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When It Comes To Learning, Kids Do Think Better On Their Feet

When It Comes To Learning, Kids Do Think Better On Their Feet

Since 2006, some schools have been giving up desks in the belief that sedentary education is doing a disservice to children. Another study adds to that debate. The Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health finds students with standing desks are more attentive than their seated counterparts, with 12 percent greater on-task engagement in classrooms with standing desks 
 The findings were based on a study of almost 300 children in second through fourth grade who were observed over the course of a school year. Engagement was measured by on-task behaviors such as answering a question, raising a hand or participating in active discussion and off-task behaviors like talking out of turn.

Parent Training Reduces Disruptive Behavior In Autistic Kids

Parent Training Reduces Disruptive Behavior In Autistic Kids

Up to 6 out of 1,000 children worldwide may be on the spectrum of an autistic disorder (ASD) and 50 percent of those kids demonstrate serious and disruptive behavior, including tantrums, aggression, self-injury and noncompliance. For children with ASD, serious disruptive behavior interrupts daily functioning and social skills development, limits their ability to benefit from education and speech therapy, can increase social isolation and intensify caregiver stress. 
Luc Lecavalier and colleagues from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center conducted a 24-week parent training study designed to effectively reduce serious behavioral problems in young children with ASD. 

What Happens When MS Patients Stop Taking Medication?

What Happens When MS Patients Stop Taking Medication?

What happens when a patient with multiple sclerosis (MS) who is clinically stable stops taking their medication?
An international, multi-site study found almost 40 percent of patients had some disease activity return after they stopped, according to research presented at the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting last week.
"Despite long periods of disease stability while taking medication, we found a large minority of patients who stopped experienced relapses or disability progression," says lead study author Ilya Kister, MD, an assistant professor of neurology at the NYU Langone Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center. "We need to identify situations when it is safe for patients with MS to stop taking these medications."

Polygamy And Health: One Extra Wife Linked To 4X Heart Disease Risk

Polygamy And Health: One Extra Wife Linked To 4X Heart Disease Risk

Married people have better overall health and longevity than single people, say epidemiologists, but more is not always better. A recent prospective multicenter observational study assessed the effect of polygamy on cardiovascular health and found a significant association between number of wives and the presence of coronary artery disease (CAD), left main disease (LMD) and Multivessel disease (MVD). Risk increased with the number of wives. After adjusting for baseline differences, the researchers showed that men who practiced polygamy had a 4.6-fold increased risk of CAD, a 3.5-fold increased risk of LMD and a 2.6-fold elevated risk of MVD. That was even for men with up to four concurrent wives who didn't reside in the same house. 

LHC: Nothing New Expected But One Deviation Can Change Everything

LHC: Nothing New Expected But One Deviation Can Change Everything

First collisions of protons at CERN's Large Hadron Collider are expected to start the first or second week of June. The LHC was restarted in early April after a two-year pause to upgrade the machine to operate at higher energies for a second three-year run . At higher energy, physicists may see new discoveries about the laws that govern the universe and SUSY diehards - physicists who support the hypothesis of space and time called SuperSymmetry - maintain hope new discoveries bolster them and change the current accepted theory of physical reality, the Standard Model.

STEM Diversity Problem Due To University Diversity Problem

STEM Diversity Problem Due To University Diversity Problem

The U.S. won't change the predominately white-male face of its science and technology workforce until higher education addresses the attitudes, behaviors and structural practices that undermine minority students' access and success at college, a new study suggests.

Origin Of Life: Chemistry Of Seabed Hot Vents Provide A Clue

Origin Of Life: Chemistry Of Seabed Hot Vents Provide A Clue

Hot vents on the seabed could have spontaneously produced the organic molecules necessary for life, according to a model which shows how the surfaces of mineral particles inside hydrothermal vents have similar chemical properties to enzymes, the biological molecules that govern chemical reactions in living organisms.
This means that vents are able to create simple carbon-based molecules, such as methanol and formic acid, out of the dissolved CO2 in the water. This would explain how some of the key building blocks for organic chemistry were already being formed in nature before life emerged - and may have played a role in the emergence of the first life forms.

Breakthrough In Treatment For HER2+ Breast Cancer

Breakthrough In Treatment For HER2+ Breast Cancer

A team of researchers have found 38 genes and molecules that most likely cause HER2+ cancer cells to spread.
The HER2+ subtype accounts for 20 to 30 percent of early-stage breast cancer diagnoses, which are around 200,000 new diagnoses each year in the United States, leading to approximately 40,000 deaths annually. Several cancer chemotherapy drugs do work well at early stages of the disease, destroying 95 to 98 percent of the cancer cells in HER2+ tumors, but patients can develop resistance and the tumors begin to grow again. 

Birth Rate Rebound: Decline Of The West No Longer Happening

Birth Rate Rebound: Decline Of The West No Longer Happening

Western Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand now have birth rates that are relatively close to replacement, which means that the 'decline of the West', where developed nations birth control and abort themselves out of existence, isn't happening.
It's certainly a more optimistic demographic narrative of the future of the West than we usually get, where declining birth rates and population aging will reduce Europe and the US while Asian superpowers, such as China and India, see huge populations and economies to match. 

Bacterial Steroids: They Get 'Pumped Up' By CO2 From Dying Phytoplankton

Bacterial Steroids: They Get 'Pumped Up' By CO2 From Dying Phytoplankton

The ocean sucks up heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) building up in our atmosphere with help from tiny plankton.
Like plants on land, plankton convert CO2 into organic carbon via photosynthesis and then can sink into the deep ocean, carrying carbon with them. They decompose when bacteria convert their remains back into CO2.
This "biological pump," if it operated 100 percent efficiently, would mean nearly every atom of carbon drawn into the ocean would be converted to organic carbon, sink into the deep ocean, and remain sequestered from the atmosphere for millennia. But like hail stones that melt before reaching the ground, some carbon never makes it to the deep ocean, allowing CO2 to leak back into the upper ocean and ultimately exchange with the atmosphere.

Hawaiian Honeycreeper Back From The Brink Of Extinction

Hawaiian Honeycreeper Back From The Brink Of Extinction

The first three eggs of the rare ‘Akeke‘e have hatched under the auspices of San Diego Zoo Global conservation biologists. The newly hatched chicks represent hope for the survival of a small Hawaiian honeycreeper.
Eggs from two species of rare Hawaiian honeycreeper birds, the ‘Akikiki and ‘Akeke‘e, were collected from native habitat earlier this month as part of an effort to preserve these two bird species from extinction.