Large-Scale Early Education Linked to Higher Living Standards and Crime Prevention 25 Years Later

Large-Scale Early Education Linked to Higher Living Standards and Crime Prevention 25 Years Later

  3:17:00 PM    Science Lover

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High-quality early education has a strong, positive impact well into adulthood, according to research led by Arthur Reynolds, co-director of the Human Capital Research Collaborative and professor of child development, and Judy Temple, a professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. The study is the longest follow-up ever of an established large-scale early childhood program.

Preschool children. High-quality early education has 
a strong, positive impact well into adulthood, new 
research shows. (Credit: © matka_Wariatka / Fotolia)

In the study published June 9 in the journal Science, Reynolds and Temple (with co-authors Suh-Ruu Ou, Irma Arteaga, and Barry White) report on more than 1,400 individuals whose well-being has been tracked for as much as 25 years. Those who had participated in an early childhood program beginning at age 3 showed higher levels of educational attainment, socioeconomic status, job skills, and health insurance coverage as well as lower rates of substance abuse, felony arrest, and incarceration than those who received the usual early childhood services.

The research focused on participants in the Child-Parent Center Education Program (CPCEP), a publicly funded early childhood development program that begins in preschool and provides up to six years of service in the Chicago public schools. Through the Chicago Longitudinal Study (CLS), Reynolds and colleagues have studied the educational and social development of a same-age cohort of low-income, minority children (93 percent African American) who participated in this program. The CLS is one of the most extensive and comprehensive studies ever undertaken of young children's learning. Reynolds and colleagues have reported on the Chicago individuals starting in preschool, then annually through the school-age years, and periodically through early adulthood.

The new paper reports on the sample participants at age 28, when they found the most positive outcomes among the 957 individuals who began services in preschool -- especially males and children of high school drop outs. Positive effects also were found for the duration of services, those participating for 4 to 6 years from preschool to third grade. The control group of 529 included individuals of the same age who participated in alternative early childhood programs in randomly selected schools and who matched the program group on socioeconomic status. Among the major findings (preschool group compared to the control group, adjusted for sample attrition):

• 9 percent more completed high school; 19 percent more males
• 20 percent more achieved moderate or higher level of socioeconomic status
• 19 percent more carried some level of health insurance coverage
• 28 percent fewer abused drugs and alcohol; 21 percent fewer males alone
• 22 percent fewer had a felony arrest; the difference was 45 percent for children of high school dropouts
• 28 percent fewer had experienced incarceration or jail

Participants who participated in CPCEP for four to six years (preschool to third grade) compared to the control group receiving less than four years:

• 18 percent more achieved moderate or higher level of socioeconomic status
• 23 percent more had some level of private health insurance coverage
• 55 percent more achieved on-time high school graduation
• 36 percent fewer had been arrested for violence

"When you follow people for more than two decades, an understanding of how early experiences shape later development can be achieved," Reynolds notes. "A chain of positive influences initiated by large advantages in school readiness and parent involvement leads to better school performance and enrollment in higher quality schools, and ultimately to higher educational attainment and socioeconomic status."



Findings demonstrate that effects of sustained school-based early education can endure through the third decade of life. Previously, Reynolds and colleagues documented the cost benefits of early education, demonstrating an 18 percent annual return on investment for society. However, policy has yet to support the kind of early interventions needed to solve persistent societal issues.

"Unfortunately, we still spend very little on prevention," says Reynolds. "Only 3 percent of the $14 billion dollars allocated to school districts to serve low-income children under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act [No Child Left Behind] goes to preschool. Yet preschool programs are one of the most cost-effective of all social programs."

He explains that since about half of the achievement gap between children from higher and lower economic statuses at age 10 already exists at age 5, education interventions need to start even earlier. "State and federal policies don't reflect the knowledge of how much earlier these gaps appear, and therefore the need to start as early as possible," he says.

Based on this and earlier studies, Reynolds and Temple say the key to CPC's success lies in both the quality of the program and its teachers, the opportunity for more than one year of participation, small classes, comprehensive family services, structured activity-based curricula focusing on language and literacy, and attention to continuity of learning from preschool to the early school grades.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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Large Study Shows : Females Are Equal to Males in Math Skills

Large Study Shows : Females Are Equal to Males in Math Skills

  9:58:00 AM    Science Lover

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The mathematical skills of boys and girls, as well as men and women, are substantially equal, according to a new examination of existing studies in the current online edition of journal Psychological Bulletin.

Young women studying mathematics. The mathematical skills of boys and girls, as well as men and women, are substantially equal, according to a new examination of existing studies.

One portion of the new study looked systematically at 242 articles that assessed the math skills of 1,286,350 people, says chief author Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

These studies, all published in English between 1990 and 2007, looked at people from grade school to college and beyond. A second portion of the new study examined the results of several large, long-term scientific studies, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

In both cases, Hyde says, the difference between the two sexes was so close as to be meaningless.

Sara Lindberg, now a postdoctoral fellow in women's health at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, was the primary author of the meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin.

