Tuesday, November 15, 2011

4 reasons songs get stuck in your head, oil boom in ND raises rents, pushes seniors out, and study links solvent to Parkinson’s disease

          Good Morning Humboldt County!

I’m glad you could make it today. I have some hot coffee on so grab a cup, pull up a seat, and check out the trio of headlines I picked to start your day.

    4 reasons a song gets stuck in your head

“Known as earworms, these random snippets of songs or melodies pop into our minds repeating themselves again and again like a broken record. For me, another one was that silly jingle from the McDonald's filet-of-fish commercial, which undoubtedly would delight advertisers but I found both amusing and mildly annoying.

So it helps to know that earworms are an incredibly common experience: Studies suggest that 90 percent of people get them at least once a week. Over the last decade, researchers have spent time collecting data to learn who gets earworms, how often they occur, how long they last and which songs won't budge from our brains.

Now, a new British study in the journal Psychology of Music has tried to understand their origins. They looked at how earworms, which psychologists call involuntary musical imagery, get started in the first place.”

Image: Seniors moving out of North Dakota

Oil boom raises rents in ND, pushes seniors out

After living all of her 82 years in the same community, Lois Sinness left her hometown this month, crying and towing a U-Haul packed with her every possession.

She didn't want to go, but the rent on her $700-a-month apartment was going up almost threefold because of heightened demand for housing generated by North Dakota's oil bonanza.

Other seniors in her complex and across the western part of the state are in the same predicament. "Our rents were raised, and we did not have a choice," Sinness said. "We're all on fixed incomes, living mostly on Social Security, so it's been a terrible shock."

A doctor examines the hands of a man with Parkinson's disease

                Study links Parkinson's disease to industrial solvent

Researchers found a six-fold increase in the risk of developing Parkinson's in individuals exposed in the workplace to trichloroethylene (TCE). Although many uses for TCE have been banned around the world, the chemical is still used as a degreasing agent.

In 1997, the US authorities banned its use as an anaesthetic, skin disinfectant, grain fumigant and coffee decaffeinating agent, but it is still used as a degreasing agent for metal parts.

Time to walk on down the road…

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