Holidays do not make you any happier: Study

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Tue, Sep 7 06:05 PM

London, Sept 7 (ANI): A scientific study has found that those who go on holidays are not
usually happy when they come back.

Dutch academic Jeroen Nawijn, of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, investigated the link
between holidays and happiness in 1,530 men and women, of an average age of 50 last
summer.

On questioning, he found that approximately two-thirds had been on holiday, and that people
who had been back from their holidays for more than a few days were no happier than they
had been a month or two before they went away.

"The maximum benefit of a holiday is two weeks after coming home. After that, people are
not any happier than they were beforehand," the Daily Mail quoted Nawijn as saying.

He also found that people who have holidays booked but had not yet travelled tend to be
happier than people who had not gone on holiday.

"People who have a great holiday may start to remember why they're alive, only to be thrown
back into the living death known as working life," clinical psychologist, Oliver James, said.

Felicia Huppert, professor of psychology at Cambridge University, says the results of the
Dutch study may be misleading as true happiness extends beyond someone's current mood.

"The way they've measured happiness relates to how you feel at the time. If you are going to
measure something fleeting, you're going to find it goes back to its normal level," she said.

"Nowadays, psychologists are interested in another kind of happiness - to do with whether

there's purpose in your life, as well as such self-esteem and your relationships with people,"
she stated.

The answer, says Nawijn, is to maximise your happiness by not booking one long holiday,
but several shorter ones.

"The length of the after-effect of a holiday does not seem to be associated with the length of
that holiday," he added. (ANI)

Dance moves that attract women

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Thu, Sep 9 08:49 AM

London, Sep 9 (IANS) The secret on how to impress women on the dance floor has now
been revealed. A study has found out that men who move their necks and torsos more to the
beat are most likely to attract members of the opposite sex.

British and German researchers filmed 19 men, aged between 18 to 35, with a 3-D camera
while they danced to a basic rhythm, and then mapped their movements on humanoid
characters.

A group of 37 heterosexual women was asked to rate the dance moves of the humanoids,
which gave no indication of the men's attractiveness, to help identify key movement areas of
the bodies.

'This is the first study to show objectively what differentiates a good dancer from a bad one.
Men all over the world will be interested to know what moves they can throw to attract
women,' psychologist Nick Neave of Britain's Northumbria University was quoted as saying
in a statement by the Shanghai Daily.

The study, which also involved Germany's University of Gottingen, found that a few basic
movements made the difference between a 'good' and a 'bad' dancer.

These were the movements of the neck, trunk, left shoulder and wrist, the variability of
movement and the speed of movement.

The analysis was concentrated on three body regions: legs including the ankle, hip and
knee, the arms with shoulder, elbow and wrist, and the central body with neck and trunk.

The study found that female perceptions of a good dance quality were influenced by varied
movements involving the neck and trunk.

A 'good' dancer thus displays larger and more variable movements in relation to bending and
twisting movements of their head/neck and torso, and faster bending and twisting
movements of their right knee,' the researchers said in the study published in the Biology
Letters journal of the Royal Society.

Neave and fellow researcher Kristofor McCarty from Northumbria's School of Life Sciences
said the study was the first to identify bio-mechanical differences between 'good' and 'bad'
male dancers.

Neave said such dance movements may show signals of a man's reproductive quality, in
terms of health, vigour or strength.

He intends to study dancing in a natural setting and would also try to understand aspects of
facial attractiveness, height, clothing and socio-economic status.

'If a man knows what the key moves are, he can get some training and improve his chances
of attracting a female through his dance style,' he said.
The Claim: The Day’s Events are Incorporated Into
That Night’s Dreams.
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Published: September 6, 2010

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THE FACTS In the world of sleep research, dreams are something of a black box.
But one tidbit that scientists have discerned is the peculiar but predictable pattern in
which dreams tend to occur.
Enlarge This Image

Christoph Niemann

Related

More Really? Columns

Research suggests that much of what happens in a dream is unique to that dream.
But some events from a person’s day can be incorporated into dreams in two stages.
First there is the “day residue” stage, in which emotional events may work their way
into a person’s dreams that night. But that is followed by the more mysterious
“dream lag” effect, in which those events disappear from the dream landscape —
often to be reincorporated roughly a week later. This lag has been documented in
studies dating to the 1980s.

A 2004 study in The Journal of Sleep Research began to shed some light on this
cycle. Researchers reviewed the journals of 470 people who recorded their dreams
over a week. The dream-lag effect was strongest among people who viewed their
dreams as a chance for self-understanding; their dreams often involved the
resolution of problems or emotions tied to relationships.

The researchers speculated that the delayed dreams were the mind’s way of working
through interpersonal difficulties and even “reformulating” negative memories into
more positive ones. Other studies have also shown a connection between dreams and
this type of emotional memory processing.

