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Munching Through Life’s Travails
The Huffington Post: The world is divided into Munchers and Skippers. I'm a Skipper, which means that, when living gets stressful, I stop eating. I don't snack. I skip meals. Munchers, on the other hand, invented comfort food. It doesn't matter whether it's Chunky Monkey or Doritos or cheeseburgers. Calories are taken like a tonic against life's mishaps. Traditionally, Munchers have been viewed as more pathetic than Skippers -- and more of a problem. Feeding on calorie-dense foods shows lack of self-discipline, and leads to unhealthy weight gain. And given our high-stress modern lives, it's likely that anxious munching is contributing to the nation's obesity epidemic.
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Hunger and Hoarding
Suzanne Collins’ futuristic trilogy, The Hunger Games, takes place in Panem, a totalitarian nation of obscene wealth and pervasive poverty. Its twelve districts are all impoverished, but District 12, the coal-mining region formerly called Appalachia, is the poorest of the poor. Citizens struggle to eke out a living in the mines, but hunger is the norm and the unfortunate routinely die of starvation. Panem is the opposite of a welfare state. There is no dole, no safety net—certainly no 47 percent. Indeed, there is no institutional sharing at all.
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Meeting Your Spouse Online May Lead to a Better Marriage
Scientific American: I met my husband at a party in a bygone era. He had no online profile. Neither did I. We didn’t trade email addresses, as neither of us had one of those either. He seemed like a good guy–and a party was as good a venue as any for meeting a future spouse. He still seems like a good guy and I rather doubt I would have done any better if I had dated online (assuming that had been an option). But I guess I’m old fashioned, as a new study suggests that, on average, we can do better if we find our spouse using a computer. In the decades since that long-gone, offline era, people have increasingly been using the Internet to search for compatible partners.
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Perfect Pitch May Not Be Absolute After All
People who think they have perfect pitch may not be as in tune as they think, according to a new study in which people failed to notice a gradual change in pitch while listening to music.
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Online Dating Really Can Lead to Love
Science: Millions of people first met their spouses through online dating. But how have those marriages fared compared with those of people who met in more traditional venues such as bars or parties? Pretty well, according to a new study. A survey of nearly 20,000 Americans reveals that marriages between people who met online are at least as stable and satisfying as those who first met in the real world—possibly more so. When online dating started gaining widespread attention a decade ago, many people considered it creepy. But after the exponential growth of dating websites such as Match and OkCupid, online dating has become a mainstream activity.
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The Influence of Family Dynamics: Mental Health of Colombian Dementia Caregivers
Megan E. Sutter of Virginia Commonwealth University is a 2013 RISE Research Award recipient. Sutter presented her research on “The Influence of Family Dynamics: Mental Health of Colombian Dementia Caregivers” at the 25th APS Annual Convention.
