Work stress, job satisfaction and health problems due to high stress have more to do with genes than you might think, according to research by Timothy Judge, professor of management at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.

The lead author of "Genetic influences on core self-evaluations, job satisfaction, work stress, and employee health: A behavioral genetics mediated model," published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Judge studied nearly 600 twins - some identical, some fraternal - who were raised together and reared apart. He found that being raised in the same environment had very little effect on personality, stress and health. Shared genes turned out to be about four times as important as shared environment.

"Assume James and Sandy both work in the same organization," Judge says. "James reports more stress than Sandy. Does it mean that James' job is objectively more stressful than Sandy's? Not necessarily. Our study suggests strong heritabilities to work stress and the outcomes of stress. This means that stress may have less to do with the objective features of the environment than to the genetic 'code' of the individual."

Social isolation in youth may wreak havoc on the brain by disrupting a protein crucial to the development of the nervous system's support cells, new research finds.

A new study in mice finds that when the animals are isolated during a crucial early period, brain cells called oligodendrocytes fail to mature properly. Oligodendrocytes build the fatty, insulating sheathes that cushion neurons, and their dysfunction seems to cause long-lasting behavioral changes.

Research in rhesus monkeys and humans has shown that social isolation during childhood has an array of nasty and lifelong effects, from cognitive and social problems in neglected children to working memory troubles in isolated monkeys. These children and monkeys also show abnormalities in the white matter of the brain, which includes support cells such as oligodendrocytes as well as the fat-covered neural projections that act as the brain's communication system.

But while previous studies had noted a correlation between white matter problems and cognitive struggles after isolation, they could not prove one caused the other. Gabriel Corfas, a professor of neurology and otolaryngology at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues wanted to understand how the relationship works.

They took baby mice from their mothers at 21 days of age, right after weaning. Some of the young mice were put in typical laboratory conditions, living in a cage with three other mice. Another group was given an enriched environment, with lots of mousey company and an ever-changing array of toys. The final group of mice was put in individual isolation for two weeks, never seeing another rodent.

A group of scientists recently gathered at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference and issued the following declaration which as been widely covered in the media:

The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

Their good intentions duly noted, this is not a declaration of a scientific fact.

We all have a kind of virtual policeman living inside us. Amongst other things he's the guy that helps us work towards our goals, whether personal or professional.

When things go wrong and we stray off the straight and narrow, he reminds us what we were supposed to be doing.

But what kind of policeman is he? Is he the kind with a riot shield, a baton and a bad attitude or does he offer a forgiving smile, a friendly word and a helping hand?

People sometimes think of the latter, more relaxed internal policeman, as being weak and ineffectual. The danger, it is thought, with going easy on ourselves, is that it will lead to lower motivation. Surely if we don't use self-criticism to push ourselves, we'll never get anywhere?

So, what stance should we adopt towards ourselves?

The musician Paul Simon came to fame collaborating with his childhood friend Art Garfunkel, yet launched another chapter with his Graceland album, collaborating with musicians from Soweto. Ratan Tata made his name expanding his family's firms in India, yet in recent decades has reached even greater success helping foreign firms such as Daewoo and Jaguar find new markets.

Whether artists, entrepreneurs, or executives, some individuals are especially able to bridge cultural gaps and leverage foreign ideas and opportunities. Why can some people collaborate creatively all around the world while others succeed only with people quite similar to themselves? Are there psychological characteristics that distinguish global collaborators? Do they form different kinds of relationships?

New research by Michael Morris, the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership at Columbia Business School, finds that mindfulness about cultural assumptions is a key driver. People who are habitually aware of their cultural frameworks tend to develop more affectively trusting relationships with people from other cultures, opening the free flow of ideas that is intrinsic to creative collaboration. The paper, published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, is led by former Columbia Business School doctoral student Roy Y.J. Chua (currently an assistant professor at Harvard Business School) and co-authored by current Columbia Business School doctoral student Shira Mor.

The globalization of business is increasingly creating demand for managers adept at working creatively with people from diverse backgrounds. Researchers have drawn attention to individual differences in cultural metacognition, the proclivity to reflect on and fine-tune one's cultural assumptions when interacting with others. In three studies using different ways of measuring cross-cultural collaboration, Morris's research team found that success can be predicted from an individual's cultural metacognition score, assessed with a survey inventory beforehand.

The first study asked business executives for lists of people from other cultures with whom they have worked over the course of their careers. The researchers then tracked down these associates and surveyed them about many aspects of the executive's management style, including the executive's success in collaborating creatively across cultural lines. These scores of intercultural collaboration success (from the vantage of individuals from different cultures) could be predicted by an executive's cultural metacognition score even when personality and other standard individual differences were controlled.

So many acts in our daily lives - refusing that second slice of cake, walking past the store with the latest gadgets, working on your tax forms when you'd rather watch TV - seem to boil down to one essential ingredient: self-control. Self-control is what enables us to maintain healthy habits, save for a rainy day, and get important things done.