THE BOTTOM LINE The dream cycle can be much longer than a single
night.ANAHAD O’CONNOR

scitimes@nytimes.com

From the hinterland to the hot seat

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Wed, Sep 8 07:00 PM

By Sobha Menon

Her accent doesn't betray the fact that back in the '90s, when she arrived in the national
capital from Jind, Haryana, to graduate in computer science at Delhi University, Harjinder
Kaur, couldn't understand a word of English. As she greeted us in her skinny jeans and
fashionable top at her office in Gurgaon, Kaur, now the CEO of Comvision, looked a far cry
from her hinterland days.

FLASHBACK

In Jind, Haryana, where Kaur was born, brought up and went to school, even math and
science were taught in Hindi. "So I would say laabh for profit and haani for loss," she laughs.
But Kaur was stubborn and she worked doubly hard - both at English and her college
subjects till she overcame her handicap.

Looking back now, Kaur says she has her father to thank for her verve and passion to excel.
Coming from a family of landowners, where women are expected to "be goodlooking, marry
and produce heirs", Kaur considers herself lucky that her father persuaded her to do
something more with her life. "I would complain to him that I looked so bad. Compared to my
beautiful sisters, I was short and I didn't have their beautiful complexion.

And my father would tell me it didn't matter because I was intelligent," Kaur says. That she
was - she had always been a topper in school. "So getting admitted to the computer science
course at DU was the easy part. And my grades really slipped the first two years, but I was
back on track in the third year, scoring enough to make up for the two bad years," she says.
After college, Kaur worked in the corporate sector but realised she would rather be an
entrepreneur. She had already noted a corporate need for computer training among
employees.

"Corporate training hadn't caught on but I could sniff an opportunity," she says. So Kaur quit
her job and told her father she wanted to start a business. Her father never someone who'd
been used to success.

She had easily got good grades without the help of personal tutors or coaching classes.

And she'd managed to overcome her language handicap too through 'sheer will power' - by
reading her lessons over and over again and consulting dictionaries.

"I didn't go for spoken English classes - but I still remember how humiliating it was when
someone asked me for a scale and I looked back blankly. That really pinched me then," she
laughs.

The same dogged perseverance saw her going out in a big way to get clients such as Onida,
Power Grid, Bhel, American Express and Mitsubishi for her computer training business. But
her really big opportunity came in Hyderabad, where she arrived in the mid-90s, just when
Chandrababu Naidu was planning to make use of technology to revolutionise the state.

said 'no' to her and with his goodwill it wasn't difficult to get a loan of Rs 3 lakh from Oriental
Bank. "I could have taken the money from my father, but I needed to do everything on my
own," Kaur explains. It was a monthly instalment of Rs 12,000 that Kaur had to pay and she
was sure she would manage that. She was a tad overconfident.

"It wasn't easy and when I couldn't pay up, the bankers met my father... Imagine how
mortified I was. But that was a lesson for me because my father admonished, 'At least now
you know the importance of money'," she says.

UNFORGETTABLE LESSONS

Kaur never forgot her dad's lesson: the value of money and the importance of having a
sound business model. "I had always seen my father doing so well that I thought running a
business would be a cakewalk," says Kaur candidly. It certainly was the cocksureness of
infection this monsoon "Marriage took me to Hyderabad.

I thought I would set up a Hyderabad branch of Comvision and run the Delhi set- up through
remote control," says Kaur. But there wasn't much happening in the private sector in
Hyderabad. Companies in Delhi too were beginning to set up their own IT training units." And
even if the Andhra Pradesh government was buzzing with activity, its staff was well-trained
and didn't need any of my help," Kaur says.

It was time to reinvent Comvision's business model. With Chandrababu Naidu having
launched his e-governance programmes, Kaur started doing the rounds of government
offices looking for projects. D R Garg, commissioner - cooperation and registrar of co-
operative societies, recalls Kaur's willingness to work on very small projects, costing just
over '10,000.

"She started with monitoring formats for casual leave, etc.

I was director of social welfare and residential schools when she came up with an attractive
model for computer education in schools. It worked out to about '10 per student but she
worked on it with commitment and also gave us several useful suggestions," Garg says.

Kaur's golden opportunity came with the government's e-Seva programme for which she did
a pilot project called TWINS which covered the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad,
Kaur says. After that she’s never looked back.

TURNING POINT

With opportunities coming up in the national capital, Kaur was back in Delhi. Her husband
decided to join her business too after moving out of the computer hardware business that he
earlier ran. One of her biggest projects today is providing IT - enabled online solutions for
NDMC's birth and death certificates, electricity and water billing, and various other civic
facilities. A senior NDMC official says Kaur's success and experience with the e-Seva
programmes had already won her a good reputation.

