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Worse Weather Pushes People to Social Media
New research shows that people post more on social media when bad weather hits, sometimes even more than during large social events in the United States.
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How COVID Shaped a Resilient Generation of Kids
As COVID surged and schools across the U.S. shuttered in March 2020, Jamie Wyss, an elementary school counselor at the Virginia Beach City Public Schools system in Virginia, vividly remembers quickly assembling paper packets on social-emotional learning to hand out to parents. She initially thought students and staff would return in a week, maybe two. But neither parents nor students would come back to the system’s campuses for the rest of the school year. ...
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Mastery of Language Could Predict Longevity
A recent study has linked longevity specifically to verbal fluency, the measure of one’s vocabulary and ability to use it.
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Why Are Girls Less Likely to Become Scientists?
Despite years of programs to get girls to code and to pair female scientists with mentors, men outnumber women two-to-one in STEM—science, technology, engineering and math—jobs. The gender gaps are especially wide in some of the fastest-growing and best-paying fields, such as computer science and engineering. ... A study of more than 70,000 high-school students in Greece, published in the Journal of Human Resources in 2024, found that girls on average outperformed boys in both STEM and non-STEM subjects but rarely pursued STEM in college if they were just as strong in other things.
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Think You Understand Your Dog? Think Again.
She was inspired by studies that explore how context clues affect people’s perceptions of others’ emotions. She was also inspired by a distinctly pandemic-era technology: Zoom. The video conferencing software has a feature that blurs out workers’ backgrounds. Ms Molinaro and her adviser, Clive Wynne — a canine-behavior expert at Arizona State — began to wonder if they could do something similar, creating videos that allowed people to see a dog’s behavior without seeing what was unfolding around it. ... “There’s no evidence at all that people actually see the dog,” Dr. Wynne said.
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Are Ultraprocessed Foods Addictive?
Over the last decade or so, research has revealed a clear pattern: People tend to overeat ultraprocessed foods. This could be one reason they’re linked with weight gain and obesity. ... As recently as eight years ago, such a concept was highly controversial, said Ashley Gearhardt, an addiction researcher at the University of Michigan. She described being heckled onstage at a scientific conference in 2017 for suggesting that some ultraprocessed foods may act as addictive substances. Now, she said, more researchers have started coming around to the idea.
