麻豆影院

Nature the Stress-Reliever

School playgrounds that incorporate elements of the natural world can help reduce children鈥檚 stress and intensify their ability to focus, according to a CU-麻豆影院-led study.

Natural-terrain schoolyards with dirt, trees or water features also can foster supportive relationships and feelings of competence, researchers found after observing children in a variety of play settings in Colorado and Maryland and interviewing students, teachers, parents and others.

鈥淪chools are really prime sites for an ecological model of health and for building access to nature into part of the school routine as a health measure,鈥� says Louise Chawla, CU-麻豆影院 environmental design professor and lead author of the study, published in the journal聽Health & Place. Chawla also directs CU-麻豆影院鈥檚 Children, Youth and Environments Center.

From Canadian Fossils, New Hedgehog Species

A CU-麻豆影院-led research team has identified a new genus and species of tiny hedgehog from fossils discovered in Canada.

The newly identified creature,聽Silvacola acares, or 鈥渢iny forest dweller,鈥� was roughly the length of an adult thumb, or four times smaller in length than the average North American pet hedgehog of today.

Estimated to be about 52 million years old, the hedgehog fossils were found at Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park in British Columbia, a site that likely was a rainforest during the early Eocene Epoch, according to researchers, who published their findings in the聽Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

It is unknown whether the mini hedgehog had quills, like modern hedgehogs, but lead researcher Jaelyn Eberle of CU-麻豆影院 says it鈥檚 鈥減lausible.鈥�

Heard Around Campus

鈥淚f it鈥檚 really that dangerous, and if even just a fraction of people stop using their phones, we would expect to find some decrease in accidents. But we didn鈥檛 find any statistical evidence of a reduction.

鈥� Daniel Kaffine, CU-麻豆影院 associate professor of economics, discussing his study of the impact of California鈥檚 ban on drivers鈥� use of hand-held cellphones.