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Attention, all you students cramming for your exams: Binging on sugar and sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid.

A study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning — and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption.

"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery  at UCLA. "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."

While earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the sweetener influences the brain.

The UCLA team zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar, that is commonly added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, apple sauce and baby food.

"We're not talking about naturally occurring fructose in fruits, which also contain important antioxidants," explained Gomez-Pinilla, who is also a member of UCLA's Brain Research Institute and Brain Injury Research Centre. "We're concerned about high-fructose corn syrup that is added to manufactured food products as a sweetener and preservative."

"DHA is essential for synaptic function — brain cells' ability to transmit signals to one another," Gomez-Pinilla said. "This is the mechanism that makes learning and memory possible. Our bodies can't produce enough DHA, so it must be supplemented through our diet."

"Because insulin can penetrate the blood–brain barrier, the hormone may signal neurons to trigger reactions that disrupt learning and cause memory loss," Gomez-Pinilla said.

Eating too much fructose could block insulin's ability to regulate how cells use and store sugar for the energy required for processing thoughts and emotions.

"Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain, where insulin appears to disturb memory and learning," he said. "Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new."

Gomez-Pinilla, a native of Chile and an exercise enthusiast who practices what he preaches, advises people to keep fructose intake to a minimum and swap sugary desserts for fresh berries and Greek yogurt, which he keeps within arm's reach in a small refrigerator in his office. An occasional bar of dark chocolate that hasn't been processed with a lot of extra sweetener is fine too, he said.

Still planning to throw caution to the wind and indulge in a hot-fudge sundae? Then also eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, walnuts and flaxseeds, or take a daily DHA capsule. Gomez-Pinilla recommends one gram of DHA per day.

"Our findings suggest that consuming DHA regularly protects the brain against fructose's harmful effects," said Gomez-Pinilla. "It's like saving money in the bank. You want to build a reserve for your brain to tap when it requires extra fuel to fight off future diseases."

Do you look fondly at the past, enjoy yourself in the present, and strive for future goals? If you hold these time perspectives simultaneously—and don't go overboard on any one of them—you're likely to be a happy person.

A new study by San Francisco State University researcher Ryan Howell and his colleagues demonstrates that having this sort of "balanced time perspective" can make people feel more vital, more grateful, and more satisfied with their lives. Their findings are reported online in the Journal of Happiness Studies.

"If you are too extreme or rely too much on any one of these perspectives, it becomes detrimental, and you can get into very destructive types of behaviours," Howell said. "It is best to be balanced in your time perspectives."

While it may seem obvious that people who have a positive attitude about their past, enjoy the present, and focus on goals for the future would be the happiest, Howell said that a sense of well-being depends on the balance between these elements.

"If you're really dominant in one type of perspective, you're very limited in certain situations," he added. "To deal well when you walk into any situation, you need to have cognitive flexibility. That is probably why people with a balanced time perspective are happiest."

It can be fine to have fond memories of childhood, for instance, but spending too much time remembering the past can keep you from enjoying the present. It might be great to treat yourself to a nice dinner, but "living in the moment" like that every night could keep you from achieving future goals.

There is some evidence that people can "rebalance" their time perspectives, Howell said, while noting that "there hasn't been a lot of work that's tried to change time perspectives explicitly." But in general, "if you're too future-oriented, it might be good to give yourself a moment to sit back and enjoy the present," Howell suggested. "If you're too hedonistic and living for the moment, maybe it's time to start planning some future goals."

Howell directs The Personality and Well-Being Lab. He and his graduate students at SF State are collecting data on time perspectives through their Beyond the Purchase website athttp://www.beyondthepurchase.org. They hope their results will help individuals to extend the benefits of a balanced time perspective into the area of consumer choice. The site contains a variety of short quizzes and surveys on purchasing habits and values and how they relate to happiness.

"The site is open to anyone who wants to learn more about their spending habits," Howell said, "and put themselves in a place where they can make better consumer choices."

