A new study by psychologists from the University of Liverpool and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) reveals that collaborating in a group to remember information is harmful.

The research, conducted by Dr Craig Thorley, the University's Department of Psychological Sciences, and Dr Stéphanie Marion, from UOIT's Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, statistically analysed 64 earlier collaborative remembering studies and found that groups recall less than their individual members would if working alone.

The same study also found that collaborative remembering boosts later individual learning: people who previously recall in a group remember more than those who do not.

The hypothesis suggests that everything from walking upright to our lack of hair, from holding our breath to eating shellfish could be because an aquatic phase in our ancestry.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Arts and cultural nonprofit organizations promote arts appreciation and strengthen communities by providing a wide range of arts programs in music, theater, visual arts and dance. These organizations rely on donations to exist. One way that the nonprofit sector currently measures these organizations' successes is by the number of people who attend their programs. However, new research from the University of Missouri finds no evidence to support the idea that donors are influenced by high attendance numbers; in fact, large audience numbers may actually lead to fewer donations.

A group of James Cook University scientists led by Emeritus Professor Ross Alford has designed and built an inexpensive incubator that could boost research into how animals and plants will be affected by climate change.

JCU's Sasha Greenspan said the team designed and built small, inexpensive, low-energy-consumption chambers that allow small organisms to grow under very precisely controlled temperature regimes.

"These are an important advance because they make well replicated, realistic experiments possible," said Ms Greenspan.

I've already done a petition to journalists on the issue of dramatized reporting of doomsday stories that make young children and vulnerable adults suicidal. This is another petition on the same topic, this time to Youtube. The  petition is to remove the ads from doomsday videos on the sane grounds that these videos make vulnerable young children and adults scared and suicidal and the ads provide a financial incentive to youtube users to make and reupload them.

Around 5.4 million people currently receive treatment for asthma in the UK, of which 1.1 million are children.

To diagnose the condition doctors usually measure a person’s airflow lung capacity, however lung function tests can be inaccurate and do not reflect underlying changes associated with asthma. Other tests, such as blood, urine or sputum analysis can be distressing, particularly for younger patients.

The new test, developed in collaboration with Nottingham City Hospital, is completely painless and offers a one-stop diagnosis suitable for people of all ages.

Patients’ evaluations of doctors’ interpersonal skills are used to assess quality of care. In both the UK and the US, certain minority ethnic groups report lower patient experience scores compared to the majority population. For example, the English General Practice Patient Survey found that South Asian groups report particularly low scores compared to the White British majority, with Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups providing the lowest scores.

Several potential explanations have been proposed for these lower ratings. These mainly relate to whether South Asian patients receive lower quality care, or whether they receive similar care, but rate this more negatively.