Human Behavior, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 30, 2009

Cheney vs. Obama: Dueling Unprovable Claims

There's an old joke about a man putting his young son to bed one night. Before the boy goes to sleep, he pulls out a whistle from under his pillow and blows it loudly. The father, startled, asks his son why he blew the whistle. It's to keep tigers away...

Apr 30, 2009

Earliest Known Case of Leprosy Unearthed

A 4,000-year-old skeleton found in India bears the earliest archaeological evidence of leprosy, a new study reports. The finding, detailed in the May 27 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE, is also the first evidence for the disease in prehistoric India and sheds light on how the disease might...

Apr 30, 2009

Flawed Survey Says 99% of Women Don’t Like Their Looks

A new documentary called America the Beautiful is currently being screened at film festivals across the country. The film examines the effects of pop culture and the fashion industry on American ideas of beauty. The idea for the documentary began when filmmaker Darryl Roberts conducted an informal sidewalk survey in...

Apr 30, 2009

Scientists Reveal the Secret to Hockey’s Wrist Shot

It takes less than a second, but the wrist shot in hockey is one of the hardest skills in sports to master. Just ask the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings who will face each other starting this weekend in the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup Finals. Both teams...

Mar 31, 2009

Humor Wins Women Over

Give it up for ... Guys like Seinfeld and Dudley Moore have a leg up on the rest of us, a new study suggests. Being funny makes men seem more intelligent and trustworthy, researchers conclude. But this was a small study, and not exactly rocket science. Researchers asked 45 women...

Mar 31, 2009

How Baseball Players Catch Fly Balls

Every Little League outfielder knows the feeling. With the crack of the bat, you see the ball jump into the air. You take a few quick steps forward. Then, as you watch the ball continue to rise faster, you feel your stomach sink knowing that this one is going over...

Mar 31, 2009

Let's Fantasize: Could You Be Batman?

One of the endearing qualities of Batman is that, unlike all other mainstream superheroes, he possesses no supernatural powers. He had no brush with radioactivity to endow him with amazing strength and agility instead of thyroid cancer. The source to his power does not lie within a special ring or...

Feb 28, 2009

DVD Habits Reveal Your Character

If you buy a movie on a DVD instead of renting it, you probably have a higher level of education, value your independence, have a greater interest in the cinema in general, and are a more selective consumer. In a recent article in Applied Economics, researchers at the universities of...

Feb 28, 2009

Extremely Premature Babies Suffer Cognitive Problems Later

More than half of children born extremely prematurely have way lower IQs and need extra help in mainstream primary schools, especially when it comes to math, a new British study finds. This research comes on the heels of media attention given to a California woman who gave birth in late...

Feb 28, 2009

Africans Came with Columbus to New World

Teeth from exhumed skeletons of crew members Christopher Columbus left on the island of Hispaniola more than 500 years ago reveal the presence of at least one African in the New World as a contemporary of the explorer, it was announced. A team of researchers is extracting the chemical details...

Feb 28, 2009

Obama's Energy Plan Faces Tough Road, History Suggests

How much should we spend? Vote below. A national need for clean energy may require a U.S. government response rivaling the Manhattan Project or Apollo Program, but history suggests that tackling an energy crisis remains more difficult than building an atomic bomb or going to the moon. Those historical analogies...

Feb 28, 2009

Religious People Work Harder to Stall Death

When you're near death, how hard do you want doctors to work on keeping you alive? Would you want cardiopulmonary resuscitation in what might be your final days of a cancer death sentence? Is a ventilator the right way to go? Researchers recently posed these sorts of questions to 345...

Jan 31, 2009

Small Farms Sprout in Economic Drought

When the economy gets tough, it seems that the tough get farming. Tens of thousands of small farms were created since 2002, according to new data from the Census of Agriculture. The farming forecast isn't entirely sunny. But packed with a cornucopia of surprise findings — such as large increases...

Jan 31, 2009

Teens Crank Up iPod Volume, Risk Hearing Damage

Teens asked by their peers to turn their iPods down actually turn them up, finds a new study that reveals other odd habits. Among the most disconcerting revelations: Teens who express the most concern about the risk for and severity of hearing loss from iPods actually play their music at...

Jan 31, 2009

Women More Religious Than Men

A new analysis of survey data finds women pray more often then men, are more likely to believe in God, and are more religious than men in a variety of other ways. The reasons, analysts say, could range from traditional mothering duties to the tendency of men to take risks...