Delicious LiveJournal Links for 10-2-2008

• Some facts and figures to make you very angry about food and diet
  No snippet this time - just go and read the bloody thing, and see if you got as angry as I did about the problems caused by inequality.
  (tags: society politics health food economics poverty uk)
• Drug firms bankroll attacks on NHS
  Patient groups that have been among the most vocal in spearheading attacks on the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) over decisions to restrict access to drugs on the NHS depend for up to half of their income on drug companies, but details are often undisclosed.
  (tags: drugs NHS politics marketing)
• On the uses of (and brain mechanism behind) adolescent embarrassment
  According a study for the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, adolescents use their medial prefrontal cortex even when considering situations that might cause them embarrassment; adults do not. Other emotions, not connected to the opinions of other people, are experienced in the same neural area by both teenagers and adults. So adolescents probably experience shame differently and more deeply, which is why they find their parents so appalling on so many levels
  
  Questioned about the purpose of the study, researchers said that adolescence was a key time in emotional development and, by extension, the development of mental illness. Overwhelmingly, the onset of depression and anxiety disorders, not to mention anorexia and similar will occur in this window.
  (tags: brains neuroscience adolescence)
• Religious belief can help relieve pain
  Brain scans of volunteers who were subjected to electrical shocks revealed that Roman Catholics felt less pain than atheists and agnostics when they were shown a painting of the Virgin Mary.
  
  "The Roman Catholics engaged a brain mechanism that is well known from research into the placebo effect, analgesia and emotional disengagement," said Wiech. "It helps people to reinterpret pain, and make it less threatening. These people felt safe by looking at the Virgin Mary, they felt looked after, so the whole context of the test changed for them."
  (tags: science religion pain health placebo)
• Next-gen Wii to be launched within three years
  "Nintendo has begun showing off a second-generation Wii thatâ™ll be officially launched before 2011, according to gaming sources."
  
  Only thing I really want from my Wii it doesn't already have is HDMI...
  (tags: wii gaming consoles)