WASHINGTON — Despite being used for several decades, test-based incentives have not consistently generated positive effects on student achievement, says a new report from the National Research Council. The report examines evidence on incentive programs, which impose sanctions or offer rewards for students, teachers, or schools on the basis of students' test performance. Federal and state governments have increasingly relied on incentives in recent decades as a way to raise accountability in public education and in the hope of driving improvements in achievement. School-level ...

People suffering from body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD — a severe mental illness characterized by debilitating misperceptions that one appears disfigured and ugly — process visual information abnormally, even when looking at inanimate objects, according to a new UCLA study. First author Dr. Jamie Feusner, a UCLA assistant professor of psychiatry, and colleagues found that patients with the disorder have less brain activity when processing holistic visual elements that provide the "big picture," regardless of whether that picture is a face or an object. The research ...

Medicine and technology are converging in patient care at a faster pace than most people realize. Space age advancements from point-of-care health technologies like telemedicine to medical robots performing surgery are fast becoming commonplace in many hospitals. What's next? Ask NJIT Distinguished Professor Atam Dhawan, an electrical engineer and associate dean of the NJIT Albert Dorman Honors College, chair of the the IEEE emerging technology committee, and workshop chair for the upcoming 33rd IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) Annual International ...

Market reports May 24 showed that gold and silver had regained their standing as 'safe haven' investments, with gold remaining comfortably above the $1500 an ounce benchmark, closing the day at $1523, the highest price for three weeks. Silver has also bounced back to close, May 24, at $36.12. Mounting concerns over European debt following rumors of a Greek default helped drive investors back toward the 'safety net' of precious metals. The UK, Italy, Spain and Portugal were causing concern as they faced reduced credit ratings and, in the case of Spain, a change of government. ...

TEMPE, Ariz.- A Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University research team has developed a process that removes a key obstacle to producing low-cost, renewable biofuels from bacteria. The team has reprogrammed photosynthetic microbes to secrete high-energy fats, making byproduct recovery and conversion to biofuels easier and potentially more commercially viable. "The real costs involved in any biofuel production are harvesting the goodies and turning them into fuel," said Roy Curtiss, of the Institute's Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology and professor ...

Liverpool welcomes An Evening with the Legendary John Cleese to the Empire Theatre at the end of the month. Few comedians can claim to have had such a huge impact on the British canon of comedy as Cleese, who made his name in Monty Python's Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers. With scenes like the 'Dead Parrot Sketch' and his hilarious silly walks, the 71-year-old has become a national treasure. People heading to the show in Liverpool on May 31st can expect to enjoy his trademark sense of humour combined with insight into his long and successful career. Speaking ...

PHILADELPHIA— Researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson have shed new light on the longstanding conundrum about what makes a tumor grow—and how to make it stop. Interestingly, cancer cells accelerate the aging of nearby connective tissue cells to cause inflammation, which ultimately provides "fuel" for the tumor to grow and even metastasize. This revealing symbiotic process, which is similar to how muscle and brain cells communicate with the body, could prove useful for developing new drugs to prevent and treat cancers. In this simple model, our bodies provide ...

TEMPE, Ariz. – A newly announced NASA mission to collect a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth will include an instrument built at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE). The ASU instrument will analyze long-wavelength infrared light emitted from the asteroid to map the minerals on its surface. The device is a modified version of the highly successful miniature infrared spectrometers carried on Spirit and Opportunity, NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers. The new asteroid sample-return mission is called OSIRIS-REx, an acronym standing ...

The Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville will stage a production of Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlo this summer. It will be performed four times between June 24th and July 3rd with musical accompaniment by the Real Orquesta Sinfonica de Sevilla. The powerful story, which paints Spain's Phillip II as a cruel tyrant, is one of the composer's most acclaimed pieces. In Seville, Pedro Halffter takes on directorial duties, while the cast is led by Fiorenza Cedolins, Dolora Zajick and Walter Fraccaro as the titular character. The plot revolves around Don Carlo's wife-to-be ...

It might not seem like scraping the top of a cold stick of butter with a knife could be a scientific test, but engineers at MIT say the process is very similar to the "scratch test," which is perhaps the oldest known way to assess a material's hardness and strength — or, in scientific language, its resistance to deformation. Using the scraping of butter as a starting point, the engineers launched a study to see if the age-old scratch test could be used to determine a material's toughness, or how well it resists fracturing after a small crack has already formed. The answer: ...

The huge San Siro stadium will host two performances of the hit opera production Notre Dame de Paris next month. Officially known as Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, AC Milan and Inter Milan's football stadium will be transformed into a concert venue for the shows on June 29th and 30th. Notre Dame de Paris has been a consistent success since first being performed in 2001 and it is celebrating its tenth anniversary by going on tour. However, production values will not be compromised, with a huge cast and a complex staging system all being brought to entertain the Milan audience. Tickets ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — While recent studies have shown long-term exposure to estrogen can be a danger to women – overturning physicians' long-held beliefs that the hormone was good for their patients' hearts – the process by which estrogen induces high blood pressure was unclear. In a new study, Michigan State University researchers found long-term estrogen exposure generates excessive levels of the compound superoxide, which causes stress in the body. The buildup of this compound occurs in an area of the brain that is crucial to regulating blood pressure, suggesting that ...

The diversity service provider 360 diversity welcomes changes in equality and diversity legislation regarding paternity leave. Nick Clegg's plans will see the introduction of new paternity rights to new fathers taking time off when their baby is born. These changes mean that the mother and father can share blocks of parental leave for which they will be paid. Stuart Bray, Business Development Manager of 360 Diversity, comments "360 diversity welcomes this news, and hopes that employers will embrace these changes. Historically, many households have centred around ...

