ScienceDaily: Living Well News

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• Tackling test anxiety may help prevent more severe problems
• Just keep your promises: Going above and beyond does not pay off
• Eurovision voting patterns analyzed
• If they know it's good for them, will they eat it?
• Homemade stink bug traps squash store-bought models, researchers find
• Improving air quality in NYC would boost children's future earnings by increasing IQ
• Does Facebook affect our self-esteem, sense of belonging?
• School-based gardening encourages healthier eating in children
• Mindfulness: Think before you eat and make healthier choices
• Bad at recognizing people: Blame your genes
• Warm hands, warm heart: heat helps cooperation
• Labelling teens as overweight can be counterproductive
• Masculinity still viewed as tied to sexuality
• Food labels are important to dieters
• Musical training can increase blood flow in the brain
• Community doulas can be big help for mother-baby relationships
• Active seniors can lower heart attack risk by doing more, not less
• Younger adults benefit from gardening's moderate- to high-intensity activities
• Smoking while pregnant leads to diseases in baby's adulthood

Tackling test anxiety may help prevent more severe problems Posted: 08 May 2014 11:18 AM PDT Showing students how to cope with test anxiety might also help them to handle their built-up angst and fretfulness about other issues. The results of a new study show that anxiety intervention programs that focus on academic matters fit well into the demands of the school routine, and do not carry the same stigma among youth as general anxiety programs do.

Just keep your promises: Going above and beyond does not pay off Posted: 08 May 2014 10:31 AM PDT If you are sending Mother's Day flowers to your mom this weekend, chances are you opted for guaranteed delivery: the promise that they will arrive by a certain time. Should the flowers not arrive in time, you will likely feel betrayed by the sender for breaking their promise. But if they arrive earlier, you likely will be no happier than if they arrive on time, according to new research.

Eurovision voting patterns analyzed Posted: 08 May 2014 08:09 AM PDT The Eurovision song contest has led to speculations of tactical voting, discriminating against some participants and inducing bias in the final results. Analysis of patterns over two decades has found that voting is more likely to be driven by positive loyalties based on culture, geography, history and migration.

If they know it's good for them, will they eat it? Posted: 08 May 2014 08:08 AM PDT One of the problems with getting kids to eat more healthful foods has been pinpointed by research: Children reject nourishing fare simply because they know it is good for them, and once they know that, they assume the food won't taste good. "Our study focused on very young children, and we should keep in mind that older children might rely less on taste when making food decisions due to higher self-control," said one author. "On the other hand, we all know teenagers who only eat six foods, so it could turn out that their thinking is similar to their younger counterparts."

Homemade stink bug traps squash store-bought models, researchers find Posted: 08 May 2014 07:03 AM PDT Homemade, inexpensive stink bug traps crafted from simple household items outshine pricier models designed to kill the invasive, annoying bugs, research shows. This discovery comes just as warm weather is coaxing the critters out of crevices of homes they were hiding in during the cold winter and homeowners will be looking for a way to get rid of the pest.

Improving air quality in NYC would boost children's future earnings by increasing IQ Posted: 08 May 2014 06:58 AM PDT Reducing air pollution in New York City would result in substantial economic gains for children as a result of increasing their IQs. The study is the first to estimate the costs of IQ loss associated with exposure to air pollution, and is based on prior research on prenatal exposure to air pollutants among low-income children.

Does Facebook affect our self-esteem, sense of belonging? Posted: 08 May 2014 06:54 AM PDT With 1.11 billion users per month on average, Facebook has become a global phenomenon offering continual and direct communication with friends and family. Research into how social media websites define us socially, and the influence that social media has on our personal welfare, suggests that a lack of social participation on Facebook leads to people feeling less meaningful.

School-based gardening encourages healthier eating in children Posted: 07 May 2014 06:17 PM PDT School-based gardening schemes can increase the amount of fruit and vegetables school children eat. Forty-six children aged between nine and ten years old took part in a twelve week school-based project to create a garden. As well as building the garden the children also had lessons devoted to cooking, plants and growth (in science) and writing (in literacy). The results showed that children who took part in the school-based gardening project ate 26 per cent more fruit and vegetables.

