Vanderbilt University
Children's behavior is determined, in part, by their genes and by the settings in which they develop. A new longitudinal study describes how a family-based prevention program helped rural African American teens avoid engaging in risky behaviors, even if some of them may have had a genetic risk to do so.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Swinging their arms helped participants in a new study solve a problem whose solution involved swinging strings, researchers report, demonstrating that the brain can use bodily cues to help understand and solve complex problems.
New research from Vanderbilt University has found students benefit more from being taught the concepts behind math problems rather than the exact procedures to solve the problems. The findings offer teachers new insights on how best to shape math instruction to have the greatest impact on student learning.
Comparing different ways of solving math problems is a great way to help middle schoolers learn new math concepts, researchers from Vanderbilt and Harvard universities have found.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Performance pay programs designed by teachers, for teachers, tend to offer small incentives to a large number of teachers, new research indicates.
A 12-year-old Dutch boy - bedridden for three years because of an inherited cardiac arrhythmia syndrome - can now join his friends on the soccer field thanks to a discovery made by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers.
A chemical component of licorice may offer a new approach to preventing colorectal cancer without the adverse side effects of other preventive therapies, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers report.
A novel anti-inflammatory therapy designed by Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators prevents acute lung injury in mice exposed to an inflammation-causing toxin, the researchers report in the journal Molecular Therapy.
A study led by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) and Vanderbilt University have identified a specific gene variant that links increased genetic risk for autism with gastrointestinal (GI) conditions.
New research from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College offers guidance for teachers to help them improve writing instruction in the primary grades and develop stronger student writers.
The day that robot playmates help children with autism learn the social skills that they naturally lack has come a step closer with the development of a system that allows a robot to monitor a child's emotional state.
In a process comparable to that of an artist who turns a two-dimensional canvas into a three-dimensional work of art, astronomers use the two dimensional images that they capture in their high-powered telescopes to reconstruct the three-dimensional structures of celestial objects. The latest example of this reconstructive artistry is a new model of the Helix Nebula--one of the nearest and brightest of the planetary nebulae, which are the Technicolor clouds of dust and glowing gas produced by exploding stars. Efforts of this sort are providing important new insights into the process that stars like the sun go through just before their fiery deaths.
If you run into Ed Saff at a cocktail party and ask him what he does for a living, the mathematician is likely to reply that he is working on a ''method for creating the perfect poppy-seed bagel.'' Then he'll pause and add, ''Maybe that's not the most accurate description, but it's the most digestible.'' More accurately, Saff, who is a mathematics professor at Vanderbilt, has been working to come up with a new and improved way to distribute points uniformly on various types of surfaces. Plotting a large set of equidistant points on a flat surface doesn't take a mathematician: Any draftsman can do it. Throw in a curve or two, however, and the problem gets much tougher.
The modern world is filled with the uncoordinated beeping and buzzing of countless electronic devices. So it was only a matter of time before someone designed an electronic network with the ability to synchronize dozens of tiny buzzers, in much the same way that frogs and cicadas coordinate their night-time choruses. ''Several years ago I was on a camping trip and we pitched our tent in an area that was filled with hundreds of tree frogs,'' says Kenneth D. Frampton, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University, who dreamed up the project. ''The frogs were so loud that I couldn't get to sleep. So I began listening to the chorus and was fascinated by how the pattern of synchronized calling moved around: Frogs in one area would croak all together for a while, then gradually one group would develop a different rhythm and drift off on its own.''
Biomedical engineers and physicians have brought the day when artificial limbs will be controlled directly by the brain considerably closer by discovering a method that uses laser light, rather than electricity, to stimulate and control nerve cells. The researchers have discovered that low-intensity infrared laser light can spark specific nerves to life, exciting a leg or even individual toes without actually touching the nerve cells.
