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For most students, thinking about the next day’’s math exam makes them so anxious that they face difficulties while solving arithmetic problems. Now, a new study has explored why the stress related to the ”dreaded” subject leads to poor performance in tests.

The study has been conducted by University of Chicago psychologist Sian L. Beilock and her colleagues.

Much Beilock’’s her work suggests that working memory is a key component of math anxiety. Working memory (also known as short term memory), helps to maintain a limited amount of information at one time, just what is necessary to solve the problem at hand.

Beilock’’s findings suggest that worrying about a situation (such as solving an arithmetic problem in front of a group of people) takes up the working memory that is available for figuring out the math problem.

The type of working memory involved in solving math problems may be affected by the way the problems are presented. When arithmetic problems are written horizontally, more working memory resources related to language are used (solvers usually maintain problem steps by repeating them in their head).

However, when problems are written vertically, visuo-spatial (or where things are located) resources of working memory are used. Individuals who solve vertical problems tend to solve them in a way similar to how they solve problems on paper.

Beilock wanted to know if stereotype-induced stress (i.e. reminding women of the stereotype that “girls can”t do math”) would result in different results for solving vertical versus horizontal math problems.

The findings showed that the women who had been exposed to the negative stereotype performed poorly, although only on the horizontal problems (which rely on verbal working memory).

Beilock suggests that the stereotype creates an inner monologue of worries, which relies heavily on verbal working memory. Thus, there is insufficient verbal working memory available to solve the horizontal math problems.

It has generally been shown that the more working memory capacity a person has, the better their performance on academic tasks such as problem solving and reasoning.

In order to explore this further, Beilock and her colleagues compared math test scores in individuals who had higher levels of working memory with those who had less.

The subjects took a math test either in a high-pressure situation or low pressure situation. It turns out that the subjects with higher working memory levels performed very poorly during the high pressure testing situation-that is, the subjects with the greatest capacity for success were the most likely to “choke under pressure”.

Beilock surmises that individuals with higher levels of working memory have superior memory and computational capacity, which they use on a regular basis to excel in the classroom.

“However, if these resources are compromised, for example, by worries about the situation and its consequences, high working memory individuals” advantage disappears,” Beilock said.

The new study is published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

apanese scientists said Tuesday they had created a cloned embryo from the dead body of an endangered species of rabbit and are hoping for a birth.

The Amami rabbit, or Pentalagus furnessi, lives on only two small islands in southwestern Japan. It is designated as endangered species by Japan’s environment ministry, with an estimated population of less than 5,000.

Professor Yoshihiko Hosoi of Kinki University in the western city of Osaka said his team had extracted a cell from a dead Amami rabbit’s ear and put it into the egg of an ordinary rabbit.

“After we confirmed that the egg developed into a cloned embryo, we put it back into the fallopian tube of the host mother,” Hosoi said.

“In about 30 days the host mother may give birth to a baby rabbit which has the gene information of Amami rabbit,” he told AFP, but added the possibility of pregnancy was less than 10 percent which is normal for cloned animals.

The experiment, which would be the first cloning of an endangered species in Japan and just one of a few cases in the world, is expected to help protect endangered species from the risk of inbreeding, Hosoi said.

“If we can use the gene information of a dead body, it will help avoid inbreeding which could lead to a genetic abnormality or frail offspring,” he said.

Scientists at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) have come up with a new method for the large-scale production of graphene sheets, which are used as nanomaterial.

Graphene is created when graphite is reduced down to a one-atom-thick sheet, which can be used as electrodes for solar cells, for use in sensors, as the anode electrode material in lithium batteries and as efficient zero-band-gap semiconductors.

However, as the scientists face difficulty in creating single-layer samples for use in experiments, much has not been done as far as research related with graphene is concerned.

But now, scientists led by Yang Yang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering, scientists have developed a method in which graphite oxide paper is placed in a solution of pure hydrazine, which then turns graphite oxide paper into single-layer graphene.

Researchers have claimed that the graphene produced from the hydrazine solution is a more efficient electrical conductor.

Field-effect devices display output currents three orders of magnitude higher than previously reported using chemically produced graphene.

“We have discovered a route toward solution processing of large-scale graphene sheets. These breakthroughs represent the future of graphene nanoelectronic research,” Nature quoted co-author Vincent Tung as saying.

It is possible to control the coverage of the graphene sheets by altering the concentration and composition of the hydrazine solution.

The hydrazine method also preserves the integrity of the sheets, producing the largest-area graphene sheet yet reported, 20 micrometers by 40 micrometers.

“These graphene sheets are by far the largest produced, and the method allows great control over deposition. Chemically converted graphene can now be studied in depth through a variety of electronic tests and microscopic techniques not previously possible,” said one of the co-authors of the study.

