The ease of finding information on the internet is hurting students’ long-term retention and resulting in lower grades on exams, according to a Rutgers University–New Brunswick study.
The study, published in the journal Educational Psychology, found that smartphones seem to be the culprit. Students who received higher homework but lower exam scores — a half to a full letter grade lower on exams — were more likely to get their homework answers from the internet or another source rather than coming up with the answer themselves.
“When a student does homework by looking up the answers, they usually find the correct answer, resulting in a high score on the assignment,” said lead author Arnold Glass, a professor of psychology at Rutgers–New Brunswick’s School of Arts and Sciences. “However, when students do that, they rapidly forget both the question and answer. Consequently, they transform homework from what has been, until now, a useful exercise into a meaningless ritual that does not help in preparing for exams.”
Release date: 3 September 2020
Unconscious Learning Underlies Belief in God
Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe.
Their research, reported in the journal Nature Communications, is the first to use implicit pattern learning to investigate religious belief. The study spanned two very different cultural and religious groups, one in the U.S. and one in Afghanistan.
Release date: 9 September 2020
Source: Georgetown University Medical Center
Children Use Both Brain Hemispheres to Understand Language, Unlike Adults
Infants and young children have brains with a superpower, of sorts, say Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists. Whereas adults process most discrete neural tasks in specific areas in one or the other of their brain’s two hemispheres, youngsters use both the right and left hemispheres to do the same task. The finding suggests a possible reason why children appear to recover from neural injury much easier than adults.
The study, published Sept. 7, 2020, in PNAS,
Release date: 7 September 2020
Source: Georgetown University Medical Center
Exposure to light-emitting media devices at night linked with poor sperm quality
Men might want to think twice before reaching for their smartphone at night. A new study found correlations between electronic media use at night and poor sperm quality.
Preliminary results show that greater self-reported exposure to light-emitting media devices in the evening and after bedtime is associated with a decline in sperm quality. Sperm concentration, motility and progressive motility — the ability of sperm to “swim” properly — were all lower, and the percentage of immotile sperm that are unable to swim was higher, in men who reported more smartphone and tablet usage at night. Journal reference: Sleep
Release date: 27 August 2020
Source: American Academy of Sleep Medicine
Post-COVID syndrome severely damages children’s hearts
Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), believed to be linked to COVID-19, damages the heart to such an extent that some children will need lifelong monitoring and interventions, said the senior author of a medical literature review published Sept. 4 in EClinicalMedicine, a journal of The Lancet.
Release date: 4 September 2020
Source: University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Sleep restriction amplifies anger
Feeling angry these days? New research suggests that a good night of sleep may be just what you need.
This program of research comprised an analysis of diaries and lab experiments. The researchers analyzed daily diary entries from 202 college students, who tracked their sleep, daily stressors, and anger over one month. Preliminary results show that individuals reported experiencing more anger on days following less sleep than usual for them.
The research team also conducted a lab experiment involving 147 community residents. Participants were randomly assigned either to maintain their regular sleep schedule or to restrict their sleep at home by about five hours across two nights. Following this manipulation, anger was assessed during exposure to irritating noise.
Release date: 28 August 2020
Source: American Academy of Sleep Medicine
Transplanted brown-fat-like cells hold promise for obesity and diabetes
Obesity is the main cause of type 2 diabetes and related chronic illnesses that together will kill more people around the globe this year than the Covid-19 coronavirus. Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center have delivered a proof of concept for a novel cell-based therapy against this dangerous condition.
The potential therapy for obesity would transplant HUMBLE (human brown-like) fat cells, human white fat cells that have been genetically modified to become similar to heat-generating brown fat cells.
Brown fat cells burn energy instead of storing energy as white fat cells do, says Tseng, senior author on a paper about the work in Science Translational Medicine . In the process, brown fat can lower excessive levels of glucose and lipids in the blood that are linked to metabolic diseases such as diabetes.
Release date: 26 August 2020
Source: Joslin Diabetes Center
COVID-19 Has Likely Tripled Depression Rates in the US
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sicken millions and claim the lives of thousands of people in the US, as millions lose their jobs, as parents and teachers worry about kids going back to school, as renters face eviction and homeowners face foreclosures… it may not come as a surprise that mental health in the general population is far from good right now.
But a first-of-its-kind School of Public Health study finds that this unprecedented time has more than tripled the prevalence of depression symptoms in the US, from 8.5 percent of adults before the pandemic to 27.8 percent as of mid-April.
The findings are published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Release date: 2 September 2020
Source: Boston University School of Medicine
Bilingual children may lose less brain matter as they grow up
Children and adolescents who speak more than one language may reach adulthood with more grey matter, according to a new study.
In a paper published in Brain Structure and Function, an international team of academics led by the University of Reading and Georgetown University looked at detailed scans of children’s and adolescents’ brains and found that bilingual participants had potential advantages of both grey and white matter than similarly-aged children who spoke only one language.
Release date: 2 September 2020
Source: University of Reading
Smartphones Are Lowering Students’ Grades
The ease of finding information on the internet is hurting students’ long-term retention and resulting in lower grades on exams, according to a Rutgers University–New Brunswick study.
The study, published in the journal Educational Psychology, found that smartphones seem to be the culprit. Students who received higher homework but lower exam scores — a half to a full letter grade lower on exams — were more likely to get their homework answers from the internet or another source rather than coming up with the answer themselves.
“When a student does homework by looking up the answers, they usually find the correct answer, resulting in a high score on the assignment,” said lead author Arnold Glass, a professor of psychology at Rutgers–New Brunswick’s School of Arts and Sciences. “However, when students do that, they rapidly forget both the question and answer. Consequently, they transform homework from what has been, until now, a useful exercise into a meaningless ritual that does not help in preparing for exams.”
Release date: 3 September 2020
Source: Rutgers University
kidneys infected with hepatitis C can be safely transplanted into healthy recipients
Donor kidneys with hepatitis C infection can be safely transplanted into noninfected recipients. A regimen of direct-acting antiviral therapies must be initiated as early as two days after the transplant. Findings may help address national shortage in donor kidneys and expand access.
Kidneys from deceased donors with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection can be safely transplanted into noninfected recipients when a regimen of direct-acting antiviral therapies is initiated as early as two days after the transplant, according to a study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In a multi-center clinical trial reported in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, MGH researchers found that each of 30 kidney recipients were cured of HCV with no serious side effects attributable to the antiviral therapy, and that nearly all maintained excellent allograft function at six months.
Release date: 2 September 2020
Source: Massachusetts General Hospital