20-Second Trust Factor F


MATE TEA FIGHTS COLON CANCER


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ccording to a recent University of Illinois study, bioactive compounds in mate tea,


a beverage consumed in South America for its medicinal properties, killed human colon cancer cells in vitro. The scientists attribute this surprising health benefit to the tea’s caffeine derivatives that not only induced death in the cancer cells, but also reduced important markers of inflammation.


Source: University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environ- mental Sciences


WATCHING MAGIC BOOSTS CREATIVITY IN CHILDREN


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esearchers from Lancaster University have discovered that youngsters watching


creative fantasy films improve their own imagination and creativity. The study involved 52 4-to-6-year-old children. The youngsters were split into two groups and shown two short segments of a popular fantasy movie. The findings showed that the group watching the


magical scenes generally scored “significantly better” in creative activities than their peers in the other group that saw scenes without any magical content.


irst impressions not only count—they are surprisingly accurate, at least when it comes to detecting whether a stranger is “made” to be compassionate, trustworthy or kind. New research by the University of California, Berkeley suggests that it can take just 20 seconds to recognize who is genetically so inclined. Two dozen couples participated in the study and


provided DNA samples. Researchers documented them as they talked about times when they had suffered. A separate group of observers that did not know the couples were shown 20-second video segments of only the listen- ers and asked to rate which participants seemed most


compassionate, based on facial expressions and body language. The listeners that received the highest ratings for empathy turned out to pos- sess a particular variation of the oxytocin receptor gene known as the GG genotype. Dubbed the “love hormone”, oxytocin is naturally secreted into the bloodstream and the brain, where it promotes social interaction, bonding and romantic love. “People can’t see genes, so there has to be something going on that is signal- ing these genetic differences to the strangers,” says Aleksandr Kogan, lead author of the study. “What we found is that the people that had two copies of the G ver- sion displayed more trustworthy behaviors: more head nods, eye contact, smiling and open body posture. These behaviors signaled kindness to the strangers.”


Can Parents Teach Peace?


recent study suggests they can. Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, and the University of Illinois system studied more than 5,500 students at 37 middle schools, focusing on this age group because aggressive behavior tends to escalate during the transition from childhood to adolescence. The researchers found that violent behavior in general increased throughout the three years of middle school, especially among girls. The good news is that children whose parents actively


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advocate peaceful conflict resolution acted less aggres- sively, even if they attended more violent schools.


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