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Cities try to cut the fat with weight-loss programs
Los Angeles Times: Ten pounds can seem like a hundred when you're trying to lose weight. So just think how Oklahoma City residents must feel. They're looking to lose a million. Across the country, mayors have been urging their citizens to downsize themselves. The goal in Philadelphia: Drop 76 tons of rotundity in 76 days. (Didn't happen.) In Louisville, Ky.: Pare off 100,000 pounds of pudge over a summer. (Didn't happen.) In Corpus Christi, Texas: Dispose of 50,000 pounds of avoirdupois in a year. (Could happen: This campaign is just getting started.) Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times
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Children’s Genetic Potentials Are Subdued by Poverty
Children from poorer families do worse in school, are less likely to graduate from high school, and are less likely to go to college. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that these differences appear surprisingly early: by the age of 2. It's not a genetic difference. Instead, something about the poorer children's environment is keeping them from realizing their genetic potentials. Past research has found that a gap between poor children and children from wealthier families opens up early in life, even before children enter formal education.
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The Myth of Joyful Parenthood
Raising children is hard, and any parent who says differently is lying. Parenting is emotionally and intellectually draining, and it often requires professional sacrifice and serious financial hardship. Kids are needy and demanding from the moment of their birth to... well, forever. Don't get me wrong. I love my children dearly, and can't imagine my life without them. But let's face the facts: Study after study has shown that parents, compared to adults without kids, experience lower emotional well-being -- fewer positive feelings and more negative ones -- and have unhappier marriages and suffer more from depression.
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Weighing the Costs of Disaster: Consequences, Risks, and Resilience in Individuals, Families, and Communities
A scientific review shows that a psychological intervention commonly employed to help victims who have just experienced a disaster lacks evidence supporting its effectiveness and may actually be harmful.
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Centuries of Sailors Weren’t Wrong: Looking at the Horizon Stabilizes Posture
Everybody who has been aboard a ship has heard the advice: if you feel unsteady, look at the horizon. For a study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers measured how much people sway on land and at sea and found there's truth in that advice; people aboard a ship are steadier if they fix their eyes on the horizon. Thomas A. Stoffregen of the University of Minnesota has been studying "body sway" for decades—how much people rock back and forth in different situations, and what this has to do with motion sickness.
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The ‘flagellation effect’: Can pain compensate for immorality?
Many religious traditions have pain rituals, and some of them are grotesque. Some Shia Muslims whip themselves with zangirs, whips made of knife blades, until their backs are red with blood. In the Hindu ritual of kavadi, believers use meat hooks and skewers to pierce their legs, face and tongue. In Christianity, “mortification of the flesh” dates back to the original teachings, and practices range from wearing hair shirts and chains to various forms of self-flagellation, even self-castration. Pain purifies. It atones for sin and cleanses the soul. Or at least that’s the idea. But is there any psychological truth to this notion?
