news 2018

A review of test scores from 10,000 school district finds that gender gaps in math and English vary with community wealth and racial diversity. When Stanford Professor Sean Reardon and his research team set out to take an unprecedented look at how elementary school girls and boys compare in academic achievement, they expected to find similar stereotype-driven patterns across all 10,000 U.S. school districts: boys consistently outperforming girls in math and girls steadily surpassing boys in reading and writing by a wide margin.

Entering menopause at a later age may be associated with a small benefit to your memory years later, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. The paper, published today in Neurology and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) suggests a possible link between entering the menopause late and memory retention.

Grammar schools are no better or worse than non-selective state schools in terms of attainment, but can be damaging to social mobility, according to new research by Durham University. The researchers say a policy of increasing selection within the schools system is dangerous for equality in society.

In its search for exoplanets-planets outside of our solar system-NASA's Kepler telescope trails behind Earth, measuring the brightness of stars that may potentially host planets. The instrument identifies potential planets around other stars by looking for dips in the brightness of the stars that occur when planets cross in front of, or transit, them.