Category: Facts

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Spending Money On Others Makes You Happier

In their book Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending, authors Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton draw on years of quantitative and qualitative research to explain how money can buy happiness, but only if we spend it in certain ways.

The key lies in adhering to five key principles: Buy Experiences (research shows that material purchases are less satisfying than vacations or concerts);Make it a Treat (limiting access to our favorite things will make us keep appreciating them); Buy Time (focusing on time over money yields wiser purchases); Pay Now, Consume Later (delayed consumption leads to increased enjoyment); and Invest in Others (spending money on other people makes us happier than spending it on ourselves).

Recently we featured a video illustrating the emotional benefits of buying experiences. In the following sequel, Norton again gives some cash to two women in Harvard Square. The catch this time: Each of them must spend the money on someone else.

“We’ve shown in our research that giving money to others actually does make people happier,” says Norton, an associate professor of marketing at Harvard Business School. “One of the reasons is that it creates social connections. If you have a nice car and a big house on an island by yourself, you’re not going to be happy because we need people to be happy. But by giving to another person, you’re…creating a connection and a conversation with that person, and those things are really good for happiness.”

Watch the video to find out how the women in Harvard Square chose to invest in others—and whether it made them happier!

Full Article from Forbes.com

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Eating Chocolate Can Improve Math Skills

chocolate-heartEating chocolate could improve the brain’s ability to do math, a new study suggests.

Mental arithmetic became easier after volunteers had been given large amounts of compounds found in chocolate, called flavanols, in a hot cocoa drink.

They were also less likely to feel tired or mentally drained, the findings, presented at the British Psychological Society annual conference in Brighton show.

Prof David Kennedy, director of the brain, performance and nutrition research centre at Northumbria University, and a co-author of the study, said that chocolate could be beneficial for mentally challenging tasks.

The findings suggest students who binge on chocolate when revising for exams may gain a real benefit from doing so.

“For things that are difficult to do, mentally demanding things that maybe crop up in your work it could help,” Prof Kennedy said.

The flavanols, part of a group of chemicals called polyphenols, work by increasing the flow of blood into the brain.

For the study 30 volunteers were asked to count backwards in groups of three from a random number between 800 and 999 generated by a computer.

The findings show that they could do the calculations more quickly and more accurately after they had been given the drink.

However, the same was not true when the group was asked to count backwards in groups of seven, which the researchers described as a more complex task, requiring a slightly different part of the brain.

The findings also show that the volunteers did not get as tired doing the calculations if they had been given the cocoa drink, despite being asked to do them over and over for an hour.

The researchers gave the volunteers a total of 500mg of flavanol.

Although the amount was too great to be found naturally in the diet, researchers said that people should ensure that they have lots of flavanols, also found in fruit and vegetables, on a regular basis.

Emma Wightman, one of the study’s lead researchers, said: “You can get bars of chocolate that have 100mg of flavanol, and we are also going to look at the effect of lower doses of flavanol on the brain.”

Dark chocolate contains higher quantaties of the chemical than plain or milk chocolate.

Prof Kennedy added: “The amount that you are giving is more than in the diet but there is quite a lot of evidence that general amounts are protective against declining function and that kind of thing.

“The more fruit and vegetables and things that are high in polyphenols the better that is for your brain in the long run.”

(via Telegraph)

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66-Year-Old Man Discovers He’s A Woman!

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A 66-year-old who lived his whole life as a man was given a surprising diagnosis after visiting the doctor in Hong Kong with a swollen abdomen — he was a woman.

Doctors realised the patient was female after they found the swelling came from a large cyst on an ovary, the Hong Kong Medical Journal reported.

The condition was the result of two rare genetic disorders.

The subject had Turner syndrome, which affects girls and women and results from a problem with the chromosomes, with characteristics including infertility and short stature.

But he also had congenital adrenal hyperplasia, increasing male hormones and making the patient, who had a beard and a “micropenis”, appear like a man.

“Were it not due to the huge ovarian cyst, his intriguing medical condition might never have been exposed,” seven doctors from two of the city’s hospitals wrote in the study published Monday.