But what is self-control, really? And how does it work?

In a new article in the September 2012 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto and Brandon Schmeichel of Texas A&M University argue that the prevailing model of self-control may not be as precise as researchers once thought. Rather than being a limited resource, self-control may actually be more like a motivation- and attention-driven process.

Research on self-control has surged in the last decade and much of it has centered on the resource model of self-control. According to this model, originally proposed by Roy Baumeister and colleagues, self-control is a limited resource - if we exercise a lot of self-control by refusing a second slice of cake, we may not have enough self-control later in the day to resist the urge to shop or watch TV.

Over 100 papers have produced findings that support this model. Research has found, for example, that people who are required to manage their emotions show impaired performance on later tasks, such as solving a difficult puzzle, squeezing a handgrip exerciser, and keeping items in working memory.

But Inzlicht and Schmeichel point out that a newer crop of studies are yielding results that don't fit with this idea of self-control as a depletable resource. Recent studies have shown that incentives, individual perceptions of task difficulty, personal beliefs about willpower, feedback on task performance, and changes in mood all seem to influence our ability to exercise self-control. These results suggest that self-control may not rely on a limited resource after all.

Paul Zak calls oxytocin the ''moral molecule''. He tells Oliver Burkeman how hugging, massage and watching soppy movies could make us better people.

The American academic Paul Zak is renowned among his colleagues for two things he does to people disconcertingly soon after meeting them. The first is hugging: seeing me approach across the library of his club, in midtown Manhattan, he springs to his feet, ignoring my outstretched hand, and enfolds me in his arms. The second is sticking needles in their arms to draw blood.

I escape our encounter unpunctured, but plenty of people don't: Zak's work, which he refers to as ''vampire studies'', has involved extracting blood from a bride and groom on their wedding day; from people who have just had massages, or been dancing; from Quakers, before and after their silent worship; and from tribal warriors in Papua New Guinea as they prepare for traditional rituals.

Long before they are able to talk, walk, or even sit up, babies are able to distinguish among different races and genders. A psychologist from the University of Delaware has found that babies are able to classify people by race and gender at 3 months; by 9 months, babies have difficulty remembering the faces of people from less-familiar races.

At 3 months, Paul Quinn says that Caucasian infants prefer Caucasian faces over Asian faces, choosing to stare at Caucasian faces for longer periods of time. At 3 months, infants were able to remember faces of different races equally, but that ability disappeared by the time babies were 9 months old.

Researchers measured babies' preferences by noting how long they stare at different objects, since babies of those ages are generally unable to speak. Looking time also demonstrates babies' familiarity with objects. Babies look at things for longer periods of time when they are more unfamiliar with it; when babies see familiar objects, they spend less time looking at them.

Researchers showed infants pictures of people of the four major ethnic groups: African, Caucasian, East Asian, and South Asian. They realized that 3-month-olds were able to recognize faces from all races, not just their own, but that the ability disappeared for 9-month-olds. Researchers wondered if that development could be changed.

A heartbreaking story out of Kazakhstan: According to reports, a dog was killed while trying to save its owner from an oncoming train.

The suicidal owner had passed out on the train tracks after drinking a bottle of alcohol. According to Russian news site Ria Novosti, the man told authorities that his dog dragged him to safety. The dog wasn't able to avoid being hit.

"Upon seeing the train, the dog started pulling its owner away," said Aida Muldashevam, who investigated the incident. "When train drivers saw the dog on the rail tracks, they used the emergency brake."

Unfortunately, it was too late. The dog was killed instantly, while the owner was taken to the hospital. He had two broken ribs and an injury to his shoulder.

Dogs have a well-deserved reputation for loyalty. At a funeral for a Navy SEAL who died in Afghanistan in 2011, dog Hawkeye lay by the casket during the memorial service. And in a small village in China last year, a dog remained at its owner's grave for weeks. When villagers took the dog back to town, the dog returned to the grave. Villagers eventually decided to build the dog a kennel near its departed friend.

Forget about reading minds; researchers from Case Western University have developed a way to insert memories into mice's minds.

Ben Strowbridge, a Professor of Neurosciences of Physiology and Biology, and Robert Hyde, a neuroscience post-doctoral student, have discovered how to store diverse types of artificial memories into brain tissue. They believe that their research will allow them the means to study exactly which brain circuits are responsible for creating short-term memories.

Memories are generally grouped into two categories. Implicit memories are the type of memory that uses previous memories to inform a new skill, even when a person is not consciously aware of those memories; these are used when a person rides a bike or other similar tasks. Declarative memories are ones that can be consciously recalled, like names or facts.

The study tried to create declarative memories, like the ones that are used to remember a phone number or email address that someone has just given.

The neuroscientists used isolated rodent tissue to form a memory in which one of four neural pathways was activated. The neural circuits located in the hippocampus maintained the memory of input for 10 seconds. Researchers were then able to identify which pathway was being stimulated by examining brain cell activity.