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I remember where I was exactly.  Waiting for my son to return from track in the rain and darkness, while all the other kids hopped into their parents' cars and took off.  I tend to be an alarmist, by nature (and also, by husband), so I started panicking and thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong to make him be so late to the car. Was there a fight in school?  Did someone go after him in the locker room?  Was a teacher holding him hostage?  (I know, I know, I'm a bit dramatic.) But having experienced some trauma in life, serious illness, childhood abuse, and always -- sadly -- expecting more, I couldn't help fearing something bad had happened to him. And then I saw him sauntering out of the gym, and I realized, he can take care of himself. It's not that I haven't stopped worrying.  But I had an "aha" moment , sitting in the car. And now researchers are saying that they can tell when you're about to have one. According to newswis

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

I know I hate it.  "What do you want for dinner?" Nothing.  "Did you do your homework?"  Nothing.  "Did you clean your room?" Grunt. I'm talking, of course, about my teenager, who ignores just about every word out of my mouth.  But now researchers are saying that mastering the art of ignoring makes people more efficient. I suppose it makes sense.  If you've ever been in one of those moments where you're working so hard on something, you don't notice the house is on fire, just get that paragraph written, you've been there.  I've left pots boiling on the stove, driven right past my road when thinking about a word, even been able to tune out my husband when he's raving about Bill O'Reilly again. But don't listen to me.  Get it from the experts. Johns Hopkins University researchers have found that when people are given time to learn what’s possible to ignore, they’re able to search faster and more efficiently.  

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 side

OK.  Here's a new therapy.  Don't look for people who are angry at you. Sounds pretty simple but we now know that people who pay a lot of attention to angry faces may be more prone to depression . Up to 80 percent of individuals with a past history of depression will get depressed again in the future. However, little is known about the specific factors that put these people at risk. New research suggests that it may be due to the things you pay attention to in your life.  I guess we're talking the cup half-full or half-empty.  It makes perfect sense to me that if we're more attuned to negative things (angry faces), we're probably already more pessimistic.  And I guess those who are pessimistic are more likely to be depressed. Researchers at Binghamton University recruited 160 women — 60 with a past history of depression, 100 with no history of depression. They showed each woman a series of two faces, one with a neutral expression and the other with

Anyone who has a dog already knows this.  But now scientists are copping to the fact. Dogs get jealous . Sadly, I've never had a dog (hope to get one soon).  But from knowing friends' dogs, it's obvious that they get sad, and depressed and excited, just like we do (only, we don't wag our tails!). "Emotion researchers" have been arguing for years whether jealousy requires complex cognition, newswise.com reports. And some scientists have even said that jealousy is an entirely social construct – not seen in all human cultures and not fundamental or hard-wired in the same ways that fear and anger are. But the new findings support the view that there may be a more basic form of jealousy, which evolved to protect social bonds from interlopers, according to the Web site. They show that dogs exhibit more jealous behaviors, like snapping and pushing at their owner or the rival, when the owner showed affection to what appeared to be another dog (actual

A program to help kids manage their behavior has also had another astounding result.  The kids do better in their academic subjects too.  According to newswise.com, a  program aimed at reducing behavior problems in order to boost academic achievement has improved performance in math and reading among low-income kindergartners and first graders, according to a study by researchers at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. “Supporting young low-income children so they can reach their potential in the classroom and beyond is of vital importance,” the Web site quotes Sandee McClowry, a professor in NYU Steinhardt’s Department of Applied Psychology and the study’s senior author. “Our findings show that learning is enhanced when it also addresses the social and emotional development of children.” Duh.  But how many programs out there do this? "Previous scholarship has shown that growing up in poverty significantly increases the like

Great.  We haven't heard and seen enough ads to last us a lifetime.  Now a new study has found the key themes that cut through the clutter and make us sit up and take notice -- to create more ads. Researchers from North Carolina State University have analyzed 50 years’ worth of hit songs to identify key themes that marketing professionals can use to craft advertisements that will resonate with audiences, according to newswise.com. “People are exposed to a barrage of advertisements and they often respond by tuning out those advertisements. We wanted to see what we could learn from hit songs to help advertisers break through all that clutter,” says Dr. David Henard, a professor of marketing at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research at newswise.com. “We also wanted to see if there were specific themes that could help companies engage with consumers in a positive way via social media." Researchers found that there's a" limited range of widel