During the recession, a number of people have begun to value work less (unless finances force them to value work much, much more) -  time away from family, less leisure time and fewer self-improvement activities have begun to get noticed.

In other words, the human condition that causes us to devalue something until we no longer have it is in full force.   A new study also indicated that recession-related stress tends to manifest differently in men and women.

Wayne Hochwarter, the Jim Moran Professor of Business Administration in the Florida State University College of Business, and research associates Tyler Everett and Stuart Tapley, decided to find out how attitudes toward work had changed during recent times.

If you like to read science studies you are most likely to get them through one of two avenues; the long-standing business model has been that a print journal gets the study and does the work formatting it and lends their 'goodwill' to it with marketing - in return, they hold copyright and subscribers pay to read it.   A more recent approach has been companies that instead charge the scientists to publish the study but reading it is free - open access versus toll access, proponents claim, though in a practical sense someone is either paying to read or someone is paying to publish.

People will pay more for an iPhone, or any product, if it is owned by someone the consumer has 'positive' envy of, such as a friend or celebrity they like, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

But it works the other way also; those with 'malicious' envy or contempt of someone who has a product would instead buy, for example, a BlackBerry instead of an iPhone.  The researchers say their discoveries about the motivations that result from different kinds of envy could be key to understanding marketing in the future.

Alcohol is among the most commonly abused substances and men are almost twice as likely as women to develop alcoholism but there have been no clear reasons for this difference. 

A new study in Biological Psychiatry says that it may be biological and that dopamine is an important factor.  Dopamine is a catecholamine, molecules that serve as hormones and neurotransmitters,  and is a precursor of adrenaline.   Dopamine has multiple functions in the brain but the researchers considered it important in their research on a biology of alcoholism because of its pleasurable effects when it is released by rewarding experiences, such as sex or drugs.

In New York State, under the Public Corporations law, so called "Authorities" or "Public Corporations" can be created that have the ability to raise capital, make autonomous decisions, and act independently fro the state government. Normally, these semi-public institutions are governed by small boards of political appointees and operate with little or no oversight. However, there are ways to make these public corporations return financial decision making power to the very people these decisions affect people.

Yesterday I posted how Game Theory solves the date-night dilemma: opera or the football game. Actually, I posted the problem but not the solution. For all of you who scratched your heads on Saturday night, here's the answer:

Mathematically, the cleanest solution is for them to use a commonly observed randomizing device: they flip a coin. Heads it's football and tails it's opera. And once the coin lands, there's no incentive for one player to switch, as it would only result in the loving husband and wife going separate ways for the evening and the loss of all preference points.