Health & Science

last updated 8 January 2015

How to make high school less painful

High school students are famously groggy in morning classes. It doesn’t have to be that way: New research has found that starting the school day just a half-hour later leads to more alert kids, less tardiness, and more healthful breakfasts. As part of a Brown University research project, a private high school in Middletown, R.I., agreed to delay the start of school from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. for two months; students were surveyed before and after the experiment. The changes were dramatic. The percentage of students who got at least eight hours of sleep jumped from 16 percent to 55 percent; tardiness fell by almost half; and students reported feeling less depressed and irritated during the day. The number of kids who said they ate a hot breakfast more than doubled. “The results were stunning,” St. George’s School academic dean Patricia Moss tells USA Today. “We didn’t think we’d get that much bang for the buck.” Researchers say teens are biologically programmed to be in their deepest sleep around dawn, and interrupting that sleep leaves them in a fog—especially because they tend to have trouble getting to sleep before 11 p.m. School districts have resisted calls to start school later, though, citing factors like bus schedules and parents’ work hours. “It’s about adult convenience,” says Mel Riddle of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. “It’s not about learning.”

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Politicians have good reason to root for their local sports teams. A Stanford University study has found that when the local team wins, it boosts the mood of voters so much that incumbents benefit on Election Day. The study looked at federal and state elections between 1964 and 2008, along with the records of 62 college football teams. Researchers found that game victories in the two weeks before elections increased the incumbents’ share of voters in the counties where the schools were located by about 1.5 percent—enough to make a difference in close races. Victories put voters in a better mood generally, researcher Neil Malhotra tells the Associated Press, and that translates into more support for sitting politicians. “Events that government had nothing to do with but that affect voters’ sense of well-being can affect the decisions they make on Election Day,” Malhotra says.

Postpartum perfectionism

New mothers who are overly concerned about being the “perfect parent” may be more at risk for postpartum depression, says LiveScience.com. Researchers at York University in Canada surveyed 100 first-time mothers and found a much higher rate of postpartum depression among women who hoped to live up to the expectation that they’d be perfect parents. The link between postpartum depression and perfectionism was strongest among women who’d never admitted they were scared or overwhelmed, and always acted as if everything was fine. “This tendency to put on this front usually means that people don’t tell other people when they’re doing badly,” says psychologist Gordon Flett. “It’s important for new mothers and fathers to just realize, ‘Hey, you haven’t got a lot of experience with this, you don’t need to be perfect, just do your best.’”

For giraffes, length matters

It’s generally assumed that giraffes evolved long necks to help them eat leaves off tall trees. But some researchers now suggest that the long necks actually have more to do with sex, New Scientist reports. Researchers at the University of Cape Town in South Africa found that male giraffes fight for females by “necking”—they stand side by side and swing their heads at each other’s ribs and legs. Giraffes with the longer, stronger necks are more likely to prevail in these showdowns, researchers say, and are therefore more likely to pass down their genes. The “necks for sex” theory also explains why giraffes evolved longer necks instead of much longer legs. From a purely biological standpoint, longer legs would make more sense, since it’s inefficient for creatures to have their brains so far away from their hearts, as giraffes do.

Addicted to love

If you’re having a really hard time getting over a broken romance, it could be because you’re literally addicted to love, says ABCnews.com. Rutgers University researchers studied the brain scans of volunteers as they looked at photographs of ex-lovers who had broken up with them; the parts of their brains that lit up were the same ones associated with cocaine and nicotine addiction, physical pain, and control of emotions. Like drug addicts going cold turkey, the scans revealed, these people were experiencing a deep-seated craving that they could no longer satisfy, causing psychic and physical agony. The results provide insight into why it can be so difficult for some people to get over a breakup—and why some resort to extreme behavior like stalking and even murder. “Romantic love is an addiction,” said study author and biological anthropologist Helen Fisher. “It’s a very powerfully wonderful addiction when things are going well and a perfectly horribly addiction when things are going poorly.”