Your Lashes are the Length Nature Intended

by Natalie Shoemaker

Most make-up commercials push the idea that fuller lips, rosier cheeks, and longer lashes will up your sex appeal. Indeed, you may become more desired and beautiful. But science says you shouldn't play with what nature might consider perfection--the length of your lashes, they're the size they're supposed to be.

Isha Aran from Fusion writes that luscious lashes may be the envy of some women, but, according to science, your eyelashes shouldn't be meddled with. Recent research has found that mammals' eyelashes are supposed to be one-third the width of the eye. After looking into various animals from armadillos to snow leopards, the researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology found that all had lashes that were one-third the width of their eyes. They report this is the optimal length in order to keep tiny particles out, and control airflow and hydration.

In addition to their field studies, the researchers built and artificial eye in a small wind tunnel—meant to mimic similar conditions. They found that a lash that was one-third the width of the eye was able to divert dust and particles most effectively than other lengths.

So, rather than buying yet another product to help with your dry eyes after days of wearing mascara, consider ditching both. If science is right, a few days without the mascara could help clear up those dry eyes.

Read more at Fusion

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Coffee Could Be Holding Your Performance Back

by Natalie Shoemaker

Coffee is killing your performance, according to Dr. Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0. He writes for Inc that the side-effects of coffee have the ability to impair your emotional intelligence and overall performance. Bold words since the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee just broke its 40-year silence on coffee, deeming it safe for consumption—even stating that it could help prevent type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. However, Bradberry's article was published well-before the Advisory Committee released its dietary suggestions, but the evidence he puts forth doesn't change his argument.

Caffeine isn't killing you, as far as we know, but it could be hindering your performance and causing an undue amount of strain to your mental well-being, bringing down your performance. Bradberry cites a new study from Johns Hopkins Medical School, writing:

“... performance increases due to caffeine intake are the result of caffeine drinkers experiencing a short-term reversal of caffeine withdrawal. By controlling for caffeine use in study participants, John Hopkins researchers found that caffeine-related performance improvement is nonexistent without caffeine withdrawal.”

Bradberry also claims that caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline that he says is “great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you're responding to a curt email.” Your emotional intelligence then becomes impaired, causing you to become anxious and irritable. What's more, coffee has a half-life, staying in your system well-after you need it. So, say you drink a cup of Joe at 8am, you'll still have 25 percent of that coffee in your system by 8pm, and any coffee you consume after noon will be at 50 percent potency by the time you may be wanting to get some shut-eye. If it's still in your system, it could make it difficult to fall asleep or at the very least disrupt the quality of your sleep.

It's important to note that Bradberry doesn't provide links to the research he claims to cite, so it's uncertain if the research he writes about is credible. Then again that may be the coffee talking, trying to make any excuse not to give it up. It truly is an addiction.

Read more about why Bradberry believes coffee is killing performance at Inc.

Photo Credit: McKay Savage/Flickr

Scientific Journal Publishes Brief Papers (200 Words or Less)

by Natalie Shoemaker

Doing research is a nightmare sometimes. There's no network to connect with other researchers to collaborate or inform others of their work. It's kind of a mess. Grad students working on their thesis will be able to relate. Combing through journals and papers, trying to find of anyone has already worked on your topic—it's maddening. Physicist David Harris shares this sentiment, which is why he founded the Journal of Brief Ideas .

He said to The Scientist:

“There is intellectual capital locked up in the heads of scientists rather than circulating in the scientific community... people often get similar ideas around about the same time, frantically work on it for quite a long time, put a lot of resources into it, without even necessarily knowing if there are other people doing the exact same thing.”

The premise behind his site is for scientist to be able to quickly publish something akin to a hypothesis on their research (in 200 words or less). This would enable other scientists, who may be working on the same project, to connect—it's like a social network for research. It could also help settle any disputes on the “whose idea it was first” debate.

Also, researchers can receive feedback on their mini-hypotheses through the voting scheme on the site. However, it's uncertain how scientists will react to this new form of “publishing research”--if they even want to call it that.

Any published scientists out there? It would be wonderful to get your opinions on this new site.

Photo Credit: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade/Flickr

Pay Your Future-Self Forward, Stop Procrastinating

by Natalie Shoemaker

We view our future selves the same way we might see a stranger—unrecognizable. So, it might explain why we sometimes have issues taking our most pressing problems of the day and getting them under control, you know, right now.

Leigh Buchanan from Inc has some interesting ideas on the psychology of productivity. At one particular point in his post he describes how a disconnect to our future selves can be detrimental to our health and future productivity. The ease of delegating tasks our present selves would rather not work on at the moment can just be pushed off tomorrow. He writes:

"At its core, procrastination represents shoddy treatment of the one person who should matter most to you: the future you."

While the present-self gets to enjoy a neural boost by binge-watching House of Cards, the future-self is left with nothing but a stressed-out schedule, crammed with several days worth of tasks into one Friday afternoon. Buchanan looks to Timothy Pychyl, a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, to help provide potent advice. Pychyl has found in his own researcher that in order to address this kind of future-self abuse we must be mindful of our feelings. He says:

"So the first step is to have some awareness of how you are feeling. 'Why do I keep not wanting to do this?' "

These feelings can manifest as a lack of interest, inability to find meaning with what you're doing, or even as a fear of failure, but they're all mental barriers that keep us from getting what needs to be done today. For your future's sake, it's better to get what you need to now.

To read more about the psychology of productivity, check out Leigh Buchanan's article on Inc.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Smarter Product Design Could Help Reduce E-Waste

by Natalie Shoemaker

As laptops and tablets become thinner and smaller, they also become more cumbersome for machines to disassemble. E-waste is piling up in junkyards and, according to Sara Be​hdad, a product design analyst from the University of Buffalo, we can fix all of it with more mindful product design.

In an interview with Maddie Stone from Motherboard, Behdad cites thinning products as a major cause of increasing e-waste. These ever-slimming chassis may be a great way to attract sale, but these designs make it increasingly more difficult for automated disposal of computers, tablets, and smartphones. Behdad said to Stone:

“Disassembly [of thinner products] usually cannot be done automatically. If you want to recover components, you have to use manual labor.”

This issue has caused companies to choose between eco-friendly disposal or saving money. So, some resort to throw e-waste in the trash, which causes harmful chemicals, like lead and mercury, to seep into the soil.

The second e-waste concern is that some products aren't being resold, recycled, or thrown away—they're just sitting in homes, unused. Consumers are keeping their old smartphones. It's not terribly surprising, we all have a stash, anyone who says they don't is likely in denial. But the truth is we've all become hoarders in a way. There's no easy way to get rid of a smartphone without knowing that all your data has been wiped clean.

“People often don’t return their old cell phones because their data is on them. We thought; if you have two different designs, one with removable memory and one without, how would this affect the consumer’s likelihood to return the product?”

Behdad found in her research that smartphones with removable data storage were more likely to be recycled than one without. Consumers want to know they can turn their device in without having to worry about important contacts, passwords, and other personal data being recovered.

