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...IQ has a substantial direct correlation with measures of success in life, and it is also correlated with a variety of other characteristics that promote success... ...It’s not just that the IQ gap in working-class and upper-middle-class communities has gotten wider. The life penalties associated with low IQ have risen since 1960. If you focus on the economic changes since 1960, those with low IQ have faced a labor market in which the market value of a strong back has dropped while the value of brains has soared... ...If you focus on the reforms and social programs of the 1960s,...

A quarter of a century ago, barely half the children of primary school age in sub-Saharan Africa were enrolled in school. By 2012 the share was 78 percent. In South Asia, primary school enrollment jumped to 94 percent from 75 percent over the same period. This didn’t happen by chance. Policy makers around the world have come to understand the importance of learning for every aspect of human development. Universal primary education was one of the United Nations’ core Millennium Development Goals, which mobilized large amounts of aid in the first decade of the century for poor countries to expand...

New research that shows poor children have smaller brains than affluent children has deepened the national debate about ways to narrow the achievement gap. Neuroscientists who studied the brain scans of nearly 1,100 children and young adults nationwide from ages 3 to 20 found that the surface area of the cerebral cortex was linked to family income. They discovered that the brains of children in families that earned less than $25,000 a year had surface areas 6 percent smaller than those whose families earned $150,000 or more. The poor children also scored lower on average on a battery of cognitive...

For a little more than 100 years weÂ’ve had standardized IQ tests, and over those 100 years there has been a consistent, linear increase in IQ scores, on the order of 3 points per decade. According to IQ tests, we are getting smarter. Also over the last 100 years, rates of belief in God and religious participation have been decreasing. The decrease in religiosity has been less linear than the rise in IQ, but discounting periods of increased religiosity corresponding to major crises like WWI, the Great Depression and WWII, overall there has been a roughly corresponding decrease in...

link only: http://qz.com/334926/your-college-major-is-a-pretty-good-indication-of-how-smart-you-are/

Who was the smartest person to ever live? There are certainly many worthy contenders. Today, the very name of "Einstein" is synonymous with genius. Others may suggest Stephen Hawking. Those who appreciate literature and music may proffer William Shakespeare or Ludwig van Beethoven. Historians may recommend Benjamin Franklin. Before I submit my own suggestion, we must first discuss what we even mean by smart. Colloquially, we routinely interchange the words smart and intelligent, but they are not necessarily the same thing. There is an ongoing debate among psychologists, neuroscientists, and artificial intelligence experts on what intelligence actually is, but for...

Brain boxes had better brace themselves, because the latest bit of bad news is that the world is becoming a dumber place. IQs have not only plateaued in many developed countries around the world – including the UK, Australia, US and in Scandinavian countries – they are actually measurably dropping. It’s an important enough development for it to be the cover story of this week’s New Scientist magazine, which hits newsstands today. Throughout the 20th century, we were getting smarter and smarter – each generation brainier than the last. Scientists were not sure why but, at the rate we were...

Have you ever heard the claim "all smart people are atheists", or maybe its inverse: "people who believe in God are dumb"? It's quite a pervasive urban legend, and one which I've known is false for a long time, but I didn't realize just how false until the other day. I recently decided to do a quick cataloging of the ten highest IQ's on earth, and discovered that it's nearly the exact opposite of the truth! Before reading the list, however, I want to remind you of the caveat that IQ test results are not in any sense the measure...

Tuesday, 3 June 2014Dr James Thompson Renée Zellweger cropped.jpg Cold Winter theory is very simple: warm blooded, warm climate adapted humans drifted North in search of game, and perished unless they could hunt, cope with the climate, and plan wisely so as to live from one winter to the next. Hence, survivors had more forethought, more behavioural restraint regarding immediate gratification, and a whole lot of other changes to help them adapt to hunting and later farming in cold climates. If any of this is true, people living in the far North should be very bright. All the short-term-ist, happy...

Mensa and Match.com have teamed up to create a new dating site for people whose IQ is in the 98th percentile. On Mensa Match, brainiacs can find people to date with the same intelligence level, according to the Daily Mail. The site was inspired by a survey where 80 percent of American singles said dating people on the same intelligence level was “very important.” 89 percent also said they would like to be with someone “considerably better educated or more intellectual.” “Why do we want a smart partner? Because intelligence is correlated with many benefits, including: higher income; sense of...

