Children who participate in collaborative group work to learn about significant social issues become better decision-makers than their peers who learn the same curriculum through teacher-led discussions, a new study finds.

More than 760 fifth-grade students were involved in the study, which compared the efficacy of collaborative group work with conventional direct instruction at promoting students' ability to make reasoned decisions and apply those skills in a novel task.

In older adults, declining health is a major reason they stop driving. But when they stop driving, what impact does this have on their subsequent health and well-being?

A new review of published studies indicates that driving cessation in older adults may contribute to a variety of health problems, especially depression.

A high proportion of older adults entering long-term care homes in Ontario are B12 deficient, with more developing deficiencies over the course of their first year in residence, according to research from the University of Waterloo. There is a connection between B12 deficiency and several serious health conditions.

Researchers found that almost 14 per cent of study participants were B12 deficient at the time of admission to a long-term care home, while another 38 per cent had only slightly better levels. Over the course of one year, an additional four per cent developed B12 deficiencies. However, those receiving supplements had better B12 levels.

A new study in rats may provide significant insights into the long-term impacts of over-consumption of sugary foods during adolescence.

The study shows that the enjoyment of such foods later in adulthood is reduced in those who over-consumed early in life. Investigators found that this decrease in reward relates to reduced activity in one of the key hubs of the brain's reward circuitry, called the nucleus accumbens. Such long-lasting alterations could have important implications for reward-related disorders such as substance abuse or eating disorders.

LA JOLLA--(January 19, 2016) Agricultural grafting dates back nearly 3,000 years. By trial and error, people from ancient China to ancient Greece realized that joining a cut branch from one plant onto the stalk of another could improve the quality of crops.

Now, researchers at the Salk Institute and Cambridge University have used this ancient practice, combined with modern genetic research, to show that grafted plants can share epigenetic traits, according to a new paper published the week of January 18, 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In results published on October 19, 2015 in the Journal of Lipid Research, a team of translational scientists at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) report a new reason why non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) worsens in people who are obese.

The results may help prevent cirrhosis and liver cancer, according to co-senior authors Kenneth D. Chavin, M.D., PhD, a transplant surgeon in the MUSC Health Department of Surgery, and Lauren Ashley Cowart, PhD, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Co-Director of the MUSC Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Lipidomics and Pathobiology.