Google searches about mental illness follow seasonal patterns

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

A new study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that Google searches for information across all major mental illnesses and problems followed seasonal patterns, suggesting mental illness may be more strongly linked with seasonal patterns than previously thought.

Monitoring population mental illness trends has been an historic challenge for scientists and clinicians alike. Typically, telephone surveys are used to try to glimpse inside the minds of respondents, but this approach is limited because respondents may be reluctant to honestly discuss their mental health. This approach also has high material costs. As a result, investigators have not had the data they need.

"The Internet is a game changer," said lead investigator John W. Ayers, PhD, MA, of the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University. "By passively monitoring how individuals search online we can figuratively look inside the heads of searchers to understand population mental health patterns."

Using Google's public database of queries, the study team identified and monitored mental health queries in the United States and Australia for 2006 through 2010. All queries relating to mental health were captured and then grouped by type of mental illness, including ADHD (attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder), anxiety, bipolar, depression, eating disorders (including anorexia or bulimia), OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), schizophrenia, and suicide. Using advanced mathematical methods to identify trends, the authors found all mental health queries in both countries were consistently higher in winter than summer.

The research showed eating disorder searches were down 37 percent in summers versus winters in the U.S., and 42 percent in summers in Australia. Schizophrenia searches decreased 37 percent during U.S. summers and by 36 percent in Australia.

Bipolar searches were down 16 percent during U.S. summers and 17 percent during Australian summers; ADHD searches decreased by 28 percent in the U.S. and 31 percent in Australia during summertime. OCD searches were down 18 percent and 15 percent, and bipolar searches decreased by 18 percent and 16 percent, in the U.S. and Australia respectively.

Searches for suicide declined 24 and 29 percent during U.S. and Australian summers and anxiety searches had the smallest seasonal change ? down 7 percent during U.S. summers and 15 percent during Australian summers.

While some conditions, such as seasonal affective disorder, are known to be associated with seasonal weather patterns, the connections between seasons and a number of major disorders were surprising. "We didn't expect to find similar winter peaks and summer troughs for queries involving every specific mental illness or problem we studied, however, the results consistently showed seasonal effects across all conditions ? even after adjusting for media trends," said James Niels Rosenquist, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"It is very exciting to ponder the potential for a universal mental health emollient, like Vitamin D (a metabolite of sun exposure). But it will be years before our findings are linked to serious mental illness and then linked to mechanisms that may be included in treatment and prevention programs," said Ayers. "Is it biologic, environmental, or social mechanisms explaining universal patterns in mental health information seeking? We don't know."

"Our findings can help researchers across the field of mental health generate additional new hypotheses while exploring other trends inexpensively in real-time," said Benjamin Althouse, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and researcher on the study. "For instance, moving forward, we can explore daily patterns in mental health information seeking ? maybe even finding a 'Monday effect.' The potential is limitless."

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Elsevier Health Sciences: http://www.elsevierhealth.com

Thanks to Elsevier Health Sciences for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127654/Google_searches_about_mental_illness_follow_seasonal_patterns

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Thatcher biography due out after funeral

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stands in a British tank during a visit to British forces in Fallingbostel, some 120km (70 miles) south of Hamburg, Germany. on Sept. 17, 1986. Thatchers former spokesman, Tim Bell, said that the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had died Monday morning, April 8, 2013, of a stroke. She was 87.(AP Photo/Jockel Fink)

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stands in a British tank during a visit to British forces in Fallingbostel, some 120km (70 miles) south of Hamburg, Germany. on Sept. 17, 1986. Thatchers former spokesman, Tim Bell, said that the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had died Monday morning, April 8, 2013, of a stroke. She was 87.(AP Photo/Jockel Fink)

LONDON (AP) ? The first volume of Margaret Thatcher's authorized biography will be published immediately after her funeral.

Allen Lane, which is part of Penguin Books, said Monday that "Not for Turning" by Charles Moore was commissioned in 1997 on the understanding that it would not be published during the former British prime minister's lifetime.

Thatcher died from a stroke Monday morning at age 87. Her funeral is expected to be held at some point next week.

