Data dreams: planning for the future of historical medical documents.

Historical medical collections with privacy-sensitive information are a potentially rich source of social, behavioral, and economic data for a wide array of researchers. They remain relatively undiscoverable and at risk for destruction, however, because of their restricted content and challenging media formats. Team members from two institutions-the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Texas at Austin-present their respective initiatives to create digital archives and databases that address the privacy and technological challenges of such collections. In doing so, they also argue for the importance (and feasibility) of medical libraries and archives to take the initiative to preserve and make accessible historical patient data.

Live Longer Better: The Historical Roots of Human Growth Hormone as Anti-Aging Medicine.

In recent years, historians have turned their attention to the emergence of anti-aging medicine, suggesting that this interest group coalesced in the wake of widespread availability of recombinant human growth hormone (HGH) after 1985. We take a longer view of modern anti-aging medicine, unearthing a nexus of scientific, medical, and cultural factors that developed over several decades in the twentieth century to produce circumstances conducive to the emergence of this medical sub-specialty established on the premise of the anti-aging effects of HGH. Specifically, we locate these roots in earlier hormone replacement therapies and in the so-called life extension movement. We reveal the continual tension between, on the one hand, champions of a mainstream medical specialty and a field of biomedical research that aimed to improve health for the aged and, on the other hand, advocates who campaigned for medical endeavors to preserve midlife health in perpetuity, and even to extend the human lifespan. We also demonstrate that the two groups shared a belief in science to solve - or at least to ameliorate - the problems of aging. This commitment to science has been the hallmark of twentieth and twenty-first century prescriptions for living life longer and better.

The tall and the short of it: An investigation of height ideals, height preferences, height dissatisfaction, heightism, and height-related quality of life impairment among sexual minority men.

Human height has attracted empirical interest from a variety of psychological perspectives. However, little research has explored height from the perspective of sexual minority men, inclusive of their height beliefs, height preferences, height dissatisfaction, experiences of heightism, and height-related quality of life impairment. We explored these height variables in 2733 sexual minority men who completed a survey distributed nationwide to Australian and New Zealander users of geosocial-networking smartphone applications. Results showed that men's ideal height (M=182.26cm, SD=5.93cm) was taller than their actual height (M=178.96cm, SD=7.52cm). Shorter and taller men reported negative and positive treatment from others due to their height, respectively, with the cross-over (i.e., neutral) point at approximately 175-176cm. Heightism was reported by 11.0% of men. Height dissatisfaction and heightism were uniquely associated with quality of life impairment; the size of these associations was small.