Off this month to South Africa to collect the International Women's Entrepreneurial Challenge
Award, given jointly by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, the Barcelona Chamber of
Commerce and Ficci, Kaur isn't resting on her laurels. She is now keenly eyeing roadways
and other infrastructure sectors to provide growth to her company.

For Kaur, it just might be her high road to bigger opportunities in life.

Reproduced From Mail Today. Copyright 2010. MTNPL. All rights reserved.

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Smile: It Pays To Be Happy At Work!

By Vicki Salemi Monday 30 August 2010 11:15 IST
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For Jackie Donovan, director of marketing and merchandising at Fairway Market, coming to the office every
morning is a joy, despite the long hours. Donovan manages 30 employees and fields approximately 600 e-
mails every day. Although she's never worked harder in a role with "no typical hours," she's also never been
happier.

This happiness, she notes, trickles into her team's productivity and morale as well. "There's a definite
correlation between happiness and productivity on the team," says Donovan. Jessica Pryce-Jones, author of
Happiness at Work and CEO of iOpener, says Donovan isn't alone in her assumptions. "Happiness at work
is closely correlated with greater performance and productivity as well as greater energy, better reviews,
faster promotion, higher income, better health and increased happiness with life. So it's good for
organizations and individuals, too."

The research Pryce-Jones conducted with her team at iOpener showed the old adage is true: The happy
worker really is the productive worker. After building questionnaires, conducting focus groups and compiling
results from 3,000 respondents in 79 countries, her findings proved that happiness has a distinct advantage
over unhappiness. "What's the evidence that people who are happy at work have it all? The happiest
employees are 180 percent more energized than their less content colleagues, 155 percent happier with
their jobs, 150 percent happier with life, 108 percent more engaged and 50 percent more motivated. Most
staggeringly, they are 50 percent more productive too."

The least happy workers reported spending 40 percent of their week doing what they're there to do,
compared with happy workers, who reported spending 80 percent of their week on work-related tasks. "This
means they are putting in only two days a week of real [work], while their happiest colleagues are doing
four." Her results also showed the happiest employees taking 66 percent less sick leave than those who are
least happy.

As for pay and promotion, Sonya Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California,
has researched happiness and how it pays off, showing positive outcomes when you're happier in the office.
According to her faculty website, benefits of happiness include higher income and superior work outcomes
(i.e., greater productivity and higher quality of work).

Pryce-Jones adds, "People who are at the top of organizations are significantly happier, about 20 percent, in
all our key indicators like goal achievement, resilience, motivation and confidence." On the other hand, if
you're unhappy, you'll be less creative, less able to solve problems, and you're likely to be spreading your
misery too." Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project, refers to this as
"emotional contagion" by which people can catch the happy, sad or angry moods of others.

A happy employee will boost the mood of his or her colleagues so it makes sense that "happy people are
good for teams." This is particularly important when that person is engaged with customers, clients, patients
or a work team. A Happy Worker is a Productive Worker Of course, not everyone can work within the
confines of a 9-to-5 schedule, and in instances like this, a little flexibility can go a long way.

For Ford employees Julie Rocco and Julie Levine, flexible arrangements like job sharing add to their
happiness quotient. As managers of the Ford Explorer, 'the Julies' each work from home two days a week
and in the office on Wednesdays. Rocco, the mother of a three-year-old son, says, "The job-share
arrangement enables me to be 100 percent program manager on the days I'm at work, and 100 percent
mommy on the days I am home."

"I think that happy and fulfilled people are far more efficient and productive. They can be focused and deliver
without the distractions of guilt or regret.Such productivity is a boon for Ford," notes author Pryce-Jones.

Salaries Don't Buy Happiness Job arrangements aside, a 2007 University of Chicago study revealed that the
happiest occupations are not necessarily the highest-paying. Sandra Naiman, the author of The High
Achiever's Secret Codebook: The Unwritten Rules for Success at Work, points out that many of these
happiest occupations, including special education teachers and actors, involve interaction with others and
the majority of them provide a service. For instance, for Elizabeth Kemp, chair of the acting department at
the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University, happiness at work is all in the creativity. "One is an
artist not for fame or fortune, but for love and passion. I am always in the work, whether teaching, coaching
or directing."

Vinjaya Selvaraju, on-air presenter and blogger for ProjectExplorer.org, says that her collaborative work
environment adds to her happiness. "Working in a collaborative environment means being able to share my
ideas openly without judgment, and being able to see how my contributions help shape the outcome of the
series. I wake up every morning excited to work, and go to bed every night anxious to get up and do it all
over again."

