A study of a million UK women has shown that happiness has no direct effect on mortality nor does unhappiness and stress directly cause ill health.

Studies that claim it had simply confused cause and effect.  

Life-threatening poor health can cause unhappiness, and so unhappiness is associated with increased mortality but that is more confirmation bias than neutral analysis. Smokers also tend to be unhappier than non-smokers but accounting for previous ill health, smoking, and other lifestyle and socio-economic factors, the investigators found that unhappiness itself was no longer associated with increased mortality.

Climate change can influence everything from pine beetle outbreaks in the Rocky Mountains to rising sea levels in Papua New Guinea. In the face of a rapidly changing earth, plants and animals are forced to quickly deal with new challenges if they hope to survive. According to a recent paper by Jason Fridley, associate professor of biology in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, recently minted SU Ph.D. Catherine Ravenscroft, and University of Liverpool professor Raj Whitlock some species may be able to handle environmental changes better than others.

To give good directions, it is not enough to say the right things: saying them in the right order is also important, shows a study in Frontiers in Psychology. Sentences that start with a prominent landmark and end with the object of interest work better than sentences where this order is reversed. These results could have direct applications in the fields of artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.

Philadelphia, PA, December 9, 2015 - A new study published in the latest issue of Biological Psychiatry reports the successful and instant reduction of fear in spider-fearful participants following a 2-minute exposure combined with a single dose of a regular pharmacological treatment.

Typical behavioral therapies for phobia take many sessions to produce the desired effect. If recovery could be accelerated, it would reduce distress and save time and money.

The authors specifically took a look at complexity theory which is part of theoretical computer science as well as mathematics. It classifies algorithms that can solve certain categories of computational problems according to their inherent difficulty.

An old legal joke goes that a man accused of lifting wallets is arrested brought into court. The judge asked if he wants a trial by judge or a jury of his peers. The accused replies, "You judge, I don't want 12 pickpockets deciding what happens to me."

It is a common psychological tendency to assume most people are 'like' us, that is why rationalization about behavior occurs so easily - everyone else is doing it. So what do we make of it when a journalist repeatedly claims that everyone else is a shill for corporate interests?

The obvious: That the journalist sees it everywhere because she assumes people are like her. I prefer to talk about individuals rather than issues but sometimes the journalist is the issue, because they make themselves into one.

Over half of patients with controlled type 2 diabetes have many more tests than is currently recommended by national guidelines, and this has been associated with overtreatment of the condition, suggests a large US study published in The BMJ.

Overtreatment is a concern because it can lead to higher costs in the healthcare system,  a concern due to runaway expenses causes by the Affordable Care Act, called Obamacare by officials and the public.

Since Type 2 diabetes is usually caused by lifestyle rather than a predisposition, "patients and doctors should question the value of routine tests."

Two studies conducted 20 years apart in England reveal an apparent increase in healthy ageing, or years lived healthily, reflecting less cognitive impairment; and an increase in the proportion of life lived healthily, through a larger proportion of years lived with disability but less rather than more severe disability. The research from Professor Carol Jagger at the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, UK, and colleagues is published in The Lancet.

The children's flu vaccine doesn't trigger an allergic reaction in those with egg allergy, finds a study in The BMJ today, and it is also appropriate for young people with well-controlled asthma or recurrent wheeze.

Evidence suggests that children and young people are the main spreaders of influenza infection. In 2012, the UK Department of Health therefore recommended annual vaccination of those aged 2-16 years of age with live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) as part of the NHS childhood vaccination program.

At a poster session at the annual meeting of the Society for Risk Assessment, 16 experts tasked with reviewing the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monograph on glyphosate release their evaluation. Along with European and American safety agencies, they could not find evidence for carcinogenesis and instead noted that the Working Group seemed to have exaggerated some studies and even disputed conclusions that were in studies they did use..