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You’re Just One in 7 Billion!
Did you take a deep breath before pushing and shoving your way into a crowded train this morning? Stepped on a few toes or nerves perhaps? Phew, well, if you thought dodging elbows and trying to hop on that crowded morning rush hour train was bad, try thinking about this – the world’s population recently hit 7 billion and in an already crowded planet, that poses quite a problem. According to the United Nations Population Fund, the world’s population more than doubled just in the last fifty years. This staggering growth is certainly a cause for alarm and has scientists, economists and sociologists scrambling to find a solution to combat the problems that come with an overcrowded planet.
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Memory Lapse
The New York Times: A while ago, I was going through my files when I came across a cache of partly crumbled photographs. One was of me holding the sight box for the M252 mortar in Garden City, N.Y., parking lot. In another, I sat with Oum in the open hatch of a UH-1W at Camp White Horse, outside Nasiriyah, Iraq. There was another of me and the guys at the 2003 Marine Corps birthday ball. I looked like a boy in those photos. At the bottom of the stack I found one photo of us standing with First Sgt. Allen. I was wearing a set of borrowed Alphas; she wore a black evening gown, First Sergeant stood adorned in dress blues, everyone was smiling, teeth shining.
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Tantrum Tamer: New Ways Parents Can Stop Bad Behavior
The Wall Street Journal: Forget everything you may have read about coping with children's temper tantrums. Time-outs, sticker charts, television denial—for many, none of these measures will actually result in long-term behavior change, according to researchers at two academic institutions. Instead, a set of techniques known as "parent management training" is proving so helpful to families struggling with a child's unmanageable behavior that clinicians in the U.S. and the U.K. are starting to adopt them. Aimed at teaching parents to encourage sustained behavior change, it was developed in part at parenting research clinics at Yale University and King's College London.
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Beautiful people ‘likely to earn more money’
The West Australian: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is only skin deep. The list of adages goes on and on, but a new book written by an economics professor at the University of Texas-Austin says beauty brings many real benefits. Daniel S. Hamermesh has studied the economics of beauty for about 20 years. In Beauty Pays he writes that attractive people enjoy many advantages while those who are less attractive often face discrimination. Using his research and worldwide studies he's collected, Hamermesh notes that beautiful people are likely to be happier, earn more money, get a bank loan with a lower interest rate and marry a good-looking and highly educated spouse.
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How We Know You (Might Be) Lying
Forbes: Few topics in psychology get as much attention as the telltale signs of deception. The emphasis on this topic has intensified tenfold over the last decade in response to terrorism, and a great deal of research has been initiated by Homeland Security, police departments and other security agencies as a means to inform and train their personnel. One of the leading researchers in this field is UCLA professor of psychology R. Edward Geiselman. His studies have served as the basis for training thousands of detectives, intelligence officers, police officers, and military personnel. Read the full story: Forbes
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Basic Human Nature: Can It Be Changed?
The Wall Street Journal: "You can't change human nature." The old cliché draws support from the persistence of human behavior in new circumstances. Shakespeare's plays reveal that no matter how much language, technology and mores have changed in the past 400 years, human nature is largely undisturbed. Macbeth's ambition, Hamlet's indecision, Iago's jealousy, Kate's feistiness and Juliet's love are all instantly understandable. Recently, however, geneticists have surprised themselves by finding evidence of recent and rapid changes in human genomes in response to the pressures of civilization.
