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Red Sneakers and Sweatshirts: The Surprising Upside Of Standing Out
The Huffington Post: The casual outfit that Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sported in front of elegantly dressed bankers and investors just before his company went public generated much clamor in the media. While some observers judged the young entrepreneur's choice to wear his typical hoodie and jeans on such an official occasion as a mark of immaturity, others defended it as a sign of boldness that helped spread publicity about the deal. Why is the "CEO Casual" look sported by Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and certain other business leaders interpreted as a sign of status, while other professionals in casual dress would be laughed out of a job interview?
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Use Virtual Reality to Eliminate That Pain in Your Neck
Smithsonian Magazine: Tired of reaching for a bottle of pills to quell your chronic pain? Maybe you should strap on a virtual reality headset. In an experiment described last week in Psychological Science, scientists showed how bogus visual feedback created by virtual reality can actually trick the brain into boosting or reducing a person's range of pain-free movement. The study highlights the ways in which sensory perceptions, and not just physical signals, can make us feel pain—and how that effect can be manipulated to design new therapies. Read the whole story: Smithsonian Magazine
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The Real Reason So Many of Us Crave the Apple Watch
TIME: No one really needs an Apple Watch. Yes, it will have many uses, including tracking exercise, making mobile payments, reading email, and running all sorts of apps. But smartphones and other devices are capable of doing all of these things and more. So why do so many of us want an Apple Watch? A month ago, I was riding in an elevator in San Francisco (45 minutes from Apple headquarters) and noticed someone wearing what appeared to be an Apple Watch. I asked him if it was indeed the much-hyped unreleased watch. He said yes. He also said I couldn’t touch it. Okay, no problem, but how about giving me a quick review? No dice. Fine, at least tell me how it is that you got one.
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When Fatigue Boosts Creativity
The Atlantic: Most people know, instinctively, whether they are morning people or evening people. Some are hit with a wave of dread whenever they hear a stranger’s iPhone clanging out the same ringtone as their morning alarm. Others can be found yawning into their second beer at 10 p.m. on a Friday. (For those who aren’t sure, countless online questionnaires can tell you whether you should be catching the worm or not.) Our chronotypes are largely a function of when our bodies start and stop producing melatonin, the sleepiness hormone. Elementary and middle schoolers tend to be early risers, but productivity begins to shift to later in the day as people enter their teens and early 20s.
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The Toll of a Solitary Life
The New York Times: Do you like being alone? New research from Brigham Young University shows just how bad loneliness and social isolation, even for people who prefer their own company, can be for health. The researchers analyzed data collected from 70 studies and more than 3.4 million people from 1980 to 2014. The studies, which followed people for about seven years on average, showed that people who were socially isolated, lonely or living alone had about a 30 percent higher chance of dying during a given study period than those who had regular social contact.
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From Sadness to Anxiety: The Emotional Legacy of Sandy Hook
Pacific Standard: The truism—apparently first uttered by Steve Allen, the original host of the Tonight Show—is that tragedy plus time equals comedy. But a newly published study that looked at responses to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre suggests a different equation: Tragedy plus time equals anxiety. Analyzing a large dataset of Twitter messages, a Columbia University research team led by psychologists Bruce Doré and Kevin Ochsner found a decrease in sadness-related words the further removed commenters were from the horrible incident, in terms of either time or distance.
