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The chewing-gum edge
The Globe and Mail: “Good news for students and worrying parents as researchers discover a quick and easy method to boost final exam scores,” says Psych Central. “In a new study, researchers determined [that] chewing gum for five minutes before taking a test improves test scores. However, students should use the initial boost judiciously as the benefits extend for only the first 15 to 20 minutes of the testing. St. Lawrence University psychologist Dr. Serge Onyper conducted a study that showed that students who chewed gum for five minutes before taking a test did better on the test than non-gum-chewing students. Read the whole story: The Globe and Mail
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Despite Occasional Scandals, Science Can Police Itself
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The public has always been fascinated with the scientific mind, including its corruption. So it is no surprise that the sordid case of the Dutch researcher Diederik Stapel grabbed headlines for a few days, including prominent articles in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and this publication. The news stories came after the journal Science expressed concern about one of Stapel's published papers, which is under investigation for data tampering. It is already clear that this one suspicious paper is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, Stapel had been under fraud investigation for some weeks when the news articles broke.
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Can Companies, Political Groups or Organizations Have a Single Mind?
News of employee misconduct always creates a whirlwind for the companies involved — think of Enron, Goldman Sachs and UBS, for example. But are these firms responsible for the actions of their employees? Or do individual members have distinct and independent responsibility separate from a group’s actions? New research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Boston College find that members of a cohesive group are judged to have less responsibility for their own individual actions.
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Friday Illusion: Ghostly images change shape
NewScientist: Think hard: you can transform a circle into a hexagon using the power of your mind. New animations created by Hiroyuki Ito from Kyushu University show how staring at coloured shapes can produce an afterimage that varies in form as well as hue. "This is the first study to show systematic shape changes in after-images involving shape processing mechanisms in the brain," says Ito. The first version of the illusion uses solid, stationary shapes. After focusing on yellow circles, blue hexagons typically appear and vice versa. The same effect also occurs with outlines of the shapes. In another variation, hexagons and circles rotate.
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Why some people never seem to forget a face
MSN India: Face recognition is an important social skill but not many of us are equally good at it, reveals a study. Researcher Jia Liu along with colleagues from Beijing Normal University have demonstrated how this skill is rooted in the unique way in which the mind perceives faces. 'Individuals who process faces more holistically - that is, as an integrated whole - are better at face recognition,' said Jia, the journal Psychological Science reported. In daily life, we recognize faces both holistically and also analytically - that is, picking out individual parts, such as eyes or nose, according to a university statement.
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How finding beauty in ordinary life can make you happy
The Globe and Mail: I have a friend who is next to impossible to go for walk with in the spring or summer. “Look,” she will instruct, stopping dead in her running shoes. “See how beautiful this gladiolus is?” And of course, you have to stop alongside her and admire the texture and the colour and the height of the flowers. What are you, anyway? Some power-walking obsessive who doesn’t know how to smell the proverbial roses? It turns out that identifying and appreciating beauty in the everyday is a happiness strategy. Some spiritual leaders advocate it as a way to feel divine energy.