
Strangely enough being able to reproduce (and actually doing it "in nature") is what defines a species, so the ability to interact is the scientific litmus test for relatedness in both of these cases.
That's a very simplistic species definition that falls down in a lot of cases. The best examples are organisms with asexual reproduction, which includes most of life on Earth. Also there are plenty of individual animals who for whatever reason can't reproduce at all. Anyway I'm not even sure what point I was trying to make there.
While you might be able to judge a person's abilities by how they talk or write it is just a measure of their usefulness to you. "More conformity == better" is just your personal bias for better or for worse.
It's not just about judging abilities. Its about judging attitude as well. When I see good English I think the author is probably smart, cares about the quality of what they do and is prepared to invest the time to get it right. When I see bad English I assume the author is either stupid, lazy, doesn't care, or is trying to make some kind of point. Bad English is also hard to read.
This doesn't mean anyone is talking "wrong". Unless you are trying to be silly, you can't really speak your native tongue in any way but the right one!
So effectively we are all speaking different languages, and just happen to understand each other? This isn't such a ridiculous statement, in the same way that we are essentially all a different species, that happen to be able to reproduce with each other.
I disagree about correctness though. The extent to which you conform to correct usage can say as much about you as the clothes you wear, and correctly written English is far easier to read. Think about the difference between well written code and badly written 'well-it-works-so-what's-your-problem' code.
As the influence of global relations (trade, culture and otherwise) expand the differences in usage will likely decrease in public publications and media but increase within subcultures as the psychological need to create a individual/social identity becomes increasingly difficult in an ever more homogeneous world culture.
Speak English man!
Indeed. But the original date was 30 January. So the 5 months is right.
This is the paper that was referred to in the original article.
I'm not an expert but I know they spread diseases and cause food poisoning, mostly due to their fondness for eating rotting food and crawling through excrement. According to a quick Google search they also seem to produce a lot of allergens.
I don't think a cockroach has enough theory of mind to 'desire' to learn. And in any case there's no practical difference between desire to learn and ability to learn if predicting cockroach behaviour is the outcome. Either it will learn or it wont.
With respect to other influences, I'm sure a journal like PNAS wouldn't take the research if it had fatal flaws. They're quite fussy.
Also, I don't see why a study needs to be replicated before it has any weight. Unless you think there are significant flaws in the first study that will be overcome later, or there has been some dishonesty in the first place. That's what p-values are for after all, checking whether a result was due to chance, which is then a measure of how likely the results are to be repeatable. What would an extra study add except bigger numbers?
From TFA
The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Presumably they're interested in the effect of the circadian system on memory aquisition and retrival, which is certainly worth studying and probably simailar in all animals, and its far easier to do initial work on insects and then scale it up to mammals.
There might also be direct benefits to understanding cockroach behaviour, since they are a major public health risk in some parts of the world.
And you forgot playing on Facebook. That's got to be quite high on the list.
Well I use it to read /.
Don't know how intensive you'd call that.
Never tried "Hello, World!" though.
Agreed. I'm using it on a new laptop, and its certainly growing on me. It's shiny, it's stable, and it's fast enough, and I haven't managed to break it yet. But then I'm not trying to use older hardware or run anything very intensive, or make it work alongside any other operating system.
Seriously...what's that quote again? "Technologists always question whether they CAN do something, but never whether they SHOULD"...
That's an interesting point. Should the tech guys working on this stop because of its potential misuse by governments? Reading human body language is an interesting AI problem that must also have some legitimate uses. If you were working on this, what would you do?
I did think this about webcams once. We're already bringing online video cameras into our own homes. Would only be a legislative problem (albeit a big one) and not a logistical one to make us leave them on the whole time.
I agree though this wouldn't make me feel any safer. If anything it'll just move crime into the areas not covered by the cameras.
Personally I am never in favor of MORE tax - there comes a point where the government has to try make do with what it gets and try to prioritize and budget accordingly instead of finding new and creative ways to squeeze us for more cash. However I guess that the above is an argument that could be put forward in favor of the tax. And of course they could do it for the children... because not supporting new taxes lets the terrorists win.
I agree with this. The government needs a certain amount of money to pay for stuff - quite how much money that should be is another argument. The issue here is who should be paying, how should the money be collected and whether taxes should be used as a way to encourage or discourage certain behaviour.
Why on earth would you want to pay more tax? middle class guilt?
I can't think why the internet shouldn't be taxed like everything else. Or at least every other public good. If pensioners have to pay tax on their fuel supplies in winter then we should be paying tax on our internet connections.
You can get your tin-foil hat at the terminus.