“This technology (hydrazine reduction) utilizes a true solution process for graphene, which can dramatically simplify preparing electronic devices. It thus holds great promise for future large-area, flexible electronics,” said Yang.

The study is published online in the latest issue of journal Nature Nanotechnology.

French scientists say they have discovered a new species of gecko, after hatching an egg 12,000 miles (19,000 kilometers) from its South Pacific island home.

Given the Latin name Lepidodactylus buleli, the gecko makes its home near the tops of the trees that line the west coast of Espiritu Santo, one of the larger islands of the Vanuatu archipelago east of Australia, France’s National Museum of Natural History said.

A 2006 expedition to Espiritu Santo to study the ecosystems of the forest canopy led to the discovery of the 3-inch-long (8-centimeter-long) gecko. The expedition included climbers who scoured the canopy for plant and animal samples.

Ivan Ineich, a reptile specialist at the museum, said he first noticed the little lizard when he saw a bloody carcass accidentally hacked in half by one of climbers.

“I said to myself ‘this guy looks bizarre,’ but I couldn’t tell right away it was a new species because it had been so massacred,” Ineich said in a phone interview.

Climbers then harvested a plant where female geckos had hidden nine minuscule eggs, Ineich wrapped them in wet Kleenex, packed them into a pillbox and carried them home to the French capital.

There, he gave the eggs to a friend who raises lizards as a hobby. Eight of the baby geckos died after temperatures in the terrarium plummeted during a power outage, but the ninth lived.

The influential former president of OPEC’s second largest oil producer Iran on Friday called the world financial crisis a tsunami which has dragged down oil prices and caused a huge loss of revenue.

“This is the first wave of the tsunami to reach us. The oil price has fallen from 147 dollars a barrel to around 64 dollars. This is a huge loss” for Iran, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said in a Friday prayer sermon on state radio.

“Our economists and government and parliament officials should cooperate and be prepared. The first wave has arrived and it was dangerous for oil-producing nations,” added Rafsanjani.

He heads the Expediency Council, Iran’s top arbitration panel, and also the Assembly of Experts which supervises the work of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“We have to be able to control future such waves or they will inflict serious harm on our society, especially the poor,” Rafsanjani said.

Oil prices hit record highs in July of above 147 dollars a barrel, but plunged to their lowest for 17 months on Friday, despite news that OPEC will cut output by 1.5 million barrels per day.

New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for December delivery, tumbled to 62.85 dollars a barrel — a price last seen in May 2007.

Ahead of Friday’s OPEC meeting in Vienna, Iran urged a cut in the cartel’s output to combat the sharp dive in oil prices as the world battles a financial crisis experts say it is the worst since last century’s Great Depression.

Two Russian cosmonauts turned over control of the International Space Station to their replacements Wednesday as they prepare to return to Earth with an American space tourist.

Space station commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko, both of Expedition 17, handed the orbiting laboratory’s reins to its new Expedition 18 crew during a traditional change of command ceremony. The two cosmonauts are due to land on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan late Thursday with American space tourist Richard Garriott.

“I would like to thank everyone for the support we’ve received throughout our six-month stay on board the station,” Volkov said during the televised ceremony. “We tried to do our best here. We accomplished a lot of tasks.”

Volkov and Kononenko arrived at the station in April and hosted one visiting NASA shuttle in June that delivered Japan’s tour bus-sized Kibo lab. They also performed two spacewalks outside the station in July. During one, they retrieved a suspect explosive bolt from their Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft for the return trip to Earth.

The Expedition 17 crew’s landing will mark a human spaceflight first. It will be the first time two second-generation spaceflyers, Volkov and Garriott, will return to Earth together.

Volkov’s father is famed Russian long-duration cosmonaut Alexander Volkov. Garriott’s father is retired NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, a veteran station flyer aboard the U.S. Skylab outpost in 1973.

“Thanks to both crews for welcoming me here onto your station,” said Garriott, who is paying about $30 million for his 10-day trip under a deal between Russia’s Federal Space Agency and the Vienna, Va.-based firm Space Adventures. He is the sixth paying visitor to the space station and the first American second-generation spaceflyer.

Volkov turned command of the station over to Expedition 18 commander Michael Fincke, of NASA, and Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov. The two veteran spaceflyers launched toward the station with Garriott on Oct. 12 and arrived two days later.

“You guys did so much and you left the ship in really fine shape,” said Fincke, a veteran station astronaut making his second long-duration trip. “We’re very proud to be able to take the ship and to work with it hopefully as well as you have.”

The third member of the new crew is NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff, who joined the Expedition 17 crew during the June shuttle mission. He will stay on for the first part of Expedition 18 until his replacement arrives aboard NASA’s shuttle Endeavour next month.