The issue of e-waste is a big one. The resources to make these devices will only continue to become more expensive as they become scarce if we aren't mindful about recycling devices. However, it's also up to companies to create designs that will help maintain its future for years to come.

Read more at Motherboard

Photo Credit: Curtis Palmer/Flickr

Unlocking the Mystery of Japan through the Art of the Kano

by Bob Duggan

Ever since American Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed into Uraga Harbor near Edo (the earlier name for Tokyo) on July 8, 1853, ending the isolationist policy of sakoku and “opening” (willingly or not) Japan to the West, “the Land of the Rising Sun” and its culture have fascinated Westerners. Yet, despite this fascination, true understanding of that history remains elusive. A new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano builds a cultural bridge for Westerners to Japan’s heritage through the art of the “Kano School,” a family of painters to the powerful who influenced all of Japanese art from the 15^th to the late 19^th century. Combining the sumptuousness of golden artworks with the compelling story of their makers, Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano offers the key to unlocking the mystery of Japan through the art of the Kano.

The story of the Kano begins with its founding figure, Kanō Masanobu (1434–1530). Like his contemporary, Sesshū, Kanō Masanobu drew inspiration from Chinese art, much as Western art drew inspiration from the classical worlds of Greece and Rome. Kanō Masanobu’s talents earned him the position of court artist to the Muromachi government, thus beginning the union of art and power that would mark the length of Kano influence. Kanō Masanobu trained his sons, most significantly Kanō Motonobu, what would be known as the Kano style, thus setting the precedent of passing down the style to the next generation of Kano (or, if no son proved talented enough, to a non-related, but talented student).

Kanō Motonobu’s grandson, Kanō Eitoku (1543–1590), not only continued the family business, but introduced the innovation of using gold leaf in the backgrounds of large paintings, a golden touch that appealed to their elite patrons. Kanō Eitoku’s grandson, Kanō Tan'yū (1602–1674), proved to be a child prodigy, earning a place as the official artist of the Tokugawa shogunate at the age of 15 to decorate castles and provide the “look” of power for 17^th century Japan. A contemporary of Rembrandt, Kanō Tan'yū set the standard for Kano artists for the remainder of the school’s existence.

Unfortunately for the Kano School, the “opening” of Japan to the West in the mid-19^th century meant the replacing of the shoguns they had served and the start of the Meiji period. “With the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1867,” project associate curator Kyoko Kinoshita writes in the catalogue, “criticism of the Kano artists—now extended to, and focused on, Tan'yū—reached a fever pitch as the country transformed from a feudal state into a modern nation.” Tan'yū and the Kano neatly symbolized the old ways to be rejected for the new. Despite some artists continuing the Kano tradition, such as Kanō Shōsenin (1823-1880), Kanō Hōgai (1828–1888), and Hashimoto Gahō (1835–1908), anti-Kano feeling lingered until recently, making Ink and Gold a recovery not just of a school of artists, but of an important piece of Japanese heritage.

One of the problems with delving into Japanese art is the similarity of style from artist to artist, something Westerners used to the “star” system of expressive individuality find difficult to understand. As Felice Fischer, Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art and senior curator of East Asian art at the PMA, points out in the catalogue’s preface, the rulers who patronized the Kano artists “had precise expectations and standards that the Kano artists were more than capable of fulfilling and maintaining, thanks to their exacting training program, which served to instill in successive generations the techniques and imagery that set the aesthetic standard.” The Kano helped create a “common cultural language,” Fischer asserts, that transcended individual artists as well as leaders to give the illusion of timeless permanence in an ever-changing world.

But if Ink and Gold does have a “star,” it’s clearly Kanō Tan'yū. From sliding doors to screens to fans, Tan'yū’s golden touch transformed the everyday into the eternal with equal parts precise and ethereal beauty. Farming scenes teem with Tan'yū’s tiny characters stretched across the four seasons. Screens by Tan'yū tell The Tale of Genji , Japan’s historically central piece of literature, with color and movement amid golden clouds. I stood before Tan'yū’s Mount Fuji and lost track of time staring at the iconic mountain rise from golden mists as the tops of green hills and trees emerge from below and a black crescent moon hangs over a nearby beach on which tiny figures begin to toil.

Walking through Ink and Gold, you’ll see many versions of Mount Fuji, including several by Tan'yū, but rather than having them melt together, the effect is similar to that of Cézanne’s long infatuation with Mont Sainte-Victoire. Just as not all of Cézanne’s mountains are created equal, neither are all Japanese versions of Mount Fuji. Ink and Gold helpfully restores this sense of Western-style personality to these pieces by giving prominence to the artist’s seals placed onto the paintings, going so far as to put Tan'yū’s gourd-shaped seal on the wall plate to allow the viewer to play a game of “Where’s Tan'yū?” The catalogue collects these seals in a valuable appendix to help the viewer connect individuals working within the tradition. Another user-friendly innovation in the exhibition space are kiosks containing sketch pads and pencils for patrons to try their own hand at mimicking the Kano style and, perhaps, coming away with a whole new appreciation for the training and talent that school (and its patrons) demanded.

The final rooms provide an elegiac coda on the fall and resurrection of the Kano school post-Meiji. Kanō Hōgai’s Two Dragons [in Clouds] (1885; shown above) came to the PMA’s collection thanks to the daughter of Ernest F. Fenollosa, an American philosophy professor who travelled to teach in Japan in 1878 but quickly fell under the spell of Japanese art, eventually studying with Kano practitioners to better understand the tradition. Fenollosa found himself not only collecting Kano art, but also defending it against its critics. Fenollosa’s faith in the value of Kano art to Japanese history eventually led him to become the first curator of Japanese art at the Museum of the Fine Arts, Boston.

But while Fenollosa fought to preserve the Kano tradition, he also introduced Kano artists to Western art ideas. As Fischer points out in the catalogue, Two Dragons [in Clouds]’s “sense of three-dimensionality and foreshortening of the dragons’ forms reflects Hōgai’s familiarity with and use of Western perspective.” Keeping up with the times, Hōgai’s dragons fly within a frame rather than on the hanging scroll format of the past. Like the two dragons in the picture, Eastern and Western aesthetics meet and grapple for creative co-existence. At the end of Ink and Gold, you wonder at what that union won, but mourn a little for what was lost in the exchange.

After you exit the exhibition Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano into the customary gift shop, you exit the gift shop and come face to face with the U.S. premier of 8K Super Hi-Vision, the latest in high-definition television provided courtesy of The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan. Looking at a resolution 16 times higher than the high definition currently available here, my eyes began to hurt, but my mind began to recognize just how appropriate it was to set this new way of seeing at the end of an exhibition about old ways of seeing. High-definition television (for better or worse) reigns as the “vision” of today’s elite, just as the ink and gold of the Kano artists once gave high definition to older ideals of power and culture. Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano may make your eyes hurt with golden visions of a foreign past, but it will also open your mind to the technique behind the Japanese mystique.

[Image: Two Dragons [in Clouds] , 1885. Kanō Hōgai, Japanese, 1828–1888. Ink on paper, framed, 35 1/2 x 53 1/4 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Moncure Biddle in memory of her father, Ernest F. Fenollosa.]