Smoking cannabis as a teenager lowers IQ into adulthood and could have a lifelong impact, researchers have warned. U.S. researchers found the damaging effects of the drug remained even if users stopped smoking marijuana as adults. They said teenagers face increased risks from smoking cannabis, because the brain is rapidly developing at this time. The scientists, from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) in the U.S., added that smoking cannabis affects critical thinking and memory during use, with the effects persisting for days. Reviewing a range of studies on marijuana smoking, they reiterated that cannabis impairs driving and increases...

I've brought up education issues before. I've tried to help other people's children with school difficulties and dealing with school administration. I have an Education background. My first child is a HS student and even with all of the public school problems we encounter, she enjoys her school (for the most part) and it is a small enough place where everybody pretty much knows everyone else. My daughter has nearly a 4.0 average. I went to the same school and was happy and grade obsessed. I never could understand how people thought HS was "hard". I must have been obnoxious....

10 Ways That Birth Order Affects Your Life Tyler Durden05/09/2014 15:16 -0400Zero Hedge Where you exist in your family’s birth order can profoundly inform your path in life, whether because of genetics or simply the way that family members tend to treat firstborns vs. middle children vs. youngest children. Psychologists have been debating the “Why?” since the 1800s, but, as ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, the outcome is certain regardless of the cause – the effects of birth order last for a lifetime... For example, firstborn kids are often rules-following and do better in society, while younger children tend to be...

Does IQ correlate with power? How many powerful people in the U.S. are actually geniuses, and how much does intelligence really affect success? In one of my research papers published last year, Investigating America's Elite, I set out to address these questions. I collected data on some key groups that greatly influence society: Fortune 500 CEOs, billionaires, federal judges, Senators, and House members. Individuals were deemed to be in the top 1% of ability if they attended an undergraduate or graduate school that had extremely high average standardized test scores that put the typical person well within the top 1%....

This Brilliant Graphic Shows You Which Country Discovered Every Element In The Periodic Table Alex Heber, Business Insider Australia April 28, 2014 When it comes to discovering elements the United Kingdom is at the top of the table. This periodic table graphic was posted by Google Science Fair on Sunday and shows which nations discovered each element on the periodic table. Leading the charge, the UK has discovered 24 elements, closely followed by the US with 21, Sweden with 20 and Germany with 19. A number of old favorites including gold, mercury and copper are listed as “ancient discovery” and...

The Supreme Court appeared likely Monday to say that states can’t rely on intelligence test scores alone in borderline cases to determine that a death row inmate is mentally able and thus eligible to be executed. The justices heard arguments on a snowy morning in a challenge from a Florida inmate who says there is ample evidence to show that he is mentally disabled and protected from being put to death, even though most of his IQ scores have topped 70. That score is the widely accepted as a marker of mental disability, but medical professionals say that test results...

With the news of Betsey Johnson, the Octomom and many other celebs facing bankruptcy in this economically uncertain time, it seems appropriate to look at other celebs who have really tanked their finances. More often than not, these actors, singers and entrepreneurs are just starting out and hoping to break out in their respective industries. But many celebs are just irresponsible with finances and blow everything they earned (we're looking at you Courtney Love). 1) Anna Nicole Smith thought she was the victim of secret sabotage. Anna Nicole Smith thought she was the victim of secret sabotage. When Anna Nicole...

A new report shows that 20 percent of Jewish households in the New York metropolitan area are poor, a figure only marginally lower than the rate in the general population. The report released Thursday by UJA-Federation of New York found more than 560,000 people living in 200,000 poor or near-poor Jewish households, a figure that represents a doubling of the number of people living in poor Jewish households since 1991, despite only a 14 percent increase in the Jewish population. The report also found nearly half of children in Jewish households live in poor or near-poor conditions. Among all residents...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Oct. 4 (UPI) -- The brilliance of Albert Einstein's brain may have been down to unusually well-connected left and right hemispheres, U.S. and Chinese researchers say. Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk, using a technique developed by Weiwei Men of East China Normal University's Department of Physics, says the study was the first detailed look at Einstein's corpus callosum, the brain's largest bundle of fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres and facilitating interhemispheric communication.

College students who major in physical sciences tend to be smarter than those who major in psychology, judging from the 2013 SAT Report on College & Career Readiness from the College Board. The report includes data on SAT scores by intended major for the college-bound class of 2013. We've taken the liberty of ranking majors based on these scores, which are the best commonly available proxy for intelligence.