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Be generous: It’s a simple way to stay healthier
Chicago Tribune: If there's a magic pill for happiness and longevity, we may have found it. Countless studies have found that generosity, both volunteering and charitable donations, benefits young and old physically and psychologically. The benefits of giving are significant, according to those studies: lower blood pressure, lower risk of dementia, less anxiety and depression, reduced cardiovascular risk, and overall greater happiness. ... Studies show that when people think about helping others, they activate a part of the brain called the mesolimbic pathway, which is responsible for feelings of gratification.
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A Technological Godsend to Counter Hearing Loss
The Wall Street Journal: The first time I clicked on my hearing aids’ telecoils, it seemed like magic. It was 1999 and my wife and I were sitting in a historic abbey on Scotland’s Isle of Iona. I had gradually become hard of hearing and had gotten my first hearing aid in my 40s, and the abbey wasn’t built with acoustics in mind. The amplified voice of the worship leader caromed off the stone walls, reverberating into a fog by the time it reached my ears. Then my wife noticed a sign with a capital T and an outline of an ear, which indicated that the abbey was wired with a “hearing loop” that could magnetically transmit sound from the PA system to the telecoils in my hearing aids.
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Are Women Better Tasters Than Men?
NPR: If, like me, you're an amateur taster of beer and wine, inevitably you've asked yourself why you don't taste that hint of raspberry or note of pine bark that someone else says is there. Genetics certainly have something to do with why we have different perceptions of tastes. Scientists have shown there's a genetic component to how we experience bitter and sweet flavors, as we've reported. And "supertasters," who seem to be born rather than made, are said to experience a lot of tastes more intensely. ... That said, Linda Bartoshuk, a professor at the University of Florida Center for Smell and Taste, has found that supertasting abilities are more common in women than in men.
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What Do Conspiracy Theories Do to Us?
New York Magazine: Conspiracy theories are all around us. Sometimes they're relatively harmless — concerns about Roswell aliens aren't having a major effect on public policy — and sometimes they're not: Something like 37 percent of Americans believe that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax, which has a pretty disastrous effect on the U.S.'s ability to contribute meaningfully to a potentially catastrophic problem. ... The author, Princeton University researcher Dr.
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A psychologist reveals ‘the single biggest predictor of human happiness’
Business Insider: When psychologist Arthur Aron was a graduate student in the 1960s, he was looking around for something to study for his dissertation. But he didn't want just any topic. He wanted to find one "that people thought couldn't be studied scientifically and then prove that it could be," he said. And then he fell in love — and that was all he could think about. It was hard, at first, for researchers to take Aron's study of love and romantic relationships seriously. "Early on," Aron told us, "it was a topic on the margins." But it quickly became clear that it deserved a closer, more scholarly look. Read the whole story: Business Insider
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Mischel, Other Golden Goose Awardees, to Be Honored in DC
The fourth annual Golden Goose Awards ceremony will be held Sept. 17 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with APS Past President Walter Mischel and two other psychological scientists among the 2015 honorees. The final group of awardees was announced today. Joel E. Cohen, a mathematical population biologist, and Christopher Small, a geophysicist, are being honored for their groundbreaking work on “hysopgraphic demography” – the study of how human populations are distributed by altitude and how that exposes them to varied geophysical and biological hazards.
