News: Who Owns Your DNA? | Wired on Amazon | Climate Chaos in Durban | Video Games Impact Brain | Editorials 12/2

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Daily French Roast

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Suspended!

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has suspended his campaign for president, accusing the media and the court of public opinion of spinning details of his private life “so as to create a cloud of doubt over me and this campaign and my family.” Read on at Politico.

Marvelous Martha

Photograph by Richard Choi for WSJMartha Stewart is front and center in WSJ’s ‘a day in the life of Martha’ interactive, a feature in the latest WSJ Magazine. See if you can keep up with 70-year-old Martha Stewart, sitting pretty at the center of her sprawling $200 million corporation.

Your DNA Is Theirs?

Sharon Terry by Marc Ninghetto for WSJThe Internet has unleashed citizen journalism, global protests and now citizen scientists writes Amy Dickser Marcus in today’s WSJ Essay. Asking why science should be limited only to professionals, ordinary people like Sharon Terry (above) are taking control of their own health data.

“It’s my data,” says Ms. Terry, who is now president and chief executive of Genetic Alliance, a network of organizations that do research, advocacy and education around genetics, in Washington, D.C. “But it gets locked away in some database that I can’t get to.”

Annual Climate Change Chaos

via Earthimes.orgGovernment climate change negotiators in Durban, South Africa have until December 9th to reach three goals. In Wilted greenery, the Economist writes that factionalism and waning interests among nations to keep the commitments made in Copenhagen in 2009 could result in a breakdown of the whole UN process in Durban.

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Advancement and Chinese Women

Following up on yesterday’s Diane von Furstenberg speech to Chinese women, the Economist writes Thesky’s the limit, arguing the China is probably the most enlightened place for women workers in Asia, but “it’s not exactly heaven.”

The supply of female talent is abundant, says Jin Yu, a partner with McKinsey in Beijing and their most senior woman in China, but once you start funnelling it the numbers come down. She also concedes that there is room for improvement in the way that Chinese companies nurture potential female leaders. The same goes for the Chinese body politic: only 13 of the 204 members elected at the most recent meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s central committee (its top decision-making body) were women.

Violent Video Games Impact Brain Function

For the first time researchers have shown that sustained changes occur in the region of the brain associated with cognitive function and emotional control in just one week of playing violent video games.

28 young men with low prior exposure to violent video game playing underwent fMRI analysis at the beginning of the study. Half the group then played a shooting video game for 10 hours at home for one week. The second group didn’t play the game.

“These findings indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning,” Dr. Yang Wang, MD, of Indiana University School of Medicine said. “These effects may translate into behavioral changes over longer periods of game play.” Read on at Science Daily

More Science Daily Headlines

Age-Old Remedies Using White Tea, Witch Hazel and Rose May Be Beneficial, Study Suggests

Heart Attack Risk Differs Between Men and Women, study confirms again that women have a more challenging health risk from plaque disruption. See New Hidden Heart Attack Culprit Identified in Women.

Moral Dilemma: Would You Kill One Person to Save Five? 90 percent of study participants said yes.

Vegetables, Fruits, Grains Reduce Stroke Risk in Women

Sharp Decline in Pollution from US Coal Power Plants, NASA Satellite Confirms