news 2013

MIT neuroscientists find even high-performing schools don't influence their students' abstract reasoning. To evaluate school quality, states require students to take standardized tests; in many cases, passing those tests is necessary to receive a high-school diploma. These high-stakes tests have also been shown to predict students' future educational attainment and adult employment and income.

A clinical aptitude test originally pioneered by The University of Nottingham has been proven to be a significant predictor of performance in medical students. The UKCAT was launched in 2006 in response to a need to widen access to medical education and provide a supplementary assessment in the context of so-called A level grade inflation.

New research shows that for children under 2 1/2 years old, interactive screens such as those on smartphones and tablet computers may be better teaching tools than educational television. Photo: iStock Photo Smartphones and tablets may be better learning tools for toddlers younger than 2 1/2 years old than "Sesame Street" and other educational TV programs, according to a researcher in the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology.

31 October 2013 Adaptable young people are more likely to participate in class, enjoy school more, and have higher self-esteem, a unique Australian-first study into adaptability suggests. In a comprehensive analysis of 969 high school students from nine Australian secondary schools, researchers from the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney found that adaptability - the ability to adjust to new and changing situations and conditions - is essential for young people's wellbeing.

Projected density images resembling the inner structure of molecular clouds controlled by the turbulence that breaks the cloud into fragments, providing initial conditions for star formation. Simulation done using Kraken abnd Nautilus supercomputers at NICS.

27 September 2013 A joint study by the University of Sydney's Faculty of Education and Social Work and the Australian Council for the Arts has found that engagement in the arts benefits students not just in the classroom, but also in life. Students who are involved in the arts have higher school motivation, engagement in class, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, researchers discovered.

Earlier this month the "Too Much, Too Soon" campaign made headlines with a letter calling for a change to the start age for formal learning in schools. Here, one of the signatories, Cambridge researcher David Whitebread, explains why children may need more time to develop before their formal education begins in earnest.

20 Jun 2013 The University of Manchester's social work degree programmes have become one of the first five higher education institutions (HEIs) to be endorsed by the College of Social Work. The College of Social Work has launched the endorsement scheme for higher education institutions aimed at providing a kite mark of quality to qualifying social work degree programmes.

A worldwide consortium of researchers including academics from the University of Bristol has found that tiny differences across person's genetic sequences are associated with educational level. Philipp Koellinger from the Erasmus School of Economics explained: "The unique feature of our study is that we looked at a sample of unprecedented size in social science genetics research.

Astronomers have spotted a galaxy that is igniting new stars faster than ever seen before. Measurements from several instruments show that gas in this galaxy is condensing to form stars close to the maximum rate thought possible. Infrared light pours from the galaxy, just a tiny red dot in this wide-angle view of the sky captured by WISE.

Imperial researchers develop model to more accurately describe the motion of soft matter particles. Chemical engineers and mathematicians from Imperial College London have put their heads together to create a new model that more accurately describes the motion of soft matter particles. Ben Goddard, a research associate who works with Professor Serafim Kalliadasis in the Department of Chemical Engineering, sat down to talk about soft matter materials, such as paints and sponges, and how their model can be applied in fields ranging from nanotechnology to environmental science.

Teaching students how to argue based on available evidence engages them in the scientific process and provides a better idea of how science actually works. The challenge is training teachers. Earth orbits the sun. Microorganisms cause infectious disease. Plants use carbon dioxide to grow. Most of us know these scientific truths from our earliest school days.

Young children are not like sponges just soaking up information. They can actively evaluate what people know and go to the "experts" for information they want, reports a Cornell study published in a special issue of Developmental Psychology (Vol. Children, the researchers say, are "natural scientists" who gather and assess evidence from the world around them.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. When former Pennsylvania pastor Arthur Schirmer was convicted in January of murder in the 2008 death of his second wife, a Penn State vehicle crash expert's analysis had helped sort out the facts of the story. Schirmer, a former pastor from Reeders, in northeast Pennsylvania, had claimed that he was driving his wife to the emergency room for treatment of jaw pain when he swerved to avoid a deer and hit a guide rail.

The drug scopolamine has been used to treat a variety of conditions, including nausea and motion sickness. A new study by UCLA life scientists suggests that it may also be useful in treating anxiety disorders. Researchers found that the drug can help boost the effectiveness of a common treatment for anxiety disorders known as exposure therapy.

For decades, researchers thought that blood plasma behaved like water. But, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania and Saarland University in Germany, plasma is more elastic and viscous than water, and, like ketchup, its flow properties depend on the pressure it is under. These traits mean that blood plasma has a much greater effect on how blood flows than was previously thought.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Bullied teens often are assured that "it gets better." And a new study suggests that bullying does, indeed, tend to decline as teens progress through high school and move toward adulthood. However, boys who identify as gay or bisexual report significantly higher rates of bullying than their heterosexual peers after leaving high school, higher even than heterosexual boys who reported nearly identical rates of victimization during school.

Stanford Report, January 31, 2013 Giving test subjects Superman-like flight in a virtual reality simulator makes them more likely to exhibit altruistic behavior in real life, Stanford researchers find. If you give people superpowers, will they use those abilities for good? Researchers at Stanford recently investigated the subject by giving people the ability of Superman-like flight in the university's Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory (VHIL).

New research at the University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows that children begin to show signs of higher-level thinking skills as young as age 4 ½. Researchers have previously attributed higher-order thinking development to knowledge acquisition and better schooling, but the new longitudinal study shows that other skills, not always connected with knowledge, play a role in the ability of children to reason analytically.

When it comes to prescribing medications to their patients, physicians could use a dose of extra training, according to a new study led by a UCLA researcher. In previous studies, Derjung Tarn and her colleagues found that when doctors prescribed medicines, the information they provided to patients was spotty at best , they rarely addressed the cost of medications and they didn't adequately monitor their patients' medication adherence .