[Many thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for providing me with the image above from, a copy of the catalogue to, and a press pass to the exhibition Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano , which runs through May 10, 2015.]

[Please follow me on Twitter (@BobDPictureThis) and Facebook (Art Blog By Bob) for more art news and views.]

Use Caution Mimicing Tone, Body Language During a Job Interview

by Natalie Shoemaker

The art of the job interview is one of preparedness--constant rehearsal of possible questions and answers as well as picking out the perfect outfit to match the company's standards. But there are uncontrollable factors that some of us may not be able to predict or control, like our tendency to mirror someone we're trying to impress. In most cases, this copycatting works in our favor—people are more likely to walk away with a good impression of someone who has similar nonverbal mannerisms. But Melissa Dahl from NYMag points out that not all interviewers have the warmest disposition. So, what happens when you unconsciously mimic someone with a cold temperament?

She writes on a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that shows how an interviewer can negatively affect your own attitude and leave a bad impression.

The researchers write:

“Nonconscious behavioral mimicry of negative behaviors occurs in social interactions, is not always associated with positive outcomes, and serves as a process through which behavioral confirmation can occur.”

To test this idea, the researchers took 50 undergraduates and had them give a short speech about themselves for a mock job interview (to use for comparison after the fake job interview). They were then thrown into a room with an interviewer who either acted cold and bored or one that spoke in a more neutral tone.

Those students paired with the colder interviewer matched their tone and, as the job interview progressed, became less enthusiastic. As a way to give an impartial analysis of the interviews, researcher brought in a separate group (with no knowledge of the study's premise) to rate the meetings. This group found the negative-toned students didn't seem to want the job as much. Thus, the interviewer set the tone for how the encounter proceeded, creating a "self-fulfilling prophecy," according to the researchers.

It's good to keep this knowledge in mind before a job interview. Though, its uncertain how much control we have over these psychological impulses—no matter how mindful we may be of them.

Read more at NYMag

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Changing Climates May Have Helped Deliver the Black Death to Europe

by Natalie Shoemaker

Few plagues can claim such a high mortality rate as the Black Death—50 to 70 million dead in Europe alone and hundreds of millions worldwide. The people that lived through the ordeal would come to know it when it first traveled to Europe in 1347.

It's known that disease was carried by rats from the fleas that harbored the deadly bacteria--the fleas using rodent as their vehicles from boats to land, and then onward to crowded cities. But Kate Wheeling from Pacific Standard writes that Nils Christian Stenseth, a professor at the University of Oslo, has authored a new study that tells a more detailed tale of blame of how the Black Death came to Europe.

Stenseth does not dispute that rats and fleas were the main carriers. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, goes into quite a bit more detail in tracing back the footsteps of the outbreak. While most evidence of the plague has all but disappeared (save for something in a CDC bunker most likely), Stenseth used tree rings and historical data to tell and alternative story of how the plague came to Europe.

He believes that changing climates caused an outbreak in Asia that then migrated into Europe. Stenseth explains that when rat populations begin to fall from changing climates, the fleas who were hitching a ride will seek-out new hosts to avoid overcrowding on the scant rat population. So, they'll hop onto humans, and where the fleas go, so goes the Yersinia pestis—the bacteria that causes the plague.

The authors of the study took samples of tree rings to see if there were matches in the flare-ups of disease in Asia with climate shifts that would cause rodent populations to decline. Stenseth and his team of researchers discovered a 15 year lag between outbreaks in Asia and the disease-carrying rats migration to Europe. In other words, climate variations pushed the rats out of Asia for much more hospitable lands. So, they made their journey towards Europe, or wherever the trade ships carried them.

Stenseth said of his research:

“[It’s] quite interesting—and surprising—that the effect of climate variation in Asia can be seen so clearly in Europe more than 10 years later.”

Read more at Pacific Standard

Photo Credit: David Farrell/Flickr

Drinking Coffee Deemed Safe By the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committe

by Natalie Shoemaker

Good news for coffee drinkers across America, a U.S. government-appointed panel of scientists has found three to five cups a day doesn't pose any long-term health risks. In fact, a caffeine habit could even reduce risks of cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes. Just make sure you take it easy on the cream and sugar.

The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has been charged with updating guidelines that act as suggestions for other agencies to follow, such as the FDA and Department of Agriculture. Roberto A. Ferdman from The Washington Post reports that this decision has broken the committee's silence on coffee that's gone on for over 40 years. One member of the committee, Tom Brenna, a nutritionist at Cornell University, said to Ferdman:

“I don’t want to get into implying coffee cures cancer--nobody thinks that. But there is no evidence for increased risk, if anything, the other way around.”

Still, there's a nagging question as to how this committee came to this conclusion after all these years: How did they get their data? What studies did they review?

Nina Teicholz from the New York Times reported on just this the other day. She says that the ruling on no more than 400 mg of coffee a day along with the committees other dietary recommendations comes from mostly observational studies of large populations, making associative connections between two sets of data: diet and disease. But correlation doesn't always mean causation.

She reports on her mistrust of these studies, especially when she reads in this new set of guidelines that much of what was once forbidden has now been deemed healthy again.

So, before forwarding this article to silence friends and family who say your coffee addiction is bad for you, question the research methods. Ask if the science is sound.

Read Nina Teicholz's full thoughts and critiques on the recent report at the NYTimes. But if you're looking for an easy way to get your friends off your back about your coffee habit, send them to The Washington Post.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Neanderthals Also Divvied Up Some Chores by Gender

by Natalie Shoemaker

Turns out gender roles date as far back as 100,000 years. Erin Blakemore from the Smithsonian has picked up on an interesting bit of research, showing evidence of how our Neanderthal ancestors split the daily chores by sex—a revelation in the scientific community which has thought this kind of division was only typical of sapiens societies.

The Spanish National Research Council made these conclusions, published their research in the Journal of Human Evolutio,n after examining 99 incisors and canines from 19 individuals from three different work sites. So, how could one possibly glean what chores were done by looking at some teeth? Well, Neanderthals liked to use their mouths as kind of a third hand. Many of us still do so today, but not to the same extent.

The teeth in the female fossils showed deeper grooves than the males, showing a distinct split in tasks that would require a “third hand.” There were more nicks in the enamel and dentin portions of the upper incisors and canines of the males, whereas females displayed more imperfections in the lower portions of their teeth.The researchers note that they cannot make any certain conclusions as to what kind of work these teeth did, just that there was a division of tasks by sex. However, it's custom within the community to think that women were primarily responsible for preparing furs and crafting garments, while the males sharpened tools with their teeth. Though, the teeth show a limited view of the Neanderthals' day-to-day lives and activities. Almudena Estalrrich, Researcher at the Spanish National Museum of Natural Sciences, said in a press release:

"Nevertheless, we believe that the specialization of labor by sex of the individuals was probably limited to a few tasks, as it is possible that both men and women participated equally in the hunting of big animals.”

Read more at Smithsonian

Photo credit: Shutterstock

To Break Bad Habits, You Must Create New Ones

by Natalie Shoemaker

Rather than trying to focus on getting rid of a bad habit, it may be easier to try developing a new one (preferably one that's also positive, too).

