People who experience parental divorce during childhood have higher levels of an inflammatory marker in the blood which is known to predict future health, according to new research from UCL.

The study, published in Psychoneuroendocrinology, found that children who experienced the breakdown in their parent's relationship before the age of 16, regardless of whether their parents were married or not, had 16% higher levels of C-reactive protein at age 44. C-reactive protein is a marker of inflammation measured in blood samples. Long-term raised C-reactive protein is a known risk factor for diseases such as coronary heart disease and type II diabetes.

This study is based on data from 7,462 people in the 1958 National Child Development Study, an on-going longitudinal study which has followed a large group of people since their birth in 1958.

Accepting what cannot be changed is key to happiness in old age after loss of independence.

When older adults lose control as they move into residential care, they adapt and accept what cannot be changed in order to stay happy. According to a new study, by Jaclyn Broadbent, Shikkiah de Quadros-Wander and Jane McGillivray from Deakin University in Australia, when it comes to satisfaction in later life the ability to accept what cannot be changed is as important as the feeling of being able to exert control. Their work is published online in Springer's Journal of Happiness Studies.

Ageing with satisfaction has been linked to maintaining a sense of control into the later years. Perceived control consists of two components. Primary control relates to the capacity to make changes to the environment to suit your desire or needs - this applies to older adults living independently in the community. Secondary control describes making cognitive changes within yourself to adapt to the environment - for example when older adults move into residential care. In effect, secondary control buffers losses in primary control by helping us to accept what cannot be changed.

The idea that consciousness arises from quantum mechanical phenomena in the brain is intriguing, yet lacks evidence, scientists say.

Physicist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff of the University of Arizona propose that the brain acts as a quantum computer - a computational machine that makes use of quantum mechanical phenomena (like the ability of particles to be in two places at once) to perform complex calculations. In the brain, fibers inside neurons could form the basic units of quantum computation, Penrose and Hameroff explained at the Global Future 2045 International Congress, a futuristic conference held here June 15-16.

The idea is appealing, because neuroscience, so far, has no satisfactory explanation for consciousness - the state of being self-aware and having sensory experiences and thoughts. But many scientists are skeptical, citing a lack of experimental evidence for the idea.

The Orch OR model

Penrose and Hameroff developed their ideas independently, but collaborated in the early 1990s to develop what they call the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) model.

The rate of decline in those who participated in infrequent mental activity was 48 percent faster than those participating in average activity levels.

In a study published on July 3 in an American Academy of Neurology online issue of the medical journal Neurology, new research suggests reading, writing and other brain stimulating activities could preserve memory, regardless of age.

The study was comprised of 294 people and tested memory and thinking every year for about 6 years before their death. Deaths occurred at an average age of 89 years old. During the study, participants were given a questionnaire that asked whether or not they read books, wrote or participated in other brain stimulating activities as a child, adolescent, middle-aged person and at their current age.

Upon death, participants' brains were examined through autopsy for any physical signs of dementia, such as lesions, brain plaques and tangles.

Not long after moving to the University of Southampton, Constantine Sedikides had lunch with a colleague in the psychology department and described some unusual symptoms he'd been feeling. A few times a week, he was suddenly hit with nostalgia for his previous home at the University of North Carolina: memories of old friends, Tar Heel basketball games, fried okra, the sweet smells of autumn in Chapel Hill.
His colleague, a clinical psychologist, made an immediate diagnosis. He must be depressed. Why else live in the past? Nostalgia had been considered a disorder ever since the term was coined by a 17th-century Swiss physician who attributed soldiers' mental and physical maladies to their longing to return home - nostos in Greek, and the accompanying pain, algos.

But Dr. Sedikides didn't want to return to any home - not to Chapel Hill, not to his native Greece - and he insisted to his lunch companion that he wasn't in pain.

"I told him I did live my life forward, but sometimes I couldn't help thinking about the past, and it was rewarding," he says. "Nostalgia made me feel that my life had roots and continuity. It made me feel good about myself and my relationships. It provided a texture to my life and gave me strength to move forward."

The colleague remained skeptical, but ultimately Dr. Sedikides prevailed. That lunch in 1999 inspired him to pioneer a field that today includes dozens of researchers around the world using tools developed at his social-psychology laboratory, including a questionnaire called the Southampton Nostalgia Scale. After a decade of study, nostalgia isn't what it used to be - it's looking a lot better.

After years of singing in the shower and warbling my way through karaoke duets, 18 months ago I finally joined a choir. Every Thursday evening, I head to a church hall in Marylebone, central London, where, along with 30 others - mostly women, the occasional bloke - I spend 90 minutes belting out Motown, gospel and pop classics, from Abba to Bon Jovi. I'm more of a keen amateur than a wannabe soloist, but even the odd off-key note or wrong lyric can't detract from how good singing makes me feel. I leave every session uplifted, buoyed by a flurry of endorphins flooding through my body.

