A Fat Question

Hummingbirds… White-Tail Deer… Guadalupe Bass… Bigtooth Maple… thriving on the Sabinal River in the Edwards Plateau.

On a weekend camping trip to Lost Maples, we found the level of the Sabinal River disturbingly low.  As a long time river enthusiast, I see the drought as dire and remain concerned about the future of Texas rivers.

Can we continue to enjoy and share the waters with the Guadalupe Bass when rainfall is scarce? Are rivers in Central Texas endangered? Any feasible solutions?

Ask Texas Parks and Wildlife biologists, who insist the answer lies in native grass restoration of the Central Texas landscape. Planting bunch grass in the limestone? Can it be that simple?

Trek up scenic roads around Utopia and Medina, and you notice the omnipresence of an evergreen bush in various states of growth. Known as the Ashe juniper or mountain cedar, this plant is far from pleasant.

Ranchers and landowners consider the Ashe juniper a nuisance “weed” that consumes a disproportionate amount of groundwater. The pollen of the Ashe juniper is also a known allergan and a popular target of the Replace a Cedar movement.

There’s hope for watershed activists and allergy sufferers alike. Non-native Ashe juniper can be reclaimed into historical grassy watershed. Replacing nuisance mountain cedar with native bunch grasses not only provides habitat for wildlife, but also controls runoff and restores rivers and creeks.

Where did I put my Cedar Eater?

Featured a February 2008 post about the research of Carol S. Dweck and the role of self-theory in motivation and learning.

Happy to report that Brainology, the eight-week workshop from the growth mindset research, is now available to educators, parents, and students!

In her study, Dweck enrolled two groups of students in the eight-week workshop. One group learned study skills and the growth mindset—that the brain is like a muscle becoming stronger with use—that learning occurs when neurons are making connections.

Within the span of a semester, these students were showing significant signs of academic improvement. Dweck suggests that the students were highly motivated because they became aware they could impact their own learning.

Dweck is very pleased to be helping more learners develop a growth mindset through the award-winning program. She writes: “Brainology can help them understand how their brains form new connections every time they learn, how they can become smarter, and how they can apply the growth mindset in school.”

“And, it’s really gratifying to see it actually being used and generating such positive feedback from others,” Dweck added.

Are you an irrepressible gesturer? You may be exhibiting a positive effect on young children as they learn language.

Today, I read in Science News about a recent study that shows a link between a child’s gesturing and later language acquisition.  Children who gesture more at 14 months will go on to have higher vocabularies when they start kindergarten, say researchers Susan Goldin-Meadow and Meredith Rowe, who studied 50 families in the Chicago area.

The researchers totaled the number of meaningful gestures, as when a child points at a toy or nods, from videotaped interactions between 14-month-olds and their mothers.

Goldin-Meadow reported that children from more affluent families performed an average of 24 meaningful gestures, while children from lower socioeconomic groups performed an average of 13.

Language tests on those children starting kindergarten found the more frequent gesturers at 14 months scored significantly higher on vocabulary.

I wrote previously about hand gesturing and a possible link between memory and learning. Susan Wagner Cook’s work with elementary students shows that teachers who use gestures to explain a concept convey their messages more effectively. And students who move their hands as they work through new concepts are more likely to retain the knowledge than those who do not gesture.

President Obama’s promise to restore the value of science should give us cause for celebration! Still plenty to do, particularly in Texas, where some seek to insert questionable arguments in the teaching of evolution.

Why should we protect the teaching of sound science in this state? Because… curriculum standards in Texas impact textbook publishing across the country. Because… we risk having our students fall behind in science, technology, engineering, and math.  Because… this says something about us when we offer up scientific method as a sacrifice to religious fundamentalism.

Please read more about today’s State Board of Education “public hearing” over religiously motivated language in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills in Science:

Austin-American Statesman story

Texas Freedom Network blog post

Texas Citizens for Science

Teach Them Science

Live Blog from EvoSphere at Chron.com

Blending the Spanish padres’ teachings with the magic of the natural world, the spirituality of the mission tribes evolved into one shared today by many of their Mexican descendants.

While we attend Mass and religious education, there is no doubt we remain in commune with this ancestral spirituality from which our creativity and empathy are fed. We hope our children look inward (more than outward) to find coherence and meaning in their lives, too.

A recent article published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found that children rate more happiness with a strong inner life versus religious practices and beliefs.

Mark Holder and fellow researchers at the University of British Columbia, Canada asked 320 children (ages 8-12) to complete six questionnaires that rate happiness, spirituality, religiousness, and temperament. Parents were also asked to rate their child’s happiness and temperament.

Four domains of spirituality were assessed in the study: 1) personal (meaning and value in one’s life); 2) communal (quality of interpersonal relationships); 3) environmental (sense of awe for nature); and 4) transcendental (faith in something beyond the human level).

While church attendance is a predictor of adult happiness, the domains of spirituality that remained important predictors of happiness in children were personal meaning and quality of interpersonal relationships.

So, what strengthens those domains of spirituality that predict happiness in children? According the researchers in this study… kindness and acts of altruism.

