Tag Archives: National Public Radio

Dec 17

SCIENTIFIC STUDY: HOW DOES MEDITATION HELP US?

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For thousands of years, religion has posed some unanswerable questions:

  Who are we?  What’s the meaning of life? What does it mean to be religious?

 In an effort to address those questions, Dr. Andrew Newberg has scanned the brains of praying nuns, chanting Sikhs and meditating Buddhists. He studies the relationship between the brain and religious experience, a field called neurotheology. And he’s written a book, Principles of Neurotheology, that tries to lay the groundwork for a new kind of scientific and theological dialogue.

Newberg tells NPR’s Neal Conan that neurotheology applies science and the scientific method to spirituality through brain imaging studies.

 ”[We] evaluate what’s happening in people’s brains when they are in a deep spiritual practice like meditation or prayer,” Newberg says. He and his team then compare that with the same brains in a state of rest. “This has really given us a remarkable window into what it means for people to be religious or spiritual or to do these kinds of practices.”

 Newberg’s scans have also shown the ways in which religious practices, like meditation, can help shape a brain. Newberg describes one study in which he worked with older individuals who were experiencing memory problems. Newberg took scans of their brains, then taught them a mantra-based type of meditation and asked them to practice that meditation 12 minutes a day for eight weeks. At the end of the eight weeks, they came back for another scan, and Newberg found some dramatic differences.

 To read or hear the rest of the article click on:

 http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132078267/neurotheology-where-religion-and-science-collide

Jul 16

WHY WE NEED A LEANER AND MORE AGGRESSIVE GOV……..

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      Massey Miners: Disabling Monitors Was Common 

(quoted & cited) July 16, 2010

 Miners who’ve worked in Massey Energy‘s Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia say disabling methane monitors was relatively common and was justified by mine managers with false descriptions of mining regulations.

 Methane monitors are mounted on 30-foot-long continuous miners like this one, and other mining machines, to warn coal miners about dangerous levels of explosive methane gas.
 
An NPR News investigation has documented an incident in February 2010 in which an Upper Big Branch electrician was ordered to circumvent the automatic shutoff mechanism on a methane detector installed on a continuous mining machine. The machine then continued to cut rock without a working methane monitor, a dangerous and possibly illegal act.

The incident occurred two months before the explosion that killed 29 mine workers. Running mining machines without methane monitors risks similar explosions.

Four former Upper Big Branch miners indicate that the February incident was not isolated. And they describe a Massey Energy practice that characterized mining coal without working monitors as accepted and even legal.

 Clay Mullins was a maintenance foreman at Upper Big Branch for eight years and left four years ago. He describes a widespread belief about mining machines that are left inoperable by malfunctioning methane monitors.

To  see, hear, or read more click on:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3

 

Sep 30

POLL: PUBLIC SAYS CONGRESS NOT LISTENING

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by JULIE ROVNER

Perhaps no other issue Congress deals with touches every American as intimately as health care. Yet a new poll by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health finds that, so far, the public feels profoundly shut out of the current health overhaul debate.

“Most people don’t feel that they personally have a voice in this debate,” said Mollyann Brodie, director of public opinion and survey research for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “In fact, 71 percent told us that Congress was paying too little attention to what people like them were saying.”

Nancy Turtenwald is one of those people. The tourist from Milwaukee was walking around the sparkling new visitor center at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday. She was quick to agree with poll findings that the lawmakers debating the massive health overhaul bill just a few blocks away weren’t much interested in problems like hers.

For much more click on:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113307616&ps=cprs

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