Boarding Schools for Girls

Obese girls who read a novel about an overweight teen's struggle lost more weight than did girls who read a "weight neutral" novel or did not read any novel at all, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics.

• Researchers divided 33 obese girls into three groups.
  
• One group read a novel about an overweight girl who goes rock climbing, hiking, and canoeing after being ridiculed by her classmates.
  
• The other two groups either were not assigned to a novel or read one that did not address weight issues.
• There was a small but significant difference in the number of pounds lost by those who read the novel that addressed being overweight, said Dr. Sarah Armstrong, director of the Healthy Lifestyles Program at Duke University.

"This provides hope to parents that something as simple as an inspiring novel can help kids make healthier choices and lower their risk of illness," Dr. Armstrong said.

Labels: weight loss, obesity, weight-gain, reading

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Intense remedial instruction can permanently "rewire" the brains of dyslexic students and others with poor reading skills, helping them to become better readers, according to a new study from Carnegie Mellon University.

Professors Marcel Just, Ann Meyler, and Tim Killer studied 25 fifth-graders who had undergone an hour a day of intensive reading instruction over a 100-day period. The scientists used magnetic resonance imagery (MRIs) to demonstrate that the children showed increases in activity in cortical regions of the brain associated with reading. Many of the students' brains activated at near-normal levels after the round of remedial instruction.

The research team expressed hope that remedial education may help students in subjects besides reading.

"We are at the beginning of a new era of neuro-education," said Dr. Just, director of the Carnegie Mellon Center for Cognitive Brain Imagery.

This study appears in the journal Neuropsychologia.

Labels: school, reading, brain-chemistry

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