Highlight Health is hosting Grand Rounds 5.14 Holiday Edition. So please head over and revel in the gift of medical blogging.
In the holiday spirit, there is a gift guide for those without a home this Christmas, a short Christmas list of evolution books, and other goodies.
After that comes the list of all your favorite medical topics and areas. I found this version easy to access, with a lot of great reads, so enjoy the latest Grand Rounds.
John Jackson, professor of communications and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, writes regularly over at Brain Storms: Annals of the Mind, hosted through The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has some great posts, and as I searched for anthro blogs to hopefully include in The Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008, I found Jackson’s other blog, From the Annals of Anthroman.
Both Jackson’s blogging at Brain Storms and Annals of Anthroman represent public anthropology and communication at the highest level, so I do hope you check his writing out. Here’s the post An Election Irony, on how John McCain turned into the racial candidate. And Spike Lee on Spike Lee is also a great read about Jackson’s course on Spike Lee at UPenn, including a visit from the master filmmaker himself.
Un numero crescente di antropologi ha cominciato a produrre e diffondere il loro lavorro su Internet, specialmente in forma di blog. Come risultato di questo vediamo che l’antropologia in tutte le sue forme diventa più rilevante e sicuramente più visibile per il resto del mondo. Per questo motivo «Neuroanthropology» proporre di creare una collezione dei migliori articoli dei blogs antropologici.
Per participare, si prega di seguire queste istruzioni:
Ci sono due categorie di articoli. La prima categoria è costituita degli articoli più popolari, in termini di numero di lettori per un articolo. La seconda è costituita degli articoli scelti da voi stessi, in altre parole, il vostro preferito articolo su vostro blog.
Si prega di inviare un esempio in ogni categoria (il più popolare e il più preferito di vostra scelta), compreso il titolo, il suo indirizzo su Internet, e una o due frasi spiegando il motivo per cui pensate che questi sono i migliori esempi da vostro blog.
Nel caso di blogs con più di un autore, è possibile inviare due esempi di articoli nella seconda categoria.
Per favore mandate questi dettagli a Dottor Daniel Lende a: dlende[@]nd[.]edu (eliminando le parentesi).
Si aspetta queste informazioni non più tardi del 29 dicembre di 2008. «I migliori dei blogs di antropologia» sarà pubblicata su Internet el 31 di dicembre.
Mille grazie ai nostri colleghi italiani.
Sharp Brains is hosting Encephalon #61, and rounds up an outstanding version of mind/brain blogging.
Mind Hacks’ Medical Jargon Alters Our Understanding of Disease is some great medical anthropology. Then we have the Jerry Springer of brain blogs, Neurocritic, on Jerry Springer himself, with some justice thrown in too.
Plus sexism and anger, the purported placebo gene, materialism and the soul, a striking visual illusion, and even more.
So check out the latest version of Encephalon.
By James J. McKenna Ph.D.
Edmund P. Joyce C.S.C. Chair in Anthropology
Director, Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory
University of Notre Dame
Author of Sleeping with Your Baby: A Parent’s Guide to Cosleeping
Where a baby sleeps is not as simple as current medical discourse and recommendations against cosleeping in some western societies want it to be. And there is good reason why. I write here to explain why the pediatric recommendations on forms of cosleeping such as bedsharing will and should remain mixed. I will also address why the majority of new parents practice intermittent bedsharing despite governmental and medical warnings against it.
Definitions are important here. The term cosleeping refers to any situation in which a committed adult caregiver, usually the mother, sleeps within close enough proximity to her infant so that each, the mother and infant, can respond to each other’s sensory signals and cues. Room sharing is a form of cosleeping, always considered safe and always considered protective. But it is not the room itself that it is protective. It is what goes on between the mother (or father) and the infant that is. Medical authorities seem to forget this fact. This form of cosleeping is not controversial and is recommended by all.
Unfortunately, the terms cosleeping, bedsharing and a well-known dangerous form of cosleeping, couch or sofa cosleeping, are mostly used interchangeably by medical authorities, even though these terms need to be kept separate. It is absolutely wrong to say, for example, that “cosleeping is dangerous” when roomsharing is a form of cosleeping and this form of cosleeping (as at least three epidemiological studies show) reduce an infant’s chances of dying by one half.
Bedsharing is another form of cosleeping which can be made either safe or unsafe, but it is not intrinsically one nor the other. Couch or sofa cosleeping is, however, intrinsically dangerous as babies can and do all too easily get pushed against the back of the couch by the adult, or flipped face down in the pillows, to suffocate.
Often news stories talk about “another baby dying while cosleeping” but they fail to distinguish between what type of cosleeping was involved and, worse, what specific dangerous factor might have actually been responsible for the baby dying. A specific example is whether the infant was sleeping prone next to their parent, which is an independent risk factor for death regardless of where the infant was sleeping. Such reports inappropriately suggest that all types of cosleeping are the same, dangerous, and all the practices around cosleeping carry the same high risks, and that no cosleeping environment can be made safe.
Nothing can be further from the truth. This is akin to suggesting that because some parents drive drunk with their infants in their cars, unstrapped into car seats, and because some of these babies die in car accidents that nobody can drive with babies in their cars because obviously car transportation for infants is fatal. You see the point.
One of the most important reasons why bedsharing occurs, and the reason why simple declarations against it will not eradicate it, is because sleeping next to one’s baby is biologically appropriate, unlike placing infants prone to sleep or putting an infant in a room to sleep by itself. This is particularly so when bedsharing is associated with breast feeding.
When done safely, mother-infant cosleeping saves infants lives and contributes to infant and maternal health and well being. Merely having an infant sleeping in a room with a committed adult caregiver (cosleeping) reduces the chances of an infant dying from SIDS or from an accident by one half!
Un número creciente de antropólogos está escribiendo sobre sus trabajos e ideas en línea, compartiendo antropología en todas sus formas y manifestando cuan pertinente es la antropología para el resto del mundo. Por este motivo, “Neuroanthropology” se propone crear una colección de los mejores artículos en los blogs (o bitácoras) dedicados a la antropología.
Favor seguir las siguientes instrucciones para proponer artículos:
Hay dos categorías de artículos – (1ª) los más populares (en términos de número de lectores) y (2ª) los que usted elige como el mejor ejemplo de su trabajo en línea en su blog.
Por favor, envíe un ejemplo de cada categoría (del más popular y del preferido), incluyendo el título del artículo, la dirección del artículo en línea y una o dos frases que expliquen porqué usted piensa que estos ejemplos han sido exitosos.
En el caso de blogs con más de un autor, pueden entregar dos ejemplos de sus artículos en la segunda categoría.
Por favor enviar los detalles a Daniel Lende vía dlende[@]nd[.]edu
(eliminando los paréntesis).
Esta información debe ser enviada a más tardar el 29 diciembre de 2008. “Lo mejor de…” será publicado en línea el 31 de diciembre.
Muchas gracias a ustedes nuestros colegas.
Neuroanthropology 