Tag Archives: research

It is Okay to Take Time Making Big Decisions

When I was younger, I used to be much more spontaneous and much more of a “risk-taker” than I am now. Or, perhaps, I am still a pretty big risk-taker, I just do a bit more research and take more calculated risks than I did in my youth and young adulthood. As a single parent, it is perfectly fine to take time making big decisions. In fact, all that research and consideration can help us learn to be better decision-makers overall. For example, I spent almost two years learning about art, reading books, going to galleries and thinking about what … Continue reading →

Book Review: Adoption, Race and Identity

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This volume contains the results of studies done in 1972, 1979, 1984 and 1991 on a consistent group of families with transracially adopted children. The authors hope to show the range of experiences of transracial adoptive families by comparing the same families over time. The formal study was conducted in 1972, 1979 and 1984 with families who had at least one transracially adopted child, with that child being between the ages of three and eight at the beginning of the study in 1972. Therefore the children were between ages twelve and nineteen at the study’s formal conclusion with the 1984 … Continue reading →

Book Review: After Adoption: Direct Contact and Relationships

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The book After Adoption: Direct Contact and Relationships, by Carole Smith and Janette Logan, fills a void in the adoption literature by providing real examples of how contact between birth relatives, adopted children and their adoptive families are arranged. The authors include comments from all parties regarding their feelings about these contacts. The authors, who are on the faculty of Applied Social Science at a British university, note that while there is an increasing presumption in favor of open adoption (in both the UK and the US), there is little substantive research as to its benefit. One interesting thing to … Continue reading →

Vocabulary Word of the Day: Research

Research means to “inquire into”. It is a “systematic investigation to establish facts”, and a “search for knowledge”. (worldnet.princeton.edu) Research is a very important part of homeschooling for many reasons. To learn how to homeschool your child, you must research and discover the right approach for yourself. Likewise, to truly teach a child, you must also teach them to find information for themselves. As homeschoolers on a mission, we tend to forget to do our due diligence and jump to conclusions based on the reports of others. I especially am guilty of this error. When talking about the very recent … Continue reading →

You’re Hard Wired for Baby Love

As it turns out, your brain responds differently to a cute cuddly little baby faces than it does to an adult face. Research that was published this week, took adult participants and used a technique called magnetoencephalography. . .a really fancy word that means using magnetic imaging on your head. (Or something like that.) Then they showed participants pictures of babies, pictures of kids, and pictures of adults, and noted that the area of the brain that responds to babies (even ones you haven’t seen before), was different than the one that responds to adults or even other kids. Simply … Continue reading →

The Magic Molecule

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Wouldn’t it be great if we could just shut off our body’s need to eat? Researchers from St Vincent’s Hospital in Australia have some fantastic news for the obese. In recent experiments on mice, they have found a molecule that causes dramatic weight loss and its antidote that causes weight gain. In a word: they have found the holy grail of the overweight. (Insert bright light and singing angels here.) Apparently, patients in advanced stages of cancer will lose interest in food and suffer from malnutrition. In researching this issue in order to eliminate malnutrition in cancer patients they’ve stumbled … Continue reading →

What Did We Do Before “Googling”?

When I was growing up, I used to hate it when my mother would answer my curious questions with her pat: “Go look it up”–meaning that I should look up the answer in one of the 3 dozen volumes of the hard-bound encyclopedias we had in the living room book case. I always swore that I was not going to say that when I had children. Instead, I catch myself saying: “I don’t know the answer to that, why don’t you Google it?” Really, it’s the same general answer and I wonder if my kids can even imagine a world … Continue reading →

Sunday School: Temple and Family History Work – Who Needs Their Work Done?

So you’ve done research and have names, along with their date of birth or death, and you know where these events took place. You are now ready to move on to the next phase of the process – determining what temple work has already been done for those individuals, if any. Your greatest tool will be the guidance of the Holy Ghost. Perhaps you need to do just a bit more research before taking the name to the temple. Maybe you have enough and feel prompted to go ahead with the work. As you stay close to the Spirit, you … Continue reading →

Breaking Research on Rock Stars

Okay, hold onto your seats for this one…a new study has come out saying that *gasp* rock stars are more likely than others to die a premature death. Yes, yes, I know many of you are shocked by this discovery. The study was conducted by researchers at the Centre for Public Health at John Moores University in Liverpool. The researchers studied more than 1,000 artists, mostly from the North America and the United Kingdom. They discovered that there were 100 deaths among the 1,064 musicians they studied between the years of 1956 and 2005. People such as Elvis, Jim Morrison, … Continue reading →

Obtaining the Records

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In this modern age, too many people believe that whatever you see on the internet is true. This applies even in genealogy; I have heard many people state that they found their family tree online and so the work is done. No family tree appears automatically online; someone has placed it there through their own research. And while I’m fairly certain that those who put their trees online do so with the best of intentions, the fact is, mistakes are made. Many years ago, when I was getting started, a woman told me that she had found a genealogy book … Continue reading →