science wire

Planning how to manage your mood can help you succeed this Lent
Planning how to manage your mood can help you succeed this Lent Scientists at the University of Sheffield have warned fasters from allowing a foul mood to lead them to fail to abstain this Lent. Evidence suggests that bad moods can lead us to abandon our dieting goals in favour of eating something nice to cheer ourselves up.

Search begins for adoption expert to lead new centre
Search begins for adoption expert to lead new centre The University has this week begun its search for an expert to lead a new research centre focusing on the major challenges facing adopted children and their families.

Researchers rank best online advice for postnatal depression
Researchers rank best online advice for postnatal depression Researchers at the University of Sussex have identified the top five internet sites offering support for women struggling with postnatal mental illness such as depression or anxiety.

Learning to ’talk things through in your head’ may help people with autism
Teaching children with autism to 'talk things through in their head' may help them to solve complex day-to-day tasks, which could increase the chances of independent, flexible living later in life, according to new research from Durham University, the University of Bristol and City University London.

Test your memory!
Online test allows public to assess their recall; scientists will use data to study long-term memory. We're hoping that thousands of people from all walks of life, and from all over the world, will go to the website and take part." —Dr Jon Simons from the University of Cambridge's Department of Experimental Psychology Today, Tuesday 10 January, researchers at the University of Cambridge launch what could be the world's biggest ever memory experiment.

New Cambridge study measures countries’ well-being
The key message is that the UK government, like many around the world, now recognises that economic measures such as GDP do not provide adequate information about a society's progress." &m

Developing nursing leadership and a support for nurses is crucial to the quality of patient care
Ward sisters/Charge nurses need to be a given a more prominent leadership role in hospitals if standards of acute nursing care are to be improved according to a new paper from the University of Birmi

Human brains unlikely to evolve into a “supermind” as price to pay would be too high
Human minds have hit an evolutionary “sweet spot” and - unlike computers - cannot continually get smarter without trade-offs elsewhere, according to research by the University of Warwick. Researchers asked the question why we are not more intelligent than we are given the adaptive evolutionary process.

Starlings give clue to irrational preferences
Research into decision-making by European starlings ( Sturnus vulgaris ) may help to explain why many animals, including humans, sometimes exhibit irrational preferences. A study by Oxford University scientists in which starlings pecked on different coloured keys to gain a food reward shows that the birds pay too much attention to context: this makes them vulnerable to the sort of tricks that marketing specialists use to try to make human shoppers choose one product over another.

Follow the crowd - with help from leading psychologists
Follow the crowd - with help from leading psychologists Events around the world have made 2011 the year of the crowd - from revolutionary protests in Egypt's Tahrir Square and anti-cuts protest

Desperate for a chocolate biscuit There’s an app for that
Beating comfort eating with help from your mobile A free app for iPhone, which is designed to help people tackle the habit of comfort eating and reduce the amount of high fat, high salt and high sugar snack food they consume, is being launched today (November 2) by the University of Birmingham.

Adoption under the spotlight of new University of Sussex research centre
Adoption under the spotlight of new University of Sussex research centre The major challenges facing adopted children and their families will be the focus of a new research centre at the University of Sussex.

Children taught to read at seven still learn at same pace as a four year old
Search News & Events Search University of Warwick Search for people at Warwick Search Warwick Blogs Search past exam papers Search video Research from the University of Warwick has found children who attend schools that opt out of the national curriculum and are not taught to read until they are seven years old still learn at the same pace as a four year old.

The science of love under the spotlight at Durham University
The science of love under the spotlight at Durham University Poets and writers have done their best to understand love but it remains a mystery. Now researchers at Durham University are setting out to unravel the science of love. The Durham psychologists and anthropologists hope to get a better evolutionary understanding of the emotional 'fuzziness' of love.

Half price theatre tickets for University staff
TinyHouse Productions are offering University staff discounted tickets for Anthony Neilson's play "Normal" at the Carriageworks Theatre, from Wednesday 28 September to Saturday 1 October.

Escalation threatens strike resolution, say researchers
New research has added more gloom to the threat of strikes by showing how the emotional strain of protracted negotiations can lock rivals on a path to mutual destruction.

Phonetics Grant Success
Barry Heselwood (School of Modern Languages, Linguistics and Phonetics) has been successful in the Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Networks scheme.

’Flexible Curriculum’ required to ensure pupils with autism achieve potential
A report published today (14 th September 2011) by the Autism Education Trust (AET) finds the current education system lacks flexibility in its approach to pupils on the autism spectrum.

Transatlantic concert marks 10 years since 9/11
An international music event which simultaneously spans two continents is to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11.