HOBBIT SPECIES

Hobbit' New Species After All, Says Study
Marlowe Hood, AFP
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Hobbit's Left Foot | Discovery News Video

May 6, 2009 -- Diminutive humans whose remains were found on the remote Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 truly are a new species, and not pygmies whose brains had shriveled with disease, researchers reported Wednesday.
Anthropologists have argued, sometimes bitterly, since the discovery of Homo floresiensis -- dubbed "the hobbit" due to its size -- as to the identity and origins of these distant cave-dwelling cousins.
Measuring about a meter (three feet) and weighing in at 30 kilos (65 pounds), the tiny, tool-making hunters may have roamed the island for which they were named as recently as 8,000 years ago. The fossils are about 18,000 years old.
Many scientists have said H. floresiensis were prehistoric humans descended from Homo erectus, stunted by natural selection over millennia through a process called insular dwarfing.
Others countered that even this evolutionary shrinking, well known in island-bound animals, could not account for the hobbit's chimp-sized grey matter of barely more than 400 cubic centimeters, a third the size of a modern human brain.




//////////////////////Meditation is a systematic method of regulating your attention, often through focusing on your breathing, a phrase, or an image. It may include calmly dismissing distracting thoughts and feelings while sitting in a relaxed position with your eyes closed.
Meditation is used to relieve stress and elicit the relaxation response, a state of profound rest and release. Some experts believe that by regularly practicing techniques that evoke the relaxation response, such as meditation, you can help your body erase the cumulative effects of stress, which has been linked to health problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease, a weakened immune system, and asthma. As noted earlier, there appears to be a link between stress and depression.

Studies have found that meditation can help prevent relapse in people who have had three or more episodes of depression. For example, in one study, while 78% of depressed people given normal treatment for depression relapsed in the following year, only 36% of those people who got meditation training in addition to regular treatment did. For people with fewer than three episodes of depression, meditation has not been found to be as effective.

There is evidence that meditation has distinct effects on the brain. In one study, researchers measured brain electrical activity before, immediately after, and four months after a two-month course in mindfulness meditation. They found persistent increased activity on the left side of the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with joyful and serene emotions.





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