Health, features and articles | Educational Science

Nov 30, 2005

Symmetrical People Make Better Dancers

Many people are attracted to hot dancers, and a new study suggests part of the reason is because their bodies are more symmetrical than those of the less coordinated. The researchers found that men judged to be better dancers tended to have a higher degree of body symmetry, a factor...

Nov 30, 2005

Scientists Predict What You'll Think of Next

To recall memories, your brain travels back in time via the ultimate Google search, according to a new study in which scientists found they can monitor the activity and actually predict what you'll think of next. The work bolsters the validity of a longstanding hypothesis that the human brain takes...

Nov 30, 2005

Good-Hearted Women Fail to Deal with Bad Hearts

The legend of the hard-hearted woman has gone to our heads, and that’s probably bad for everyone’s health. Women with heart disease discount the severity of their problem compared to men with the exact same cardiac symptoms and conditions, new research shows. Among surveys given to 490 patients treated for...

Nov 30, 2005

Adult Brain Cells Do Keep Growing

The apocryphal tale that you can't grow new brain cells just isn't true. Neurons continue to grow and change beyond the first years of development and well into adulthood, according to a new study. The finding challenges the traditional belief that adult brain cells, or neurons, are largely static and...

Oct 31, 2005

The Chemistry of Great Coffee

High-end coffee is suddenly seeping into fast-food restaurants faster than you can ask for fries with that. McDonald's started offering organic coffee roasted by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters at 650 locations in New England and Albany, New York, this month. Burger King now lets you order coffee brewed one cup...

Oct 31, 2005

Hospitals Getting Noisier, Threatening Patient Safety

Hospitals have grown noisier over the past 50 years, with sounds in patients room that rival that of a jackhammer. The noise is preventing patients from sleeping and slowing their recovery. And it is stressing out the staff and potentially raising the risk of medical mistakes, researchers said Monday. A...

Oct 31, 2005

Key to a Good Memory: Predict What You Need to Remember

It's one thing to stuff a lot of facts into your brain. Marking them as important is a whole other talent. Yet this predictive ability is a key to having a good memory, a new brain-imaging study suggests. While one part of the brain was very active when study subjects...

Oct 31, 2005

Creative Types Have More Sex Partners

Talk about creativity. Professional artists and poets hook up with two or three times as many sex partners as other people, new research indicates. A study of 425 British men and women found the creative types averaged between four and ten partners, while the less creative folks had typically had...

Aug 31, 2005

Long Live The Klotho Mice

Klotho, a gene in both mice and men, has a definite effect on aging, according to Dr. Makoto Kuro-o. Stimulating the Klotho gene seems to delay many of the effects of old age, like weakening of bones, clogging of the arteries and loss of muscle fitness. For their current study,...

Aug 31, 2005

Fine Line Revealed Between Creativity and Insanity

History suggests that the line between creativity and madness is a fine one, but a small group of people known as schizotypes are able to walk it with few problems and even benefit from it. A new study confirms that their enhanced creativity may come from using more of the...

Aug 31, 2005

Nuclear Tests Leave Mark in Teeth, Reveal Age

Aboveground testing of nuclear bombs during the 1950s and 1960s produced large amounts of radioactive carbon that diffused around the globe. One of the places this radioactive element ended up is in our teeth, a new study reports. Carbon 14 (C14) is a radioactive form of carbon that makes up...

Aug 31, 2005

People Respond to Computer's Flattery

Humans love flattery so much they warm to it even when it comes from a computer, and even when they don't realize it's occurring. Researchers built head-and-shoulders computer agents, then had them present an argument to various study subjects. In some cases, the computer agent's head movements mimicked the listener...

Jul 31, 2005

Surprise! 1-in-25 Dads Not the Real Father

About 4 percent of men may unknowingly be raising a child that really belongs to the mailman or some other guy, researchers speculate in a new study. Here's the real news: With modern methods, the truth will become known more frequently. Researchers pawed through a host of scientific articles published...

Jul 31, 2005

Doctor's Advice: Have Your Heart Attack During Normal Business Hours

No time is a good time to have and survive a heart attack. But a new study finds that normal business hours are your best bet. Heart attack victims who arrive at a hospital during off-hours or on the weekend wait longer for help and are at a higher risk...

Jul 31, 2005

Scientists: You Learn Without Knowing It

You can learn without realizing what your are doing, a new study finds. The process is similar to how other animals learn, scientists suspect. The idea is that humans have a robust capacity for habit learning, independent of conscious memory, said Larry Squire of the University of California, San Diego....