according to a new study, choosing to spend your money on experiences like trips, meals, or concerts rather than material things probably means you’re not only happier, but a generally cooler person.

via The Cut / New York Magazine

Thank you, Mrs. Obama! Supporting work-life balance for our nations brightest minds will lead to a brighter future!

The new plan from the National Science Foundation includes a “stop the clock” provision on its grants, allowing scientists to defer or suspend their grants for up to year to accommodate childbirth or adoption. The plan also includes a salary supplement to help pay for a research technician to step in when a grant’s principal investigator is on parental leave.

Why this matters:

Childbirth takes a high toll on the career aspirations of female scientists. Of those who had children while they were postdocs at the University of California, 41 percent indicated that they had shifted their career goals away from becoming a research professor at a university.

[Pole] ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged. Lotions, for example. Lots of people buy lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Many shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close to their delivery date.

A 3D accelerometer [that] measures how active you are, [and] temperature and galvanic skin response sensors [that] provide new insight into how your performance is impacted by events in your day. These factors in relation to your heart rate give you the richest picture of your wellness.

The program uses web cameras and the Wii balance board to customize rehabilitation exercises and monitor progress more closely than previously possible. The system works with the WeHab software, where the data is logged and analyzed. At home, the patient is able to perform balance therapy with real- time feedback from the physical therapist via video chat, helping keep patients engaged with their rehab.

The finding marks the first time that endorphin release in the nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal cortex in response to alcohol consumption has been directly observed in humans.