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AP exams, personality traits more likely to predict long-term college success
How 'obesity gene' triggers weight gain
New Model to Improve Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication for ‘Intelligent Transportation’
New Compound CYM51010 Shows Promise as Alternative to Opioid Pain Relievers
Pediatricians should identify and treat the cause of chronic pain in children with cerebral palsy
Common autism supplement affects endocrine system
Newly found CLAMP protein regulates genes
Study Finds Clues on How to Keep Kids Engaged with Educational Games
In bonobos, attractive females are more likely to win conflicts against males

AP exams, personality traits more likely to predict long-term college success

Posted: 16 Jul 2013 05:46 AM PDT

Long-term success in college may be better predicted with Advanced Placement (AP) exams and personality traits in combination with standard admission practices, according to new research from Rice University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The study showed that prediction of student graduation may be significantly improved by including in the college admission process consideration of AP exam performance and a small set of personality traits, along with traditional indicators of student abilities and high school grades.

How 'obesity gene' triggers weight gain

Posted: 16 Jul 2013 05:32 AM PDT

An international team of researchers has discovered why people with a variation of the FTO gene that affects one in six of the population are 70 per cent more likely to become obese.

A new study led by scientists at UCL, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry shows that people with the obesity-risk FTO variant have higher circulating levels of the ‘hunger hormone’, ghrelin, in their blood. This means they start to feel hungry again soon after eating a meal.

New Model to Improve Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication for ‘Intelligent Transportation’

Posted: 16 Jul 2013 05:14 AM PDT

Imagine a transportation system where vehicles communicate directly with each other in real time, giving drivers warnings about traffic delays, allowing a single driver to control multiple vehicles or routing vehicles around hazardous road conditions. Those are all aspects of the “intelligent transportation” concept. And researchers have developed a model to improve the clarity of the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) transmissions needed to make that concept a reality.

New Compound CYM51010 Shows Promise as Alternative to Opioid Pain Relievers

Posted: 15 Jul 2013 06:26 PM PDT

A drug targeting a protein complex containing two different types of opioid receptors may be an effective alternative to morphine and other opioid pain medications, without any of the side effects or risk of dependence, according to research led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The findings are published in July in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pediatricians should identify and treat the cause of chronic pain in children with cerebral palsy

Posted: 15 Jul 2013 05:55 PM PDT

Researchers have found that more than 25 percent of children with cerebral palsy seen by physicians have moderate to severe chronic pain, limiting their activity. Findings indicate that pediatricians should be aware of chronic pain in this group and try to identify and treat its underlying causes.

Chronic pain is the most common neurodevelopmental physical disability, occurring in 2 – 2.5 out of every 1000 live births in developed countries.

Common autism supplement affects endocrine system

Posted: 15 Jul 2013 12:05 PM PDT

Plant-based diets are healthy. Plants are high in flavonoids. So flavonoids are healthy. At least that's the reasoning of many manufacturers of flavonoid-based nutritional supplements. But a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the journal Hormones & Cancer shows that may not be the case. Flavonoids tested in the study affected the endocrine system in ways that in one case promoted cancer and in another repressed it.

Newly found CLAMP protein regulates genes

Posted: 15 Jul 2013 09:58 AM PDT

A newly discovered protein, found in many species, turns out to be the missing link that allows a key regulatory complex to find and operate on the lone X chromosome of male fruit flies, bringing them to parity with females. Called CLAMP, the protein provides a model of how such regulatory protein complexes find their chromosome targets.

Study Finds Clues on How to Keep Kids Engaged with Educational Games

Posted: 15 Jul 2013 09:51 AM PDT

If you want teams of students to stay engaged while playing educational games, you might want them to switch seats pretty often. That’s one finding from a pilot study that evaluated how well middle school students were able to pay attention to game-based learning tasks.

In bonobos, attractive females are more likely to win conflicts against males

Posted: 15 Jul 2013 08:49 AM PDT

Female social dominance over males is rare among mammal species. Bonobos, one of our closest living relatives, are known for females holding relatively high social statuses when compared to males; though this is puzzling as the males are often bigger and stronger than the females. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now analyzed the dominance relations between male and female wild bonobos and took particular interest in the high social status ranking of some females.