Melissa Dahl from NYMag writes on an interview with Art Markman, a University of Texas at Austin psychologist, who has struggled forming his own positive habits and breaking his bad ones. In his interview with The Psychology Podcast he talks about the power of positive goals versus negative goals. For instance, say you don't want to bite your nails anymore:

“Because it’s something you don’t want to do. And the reason that that’s a problem is because your habit learning system is an active system. It wants to associate behaviors with the environment. If you say I don’t want to do something, then what you’re doing is focusing yourself on not acting.”

Markman says in his interview that it's much easier to learn something new than to break an old habit. So, the best way to break that bad habit is to replace it with a new one. Brett McKay from the Art of Manliness found his own research to break his habits, discovered his actions could be broken down into three steps: cue, routine, and reward.

In order to figure out what cue was driving routine to drink Mountain Dew in the afternoon, he tried replacing the habit with drinking water one day and going out for a walk the next. In his own tests, he found that the quick walk won out and helped him get that burst of energy he needed to get through the rest of the day. Likewise, Markman found he would bite his nails while he read. So, he got some toys and squish balls to play with, which did the trick—his hands simply required some occupation while he read.

Of course, changing these long-held habits does take some effort. Studies say it takes 66 days to form a new one. But with some mental trickery to recognize the routine you need to change in order to get that same feeling of reward, you'll be well on your way to forming a more productive, positive habit.

What bad habit have you conquered or wish to overcome? Sound off in the comments below.

Read more at NYMag

Photo Credit:

Teen Dads Risk Passing Genetic Mutations to Their Kids

by Natalie Shoemaker

Maggie Fox from NBC News reports that babies born of teen dads have an increased risk of birth defects. For very young parents, researchers say that the risk of mutation increases by 30 percent. Of course, that's a 1.5 percent risk bumped up to 2 percent risk. Still, people will usually opt for the better odds concerning the health and wellness of their children.

The research comes from Dr. Peter Forster of the University of Cambridge in Britain who led the study. His team didn't skimp on the data either, researchers looked into more than 24,000 parents and their offspring, ranging from age 10 to 70. In cases where the father of the child was 20 years or younger, the researchers found the child had many more mutations than those with older dads.

The risk of defects are comparatively low, but it would explain why mutations tend to occur more often in teen parents. Foster told NBC:

"However, for policymakers an increase in birth defects of half a percent across the population is a serious matter, and policymakers should continue to discourage teenage parenthood."

So, why are young fathers passing on these mutations more than older ones? Foster believes it has something to do with the germ cells. Women carry all the eggs they'll ever have from birth, whereas men continue to produce fresh sperm regularly.

There may be a connection with mutations and the sperm precursor cells, which men carry throughout their lives. There's still more research to be done on the subject, but the main take-away from this research is that men looking to procreate should do so between the ages of 20 to 35 in order to avoid a heightened risk of mutation.

Read more at NBC News

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

How Our Brains React to Weird Weather

by Natalie Shoemaker

Did you know that the United States is experiencing its sixth warmest winter on record? People in the northeastern and north-central parts of America may find that hard to believe—as most of us are trying to stay warm through week-long temperatures that hardly break 10 degrees Fahrenheit. As humans, MinuteEarth reports it's tough for us to stay objective when observing weather patterns.

In a recent video, the team covered how skewed our perspectives on weather can get depending on our political views, opinions on climate change, and recent weather experiences. So, when we ask ourselves “Is this weather getting weirder?” our personal experiences will be the main driver of our answer.

The video cites a very rainy season that UK residents experienced back in 2012. In some parts, citizens reported flooding. However, researchers found that those who were flooded said that they'd noticed wetter and wetter weather over the course of their lives, compared to those who did not experience any floods.

The video states:

“Rain or shine, our minds tend to prize their freshest impressions. But even when we experience the same weird weather events as other people, we don't always agree on how weird they actually were.”

Take the winter of 2012 for example, it was the 3rd warmest on record. But Americans who lived through it remained divided based on their view on climate change. Even after adjusting for these beliefs, there remained another divide—democrats were more likely to rate that winter as hotter than republicans.

For more examples on how everything from personal impressions to the news influence our views on climate change, check out the video from MinuteEarth.

Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr

Nostalgia Fosters Creativity, Openness

by Natalie Shoemaker

Are your prose suffering? Perhaps dig out an old yearbook, think about events from your past. If you want to get those creative juices flowing, you may need to get a little nostalgic (if recent research is correct).

Tom Jacobs from Pacific Standard summarized the new study that sought to find out if nostalgia helped to influence writing creativity and openness, and indeed it did. In their paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , the researchers conducted four experiments to find how strongly an exercise in nostalgia could boost creative thought.

In the first two 51 and 124 students were split into two groups. Half were told to "think of a past event that makes you feel nostalgic," and to immerse themselves in that experience in order to write about it for the next five minutes. The other half were told to think about an "ordinary experience" from their past and write about it as well.

Here's were the two experiments diverge: In order to test the effects of the exercise, researchers gave the first experimental group instructions to write a story featuring “a princess, a cat, and a race car." The other group was told to write a story where the first line began: "One cold winter evening, a man and a woman were alarmed by a sound coming from a nearby house."

The results revealed that those who were put in a nostalgic frame of mind were more creative.

In yet another experiment, researchers split a group of 106 online participants in half, asking one to write about a time they were lucky and the other to write about a nostalgic time in their lives. After a series of written creative tests and answering a series of statements to judge openness, the researchers found that the nostalgic group scored higher for openness and linguistic creativity.

The researchers write:

“The findings showcase the relevance of nostalgic reverie for the present and future, and establish nostalgia as a force of creative endeavors.”

Perhaps creative types must continue to suffer the past in order build linguistic marvels carved from the keyboard. After all, what better place to draw inspiration than from one's own mind.

Read more at Pacific Standard

Photo Credit: Damien McMahon/Flickr

The 2015 Exponential Leaders List

by DSN Editors

Disruptive innovation can be a polarizing force. Few companies can create it, but all companies feel its effect, some in ways that damage their business irreparably. Company leaders must understand how they can benefit from such change and need to see models of who has implemented it well.

In late January, DSN and Singularity University surveyed program participants about practices related to disruptive innovation. Using questions based on recent research in the field, respondents were asked to:

• 
  

  Identify best practices for disruptive innovation.

  
  




• 
  

  Identify a range of companies and nonprofit organizations, and their leaders excelling in disruptive innovation practices.

  
  




• 
  

  Identify effective leadership traits as well as which technologies have the most potential to disrupt businesses in the next five years.

  
  

Experimentation, feedback, and autonomy are especially important to foster disruptive innovation.

Respondents most frequently cited an ability to experiment and fail fast as one of the most important tools or practices to achieving such change, making it the only choice to be cited by a majority of participants. Staff autonomy and product feedback using “the crowd” were the second and third most cited requirements, painting a picture of short development cycles, ground-up innovation, and rapid readjustment.

QUESTION:

Which three of the following tools or practices do you think are most important in creating disruptive innovation?