Ultimately this sense of happiness will boost your magnetism and increase the recognition you receive for
your work. Pryce-Jones remarks, "Who wants to work with a pessimist? Everyone is drawn to energy
naturally, and that's because it's a secret indicator. People who are happiest at work have 180% more
energy than their least happy colleagues." And that definitely translates into increased productivity.

Love Yourself: No Body is Perfect!

By Agencies Thursday 2 September 2010 12:10 IST
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 •
Ignore your facial and body hair & the world will do the same, says a new campaign. Grow it, show it and to
hell with it! British feminist Jessica Burton's Hairy Awarey campaign asking women to let facial and body hair
grow is making many wonder which way the women's movement is heading (no pun intended).

After putting aside her bra and make-up, Burton decided to bid her tweezers good-bye too. And her
whiskerpride movement has indeed attracted enough attention virtually to have both men and women
plucking at their 'beards' in some confusion.

Bristol-based Burton wants all women to go natural, but going by the reactions on the internet, it's unlikely to
stop women - many of them, mind you feminists - from junking their razors or wax. One confessed she was
glad she had undergone electrolysis for hair removal before becoming a feminist. But Burton believes that if
women stop bothering about the odd whisker, bushy eyebrows and un-waxed body parts, the stigma
associated with hairy women will disappear.

Wouldn't such a move put the cosmetic and beauty industry out of business? Not to fear, says a study
conducted by a UK based forum called, 'We can face it'. It found that 85 percent of the 1,000 women asked
suffered high levels of anxiety because of their facial hair. It said the emotional impact was greater in
younger women. Nearly all ( 98 per cent) said they had negative feelings about facial hair.

So will the 2010 Miss Universe pageant be called a game changer in the event's history? Jimena Navarrete,
who won the Miss Universe title, has visible facial hair and never during the contest did the 22-year-old
seem to feel it would be held against her. For many women across the world, Navarrete has become a role
model for women who want to be at ease with their looks.

Navarrete isn't the only one. In 1999, Julia Roberts in a stunning red dress, left onlookers gobsmacked when
she revealed her abundant underarm hair, while walking the red carpet for Notting Hill's premiere. There's
Hollywood hottie Salma Hayek too who grew out her eyebrows and sported hair over her upper lip for the
2002 flick Frida . But will the "grow it, show it and to hell with it" campaign find support in India? It didn't take
much time to get the unanimous response with a resounding "Yuck!" among the youth.

"It's totally gross. It's a matter of personal hygiene too," says 23-year-old Neha Agnihotri, a Delhi University
student. Body and facial hair has always been a subject of ridicule and curiosity - an unshaved underarm
invites jeers even in school. "I get girls as young as 13 and 14 for hair removal sessions," says a stylist at a
Khan Market beauty parlour.
But let's go back for a while to the Awarey agenda. It's thrust is two-fold. Burton believes that it's an
opportunity for women to reflect on their hair. For the woman who may be more hairy, it is a chance to go
outside with pride and discover someone similar to her. The second effect: to impact public consciousness
and make people believe that growing hair is natural.

But then if young women are united in their disdain for such hairy experiments, a few in their mid-30s don't
quite mind giving a thumbs-up to the idea. The campaign strikes a chord with Sudeshana Nag, a 34-year-old
Delhi-based NGO worker. "I spend at least an hour in front of my mirror tweezing my brows.

"It's such a waste of time. If a guy is going to turn me down because I have a thin moustache, to hell with
him," says Nag. However, examples of the bold and beautiful doesn't change 26-year-old ad executive
Trisha Venkat's mind. "It's weird. I won't feel comfortable going around with my boyfriend if he wakes up and
finds he has grown a breast. Similarly, it's just plain ugly and unnatural for a woman to flaunt a bush in the
underarm area or a Salvador Dali moustache," says Venkat.

If embarrassment works as a deterrent from women growing facial hair, at times even cost plays a part.
Mandeep Khullar, an event manager, got the shock of her life when the beautician produced a $ 100 bill in
New York for an eyebrow pluck. "It's not surprising that women in the West find growing facial hair a form of
resurgence - it's so costly to go to a beautician there. I visited one as I had to meet a client. With $ 100, I
could have spent two days at a spa in India," says Khullar.

The Hairy Awarey movement won't find many takers in India, but 62-year-old Sharada Bansal makes her
point: "Traditional Indian methods of beauty care ensure that women don't grow facial hair. My grandmother
would make me wash myself with turmeric paste at least once a week. Besides acne, it gets rid of hair.
Sadly, girls now lead busy lives and opt for chemical quick fixes," says Bansal.

There may be a stand off between tradition and modernity on the methods to be used, but there's
consensus on one count: that facial hair can be a darn ugly sight.