Science

Sudden Interest in Math

How Teachers Can Motivate Pupils

The lack of interest in math or natural sciences is one of the most frequently voiced causes for concern in the debate surrounding education, at least in Germany. It has been seen time and again that pupils lose their enthusiasm for physics, chemistry and math once they reach eighth or ninth grade. But is this inevitable? And if not, how can teachers steer a different course?
Education researchers from TUM school of Education have been investigating classroom dialog -- the way that teachers and pupils communicate with each other. They observe that most math and science teachers use a rigid style of communication to get their subject across. Their teaching methods involve closed questions and they hardly ever encourage discussion among the pupils. Furthermore, they rarely give feedback.
A control group of teachers attended traditional professional development training on the same topic at the same time. The pupils of all the participating teachers were interviewed by the researchers. One question explored the pupils' basic interest and perceived strength in each subject at the start and then at the end of the year. The pupils were also asked to comment on how motivated they were at the end of each class and to assess their level of competence.
The research showed that interest in the subject, motivation and perceived competence level all increased in the majority of the pupils whose teachers had participated in the new professional development program. For most of the pupils whose teachers belonged to the control group, however, interest and motivation levels dropped, as is typically the case among school-goers in these grades.
The "Observer" test, modeled after this new approach by TUM researchers is now used in teacher training courses at around 25 universities in Germany and Switzerland.

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Gene Expression Changes With Meditation

With evidence growing that meditation can have beneficial health effects, scientists have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body.
A new study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of mindfulness meditation.
The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.
Mindfulness-based trainings have shown beneficial effects on inflammatory disorders in prior clinical studies and are endorsed by the American Heart Association as a preventative intervention. The new results provide a possible biological mechanism for therapeutic effects.
Perhaps surprisingly, the researchers say, there was no difference in the tested genes between the two groups of people at the start of the study. The observed effects were seen only in the meditators following mindfulness practice. In addition, several other DNA-modifying genes showed no differences between groups, suggesting that the mindfulness practice specifically affected certain regulatory pathways.

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Stomach 'Clock' Tells Us How Much to Eat

University of Adelaide researchers have discovered the first evidence that the nerves in the stomach act as a circadian clock, limiting food intake to specific times of the day.
The discovery could lead to new information about how the gut signals to our brains about when we're full, and when to keep eating.
In the University's Nerve-Gut Research Laboratory, Dr Stephen Kentish investigated how the nerves in the stomach respond to stretch, which occurs as a consequence of food intake, at three-hourly intervals across one day.
"What we've found is that the nerves in the gut are at their least sensitive at time periods associated with being awake. This means more food can be consumed before we feel full at times of high activity, when more energy is required,” Kentish writes in a paper published in The Journal of Neuroscience. "However, with a change in the day-night cycle to a period associated with sleeping, the nerves in the stomach become more sensitive to stretch, signaling fullness to the brain quicker and thus limiting food intake. This variation repeats every 24 hours in a circadian manner, with the nerves acting as a clock to coordinate food intake with energy requirements,"
So far this discovery has been made in laboratory studies, not in humans.

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Computer Scientists Create New 3-D Technique
University of Texas Dallas computer scientists have developed a technique to create 3-D images that finds practical applications of a theory created by a famous mathematician.

This technique uses anisotropic triangles -- triangles with sides that vary in length depending on their direction -- to create 3-D "mesh" computer graphics of more accurate approximations of the shape of the original object, and in a shorter amount of time than current techniques. These types of images are used in movies, video games and computer modeling of various phenomena, such as the flow of water or air across the earth, the deformation and wrinkles of clothes on the human body, or in mechanical and other types of engineering designs. Researchers hope this technique will also lead to greater accuracy in models of human organs to more effectively treat human diseases, such as cancer.
The technique finds a practical application of the Nash embedding theorem, which was named after mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr., subject of the Hollywood movie A Beautiful Mind.
The computer graphics field represents shapes in the virtual world through triangle mesh. Traditionally, it is believed that isotropic triangles -- where each side of the triangle has the same length regardless of direction -- are the best representation of shapes. However, the aggregate of these uniform triangles can create edges or bumps that are not on the original objects. Because triangle sides can differ in anisotrophic images, creating images with this technique would allow the user flexibility to more accurately represent object edges or folds.
The next step of this research would be to move from representing the surface of 3-D objects to representing 3-D volume.