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Can we wire children’s brains to not crave junk food?
PBS: A study published in Psychological Science says it is possible to train children’s brains to resist craving junk food. The cognitive strategy was developed by researchers at Columbia University, who took MRI brain scans of 105 children, adolescents and young adults while they looked at images of “unhealthy but appetizing” food. The participants rated each picture by how much it made them want to eat it. When asked to visualize the food far away, as well as focus on the shape and color (versus imagining the food up close, in addition to its taste and smell), researchers saw a 16 percent drop in response, i.e., cravings.
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Companies That Provide Job Training May Earn Greater Employee Loyalty
There’s one thing that the United States Congress can agree on: the potential of job training. This summer, in a rare act of bipartisanship, Congress approved new legislation focused on increased funding for job training for US workers. The hope is that providing workers with more job training opportunities will help kickstart the US economy by getting more unemployed Americans back in the workforce. Congress isn’t alone in seeing job training as a beneficial tool. A new study from a team of European researchers found that job training may also be a good strategy for companies looking to hire and retain top talent.
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Brain Wave May Be Used to Detect What People Have Seen, Recognize
Brain activity can be used to tell whether someone recognizes details they encountered in normal, daily life, which may have implications for criminal investigations and use in courtrooms.
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Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) Pilot Seeks Proposals
The Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) pilot seeks to support bold interdisciplinary projects in all NSF-supported areas of science, engineering, and education research. INSPIRE has no targeted themes and serves as a funding mechanism for proposalsthat are required both to be interdisciplinary and to exhibit potentially transformative research (IDR and PTR, respectively). Complementing existing NSF efforts, INSPIRE was created to handle proposals whose: Scientific advances lie outside the scope of a single program or discipline, such that substantial funding support from more than one program or discipline is necessary.
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Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Science Research (IBSS) Competition Seeks Submissions
Since 2010, the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (NSF/SBE) has provided matching funds for core SBE programs to facilitate their support of interdisciplinary research projects reviewed independently or coreviewed by multiple programs.
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Stimulating Research Related to the Science of Broadening Participation
Building on previous investments, the Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE) and the Directorate for Education & Human Resources (EHR) announce their interest in stimulating research related to the Science of Broadening Participation (SBP). The Science of Broadening Participation will employ the theories, methods, and analytic techniques of the social, behavioral, economic, and learning sciences to better understand the barriers that hinder and factors that enhance our ability to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).