Summary: New research shows that microglia — the brain’s resident immune cells — can block blood-derived macrophages from spreading into damaged areas of the central nervous system. This insight may guide development of therapies for multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord injury and other neurodegenerative conditions. Source: University of Alberta Unexpected findings from a collaborative … Read more

A core task in any coaching practice is guiding clients toward their goals rather than prescribing exact steps for them to follow. Effective coaches combine thoughtful guidance with activities that prompt clients to reflect, set priorities, and take meaningful action. This article shares practical coaching forms and templates to help you deliver a better client … Read more

Summary: Children who repeatedly bullied peers at age 8–9 are more likely to be suspected of violent offenses by age 31, according to a Finnish nationwide birth cohort study. Source: University of Turku Key finding: In a large longitudinal study from Finland, children identified as frequent bullies at 8–9 years old showed a substantially higher … Read more

Behavior therapy grew out of scientific and psychological efforts to observe, predict, and influence human action (Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2015). Unlike psychoanalytic approaches that emphasize inner dynamics or abstract mental constructs, behavior therapy targets observable behavior and measurable change. Over decades it has produced robust, evidence-based methods that effectively help diverse clients across many presenting … Read more

Summary: A new study illuminates genetic contributions to fox behavior. Researchers report that the SorCS1 gene is linked to social tendencies in foxes and suggest these findings may also have relevance for understanding behavior in other mammals, including humans. Source: University of Illinois. Sequenced Fox Genome Reveals Genetic Regions Linked to Tame and Aggressive Behavior … Read more

Summary: New research reframes the “Cambrian Explosion”—the interval about 500 million years ago when animal diversity rapidly appears in the fossil record—not as a single sudden event but as a multi-stage process largely driven by increasing neural complexity. The study argues that the evolution and regionalization of the brain created genetic toolkits later co-opted to … Read more

Would you like your students to be resilient, motivated, confident, and kind? Do you want a classroom where wellbeing and learning go hand in hand? Those are goals every educator shares, yet finding time to cultivate character, emotional skills, and positive relationships within an already packed school day can feel overwhelming. Positive education offers a … Read more

Summary: Researchers report that introducing people who are hesitant about vaccines to someone who has experienced a vaccine-preventable disease can reduce vaccine hesitancy. In a college-based intervention, about 70% of students who interviewed a person with a vaccine-preventable disease moved from vaccine-hesitant to pro-vaccine. Overall, 75% of initially anti-vaccine students increased their vaccine attitude scores, … Read more

Summary: Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have created a mouse model to study sexual transmission of Zika virus from males to females and vertical transmission from pregnant females to their fetuses, and are using it to explore how the virus crosses the placenta and to test ways to block transmission. Source: NIH/NIAID. Study … Read more

Compassion sustains human life. Without it, countless acts of courage, care, and sacrifice would never have occurred. Imagine a world without figures like Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., St. Francis of Assisi, Nelson Mandela, or Mahatma Gandhi. Imagine a world without the many ordinary people who risked their lives to save others in wartime … Read more