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Cleverer still
The Economist: SCIENCE has few more controversial topics than human intelligence—in particular, whether variations in it are a result of nature or nurture, and especially whether such variations differ between the sexes. The mines in this field can blow up an entire career, as Larry Summers found out in 2005 when he spoke of the hypothesis that the mathematical aptitude needed for physics and engineering, as well as for maths itself, is innately rarer in women than in men. He resigned as president of Harvard University shortly afterwards.
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On Facebook, Bad With the Good
The New York Times: Like many women these days, Aran Hissam, 35, of Melbourne, Fla., posted the news that she was pregnant on Facebook. On the morning of an ultrasound last year, she debated on the site whether to learn the baby’s sex, musing “to peek or not to peek?” When she failed to post an update later that day, friends started to contact her. Ms. Hissam decided to return to Facebook to share the news that her unborn baby, a girl, had been found to have fetal hydrops and given no chance of survival. “I wanted to communicate the news to get people off my back,” Ms. Hissam said in a telephone interview recently.
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Americans increasingly stuff holiday stockings with gifts for themselves
The Washington Post: They say it’s better to give than to receive, but They haven’t been to the mall lately. Americans are doing more and more holiday shopping for themselves, data over the last decade show, even as planned gift-buying for family members has stayed steady (sorry friends and co-workers, your numbers are down). The reasons are complicated, including a recession that’s transformed what used to be a magical few days of strolling past Santa-themed window displays into a weeks-long, competitive fire sale.
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The Science of Finding the Perfect Christmas Gift
LiveScience: For all of recorded history, people have been giving presents for a myriad of reasons: to show affection, curry favor, or fulfill familial duty. And the custom goes beyond the human species. Even family cats are known to bequeath presents of dead mice or birds on their owners. There's also regifting — recycling a gift you've received previously — which new research in the journal Psychological Science suggests may not be as offensive as once thought, at least to the gift giver.
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Compassion & Business Conference
The Compassion & Business Conference will be held Tuesday, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 from 8:00am to 4:00pm at Stanford University. For more information visit ccare.stanford.edu/?page_id=226&ee=68.
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Getting the Cold Shoulder
The New York Times: In “Jealous Guy,” John Lennon described his heart-aching insecurity as “shivering inside.” In “The Rain Song,” Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant bemoaned, “I’ve felt the coldness of my winter.” And in “It Will Be Lonely This Christmas,” the ’70s band Mud crooned desperately, “It’ll be cold, so cold, without you to hold.” The poets were right about the chill of isolation and rejection — more, perhaps, than even they knew: when a person feels lonely or is being excluded by others, his or her skin literally becomes colder. For the past several years, our lab has been studying just how people respond to exclusion and other social interactions.