The idea that both genders have equal math abilities is widely accepted among social scientists, Hyde adds, but word has been slow to reach teachers and parents, who can play a negative role by guiding girls away from math-heavy sciences and engineering. "One reason I am still spending time on this is because parents and teachers continue to hold stereotypes that boys are better in math, and that can have a tremendous impact on individual girls who are told to stay away from engineering or the physical sciences because 'Girls can't do the math.'"

Scientists now know that stereotypes affect performance, Hyde adds. "There is lots of evidence that what we call 'stereotype threat' can hold women back in math. If, before a test, you imply that the women should expect to do a little worse than the men, that hurts performance. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Parents and teachers give little implicit messages about how good they expect kids to be at different subjects," Hyde adds, "and that powerfully affects their self-concept of their ability. When you are deciding about a major in physics, this can become a huge factor."

Hyde hopes the new results will slow the trend toward single-sex schools, which are sometimes justified on the basis of differential math skills. It may also affect standardized tests, which gained clout with the passage of No Child Left Behind, and tend to emphasize lower-level math skills such as multiplication, Hyde says. "High-stakes testing really needs to include higher-level problem-solving, which tends to be more important in jobs that require math skills. But because many teachers teach to the test, they will not teach higher reasoning unless the tests start to include it."

The new findings reinforce a recent study that ranked gender dead last among nine factors, including parental education, family income, and school effectiveness, in influencing the math performance of 10-year-olds.

Hyde acknowledges that women have made significant advances in technical fields. Half of medical school students are female, as are 48 percent of undergraduate math majors. "If women can't do math, how are they getting these majors?" she asks.

Because progress in physics and engineering is much slower, "we have lots of work to do," Hyde says. "This persistent stereotyping disadvantages girls. My message to parents is that they should have confidence in their daughter's math performance. They need to realize that women can do math just as well as men. These changes will encourage women to pursue occupations that require lots of math."

Editor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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Smoking Is Dumb: Young Men Who Smoke Have Lower IQs, Study Finds

Smoking Is Dumb: Young Men Who Smoke Have Lower IQs, Study Finds

  5:11:00 PM    Science Lover

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"Only dopes use dope," goes the memorable warning about drugs. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher cautions that the same goes for cigarettes.

A new study has determined that young men who smoke are likely to have lower IQs than their nonsmoking peers. (Credit: iStockphoto)

A study led by Prof. Mark Weiser of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychiatry and the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer Hospital has determined that young men who smoke are likely to have lower IQs than their non-smoking peers. Tracking 18- to 21-year-old men enlisted in the Israeli army in the largest ever study of its kind, he has been able to demonstrate an important connection between the number of cigarettes young males smoke and their IQ.

The average IQ for a non-smoker was about 101, while the smokers' average was more than seven IQ points lower at about 94, the study determined. The IQs of young men who smoked more than a pack a day were lower still, at about 90. An IQ score in a healthy population of such young men, with no mental disorders, falls within the range of 84 to 116.

An addiction that doesn't discriminate

"In the health profession, we've generally thought that smokers are most likely the kind of people to have grown up in difficult neighborhoods, or who've been given less education at good schools," says Prof. Weiser, whose study was reported in a recent version of the journal Addiction. "But because our study included subjects with diverse socio-economic backgrounds, we've been able to rule out socio-economics as a major factor. The government might want to rethink how it allocates its educational resources on smoking."

Making the results more significant, the study also measured effects in twin brothers. In the case where one twin smoked, the non-smoking twin registered a higher IQ on average.

Although a lower IQ may suggest a greater risk for smoking addiction, the cross-sectional data on IQ and smoking found that most of the smokers investigated in the study had IQs within the average range nevertheless.

Obesity, drug addiction also at issue

In the study, the researchers took data from more than 20,000 men before, during and after their time in the military. All men in the study were considered in good health, since pre-screening measures for suitability in the army had already been taken. The researchers found that around 28 percent of their sample smoked one or more cigarettes a day, 3 percent considered themselves ex-smokers, and 68% said they never smoked.

Prof. Weiser says that the study illuminates a general trend in epidemiological studies. "People on the lower end of the average IQ tend to display poorer overall decision-making skills when it comes to their health," says Prof. Weiser. He adds that his finding can help address a serious concern among health counsellors at grade and high schools. Schoolchildren who have been found to have a lower IQ can be considered at risk to begin the habit, and can be targeted with special education and therapy to prevent them from starting or to break the habit after it sets in.

"People with lower IQs are not only prone to addictions such as smoking," Prof. Weiser adds. "These same people are more likely to have obesity, nutrition and narcotics issues. Our study adds to the evidence of this growing body of research, and it may help parents and health professionals help at-risk young people make better choices."