Read more from Huffington Post

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There’s a Town in Italy that doesn’t get sunlight for 84 days a year.

There’s a Town in Italy that doesn’t get sunlight for 84 days a year. They’ve solved this problem with a giant mirror:

Call it the reverse Montgomery Burns scheme. The little town of
Viganella is located amidst the Italian side of the Alps. During the
winter time, the shift in the sun’s pattern makes it so that it never
clears the 1600 feet tall mountain that’s close to the town. This means
that for 84 days, they do not get any
sunlight. The townspeople end up suffering from Seasonal Affective
Disorder, a type of mild depression.

To solve this, the
government installed a massive mirror on the side of the mountain. It
measure 26×16 feet and is computer controlled to follow the trajectory
of the Sun. The result is that starting in 2006, the town was able to
celebrate the first winter sun in 600 years!

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A FAKE neighborhood was built in SEATTLE during WORLD WAR II

The destruction of a lesser-known Seattle pseudo-suburb is underway.
This series of a dozen square blocks was lofted forty feet in the air
but, despite looking picture-perfect (a series of pristine streets,
homes, yards and trees) it was never intended for human habitation.

A little anomaly dates back to World War II, this whole fake
neighborhood built atop a Boeing factory south of downtown Seattle,
meant to hide the presence of airplane production facilities below … the
cumulative size of eight football fields.

 Houses, streets and plants were assembled like stage props out of
plywood, clapboard, chicken wire and burlap, covering the plant’s roof
during World War II. If any Japanese bombers made it this far east, the
hope was that their pilots would mistake this for a quiet residential
neighborhood.
 Despite the proximity of faux overhead homes, workers from the plane
plant took an entirely opposite route to get out, heading down instead
of up. Secret underground tunnels to reach nearby and
likewise-camouflaged cafeterias, classrooms and restrooms – images of
people on top were merely staged for a post-construction photo and film
shoot.
 But these would-have-been houses will not go to waste – the reclamation
of remaining materials is in progress. The Duluth Timber Company is
salvaging scraps as well as heavy timber beams from the site before it
is leveled.
 As for the plant itself: it became increasingly outdated (and
structurally dangerous) as decades past, despite being the original home
of many famous Boeing aircraft including the original B-52 bomber and
737 jetliner.
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The Øresund Bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden runs partly UNDERWATER

The Øresund Bridge is a combined twin-track
railway and dual carriageway bridge-tunnel across the Øresund strait
between Sweden and Denmark.

The bridge runs nearly 8 km (5
miles) from the Swedish coast to the artificial island of Peberholm,
which lies in the middle of the strait. The remainder of the link is by
tunnel from Peberholm to the Danish island of Amager. The Øresund Bridge
is the longest combined road and rail
bridge in Europe, and connects two major metropolitan areas: those of
the Danish capital city Copenhagen and the major Swedish city Malmö.
Furthermore, the Øresund Bridge connects the road and rail networks of
Scandinavia with those of Central and Western Europe.

The
justification for the additional expenditure and complexity related to
digging a tunnel for part of the way – rather than simply raising that
section of the bridge – was to avoid interfering with air traffic from
the nearby Copenhagen International Airport, and also to provide a clear
channel for ships in good weather or bad, and to prevent ice floes from
blocking the strait. The Oresund Bridge crosses the border between
Denmark and Sweden, but in accordance with the Schengen Agreement and
the Nordic Passport Union, there are usually no passport inspections.
There are random customs checks at the entrance toll booths for entering
Sweden, but not for entering Denmark.

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IKEA stores are designed like a maze in order to prevent customers from leaving

The theory behind the design is: the longer a customer is inside the
store and the more furniture they see, the more items they are inclined
to buy. This layout is so confusing that oftentimes shoppers make
purchases simply because they are afraid they may never find their way
back to the item!

A study at a store location in Kent, England showed that patrons spent
an average of 3 hours inside the store, with a significant number
remaining for as long a 8 hours! IKEA is quick to deny any intention to
purposely bewilder its customers, citing shortcuts within the facility
(built primarily due to fire code), but the store’s exits still are not
very easy to find.