38004305
submission
bbianca127 writes:
A study has found that fast-food logos are branded into the minds of children at an early age, perhaps fueling the U.S.'s obesity epidemic. The study showed children 60 logos from popular food brands and 60 logos from popular non-food brands. Researchers found that, when shown images of fast-food brands, the parts of kids' brains linked with pleasure and appetite lit up. This is concerning because marketers tap into those portions of the brain long before children develop self-control, and most foods marketed to kids are high in calories, sugar, sodium, and fat.
36804467
submission
bbianca127 writes:
Researchers studied classical conditioning in 55 study participants while sleeping or awake. According to the article, "Classical conditioning teaches a person or animal to associate one stimulus with another." The researchers paired tones with scents; when they played a tone, they would let out a particular scent while the participants were sleeping. They found that the participants would make the association between the tones and scents even while awake.
36534245
submission
bbianca127 writes:
In November, California voters will be voting on Proposition 37. The proposition wants to put labels on foods that have been genetically modified. While supporters of the proposition think that consumers deserve to know what they're eating, opponents call it "anti-science" and have donated $25 million to defeating the measure.
36427205
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bbianca127 writes:
Kentucky mandated that schools include tests that are based on national standards, and contracted test maker ACT to handle them. Legislators were then shocked that evolution was so prominently featured, even though evolution is well-supported and a central tenet of modern biology. One KY Senator said that he wanted creationism taught alongside evolution, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that teaching creationism in science classes is a violation of the establishment clause. Representative Ben Wade stated that evolution is just a theory, and that Darwin made it all up. Legislators want ACT to make a Kentucky-specific ACT test, though the test makers say that would be prohibitively expensive. This is just the latest in a round of states' fight against evolution — Louisiana and Tennessee have recently passed laws directed at teaching evolution.
36390847
submission
bbianca127 writes:
Curiosity sent a picture down to us, and it looks a lot like Earth. Actually, the picture's color quality has been changed — to human eyes, the landscape would look a lot more reddish. Still, it looks remarkably like the southwestern United States (bringing to mind the AD quote about how Lucille Bluth would rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona).
