Word: pet
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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More than 6 million people mini-blog about their lives on Twitter, including a surprising number of celebrities. Sean (Diddy) Combs recently Twittered about a tantric sex session, a 48-hour juice fast and taking a bubble bath with an Oscar statue. John Cleese has written about his pet chickens, while MC Hammer has mused on the economy ("We just fed the nation 15 [years] of evil soup. Now we're throwing up"). Other celebrities, including Shaquille O'Neal, post actual information about where they are and what they're doing. And they encourage fans to meet them...
...researchers thus recruited a small sample group of 10 men, ages 23 to 46; some of them got a placebo, while others took either 200 mg or 400 mg (typical therapeutic doses) of modafinil. All of the men's brains were then scanned using positron-emission tomography (PET scans). Volkow and Fowler were looking for dopamine activity - not just for overall dopamine levels, but also for the behavior of dopamine transporters...
...says Volkow. "They remove dopamine after it's released and recycle it." The more dopamine that gets left in the spaces between cells, the longer its rewarding effect on the brain - and the likelier it is to lay down the roots of addiction. As Volkow and Fowler suspected, the PET scans of the men who had taken modafinil showed that dopamine transporters were indeed being blocked by the drug and overall levels were rising...
...know what is funny? Pretending your pet lives in Communist Russia. Hilarious (unless you once lived in Communist Russia). You could take a picture of your cat eating cat food and pretend it was dinnertime at the gulag. Or if you have an unusually small kitten, you could joke about robbing it of its childhood and training it as an Olympic gymnast. But where would one find a website dedicated to such a strange, esoteric joke? If only one existed...
...It’s also important to note that the majority of Americans support expanding stem cell research. A recent Gallup poll found that only four in 10 Americans support further restrictions. Claims that Obama is pursuing the pet causes of liberal scientists against the wishes of most Americans are simply incorrect...