Word: non
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...expect accession talks to move at a double-quick pace. As a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), Iceland already has access to the E.U.'s single market. It is also part of Europe's border-free Schengen zone, and virtually all the other E.U. programs open to non-member states. Around two-thirds of all Icelandic law is already in line with E.U. rules...
...Turkey's new non-smoking law makes it only the second developing country after Uruguay to institute a comprehensive ban. That is significant - according to the World Health Organization, developing nations will account for 80% of the world's tobacco-related deaths over the next decade, as smoking rates in developed countries fall and tobacco companies step up their presence in other markets to compensate. "People in the region are watching Turkey closely," says Ratte, who is due to take her anti-smoking campaign to Egypt next. "It could become a regional role model, like Ireland was for Europe...
...college students and asked them to stick their hands in a bucket of ice water and endure the pain for several minutes. One group was allowed to repeat a curse word of their choice continuously while their hands were in the water; another group was asked to repeat a non-expletive control word, such as that which might be used to describe a table. The result was that swearing not only allowed students to withstand the discomfort longer, but also reduced their perception of pain intensity. Curse words, the study found, help you cope...
...part of the brain that accounts for the urge to swear - or yelp, in the case of animals - is deep within, suggesting its primitiveness. Studies of non-human primates show that vocalization is nearly always attributed to subcortical processes in the brain, in those regions that control primal, raw emotions, says Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, a professor of speech language pathology and audiology at New York University. In humans too, the urge to swear likely stems from primitive parts, but it is usually overridden by commands from the brain's more complex cortex - the abundant gray matter on which humans...
...that swearing serves as an alarm bell, triggering the body's fight-or-flight response, as Stephens postulates in the study. He and his colleagues found that when study participants used expletives, their heart rates were consistently higher than when they were repeating non-obscene control words - a physiological response that is consistent with fight or flight. But while it is typically fear that triggers the stress response, Stephens suggests the salient emotion in this case is not fear but aggression. "In swearing, people have an emotional response, and it's the emotional response that actually triggers the reduction...