Month: July 2014

Got half an hour? Good. A small new study shows that just 25 minutes a day of mindfulness meditation can help you feel less stressed in an anxiety-inducing situation. And the best part: This effect was shown in people who had not spent months, or even weeks, but merely days training in mindfulness meditation. For the study, which is published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, researchers had 31 young adults undergo three days of a brief, 25-minute mindfulness meditation training. …

By Daniel Wallis DENVER (Reuters) – At the Native Roots Apothecary, a discreet marijuana shop in a grand old building in Denver's busy 16th street shopping mall, business is so brisk that customers are given a number before taking a seat to wait their turn. Staff say customers have been flocking to their outlets since Colorado voted to allow recreational pot use for adults from January.     Six months on, Colorado's marijuana shops are mushrooming, with support from local consumers, weed tourists and federal government taking a wait-and-see attitude. Tax dollars are pouring in, crime is down in Denver, and few of the early concerns about social breakdown have materialized – at least so far. "The sky hasn't fallen, but we're a long way from knowing the unintended consequences," said Andrew Freeman, director of marijuana coordination for Colorado.

The World Health Organization on Thursday urged over 30 countries, including some of the world's richest, to recognise the continued danger of tuberculosis and try to wipe it out by 2050. Millions are also unknowingly infected with the TB bacillus, which can be spread by sneezing, and therefore risk falling ill at some point, the WHO underlined. "If you talk to the general public of these countries, (they think) it is a disease of the past, that they don't have it anymore," said Marco Raviglione, head of the WHO's anti-TB programme. The 33 countries have been singled out precisely because they have relatively low levels of tuberculosis, notably compared with hotspots such as China, India and the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Scientists studying the effects of the psychedelic chemical in magic mushrooms have found the human brain displays a similar pattern of activity during dreams as it does during a mind-expanding drug trip. Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms can profoundly alter the way we experience the world, but little is known about what physically happens in the brain. In a study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, researchers examined the brain effects of psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, using data from brain scans of volunteers who had been injected with the drug. Psychedelic drugs do precisely this and so are powerful tools for exploring what happens in the brain when consciousness is profoundly altered," said Dr Enzo Tagliazucchi, who led the study at Germany's Goethe University.

(Reuters) – A California university fraternity has been ordered to stop all activities after a student died on hiking trip with group members in the Angeles National Forest, the university said, according to local media. A 19-year-old California State University-Northridge student died on Tuesday after running out of water and passing out, local media quoted the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as saying. The university was investigating the incident involving the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, which it had ordered to “cease and desist” all activities, school spokeswoman Carmen Ramos Chandler said, according to the Los Angeles Times newspaper. The university and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Child advocates are worried possible legal changes could cut off migrant kids’ access to social workers, asylum lawyers.

A Sudanese woman spared a death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity faces a new lawsuit on Thursday brought by her family to formally establish her as a Muslim, a lawyer said, in a move that could delay her departure for the United States. Mariam Yahya Ibrahim, 27, was briefly detained last week, a day after an appeals court overturned a death sentence imposed on her for changing her faith and marrying a Christian South Sudanese-American. Despite lifting the death penalty, Sudan refuses to acknowledge Ibrahim’s new identity as a South-Sudanese Christian. “The Khartoum Religious Court will review on Thursday morning a case asking to prove that Mariam Ibrahim belongs to her (Muslim) father and family,” said Abdel Rahman Malek, the lawyer hired by Ibrahim’s Muslim family for the case.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The blood is not the most jarring part of the photograph taken shortly after the bomb blew off Marine Gunnery Sgt. Brian Meyer's leg and hand.