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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.
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ADHD a challenge for young athletes
Gazette.Net: Joshua Wooten is enjoying his freshman season on the tennis team at Crossland High School this spring. As one of millions of people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Wooten has endured numerous academic and social challenges, but he has found participating in sports therapeutic. Experts say it's important for coaches and parents of children with ADHD to understand the condition before a child begins playing organized sports. "The reality is that anybody that's coaching youth sports either has an athlete with ADHD or will have one," said Dr. Diane Finley, a professor of psychology at Prince George's Community College who holds a Ph.D.
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I Like Your Face—but why? A New Computer Model Pinpoints the Reasons
Whether you’re dating, job seeking, or running for office, an attractive face can get you far. But what makes a face attractive? Most studies have found we’re drawn to “average” faces, as well as those whose features fit conventionally with one gender or the other—“masculinity” in men, “femininity” in women. Except, that is, when we’re drawn to “feminine” male faces—or our reactions are mixed. Psychologists Christopher P. Said of New York University and Alexander Todorov of Princeton University surmised that attractiveness is more complex than those two qualities. So they designed a computer model to tease out and measure the complexities.
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Eighty Years Along, a Longevity Study Still Has Ground to Cover
The New York Times: After reading “The Longevity Project,” I took an unscientific survey of friends and relatives asking them what personality characteristic they thought was most associated with long life. Several said “optimism,” followed by “equanimity,” “happiness,” “a good marriage,” “the ability to handle stress.” One offered, jokingly, “good table manners.” In fact, “good table manners” is closest to the correct answer. Cheerfulness, optimism, extroversion and sociability may make life more enjoyable, but they won’t necessarily extend it, Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin found in a study that covered eight decades. The key traits are prudence and persistence.
