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Anatomy Of A Dance Hit: Why We Love To Boogie With Pharrell
NPR: There's no doubt Pharrell's "Happy" is the biggest hit of the year so far. It spent 15 weeks at the top of the Billboard 100 and inspired hundreds of fan videos on YouTube. Just a few weeks ago, six Iranian teenagers got arrested for posting a video of themselves dancing to the catchy song. So what is it about "Happy" that triggers a nearly uncontrollable need to tap your foot, bob your head or move to the rhythm in some way? It may be more about what's missing from the song than what's there. Read the whole story: NPR
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Are Teachers Distracting Students with Bad Interior Design?
Fast Company: Few environments feature such a cacophony of decor as the elementary school classroom. Colorful bulletin boards, scientific posters, state maps, and student artwork tend to cover nearly every inch of wall space. Yet a new study on classroom design from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University suggests that all that educational flair may not be all that great for getting kids to learn. The study, carried out over two weeks, examined 24 kindergarten students who were taught six lessons on topics they had not yet learned in school.
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Little Boxes of Decision Avoidance
The New Yorker: Life would be easier if everything you needed were sent to you in a box. A few months ago, I subscribed to Quinciple, a service that sends me a box of groceries once a week, which I pick up at a store a few blocks from my apartment. It saves me a little time and maybe a little money—but, mostly, it spares me from the so-called paradox of choice, or the paralysis that comes with having too many options while shopping. I have wasted hours of my life reading the fine print on cereal boxes, lipstick boxes, and sneaker boxes. I am forever looking for a reason to choose one loaf of bread or one brand of shampoo over countless others.
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Big Seat, Bad Behavior
If you’ve stacked up a lot of speeding tickets or parking fines in the last several months, you might consider how the size and interior of your vehicle is contributing to the points on your driver’s license. Research has shown how our posture can significantly affect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. And a study published last year showed that these postures can affect our conduct behind the wheel. The study, led by behavioral researcher Andy J. Yap of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, involved a series of experiments and revealed that open postures boost our feelings of power, and those feelings can cause us to act dishonestly.
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Science Says There’s No Such Thing as ‘Comfort Food’. We All Beg to Differ
The Guardian: Most of us know this intuitively – that comfort and junk foods are subtly distinct. The former is an emotional as well as a nutritional unit, and the latter is merely a sugar rush. Besides which, no cookbook would dare put the word "junk" in its title, but whole shelves are devoted to the art of the comfort food. If, after a hard day, you make yourself mashed potatoes with gravy, or mac and cheese with brown sauce, or scrambled eggs with the consistency of an Ultimate Frisbee, it is probably because someone once made it for you exactly that way.
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What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades
The New York Times: Does handwriting matter? Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard. But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep. Read the whole story: The New York Times
