Category: research

Posted on

It Turns Out Kids Who Are Obsessed with Dinosaurs Are Actually Smarter

Do you know a kid who absolutely LOVES dinosaurs? My nephew is obsessed with them, and I was the kind of kid who could describe a paleontologist’s job in great detail back in second grade.

If that describes your kids, that’s great news since a recent study found that kids who are obsessed with dinosaurs are smarter than kids who aren’t.

In the psychology world, this phenomenon is called “intense interests.” Roughly one-third of kids develop an intense interest in their lives but for most the obsession usually fades after the age of six.

Photo Credit: Flickr,Mike Mozart

A study from the University of Indiana and the University of Wisconsin found that an intense interest can “enhance perseverance, improve attention and enhance skills of complex thinking as the processing of information”, especially when the interest demands a conceptual domain.

Intense interests have also been shown to improve linguistic skills and are a good indicator of higher understanding. It’s also been shown that the way children study dinosaurs helps them develop strategies to tackle problems throughout their lives.

Interestingly, kids’ intense interest in dinosaurs develops in the first year of life without encouragement from their parents. As mentioned earlier, most of these obsessions pass and only 20% of kids still have the intense interest when they enter school.

Researchers believe that once kids start school and have to devote time to learning new things, they lose their free time to explore their interests. It is suggested that in order to keep your child’s interest alive as they grow up, parents should teach their kids facts about the subject as opposed to letting them have “pretend adventures.”

Make sure those kids keep learning on their own after they start school, and remember, if your child is obsessed with T-Rex, that’s a good thing!

The post It Turns Out Kids Who Are Obsessed with Dinosaurs Are Actually Smarter appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Scientists Say Beards Keep You Healthy and Handsome

I mean, as a bearded fella myself, I might be a little biased about this but I, for one, couldn’t be happier about this news.

A study from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, found that men who have thick, rugged beards receive benefits that make them healthier and more handsome.

Photo Credit: Pexels

In what must have been a very strange sight, the researchers left mannequins in the harsh Australian outback and studied the results. Some of the mannequins had beards and some were bare-faced. The study found that the beards blocked 90 to 95% of harmful ultraviolet rays on the mannequins from the blazing sun. This help beards reduce the risk of skin cancer in the skin they cover.

But don’t think you can just get by with a little stubble. One of the researchers said,

“Facial hair has an Ultraviolet Protection Factor (UPF) of anywhere from 2 to 21. The percentage of UV blocked to the skin depends on the thickness and angle of the sun…Provided the beard is of reasonable thickness, I do not think there is a need to slather sunscreen over the beard due to the protection it provides. It has to be a thick bushy beard and not just stubble.”

Photo Credit: pxhere

Having a large beard also protects the face from irritants and can keep the face youthful by retaining moisture and blocking harsh wind.

Bottom line: embrace that beard of yours if you have one! It’s good for you!

The post Scientists Say Beards Keep You Healthy and Handsome appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Science Says Practicing Yoga and Meditation Can Inflate Your Ego

A forthcoming study in Psychological Science confirms what everyone who has a yogi friend already suspects: regular practitioners experience inflated egos.

According to the study, both yoga and meditation increase “self-enhancement,” which is the tendency for people to attach importance to their own actions. In a report, Quartz said that the study followed 93 yoga students over the course of 15 weeks, and measured superiority, communal narcissism, and self-esteem. They repeated the study with 162 meditation students.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

In the hour after their practices, both participants showed significantly higher self-enhancement and were more likely to make statements that implied an inflated sense of self-importance.

Whether this is good or bad is your call, but given that the roots of Hindu and Buddhist yoga is the ideas of quieting the ego and conquering the self, there seems to be little doubt that Western-style yoga seems to be missing the mark.

The post Science Says Practicing Yoga and Meditation Can Inflate Your Ego appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Had Your Tonsils Removed? Here’s Some Bad News for You…

For decades, doctors removed the tonsils and adenoids from children who suffered from chronic strep throat infections. The reason is that the tonsils and adenoids trigger a first-line immune response for pathogens entering the respiratory tract, and can become chronically inflamed during our early years.

It probably seemed like a no-brainer to remove organs that don’t perform any essential purpose in favor of happier kids, but a recent study published in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery suggests kids who are missing their tonsils could be at risk for more illnesses in the future.

Photo Credit: MaxHealthline

The study is one of the first of its kind, but the massive dataset of around 1.2 Danish individuals lends serious weight to the results.

“Given that tonsils and adenoids are part of the lymphatic system and play a key role both in the normal development of the immune system and in pathogen screening during childhood and early-life,3 it is not surprising that their removal may impair pathogen detection and increase risk of later respiratory and infectious diseases,” they conclude.

Researchers followed the health of participants from birth to at least age 10, keeping up with some until the age of 30, and found that those who had their tonsils removed before age 9 were 3x more likely to suffer from allergic or infectious upper respiratory tract diseases like asthma, flu, and pneumonia. An adenoidectomy during the same period was associated with a two-fold higher rate of those diseases, plus COPD and conjunctivitis.

Photo Credit: Lavur

In light of the results, the doctors involved in the study conclude that the procedures should be avoided when other treatments are available, and if options run out, the procedures should be delayed for as long as possible to allow a child’s immune system to develop further.

“The growing body of research on developmental origins of disease has convincingly demonstrated that even small perturbations to fetal and childhood growth and development can have lifelong consequences for general health.”

So, you might be screwed, but at least you can save your kids from the same fate!

The post Had Your Tonsils Removed? Here’s Some Bad News for You… appeared first on UberFacts.