"We would expect that people with certain time perspectives would be much more likely to make consumer choices that fall either in the more experiential or more materialistic side of things," said Howell, who is preparing a new study on the topic.

Ageing may seem unavoidable, but that's not necessarily so when it comes to the brain.

"Although some memory functions do tend to decline as we get older, several elderly show well preserved functioning and this is related to a well-preserved, youth-like brain," says Lars Nyberg of Umeå University in Sweden.

Education won't save your brain – people with PhDs are just as likely as high-school dropouts to experience memory loss with old age, the researchers say. Don't count on your job either. Those with a complex or demanding career may enjoy a limited advantage, but those benefits quickly dwindle after retirement.

Engagement is the secret to success. Those who are socially, mentally and physically stimulated reliably show better cognitive performance with a brain that appears younger than its years.

"There is quite solid evidence that staying physically and mentally active is a way towards brain maintenance," Nyberg says.

The researchers say this new take on successful aging represents an important shift in focus for the field. Much attention in the past has gone instead to understanding ways in which the brain copes with or compensates for cognitive decline in aging. The research team now argues for the importance of avoiding those age-related brain changes in the first place. Genes play some role, but life choices and other environmental factors, especially in old age, are critical.

Elderly people generally do have more trouble remembering meetings or names, Nyberg says. But those memory losses often happen later than many often think, after the age of 60. Older people also continue to accumulate knowledge and to use what they know effectively, often to very old ages.

"Taken together, a wide range of findings provides converging evidence for marked heterogeneity in brain aging," the scientists write. "Critically, some older adults show little or no brain changes relative to younger adults, along with intact cognitive performance, which supports the notion of brain maintenance. In other words, maintaining a youthful brain, rather than responding to and compensating for changes, may be the key to successful memory aging."

A research car which monitors our concentration, stress levels and driving habits while we're sat behind the steering wheel is being used to develop new technologies to support older drivers.

The Intelligent Transport team at Newcastle University, UK, have converted an electric car into a mobile laboratory.

Dubbed 'DriveLAB', the car is kitted out with tracking systems, eye trackers and bio-monitors in an effort to understand the challenges faced by older drivers and to identify where the key stress points are.

Research shows that giving up driving is one of the key factors responsible for a fall in health and well-being among older people, leading to them becoming more isolated and inactive.

Led by Professor Phil Blythe, the Newcastle team are investigating in-vehicle technologies for older drivers which they hope could help them to continue driving into later life.

These include bespoke navigation tools, night vision systems and intelligent speed adaptations.

Phil Blythe, Professor of Intelligent Transport Systems at Newcastle University, explains: "For many older people, particularly those living alone or in rural areas, driving is essential for maintaining their independence, giving them the freedom to get out and about without having to rely on others.

"But we all have to accept that as we get older our reactions slow down and this often results in people avoiding any potentially challenging driving conditions and losing confidence in their driving skills. The result is that people stop driving before they really need to.

"What we are doing is to look at ways of keeping people driving safely for longer, which in turn boosts independence and keeps us socially connected."

Funded by Research Councils UK's Digital Economy programme the research is part of the Social inclusion through the Digital Economy (SiDE) project, a £12m research hub led by Newcastle University.

Using the new DriveLAB as well as the University's driving simulator, the team have been working with older people from across the North East and Scotland to understand their driving habits and fears and look at ways of overcoming them.

By incorporating the eye tracker and bio-monitor with the driving simulator the team are able to monitor eye movement, speed, reaction, lane position, acceleration, braking and driving efficiency.

Dr Amy Guo, the leading researcher on the older driver study, explains: "The DriveLAB is helping us to understand what the key stress triggers and difficulties are for older drivers and how we might use technology to address these problems.

"For example, most of us would expect older drivers always go slower than everyone else but surprisingly, we found that in 30mph zones they struggled to keep at a constant speed and so were more likely to break the speed limit and be at risk of getting fined.

"We're looking at the benefits of systems which control your speed as a way of preventing that."

