science wire

Planning how to manage your mood can help you succeed this Lent
Planning how to manage your mood can help you succeed this Lent Scientists at the University of Sheffield have warned fasters from allowing a foul mood to lead them to fail to abstain this Lent. Evidence suggests that bad moods can lead us to abandon our dieting goals in favour of eating something nice to cheer ourselves up.

Psychology Professor Studies Science of Motivation
Forget carrots and sticks, the widely used catch phrase suggesting people are motivated by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Search begins for adoption expert to lead new centre
Search begins for adoption expert to lead new centre The University has this week begun its search for an expert to lead a new research centre focusing on the major challenges facing adopted children and their families.

New approach could more effectively diagnose personality disorders
Personality disorders could be more effectively diagnosed by identifying and targeting the disrupted neurobiological systems where the disorders originate, report Cornell researchers. The way that these mental illnesses are now classified - based on particular patterns of thought and behavior - is misguided and has little hard evidence to support it, reports Cornell neuroscientist Richard Depue and his colleague in a special issue of the Journal of International Review of Psychiatry (23:3).

Indigenous Australians experience poorer mental health
Significant inequality exists in the mental health of Indigenous Australians compared with non-Indigenous Australians, and it starts from an early age, according to new analysis of data by leading youth mental health experts. In an article published in a recent edition of the Medical Journal of Australia Professor Anthony Jorm from the University of Melbourne's Youth Mental Health Research Centre, based at Orygen, and colleagues mined existing community health surveys from 2000 onward to establish an accurate picture of the state of Indigenous mental health.

A neuroscientific odyssey into how we ’remember the future’
Shimon Edelman finds happiness when he hikes. He treks the canyons of the American southwest, the hills of the Negev Desert, the gorges of Ithaca.

Scientists report link between traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder
UCLA life scientists and their colleagues have provided the first evidence of a causal link between traumatic brain injury and an increased susceptibility to post-traumatic stress disorder. Their new study, published Feb. 15 in the in the journal Biological Psychology, also suggests that people who suffer even a mild traumatic brain injury are more likely to develop an anxiety disorder and should take precautions to avoid stressful situations for at least some period of time.

Less prison, better prevention of crime
Spending money on crime prevention might prove a wiser investment than building more prisons, writes Australian Research Council Federation Fellow JOHN BRAITHWAITE. Between 1910 and 1990 Australia had an imprisonment rate at approximately half what it is today. Punitive thinking led to the tragedy of massive public investment in prison building in an era when the evidence suggested this was not an effective way of reducing crime.

Caregiver personality traits affect mental, physical health
Taking care of an aging or disabled loved one can be hazardous to your health. But certain personality traits appear to reduce caregivers' risk for health problems, reports a new Cornell study. "Personality accounted for about a quarter of the variance in caregivers' mental health and about 10 percent of the variance in their physical health," said lead author Corinna Loeckenhoff, assistant professor of human development in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.

Low hormone response may contribute to women avoiding intimacy
“ Our findings demonstrate that, for some people, viewing emotionally intimate stimuli can increase estradiol levels, but this was not the case for women who are more detached from close relationships. ” ANN ARBOR, Mich.—University of Michigan researchers have found that women who avoid close relationships and intimacy have smaller hormone responses to emotionally intimate stimuli.

Physical activity yields feelings of excitement, enthusiasm
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - People who are more physically active report greater levels of excitement and enthusiasm than people who are less physically active, according to Penn State researchers.

Comparing yourself to others can have health impacts
University Park, Pa. - Comparing yourself to others with the same health problem can influence your physical and emotional health, according to researchers who conducted a qualitative synthesis of over 30 studies focusing on the relationship between social comparisons and health.

Researchers rank best online advice for postnatal depression
Researchers rank best online advice for postnatal depression Researchers at the University of Sussex have identified the top five internet sites offering support for women struggling with postnatal mental illness such as depression or anxiety.

Public lectures explore the brain and behavior
Register for the lectures online or call 206-616-5274. See previous years' lectures on UWTV. How do fish hear and communicate with each other?

Here is what real commitment to your marriage means
What does being committed to your marriage really mean? UCLA psychologists answer this question in a new study based on their analysis of 172 married couples over the first 11 years of marriage.

How does the compassionate brain, measured in the lab, predict what occurs in real life?
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are launching a new series of studies to understand how laboratory measures of virtuous qualities such as compassion relate to their behavior in the real world. Richard J. Davidson , founder of the UW's Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) , at the Waisman Center, has received a three-year, $1.7 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to develop laboratory and real-world measures of virtuous qualities such as altruism and compassion.

