Calculating the Real Cost of Van Life vs. Hotels for a Summer Roadtrip
By the time your rent a van and pay for gas and campgrounds, would you be better off just driving your car and paying for hotels? Here’s the bottom line.
Continue ReadingBy the time your rent a van and pay for gas and campgrounds, would you be better off just driving your car and paying for hotels? Here’s the bottom line.
Continue ReadingThe last few weeks of school are an opportunity for your child to wring every last drop of education from the remaining precious minutes of instruction. And then you wake up.
Continue ReadingMath anxiety and along with it math performance come down to adjusting the sliders on a giant mathematical mixing board: push the right sliders up and down, and even students who have felt helpless may have a chance to succeed.
Continue ReadingStudy in ‘Nature’ shows that creativity and psychosis may have the same genetic roots.
Continue ReadingA study in the journal Child Development shows that our intuition about positive reinforcement can be exactly wrong: Rewarding a child’s sharing resulted in the child choosing to share less.
Continue ReadingInsight doesn’t always tell you you’re looking at a llama’s nostrils. But when it does, it’s probably right.
Continue ReadingUnfairness trickles down from one person to others. A new study in the journal Scientific Reports shows how to stop the flow.
Continue ReadingWho is besties with a narcissist? Research on best friend pairs shows that narcissists may be stuck with themselves.
Continue ReadingIn elementary school the kids in the “redbird” and “bluebird” reading groups tended to be grouped together for math too. Why is that? Why do math and reading ability go hand-in-hand? And why do some kids break this mold to excel in only one?
Continue ReadingDoes immigration create a rich melting pot or lead to tension? In STEM fields that require complex problem solving, birthplace diversity increases productivity.
Continue ReadingWhen the going gets tough, should the tough get going or should the tough try something new?
Continue ReadingOn his fourth attempt, Leif stood in a position of relative rest halfway through the climb and you could see the panic starting to set in as he looked at the next hold, still impossibly far away…
Continue ReadingAs a society, we systematically fail to take into account issues of workplace safety that affect or have the potential to affect Santa Claus and his ungulate co-workers every Christmas Eve. A commentary by University of Alberta medical researcher Sebastian Straube hopes to change that.
Continue ReadingStudy finds that “the Christmas period is related to a decrease in life satisfaction and emotional well-being.” But not among the very religious…
Continue ReadingBy compiling millions and millions of League of Legends data points, researchers hint at “psychological traits across global populations.”
Continue Reading“The present findings could mean that interventions in education that try to increase intrinsic motivation may not be the best approach in the early school years.” Care to discuss?
Continue ReadingHow does a child’s sense of fairness develop? A fascinating MIT study shows fairness depends on number sense and not necessarily age or socialization.
Continue ReadingAfter testing the knowledge of older and younger brains, you give them the right answers and a chance to make changes. Here’s what happens.
Continue ReadingStudies show that “cultural dysfluency” — Halloween plates on Labor Day, a purple wedding tux, a “good riddance” obituary — jolts brains from complacency and makes people perform better on cognitive tests. This, my friends, is why the geek brain thinks while the mainstream brain coasts.
Continue ReadingLet’s bond over math the same way we bond over reading–a study in ‘Science’ shows that over the course of a school year ‘Bedtime Math’ pushes kids’ math skills 3 months further than a similar reading app.
Continue ReadingIf children followed the rules of real estate, you would expect the poorer mathematician in a friendship to benefit at the better mathematician’s expense. Study says…?
Continue ReadingMight happiness be more than simply feeling good without feeling bad (and maybe the lingering afterglow of smugness)?
Continue ReadingMost kids who are good or bad at math in first grade are similarly good or bad at math as 15-year-olds. Most but not all. A few get better or worse and a new study shows what’s behind the migration of math ability.
Continue ReadingImagine you’re driving through a crowded grocery store parking lot when a man on a cell phone walks out in front of you and holds up a hand toward you, palm out. What does he mean by this gesture? Studies show that your interpretation depends on your mood.
Continue ReadingResearch is showing that procrastination isn’t a defect in ability or personality but rather a disconnect between the demands of a task and what motivates the procrastinator.
Continue ReadingHow to help your kids stay in the Goldilocks zone of productive stress even when life makes the porridge too hot.
Continue ReadingAre the offsprings’ brains better off setting the alarm for 6:00am and hitting snooze for a blissful half an hour, or setting the alarm for 6:34am and sledding to breakfast on a piece of greased cardboard? The answer has to do with crickets… and brain waves… and insight.
Continue ReadingCreativity isn’t the lucky gift it seems. “This research demonstrates that persistence is a critical determinant of creative performance and that people may undervalue and underutilize persistence in everyday creative problem solving,” write authors Brain Lucas and Loran Nordgren from Northwestern University.
Continue ReadingWhat caught my ear wasn’t the fact that a young, hipsterish guy struggled with subtraction Captchas; it was the fact that he excused it, saying, “Hey, I’m not a numbers person…”
Continue Reading“The whole of ‘Minecraft’ is what we refer to as ‘A.I. complete.’ If you can do all of ‘Minecraft’ you could solve anything,” says Brown University researcher.
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