Moore was given full access to Thatcher's private papers and interviewed her extensively. The publisher said that Thatcher also supported requests for interviews with others, including those who worked most closely with her and her family.

Permission was also granted to former and existing civil servants to speak freely about the Thatcher years.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-04-08-Britain-Thatcher%20Biography/id-b4e29617fee94753b6cb33089a9b4500

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AZ Electronic shares slide after profit warning

LONDON (Reuters) - AZ Electronic Materials, a maker of chemicals for Apple's iPad displays and memory chips, warned that profit would be lower than expected in the first half, wiping a quarter of the value of its share price.

The company said on Tuesday that its core earnings margin for the first six months of the year would dip below 30 percent, resulting in 2013 group margins coming in below normal levels. It forecast an improvement in the second half.

A weaker than expected performance in the part of its business which provides materials used in integrated circuits was to blame, said the company.

Shares in AZ Electronics crashed 27 percent to 269 pence at 3:43 a.m. ET, hitting their lowest level for around nine months and leading the FTSE 250 losers board.

"Softness in demand patterns within the integrated circuit industry was compounded by increased pressure from dual sourcing by certain customers," AZ said in a statement.

Analysts at Singer called the update "disappointing" and said that the lower than normal margin implied a possible 2013 earnings downgrade of over 10 percent.

"We believe that a number of the challenges are likely to be short term ... but we expect the shares to come under some pressure pending visibility of the anticipated second half recovery," they said.

AZ said discussions with customers meant it was confident of a stronger second half. It also gave assurances on profit growth beyond 2013 citing encouraging progress on the development of new products.

(Reporting by Sarah Young, editing by James Davey)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/az-electronic-shares-slide-profit-warning-081723369--finance.html

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Cosmic Crab scurries its way into night sky

Starry Night Software

The small, faint constellation Cancer is rich in open clusters and double stars.

By Joe Rao
Space.com

The dim constellation of Cancer, the Crab, high toward the south during the mid-to-late evening hours recently, is the least conspicuous of the 12 zodiacal constellations.

Aside from being in the Zodiac, Cancer is probably noteworthy only because it contains one of the brightest galactic star clusters in the sky. It appears to the eye as a fuzzy patch of light, but binoculars will reveal its stellar nature.?

But what to call it?
Some astronomy texts speak of "Praesepe, the Manger," while others simply call this cluster the "Beehive."

A manger is defined as "a trough in which feed for donkeys is placed." The cluster was apparently first called Praesepe 20 centuries ago. Perhaps the older designation Praesepe is preferable since in the middle of Cancer are two stars called the Aselli ("donkeys") known for over 2,000 years as Asellus Borealis and Asellus Australis ? the northern and southern colts ? feeding from a manger. [Night Sky?Observing Guide:?April?2013 (Sky Maps)]

Galileo first resolved Praesepe into individual stars (36 of them) in 1610. More than 100 stars can be seen in binoculars or a small telescope, and they seem to be spread out over an area about three times the apparent diameter of the moon.?

The cluster's relatively new moniker, Beehive, apparently evolved almost four centuries ago, when some anonymous person, upon seeing so many stars revealed in one of the first crude telescopes exclaimed,? "It looks just like a swarm of bees!" Hence, some astronomy books call the cluster Beehive, while others still call it Praesepe.??

Celestial weather forecaster
Interestingly, Praesepe was also used in medieval times to forecast the weather. It was one of the very few clusters that was mentioned in antiquity.?

Aratus (around 260 B.C.) and Hipparchus (about 130 B.C.) called it the "Little Mist" or "Little Cloud." But Aratus also noted that on those occasions when the sky was seemingly clear, but Praesepe was invisible, this meant a storm was approaching.?

Of course, we know today that prior to the arrival of any unsettled weather maker, high, thin cirrus clouds (composed of ice crystals) begin to appear in the sky. Such clouds are thin enough to dim the sun, moon and brighter stars only slightly, but apparently just opaque enough to hide a dim patch of light like Praesepe.

Crushed Crab
Because it contains no star brighter than 4th magnitude, the Crab is difficult, if not impossible, to see under a light-polluted sky.?