So it comes as no surprise that scientists have shown that not only does singing in a choir make you feel good, it's got health benefits, too. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, found that choristers' heartbeats synchronize when they sing together, bringing about a calming effect that is as beneficial to our health as yoga.

If you see your partner flirt with someone else, you may feel hurt, angry, and jealous. The last thing you might expect is to start thinking of yourself more like your rival. New research suggests just that: that jealousy can prompt people to change how they view themselves relative to competitors for their partners' attention.

Previous research has shown that individuals often will change their self-views to be more similar to someone to whom they want to get closer, such as a romantic partner. "However, a rival isn't someone that individuals should like, let alone want to affiliate with," Erica Slotter of Villanova University. "This work was really novel in that we were looking at whether individuals would be willing to shift their self-views to be more similar to a romantic rival."

Across three studies published online today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Slotter and colleagues tested what happens to people when in a jealous state. They predicted that individuals would only change their self-views if they thought their partner was interested in someone else. "This meant that individuals should not change their self-views if someone flirts with their partner, but the partner doesn't respond with interest," Slotter says.

In one of the studies, 144 romantically involved men and women completed an online survey about personal attributes, such as artistic, musical, or athletic ability . The researchers then asked the participants to imagine either that their partner expressed romantic interest in someone else or not. In some of the scenarios, the other person expressed romantic interest in their partner, but the partner did not respond.

In May, the Los Angeles school board voted to ban suspensions of students for "willful defiance" and directed school officials to use alternative disciplinary practices. The decision was controversial, and the question remains: How do you discipline rowdy students and keep them in the classroom while still being fair to other kids who want to learn?

A team led by Dara Ghahremani, an assistant researcher in the department of psychiatry at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior conducted a study on the Youth Empower Seminar, or YES!, a workshop for adolescents that teaches them to manage stress, regulate their emotions, resolve conflicts and control impulsive behavior. Impulsive behavior, in particular - including acting out in class, engaging in drug or alcohol abuse, and risky sexual behaviors - is something that gets adolescents in trouble.

The YES! program, run by the nonprofit International Association for Human Values, includes yoga-based breathing practices, among other techniques, and the research findings show that a little bit of breathing can go a long way. The scientists report that students who went through the four-week YES! for Schools program felt less impulsive, while students in a control group that didn't participate in the program showed no change.

The study appears in the the July issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"The program helps teens to gain greater control over their actions by giving them tools to respond to challenging situations in constructive and mindful ways, rather than impulsively," said Ghahremani, who conducted the study at the UCLA Center for Addictive Behaviors and UCLA's Laboratory for Molecular Neuroimaging. "The program uses a variety of techniques, ranging from a powerful yoga-based breathing program called Sudarshan Kriya to decision-making and leadership skills that are taught via interactive group games. We found it to be a simple yet powerful approach that could potentially reduce impulsive behavior."

The most common thing that couples want from each other during a conflict is not an apology, but a willingness to relinquish power, according to a new Baylor University study.

Giving up power comes in many forms, among them giving a partner more independence, admitting faults, showing respect and being willing to compromise. The study is published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

"It's common for partners to be sensitive to how to share power and control when making decisions in their relationship," said researcher Keith Sanford, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience in Baylor University's College of Arts & Sciences.

Following closely behind the desire for shared control was the wish for the partner to show more of an investment in the relationship through such ways as sharing intimate thoughts or feelings, listening, and sharing chores and activities, Sanford said.

The research results are based on two studies of married or cohabitating people and build upon previous research by Sanford. Earlier studies of more than 3,500 married people found that there are just two basic types of underlying concerns that couples experience during conflicts: "perceived threat," in which a person thinks that his or her status is threatened by a critical or demanding partner; and "perceived neglect," in which an individual sees a partner as being disloyal or inattentive and showing a lack of investment in the relationship.

The study found those with clinical depression were more likely to set abstract goals that were difficult to achieve

Researchers from the University of Liverpool have found that people with depression have more generalised personal goals than non-depressed people.

A study conducted by Dr Joanne Dickson, in the University's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, analysed the lists of personal goals made by people who suffered with depression and those who didn't.

List personal goals

The participants were asked to list goals they would like to achieve at any time in the short, medium or long-term. The goals were categorised for their specificity - for example a global or abstract goal such as, 'to be happy' would represent a general goal, whereas, a goal such as 'improve my 5-mile marathon time this summer' would represent a more specific goal.

Researchers found that whilst both groups generated the same number of goals, people with depression listed goals which were more general and more abstract. The study also found that depressed people were far more likely to give non-specific reasons for achieving and not achieving their goals.