Category: ideas

“Smiling affects how we speak, to the point that listeners can actually identify the type of smile based on sound alone, according to a new study that also determined some people have “smilier” voices overall than others.”

“Medicines which were designed to treat brain injury, dementia and ADHD are now becoming popular pick-me ups. Businessmen take them to beat jet lag, academics pop them to sharpen their minds and shift workers take them to stay alert.”

“The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial – and forcing a rethinking of what it means to be alive. This raises a range of big questions about what nature is and what it could be. Evolutionary processes are no longer seen as sacred or inviolable.”

There has never been a more exciting time for the intellectually curious. The world’s top universities have come late to the world of online education, but they’re arriving at last, creating an all-you-can eat online buffet of information. And mostly, they are giving it away.

Feeling overwhelmed by all the arts and culture in your life? (Okay, us neither. But let’s say you were…) Here’s an easy ten-step arts detox program that also serves as a good guide to winnowing the cultural wheat from the chaff.

2007 was a year of contradictions and fragmented ideas, a year in which the worlds of politics, entertainment, and art seemed to be in some sort of bizarre holding pattern. “If there was a way out of any dilemma this year – a lesson for would-be fixers – it was the need to be fluid. Don’t try to change your situation. Just adapt.”

It’s taken as fact at colleges and universities across America: students just can’t write as well as they used to, and the problem has become so widespread that some schools are requiring students to take courses in proper writing. But do these courses actually work?

“Americans gave nearly $300 billion away last year, and some charities claim to collect as much as a quarter of their annual contributions in the month of December alone.” And in case you need an incentive to contribute some of your hard-earned cash, consider this: “It is a fact that givers are happier people than non-givers.”

“A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.”