light up your mood, literally!
The next time you want to turn down the emotional intensity before making an important decision, you may want to dim the lights first. A new study shows that human emotion, whether positive or negative, is felt more intensely under bright light. Researchers conducted a series of studies to examine the unusual paradox of lighting and human emotion. “Other evidence shows that on sunny days people are more optimistic about the stock market, report higher wellbeing and are more helpful while extended exposure to dark, gloomy days can result in seasonal affective disorder. Contrary to these results, we found that on sunny days depression-prone people actually become more depressed,” the researcher says, pointing to peaks in suicide rates during times when sunshine is a lot.
dishonesty and creativity are linked
New research shows that lying about performance on one task may increase creativity on a subsequent task by making people feel less bound by conventional rules. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “The common saying that ‘rules are meant to be broken' is at the root of both creative performance and dishonest behavior,” says lead researcher Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School. “Both creativity and dishonesty, in fact, involve rule breaking.” Subsequent experiments provided evidence for a link between dishonesty and creativity, revealing that participants showed higher levels of creative thinking according to various measures after they had been induced to cheat on an earlier task. Additionally cheating may encourage creativity because of the implementation of less rules.
cavities are contagious
Dental caries, commonly known as tooth decay, is the single most common chronic childhood disease. In fact, it is an infectious disease. Mothers with cavities can transmit caries-producing oral bacteria to their babies when they clean pacifiers by sticking them in their own mouths or by sharing spoons. According to a researcher, tooth decay can have a detrimental effect on a child's quality of life, performance in school and success in life. The disease can cause pain, inability to chew food well, embarrassment about discolored or damaged teeth, and distraction from play and learning. The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) encourages parents to find a dental home for their baby as soon as the child's first tooth erupts. Regular visits to a pediatric dentist will help parents become familiar with their child's dental and oral health milestones.
What does a woman wantIJ
If she loves you and then she loves you not, don't blame the petals of that daisy. Blame evolution. UClA researchers analysed dozens of published and unpublished studies on how women's preferences for mates change throughout the menstrual cycle. Their findings suggest that ovulating women have evolved to prefer mates who display sexy traits — such as a masculine body type and facial features, dominant behaviour and certain scents — but not traits typically desired in long-term mates. So, desires for those masculine characteristics, which are thought to have been markers of high genetic quality in our male ancestors, don't last all month — just the few days in a woman's cycle when she is most likely to pass on genes that might have increased the odds of her offspring surviving.
thyroid leads to depression
When older individuals' thyroid glands are more active than average, it may be a risk factor for depression, according to new research accepted for publication in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Beyond its role in regulating the body's metabolism, the thyroid gland also can influence mental health. Past research has found links between an increased risk of depression and both over and under active thyroid glands. “We found that older individuals with thyroid activity at the high end of the normal range had a substantially increased risk of developing depression over the course of an eight-year period compared to individuals who had less thyroid activity within the normal range,” said one of the study's authors.