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Anti-epilepsy drug could stave off Alzheimer’s
The Telegraph: Giving the drug levetiracetam to patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition known to foreshadow Alzheimer's, improved their ability to remember. It also reduced overactivity in a part of the brain tasked with remembering called the hippocampus, MRI scans showed. People with MCI who have excess activity in the hippocampus are known to be at the highest risk of being daignosed with full-bolwn Alzheimer's in the following four to six years. Read more: The Telegraph
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How Media Can Encourage Our Better Side
Violent media—films, TV, videogames—can encourage aggression, and lots of research says so. But psychologists haven’t spent as much time looking at the ways media with more socially positive content help suppress meanness and prod us toward cooperation, empathy, and helpfulness. When and why might a game or a movie mobilize our better angels and squelch our devils? A review of the literature, including his own work, by psychologist Tobias Greitemeyer at the University of Innsbruck in Austria sorts out those questions and proposes a model to explain the cognitive processes underlying their answers.
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Queen bee syndrome: Women are warned to steer clear of female bosses if they want to rise through the ranks
Daily Mail: Powerful businesswomen block the rise of other women in the company due to sexism in the workplace, a new study shows. Psychologists have studied so-called ‘queen bee’ behaviour where top women distance themselves from other women and refuse to help them rise through the ranks. They concluded that when women were aware of gender bias at work, they were more likely to act like men and distance themselves from women. Read more: Daily Mail
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Common courtesy at the coffeehouse
CNN: Ah, cafes -- those coffee-scented cultural nerve centers where creative souls sip espresso and engage in existential thought. At least, that's how we'd like to think of them. Nowadays, many have become havens for 13-year-olds growing hyper on blended sugar bombs and sad scenesters pretending to work on their screenplays while actually clicking around on Facebook. As another heat wave belches its way across the States, cafes are becoming exceptionally attractive as a place to boot up your laptop, hook into the Wi-Fi and get some work done. Here are some top courtesy tips for not offending the staff or fellow worker bees in a packed coffeehouse. Read more: CNN
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Schadenfreude: Why the News Corp Phone Hacking Scandal Makes Some People Smile
Scientific American: Until very recently, even Rupert Murdoch 's sharpest critics might have admitted to envying the 80-year-old arch-conservative News Corporation CEO, who built a far-reaching media empire almost from scratch and made himself outstandingly rich even among billionaires. Now, though, amidst a phone hacking and corruption scandal that threatens to permanently damage his company, Murdoch is struggling to defend himself. Summoned to testify in front of a British Parliament committee investigating the scandal on Tuesday, he called it "the most humble day" of his career—and that was before a protester flung a shaving cream pie at his face. Read more: Scientific American
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3rd Scientific Meeting of the Federation of the European Societies of Neuropsychology
September 7 - 9, 2011 in Basel, Switzerland www.esn2011.org/