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Written by: Lake County News reports

Published: 06 January 2024

On Friday, Chair of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Mike Thompson (CA-04) applauded the Department of Justice announcement that over 500 illegal gun purchases by Americans under the age of 21 have been stopped thanks to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

“The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is the most significant law enacted in 30 years to keep our country safe from the epidemic of gun violence,” Thompson said Friday. “Today’s announcement by the DOJ proves that this law is working and is keeping firearms out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others. Preventing young people who have a criminal record or have been shown to be dangerous from purchasing a firearm is helping to reduce suicide rates, stop domestic violence, and prevent mass shootings.

He added, “We have a lot more to do to end the scourge of gun violence, but this announcement makes clear that we are moving in the right direction. House Republicans must stop playing political games and work with House Democrats to pass legislation that would help save lives and keep firearms out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others.”

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act provided enhanced background checks for people under 21.

The law requires an investigative period to review juvenile and mental health records, including checks with state databases and local law enforcement, for buyers under 21 years of age, creating an enhanced, longer background check of up to ten days.

Thompson represents California’s Fourth Congressional District, which includes all or part of Lake, Napa, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo counties.

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Written by: Kaitlin Woolley, Cornell University and Paul Stillman, San Diego State University

Published: 06 January 2024

 

It’s a familiar start-of-the-year scene. You’ve committed to a healthier lifestyle and are determined that this time is going to be different. Your refrigerator is stocked with fruits and veggies, you’ve tossed out processed foods, and your workout routine is written in pen in your daily planner.

Yet, as you head out one morning, the tantalizing aroma of fresh doughnuts wafts through the air. How can you resist the call of this sugary treat and stick with your healthy choices?

Conventional wisdom, grounded in years of research, suggests that the best way to resist unhealthy choices is to think about the long-term consequences. For example, you could consider how the added sugar from eating too many doughnuts can lead to diabetes and obesity. Thinking about these long-term consequences, the argument goes, should help you avoid indulging right now and better stick to your goals.

However, in our combined 25 years of experience investigating people’s self-control behavior and motivation, we have learned that, in the heat of the moment, people often overlook distant outcomes, diminishing the effectiveness of strategies focused on the long term.

In response, we propose three approaches, backed by recent research, to help you stick to healthier habits.

To resist temptation, think short term

One strategy to avoid indulging is to consider the short-term consequences of unhealthy behavior. We tested this approach in seven studies with over 4,000 participants.

In one study, we invited university students to view one of two public service announcements detailing reasons to avoid energy drinks. One message emphasized long-term costs of drinking high-sugar energy drinks, such as diabetes and obesity. The other stressed short-term costs, such as anxiety and a sugar and caffeine crash.

Students then had a choice between receiving an energy drink or another attractive prize. Those who read about the short-term costs were 25% less likely to choose the energy drink than those who read about the long-term costs.

In another study with a similar setup, participants read about either the short-term costs of eating sugar, the long-term costs of eating sugar, or they did not read about any downsides. Everyone then had to choose a delivery of cookies or a tote bag. Those who read about the short-term costs were 30% less likely to choose the cookies than those who read about the long-term costs and 45% less likely than those who didn’t read about any detriments to sugar.

We found that emphasizing short-term costs can also help you avoid other temptations. For alcohol, think about how excessive drinking can lead to poor sleep and hangovers. For fast food, think about how it can make you feel bloated or give you indigestion.

In our studies, immediate effects were a stronger motivator than long-term consequences that could take decades to occur. The takeaway is simple: To avoid indulging, think short term.

Focus on the fun of healthy options

Avoiding unhealthy foods is one thing. On the flip side, can you nudge yourself toward consuming more healthy foods?

Research that one of us (Kaitlin) conducted with behavioral scientist Ayelet Fishbach found that prompting people to focus on the good taste – rather than the health benefits – of foods such as apples and carrots increased consumption in the lab and the real world. These findings were independently replicated in an intervention at five university dining halls that used food labels focused on either tastiness or healthfulness.

This strategy can also promote other healthy behaviors, such as exercise. In one study, Kaitlin asked gymgoers to choose a weightlifting workout from a list of similarly difficult routines. The participants who were instructed to select a fun exercise completed more reps than those told to pick an exercise most useful for their long-term fitness goals.

Immediate rewards that result from pursuing long-term goals improve your experience right now, although they often go unnoticed. For this reason, focusing on the immediate versus delayed benefits of behaviors such as healthy eating and exercise can increase intrinsic motivation, making a behavior feel like its own reward and resulting in the immersed-in-an-activity feeling called “flow.”

Timing the reward sweet spot

Starting healthy behaviors is one important piece of the puzzle; another is sticking with these behaviors over time. One strategy for persistence is to use rewards to stay committed.

