Generation Next Blog

August 2012

Forget health, happiness the best motivator for exercise

By |2012-08-31T15:38:37+10:00August 31st, 2012|Categories: Mental Health & Wellbeing, Science & Research|Tags: , , , |

What would it take to persuade you to exercise? A desire to lose weight or improve your figure? To keep heart disease, cancer or diabetes at bay? To lower blood pressure or cholesterol? To protect your bones? To live to a healthy old age?   You'd think any of those reasons would be sufficient to [...]

A positive choice: Young people who drink little or no alcohol

By |2012-08-31T15:45:32+10:00August 29th, 2012|Categories: Drugs & Alcohol, Society & Culture|Tags: , , , |

This study examines the lives and choices of young people (aged 16-25) who drink little or no alcohol. It explores the influences that shape their decisions and how their choices and patterns of consumption affect their lives. Key points Drinking and getting drunk is not an automatic rite of passage for young people in the [...]

Women have a happiness gene

By |2012-08-31T16:19:40+10:00August 29th, 2012|Categories: Science & Research|Tags: , , , |

A new study has found a gene that appears to make women happy, but it doesn’t work for men. The finding may help explain why women are often happier than men, the research team said. Scientists at the University of South Florida (USF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Columbia University and the New York [...]

Academic performance in early years has impact on mental health

By |2012-08-31T15:55:23+10:00August 28th, 2012|Categories: Mental Health & Wellbeing|Tags: , , , , |

Helping kids succeed in first grade may have a lasting mental-health benefit: Lower risk for depression in seventh grade and beyond. That’s the conclusion University of Missouri researchers arrived at after tracking 474 boys and girls from grammar school to middle school. It makes sense - and it’s just one more reason to help your [...]

Clothes can make you smarter

By |2012-08-31T16:01:50+10:00August 28th, 2012|Categories: Science & Research|Tags: , , , |

People who wore white lab coats made half as many mistakes on attention-related tasks as those wearing their regular clothes, according to a study published this year by Hajo Adam, a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University, along with colleague Adam Galinsky.  It isn't clear if the effect wears off over time, or if knowing [...]

Practicing music for only few years in childhood helps improve adult brain

By |2012-08-27T23:28:31+10:00August 27th, 2012|Categories: Science & Research, Society & Culture|Tags: , , , |

The impact of music on the brain has been a hot topic in science in the past decade. Now Northwestern researchers for the first time have directly examined what happens after children stop playing a musical instrument after only a few years -- a common childhood experience. Compared to peers with no musical training, adults [...]

Sugary drinks to be phased out in ACT schools

By |2012-08-31T16:45:24+10:00August 27th, 2012|Categories: Society & Culture|Tags: , , , |

Soft drinks, fruit juice and flavoured milk will be phased out of ACT primary schools within five years if the ACT Government is re-elected in October. Chief Minister Katy Gallagher has announced a $500,000 fund to install water bottle refill stations and supply reusable bottles to government and non-government primary schools, high schools and colleges. [...]

Even light drinking increases cancer risk

By |2012-08-31T16:24:47+10:00August 27th, 2012|Categories: Drugs & Alcohol, Science & Research|Tags: , , , |

Just one alcoholic drink a day may increase the risk of cancer, according to a new study, which estimates that light drinking is responsible for 34,000 deaths a year worldwide. New research based on more than 150,000 men and women shows that light drinking increases the likelihood of cancer of the mouth, pharynx, oesophagus and [...]

Mindsets in Education

By |2012-08-27T14:28:32+10:00August 27th, 2012|Categories: Mental Health & Wellbeing|Tags: , , , |

Mindsets Professor Carol Dweck has written a great book called Mindset – the new psychology of success. In it she speaks of two mindset: Fixed and Growth. In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing [...]

10 minute activist: Reality is beautiful; tell Cleo to stop airbrushing images

By |2012-08-27T14:13:46+10:00August 27th, 2012|Categories: Society & Culture|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

Jessica Barlow, a 20 your old student in Melbourne has got the ball rolling by setting up a petition to demand that magazines like Cleo and Cosmopolitan stop altering the images they feature in photo spreads because of the damage it can cause to young girls by increasing any body image issues that they might [...]

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