In Short

Taking notes at a meeting? You might want to put away the laptop and pull out a pen and paper instead. Research by psychology graduate student Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, a former Princeton professor now at UCLA, found that college students who took HANDWRITTEN NOTES performed better on tests that assessed conceptual learning than those who took notes on laptops. The finding will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science.

Having children is heralded by many as life’s greatest joy, but does it make you happier? A new study has found that parents and nonparents have similar levels of SATISFACTION with their lives. It also found that adults with children at home report experiencing more emotional highs and lows than those without children at home. The study, by professor of economics and international affairs Angus Deaton and a colleague at Stony Brook University, was published in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.