Another solution is a tailored SatNav which identifies the safest route – such as avoiding right turns and dual carriageways - and uses pictures as turning cues, such as a post box or public house.

Researcher Chris Emmerson, explains: "One thing that came out of the focus groups was that while the older generation is often keen to try new technologies it's their lack of experience with, and confidence in, digital technologies which puts them off. Also, they felt most were designed with younger people in mind."

The work is being presented at the Aging, Mobility and Quality of Life conference in Michigan in June.

The driving simulator is also being used to look at how distractions such as answering a mobile phone, sending a text or eating can affect our driving.

People who are excluded by others online, such as on Facebook, may feel just as bad as if they had been excluded in person, say researchers.

"If you've ever felt bad about being 'ignored' on Facebook you're not alone," said Joshua Smyth, professor of biobehavioural health and of medicine at Penn State and Misericordia University.

"Facebook -- with its approximately 800 million users -- serves as a place to forge social connections; however, it is often a way to exclude others without the awkwardness of a face-to-face interaction. Most people would probably expect that being ignored or rejected via a remote source like the Internet would not hurt as much as being rejected in person. Yet, our studies show that people may experience similar psychological reactions to online exclusion as they do with face-to-face exclusion." Smyth and Kelly Filipkowski, assistant professor of psychology at Misericordia University, conducted two studies examining the perceptions of and reactions to face-to-face and online chat room exclusion.

The students operating face to face believed they were participating in a study on the formation of impressions in casual settings. They thought they would briefly interact with two other student participants and then supply the researchers with their impressions of themselves and the others.

The students involved in the chat-room conversation believed they were participating in a study to investigate the formation of impressions when individuals do not receive visual cues from one another. In reality, the researchers set up both scenarios -- the in-person conversations and the chat-room conversations -- so student participants would be ignored by student research assistants trained to pose as study participants.

The team found that participants in both scenarios responded similarly to being excluded.

"Contrary to our expectation, the students' responses to rejection were not primarily characterised by severe distress, but rather characterised by numbness and distancing or withdrawal," Smyth said.

Overall, the team showed that the participants expected the exclusion to be much worse than what they actually reported when they experienced the exclusion. The results of both studies appeared in a recent online issue of Computers in Human Behaviour.

"What we found interesting is that in the lab setting, the vast majority of participants attributed their exclusion as being no fault of their own, but rather due to the other individuals in the room," Filipkowski said. "In other words, people said, 'it isn't me, it's you.' This may have been a type of protective mechanism in order to buffer their mood and self-esteem."

The results suggest that our culture may not differentiate between in-person and online experiences as much as we might think, according to the researchers.

"Although the meaningfulness of online or remote interactions may seem troubling, these data may also hold a more positive message," Smyth said. "Meaningful online interactions may support the utilization of remote interventions that can enhance physical and psychological well-being, in turn providing increased access to opportunities for people who are in need."

However, the researchers caution that these findings may be related to the types of individuals who participated in their study.

"These studies were conducted with college-aged students who have grown up with the Internet and other related technology," Filipkowski said. "These findings may not apply to individuals who have much less experience with technology and remote communication."

Intelligence wins out over socio-economic status when it comes to career advancement researchers prove.

Conventional wisdom tells us that in the business world, "you are who you know" — your social background and professional networks outweigh talent when it comes to career success. But according to a Tel Aviv University researcher, making the right connection only gets your foot in the door. Your future success is entirely up to you.

When intelligence and socio-economic background (SEB) are pitted directly against one another, intelligence is a more accurate predictor of future career success. Although those from a wealthy family tended to start higher on the office totem pole with better entry-level wages, Prof. Ganzach's research discovered a direct correlation between intelligence and an upward wage trajectory, defined as the rate at which an employee was rewarded with salary raises.

Prof. Ganzach says that these findings, published in the journal Intelligence, have a positive message for those who can't rely on nepotism for their first job placements. "Your family can help you launch your career and you do get an advantage, but it doesn't help you progress. And once you start working, you can go wherever your abilities take you," he says.

