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New Research about Eating, Sleeping, Eliminating and Snuggling
As Cleveland Cavaliers guard J. R. Smith has probably heard a few times at this point, you have to be solid in the fundamentals. For a basketball player, some of the fundamentals are dribbling, shooting and, as Smith learned the hard way, knowing the correct score with seconds to play in the first game of the NBA Finals. For the rest of us (who blissfully do dumb things without attracting worldwide attention), the major fundamentals include sleeping, eating, sex and eliminating. Fortunately, new scientific research has made key discoveries all these areas.
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You Should Actually Send That Thank You Note You’ve Been Meaning to Write
We want to let you know that we are grateful that you are taking the time to click on this headline. Because without you reading the story, what’s the point? We are now going to use your precious time to share a surprising new finding: People like getting thank you notes. --- The study, published last month in the journal Psychological Science, is an effort to fill a hole in the growing field of gratitude research. Numerous studies had documented a range of benefits to individuals who express gratitude, so then the question researchers turned to was — what’s holding people back?
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An Enormous Study of the Genes Related to Staying in School
When scientists publish their research, it’s rare for them to write an accompanying FAQ that explains what they found and what it means. It’s especially rare for that FAQ to be three times longer than the research paper itself. But Daniel Benjamin and his colleagues felt the need to do so, because they work on a topic that is frequently and easily misunderstood: the genetics of education. Over the past five years, Benjamin has been part of an international team of researchers identifying variations in the human genome that are associated with how many years of education people get. In 2013, after analyzing the DNA of 101,000 people, the team found just three of these genetic variants.
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NIH Delays Clinical Trials Policy Enforcement. Now What?
NIH has released a new notice announcing that it is delaying enforcement of clinical trials policies for basic behavioral research, but reviews say that this notice has created more confusion in the process.
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Efficient Learners May Remember More Over Time
Healthy adults who learn information more quickly than their peers also have better long-term retention for the material despite spending less time studying it, a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the
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Biracial People Play a Uniquely Positive Role Helping Americans Grapple With Race
White Americans are very good at avoiding the subject of race. "I don't see color—I treat everyone equally" is a common way to dismiss complaints about white privilege and systematic bias. New research reveals a large and growing group of fellow citizens are uniquely placed to break through this barrier to meaningful discussion: biracial individuals. It finds American whites are more likely to acknowledge race as significant if they have been exposed to people from mixed-race backgrounds. "The multiracial population's increasing size and visibility has the potential to positively shift racial attitudes," writes a research team led by Duke University psychologist Sarah E. Gaither.
