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POPSThe Teen Brain Human and animal studies, Jensen and Urion note, have shown that the brain grows and changes continually in young people—and that it is only about 80 percent developed in adolescents. The largest part, the cortex, is divided into lobes that mature from back to front. The last section to connect is the frontal lobe, responsible for cognitive processes such as reasoning, planning, and judgment. Normally this mental merger is not completed until somewhere between ages 25 and 30—much later than these two neurologists were taught in medical school. There are also gender differences in brain development. As Urion and Jensen explain, the part of our brain that processes information expands during childhood and then begins to thin, peaking in girls at roughly 12 to 14 years old and in boys about two years later. This suggests that girls and boys may be ready to absorb challenging material at different stages, and that schools may be missing opportunities to reach them.
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POPSBlack-White Differences in Attitudes Toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights This article uses responses from almost seven thousand blacks and forty-three thousand whites in 31 surveys conducted since 1973 to give more definitive answers on black-white attitudinal differences and their demographic roots. Despite their greater disapproval of homosexuality, blacks' opinions on sodomy laws, gay civil liberties, and employment discrimination are quite similar to whites' opinions, and African Americans are more likely to support laws prohibiting antigay discrimination. Once religious and educational differences are controlled, blacks remain more disapproving of homosexuality but are moderately more supportive of gay civil liberties and markedly more opposed to antigay employment discrimination than are whites. Yet religion, education, gender, and age all have weaker impacts on black than on white attitudes, suggesting that black and white attitudes have different roots.
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POPSNo Gender Differences In Math Performance Thirty years of teaching taught me that all students have strengths. Find them and let them develop, was my hope with each kid. Gender just isn't a factor, except for these incorrect precepts based on the fact that religions won't allow that most women are anything but evil and should not be educated.
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POPSGirls Score Just as Well as Boys in Math Tests My daughter used to complain that her high school math teacher would often call on a boy to answer a question than call on her when she had her hand raised in class. She knew nothing of the stereotype that females are not as good as males in math. She lived it. Follow the link and read the entire article for further interesting findings.
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POPSX, Y, Z of genders :) Professor Carey Cooper, a psychologist who specialises in sex differences at Lancaster University, said: "It is probably a combination of the genetics and hard wiring of the brain together with the social imprinting of gender that has led to the behavioural differences we now see between men and women."
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POPSMen and women are programmed differently when it comes to temptation "One interpretation of these studies is that men are unable to ward off temptation. We do not subscribe to this. Instead, we believe men simply interpret these interactions differently than women do," said Lydon. "We think that if men believed an attractive, available woman was a threat to their relationship, they might try to protect that relationship."
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POPSHow Homophobia Hurts Us All It hurts me that my own Mother wouldn't love me if she knew I was bisexual, but it also helps me to know that through it all some people can love me for who I am. My husband, my youngest daughter, my very best friends, and the support at CM.
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POPSGay Unions Shed Light on Gender in Marriage My clips do not come close to describing the differences found between the two types of relationships. I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to read the entire piece, which is not very long at all. It delineates many of the differences along with the perceived reasons for them.
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POPSMale monkeys prefer boys' toys To try and tease out the effects of nature over those of nurture, Wallen and his colleagues studied a group of captive rhesus monkeys. His team reasoned that the choices of the monkeys wouldn't be determined by social pressures. Video on source.
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POPSRape in Ireland: Females at fault!!! I'm very disappointed in the attitude still about rape in Ireland. Even more surprised that other females blame the victim equally with the males. So don't expect sympathy from your sisters. The one ray of sunshine is that the younger the questioned, the more sympathetic the answer. Older people always find it harder to understand the dress of the young. They forget the 60's when we wore even less or none.
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POPSLocker-Room Mentality Of MSNBC, Alive and Well!
locker-room language is still rampant on our airwaves and elsewhere but should never be allowed to go unchecked. I was watching Bill Maher the other night and P. J. O'Rourke said something to the effect that what Ann Coulter says at 3 in the afternoon on TV, piped into millions of viewers living rooms, is language I (O'Rourke) would use in the middle of the night, at 3am, while I was roaring drunk. In other words, this pattern of inconsiderate thought should be kept to one's self. This type of bad behavior by anchors, writers, pundits or any, who supposedly represent segments of we-the-people, should never be deemed as normal conduct. DAVID SHUSTER, should have known better when that misogynist thought popped into his locker-room head. The fact that he ran with it, speaks volumes about our society's inability to consider all people equal, regardless of their political, racial, gender, sexual or religious differences from ourselves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2St8qoXx1g
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POPSOvercoming Gender Similarly, my gender plays an integral role in determining who I am, what my preferences are, and ultimately what I’m capable of. And that bothers me. Gender is a disease
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POPSGirls Make History At Science Contest More: Dr. Hopkins helped start a national discussion about girls and science two years ago when she walked out of a talk by Harvard University’s president, Lawrence H. Summers, after he suggested that innate differences between men and women might be one reason that fewer women than men succeed in math and science careers. Dr. Summers apologized during the ensuing furor; he announced his resignation as Harvard’s president 13 months later James Whaley, president of the Siemens Foundation, which oversees the competition for Siemens AG, a global electronics and engineering company, said the competition results send a great message to young women Alicia Darnell, 17, a senior at Pelham Memorial High School in Pelham, N.Y., won second place and a $50,000 scholarship in the individual category for research that identified genetic defects that could play a role in the development of Lou Gehrig’s disease Pretty good for 16 and 17 year olds don't ya think?
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POPSDo Women Hurt More Than Men?? These factors, and a few others, are touched upon by Erik Dalton in a newsletter. Erik's newsletters contain a fair amount of self promotion, of course, but I almost always pick up something useful each month, too.