Learning to ’talk things through in your head’ may help people with autism
Teaching children with autism to 'talk things through in their head' may help them to solve complex day-to-day tasks, which could increase the chances of independent, flexible living later in life, according to new research from Durham University, the University of Bristol and City University London.

Multitasking may harm the social and emotional development of tweenage girls, Stanford researchers say
Multitasking may harm the social and emotional development of tweenage girls, but face-to-face talks could save the day, say Stanford researchers Too much screen time can be detrimental to girls

Seeking the neurological roots of conflict
MIT neuroscientists explore how longstanding conflict influences empathy for others. MIT postdoc Emile Bruneau has long been drawn to conflict - not as a participant, but an observer. In 1994, while doing volunteer work in South Africa, he witnessed firsthand the turmoil surrounding the fall of apartheid; during a 2001 trip to visit friends in Sri Lanka, he found himself in the midst of the violent conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military.

Enhancing cognition in older adults also changes personality
CHAMPAIGN, lll.

International health experts call for a special UN session on mental health
Professor Harry Minas, Director of the Centre for International Mental Health at the University of Melbourne has joined experts from the US and the UK to call for a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the topic.

Test your memory!
Online test allows public to assess their recall; scientists will use data to study long-term memory. We're hoping that thousands of people from all walks of life, and from all over the world, will go to the website and take part." —Dr Jon Simons from the University of Cambridge's Department of Experimental Psychology Today, Tuesday 10 January, researchers at the University of Cambridge launch what could be the world's biggest ever memory experiment.

Women with celiac disease suffer from depression, disordered eating
University pledges continued cooperation with NCAA inquiry Hotels to support RAINN over commencement weekend A message from President Rodney Erickson As lawmakers review child abuse laws, Erickson expresses support Blue out, canning efforts raise $47,000 to fight child abuse, rape UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.

Brad steps up in marathon for mental health
ANU graduate Brad Carron-Arthur is moving his feet for a good cause, running up the east coast of Australia to raise money for mental health research, programs and awareness.

Persistence Pays Off in the Mating Game
AUSTIN, Texas — A new study co-authored by a University of Texas at Austin psychology professor suggests that self-deception may help men succeed in the mating game, while women will benefit more from effective communication.

New Cambridge study measures countries’ well-being
The key message is that the UK government, like many around the world, now recognises that economic measures such as GDP do not provide adequate information about a society's progress." &m

Developing nursing leadership and a support for nurses is crucial to the quality of patient care
Ward sisters/Charge nurses need to be a given a more prominent leadership role in hospitals if standards of acute nursing care are to be improved according to a new paper from the University of Birmi

New book on teen brains can help improve reasoning, decision making
Teenage brains undergo big changes, and they won't look or function like adult brains until well into one's 20s.

People More Motivated to Give When They See Others Volunteering Abroad
AUSTIN, Texas — People are more inspired to give when they see others contributing their time and money to a good cause outside their home state, according to a new psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin.

University of Sydney professor joins leaders of Australia’s first National Mental Health Commission
Professor Ian Hickie, Executive Director of the University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Research Institute , has been named as one of eight commissioners to lead Australia's first National Mental Health Commission.

Sound and vision work hand in hand, UCLA psychologists report
"If we think of the perceptual system as a democracy where each sense is like a person casting a vote and all votes are counted to reach a decision — although not all votes are counted equally — what our study shows is that the voters talk to one another and influence one another even before each casts a vote," said Ladan Shams, a UCLA associate professor of psychology and the senior author of the new study.

Human brains unlikely to evolve into a “supermind” as price to pay would be too high
Human minds have hit an evolutionary “sweet spot” and - unlike computers - cannot continually get smarter without trade-offs elsewhere, according to research by the University of Warwick. Researchers asked the question why we are not more intelligent than we are given the adaptive evolutionary process.

Parental response to sexual abuse varies by age of victim, suspect
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Parents are more likely to blame or doubt a child victim of sexual abuse when the suspected perpetrator is an adolescent rather than an adult, according to a new study that examined child molestation cases in four states. The findings also suggest that, regardless of the age of the perpetrator, parental blame/doubt toward the victim significantly increases if the victim is an adolescent.

