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Behind A Diagnosis of March Madness
The Wall Street Journal: From the point of view of a non-sports-fan, March Madness looks like the month when many people actually go mad. Fans parade by in crazy hats and face paint. You go to a nice cafe for lunch and some other diner screams "Go Orange!" for Syracuse University—and instead of getting escorted from the premises is joined by a dozen other fans who look up and chant in unison, "Go Orange!" Strangers on the street ask what you think about something called Florida Gulf Coast University.
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Number Of Early Childhood Vaccines Not Linked To Autism
NPR: A large new government study should reassure parents who are afraid that kids are getting autism because they receive too many vaccines too early in life. The study, by researchers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, found no connection between the number of vaccines a child received and his or her risk of autism spectrum disorder. It also found that even though kids are getting more vaccines these days, those vaccines contain many fewer of the substances that provoke an immune response. ... Autism Speaks, a major advocacy and research group, seems ready to move beyond the vaccine issue.
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Following Your Bliss, Right Off the Cliff
The New York Times: So you want to be a writer. Or an artist. Or to open a cupcake shop. What you’ll hear, often, is that you should pursue your dream. Follow your passion. Quit your job and live the life you want. That advice should come with a bright yellow warning sticker: your dream may end in disaster. ... “There’s a whole host of what my colleague Shelley Taylor” — a psychology professor at U.C.L.A. —“calls positive illusions,” said Professor Fox. “We overestimate our ability to control outcomes that have some element of chance” and we “tend to overestimate the extent to which good things are going to happen, especially to us.” Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Does studying science make you a better person?
Pacific Standard: That’s the implication of newly published research, which finds people who study science — or who are even momentarily exposed to the idea of scientific research — are more likely to condemn unethical behavior and more inclined to help others. “Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms,” report psychologists Christine Ma-Kellams of Harvard University and Jim Blascovich of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Their research is published in the online journal PLOS One. The researchers describe four experiments, all conducted at UCSB, that back up their surprising conclusion.
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Body Representation Differs in Children and Adults
Children’s sense of having and owning a body differs from that of adults, indicating that our sense of physical self develops over time, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Many of our senses -- vision, touch, and body orientation -- come together to inform our perception of having and owning a body. Psychological scientist Dorothy Cowie of Goldsmiths, University of London and colleagues hypothesized that there might be age differences in how these processes come together.
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Is the Music of the ’60s Really the Best Ever?
I had the good fortune to come of age during the richest musical epoch—well, ever. The Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Dylan, Janis Joplin, Zappa. I could go on and on. The ‘60s witnessed an unparalleled burst of musical creativity, ranging from the Cream to CCR to Hendrix and to Neil Young and Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell. There is simply no match—not before nor since—for this outpouring of enduring song. And what’s more, nobody really disputes this. Okay, okay. I wrote all those superlatives in part to provoke a reaction. There are people who dispute this claim, and indeed some are among my own friends and family.
