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The flip side of dietary supplement use
The Washington Post: You know those people who take a million dietary supplements a day and act kind of healthier-than-thou about it? A study to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, might take some wind out of their sails. In a set of small but clever experiments, researchers from three educational institutions in Taiwan worked to examine whether people who take dietary supplements might treat that behavior as a kind of safety net that entitled them to indulge in foods and activities that aren’t so conducive to good health. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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What makes a face appealing to the opposite sex?
USA Today: While it may be true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, a new computer model helps reveal what's behind peoples' ideas of facial attractiveness. Many studies have concluded that people are drawn to "average" faces and those who fit the conventional notion of attractiveness for a person's gender — "masculinity" in men and "femininity" in women. But psychologists Christopher P. Said of New York University and Alexander Todorov of Princeton University believe attractiveness is more complex than that, so they created a computer model to identify and measure those complexities. Read the whole story: USA Today
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Snooze Control: Fatigue, Air Traffic and Safety
It is safe to say that we are all guilty of these at some point in our day – stifling a yawn in the middle of the work day, eyelids growing heavy and having the
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Maybe Just Drunk Enough to Remember
The New York Times: Drunken recollections, especially in rape trials, rarely play well to jurors. In a society that can be quick to turn a skeptical eye toward women who say they were raped — she was scantily dressed, she’s promiscuous, she’s just angry at him — prosecutors of sex crimes say one of their biggest obstacles in the courtroom is alcohol. A rape trial in Manhattan is the latest example. The accuser, who completed her testimony Monday, admitted that she was so drunk on the night in question that she could not remember most of what happened, even the cab ride home.
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The Hazards of Teamwork: Does Group Study Disrupt Learning?
The classic 1973 film The Paper Chase explores the challenges of first-year law students at Harvard, focusing on a handful who come together to form a study group. These groups are formed to manage the vast amount of learning that 1-L students are expected to absorb, on everything from contracts to property to the Constitution—but in this case the collaboration is a disaster. A combination of stress and competitiveness and pettiness sabotages the group effort, leaving the individual students on their own as they face the rigors of final exams. Study groups are very popular—and not only in law school.
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How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?
The New York Times: We all know that we don’t get enough sleep. But how much sleep do we really need? Until about 15 years ago, one common theory was that if you slept at least four or five hours a night, your cognitive performance remained intact; your body simply adapted to less sleep. But that idea was based on studies in which researchers sent sleepy subjects home during the day — where they may have sneaked in naps and downed coffee. nter David Dinges, the head of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the Hospital at University of Pennsylvania, who has the distinction of depriving more people of sleep than perhaps anyone in the world.
