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Why YouTube Videos Go Viral
New York Magazine: Half of all YouTube videos have fewer than 500 views, but a tiny fraction of the 100 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute garner millions of hits, turning amateur filmmakers into stars or launching viral marketing campaigns. Recently, a video of a New York woman getting catcalled posted by the advocacy group Hollaback! became an internet sensation. A video of men trying to lure a drunk woman home went viral last week, before it was revealed to be a hoax. A few days ago, a clip of a man singing “Blackbird” to his dying son started making the rounds. ...
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When Thankfulness Can Hurt Us
U.S. News & World Report: Todd Kashdan, a psychology professor at George Mason University, is one of those guys. The good kind. The type who, when the waiter brings the check, doesn’t miss a beat and offers his credit card before his friends do. But sometimes, one of Kashdan’s friends takes the gesture as a challenge and insists on paying the bill himself. That’s where things can go wrong. Instead of “thank you” and “you're welcome,” it’s “I got it” and “no, no, no, I got it.” Instead of warmth and appreciation, it’s discomfort and confusion.
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Complex jobs ‘may protect memory’
BBC: A study of more than 1,000 Scottish 70-year-olds found that those who had had complex jobs scored better on memory and thinking tests. One theory is a more stimulating environment helps build up a "cognitive reserve" to help buffer the brain against age-related decline, The research was reported in Neurology. The team, from Heriot-Watt University, in Edinburgh, is now planning more work to look at how lifestyle and work interact to affect memory loss. Those taking part in the study took tests designed to assess memory, processing speed and general thinking ability, as well as filling in a questionnaire about their working life.
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Debate Persists Over Diagnosing Mental Health Disorders, Long After ‘Sybil’
The New York Times: The notion that a person might embody several personalities, each of them distinct, is hardly new. The ancient Romans had a sense of this and came up with Janus, a two-faced god. In the 1880s, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” a novella that provided us with an enduring metaphor for good and evil corporeally bound. Modern comic books are awash in divided personalities like the Hulk and Two-Face in the Batman series. Even heroic Superman has his alternating personas.
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Cornell’s Stephen Ceci on Changing Landscape for Women in Academic Science
Psychological scientist Stephen Ceci is the H. L. Carr Chaired Professor of Developmental Psychology at Cornell University. His research focuses on a range of subjects, including cognitive development of children’s memory, intelligence, and women and academic science. Below is a Q&A with Ceci on his recent report, Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. What advice, if any, would you give parents to encourage their daughters on a path to the fields of geoscience, engineering, economics, mathematics, and physical sciences (GEEMP)?
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What Makes a Child an Art Prodigy?
The Atlantic: Stand before any abstract painting—try a Jackson Pollock or a Cy Twombly— and it’s inevitable someone will say: My child could have done that. For many, the dripping splatters or scribbles seem haphazard and simplistic, not unlike something an average toddler might do with a set of finger paints. And as contemporary art becomes more conceptual, it’s harder to know what makes a piece of art great: the object itself, the story behind it, or both?