2 million Californians report mental health needs; most receive little or no treatment
Nearly 2 million adults in California, about 8 percent of the population, need mental health treatment, but the majority receive no services or inadequate services, despite a state law mandating that health insurance providers include mental health treatment in their coverage options, a new report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research shows.

Eye, I, aye
Eye, I, aye: investigating embodiment, identity and sociality and the Internet a talk from Elizabeth Churchill, on December 16th, at 10h15, in room BC 410 Abstract: In this talk I will discuss the increasingly broad remit of human computer interaction (HCI) as a discipline.

Starlings give clue to irrational preferences
Research into decision-making by European starlings ( Sturnus vulgaris ) may help to explain why many animals, including humans, sometimes exhibit irrational preferences. A study by Oxford University scientists in which starlings pecked on different coloured keys to gain a food reward shows that the birds pay too much attention to context: this makes them vulnerable to the sort of tricks that marketing specialists use to try to make human shoppers choose one product over another.

Beyond Bushfires, a study into community resilience and recovery
A long-term study into the health and wellbeing of community members affected by the 2009 Victorian bushfires, is being led by the University of Melbourne.

Uncertainty fear and eating disorders linked
People who fear the unknown or view uncertainty as especially negative or threatening are more likely to report symptoms of eating disorders, according to new ANU research. Alice Heikkonen, a PhD researcher in the Department of Psychology, has been looking at women aged 18-30 and has found a significant link between eating disorder symptoms and intolerance of uncertainty.

Giving up driving not all bad: study
Older people who give up driving report positive life impacts and say it's not all doom and gloom, according to new research by PhD student Sarah Walker from The Australian National University.

Follow the crowd - with help from leading psychologists
Follow the crowd - with help from leading psychologists Events around the world have made 2011 the year of the crowd - from revolutionary protests in Egypt's Tahrir Square and anti-cuts protest

Desperate for a chocolate biscuit There’s an app for that
Beating comfort eating with help from your mobile A free app for iPhone, which is designed to help people tackle the habit of comfort eating and reduce the amount of high fat, high salt and high sugar snack food they consume, is being launched today (November 2) by the University of Birmingham.

Hippocampus Plays Bigger Memory Role Than Previously Thought
Human memory has historically defied precise scientific description, its biological functions broadly but imperfectly defined in psychological terms. In a pair of papers published in the November 2 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience , researchers at the University of California, San Diego report a new methodology that more deeply parses how and where certain types of memories are processed in the brain, and challenges earlier assumptions about the role of the hippocampus.

SEK 56 million in funding from the Swedish Research Council
The Swedish Research Council has reached the decision to grant over SEK 56 million (¤6.2 million) in support for 15 new research projects in the humanities, social sciences and educational sciences at Umeå University.

Children of deployed military at greater risk of engaging in violent behavior
Adolescent boys with at least one parent in the military are at elevated risk of engaging in school-based physical fighting, carrying a weapon and joining a gang, according to researchers at the University of Washington's School of Public Health.

Exploring the science and nuance of facial perception
  Alexander Todorov, an associate professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, has designed a new freshman seminar, "The Face: The Forces That Shape How We Perceive Others," t

Adoption under the spotlight of new University of Sussex research centre
Adoption under the spotlight of new University of Sussex research centre The major challenges facing adopted children and their families will be the focus of a new research centre at the University of Sussex.

Funny Finding: Men Win Humor Test (by a Hair)
Funny Finding: Men Win Humor Test (by a Hair) UC San Diego Researchers Used New Yorker Cartoons to Explore Gender Stereotype October 19, 2011 By Inga Kiderra Huffington Post ABC News and "Good Morning America" TIME Slate Scientific American Men are funnier than women, but only just barely and mostly to other men.

Governor-General launches mentors program
The Australian Foundation for Mental Health Research's (AFFIRM) Youth Ambassador Program has been officially launched by the Governor-General of Australia, Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC at The Australian National University.

Children taught to read at seven still learn at same pace as a four year old
Search News & Events Search University of Warwick Search for people at Warwick Search Warwick Blogs Search past exam papers Search video Research from the University of Warwick has found children who attend schools that opt out of the national curriculum and are not taught to read until they are seven years old still learn at the same pace as a four year old.

Exercise gives mental health a boost
While most people know physical exercise helps them in losing weight or achieving better physical health, perhaps less well known is the extensive evidence concluding that exercise also benefits mental health.

Wash away your troubles with soap
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Cleaning your hands removes more than dirt, it also removes residues of the past, such as guilt and doubt, a new University of Michigan study finds.