One of the limitations of the study, says Prof. Ganzach, is that it doesn't account for other possible variables, such as personality, social skills, and the ability to work well in a group — all factors that influence advancement. Future research might also look at different measures of success, such as occupational success or job satisfaction, and explore whether these results also apply to employees with different education levels, such as university graduates.

Nodding off in class may not be such a bad idea after all. New research shows that going to sleep shortly after learning new material is most beneficial for recall.

Notre Dame Psychologist Jessica Payne and colleagues studied 207 students who habitually slept for at least six hours per night. Participants were randomly assigned to study declarative, semantically related or unrelated word pairs at 9:00 a.m. or 9:00 p.m., and returned for testing 30 minutes, 12 hours or 24 hours later. Declarative memory refers to the ability to consciously remember facts and events, and can be broken down into episodic memory (memory for events) and semantic memory (memory for facts about the world). People routinely use both types of memory every day – recalling where we parked today or learning how a colleague prefers to be addressed.

At the 12-hour retest, memory overall was superior following a night of sleep compared to a day of wakefulness. However, this performance difference was a result of a pronounced deterioration in memory for unrelated word pairs; there was no sleep-wake difference for related word pairs. At the 24-hour retest, with all subjects having received both a full night of sleep and a full day of wakefulness, subjects' memories were superior when sleep occurred shortly after learning, rather than following a full day of wakefulness.

"Our study confirms that sleeping directly after learning something new is beneficial for memory. What's novel about this study is that we tried to shine light on sleep's influence on both types of declarative memory by studying semantically unrelated and related word pairs," Payne says.

"Since we found that sleeping soon after learning benefited both types of memory, this means that it would be a good thing to rehearse any information you need to remember just prior to going to bed. In some sense, you may be 'telling' the sleeping brain what to consolidate."

Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality. It involves two processes: thinking, then producing. Innovation is the production or implementation of an idea. Some people are full of creative ideas, but don’t act on them, so they are imaginative but not creative.

Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. It requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life.

The bigger the concept and the more ideas it stimulates, the more creative it is.

Many adults forget their creative side that they enjoyed as a child. Children are so creative and imaginative that they constantly breathe new life into the world around them.

Being creative can involve cooking a meal from scratch, creating a new dance routine, decorating your room a different colour, or making up a bedtime story for your child. Whatever you do, creativity helps you do it better.

Researchers have found that a parent's weight change is a key contributor to the success of a child's weight loss in family-based treatment of childhood obesity.

"We looked at things such as parenting skills and styles, or changing the home food environment, and how they impacted a child's weight," said Kerri N. Boutelle, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at UC San Diego and Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego. "The number one way in which parents can help an obese child lose weight? Lose weight themselves. In this study, it was the most important predictor of child weight loss."

Recent data suggests that 31 percent of children in the United States are overweight or obese, or between four and five million children. Statistics from the most recent large-scale survey in the UK shockingly reveal that 25 percent of boys and 33 percent of girls aged between two and 19 years are overweight or obese – and there’s little sign the incidence is slowing. Current treatment programs generally require participation by both parents and children in a plan that combines nutrition education and exercise with behaviour therapy techniques.

"Parents are the most significant people in a child's environment, serving as the first and most important teachers," said Boutelle "They play a significant role in any weight-loss program for children, and this study confirms the importance of their example in establishing healthy eating and exercise behaviours for their kids."

The researchers looked at eighty parent-child groups with an 8 to 12-year-old overweight or obese child, who participated in a parent-only or parent + child treatment program for five months.

The study focused on evaluating the impact of three types of parenting skills taught in family-based behavioural treatment for childhood obesity, and the impact of each on the child's body weight: the parent modelling behaviours to promote their own weight loss, changes in home food environment, and parenting style and techniques (for example, a parent's ability to help limit the child's eating behaviour, encouraging the child and participating in program activities).

Consistent with previously published research, parent BMI change was the only significant predictor of a child's weight loss.

The researchers concluded that clinicians should focus on encouraging parents to lose weight to help their overweight or obese child lose weight.