“It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve onboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 17,” said Chamitoff, adding that Volkov and Kononenko have become lifelong friends. “It’s really sad for me to see them go, but I hope maybe we can fly again in space someday.”

Garriott and the Expedition 17 crew are slated to undock from the space station at around 8:15 p.m. EDT (0015 Oct. 24 GMT) and land at 11:36 p.m. EDT (0336 Oct. 24 GMT).

NASA pulled space shuttle Atlantis off the launch pad and sent it back to the hangar Monday to await a trip to the Hubble Space Telescope next year.

Atlantis was originally scheduled to blast off this month on a mission to make various repairs and upgrade the telescope. But the Hubble broke down three weeks ago and stopped sending data for its space pictures, forcing NASA to regroup and delay its mission until February at the earliest.

Now astronauts will need time to train for a telescope repair they hadn’t planned on.

Atlantis’ return to the Vehicle Assembly Building marks the 18th time in 25 years that NASA has had to pull a launch-ready spacecraft off the pad.

Shuttle Endeavour, now at the front of the flight lineup, will be moved from its launch pad to Atlantis’ spot this weekend. Endeavour had been poised to blast off as a rescue ship for Atlantis’ crew if there was an emergency during the Hubble mission. Instead, Endeavour will carry seven astronauts to the international space station on an equipment delivery mission; launch is targeted for Nov. 14.

That trip will enable NASA to double the number of astronauts living at the orbiting outpost, from three to six. That transition should occur next spring.

The 18-year-old Hubble, meanwhile, has been unable to send back pictures of the cosmos since Sept. 27 because of a failure of its science commanding and data-handling system. Flight controllers tried unsuccessfully to get a backup channel working last week, and may make another attempt later this week.

When they do fly, the Hubble repair crew members will take up a replacement part for the disabled system.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is scheduled to fly within 16 miles of Saturn’s moon Enceladus on October 9 and measure molecules in its space environment that could give insight into the history of the solar system.

Enceladus is Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, orbiting within the planet’s outermost ring. It is approximately 313 miles in diameter.

“This encounter will potentially have far-reaching implications for understanding how the solar system was formed and how it evolved,” said professor Tamas Gombosi, chair of the University of Michigan Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences.

In this flyby, Cassini will be close enough to Enceladus to identify individual molecules in the moon’s space environment, including ions and isotopes.

An ion is a charged particle, or a version of an element that has lost or gained negatively charged electrons.

An isotope is a version of an element that has in its nucleus the typical protons for that element, but a different number of neutrons, thus exhibiting a different atomic weight.

The atoms around Enceladus are expected to hold clues to the past because they come from interior regions that have changed little since the moon was formed.

Geysers near the moon’s south pole spew water and other molecules from the satellite’s interior.

Because of Enceladus’ weak gravity and low atmospheric pressure, the water and gas molecules waft off to space.

The encounter will contribute to scientists’ understanding of how particles become charged and energized in Saturn’s magnetosphere.

Also, when Cassini identifies the different isotopes in the space around the moon, it will help scientists discern the temperatures at various stages in Enceladus’ formation eons ago.

Cassini discovered the geysers on Enceladus in 2005.

Scientists believe that there could be a liquid ocean beneath the moon’s surface. They also detected organic molecules at the moon in March.

Organic molecules have carbon-hydrogen bonds, and are found in living organisms, and in comets.

“The mission as a whole is expected to bring central pieces of the solar system evolution puzzle into place,” Gombosi said. “This encounter is expected to provide some of those puzzle pieces,” he added.

This will be Cassini’s fifth encounter with Enceladus. A sixth encounter, during which it will approach within 122 miles of the moon, is scheduled for October 31.

Four more flybys are planned in the next two years of Cassini’s extended mission, the Cassini Equinox Mission.

The launch of a satellite to monitor Earth’s gravitational field, which had been postponed from September 10 to October 5, has been delayed for a second time, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.

The one-tonne Gravity field and state-steady Ocean Circulation Explorer, or GOCE, now has a “tentative” launch date of October 27 at 1421 GMT, it said in a press release.

Launch preparations at the Plesetsk cosmodrome 800 kilometres (500 miles) north of Moscow have been hit by a problem in the guidance and navigation subsystem in the launcher’s upper stage, called the Breeze KM.

“Russian launcher authorities are completing the investigation of the Breeze KM failure and implementing the related corrective measures,” ESA said.

GOCE is part of ESA’s “Earth Explorer” programme, initiated in 1999, to deepen understanding about some of the fundamentals of the planet — its atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and interior.

GOCE’s launcher is a Rockot, a derivative of a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile operated by a joint venture between EADS Astrium and the Khrunichev Space Centre.