Students who are told they can get smarter if they train their brains to be stronger, like a muscle, do better in school, a new psychology study shows.
Many people have various theories about the nature of intelligence. Some view it as a fixed trait, while others see intelligence as a quality that can develop and expand.
These ideas have can have a profound effect on the motivation to learn, said researcher Carol Dweck, a child and social psychologist at Stanford University.
US scientists have found that not enough sleep probably leads to children becoming overweight.
The findings are published in the journal Child Development.
"Our study suggests that earlier bedtimes, later wake times and later school start times could be an important and relatively low-cost strategy to help reduce childhood weight problems," said Emily Snell, lead author and doctoral student in human development and social policy at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
Maggie Fox
ReutersWed, 07 Feb 2007 07:05 UTC
Orlando, Florida - Exxon plans to keep some refinery workers living in the plants to keep them going. A small Southern grocery chain is thinking about drive-through pickup of soup and bread.
The U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration urged employers to develop plans to cope with a possible flu pandemic on Tuesday, suggesting letting employees work from home and encouraging sick workers to stay home without reprisals.
BBCTue, 06 Feb 2007 08:17 UTC
Early dementia could be detected with a simple eye test, similar to those used to test for high blood pressure and diabetes, US scientists believe.
The test, developed by a team led by Dr Lee Goldstein, of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, uses a non-invasive laser to study the lens of the eye.
It checks for deposits of beta-amyloid - the protein found in the brains of those with Alzheimer's disease.
The procedure has worked in a trial in mice, a conference in Spain heard.
Shahreen Abedin
CNNTue, 06 Feb 2007 05:37 UTC
Imagine an entire day of seeing faces -- friends, co-workers, even family -- but not being able to retain those images in your mind. For 48-year-old Kiki Latimer, each time she sees someone is often like the first time. She has face blindness.
She first realized she had a problem in her 20s while working at a youth hostel. "One particular guest came back every week, and every time I didn't recognize him. He started to look at me like I was a fruitcake."
San Francisco - Your ability to reproduce - and the health of your child and even your child's children - hinges on an exquisitely timed series of chemical reactions controlled by infinitesimally tiny amounts of hormones.
You scramble those reactions at your peril, in other words, and last week hundreds of researchers gathered at the University of California, San Francisco, warned society may be doing exactly that with synthetic chemicals.
Dr. James R. Shannon, former director of the National institute of health declared, "the only safe vaccine is one that is never used."
BBCMon, 05 Feb 2007 13:23 UTC
HIV can dodge destruction by powerful antiretroviral drugs by hiding out in the testicles, scientists say.
The French work in the American Journal of Pathology suggests the gonads provide an ideal environment for the Aids virus to replicate itself.
Evidence shows even the best antiretrovirals find it difficult to penetrate the testes.
This may explain why HIV can still be found in the semen of men on drugs that successfully clear their blood of it.
The foot-and-mouth outbreak could have been started deliberately by someone who stole a test-tube of the virus from a laboratory in Britain.
The Sunday Express says a container of foot-and-mouth virus went missing from a secret Government lab at Porton Down in Wiltshire two months before the crisis began.
News articles on newscientist.com and mercola.com indicate that burning incense can expose people to dangerous levels of cancer-causing chemicals.
Both articles are based on a study that was published in a September, 2001 issue of the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.