Organizations are executing important disruptive innovation practices, but need to embrace more data and external resources.

When looking at disruptive innovation practices in their own organizations, respondents said that they were executing well on criteria that they deemed important, such as frequent reviews of key metrics (50%), staff autonomy (47%), and experimentation (36%). Fewer respondents said that their organizations were effectively using practices such as renting assets on demand (21%) and prizes and gamification (10%).

Respondents also identified practices at which their organizations could improve. The top two of these were predictive algorithms and prizes and gamification, both cited by over 40 percent of respondents.

QUESTION PART 1:

Which three [disruptive innovation tools or practices] do you think are being used most effectively in your organization?

QUESTION PART 2:

Which three [disruptive innovation tools or practices] do you think are being used least effectively in your organization?

Among younger companies, leaders at sharing-economy companies were deemed at the forefront of disruptive innovation.

Respondents cited leaders of companies such as Kickstarter, Uber, and Airbnb as most effective in driving disruptive innovation by a wide margin, with Yancey Strickler, Travis Kalanick, and Brian Chesky each being cited by about two out of five respondents. Chance Barnett, CEO of Crowdfunder, was cited by 23% of respondents.

QUESTION:

Which four of the following chief executives of young companies do you think are most effective in achieving disruptive innovation?

Among more established companies, respondents favored leaders who engaged in media and took big bets.

Eight of the 10 most cited CEOs creating disruptive innovation had some involvement in media businesses even if their core business model lay elsewhere. Examples included Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Starbucks’ Howard Schultz. Elon Musk, though, was respondents’ most popular choice, being named by half of respondents as one of the most innovative leaders in younger companies.

QUESTION:

Which four of the following chief executives of more established companies do you think are most effective in achieving disruptive innovation?

Nonprofit leaders touted by respondents were adept at disseminating content and resources from the crowd and distributing it on a massive scale.

Examples included TED leader Chris Anderson, who has expanded TED proliferation through programs such as TEDx. Salman Khan has democratized education with Khan Academy. And both the Gates Foundation and Doctors Without Borders have helped to foment medical progress around the world.

QUESTION:

Which four of the following leaders of nonprofits do you think are most effective in achieving disruptive innovation?

Integrity trumps other factors for effective leadership.

More respondents (30%) cited “acting with integrity” as the most important factor for effective leadership. However, respondents often cited other factors. One in four cited “embracing challenges and overcoming obstacles” — a trait consistent with the focus on experimenting and failing fast seen as key for disruptive innovation. In addition, 22% saw creating a positive work environment as the most effective trait.

QUESTION:

Which of the following practices do you think is most important in creating effective leadership?

3D printing, IoT, and AI seem best positioned to drive disruption in the next three years.

Disruptive innovation requires an understanding of emerging trends and technologies. The highest percentage (23%) of respondents identified advances in prototyping, additive manufacturing, and nanomaterials as having the most disruptive impact on business in the next three years. Sensors and the Internet of Things came in second, with 21% of respondents citing those technologies as having the potential to be the most disruptive.

While crowd feedback was ranked highly by respondents as key to disruptive innovation in other questions, only 9% of respondents cited crowdfunding and crowdsourcing as key to driving future disruption

QUESTION:

Which of the following technologies do you think will have the most disruptive impact on business in the next three years?

Midnight Snacking May Be Bad for Your Brain

by Natalie Shoemaker

Midnight snacking has been linked to numerous health issues from obesity to type-2 diabetes. But Adam Hoffman from The Smithsonian writes on a team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles have found new evidence showing how the late-night habit can damage the brain, by misaligning your natural sleep patterns and damaging areas that deal with memory and learning.

The team of researchers used two groups of mice to conduct their tests. One group was fed during the day and one was fed at night (keep in mind mice are nocturnal creatures). There was a shift in activity with mice who were fed during the day—their natural day-night tendencies became flipped. The mice became more active during the day and less so at night. The flow of eating was enough to disrupted their natural day-night cycles.

One of the researchers, Christopher Colwell, commented on these results, saying:

“We showed that under these eating conditions, some parts of the body, especially the hippocampus, are completely shifted in their molecular clock. So the hippocampus, the part of the brain which is so essential for learning and memory, is actually following when the food is available.”

The researchers continued their testing to see how the shift affected cognitive process, particularly in learning and memory. The misaligned eaters showed poorer results compared to the natural eaters when it came to learning new tasks and memory-related tests. These results raise questions about how health professionals might treat people with sleep deficiencies.

Colwell said of the results:

“We think that we are uncovering a tool that we can use to either strengthen or weaken the clock, just by controlling when a person eats.”

The researchers plan on continuing their study to investigate the cellular mechanisms that contribute to these changes in misaligned eating.

Read more at The Smithsonian

Photo Credit: Gabriela Pinto/Flickr

Some Smart TVs Reserve the Right to Record Your Private Conversations

by Natalie Shoemaker

Having a private conversation within the confines of your own home may become a thing of the past as voice recognition technology becomes ever-more prevalent. The Takeaway writes on a disturbing note they found in Samsung's terms of service relating to its smart TVs.

It reads:

“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”

It sounds like a disclosure to wiretap someone's home. What's more, they write that trying to disable the technology may land you a felony charge under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prevents people from tampering. While privacy policies are about as clear as mud most of the time, buried between lines of jargon and legal terms are little tidbits that read as clear as day (like the one above). It's just finding them is the hard part.

So, what's a consumer to do? Unplug it from the internet is one option, but then you're pay for a device that won't carry out all the functions you've paid for. The next option is to “vote with your dollar” and not buy one. It's your right as a consumer to decide what you want or don't want to purchase. However, there's the possibility that this technology will become our future. While Samsung does admit that they “take consumer privacy very seriously,” that doesn't mean some people can't get a hold of your private conversations. What people say in the privacy of their own home to this machine isn't protected by the Constitution, because you're releasing that information into the hands of a third-party. The government and law enforcement officials need only hand Samsung a subpoena—not a warrant—in order to access what conversations have taken place while watching TV.

In this instance, it's impossible not to draw lines to George Orwell's 1984. There's a particular scene that involves just such a smart TV installed in every resident's home, and it can never be turned off—it's always listening, watching.

“Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.”

Consumers have been continually sacrificing much of their information as a trade-off for convenience, using services that collect, store, and sell their data. But even after the Edward Snowden revelations, there has been little change in our personal habits to try and protect our privacy. There has been an slight up-tick in the use of Tor and more talk about alternative search engines, like DuckDuckGo and StartPage. But these numbers are few. So, when does the collective mindset change on these invasive products?

Read more at The Takeaway

Photo Credit: Isengardt/Flickr

People Buy More Things When They Shop on an Empty Stomach

by Natalie Shoemaker

You've probably heard this advice before: never shop on an empty stomach. You'll end up buying more food and wind up with a heftier grocery bill. What you may not realize is you may purchase more non-food items too, according to a recent study highlighted in an article by Helen Thomson from New Scientist.

The idea for the research came to Alison Jing Xu when she realized when she sat down to eat after shopping that she had bought 10 pair of tights—eight more than she had originally intended on purchasing. That got her thinking about how hunger effects our buying habits beyond food.

