20% of gamblers attempt suicide — why don't we take the addiction more seriously?
Americans lost $116.9 billion gambling in 2016.
- Gambling addiction has been shown to have the same pharmacological effects as opiates.
- Eighty-five percent of all gambling revenue comes from slot machines.
- Casinos are designed to disorient and confuse patrons, from the lighting and carpeting to the key of machine sounds.
Brazilian scientists produce mini-brains with eyes
Using a new process, a mini-brain develops retinal cells.
- Mini-brains, or "neural organoids," are at the cutting edge of medical research.
- This is the first one that's started developing eyes.
- Stem cells are key to the growing of organoids of various body parts.
How financial insecurity sinks American IQ scores
Being on shaky financial footing is making Americans dumber.
- Not being able to pay your bills has the functional equivalent of lowering your IQ by 13 points. Many Americans have scarcity mindsets because of their inability to pay their bills.
- In a scarcity mindset, your functional bandwidth decreases — it influences you to be less generous and less reasonable.
- The opposite of a mindset of scarcity is a mindset of abundance, which is what many entrepreneurs have. Abundance mindsets tend to build on to themselves if the environment is right.
- Researchers noticed a spike in sales of ice cream, cookies, and chips after the legalization of marijuana.
- They studied 2,000 U.S. counties over the course of a decade, focusing on data from Colorado, Oregon, and Washington.
- While research is confirming the medical benefits of marijuana, obesity is an unintended consequence of legalization.
New study finds strength of imagination not associated with creative ability or achievement
If you have a strong imagination, this won't help you with academic study.
Imagination is sometimes claimed to be a uniquely human ability, and it has long intrigued psychologists. "Nevertheless, our understanding of the benefits and risks that individual differences in imagination hold for psychological outcomes is currently limited," note two researchers who have created a new psychometric test – the Imaginative Behaviour Engagement Scale (IBES) – for measuring how much imagination a person has, and then used it to investigate whether, as some earlier work hinted, having a stronger imagination might aid learning and creativity.
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