Curated News: Featured: LifeWire

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Adding captivating visuals to a textbook lesson to attract children’s interest may sometimes make it harder for them to learn, a new study suggests.

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As college students across the country cram for final exams, higher ed leaders look for inspiration out their windows to help students relax. With the goal of relieving student stress and increasing overall well-being in mind, Wake Forest University President Nathan Hatch made improving the public spaces on campus a priority.

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Opposing thumbs, expressive faces, complex social systems: it’s hard to miss the similarities between apes and humans. Now a new study with a troop of zoo baboons and lots of peanuts shows that a less obvious trait—the ability to understand numbers—also is shared by man and his primate cousins.

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The Internet has been understudied as a political and cultural formation, Stephanie Ricker Schulte argues in her new book, Cached: Decoding the Internet in Global Popular Culture.

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Paying college athletes is a contentious issue and the subject of a lawsuit challenging the use of their likenesses in video games. An Indiana U. study found that many video gamers recognize athletes in the video games.

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Wide-eyed expressions that typically signal fear seem to enlarge our visual field making it easier to spot threats at the same time they enhance the ability of others to locate the source of danger, according to new research from the University of Toronto.

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Research from Temple University’s Center for Competitive Government finds that privately operated prisons can substantially cut costs while performing at equal or better levels than government-run prisons.

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The faculty advisor to Michigan Technological University's Korean Student Association and a visiting scholar from South Korea express their fears and hopes about escalating tensions between South and North Korea.

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A Western Illinois University faculty member who published a widely covered study about Facebook and narcissism last year has authored another study about Facebook and romantic relationships.

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A mother’s trait of simply “being there” was mentioned most frequently by young men as critical in their relationships with their moms — whether that meant talking about romance, discussing faith or picking a college major, according to a Baylor University resesarcher.

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Acute or chronic sleep deprivation resulting in increased feelings of fatigue is one of the leading causes of workplace incidents and related injuries. More incidents and performance failures, such as automobile accidents, occur in the mid-afternoon hours known as the “post-lunch dip.” A new study from the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that exposure to certain wavelengths and levels of light has the potential to increase alertness during the post-lunch dip.

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People who participate in community gardening have a significantly lower BMIs—as well as lower odds of being overweight or obese—than do their non-gardening neighbors, according to a study by Univ. of Utah researchers with local gardeners.

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Maternal love can counteract aggressive behaviors by children.

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An Iowa State psychology professor looks at optimism and knowledge influence voter expectations in the weeks leading up to an election.

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Students and scholars are taking a renewed interest in an "underdog" method of philosophy that is also uniquely American.

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Romantic-comedy films are not a major source for developing unrealistic expectations about relationships among young adults, finds a new study to be published online this week in the National Communication Association’s journal Communication Monographs.

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On April 15, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, a case that could answer the question, “Under what conditions, if any, are isolated human genes patentable?” Kevin Emerson Collins, JD, patent law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, believes that layered uncertainties make this case an unusually difficult case in which to predict the outcome.

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A new report on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in California warns of possible water contamination and seismic activity near drilling sites, unless the oil-extraction method is tightly regulated.

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Similar to blogging and e-publication in the 21st century, wood-block illustrated books (ehon) in Edo-period Japan (1615–1868) evolved quickly into a popular mode of both artistic production and commercial trade. This Smithsonian Snapshot features an image from Odori Hitori Geiko (Dance Instruction Manual) by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). It is in the exhibition, “Hand-Held: Gerhard Pulverer’s Japanese Illustrated Books,” at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

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Effective leaders’ brains may be physically “wired” to lead, offering the promise of more precise identification and training, according to studies of U.S. Army officers published by the American Psychological Association.