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Social environment linked to gay teen suicide risk
Reuters: Lesbian, gay and bisexual teens are five times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers - but those living in a supportive community might be a little better off, according to a new study. The findings, published online today in Pediatrics, showed that lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) teens living in counties with a high proportion of gay and lesbian couples, and those who went to schools with gay-straight alliances and anti-discrimination policies, were less likely to attempt suicide than LGB teens living in less accepting environments. Read the Whole Story: Reuters
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Sad in the spring? Allergy-mood link is real
CNN: You know spring has sprung when hundreds of people daily turn to Twitter to vent about their itchy eyes, dripping nose and uncontrollable sneezing and coughing. And if it's not obvious that allergies can ruin a person's day, watch how many tweets go by that use "allergies" and the f-word in the same sentence. Seasonal allergies, which affect about 36 million Americans, aren't just an annoyance; many doctors agree there is a real connection between allergies and mood. "'Cranky' is really the best word for it," says Katie Ingram, 30, of Alexandria, Virginia, a triathlete who suffers seasonal allergies. "I take a lot of medication for it and that makes me sleepy.
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Two Sides of Emotional Intelligence
People often assume that having good emotional intelligence makes you a better person. Not so, say the authors of a study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Emotional skills can be used for good or for evil—for the betterment of the group or for humiliating your coworkers. A popular book on emotional intelligence that came out in the mid 1990s equated emotional intelligence with good character.
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The Possibilian
THE NEW YORKER: When David Eagleman was eight years old, he fell off a roof and kept on falling. Or so it seemed at the time. His family was living outside Albuquerque, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. There were only a few other houses around, scattered among the bunchgrass and the cholla cactus, and a new construction site was the Eagleman boys’ idea of a perfect playground. David and his older brother, Joel, had ridden their dirt bikes to a half-finished adobe house about a quarter of a mile away. When they’d explored the rooms below, David scrambled up a wooden ladder to the roof.
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Quantum physicist, social psychologist among this year’s Killam Prize winners
The Globe and Mail: The Canada Council for the Arts calls it this country’s Nobel Prize. And today, the Killam Prize recognized five more of Canada’s finest academics for their devoted work to scientific and scholastic research over their lifetime, from an oft-quoted social psychologist to a humanitarian doctor. Winners of the $100,000 prize, rewarded for research in health sciences, engineering, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, were announced Wednesday. The prize is one of the country’s most distinguished, its limited number reserving it only for the best minds in Canada. Past winners say the prestige of the award speaks for itself. “It’s not simply an academic prize.
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Matter Over Mind
The New York Times: Over the next few weeks, this blog may have a distinct Harvard bias. This is not only because I am kissing up to the alpha school, but recently I had a fantastic visit to the Harvard Decision Science Lab, run by Jennifer Lerner, and I got to meet several of the researchers there. For example, I got to hear Amy Cuddy of the Harvard Business School, describe her research. I pause to describe Cuddy’s background because I’ve been struck by the number of people I meet in the general field of brain and behavioral research who have suffered some form of personal trauma. Daniel Kahneman is one of the several senior figures in the field who survived the Holocaust.
