ScienceDaily: Living Well News |
- Better batters from brain-training research: Baseball player study significantly improves vision, reduces strikeouts
- Why does the brain remember dreams?
- Study on flu evolution may change textbooks, history books
- Loneliness is a major health risk for older adults
- Wealthy neighborhoods fuel materialistic desires, study says
- First large-scale study of stock market volatility, mental disorders
- Link between selling, leasing market prices for cars studied
- Massachusetts' fire-safe cigarette law appears to decrease likelihood of residential fires
- London's bicycle sharing scheme has had positive overall health effect
- Stopping smoking linked to improved mental health
- Interactive map of human genetic history revealed
- Physician urges greater recognition of how 'misfearing' influences women's perceptions of heart health risks
- Could action video games help people with dyslexia learn to read?
- Promise of a bonus counter-productive in brains with high dopamine levels
- Blood clot risk remains higher than normal for at least 12 weeks after women deliver babies
| Posted: 17 Feb 2014 09:16 AM PST UC Riverside baseball players who participated in novel brain-training research saw significant improvement in vision, resulting in fewer strikeouts and more hits. The experiment demonstrated that improvements from a multiple perceptual-learning approach transfer to real-world tasks. |
| Why does the brain remember dreams? Posted: 17 Feb 2014 05:59 AM PST Some people recall a dream every morning, whereas others rarely recall one. In a new study, research shows that the temporo-parietal junction, an information-processing hub in the brain, is more active in high dream recallers. Increased activity in this brain region might facilitate attention orienting toward external stimuli and promote intrasleep wakefulness, thereby facilitating the encoding of dreams in memory. |
| Study on flu evolution may change textbooks, history books Posted: 16 Feb 2014 12:17 PM PST A new study reconstructing the evolutionary tree of flu viruses challenges conventional wisdom and solves some of the mysteries surrounding flu outbreaks of historical significance. The study challenges several tenets of conventional wisdom -- for example, the notion that the virus moves largely unidirectionally from wild birds to domestic birds rather than with spillover in the other direction. It also helps resolve the origin of the virus that caused the unprecedentedly severe influenza pandemic of 1918. |
| Loneliness is a major health risk for older adults Posted: 16 Feb 2014 12:14 PM PST Feeling extreme loneliness can increase an older person's chances of premature death by 14 percent, according to new research. The research shows that the impact of loneliness on premature death is nearly as strong as the impact of disadvantaged socioeconomic status, which they found increases the chances of dying early by 19 percent. |
| Wealthy neighborhoods fuel materialistic desires, study says Posted: 13 Feb 2014 07:04 PM PST Living in a wealthy neighborhood could fuel feelings of materialism and compulsive spending, according to new research. Those living in affluent areas report more materialistic values and poorer spending habits than those in less well-off areas, particularly if they are young, city dwellers or relatively poor compared with their surroundings. Researchers believe the behavior stems from a desire to project a level of wealth that matches one's surroundings. |
| First large-scale study of stock market volatility, mental disorders Posted: 13 Feb 2014 07:03 PM PST Falling stock prices lead to increased hospitalizations for mental disorders, according to new research. Researchers assessed the relationship between stock price movements and mental disorders using data on daily hospitalizations for mental disorders in Taiwan over 4,000 days between 1998 and 2009. They found that a 1000-point fall in the Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalisation Weighted Stock Index (TAIEX) coincided with a 4.71% daily increase in hospitalizations for mental disorders. |
| Link between selling, leasing market prices for cars studied Posted: 13 Feb 2014 07:03 PM PST Researchers have, for the first time, modeled the relationship between variations in leasing and selling market prices, using almost 10 years of data from the US, the world's largest automobile market. They suggest that in order to determine more accurately the monthly payments agreed in leasing contracts, firms need to take into account the prevailing selling, also known as cash, price of vehicles. |
| Massachusetts' fire-safe cigarette law appears to decrease likelihood of residential fires Posted: 13 Feb 2014 03:49 PM PST A six-year-old Massachusetts law requiring that only "fire-safe" cigarettes be sold in the state appears to decrease the likelihood of unintentional residential fires caused by cigarettes by 28 percent, according to a new study. |
| London's bicycle sharing scheme has had positive overall health effect Posted: 13 Feb 2014 03:48 PM PST London's bicycle sharing scheme has had a positive overall health effect, but the benefits of cycling in the cycle hire zone are clearer for men than for women and for older users than for younger users, finds a study. |
| Stopping smoking linked to improved mental health Posted: 13 Feb 2014 03:48 PM PST Quitting smoking is associated with an improvement in mental health in comparison with continuing to smoke, suggests a study. It is well known that stopping smoking substantially reduces major health risks, such as the development of cancers, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. But the association between smoking and mental health is less clear cut. So researchers in the UK set out to investigate changes in mental health after smoking cessation compared with continuing to smoke. |
| Interactive map of human genetic history revealed Posted: 13 Feb 2014 11:22 AM PST A global map detailing the genetic histories of 95 different populations across the world, showing likely genetic impacts of European colonialism, the Arab slave trade, the Mongol Empire and European traders near the Silk Road mixing with people in China, has been revealed for the first time. |
| Posted: 13 Feb 2014 11:19 AM PST While more women die from heart disease each year than all forms of cancer combined, many are more fearful of other diseases, particularly breast cancer. This phenomenon, referred to as "misfearing," describes the human tendency to fear instinctively and according to societal influences rather than based on facts. This trend may be a contributor to the reasons why many women fail to take enough steps -- such as changing diet and fitness habits or risk-taking behaviors -- to guard against heart disease. In a new article, a cardiologist discusses barriers to helping women understand their heart health risks. |
| Could action video games help people with dyslexia learn to read? Posted: 13 Feb 2014 09:23 AM PST In addition to their trouble with reading, people with dyslexia also have greater difficulty than typical readers do when it comes to managing competing sensory cues, according to a study. The findings suggest that action video games might improve literacy skills in those with dyslexia, which represent five to ten percent of the population. |
| Promise of a bonus counter-productive in brains with high dopamine levels Posted: 13 Feb 2014 09:22 AM PST Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that the amount of dopamine in the brain plays a role in how people perform when promised a high bonus. |
| Blood clot risk remains higher than normal for at least 12 weeks after women deliver babies Posted: 13 Feb 2014 08:27 AM PST Risk of a blood clot is higher than normal for at least 12 weeks after a woman delivers a baby -- twice as long as previously recognized. |
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