Cancer is essentially a Greek creation. This creeping creature was sent by Zeus' jealous wife Hera to fatally bite Hercules, Zeus's son from his liaison with Alcmene. The crab arrived just as Hercules was slaying the multiheaded Hydra, one of his assigned 12 "labors."?

Cancer's bite was no more than a mere annoyance to Hercules, who crushed the crab under his heel. Infuriated, Hera banished the hapless sea creature to the heavens as one of the most inconspicuous constellations. Furthermore, nearby, directly under the Crab we find the head (and only one head) of the Hydra.

To the Egyptians, Cancer was Scarabaeus, a sacred insect who was charged with rolling the sun across the sky. Roughly 3,000 years ago, the point in the sky marking the position of the June solstice lay very close to Praesepe. But thanks to precession ? the "wobble" that the Earth's axis describes over an interval of 25,800 years ? the solstice point has shifted out of constellation Cancer?and is now located in the adjacent constellation of Gemini, having apparently slid backward toward the west over the last three millennia.?

The crab is a creature that can go in one direction as well as another, so it seems only fitting that this part of the sky where the sun has seemingly reversed its direction at the beginning of summer has since been dedicated to this animal.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y. Follow us?@Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on?Space.com.

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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U.S. VC Fundraising Up 22 Percent To $4.1B In Q1 2013, But Number Of Funds Raised Down

According to a NVCA and Thomson Reuters report issued this morning, U.S. venture capital firms raised $4.1 billion from 35 funds in the first quarter of 2013, an increase of 22 percent. But compared to Q4 2012, there is a 14 percent decrease by number of funds.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Vx9bGjb650Y/

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App Stores In Q1 2013 Hauled In $2.2B In Sales On 13.4B Downloads, Google/Apple Duopoly Leading The Way: Canalys

Apple's App Store and Goole Play on Android continue to set the pace for the overall performance and fortunes of mobile apps worldwide, while BlackBerry and Microsoft's Windows Phone remain "distant challengers." Figures out today from Canalys note that in Q1 2013, the four top app stores worldwide collectively accounted for 13.4 billion downloads, with $2.2 billion in paid app sales, in-app purchases and subscriptions. But while Google has long passed Apple as the biggest smartphone platform worldwide, Apple is still killing it when it comes to monetizing: Google Play accounted for 51% of all downloads (6.8 billion), but Apple's App Store for 74% of all revenues ($1.6 billion).

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hbB9f_EuqLs/

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Egyptian Copts and Muslims clash again, in central Cairo

CAIRO (Reuters) - Clashes broke out between Coptic Christians and Muslims in central Cairo on Sunday after the funeral of four Copts killed in sectarian violence outside the Egyptian capital on Friday night, a witness said.

The state news agency MENA said 17 people had been injured in fighting after a funeral ceremony at the city's Coptic Orthodox cathedral. Public television showed riot police firing tear gas to disperse the crowd.

In some of the worst sectarian violence for months on Friday, four Christians and one Muslim were killed in El Khusus, north of Cairo, when members of both communities started shooting at each other.

New clashes erupted on Sunday when hundreds of angry Copts who had attended a funeral service at St. Mark's Cathedral spilled out into the streets of Cairo, chanting "With our blood and soul we will sacrifice ourselves for the cross".

After an emotional church service, where relatives of the dead wept, young Christians started hurling rocks at police officers, a witness said.

The protesters smashed six private cars and set two on fire, prompting an angry reaction from Muslims living in the neighborhood, who threw stones at them, a witness said.

Christian-Muslim confrontations have increased in Muslim-majority Egypt since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011 gave freer rein to hardline Islamists repressed under his rule.

President Mohamed Mursi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader elected in June, has promised to protect the rights of Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 84 million people.

Christians have complained of attacks on churches by radical Islamists, incidents that have sharpened long-standing Christian grievances about being sidelined in the workplace and in law.

The president's office and top Muslim leaders were quick to condemn Friday's clashes, which happened after Christian children scrawled on the wall of a Muslim religious institute, according to witnesses.

Still, many Christians at the funeral called for Mursi and his Islamist allies to go, some of them chanting "The blood of Christians is not cheap, Mursi, you villain".

(Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Paul Taylor)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/five-die-christian-muslim-clashes-egypt-114329379.html

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