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Single-molecule Nano-vehicles Synthesized: 'Fantastic Voyage' Not So Far-Fetched

Single-molecule Nano-vehicles Synthesized: 'Fantastic Voyage' Not So Far-Fetched

  12:58:00 AM    Science Lover

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James Tour and coworkers at Rice University synthesized a molecular car with four carbon-based wheels that roll on axles made from linked carbon atoms. The nano-car's molecular wheels are 5,000 times smaller than a human cell. A powerful technique that allows viewing objects at the atomic level called scanning tunneling microscopy reveals the wheels roll perpendicular to the axles, rather than sliding about like a car on ice as the car moves back and forth on a surface. (Credit: Y. Shirai/Rice University)

Imagine producing vehicles so small they would be about the size of a molecule and powered by engines that run on sugar. To top it off, a penny would buy a million of them.

A new article published in the May 2009 issue of Scientific American asks readers to do just that.

The concept is nearly unthinkable, but it's exactly the kind of thing occupying National Science Foundation supported researchers at Penn State and Rice universities.

For several years, Ayusman Sen, who heads Penn State's department of chemistry, and his colleague Thomas E. Mallouk, director of the Center for Nanoscale Science at Penn State, have investigated technologies that could realize these remarkable machines whose uses might include delivering medicine to specific tissue, accomplishing surgeries or communicating with the outside world from inside the human body.

Though researchers consistently have improved ways to build nano-machines, the stumbling block has been finding a way to power them. Shrinking energy producers--internal combustion engines, electric motors or jet engines--below millimeter dimensions is not an easy task, but researchers may be closer to a fantastic solution.

In the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage, scientists shrink a submarine to microscopic size and inject it into the blood stream of a brilliant scientist, who has a blood clot forming in his brain. The nano-sized surgeons then set out to remove the blood clot.

Today, researchers can steer nano-machines, use them to convey cargo, and guide them using electromagnetic forces or chemical interactions. All of this, they say, makes the world seen in Fantastic Voyage not so far-fetched.

The article -- "How to Build Nanotech Motors" is available on the Scientific American web site at: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-build-nanotech-motors

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Car coating made from crab shell material heals scratches automatically

Car coating made from crab shell material heals scratches automatically

  9:51:00 AM    Science Lover

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Direct sunlight might be bad for you, but it can do wonders to your car. US scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi have developed a new polyurethane material that heals its own scratches in less than an hour when exposed to sunlight.

The material’s secret lies in using molecules made from chitosan – a carbohydrate derived from the shells of crabs and other crustaceans.

Tiny scratches to the surface of the material close up in only a few minutes when the material is exposed to the ultraviolet (UV) light in sunlight.

According to Marek Urban, who led the study, the material could make a good topcoat for an automobile.

The scientist and his team combined polyurethane with a molecule made up of chitosan. They then modified this chitosan slightly with the addition of the structures composed of four carbon atoms called oxetane rings.

“It is the oxetane rings that give the material its ability to heal,” Urban reported in the journal Science.

When a scratch is made, some of the rings are broken, leaving chemically reactive free ends. The chitosan then responds to ultraviolet light by forming chemical chains that begin bonding with other materials in the substance, eventually smoothing the scratch.

The process can take less than an hour, beginning at the bottom of a scratch, and pulling it closed like a zipper.
Urban says scratches about 10 micrometres wide and 50 deep heal over after 30 minutes of exposure to UV light.

However, the polymer can only repair itself in the same spot once, and would not work after repeated scratches.
“Obviously, this is one of the drawbacks,” he said, adding that the chances are low of having two scratches in exactly the same spot.

According to the expert, the material could be useful for a number of applications, including vehicles and furniture, or electronic devices like cellphones.

“If you scratch it, let it sit under the Sun for some time and it’s cured,” he said.

Urban said his team has patents pending on the material and is considering commercialisation.


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World's smallest periscopes

World's smallest periscopes

  2:05:00 AM    Science Lover

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A team of scientists has designed the world's tiniest version of the periscope to peer at cells and other micro-organisms from all the sides at once.

"With an off-the-shelf laboratory microscope you only see cells from one side, the top," said Chris Janetopoulos, assistant professor of biological sciences at the Vanderbilt University (VU) and member of the research team.

"Now not only can we see the tops of cells, we can view their sides as well - something biologists almost never see," he added.

The researchers dubbed their devices "mirrored pyramidal wells". They consist of pyramidal-shaped cavities moulded into silicon whose interior surfaces are coated with a reflective layer of gold or platinum.

They are about the width of a human hair and can be made in a range of sizes to view different-sized objects. When a cell is placed in such a well and viewed with a regular microscope, the researcher can see several sides simultaneously.

"This technology is exciting because these mirrored wells can be made at very low cost, unlike other, more complex methods for 3D microscopy," said VU assistant professor Kevin Seale.

"This could easily become as ubiquitous as the microscope slide and could replace more expensive methods currently used to position individual cells," said Ron Reiserer, lab manager at the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education (VIIBRE) who helped design the protocol used to make the micropyramids.

The Vanderbilt group is not the first to make microscopic pyramidal wells, but it is the first to apply them to make 3D images of microorganisms, said a Vanderbilt release.

These findings were published in the Journal of Microscopy.

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