Although current teacher training programs generally omit the science of how we learn, an overwhelming number of the teachers surveyed by the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) felt neuroscience could make an important contribution in key educational areas.

Dr Sue Pickering and Dr Paul Howard-Jones, at Bristol University's Graduate School of Education, asked teachers and other education professionals whether they thought it was important to consider the workings of the brain in educational practice. Around 87 per cent of respondents felt it was.

When cells become cancerous, the sugars on their surfaces undergo distinct changes that set them apart from healthy cells. For decades, scientists have tried to exploit these differences by training the immune system to attack cancerous cells before they can spread and ravage the body.

Now, researchers at the University of Georgia Cancer Center have synthesized a carbohydrate-based vaccine that – in mice – has successfully triggered a strong immune response to cancer cells.

Leaking pipelines in Siberia, sabotage operations in Nigeria and the long-term consequences of accidents have one thing in common: they leave behind them huge lakes of oil which pollute the soil, contaminate the ground water and destroy the habitat of humans, animals and plants.

Biotherm Technologie AG from Schaffhausen in Switzerland has devised a way to neutralize the environmental damage and create energy by producing heating oil, diesel fuel and bitumen from long-chain hydrocarbons.

"Our process is based on fractionated depolymerisation and was originally developed for the reconditioning of waste plastics and oil," says Christopher F. Stampfli, director designate of Biotherm Technologie AG. "However, it's equally effective for drying up oil lakes.

Biological cements to repair ‘burst fractures’ of the spine are being developed and tested in a major new collaborative project between the University of Leeds and Queen’s University Belfast.

Bone cements, similar to those used in joint replacement surgery, are already being used to strengthen damaged vertebrae of patients with diseases such as osteoporosis, in a procedure known as vertebroplasty, but ‘burst fractures’ to the spine, injuries often sustained in major impact accidents and falls, are much more difficult to treat. They account for over 1,000 emergency NHS admissions each year and often require highly complex, invasive surgery and a long stay in hospital.

Baby Miriam's mother lost her amniotic fluid in the 20th week of pregnancy, giving the baby a very slim chance of surviving birth and, even if she had, because her lungs had stopped growing, she would probably have suffocated shortly afterward.

Doctors at Bonn Univer-sity Clinic saved Miriam's life with surgery in the womb that stimulated lung growth - the first time this method has been used worldwide in a case of premature rupture of the fetal membrane. The baby is now one year old and very healthy. The doctors will report the case study in this month's Fetal Diagnosis and Therapy.

An autoimmune inflammatory disease that takes a progressive toll on the heart, kidney and liver as well as the joints, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with a high risk of early death. This sobering fact is well known. Less is known about whether longevity has improved for RA patients over the past few decades of remarkable improvements in longevity in the general population. Are earlier diagnosis, breakthrough drugs, and more aggressive antirheumatic treatment regimens paying off in terms of survival?

In political polling, as the same questions are asked of more and more people the uncertainty (expressed as margin of error) declines and the results become a clearer snapshot of public opinion - yet with climate issues additional research does not substantially reduce the uncertainty.

"Uncertainty and sensitivity have to go hand in hand. They're inextricable," said Gerard Roe, a University of Washington associate professor of Earth and space sciences. "We're used to systems in which reducing the uncertainty in the physics means reducing the uncertainty in the response by about the same proportion.

Chilean researchers have identified a region of the brain – the insular cortex – that plays a role in drug craving in amphetamine-addicted rats, according to a report published Science. This finding ultimately may help support the development of new therapies to treat drug addiction as well as certain behavioral side effects of medications.

The insular cortex, also known as the insula, lies deep inside the brain. It is a part of the interoceptive sensory system that monitors the body’s perception of its physiological states and needs. The researchers used rats for these studies and before the findings can be shown to apply in humans, researchers will have to perform similar tests in human subjects.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurobiological disorder that manifests as a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that is more frequent and severe than is typically observed in individuals at a comparable level of development.

Approximately 7.8 percent of all school-age children, or about 4.4 million U.S. children aged 4 to 17 years, have been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Shire plc announced the results of a phase III trial which demonstrated that adults with ADHD experienced significant improvements in ADHD symptom control within one week of treatment with VYVANSE (lisdexamfetamine dimesylate), the first prodrug stimulant.