By Frederick E. Allen (Forbes) Four university professors found that power breeds overconfidence, and overconfidence leads to bad decisions. People who had been primed to think of themselves as more powerful had more confidence in their answers — and yet their answers were actually less accurate. The fifth and final experiment the four conducted found [...]

By Sara Robinson (AlterNet) How did we get to the 40-hour week in the first place? How did we lose it? And are there compelling bottom-line business reasons that we should bring it back? The most essential thing to know about the 40-hour work-week is that, while it was the unions that pushed it, business [...]

By Erica Goode (NY Times) Kept in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours each day, allowed out only in shackles and escorted by guards, they were restless and angry — made more so by the excrement-smeared walls, the insects, the filthy food trays and the mentally ill inmates who screamed in the night, conditions that [...]

By John Avlon (The Daily Beast) Ninety-eight major advertisers—including Ford and Geico—will no longer air spots on Premiere Networks’ ‘offensive’ programs. Insiders say the loss will rock right-wing talk radio. Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 [...]

By Arran Frood (Nature) The powerful hallucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) has potential as a treatment for alcoholism, according to a retrospective analysis of studies published in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The study1, by neuroscientist Teri Krebs and clinical psychologist Pål-Ørjan Johansen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, is the [...]

(Sandia Labs News Release) Research by a team of Sandia chemists could impact worldwide efforts to produce clean, safe nuclear energy and reduce radioactive waste. Sandia chemist Tina Nenoff heads a team of researchers focused on removal of radioactive iodine from spent nuclear fuel.  (Photo by Randy Montoya) Click on the thumbnail for a high-resolution [...]

By Joseph Castro (LiveScience) The act of helping others out of empathy has long been associated strictly with humans and other primates, but new research shows that rats exhibit this prosocial behavior as well. In the new study, laboratory rats repeatedly freed their cage-mates from containers, even though there was no clear reward for doing [...]

By John Ingold (Denver Post) The passage of state medical-marijuana laws is associated with a subsequent drop in the rate of traffic fatalities, according to a newly released study by two university professors. The study — by University of Colorado Denver professor Daniel Rees and Montana State University professor D. Mark Anderson — found that [...]

By Jenny Deam (Los Angeles Times) According to the Air Force Academy’s enrollment records, only three of United States Air Force 4,300 cadets identified themselves as pagans, followers of an ancient religion that generally does not worship a single god and considers all things in nature interconnected. Still, the academy this year dedicated an $80,000 [...]

By Adam Bernstein (Washington Post) Loren R. Mosher, 70, who died of liver cancer July 10 at a clinic in Berlin, was a contrarian psychiatrist and schizophrenia expert who was dismissed from the National Institute of Mental Health for his controversial theories on treatment. While chief of NIMH’s Center for the Study of Schizophrenia from [...]