Word: smile
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...basis of their potential for mood enhancement. "The problem is that Botox paralyzes muscles used for communication - even if it is negative communication - so it's difficult to predict the full consequences," he says. "But certainly the research suggests possible treatments." And that, at least, could be something to smile about...
...Smile in Your Profile Picture If all else fails, try "catching" happiness from your friends. We are social beings, of course, and our outlook is influenced to no small degree by that of our friends and family. Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a professor at Harvard Medical School, documented in a 2008 study just how extensive and powerful this network effect is. Compared with glum people, those who were happy were more likely to be surrounded by other happy people - even the friends of happy people's friends' friends (who might be complete strangers) tended to be happy...
Christakis and his colleague James Fowler at the University of California, San Diego, are now studying happiness contagion in perhaps the largest social network of all, Facebook. They noticed that people who smiled in their Facebook profile pictures tended to have other friends who smiled. This might simply be peer pressure at work, with members feeling obliged to flash a smile to fit in with the rest of the group, but Christakis and Fowler are investigating whether there isn't a more infectious phenomenon at work...
...decision on Jan. 29 to abandon the Zimbabwean dollar for a raft of foreign currencies, including the U.S. dollar and the South African rand. "I am earning in real money. It feels good," says Majuru. "I can now put food on the table and feed my family." A smile spreads across his face...
...responsibility to my country to teach people about the elections," he said. "People say they are stupid, but we have nothing else to look forward to." I watched as the English-speaking waiter loitering a little too close to our table grinned. But it wasn't a smile of condescension from a government informant. It was a smile, I think, of hope...