"As a researcher interested in human behaviour, I wanted to understand this. We already know that when we are hungry in a supermarket, we buy more food--I wondered whether hunger might have also increased my desire to purchase non-food items."

In one of five experiments, researchers stood outside a department store that contained mostly non-food items. The researchers asked customers how hungry they were and how long they were in the store for. They also asked to peek at their receipts to see what they purchased. Researchers were able to get information from 81 customers and found, of those who were hungrier, spent up to 64 percent more.

There's some bio-chemical reactions to back all this up. When we're hungry, our stomachs release a hormone called ghrelin, which acts on a part of the brain involved in reward and motivation. This reaction is supposed to cause us to seek-out food, but Jing Xu thinks that there could be a strong connection that influences us to purchase non-food-related goods as well. The idea is an interesting one, and has made me consider how I will conduct my online shopping in the future.

What do you think about this study? Sound off in the comments below.

To read more about Jing Xu's research, check out the write-up in New Scientist.

Photo Credit: Bert Kaufmann/Flickr

Brand Loyalty Starts By Talking with Your Customers

by Natalie Shoemaker

Alexander Jutkowitz believes that marketers are obsolete...unless they turn themselves into loyalty specialists.

Every consumer has "their" brand--one that they consider their own. They talk about it like they would a good friend that has a personality--someone who may even share some of their own beliefs. Behind those brand labels, people have found something they were able to relate to that keeps them coming back. Perhaps it's the quality of the product, but Jutkowitz insists there's more that can be done.

Jutkowitz is the Vice Chairman and Chief Global Strategist at Hill+Knowlton Strategies and he says the transition from marketing to loyalty specialist is as simple as beginning to talk with your customers. In his article for the Harvard Business Review he talks about how marketing and sales can't be a one-sided conversation. With social media on the rise, everyone has a megaphone and can shout something into the ether—your company's message will get lost if its message doesn't resonate with customers.

He cites examples from companies that are succeeding in building a meaningful, personalized experience for their customers, and marketers would do well to study up on their techniques. These little accents come from understanding and listening to your customer base, he says. Chipotle's “Cultivating Thought” initiative is a prime example. The company took action on an idea emailed to them to by author Jonathan Safran Foer who thought it'd be nice to have something to read while he was chowing down on his burrito. So, Chipotle started asking authors to write short texts on Chipotle's cups for their customers to read while they feasted.

It's listening to these ideas—things that won't yield direct results, like a promotional email or tracking link would, but creates a conversation that piques consumer and third-party interests.

Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tank knows a lot about building a brand. In her DSN interview, she talks about how she would use third-parties in order to boost the value of her own brand when she worked in real-estate.

Read more at Harvard Business Review

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Mindful Meditation Could Help Improve Sleep Quality in Older Adults

by Natalie Shoemaker

Alexandra Sifferlin from Time reports that it's not just teens or adults that aren't getting enough sleep these days, but approximately half of people over the age of 55 complain of having sleep issues. However, a study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine has found evidence suggesting meditation may be a promising solution to a restful night's sleep.

Meditation has recently been getting the spotlight in many articles relating to managing stress and increasing wellness for all age groups (perhaps we should take the hint). The researchers of this study sought to follow the trends, and focused their attention on 49 men and women around the age of 66 who had been experiencing sleep problems. The participants were split into two groups: one learning about sleep hygiene and the other mindful meditation.

For the next six weeks the meditation group gathered for two hours each week, learning about a variety of meditation practices and mindfulness techniques. The group was told to continue their exercises at home, but never talked about how it would help improve their sleep in the sessions. Likely, in order to avoid a placebo effect or as the study's author, David S. Black of the University of Southern California, said:

“A lot of individuals who are undergoing sleep problems don’t want to talk about their sleep anymore. It just further exacerbates their issue.”

By the study's conclusion, researchers found the people who participated in the mindfulness exercises scored higher for sleep quality than those in the sleep hygiene group. Black speculates on the results, saying:

“Before going to bed, people who can’t sleep worry a lot, and they start ruminating about not being able to sleep. Through mindfulness practice, people learn how to observe thoughts without having to elaborate. It allows people be present without further interpretation of their symptoms.”

It's important to note that these findings aren't conclusive, but numerous people have attested to mindful meditation and it's ability to calm those who practice it. In his DSN interview Nightline anchor, Dan Harris, attests to their boosts to health and wellness, and predicts how meditation will grow out of its obscurity and into the mainstream culture as something of a daily routine—as normal as brushing one's teeth before bed.

Read more at Time

Photo Credit: Joe Shlabotnik/Flickr

Music Impairs Associative Memory in Older Adults

by Natalie Shoemaker

As we age, we go through changes, and for workplaces with older employees, managers may have to consider their needs in order to make for a more productive environment. Science Daily reported on a recent study, which looks at how background noise can compromise associative memory, particularly, in older folks.

Sarah Reaves and Audrey Duarte from Georgia Institute of Technology headed up the study that was published in the journal The Gerontologist . The researchers brought in a group of young and old adult participants to study face-name pairs, splitting them into groups that would memorize while listening to non-lyrical music or in complete silence. Then the groups were asked to match those faces with names to test their associative memory. Reaves reported:

"Both age groups agreed that the music was distracting. But only the older adults struggled while it was playing in the background."

The older adults recalled 10 percent fewer names than the younger participants when they did the test while music played. Researchers attribute these results to something called the “cocktail party effect,” which allows people to focus on one conversation in a noisy environment—a skill that becomes more difficult as we age. Duarte said in a press release:

"Older adults have trouble ignoring irrelevant noises and concentrating. Associative memory also declines with age. As we get older, it's harder to remember what name went with a face or where a conversation took place."

The researchers write:

“These data have important practical implications for older adults’ ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks even in what many consider to be an unobtrusive environment.”

This research could help assisted living facilities plan and arrange more productive spaces that cater to their needs, and even help offices arrange their workplaces to allow young and aging staffers to thrive.

Read more at Science Daily

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Relying on Technology to Remember for Us Frees-Up Cognitive Space

by Natalie Shoemaker

As our minds move to the cloud, people fear that our reliance on storing our personal information and memories on external devices is making us weaker. Indeed, without our smartphones to help us remember birthdays and phones numbers our internal memories become worse in these respects. However, BPS Research Digest writes on a study that argues there's a positive side to offloading this information: we make room to learn new things.

In a paper, published in Psychological Science , Benjamin Storm and Sean Stone have evidence indicating how humans can free-up cognitive resources to learn more. The study involved 12 undergraduate students—quite a small group—in several experiments. The researchers asked them to study two documents on the computer with ten words on them that they would be tested on later. Once they finished studying the first list they save the file and studied the second list.

The students were able to recall the words on the second list better than the first. It could be argued that the students' were influenced by the order of the lists—the second list was fresher in their minds. But the researchers attribute the participants' higher recall of the second list to the fact that students were able to offload (i.e. save) the first file to the computer, enhancing their ability to etch the second into their minds. They controlled for this scenario by making some of the saving processes unreliable on computers. They write:

“... saving one file before studying a new file significantly improved memory for the contents of the new file. Notably, this effect was not observed when the saving process was deemed unreliable or when the contents of the to-be-saved file were not substantial enough to interfere with memory for the new file."

