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It seemed kind of obvious to me but when all the country did away with handheld cell phones in the car being legal and only allowing hands-free ones, that it really didn't make much of a difference. Hands-free?  That's brain-free. It's not the holding the phone that's the problem.  It's the thinking while you're on the phone. Who hasn't been distracted by a phone call (or, God forbid, a text) when driving?  I have all I can do just to keep my mind on my driving, as that's the time I free float and often get ideas for stories.  No way can I talk and drive at the same time. My husband, on the other hand, does it all the time (and has been ticketed in NYC).  He doesn't believe in laws (or medicine, but that's another story), and so he continues to get tickets for not wearing a seat belt, talking on his handheld phone and other expensive habits he really should discontinue. But getting back to the phone, a new study says the hands-free ones ...

Admit it.  The sound of your husband crunching his breakfast cereal sometimes makes you consider divorce. But did you know the sounds you make when eating food affect how you eat?  According to researchers at Brigham Young University and Colorado State University, the noise your food makes while you're eating can have a significant effect on how much food you eat. The "Crunch Effect," as they call it, suggests you're likely to eat less if you're more conscious of the sound your food makes while you're eating. Therefore, watching loud TV or listening to loud music while eating can mask eating sounds that keep you in check.   "For the most part, consumers and researchers have overlooked food sound as an important sensory cue in the eating experience," says study coauthor Gina Mohr, an assistant professor of marketing at CSU, at newswise.com. "Sound is typically labeled as the forgotten food sense," adds Ryan Elder, assistan...

So everyone thought all we had to do to make driving while talking on a cell phone safer was to remove our hands.  Big joke. It's our minds that we have to remove when we're doing that.  I always wondered why the big deal about hands-free cell phones when it's the talking that's distracting, not the damn holding of the phone.  And it appears it's not limited to calls, but sending texts with Apple Siri or Google Now smart phone personal assistants.  Even just speaking into your phone to give a command slices our attention in half. Now a study has finally found that it takes up to 27 seconds to regain full attention after issuing voice commands, according to newswise.com.  University of Utah researchers discovered this in a pair of new studies for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. I mean, it makes sense.  When I'm talking to someone -- whether in person or on a cell -- I'm totally in the conversation.  I don't notice if a car is about to si...

Duh. Thinking how many pounds that 12-oz bag of M&Ms is going to pad onto you may cause you to  reconsider. That's what new research is saying, according to newswise.com.  Turns out the idea that the brain can control eating behavior, and considering the long-term consequences of your food choices may help control food cravings. Two research studies have showed the way you think about food can have an impact on appetite, and many others on the relationship between the brain and eating behavior. Scientists at Brown University used functional MRI scans to watch participants' brains as they reviewed pictures of enticing foods, like pizza, French fries and ice cream. Through the scans researchers were able to evaluate different strategies to reduce the desire to eat. They found that thinking about the long-term negative impact of eating these foods may be an effective way to reduce appetite. "We found that simply thinking in a different way affects how t...

When I started out in corporate life back in the '80s, most if not all the women in executive positions were unmarried and I can't think of one who had children. Today that's been changing. Many companies allow employees – both mothers and fathers – to work from home (though that has its challenges, too; more on that later). According to about.com, some of the best companies for telecommuting are Accenture, Federal Express, Sears, Wendy's, and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The advantages for companies are many: save office space and reduce costs, help employees better balance home life and work, reduce absenteeism (how many moms and dads miss a day of work because of ear infections or strep throat?), and finally, happier employees who produce more. For the employee, it's even better. Less time commuting (more time spent on actual work), ability to stay on-task even with sick kids at home, less money spent on caretakers when both parents work, better...

Well, not really.  It's not the tweeting that does it, but the distraction -- and disruption -- it brings to your day.  And the Instagraming, Facebooking, iTubing, Pinteresting, etc. According to Bob Sullivan at The New York Times, each time our cell phone rings, or a text tings, or an email pops up on the screen, it interrupts the task we're working on. He noted that Gloria Mark, of the University of California, Irvine,  found  that "it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption." But worse, no one really knows the quality of work "done during these periods of rapid toggling." And what's been found to have an even bigger effect on disruption is the anticipation that a call or email or text might come in. Sullivan and his staff conducted three tests on volunteers sitting in labs to perform a cognitive skills test.  One group simply completed the test but the second group was interrupted while the third was ...