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Lifelong Learning: Times Ideas and Resources for Keeping Your Brain Sharp
The New York Times: A much-e-mailed article in the most recent issue of Education Life looks at research on why and how challenging the brain — whether via reading, getting a college degree, attending lectures, writing or doing puzzles — can keep one’s mind sharp for a lifetime: …one essential element of mental fitness has already been identified. “Education seems to be an elixir that can bring us a healthy body and mind throughout adulthood and even a longer life,” says Margie E. Lachman, a psychologist at Brandeis University who specializes in aging.
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Mothers who nurture, not spoil children, raise healthier adults
Examiner: In Utah County, it's hard to go anywhere without seeing an expectant mother. Utah women top all other states in fertility with an average of 2.6 children per woman, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau. Mothers deserve tribute for the many skinned knees they treated on the playground, the countless sporting and extracurricular events they cheered at for their children and the countless hours spent caring for sick children. Now scientists, who published their research in the journal Psychological Science, January 23, 2012, assert that all that nurturing by your mother may have contributed to better health as an adult.
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Notre carte intérieure est orientée vers le nord
Yahoo France: Les géographes occidentaux ont finalement bien raison d'orienter leur carte routière ou touristique en faisant correspondre le haut de ces cartes avec le nord. En tout cas, ce choix s'est ancré dans notre cerveau, au point de nous permettre de ne pas nous perdre, comme l'a constaté une équipe allemande de l'Institut Max-Planck de Tübingen dans la revue Psychological Science mise en ligne le 29 décembre. Read the whole story: Yahoo France
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Decisions: We’re maxed out say Montreal researchers
The Montreal Gazette: One has to wonder whether Liberal MP Justin Trudeau might have been suffering from a bout of decision fatigue when he launched an s-bomb on Environment Minister Peter Kent during Question Period in mid-December. Parliament was in its final days of a five-week session and Trudeau had recently been under attack for his views on abortion and the long-gun registry. The mental work of parliamentarians can wear them down, leading to slip-ups in self-control. It's a form of mental distress recently labeled by psychologists as decision fatigue.
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Yes, It Is Possible To Be Happy With Spending Less
Business Insider: Increased consumer spending has become an obsession with the economic-recovery crowd. Such spending accounts for 70 percent of the U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, or GDP. Therefore, the thinking goes, consumer spending must rise if the economy and stubbornly high unemployment rate are to recover. Some pundits even muse about consumer spending being a particularly American form of patriotism. Read the whole story: Business Insider
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Powerful People Feel Taller Than They Are
After the huge 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the chairman of BP referred to the victims of the spill as the “small people.” He explained it as awkward word choice by a non-native speaker of English, but the authors of a new paper published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, wondered if there was something real behind it. In their study, they found that people who feel powerful tend to overestimate their own height—they feel physically larger than they actually are. “Maybe there’s a physical experience that goes along with being powerful,” says Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell University, who cowrote the paper with Michelle M.