Happy New Year! What are you consuming today to encourage a year of health and abundance? Collards? Cabbage? Pomegranates? Circular foods? 12 grapes before midnight?

If your preference is the humble black-eyed pea, then you’ll start out the New Year healthy. A bowl of black-eyed peas is rich in folate, fiber, and flavanoids.

Please enjoy my recipe for black-eyed peas. How does it differ from your recipe?

Black-Eyed Peas
1 1-lb. pkg. black-eyed peas, split peas, or lentils
8 c. vegetable or chicken broth
Cubed salt pork, sliced bacon, pancetta, or favorite sausage
6 small Roma tomatoes, diced
1 chopped onion
1 clove minced garlic
1 bay leaf
1 T. each butter and olive oil
Salt
Cayenne pepper

Heat butter and olive oil in stockpot. Sauté onion and garlic until translucent. Add salt pork, stir and cook one minute. Add tomatoes, stir and cook one minute. Add beans, stir and cook one minute. Add broth, salt, cayenne and bay leaf. Simmer 45 to 48 minutes.

You do your fair share of household chores. You show up for meetings as scheduled. You deliver work on time. You put in effort and wait patiently for results. Personality traits like organization, reliability, competence, or deliberation might make you more trustworthy or employable. Can they contribute to a longer, healthier life?

A University of California Riverside study published in a journal of the American Psychological Association has found a link between conscientious personality traits and longevity.

Data on more than 8,900 participants in 20 studies from the United States, Canada, Germany, Norway, Japan, and Sweden were reviewed by researchers Margaret Kern and Howard Friedman.

The researchers looked at three facets of conscientiousness: responsibility (self-controlled, not impulsive), order (organized, disciplined), and achievement (persistent, industrious).  Kern and Friedman found people who are highly conscientious tend to make better health choices and live up to four years longer than impulsive types.

Not quite other-oriented or disciplined? You can still get it together. Kern suggests that people can become more conscientious with a stable job, marriage, or partnership.

There is a Mr. Spock and a Homer Simpson lurking in our thinking. Guess which one a voter is more likely to rely on when making a decision about a candidate?

In the book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Richard H. Thaler compares the cognitive processes in two thinking systems: 1) the automatic and intuitive, 2) the reflective and rational.

The Automatic System is associated with gut reactions and the primeval portion of the brain: “Turbulence! We’re gonna die!”

The Reflective System is associated with conscious thought and the prefrontal cortex:  “Flying is statistically safer than driving a car.”

Thaler writes that either system can fail us when we make complex decisions. Our inner Mr. Spock is no better at helping us arrive at good outcomes than our inner Homer Simpson. We can all use a little nudging, particularly when “being informed” doesn’t guarantee a favorable outcome.

When we make decisions, we act as Humans.  And we benefit when choice architecture improves outcomes with incentives, mapping, defaults, feedback, error expectation, or structuring complex choices.

The most interesting incentive from Thaler’s economic research at the University of Chicago?

I think it has to be the Save More Tomorrow nudge. People understand the importance of saving for retirement, but tend to save far less than their attitudes imply.

Some employees might be willing to save 6 percent of their paycheck, which is generally the minimum required for employer matching to a 401(k) plan. Yet people are “loss averse.” Giving up a higher portion of their paychecks would hurt more than feeling good about increasing their retirement savings.

Here’s the nudge. Ask employees to increase their retirement savings and link the increase to yearly pay raises. Based on a 3.5 percent raise each year, employees are more likely to increase their savings rate. And, they wouldn’t feel the loss in terms of take home pay.

Have we heard it often enough? Do we need to hear this 10 million more times to the power of infinity?

EAT A MEDITERRANEAN DIET FOR A HEALTHIER AND LONGER LIFE!

Harvard researchers, studying a group of 26,000 Greek men and women, recently found that merely adopting a few fundamentals of the Mediterranean diet was beneficial. The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, concluded this alone could cut cancer risk by 12 percent.

Simply consuming olive oil in your diet could reduce cancer risk by 9 percent.

The study participants, the Greek segment of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), lowered their incidence of cancer the most when following the traditional Mediterranean diet closely.

Scores of studies have linked health and longevity in countries like Spain and Greece to consumption of vegetables, fish, olive oil and an occasional glass of wine (all while relaxing with family or friends).

According to the American Heart Association, characteristics of a Mediterranean diet include the following:

• high consumption of fruits, vegetables, breads and other cereals, potatoes, beans, nuts, and seeds
• olive oil
• moderate consumption of fish and shellfish and lower amounts of meat and meat products
• dairy products and eggs in low to moderate amounts
• moderate consumption of wine

If most of the fat calories in a diet come from the monosaturated fats in olive oil, then this is significantly contributing to a decrease in the risk of cancer. And, of course, heart disease. Maybe, even aging and intestinal and stomach disorders.

Based on the EPIC study, dietary characteristics of the Mediterranean diet are strongly associated with health benefits. So, how strong is the link with quality of life characteristics, such as laughing more and sharing your worries with compadres?

Could adopting Mediterranean quality of life characteristics decrease a person’s risk of cancer by at least 9 percent, equivalent to adding olive oil to the diet?