In April 2009, researchers at UCLA announced they had discovered a link between Parkinson's disease and two chemicals commonly sprayed on crops to fight pests. That epidemiological study didn't examine farmers who constantly work with pesticides but people who simply lived near where farm fields were sprayed with the fungicide maneb and the herbicide paraquat. It found that the risk for Parkinson's disease for these people increased by 75 percent. Now a follow-up study adds two new twists. Once again the researchers returned to California's fertile Central Valley, ...

TORONTO, Ont., May 26, 2011—Folic acid supplements given to pregnant and breast-feeding rats reduced the rate of colon cancer in their offspring by 64 per cent, a new study has found. The research, led by Dr. Young-in Kim, a gastroenterologist at St. Michael's Hospital, adds to the growing but sometimes contradictory evidence that folic acid supplementation during pregnancy and lactation can increase or decrease the development or progression of some pediatric malignancies and common cancers in their offspring in adulthood. For example, a separate study by Kim published ...

In an article published by Bloomberg.com on May 12, 2011 it was reported that global food prices could climb an additional 4.4% by the end of the year, providing further evidence that the current state of the world's food supply is in flux and in dire need of stabilization. Unfortunately the need isn't being met with enough action as more than 44 million people have been pushed into poverty since last June due to rising food prices and that figure will likely climb alongside the anticipated escalation of food costs. As it becomes evident that governmental involvement and ...

Thirty-eight million years ago, tropical jungles thrived in what are now the cornfields of the American Midwest and furry marsupials wandered temperate forests in what is now the frozen Antarctic. The temperature differences of that era, known as the late Eocene, between the equator and Antarctica were half what they are today. A debate has been ongoing in the scientific community about what changes in our global climate system led to such a major shift from the more tropical, greenhouse climate of the Eocene to modern and much cooler climates. New research results ...

CORAL GABLES, FL (May 26, 2011) A new research study conducted by University of Miami Frost School of Music's Music Engineering Technology Group touches upon multi-touch surfaces as emerging valuable tools for collaboration, display, interaction, and musical expression. The study will be presented at the 2011 International Conference on New Instruments for Musical Expression in Oslo, Norway this month. A Low-Cost, Low-Latency Multi-Touch Table with Haptic Feedback for Musical Applications, authored by Matthew Montag GMuE '11 (Cedar Rapids, IA), Stefan Sullivan GMuE '12 ...

There are several cleaning products for flatscreen televisions and then there are anti-static screen cleaners. Now, even the retailers who sell you televisions will tell you that you would do best to buy an anti-static screen cleaner for flatscreen TVs because they are what will ensure long-term protection for your device. Here we shall see the benefits of using such a cleaning product over other cleaners. The anti-static technology was patented by Reckitt Benckiser. These are the people who had developed the very popular Brasso cleaning product, which has become almost ...

Conflicts and misunderstandings frequently arise between individuals from different cultures. But what makes cultures different; what makes one more restrictive and another less so? A new international study led by the University of Maryland and supported by the National Science Foundation's Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences offers insights that may help explain such cultural differences and bridge the gaps between them. Published in the May 27 issue of the journal Science, the study for the first time assesses the degree to which countries are restrictive ...

As predicted, Typhoon Songda intensified and was a super typhoon with wind speeds estimated at over 130 knots ( ~145 mph) when NASA's TRMM satellite passed directly over head on May 26, 2011 at 0806 UTC (4:06 a.m. EDT). The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite captured the heavy rainfall rates within the super typhoon using TRMM's Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS) instrument. The rainfall analysis from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) data showed that Songda had a circular eye with extremely heavy rainfall (as much as 2 inches/50 ...

The more advanced the electronics, the more power they use. The more power they use, the hotter they get. The hotter they get, the more likely they'll overheat. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what typically happens next: The electronics fry. In the world of electronics, thermal control is always one of the limiting factors -- particularly in space where there is no air to help cool down electronic components. However, Jeffrey Didion, a thermal engineer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Dr. Jamal Seyed-Yagoobi, a professor ...

On October 18, 2010, 1-800-GET-THIN announced that they had joined forces with the Lifetime Network throughout the month of October, teaming up in support of Breast Cancer Awareness. The ultimate goal of the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign is to emphasize the importance of self-examinations as well as professional breast examinations and encourage them to be proactive with their health care. It is also important for women to be educated and aware of the signs and symptoms that could indicate a health problem. When cancer is detected earlier, there may be a better chance ...

The results of this study, conducted in Germany, re-open the debate on whether it is ethical to conduct placebo-controlled studies where patients in the placebo-group are at a serious disadvantage compared to patients taking the new treatments. The study analysed current study designs, for new therapies such as abatacept (Orencia®), golimumab (Simponi®) or tocilizumab (Actemra®), and showed that patients in the placebo group experienced no change in medication, having to continue with their former, ineffective treatment plus placebo. "According to the Helsinki-Declaration ...

Only three percent (n=181) of patients in the study cohort receiving anti-tumour necrosis factor agents (anti-TNFs) for treatment of their arthritis developed a first cancer within nine years and overall risk was not dependent on the type of arthritis. The nine year follow-up study conducted at Gentofte University Hospital, Denmark demonstrated that relative risk ((RR)=1.03 (95%confidence interval 0.82-1.30)) was not increased in patients treated with anti-TNFs compared to patients who had never taken anti-TNFs during 23,965 person-years follow-up. Overall cancer risk ...