Using seminar blogs to enhance student participation and learning in public health school classes.

Objectives: We evaluated whether "seminar blogs" enhanced learning in a large graduate-level introductory public health school class.

Methods: Sixty students were divided into 6 online blog groups. Students posted their assignments (case analyses, news commentaries), prompting comments from other students.

Decreased absolute amygdala volume in cocaine addicts.

The amygdala is instrumental to a set of brain processes that lead to cocaine consumption, including those that mediate reward and drug craving. This study examined the volumes of the amygdala and hippocampus in cocaine-addicted subjects and matched healthy controls and determined that the amygdala but not the hippocampus was significantly reduced in volume. The right-left amygdala asymmetry in control subjects was absent in the cocaine addicts.