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[Retracted] Feeling Blue and Seeing Blue: Sadness May Impair Color Perception
This story was removed on November 5, 2015 because the research report on which it is based has been retracted. The full retraction notice is available online: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/26/11/1822.full
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Conversation Piece
The Chronicle of Higher Education: These quotations, in their various ways, get to a deceptively simple truth about good writing. That is, it should be similar to speech, but … The “but” is expressed by Sterne in “properly managed,” by Steffens in “would,” by Wilder in “the impression,” by Maugham in “should” and “well-bred.” Everyone knows that pure speech doesn’t work on the page. Transcribe any conversation (except maybe one between John Updike and Clive James) and you will see rampant halts and starts, “um”s and “uh”s, redundancies, ellipses, grammatical solecisms, and all manner of infelicities. ...
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Relax: Daycare Doesn’t Make Kids Aggressive!
Parenting: Parents who work tend to stress about sending their children to daycare. But a new study involving almost 1,000 Norwegian children enrolled in daycare found that spending time in childcare settings had little impact on aggressive behavior. The majority of families need a duel income these days (and, of course, single parents heading back to work after baby need childcare, too) — which means many babies and kids are sent to daycare. In Norway, super-lucky parents have up to a year of parent leave, so children in that country rarely start attending daycare before they are 9 months old.
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Is “Baby Brain” a Myth?
Scientific American: As many as four out of every five pregnant women say that they suffer from “pregnancy brain”—deficits in memory and cognitive ability that arise during pregnancy, making women more forgetful and slow-witted. Yet studies on the phenomenon have generally not supported these claims: although some have found evidence of problems on certain types of tasks, others, including a recent paper published by researchers in Utah, have found no signs of cognitive problems at all. ...
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People Love Your Sarcasm, Really
The Wall Street Journal: When Richard Laermer walked into an eyeglass store in Paris, he was surprised to find fewer than 10 frames for sale, each displayed on top of its own large pedestal. He looked for another room or some sign of a second floor. But that was it. A clerk stopped dusting. “Hmmm?” he asked. Mr. Laermer says he couldn’t resist his reply: “Don’t mind me,” he told the clerk. “I’m sure I’ll find something in the 30 seconds it will take to look over your inventory.” Mr. Laermer was shown the door. Does sarcasm have a place in polite conversation? ... Sarcasm has many uses, depending on the degree of sharpness.
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Preterm Birth Linked With Lower Math Abilities and Less Wealth
People who are born premature tend to accumulate less wealth as adults, and a new study suggests that this may be due to lower mathematics abilities. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that preterm birth is associated with lower academic abilities in childhood, and lower educational attainment and less wealth in adulthood. "Our findings suggest that the economic costs of preterm birth are not limited to healthcare and educational support in childhood, but extend well into adulthood,” says psychological scientist Dieter Wolke of the University of Warwick in the UK.
