Smile!

It Could Make You Happier

Making an emotional face--or suppressing one--influences your feelings
By Melinda Wenner | October 14, 2009

35. We smile because we are happy, and we frown because we are sad. But does the causal arrow
point in the other direction, too? A spate of recent studies of botox recipients and others suggests
that our emotions are reinforcedperhaps even drivenby their corresponding facial
expressions. Charles Darwin first posed the idea that emotional responses influence our feelings
in 1872. The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it, he wrote. The
esteemed 19th-century psychologist William James went so far as to assert that if a person does
not express an emotion, he has not felt it at all. Although few scientists would agree with such a
statement today, there is evidence that emotions involve more than just the brain. The face, in
particular, appears to play a big role. This February psychologists at the University of Cardiff in
Wales found that people whose ability to frown is compromised by cosmetic botox injections are
happier, on average, than people who can frown.

Smile! It Could Make You Happier

Making an emotional face--or suppressing one--influences your feelings
By Melinda Wenner | October 14, 2009

36. This February psychologists at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people whose
ability to frown is compromised by cosmetic botox injections are happier, on average, than
people who can frown. The researchers administered an anxiety and depression questionnaire to
25 females, half of whom had received frown-inhibiting botox injections. The botox recipients
reported feeling happier and less anxious in general; more important, they did not report feeling
any more attractive, which suggests that the emotional effects were not driven by a psychological
boost that could come from the treatments cosmetic nature. It would appear that the way we feel
emotions isnt just restricted to our brainthere are parts of our bodies that help and reinforce
the feelings were having. This is to say that we might become happy by simply smiling.

Smile! It Could Make You Happier

Making an emotional face--or suppressing one--influences your feelings
By Melinda Wenner | October 14, 2009

37. People who frown during an unpleasant procedure report feeling more pain than those who
do not, according to a study published in May 2008 in the Journal of Pain. Researchers applied
heat to the forearms of 29 participants, who were asked to either make unhappy, neutral or
relaxed faces during the procedure. Those who exhibited negative expressions reported being in
more pain than the other two groups. John Lewis, who was not involved in that study, says he
plans to study the effect that botox injections have on pain perception. Its possible that people
may feel less pain if theyre unable to express it, he says. But we have all heard that it is bad to
repress our feelingsso what happens if a person intentionally suppresses his or her negative
emotions on an ongoing basis? Work by psychologist Judith Grob of the University of Groningen
in the Netherlands suggests that this suppressed negativity may leak into other realms of a
persons life.

Smile! It Could Make You Happier

Making an emotional face--or suppressing one--influences your feelings
By Melinda Wenner | October 14, 2009

38. We have all heard that it is bad to repress our feelingsso what happens if a person
intentionally suppresses his or her negative emotions on an ongoing basis? Work by psychologist
Judith Grob suggests that this suppressed negativity may leak into other realms of a persons
life. In a series of studies she performed for her Ph.D. thesis and has submitted for publication,
she asked subjects to look at disgusting images while hiding their emotions or while holding
pens in their mouths in such a way that prevented them from frowning. A third group could react
as they pleased. As expected, the subjects in both groups that did not express their emotions
reported feeling less disgusted afterward than control subjects. Then she gave the subjects a
series of cognitive tasks that included fill-in-the-blank exercises. She found that subjects who
had repressed their emotions performed poorly on memory tasks.

Poachers still killing 100 elephants daily in Africa

By John Platt | Oct 19, 2009

39. Twenty years after the international ban on ivory trade took effect, poachers are still
slaughtering more than 100 elephants a day. The ban on ivory trade took effect on October 17,
1989. At the time an average of 200 elephants were killed every day in Africa. Poaching almost
ceased after the ban, but it is now on the increase once again. Over the last few years, several
sales of ivory stockpiles have been allowed, mostly from elephants that died of natural causes.
But this has only fed consumer demand and created opportunities for the black market to mask
its operations. The world financial crisis has made things even worse: Many African nations have
had to cut back on their antipoaching operations, giving illegal wildlife traders even more
incentive to profit from their operations. Can this increase in elephant poaching be reversed?
Unfortunately, at current rates, at least 12,000 African elephants could die before a decision is
reached by the competent authority.

Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn

New research makes the case for hard tests, and suggests an unusual technique that anyone can use to learn
By Henry L. Roediger and Bridgid Finn | October 20, 2009

40. For years, many educators have championed errorless learning," advising teachers (and
students) to create study conditions that do not permit errors. For example, a classroom teacher
might drill students repeatedly on the same multiplication problem, with very little delay
between the first and second presentations of the problem, ensuring that the student gets the
answer correct each time. The idea embedded in this approach is that if students make errors,
they will learn the errors and be prevented (or slowed) in learning the correct information. But
research reveals that this worry is misplaced. In fact, they found, learning becomes better if
conditions are arranged so that students make errors. People remember things better, longer, if
they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. Trying
and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning. Its an idea that has obvious
applications for education, but could be useful for anyone who is trying to learn new material of
any kind.

Burning bunnies for biofuel?

By David Biello | Oct 14, 2009

41. The Swedes, those latter-day descendants of bloodthirsty Vikings, have found a new use for
rabbits: heating fuel. According to Der Spiegel, rabbits in Stockholm are being shot, frozen and
then shipped to a heating plant to be incinerated. In the Swedes' defense, the bunnies are a
menace; a plague of wild and stray pet rabbits is devouring the city's parks. Some 3,000 have
been killed thus far this year, down from 6,000 last year, a professional hunter who works for the
city, told the German news magazine. Converting the rabbits to fuel is the company Konvex,
which makes automotive and heating fuels from vegetable and animal oils and fats. The Swedes
have a variety of similar efforts, including turning slaughterhouse remains into biogas, a methane
fuel that runs taxicabs in Linkoping in southern Sweden. And in the U.S., ConocoPhillips and
Tyson have joined forces to make biofuel from pork and chicken fat, which is otherwise
consumed as pet food or turned into cosmetics or soaps.

Burning bunnies for biofuel?

By David Biello | Oct 14, 2009

42. The Swedes, those latter-day descendants of bloodthirsty Vikings, have found a new use for
rabbits: heating fuel. According to Der Spiegel, rabbits in Stockholm are being shot, frozen and
then shipped to a heating plant to be incinerated. In the Swedes' defense, the bunnies are a
menace; a plague of wild and stray pet rabbits is devouring the city's parks. Some 3,000 have
been killed thus far this year, down from 6,000 last year, a professional hunter who works for the
city, told the German news magazine. Such methods have given rise to parody, but they remain
in place and they are likely to continue to be used as they solve several problems at the same
time. But bunnies, despite their fertility, are not quite abundant enough to be a reliable fuel so
Stockholm also ships dead cats, cows, deer and horses to the plant for processing. No word on
whether the remains of man's best friend are also keeping Swedes warm this winter.

What Is Killing South African Crocs?

Mass deaths of South Africa's Nile crocodiles puzzle biologists
By Naomi Lubick | October 9, 2009

43. Carcasses of adult crocodiles do not usually signal the return of winter in South Africa, but
mass death seems to be becoming the harbinger of the season. People have found Nile crocodiles
floating in the Olifants River or decaying along its banks. Investigators are rushing to figure out
the cause and worry that the deaths might be signaling the presence of toxins or pathogens that
could threaten not only the croc population but also the animals of the people living near the
river. After slicing open some of the crocodile corpses last year, researchers determined some
kind of inflammation of adipose tissue was killing the animals. Specifically, their tails were
swollen with the hardened, enlarged fat deposits, which had stiffened and immobilized the
crocodiles and left them unable to hunt. The disease may not be limited to crocs.
Harbinger - One that indicates or foreshadows what is to come; a forerunner.
44. Daunting grammar
In a desperate exercise of re-branding, Waterstones have decided to remove the apostrophe from
their name. According to James Daunt, Waterstones [sic] without an apostrophe is, in a digital
world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling. This, of course, is
nonsense. The march of the digital world is no excuse for misuse of the English language.
Indeed, in many ways, the digital world has given written English a new lease of life through the
proliferation of blogs and online journals. Waterstones decision is rather like the middle-aged
classical music fan who suddenly develops a taste for hip hop and trance in order to impress his
kids. In doing so, he loses credibility amongst his peers and looks the opposite of cool to the
people hes trying to impress. Waterstones have made the same kind of mistake. By trying to
appear attuned to the digital age, they have enraged a huge number of people and impressed
nobody. There is, of course, the added factor that Waterstones without the apostrophe is just bad
English. People arent being petty or pedantic in not liking this decisionwe just dont like the
idea that Britains largest bookseller has started to pretend that grammar is optional. What next?
Will Waterstones decide to remove full stops or commas because they are no longer relevant in a
digital world? The reasoning is maddening.