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New View of Depression: An Ailment of the Entire Body
Wall Street Journal April 09, 2011
Scientists are increasingly finding that depression and other psychological disorders can be as much diseases of the body as of the mind.
Shirley Wang on Lunch Break discusses the impact of depression on aging and why people with a history of depression are also known to be at greater risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other aging-related diseases.
People with long-term psychological stress, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder tend to develop earlier and more serious forms of physical illnesses that usually hit people in older age, such as stroke, dementia, heart disease and diabetes. Recent research points to what might be happening on the cellular level that could account for this.
Scientists are finding that the same changes to chromosomes that happen as people age can also be found in people experiencing major stress and depression.
The phenomenon, known as "accelerated aging," is beginning to reshape the field's understanding of stress and depression not merely as psychological conditions but as body-wide illnesses in which mood may be just the most obvious symptom.
"As we learn more…we will begin to think less of depression as a 'mental illness' or even a 'brain disease,' but as a systemic illness," says Owen Wolkowitz, a psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who along with colleagues has conducted research in the field.
Gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms that link physical and mental conditions could someday prove helpful in diagnosing and treating psychological illnesses and improving cognition in people with memory problems, Dr. Wolkowitz says.
1. How Green Are Electric Cars? Depends on Where You Plug In
New York Times April 13, 2012
IT’S a lot like one of those math problems that gave you fits in sixth grade: a salesman leaves home in Denver and drives his electric car to a meeting in Boulder. At the same time, a physicist driving the same model electric car sets out from her loft in Los Angeles, heading to an appointment near Anaheim.
For both, the traffic is light, and the cars consume an identical amount of battery power while traveling the same number of miles. Being purely electric, they emit zero tailpipe pollutants during their trips.
The test question: are their carbon footprints also equal?
The answer may be a surprise. According to a report that the Union of Concerned Scientists plans to release on Monday, there would be a considerable difference in the amount of greenhouse gases — primarily carbon dioxide — that result from charging the cars’ battery packs. By trapping heat, greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.
The advocacy group’s report, titled “State of Charge: Electric Vehicles’ Global Warming Emissions and Fuel Cost Savings Across the United States,” uses the electric power requirements of the Nissan Leaf as a basis for comparison. The Leaf, on sale in the United States for more than a year and the most widely available electric model from a major automaker, sets a logical baseline.
2. China Loosens Grip on Yuan
The Wall Street Journal 2012.04.15
Central Bank Widens Currency's Trading Range; Move Could Ease Trade Tensions
BEIJING—China made one of its strongest moves yet to show that it believes the yuan is ready to become a global currency by loosening daily trading limits.
The move to widen the currency's trading range, which went into effect Monday, doesn't eliminate Beijing's tight grip on the yuan. China's central bank still sets a daily reference rate for its currency. On Monday in China, the yuan opened modestly weaker in currency trading, after the central bank set a reference rate for the yuan stronger than Friday's market close.
Nonetheless, the change is seen as an important step toward addressing foreign complaints about China's currency policies. The U.S. and other advanced economies have pressed Beijing for years to relax its hold on the yuan and allow it to appreciate at a faster pace. The hope is to boost consumer demand in China as consumers in advanced nations, such as the U.S. and Europe, pull back amid still-fragile economies. China long had resisted a loosened yuan, fearing it would hurt the country's powerful export market. A stronger yuan makes Chinese products more expensive overseas, while making imports more affordable for Chinese consumers.
A freer currency market is the latest step from China's leaders to overhaul the country's financial system. Beijing has moved to bring the country's informal lending sector out of the shadows; has openly questioned the dominance of state-owned banks; and has eased its capital restrictions, amid complaints from both inside and outside the country that the financial system is inadequate to sustain the world's No. 2 economy.
The decision to widen the yuan's daily trading range was cautiously welcomed by Washington and the International Monetary Fund. "We've obviously over the course of the last several years pressed the Chinese to take additional steps to appreciate their currency and to come in line with international markets," said Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communication. "They've made some progress."
3. Gunman in Norway Claims Self-Defense as Trial Begins
New York Times April 16, 2012
OSLO — By turns defiant, impassive and, just once, tearful, a self-described anti-Islamic militant who admitted carrying out Norway’s worst peacetime atrocity last year, killing 77 people including scores of young people at a summer camp on a tranquil, wooded island, went on trial here on Monday proclaiming that he had acted in self-defense, bore no criminal guilt and rejected the authority of the court.
In remarkable evidence played to a packed and shocked courtroom, recordings of cellphone calls made by the gunman to the police suggested that he had tried twice to give himself up and had simply gone on killing in the absence of officers to accept his surrender. In the period after the first call to his final shot, prosecutors said, 41 people died.
The gunman, Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has admitted on several occasions that he carried out the rampage on July 22, in which 69 people were shot and killed on Utoya Island, near Oslo, where the youth wing of the governing Labor Party was holding a summer camp. Hours earlier, a car bombing in central Oslo killed eight people.
As the grisly evidence unfolded, and some of the bereaved families and survivors in the courtroom sobbed, Mr. Breivik remained mostly impassive, and at one point seemed to discreetly stifle a yawn. Only as the court viewed a video that Mr. Breivik had made before the attacks to publicize his cause, did he break down in tears, dabbing at his face.
