Article Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Thinking out loud really does help you to solve problems faster, scientists have discovered.

People who talk out loud to think through their maths problems are able to solve them faster and have more chance of getting the right answer, the research has found.

Article Source: The New York Times

Growing up in the ’70s, John Halamka was a bookish child with a penchant for science and electronics. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses and buttoned his shirts up to the collar.

Now 47, Dr. Halamka is the chief information officer at the Harvard Medical School, a practicing emergency-ward physician and an adviser to the Obama administration on electronic health records.

Hybrid careers like Dr. Halamka’s that combine computing with other fields will increasingly be the new American jobs of the future, labor experts say. In other words, the nation’s economy is going to need more cool nerds. But not enough young people are embracing computing — often because they are leery of being branded nerds.

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Article Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

PRIMARY school pupils chosen to take part in bilingual classes may receive an unexpected long-term benefit: learning in two languages could stave off the onset of dementia in their senior years.

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Article Source: U.S. News and World Report

From New York to Arkansas to California, many schools have found ways to help disadvantaged students learn better

For years, Americans have been pounded by bad news about public education: Students can't do math as well as Japanese and South Korean kids, high school graduation rates are below those of most other developed countries, and many of the kids who do graduate need remedial courses before they're ready for credit-bearing classes in college.

The news is even worse for low-income and minority children, whose academic performance generally lags so far behind that of middle-class white students that the "achievement gap" is a staple of every school reform discussion.

So what about the schools where low-income students and students of color do as well as their more privileged peers?

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