Why women find doctors so irresistible... (Scientific Study)

clipped from timesofindia.indiatimes.com The study conducted by Dr Brendan Kelly, of University College Dublin found that people get attracted to GPs, nurses and surgeons because they expect them to be more caring than the average professional. The study was carried out after researching medical romance stories to see what got readers so hot under the collar. In the study, at random 20 novels were selected with a medical theme and the recurrence of “brilliant, tall, muscular, male doctors with chiseled features, working in emergency medicine” was noticed. "These novels suggest there is an urgent need to include instruction in the arts of romance in training programmes for doctors and nurses who intend working in these settings,” the Sun quoted him, as saying in a tongue in cheek manner. "It gives a good insight into how people think medicine should be. If you were to take these novels literally, one would think uncontrolled passion is an inevitable consequence of working in the emergency room,” he said.

Will This Winter Be Warmer Than Average?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Most of the country is likely to have a warmer than average winter, according to AccuWeather.com’s seasonal forecast, released last week and covered widely in the press. And if you’ve ever been prodded by a rain forecast to carry an umbrella on what turns out to be a cloudless day, you won’t be surprised to learn that predicting the weather three months out comes with a lot of uncertainty. What do you think? How reliable are such forecasts? Would you base business or personal decisions on them? Please let me know in the comments. Further reading: Reuters rounds up winter forecasts.

Witness recounts Lady Di's last words

clipped from blogs.usatoday.com A witness says he heard Princess Diana repeatedly say "oh, my God" before she succumbed to the injuries she sustained when her vehicle crashed in a Paris underpass on Aug. 31, 1997. "There was smoke emanating from the vehicle. I wanted to stop the battery but I couldn't," Damian Dalby, a volunteer firefighter, says during the inquest according to Sky News. "Was it right the lady in the car was trying to speak?" Ian Burnett, counsel for the inquest asks. "Yes, she was saying 'oh my God, oh my God,'" Dalby says.

What Women Love this Man

clipped from blackvoices.aol.com What's the secret to his success? There really isn't one. One of the reasons Perry has been able to capture the attention of many, first in his plays and now in his movies, is that he creates what hasn't been pitched to the masses in slick, big-budget Hollywood films. Perry's movies instill family values, sometimes using words with religious sentiments. Perry is also a business man who knows how to capture markets that have gone under-served. Women tend to go to movies in droves if you give them what appeals to them. They want to see stories that they can relate to and men they can love. It also helps when you have actors who are also musicians like Janet Jackson and Jill Scott, that women identify with or even revere as icons. At a time when Hollywood seems to make mostly films for kids and young males, a Tyler Perry film is a rare movie that appeals to mature, modern women.

Dem's Go Chicken on Kid's Health Bill

Persoanlly I believe they should bring the same bill back and back and back until the public puts pressure on Bush and the Republicans to insure the heatlh of our kids.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The long-debated, once-vetoed plan to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program will return to the House floor this week, The Hill reports. And Democrats, who overwhelmingly supported the first bill, say they’re open to some changes that could reduce the risk of a second veto. In particular, Democrats are responding to complaints that their plan went too far. One criticism was that federally-subsidized insurance for children would be allowed for families earning up to $83,000 a year. But as the Hill points out, only the state of New York asked to insure families with that income level. The Bush administration rejected that proposed waiver, as the Health Blog noted.

Discovery suggests new ways to treat Alzheimer's cause, not just symptoms

clipped from www.newsroom.ucla.edu For some time, scientists have blamed Alzheimer's disease on a small molecule called amyloid beta protein (A beta) that leaves large gummy deposits in the brain. Recent studies suggest that these A beta proteins stick together to form floating toxic clumps that kill brain cells. Now, UCLA scientists have identified a tiny loop in A beta as the likely culprit behind the adhesion process. The UCLA team discovered that gene mutations in A beta increase the loop's flexibility, enabling it to join easily with loops from other A beta proteins and form clumps. The loop also appears in the region of the protein that regulates how — and how much — A beta is made. Principal investigator David Teplow, professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, is available for interviews. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the findings in its Oct. 10 online early edition. For a PDF of the study, see www.eurekalert.org/pio/tipsheetdoc.php/237/zpq7481.pdf.

The Evolution of Home Ownership

Forty-three percent of housholds aged 20-34 already own a home. Nationally about 70 percent of households now own a home. With a return to more normal lending practices and higher interest rates it is likely that the back log of homes already being built and homes from foreclosures will cause a long term hangover in the housing market.

These numbers indicate that housing is a big long term problem for the economy. This problem is not likely to resolve in a couple or few years. It seems that houses are over owned at this point in time. Demogrpahics already in place favor downsizing (retirement) and shrinkage in the pool of available new buyers. This indicates a long term, possibly a decade, hangover in the housing market. That is much longer then anything now being anticipated in the market place.

It is likely that we will see significant mark downs in prices in the years ahead in the formerly hot areas like New York, California, and Florida.

More details on next page.


Get the detailed paper from the Atlanta Fed

Source Atlanta Fed: Mortgage Innovation Boosted Home Ownership

After holding steady for three decades, the share of U.S. households owning their own home jumped from 64% in 1994 to 69% in 2005. The primary cause, argues a new staff study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, was the introduction of new mortgage products that reduced the initial down payment needed by a home buyer.

The paper, by Matthew Chambers, Carlos Garriga, and Don E. Schlagenhauf, examines changes in home ownership by age cohort. The U.S. population aged in the last decade, boosting the share of the population in age cohorts that are more likely to own a home. But the authors conclude this explains just 16% to 31% of the rise in total home ownership. The introduction of new mortgage products, in particular those that allowed little or no down payment, accounts for 56% to 70% of the increase. Such “loans tend to be the contract of choice for younger cohorts which explains an important part of the increase in the aggregate homeownership rate observed since 1994,” they say. Indeed, while the homeownership rate rose for all age groups in that period, it rose most for households under age 35: it jumped to 43% from 37.3%



Robert T DeMarco Weblog: The Evolution of Home Ownership