By Elizabeth King Humphrey, Scientific American MIND Stumped by a crossword puzzle? Try taking a break to watch a funny TV show. Recent research shows that people in a lighthearted mood more often have eureka moments of sudden inspiration. Karuna Subramaniam, then at Northwestern University, and her...

From the New York Times A summary: Scientists have found indications that your ability to jump to intuitive answers — what they term the “Aha!” moment — may be affected by your mood. After watching a humorous video, brain imaging and test results of subjects suggested that a positive mood prepares the...

By Benedict Carey 12/6/2010, The New York Times The puzzles look easy, and mostly they are. Given three words — “trip,” “house” and “goal,” for example — find a fourth that will complete a compound word with each. A minute or so of mental trolling (housekeeper, goalkeeper, trip?) is all it usually takes...

By Jonah Lehrer, Wired October 12, 2010 There’s a fascinating new paper in Psychological Science by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis on the virtues of unconscious thought when it comes to predicting the outcome of soccer matches. It turns out that the conscious brain – that rational voice in your...

By Charles Q. Choi "The dozen students and scientists spread over an area called Furnace Creek looked like cyborgs in floppy hats scrabbling over the boulders. Before hammering chips off rocks, they inspected them with magnifying lenses held up next to eyeglasses sporting miniature cameras and infrared...

ByMichael Balter "Language leaves no traces in the archaeological record, and many researchers have been doubtful about how much animal communication could reveal about the unique features of human communication. That began to change in the 1990s, when linguists, evolutionary biologists, psychologists...

By David Glenn from The Chronicle of Higher Education "That's one tiny way in which Dweck's theories might change higher education. But she also has grander hopes. Colleges could improve their students' learning, she says, if they relentlessly encouraged them to think about their mental...

From NewScientist. "The human brain is the most astoundingly complex structure in the known universe. Yet we are starting to unravel some of its mysteries, thanks to advances in brain imaging, genetics, stem cell research and more. We explore the latest findings from the hottest topics in neuroscience...

By David Berreby from Big Think. "If you want to rile up a biologist and have no pointed stick handy, try this: Tell her that chemistry or physics are "harder," more fundamentally "sciencey" sciences than hers. "You can't use the standards of one science to judge another...

By Lama Surya Das from The Huffington Post . "Wisdom is an endangered natural resource today in our Over-Information Age, where knowledge is rising and genuine sagacity increasingly rare. If we wish to become wiser and more sane, we'd do well exploit and develop our own innate natural resources...

Although in a selection of biblical and theological essays, my contribution is on Paul as a major contributor to the subsequent shape of western thought and society. The central puzzle of Paul's life is how this zealous Pharisee obsessed with land, city and temple never refers to them again (or only...

By Anna Grandori A conspicuous ‘hole’ lies between the ‘rational-choice’ paradigm and the ‘behavioral decision-making’ paradigm. The ‘missing model’ is ‘heuristic’ (research-based) yet ‘rational’ (non-biasing): a set of methods for the logically sound discovery and design of economic actions, options...

By George Bragues This article attempts to uncover the relevance of Cicero’s thought to present-day management through an analysis of his last philosophical study, On Duties. Applying a methodology grounded in Socratic skepticism, Cicero synthesizes the Stoics and Aristotle to create his own moral theory...

by Torsten Zesch and Iryna Gurevych In this article, we present a comprehensive study aimed at computing semantic relatedness of word pairs. We analyze the performance of a large number of semantic relatedness measures proposed in the literature with respect to different experimental conditions, such...

By Emily B. Falk, Elliot T. Berkman, Traci Mann, Brittany Harrison, and Matthew D. Lieberman "Although persuasive messages often alter people's self-reported attitudes and intentions to perform behaviors, these self-reports do not necessarily predict behavior change. We demonstrate that neural...

By Dani Dumitriu, Jiandong Hao, Yuko Hara, Jeffrey Kaufmann, William G. M. Janssen, Wendy Lou, Peter R. Rapp, and John H. Morrison Age-associated memory impairment (AAMI) occurs in many mammalian species, including humans. In contrast to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), in which circuit disruption occurs through...

By April Nowell Hominin evolution is the result of complex interactions of biology and behavior within particular physical, social, and cultural environments. While evolution takes place at the species level, species are made up of individuals engaging in a social world. Extensive research into topics...

By Lewis Asimeng-Boahene Preparing children to function effectively as global citizens in today's complex and ethnically polarized nations and the world, will require students who think critically about the knowledge of the histories, experiences, and the cultural practices of other parts of the...

By Stephanie Schnorbus Most historians agree there was a shift away from Calvinism and toward Enlightenment thought during the eighteenth century. When discussing that shift in relation to children's literature or education, some historians use The New-England Primer as an example of unchanging Calvinism...

By Tom Abeles Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the emerging science of complexity and the rise of fast computational capabilities on human understanding of the world and the implications for education. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a scenario in which...