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To get a good sense of a country's level of development, you need to look at the items people have in their homes, according to economists Rutger Schilpzand and Jeroen Smits from Radboud University. Research on lowand middle-income countries often focuses on income, health or education, but that doesn't tell you the full story of a country's situation.

Study: Diverse Paths To College Success: The Impact Of Massachusetts' Urban And Nonurban Charter Schools On College Trajectories Student test scores are not the only indicator of future college success. New research led by University of Michigan education economist Sarah Cohodes provides insights into how different K-12 educational environments shape college preparation, enrollment and graduation outcomes.

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.

Induction heating can completely change the energy budget of an exoplanet and even melt its interior. In a study published by Nature Astronomy an international team led by the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with participation of the University of Vienna explains how magma oceans can form under the surface of exoplanets as a result of induction heating.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that newer gasoline vehicles emit less particulate matter, but vapors in the "cleaner" exhaust form particulate matter long after exiting the tailpipe. These secondary particles, can be just as harmful to human health. Mechanical Engineering Professor Allen Robinson and his research team investigated the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) and the effects that more stringent vehicle standards could have on SOA formation.

Around 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, a giant asteroid crashed into the present-day Gulf of Mexico, leading to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. How plants were affected is less understood, but fossil records show that ferns were the first plants to recover many thousands of years afterward.

In experiments on transport tissues in plants, researchers from Heidelberg University were able to identify factors of crucial importance for the formation of the plant tissue known as phloem. According to Thomas Greb of the Centre for Organismal Studies (COS), these factors differ from all previously known factors that trigger the specification of cells.

Origami-inspired materials use folds in materials to embed powerful functionality. However, all that folding can be pretty labor intensive. Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) are drawing material inspiration from another ancient Japanese paper craft - kirigami.

Formation mechanism of spontaneous dust traps(red) in a protoplanetary disk after the formation of a spontaneous dust trap, visible as a bright dust ring. JF Gonzalez? One of the major questions in astronomy today is how do planets form? Until recently, no theory has been able to provide a complete answer.

Astronomers of the Universities of Tübingen and Vienna are investigating the basic principles of the formation of stars "How do massive stars form?" is one of the fundamental questions in modern astrophysics, because these massive stars govern the energy budget of their host galaxies.

Researchers at the Faculty of Science in Lund show that birds fly faster in flocks. The picture shows Terns photographed on Öland. Photo: Anders Hedenström New research at Lund University in Sweden shows that the flight speed of birds is determined by a variety of factors. Among the most sensational is that the size of the flock has a significant impact on how fast the birds can fly.

Scientists have been able to track the flow of water created by Greenland's melting glaciers, revealing that it's currently having a less significant impact on the Gulf Stream than previously thought. New model calculations, conducted by an international research team from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research based in Germany and the University of Bristol in the UK, suggest that a large fraction of the meltwater is effectively removed from the most sensitive areas by swift, narrow boundary currents, delaying the influence on the Gulf Stream.

Research news Rechargeable lithium air batteries are a next-generation technology: Theoretically they might be much lighter and offer better performance than current lithium ion batteries. However, currently they run out of steam after only a few charging cycles. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Forschungszentrum Jülich have now investigated the processes and discovered a possible culprit: highly reactive singlet oxygen, which is released when the batteries are charged.

Some phenomena that appear to be well understood are much more mysterious than it seems. In spite of the numerous applications that rely on the presence or absence of bubbles, no advanced scientific studies had been carried out so far into how bubbles form.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Understanding the complex geological processes that form supervolcanoes could ultimately help geologists determine what triggers their eruptions. A new study using an advanced computer model casts doubt on previously held theories about the Yellowstone supervolcano's origins, adding to the mystery of Yellowstone's formation.

Migrating birds 'share the pain' of the arduous task of leading a v-formation, so that they can then take turns saving energy by following in another bird's wake, a new study shows. The research, by an international team led by Oxford University scientists, is the first convincing evidence for 'turn taking' reciprocal cooperative behaviour in birds.

In life, Tyrannosaurus rex usually got the best of the less fearsome duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs: T. rex ate them. But in death, the plant-eating hadrosaurs have proved more resilient than their carnivorous predators - and apparently all other dinosaurs - at least by the measure of their skin.