Mindfulness: Think before you eat and make healthier choices Posted: 07 May 2014 06:16 PM PDT Making individuals more aware of their eating behaviour (mindfulness) can lead to healthier choices and help prevent emotional eating. The link between food consumption and psychological wellbeing seems more complex than the direct relationship of hunger and eating, one of the researchers said.

Bad at recognizing people: Blame your genes Posted: 07 May 2014 06:16 PM PDT The ability to recognize faces is a distinct human skill, separate from a general ability to recognize objects, and can be inherited. In other words, people who are good at recognizing cars are not necessarily good at recognizing faces.

Warm hands, warm heart: heat helps cooperation Posted: 07 May 2014 06:16 PM PDT People cooperate with each other more when they've been holding hot, as opposed to cold, objects. This is the finding of a new study. The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) task, designed to measure levels of cooperation, was completed by 60 students. Before performing the IPD task, participants were asked to hold either hot or cold objects. Analysis showed that individuals who held hot objects cooperated significantly more frequently when they had held the hot, as opposed to cold, objects.

Labelling teens as overweight can be counterproductive Posted: 07 May 2014 06:16 PM PDT Ensuring teenagers know exactly how overweight they are encourages them to adopt a healthier lifestyle, but in practice many fail to follow this through. These are the findings of a new study. The relationship between weight perception, body change intention and behaviour was analysed.

Masculinity still viewed as tied to sexuality Posted: 07 May 2014 06:16 PM PDT We are still inclined to regard heterosexual men as more masculine than homosexual men and single men as more competent than married men. Researchers asked 158 participants to evaluate a fictional man. His description was varied so that he was sometimes heterosexual and sometimes homosexual, and sometimes single and sometimes married; other facts about him stayed the same. The researchers found that the man was evaluated as most manly when he was both heterosexual and married.

Food labels are important to dieters Posted: 07 May 2014 06:16 PM PDT Dieters are more likely to read and understand food labels than people who aren't dieting. Some 255 participants completed questionnaires on their mood, wellbeing, how they controlled what they ate and their food shopping habits. The participants were made up of 140 who were non-dieters and 115 who were members of a slimming group.

Musical training can increase blood flow in the brain Posted: 07 May 2014 06:16 PM PDT Brief musical training can increase the blood flow in the left hemisphere of our brain. This suggests that the areas responsible for music and language share common brain pathways.

Community doulas can be big help for mother-baby relationships Posted: 07 May 2014 10:21 AM PDT Young mothers are more likely to breastfeed and have positive relationships with their babies when they have another woman "mothering" them in the delivery room, according to new research on the value of doulas -— women who help with deliveries and early care for mothers and babies. The assistance from doulas is particularly valuable to young mothers from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Active seniors can lower heart attack risk by doing more, not less Posted: 05 May 2014 06:13 PM PDT Maintaining or boosting your level of physical activity after age 65 can improve your heart's electrical well-being and lower your risk of heart attack. In heart monitor recordings taken over five years, researchers found that people who walked more and faster and had more physically active leisure time had fewer irregular heart rhythms and greater heart rate variability than those who were less active.

Younger adults benefit from gardening's moderate- to high-intensity activities Posted: 05 May 2014 07:44 AM PDT The exercise intensities of 10 gardening tasks for men and women in their 20s was recently studied by researchers. Subjects wore portable telemetric calorimeters during the gardening tasks and resting periods to measure their oxygen uptake, and wore heart rate monitors to record heart rate data during the gardening tasks and resting periods via radiotelemetry. All 10 tasks were determined to be moderate- to high-intensity physical activities for the age group.

Smoking while pregnant leads to diseases in baby's adulthood Posted: 05 May 2014 06:49 AM PDT While many parents-to-be are aware that the health of their baby starts before they've actually arrived into the world, recent research reveals that 'harm' may not present itself disease-wise until well into adulthood or when a second harmful 'hit' triggers the individual's susceptibility.

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