Brain

A major study of the relationships between maternal metabolic conditions and the risk that a child will be born with a neurodevelopmental disorder has found strong links between maternal diabetes and obesity and the likelihood of having a child with autism or another developmental disability.

WASHINGTON, April 9, 2012– Education research experts will unveil findings critical to the future of education at the upcoming AERA 2012 Annual Meeting, the largest gathering of education research experts in the world. More than 13,000 participants from over 60 countries plan to attend the meeting from April 13 through 17 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Researchers will present their latest findings in more than 2,400 sessions, invited lectures, and other events.

In order to develop new and effective treatments for diabetes, researchers need to understand the complex and delicate biology behind human metabolism as well as the disorders that develop when this finely tuned system is out of balance, Montminy says.

Worries over vaccine risks can allow preventable contagious diseases, such as measles and whooping cough, to make a comeback. A new study, published in PLoS Computational Biology, shows how to predict ways in which population vaccinating behavior might unfold during a vaccine scare.

"These findings might help in evaluating and developing global immunization programs and public health policy", said Professor Chris Bauch of the University of Guelph's Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

The ability of the commonly used stimulant methylphenidate (Ritalin) to speed recovery from general anesthesia appears to apply both to the inhaled gas isoflurane, as previously reported, and to the intravenous drug propofol. Members of the same Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team that reported the isoflurane study are publishing similar results for propofol in the May issue of Anesthesiology, and their paper has been issued online.

ARLINGTON, Va.— Navy unmanned aircraft will be able to distinguish small pirate boats from other vessels when an Office of Naval Research (ONR)-funded sensor starts airborne tests this summer, officials said April 5.

Obesity is increasing worldwide in adults and children and is currently viewed by many as one of the most serious threats to public health. It is likely that solutions to the obesity pandemic will require changes in public policy and that scientific insight into obesity will be invaluable for guiding those changes.

In the largest multicenter clinical trial of children undergoing early-stage surgery for single-ventricle heart defects, differences in intraoperative management did not significantly affect neurodevelopmental outcomes at 14 months of age. Instead, the strongest influences were innate patient characteristics and general medical morbidity during the child's first year of life.

In a discovery that could help instructors better teach deaf children, a team of University of Chicago researchers has found that a gesture-sign mismatch made while explaining a math problem suggests that a deaf child is experiencing a teachable moment.

Through a series of experiments with 40 deaf children, ages nine through 12, all of whom were fluent in American Sign Language, researchers were able to distinguish between ASL signs and gestures that look like the gestures hearing children produce when explaining the same math problems.

WASHINGTON – The American Psychological Association Council of Representatives has approved a new set of national guidelines that outline models for preparing high school teachers to teach psychology effectively. The guidelines will be distributed to all state and the District of Columbia boards of education for review and consideration for implementation.

Measuring what are known as executive functions, which reflect the cognitive ability to deal with sudden problems, may make it possible to predict how good an elite soccer player will become in the future. This has been shown by a new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. Scientists believe for the first time that they have found the scientific key to what has previously been described as 'game intelligence' in successful soccer players.

Photographs of children with Down syndrome elicit less positive attitudes than photographs of typically developing children do, reports new research published Apr. 4 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. This effect was strongest for photographs of children with features that are "strongly typical" of Down syndrome, and somewhat weaker for images that were more "weakly typical."

CORAL GABLES, FL (March 20, 2012)—Delayed gratification: People who are good at overcoming their immediate impulses to take small rewards now — in favor of larger rewards down the road — do better in many areas of life, including academic achievement, income, job performance and health. What life experiences develop this ability? A new study published online, ahead of print, by the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, finds that religious people are better able to forgo immediate satisfaction in order to gain larger rewards in the future.

Awakening from anesthesia is often associated with an initial phase of delirious struggle before the full restoration of awareness and orientation to one's surroundings. Scientists now know why this may occur: primitive consciousness emerges first. Using brain imaging techniques in healthy volunteers, a team of scientists led by Adjunct Professor Harry Scheinin, M.D. from the University of Turku, Turku, Finland in collaboration with investigators from the University of California, Irvine, USA, have now imaged the process of returning consciousness after general anesthesia.