The researchers conclude:

“These results suggest that saving provides a means to strategically off-load memory onto the environment in order to reduce the extent to which currently unneeded to-be-remembered information interferes with the learning and remembering of other information.”

Read more at BPS Research Digest

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We May Choose an Object Because It's Easier to Pick Up

by Natalie Shoemaker

The mind may not be the sole dictator of our desires. In fact, the body may play an active role in our decision-making process, according to Sian Beilock, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, in her new book How the Body Knows Its Mind .

NPR's Marc Silver writes on the research that has helped influence her conclusions about how our bodies affect our brains, particularly, how we choose to act on an object. To test this, a team of researchers invited 15 students—a pretty small group—to choose the better of two kitchen utensils. For instance, researchers would place a spatula and a spoon in different positions in front of the students and see which one they picked. The researchers asked each participant to do this task a total of 16 times--choose the object they liked more.

The results, published in the journal Emotion Review , showed that 63 percent of the time participants would reach for whichever object was easiest to pick up. The researchers write:

“It transpires that we like to do what is easy, and we also prefer objects that are easier to act on. The notion that judgments of object likeability are driven by motoric information furthers embodied cognition theories by demonstrating that even our preferences are grounded in action.”

Silver notes in his own write-up how this could influence the designs of soda bottles—to appeal to our body's desire to choose what's easier to pick-up and hold. For instance, back in 2008, Coca-Cola redesigned its two-liter bottle to make it curvier and, thus, easier to hold. A representative claimed it tested well among groups, and for good reason, according to Beilock's research. The alteration allowed the company to outsell its rival, Pepsi, in this size category because of the change.

So, next time you're at the grocery store it may be fun to take note of the design of food containers.

Read more at NPR

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Shane Battier Remembers Coach Dean Smith

by DSN Editors

Legendary college basketball coach Dean Smith died last week at the age of 83. Smith coached 36 years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is remembered for his commitment to social progress and graduating his athletes at a very high rate. Outside of his winning prowess, Smith's legacy is one of honor and class. Former NBA player Shane Battier, who was recruited by Smith but eventually settled on rival school Duke, recounts his memories of the man in today's featured DSN interview:

"His legacy is not championships. Obviously he won a bunch of championships and a bunch of games but I believe his legacy is the men that he produced. And if you’re talking to one of his players to a man he’ll tell you that they’re better fathers, they’re better husbands, they’re better people because of Coach Smith."

Battier follows up this short introduction with an anecdote about when he was being recruited by schools during the 1990's. Despite his respect for Smith and UNC, Battier decided to commit to rival school Duke. Battier says he was afraid to call Smith and break the news. Smith reacted with grace and gravitas:

"He said, 'You know Shane, you’re one of the classiest young men I’ve ever had a chance to recruit. I’ll be cheering for you except when we play Duke. And you’re going to do fantastic.' And he followed that up with a fantastic handwritten note to my parents and a fantastic handwritten note to me that I still have in my house. It just sums up the class of the man."

Of course, being good-natured and composing hand-written notes doesn't automatically make you beloved. Smith's larger actions, such as handing out the first conference scholarship to an African-American player, defined who he was. A staunch desegregationist, Smith was a fixture in the community and a champion for his players. Nary a bad word has been uttered or written about the man because nary a bad word has been deserved. Smith's later years were marked by the ravaging dementia that had claimed his mind but Smith's legacy was and remains as vivid and bright as ever.

If you'd like to learn more about Coach Dean Smith, check out this fantastic article published in ESPN Magazine in March, 2014.

How Our Brains Respond When We Read Harry Potter

by Natalie Shoemaker

How do our brains resolve the supernatural descriptions we read in fantasy literature compared to more mundane descriptions? It's a loaded question, but Tom Jacobs from Pacific Standard has the scoop. He recently wrote on a new study that has found portions of our minds associated with emotion processing are quite tickled by the fantastic and supernatural--more specifically, when we read Harry Potter.

The paper published in PLoS One took 23 people ages 19 to 31 years old and had them read passages from one of the seven Harry Potter (I hope the scientists avoided spoilers). There were 40 passages in total half were descriptions of spectacular events, such as “She waved her wand over her shoulder; a loaf of bread and a knife soared gracefully onto the table.” The other half, quite mundane, “Harry, Ron and Hermione descended Professor Trelawney’s ladder and the winding staircase in silence.”

The participants were hooked up to an fMRI machine to monitor their brain activity while they read. The results show that the participants reacted to the passages quite differently. The brains' Visual Word Form Area became active when reading the more supernatural passages, which the researchers say comes “from the effort to resolve the uncertainty of surprise due to the supra-natural events.”

What's more these fantastic passages activated the left amygdala, which is usually associated with emotional processing. The researchers suggest:

“... reading about events so charmingly beyond our everyday life experiences lays the ground of gratifying emotional experiences associated with this literature.”

Read more at Pacific Standard

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Light to Moderate Drinking May Not Be as Beneficial as Previously Thought

by Natalie Shoemaker

Magazines and health journals have been publishing studies for years saying a glass of wine is good for your heart. But that may not be the case, according to a recent article by Pacific Standard's Nathan Collins. He points to a new study that questions previous medical data that claims an association with health benefits and moderate alcohol consumption.

In the study, researchers have found that compared to people who don't drink throughout their entire lives, only women over the age of 65 who drank lightly were able to reap some minor benefits from light alcohol consumption. As for all other age and sex groups—no dice.

Researchers from the University College London alongside colleagues from the University of Sydney looked into the Health Survey Data from England and found previous studies weren't entirely accurate in their assessments of participants. They argue that previous researchers never divided people who were life-long non-drinkers with people who were just now abstaining. Other researchers may have neglected to ask for a complete history of drinking, and only inquiring how many drinks they'd had in the last day, month, or year.

The team of researchers focused on 18,368 adults ages 50 and older. They split the data into groups of people who drank, currently abstain, and never drank. Former drinkers had quite a higher mortality rate compared to other groups.

The researcher concluded:

“Findings indicate that beneficial associations between alcohol consumption and all cause mortality may be attributable in part to inappropriate referent group selection and weak adjustment for confounders.”

They say that to really delve into the health connections, researchers will have to take-up better practices:

“Future research should seek to move toward statistical techniques capable of analysing complex heterogeneous drinking trajectories, such as growth mixture models.”

Read more at Pacific Standard

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Napping Can Reverse the Effects of a Poor Night's Sleep

by Natalie Shoemaker

We've all been through an all-nighter, staying up late and only racking-up two hours of sleep. The next day you feel run-down, stressed. But taking a short nap can boost that immune system and return stress levels to normal--amening some of the damage done by not catching enough Zs.

One of the study's authors, Brice Faraut, from the Université Paris Descartes-Sorbonne Paris Cité, said of the research:

"Our data suggests a 30-minute nap can reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor sleep. This is the first study that found napping could restore biomarkers of neuroendocrine and immune health to normal levels."

