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We know that magicians are fooling us, but why can’t we catch them at it? Or is there such a thing a REAL magic?

In LiveScience.com, Charles Q. Choi quotes psychologist Gustav Kuhn as saying, “It made sense to look at magicians to advance knowledge of human cognition, since magicians have been working on figuring out how certain principles of psychology work for hundreds of years.” He studied a magic trick called the “vanishing ball,” in which a ball seems to disappear in midair. It’s done by the magician pretending to throw a ball, while all the time keeping it palmed in his hand.
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We all have tastes we love, and tastes we hate. And yet, our preferences for certain flavors and foods can change over time, as we get older or we get tired of eating the same old thing.

Scientists have long assumed that our antipathy towards bitter tastes evolved as a defense mechanism to detect potentially harmful toxins in plants. Our taste buds are trying to help us avoid digesting any glucosinolates, which inhibit iodine uptake by the thyroid, increasing the risk of a goiter and altering the levels of thyroid hormones. The ability to detect and avoid naturally-occurring glucosinolates would confer a selective advantage to the over 1 billion people who presently eat foods with low levels of iodine and thus are at risk.
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On Christmas (hopefully), our thoughts turn to giving, but on Thanksgiving, our thoughts turn to that turkey we’re going to dine on with friends and family. Turkey is still fairly unknown in Europe, but Americans are eating over 100% more of it each year than we did 35 years ago. How is today’s turkey different from the one the Pilgrims ate?

Turkey expert Nickolas Zimmermann says, “Turkeys in the days of the Pilgrims were similar to the wild turkeys that are now abundant in most states of the nation. They have dark plumage and can fly. Modern turkeys have been bred to have large breast muscles, desired by consumers. Modern turkeys also have been bred to have white feathers, so that pigment from dark feathers does not blemish the skin.
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The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays have long been an especially painful season for lonely people. Now, there’s good news: Suicide rates among younger and older Americans have been declining since the early 1990s. There’s also puzzling news: No one really knows why.

Researcher Robert McKeown says, “For 40 years adolescent suicide rates rose. Then, the rates began to decline in the late 1980s for adults 65 and older and in the early 1990s for adolescents and young adults. But many people weren’t aware; they kept saying suicides were increasing when it was no longer true.
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