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Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…
Should I skip my morning workout today so I can sleep longer? Or perhaps, since it is summer after all, indulge in an ice cold Mocha Frappucino with whipped cream and chocolate syrup drizzled over it instead of my regular herbal tea? Where should I take my date on our first dinner date? Should I go to graduate school? Decisions, decisions, decisions… We all make numerous decisions everyday; unconsciously or consciously, sometimes doing it automatically with little effort or thinking and yet, at other times, we agonize for hours over another. Why do we make these choices – be it from deciding what to have for lunch or whether to say yes to that job offer halfway round the world.
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Porteros se lanzan más a la derecha cuando van perdiendo
BBC Mundo: Un estudio por investigadores holandeses de las tandas de penaltis en los partidos de los Campeonatos Mundiales de 1982 a 2010 mostró que los arqueros por lo general tenían la misma probabilidad de ir a la izquierda o a la derecha para defender la portería. Pero estar sometidos a la enorme presión de una posición perdedora los empuja más a la derecha. El estudio, que será publicado en la revista Psychological Science, sugiere que los cerebros "orientados a la derecha" de los seres humanos tienen la culpa. Read more: BBC Mundo
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J.K. Rowling’s characters turn up in medical literature, too
Los Angeles Times: For more than a decade, the phenomenally popular Harry Potter series has provided grist for medical studies on topics including genetics, social cognition and autism. PubMed, an online database of medical studies, lists 30 studies that invoke the young wizard. There's "Harry Potter and the Recessive Allele," "Harry Potter and the Structural Biologist's (Key)stone," and even "Harry Potter Casts a Spell on Accident-Prone Children." That last study found that children's emergency department visits decreased significantly when new Harry Potter books went on sale.
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Seek value, not status, when shopping
China Daily: I was in the States recently wearing my Armani suit that I bought in Beijing. Friends commented how great I looked and a stranger or two even stopped me to pay a compliment. Now I'm pretty sure Armani suits cost more than the $50 or so I paid and that probably holds true for my $75 prescription designer glasses, my $5 Polo shirts, and the $30 Adidas running shoes that have a Nike Swoosh on the front end. Or maybe I just got great deals. Read more: China Daily
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Horizon stare still best option to find sea legs
New Zealand Herald: There is little doubt that the dreaded mal de mer or seasickness is one of the worst and most debilitating of ailments that strike those trying to enjoy a day at sea. It is a peculiar malady, seemingly attacking people at random. Some of the worst boaties I have known - in terms of their ability, seamanship and knowledge of how things work - are the least affected by seasickness and can happily party on in the worst of conditions. Read more: New Zealand Herald
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Is Google Ruining Your Memory?
Wired: By now, you’ve probably heard about this smart study showing that Google is making you stupid, led by Betsy Sparrow at Columbia. The scientists demonstrated that the availability of the internet is changing the nature of what we remember, making us more likely to recall where the facts are rather than the facts themselves. Patricia Cohen of the Times summarizes the results: Dr. Sparrow and her collaborators, Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard and Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, staged four different memory experiments. In one, participants typed 40 bits of trivia — for example, “an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain” — into a computer.