The researchers took 11 healthy men between the ages of 25 and 32. The participants underwent two sessions of testing where their meals and room lighting were all controlled in a lab.

In one session, the participants were restricted to two hours of sleep for a night, and in another session, subjects were able to take two, 30-minute naps the following day. Researchers took saliva and urine samples from the participants after each session to measure how their hormone levels responded after restricting sleep and the recovery naps.

The researchers found increases in the hormone norepinephrine, which is related to the body's fight-or-flight stress response, and contributes to increased heart-rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar. They also saw decreases in a certain protein related to fighting off viruses. However, after napping, these levels stabilized.

Fraraut says that these results suggests:

"Napping may offer a way to counter the damaging effects of sleep restriction by helping the immune and neuroendocrine systems to recover. The findings support the development of practical strategies for addressing chronically sleep-deprived populations, such as night and shift workers."

Read more at Science Daily

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How Learning Art Alters Brain Structure

by Natalie Shoemaker

The notion that “you either have it or you don't” in the art world may be exaggerated. Certainly, some may be drawn to take up the brush more than others, but creativity isn't something that's encoded in your genes, and a new study published in NeuroImage proves it so.

Tim Jacobs from Pacific Standard has written up a summary on the research showing evidence that just taking a sketching class can alter our brains' white matter to boost creative thinking. Lead Author of the paper, Alexander Schlegel, said of the results:

"Creativity is another concept that is often thought of as something we are either born with or will never have. Our data clearly refute this notion."

The study was comprised of only 35 students, so pretty small. Out of those participants, 17 were enlisted to take a three-month introduction course in drawing or painting. At the beginning of the study, the student's creativity was assessed through a test, measuring originality and creating thinking. Each month during the study, the students would also undergo a brain scan using fMRI technology in order to measure the physical changes happing inside their brains.

The researchers write of their results:

"We did not find any improvements in the art students' purely perceptual skills or related brain activity relative to a control group of students who did not study art. We did, however, find that the art students improved in the ability to quickly translate observations of human figures into gesture drawings, and that fine-grained patterns of drawing-related neural activity in the cerebellum and cerebral cortex increasingly differentiated the art students from the control group over the course of the study."

The brain was, indeed, able to adapt to learning a new skill. Researcher were able to see the participants' brains change in response to this new information. So, the next time you complain to your friend that you wish you could draw as well as him/her—put in the effort to learn and it just might happen.

Read more at Pacific Standard

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Walking on a Treadmill Desk Shouldn't Be Your Only Source of Exercise

by Natalie Shoemaker

Sitting is killing us. Even exercising daily can't make up for the eight hours we spend toiling at a desk. As a way of counter-acting this issue, the treadmill-desk was born. But a new study shows that while these machines can help us get a dose of daily activity, it shouldn't be our only source of activity.

Melissa Dahl from NYMag writes on a study by John M. Schuna, Jr., an exercise scientist, who found in his research that treadmill desks don't even provide the minimum amount of physical activity we need in order to stay healthy.

The study, outlined in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine , took 41 overweight participants who work at a desk as part of their day job. Twenty-one were assigned to work at a treadmill desk for 12 weeks, while the remaining participants stuck to their usual sitting routine. The treadmill desk group increased their daily steps per day (around 1,622), but not enough to reach the recommended 10,000 step daily average.

The researchers write:

“Shared-treadmill desks in the workplace can be effective at promoting favorable changes in light physical activity (specifically 40 to 99 steps/minute) and sedentary behavior among overweight/obese office workers.”

The bottom line is treadmill desks shouldn't be held as the end-all-be-all exercise solution. It's a way to improve a situation and decrease the amount of time you spend sitting at a desk. Treadmill desks and standing desks are a good first-step to improving yourself, but the reality is it shouldn't be the last thing you do to improve your health and wellness.

Read more at NYMag

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Smartphone Apps Better at Tracking Physical Activity than Fitness Bands

by Natalie Shoemaker

There's evidence that fitness devices do little to change our behavior. Some recent studies have found that in a matter of six months a fitness band someone just dropped $100 on will be collecting dust in the corner. One of the main hangups consumers have about the device is constantly charging it every seven day on top of their smartphone becomes a tedious exercise after a while. So, why not just download an app as a trial run?

Researchers have found the top smartphone applications are just as good as fitness bands in tracking steps taken. Mitesh Patel, the study's Senior Author and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania said in a press release:

“For most adults that want to track their general activity, smartphones will meet their needs."

In order to find out just how accurate the devices were, researcher took the top-selling smartphone fitness applications and compared them to the top fitness wearables. The team tracked the steps of 14 healthy adults, using the smartphone apps and pedometers while walking on a treadmill. The participants walked a couple controlled steps of 500 and 1,500 steps.

Of the findings, Lead Study Author Meredith A. Case, a medical student at Penn, said:

"In this study, we wanted to address one of the challenges with using wearable devices: they must be accurate. After all, if a device is going to be effective at monitoring--and potentially changing--behavior, individuals have to be able to trust the data. We found that smartphone apps are just as accurate as wearable devices for tracking physical activity."

The fitness bands had as much as a 22 percent variation in the range of step counts compared to the controlled number of steps taken, whereas the smartphone apps only had a 6 percent range in variation compared to the steps observed by researchers.

It seems only logical that anyone looking to track steps taken and calories burned in a day should opt for the smartphone app over the $100 fitness band. Especially when you consider how much more accessible an app is compared to a fitness band in day-to-day convenience and price.

Read more at EurekAlert!

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Facebook Couples that Post More Updates May Be Happier

by Natalie Shoemaker

Facebook has become a wealth of social information and discovery for psychologist--it's a way to explore a unique kind of intimacy. Taryn Hillin of Fusion has written on yet another study that implies that those over-sharing Facebook couples may actually be as happy as they look in their constant photo updates.

The study, published in the Psychology of Popular Media Culture, examined 188 participants, aged 18 to 53 who were in a relationship at the time of the research. The team of researchers asked participants to rate themselves and their relationships based off of a series of statements to determine if their offline lives were as blissful as their online ones suggested.

The statements measured how capable the participants were in assessing themselves, how honest they were about their relationships, and the quality of their relationship. Then the researchers looked at participants' Facebook profiles to see how often they posted photos of themselves with their significant other, tagged them in updates, and included them in posts.

The results showed there was a higher rate of happiness between couples that posted more often, and displayed a certain degree of “relationship-awareness” as the researcher put it.

The researchers suggest that people who are open and honest in their relationships aren't afraid to share and post public declarations. Either that or making a relationship public makes couples more open and honest. However, there are often conflicting studies when it comes to Facebook. One of which says that people who post more to Facebook are depressed or lonely. To which the researchers write:

“It may be that negative or positive effects related to Facebook use are not innate to the medium itself but rather these effects are an artifact of how people elect to use Facebook.”

So, people can either choose to utilize this social tool to boost happiness or cope with loneliness, as well as a myriad of other things. It all depends on how you look at it.

Read more at Fusion

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