In discussions about the quality and equity of our educational system, one thing lost in political arguments about unions and ideological bias and No Child Left Behind is empirical data of what difference teachers make in actual education.

A special issue of Public Finance Review tackles the impact of teachers, focusing especially on the hiring and retention of qualified teachers, including in disadvantaged districts.

Some of the topics addressed:

It’s not always best to be first, finds a new study from the Journal of Consumer Research. The researchers examined how consumers evaluate new products and found that many products may actually benefit from having competition, entering the market as followers rather than as the first of their kind.

New types of products are constantly being developed and introduced. When a brand releases a product that has never been offered by any brand before, it is the “pioneer” product, and consumers can’t evaluate it in the same way they evaluate existing products, the researchers explain. For example, Clorox was the pioneer brand for disinfectant wipes.

Other brands that then release similar products are termed “followers.” Mr.

Some elections are tougher than others. If you like John Edwards, who would you reject if he drops out, Clinton or Obama? How we decide against candidates can tell us valuable things about how people make choices.

A new study from the February issue of the Journal of Consumer Research reveals that sometimes asking people to reject an option – rather than choose an option – makes it easier for consumers to decide among options that they don’t particularly like.

“If both the alternatives are attractive, then both provide reasons to choose, and therefore are compatible with the choose task,” explain Anish Nagpal from the University of Melbourne) and Parthasarathy Krishnamurthy from the University of Houston.

2-3 percent of children are born with mental retardation. It can sometimes be attributed to external factors (such as a shortage of oxygen at birth) or to defects in the DNA but, in 80% of the cases involving DNA, scientists do not know which genes are responsible.

Researchers at VIB, the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, connected to the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in collaboration with an Australian research team, have discovered that, in a portion of these patients, the mental retardation is caused by a twofold production of two proteins (HSD17B10 and HUWE1). This is the first time that scientists have found that duplication of a protein leads to mental retardation.

Baking soda is one of those wonder substances with useful applications far beyond simple baked goods. We all know we can open a box and leave it in our fridge to combat odors. But as a result of innovative work done by Skyonic Corporation in Texas, baking soda may become one of our greatest weapons against carbon emissions and global warming as well.

Skyonic has developed a “post-combustion carbon capture and sequestration technology that works with any large-scale stationary CO2 emitter” (e.g.- coal, natural gas or oil fired power plant). The process removes heavy metals, acid gasses, and carbon dioxide from conditioned at-temperature flue gas. The carbon emissions are then stored as stable sodium bicarbonate (better-than-food-grade baking soda) for long-term storage as land or mine fill. The clean flue gas is then returned to the plants stack for release.

Researchers today closed out the inaugural season on an unprecedented, multi-year effort to retrieve the most detailed record of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere over the last 100,000 years.

The dust, chemicals, and air trapped in the two-mile-long ice core will provide critical information for scientists working to predict the extent to which human activity will alter Earth’s climate, according to the chief scientist for the project, Kendrick Taylor of the Desert Research Institute of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Working as part of the National Science Foundation’s West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS Divide) Ice Core Project, a team of scientists, engineers, technicians, and students from multiple U.S.

Traditional gene therapy has focused on supplying a normal copy of a faulty gene. RNAi turns off a problematic gene. These contrasting approaches share some of the same techniques and challenges, including delivery of a therapeutic gene or siRNA into cells. RNA interference (RNAi) represents an innovative new strategy for using small RNA molecules to silence specific genes associated with disease processes.

At least six clinical trials using RNA interference (RNAi) have been approved, “with many more coming down the pipeline,” according to the Editorial by Mark A. Kay, MD, PhD, an Associate Editor of Human Gene Therapy and the Dennis Farrey Family Professor in Pediatrics and Professor of Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Quick use of fingertips is common for anyone text messaging on their cell phone but researchers at the University of Southern California say that this seemingly trivial action is the result of a complex neuro-motor-mechanical process orchestrated with precision timing by the brain, nervous system and muscles of the hand.

USC Viterbi School of Engineering biomedical engineer Francisco Valero-Cuevas is working to understand the biological, neurological and mechanical features of the human hand that enable dexterous manipulation and makes it possible for a person to grasp and crack an egg, fasten a button, or fumble with a cell phone to answer a call.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that field mice have evolved a unique way of ensuring faster fertilization, a phenomenon which could explain some cases of infertility in humans.

The team, in collaboration with Charles University, Prague, found that field mice sacrifice some of their immunity protection in favor of a more rapid fertilization process. This occurs due to the absence of a protein, called CD46. Present in both animals and humans, it helps protect the body’s cells from attack by its immune system. Over time, field mice have lost the ability to produce this protein, resulting in instability of a cap-like structure, called the acrosome, present over the head of the sperm.

People love to find things on Mars. Sometimes it's a face, and sometimes it's a really happy face. Other times it's pyramids or even DNA.

This time, it's Bigfoot.

The Mars exploration rover, Spirit, took this picture in late 2007. Launched in June, 2003, Spirit is a solar-powered explorer that is walking along the surface of Mars to see what we can learn about its geological history.