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What’s Tylenol Doing to Our Minds?
The Atlantic: The active drug in Tylenol, acetaminophen, is one of the best medications we have for helping people in pain. It's also one the most commonly overdosed substances in the world and puts about 60,000 Americans in the hospital every year. Several hundred people in the U.S. will die in 2013 from liver failure after acetaminophen overdose. Tylenol isn't addictive like narcotics, and the kids don't take it to get high, which lends it an air of benignity and social acceptance not otherwise afforded to many pain medications. When people overdose on pills like Vicodin or Percocet, though, which contain acetaminophen, it's that component that often does the most damage. ...
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Fool yourself out of your fear of public speaking
NBC: You're on a stage, lights hot and glaring, watching the large audience you’ll soon be addressing file in. How is your body reacting? You’re most likely jittery, your heart pounding through your rib cage and your breath quickening. Your legs may very well be able to run a marathon at this moment. And—oh great—your mouth just became super dry. These reactions are not exactly conducive to standing in place and addressing a crowd, right? You’re not alone. Fear of public speaking, or glossophobia, is estimated to affect 75 percent of adults. But such reactions, as it turns out, are the body’s natural way of helping us cope with stressful situations.
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What David Lynch And Tylenol Can Tell You About The Brain
NPR: Even for a hardcore David Lynch fan, the idea that a film of his would be used to weird people out in a psychology experiment is a tad weird. But it gets much stranger than that — fast. Imagine the experiment involved testing whether Tylenol could help people overcome the angst triggered by a four-minute dose of Lynch. A related experiment tested Tylenol's effect on people asked to write about what happens to their bodies after they die. At the University of British Columbia, psychologists went both places. Their findings: Tylenol may relieve more than physical pain; it may just dull existential aches, too. The results were by the journal Psychological Science.
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You’re Lying to Yourself About How Good Your Future Will Be
Smithsonian Magazine: In the long run, we all can look forward to pretty bleak futures. Whether the final ‘game over’ arrives in the form of a car wreck, a terminal illness, a heart attack or just old age in the end we all meet our end. Yet many of us look forward to happy futures, both on the short and long term. According to new research published in the journal Psychological Science, our ability to remain optimistic despite all the bad things that could and likely will happen to us hinges upon our tendency to assume those calamities will befall others, not ourselves. Read the whole story: Smithsonian Magazine
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To Attract More Girls to STEM, Bring More Storytelling to Science
Scientific American: Women and girls are historically underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields and much has been written lately about why girls in school seem disinterested in these areas. As STEM becomes more important in our increasingly interconnected global society, it becomes even more imperative that educators find ways to encourage girls to participate in these fields. A few weeks ago, researchers at the Universities of Pittsburgh and Michigan released the results of a study that reflected many girls’ antipathy toward all things STEM.
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Survey: Young people who use social media seek fame
USA Today: Tweens and young teens who use social media place a higher value on fame than kids who don't use it or use it infrequently, according to a new survey of media use among those ages 9-15. "Kids who claim they want to be famous use more media," says lead author Yalda Uhls, a researcher at UCLA's Children's Digital Media Center, who will present the study Friday at a meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Seattle. Of the 334 young people surveyed online with their parents' permission, almost half say they use social networks; among the under-13 age group, 23% use a social networking site; 26% of the younger group say they have a YouTube account.
