The Bluebird Patch

Work schedule flexibility seems to be the number one contributor o f a women happiness in the workplace. Flexible hours can dramatically affect happiness and improve productivity. Below is an infographic from Accenture that illustrates the findings of Accenture’s Defining Success research conducted for International Women’s Day 2013. Further, research reveals that many professional working women, if given the option, would choose flextime, spending time with family, and helping others over making more money. Other studies show women want friendly and supportive work environments and are, therefore, working with organizational leaders to achieve them.   

An international team of scientists led by the University of California , Los Angeles has found that a hypothalamic neuropeptide hypocretin (also known as orexin )  greatly increases when humans are happy but decrease when they are sad .  The finding, published online in the journal Nature Communications , suggests that boosting hypocretin could elevate both mood and alertness in humans, thus laying the foundation for possible future treatments of psychiatric disorders like depression. " We show that hypocretin-1 levels are maximal during positive emotion, social interaction and anger, behaviours that induce cataplexy in human narcoleptics". Orexin , also called hypocretin , is a neurotransmitter that regulates arousal, wakefulness, and appetite. The most common form of narcolepsy, in which the sufferer briefly loses muscle tone (cataplexy), is caused by a lack of orexin in the brain due to destruction of the cells that produce it. Read more at: Nature.c...

UC Berkeley has helped establish a new psychology department at China's Tsinghua University. Professor Kaipeng Peng discusses the Science of Happiness.He says the social changes brought about by China's move from socialism to capitalism have made the study of psychology there more important, and that the collaboration also helps American psychologists learn more about psychological differences between cultures. Video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian, UC Berkeley Media Relation" The ranks of China's millionaires continue to grow, but the increased wealth has done little to boost the country’s gross domestic happiness, according to psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley. They say the pursuit of prosperity in the nation is fast outpacing mental health and well-being, and are seeking to correct that imbalance by spreading the science of happiness in China. As part of that effort, UC Berkeley psychologists, along with colleagues at Tsinghua Unive...