The science of love under the spotlight at Durham University
The science of love under the spotlight at Durham University Poets and writers have done their best to understand love but it remains a mystery. Now researchers at Durham University are setting out to unravel the science of love. The Durham psychologists and anthropologists hope to get a better evolutionary understanding of the emotional 'fuzziness' of love.

Stanford launches center to study fraud against the elderly
An overwhelming number of defrauded people are older than 50 – but the profile of the typical target is not who you would expect, say the founders of the new interdisciplinary Research Center on the Prevention of Financial Fraud.

Feeling entitled makes dull tasks drag on
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—People who feel entitled may think performing dull tasks is a waste of their precious time, resulting in a perception that time passes slowly, according to a new University of Michigan study.

Who are you People yearn for positive perception about themselves
Sept. 27, 2011 Who are you? People yearn for positive perception about themselves ANN ARBOR, Mich.—People care about how others view them and will go to great lengths to repair negative perceptions, a new University of Michigan study found.

Rebranding exercise: Quality of life a better motivator than Live longer
Sept. 27, 2011 Rebranding exercise: 'Quality of life' a better motivator than 'Live longer' Listen to podcast ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A new University of Michigan study finds that the most convincing exercise message emphasizes immediate benefits that enhance daily quality of life. Health care, business and public health have presumed that promoting health and longevity benefits from exercise will motivate people to exercise.

33 percent drop in physical bullying in schools using Steps to Respect
Elementary schools using the bullying prevention program Steps to Respect saw a reduction in physical bullying and in the number of teachers reporting fighting as a big problem, according to a new University of Washington study.

Escalation threatens strike resolution, say researchers
New research has added more gloom to the threat of strikes by showing how the emotional strain of protracted negotiations can lock rivals on a path to mutual destruction.

Hogg Foundation Funds New Initiative to Provide Safer, More Effective Alternatives to Seclusion and Restraint
Sept. 20, 2011 AUSTIN, Texas — The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at The University of Texas at Austin is funding a new statewide initiative to help residential treatment centers adopt safer, more effective tools than traumatic and potentially deadly seclusion and restraint practices commonly used to manage the behavior of children and youth.

Researchers predict long-term personal finances in the lab
A Stanford neuro-economics study shows that a simple kind of learning, supported by our emotional responses, is surprisingly good at predicting real-world financial success. Why are some people wealthier than others? It's a question that has spawned a slew of maddeningly optimistic self-help books – and a pile of research that takes a much more depressing stance.

Size matters: Length of songbirds’ playlists linked to relative size of their brain parts
The term "birdbrain" may take on new meaning as a Cornell study is the first to prove that the capacity for learning in birds is not linked to overall brain size, but to the relative size of their brain parts. The study finds that songbirds whose higher brain areas are larger in relation to lower brain areas have a greater capacity for learning songs.

’Flexible Curriculum’ required to ensure pupils with autism achieve potential
A report published today (14 th September 2011) by the Autism Education Trust (AET) finds the current education system lacks flexibility in its approach to pupils on the autism spectrum.

Captivated by Critters: Humans Are Wired to Respond to Animals
Some people feel compelled to pet every furry animal they see on the street, while others jump at the mere sight of a shark or snake on the television screen. No matter what your response is to animals, it may be thanks to a specific part of your brain that is hardwired to rapidly detect creatures of the nonhuman kind.

Study offers insight for returning troops and their relationships
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. ‘ Troops overseas often want nothing more than to get back home to loved ones ' but the reunion period often can be more emotionally taxing than the deployment. Returning service members are at a greater risk of both depressive symptoms and relationship distress, and research shows the two often go together, says University of Illinois researcher Leanne Knobloch (pronounced kuh-NO-block).

Study of childhood bullying shifts focus to victims
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Many wonder why bullies bully, but a new study looks at the other side of the equation: How do children respond to bullying and why‘ The answer, researchers say, may lead to more effective interventions to reduce the negative consequences - and perhaps even the frequency ' of bullying.

9/11 Attacks Led to New Understanding of Mass Trauma
Out of the wreckage of the World Trade Center attacks and the events of 9/11 came some of the first large-scale research of mass trauma. The resulting findings have led to a broader understanding of how post-traumatic stress disorder can affect hundreds of thousands of people, not just individuals. Sandro Galea , chair of the epidemiology department at the Mailman School of Public Health , is one of the leading researchers on the topic, having written some 50 articles on the subject of 9/11 and trauma.