hotmedfax2018

Every Wednesday afternoon I drive down to my church and go upstairs to the little kids' wing -- where my kindergarten and first- and second-graders come in from school. I say "my" because I love these kids.  I've been working with them for several years now and I've gotten to know most of them.  One little girl runs to me every week and throws her arms around me. I can't tell you how good that makes me feel. Now here's why I'm telling you.  A new study has found that giving is better than getting . Yes, the work is sometimes hard.  The kids don't always want to do their homework, or read, which they're supposed to do for 20 minutes a day (they love reading with me because I usually let them off early, to play). "The happiness we feel after a particular event or activity diminishes each time we experience that event, a phenomenon known as hedonic adaptation," newswise.com reports. "But giving to others may be the exceptio...

OK.  So get this.  You're trying to decide between the candy with peanut butter and the one with caramel.  According to a new study, our attention to what we're looking at helps us make the decision . Huh? Newswise.com reports that s cientists using eye-tracking technology have found that what we look at helps guide our decisions when faced with two visible choices, such as snack food options. "But it is not as easy as saying we simply choose what we look at the most, the research found.  Instead, our gaze amplifies our desire for choices we already like," the site says.. “We don’t necessarily choose something just because we look at it more, as some researchers have suggested.  If we look at something we feel neutral about, our attention will have little effect,” the site quotes  Ian Krajbich , co-author of the study and assistant professor of  psychology  and  economics  at The Ohio State University.  “But if we look a...

I don't know about you but I kind of like my imagination .  Of course, it's something that's needed in my profession, as a writer.   I'd be pretty dead meat without it. But now a new study says that it might be just as good for helping us with a certain trait we may not like. According to newswise.com,  “This research confirms that imagination is a neurological reality that can have an impact our brains and bodies in ways that matter for our well-being,” says Tor Wager, director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at CU Boulder and co-senior author of the paper. About one in three people in the United States have anxiety disorders, including phobias, and 8 percent have post-traumatic stress disorder. Since the 1950s, clinicians have used “exposure therapy” as a first-line treatment, asking patients to face their fears—real or imagined—in a safe, controlled setting. Anecdotally, results have been positive, newswise notes. But until now, very...

Wish I believed the glass is half-full.  But I'm one of those people who pretty much always sees it as half-empty. Now a new study says that looking on the bright side might reduce anxiety, even when money is tight, according to newswise.com.   So what's new about this?   "Trying to find something good in a bad situation appears to be particularly effective in reducing anxiety the less money a person makes, possibly because people with low incomes have less control over their environment, according to research published by the American Psychological Associatio," the web site reports. “Our research shows that socioeconomic status has a powerful effect on whether reframing a situation can reduce anxiety, both in the short term and the long term,” newswise quotes Claudia Haase, PhD, of Northwestern University and co-author of the study. “As social inequality continues to rise, it becomes increasingly important that we understand how emotional regulation ...

We've probably long since filed anticipation away in the back of our brains.  No more Christmas mornings with presents under the tree.  Seeing your fiance waiting at the end of the aisle.  Or waiting for that bonus check (as if). But now a new study says that anticipation is something we need to think about in the working world, and not just when it comes to bonuses. According to newswise.com, this study of six-to-eight-year-olds (ok, so they're pretty irrelevant to us) showed  how anticipation relates to executive function skills. Say what?  The study explored  specifically what happens in children’s brains when they anticipate a touch to the hand, and relates this brain activity to the executive functions the child demonstrates on other mental tasks. The ability to anticipate, researchers found, also indicates an ability to focus . “Executive function” is a broad term that encompasses various skills necessary for organizing information and cont...

I t's probably no surprise that fear hinders innovation . When you're about to make a presentation in front of your peers about something you feel less than knowledgeable about, it's not going to be the time you also come up with a new app for cutting calories. Organizations are transforming all over the place, thanks to the Internet and social media and how we communicate now (I'm breaking up with you: text).  But a new study points out that t ransformation requires the mitigation of fear, according to newswise.com. "Mitigating the fear of failing, the fear of not knowing what to do, the fear of learning new skills, and the fear of losing one’s position or job," the web site reports. "Change can be scary for employees — especially for employees who do not have the skills needed for the new way of working, and especially for employees who do not have significant financial reserves to fall back upon if they find themselves needing to change jobs.   ...

Now this one wasn't hard to guess.  Did you know that negative views of flexible workplaces are mostly held by -- men? Big surprise, right, ladies?  I've worked from a home office for over 20 years and I must admit, it's easy to put the assignment aside and do laundry, or make hamburgers for dinner. But, according to newswise.com, negative views of  working from home are prevalent,  especially so, among men. "Flexible working often leads to negative views from other employees, with 1/3 of all UK workers believing those who work flexibly create more work for others, while a similar proportion believe their career will suffer if they use flexible working arrangements, according to new research," the web site reports. Newswise explains that  Dr Heejung Chung from the University of Kent set out to analyse data from the 2011 Work-Life Balance Survey conducted by the government. Specifically she wanted to examine whether stigma against flexible workers exists...