Research led by marketing professor Marissa Sharif, along with Kaitlin, involving over 5,000 people across eight experiments found that small, regular rewards were more effective for cultivating long-term commitment to healthy behavior such as exercising and flossing than were large, occasional rewards. Think watching 20 minutes of a guilty pleasure TV show each day you work out, rather than waiting to the end of the week to watch 80 minutes of TV to reward yourself for those four workouts.

But there’s a twist: Rewarding yourself too early may backfire. It seems rewards are most effective when people have to work to unlock them, after which they become regular. In other words, putting in initial effort while not being rewarded, followed by small, continual perks, is the most effective way to structure rewards.

In a study on exercise, Marissa and Kaitlin followed exercisers as they engaged in four initial workouts that came with no rewards. Then a work-to-unlock-rewards group began to receive small, continual rewards for each subsequent workout. They ended up persisting longer and completing more workouts than people in a lump-sum group who received a larger, occasional reward for every four workouts they finished.

A similar effect was evident in a 12-day study on tooth flossing. People in the work-to-unlock-rewards group – three days of flossing without rewards followed by daily rewards – flossed for more days than those who received continual rewards right way. Those who had to commit extra effort to unlock the rewards flossed 15% more days.

These studies suggest people can strategically incorporate rewards – with a short initial period without any rewards – into their routine to help them stick with healthy behaviors over time.

Resistance, enjoyment and persistence

Our research highlights three effective strategies to help you achieve your goals: prioritizing short-term consequences to resist temptation, finding enjoyment in long-term choices, and continually rewarding yourself for sustained persistence.

What’s great about these strategies is that you can adapt them to any personal goal you hold. For instance, if you’re finding it hard to swap social media for a book, consider reflecting on negative short-term consequences of endless scrolling. Or if carving out time for relaxation feels like a challenge, focus on the immediate benefits of engaging in meditative exercises.

By incorporating these evidence-based approaches, you can empower yourself to follow through on your long-term goals.

Kaitlin Woolley, Associate Professor of Marketing, Cornell University and Paul Stillman, Assistant Professor of Marketing, San Diego State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Written by: PRESTON DYCHES

Published: 06 January 2024

What's up for January? Some moderate meteor activity, several great pair-ups of the Moon and planets, and how just four minutes a day can make a big difference in your view of the universe.

The year kicks off with the Quadrantid meteor shower, which peaks after midnight on Jan. 4. Light from the third-quarter moon will brighten the sky on the peak night, causing fainter meteors to be lost from view. But the shower does produce a decent number of bright meteors called fireballs, so it can still be worth your time. If viewing from a dark sky location, you may see 20-25 meteors per hour at the peak.

You can catch a few meteors in the days before or after, as well. In fact, the shower is active through around Jan. 12, so you might catch a fireball in the week after the peak when the Moon has moved out of the predawn sky.

On Jan. 8, in the hour before sunrise, look for brilliant Venus rising with a slim crescent Moon in the southeast. Bright star Arcturus hangs high above them.

The Moon will appear quite close to the red giant star Antares, the fiery red heart of Scorpius, that morning. And for observers in parts of the Western U.S., the Moon will actually occult, or pass in front of, Antares as the pair are rising that morning.

And if you have a view of the horizon, this is also good morning to spot Mercury before the sky brightens. It's quite low, but rises above 10 degrees off the horizon as dawn warms the sky, and it will be shining even brighter than Arcturus.

Next up, the crescent moon visits Saturn on the 13th and 14th. You'll find the pair in the southwest for a couple of hours following sunset both nights. Then the Moon pairs up with Jupiter in the evening on the 17th and 18th.

This is actually a great week to pull out the telescope or binoculars, because as soon as it's fully dark, you can work your way across the sky, starting with Jupiter and its moons, our own Moon, the Pleiades, Aldebaran and the Hyades star cluster, and the Orion Nebula.

One of the things that makes skywatching so interesting is that the sky is always changing. The stars rise in the east and set in the west each night. The Moon gradually waxes and wanes as it goes through its monthly cycle.

And likely you've also noticed that which stars you can see on a given night changes slowly over the course of the year. The bright stars and constellations we see on warm summer nights are not the ones that fill the chilly sky in winter.

This is because the stars rise 4 minutes earlier each day, and it adds up over time. In just 1 week, a given star will rise 28 minutes earlier than it does tonight.

And in one month, the same star will be rising about two hours earlier. So at four minutes per day, or two hours per month, after six months, the stars of summer are rising a full 12 hours earlier than they did back in June, placing them high in the daytime sky. But in their place, the evening sky belongs to the stars of winter.

This slow-motion cycle in the sky plays out annually as Earth moves in its orbit around the Sun. Our view outward into space during the night depends on where Earth is in its orbit.

At one part of the year, our view of space from Earth's night side looks in one direction, and six months later the view is in the opposite direction.

And so our nighttime view of the cosmos changes over the course of the year, because the stars aren't moving, we are! And that change happens at a pace of 4 minutes per day.

Dyches works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.