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Short Course in Obesity Research
A 5-day short course on "Strengthening Causal Inference in Behavioral Obesity Research" will be hosted at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from July 20, 2015–July 24, 2015. Identifying causal relations among variables is fundamental to science. Obesity is a major problem for which much progress in understanding, treatment, and prevention remains to be made. Understanding which social and behavioral factors cause variations in adiposity and which other factors cause variations is vital to producing, evaluating, and selecting intervention and prevention strategies.
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ARPA-E New Funding Opportunity Announcement
ARPA-E has released a Funding Opportunity Announcement for its newest program, Traveler Response Architecture using Novel Signaling for Network Efficiency in Transportation (TRANSNET). The program aims to optimize energy efficiency in multimodal, urban transportation networks (e.g., personal vehicles, buses, light rail, etc.). Transportation systems are responsible for more than 25% of domestic energy use, but currently no one is exploring holistic solutions to optimizing energy use throughout the entire network.
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The Sound of Status: People Know High-Power Voices When They Hear Them
Being in a position of power can fundamentally change the way you speak, altering basic acoustic properties of the voice, and other people are able to pick up on these vocal cues to know who is really in charge, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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<em>Perspectives</em> Provides Strategies for Maximizing Informational Value of Research
It’s an exhilarating time in psychological science, as momentum continues to build toward improving research standards and practices across the field. A special section in the November issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science is part of an ongoing effort to involve researchers in this movement by providing a set of cutting-edge strategies that can be used to improve the way research is conducted and evaluated.
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Hard To Think Straight: Processing Prejudice
We all have a bit of irrationality in us. Even if we think of ourselves as logical and deliberative, we still make decisions and judgments, based not entirely on the facts of the matter, but upon seemingly inconsequential information, random cues that we take from the world around us. Some of our irrational thinking is just quirky. For example, simply reading food labels in a difficult-to-read typeface can make us more fearful of food additives, while an easy-to-read label can diminish our perception of risk. We are more reluctant to ride roller coasters—and even to invest in new companies—with difficult-to-pronounce names.
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How to Maximize the 2 Most Productive Hours of the Day
Inc.: Wake up, smell the coffee, and get right to work. That should be your new mantra to start the day, according to Dan Ariely, a Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics. This week, Ariely conducted an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit where he revealed that generally people are most productive during the first two hours after becoming fully awake. Unfortunately, most people's morning routines and work schedules are not designed to maximize this bright-and-early potential. The first things we cross off our list in the mornings are the mindless tasks to prepare for the day ahead. Read the whole story: Inc.
