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The response to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China suggests that many of the lessons from the 2003 SARS epidemic have been implemented and the response improved as a consequence. Nevertheless some questions remain and not all lessons have been successful. The national and international response demonstrates the complex link between public health, science and politics when an outbreak threatens to impact on global economies and reputations. The unprecedented measures implemented in China are a bold attempt to control the outbreak – we need to understand their effectiveness to balance costs and benefits for similar events in the future.
McCloskey B, Heymann DL. SARS to novel coronavirus - old lessons and new lessons. Epidemiol Infect. 2020;148:e22. Published 2020 Feb 5. doi:10.1017/S0950268820000254
Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Sections of the Abstract and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7026896/
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There is a heated debate on whether markets erode social responsibility and moral behavior. However, it is a challenging task to identify and measure moral behavior in markets. Based on a theoretical model, we examine in an experiment the relation between trading volume, prices and moral behavior by setting up markets that either impose a negative externality on third parties or not. We find that moral behavior reveals itself in lower trading volume in markets with a negative externality, while prices mostly depend on the market structure. We further investigate individual characteristics that explain trading behavior in markets with negative externalities.
Sutter M, Huber J, Kirchler M, Stefan M, Walzl M. Where to look for the morals in markets?. Exp Econ. 2020;23(1):30–52. doi:10.1007/s10683-019-09608-z
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6991999/
Science Says is supported by Leksi (https://Leksi.co): the best education and study app to convert your notes, articles, or any document to audio so you can listen and learn no matter where you.

The presence of delay of gratification (DG) in childhood is correlated with success later in a person's life. Is there any way of helping adults with a low level of DG to obtain similar success? The present research examines how social support helps those low in DG nonetheless to act similarly to those high in DG. This research includes both correlational studies and experiments that manipulate social support as well as both field studies and a laboratory study. The results show that with high social support, employees (Study 1) and university students (Study 2) low in DG report vocational and academic DG behavioral intentions, respectively, similar to those high in DG. Study 3 found that participants low in DG who were primed with high social support expressed job-choice DG similar to those high in the DG. Study 4 controlled for mood and self-image and found that participants low in DG who were primed with high social support expressed more money-choice DG than those high in the DG. Study 5 showed that social support moderated the relationship between DG and actual DG behaviors. These findings provide evidence for a moderating role of social support in the expression of DG behavior.
Liu X, Wang L, Liao J. Enabling Delay of Gratification Behavior in Those Not So Predisposed: The Moderating Role of Social Support. Front Psychol. 2016;7:366. Published 2016 Mar 18. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00366.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and General Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4796028/.

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Objectives: Undergraduate medical students experience a considerable amount of stress and anxiety due to frequent exams. The goal of the present study was to examine the development of exam related anxiety and to test for a correlation between anxiety and learning approaches.
Methods: A whole class of 212 medical students was invited to participate in the study. During their first term, trait anxiety and learning approaches were assessed by use of the state-trait-anxiety inventory (STAI-T) and the approaches-and-study-skills-inventory-for-students (ASSIST), respectively. Acute state anxiety was assessed twice in the course of the second term. To that extent, the STAI-S in combination with measuring salivary cortisol were employed immediately before two oral anatomy exams.
Results: Our most important results were that a surface learning approach correlated significantly with anxiety as a trait and that students with a predominantly strategic approach to learning were the least anxious yet academically most successful.
Conclusion: As surface learners are at risk of being academically less successful and because anxiety is a prerequisite for burn-out, we suggest that medical faculties place particular emphasis on conveying strategies for both, coping with stress and successful learning.
Cipra C, Müller-Hilke B. Testing anxiety in undergraduate medical students and its correlation with different learning approaches. PLoS One. 2019;14(3):e0210130. Published 2019 Mar 13. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0210130.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6415780/

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Learning outcomes may be a result of several factors including the learning environment, students’ predispositions, study efforts, cultural factors and approaches towards studying. This study examined the influence of demographic variables, education-related factors, and approaches to studying on occupational therapy students’ Grade Point Average (GPA).
Undergraduate occupational therapy students (n = 712) from four countries completed the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST). Demographic background, education-related factors, and ASSIST scores were used in a hierarchical linear regression analysis to predict the students’ GPA.
Being older, female and more time engaged in self-study activities were associated with higher GPA among the students. In addition, five ASSIST subscales predicted higher GPA: higher scores on ‘seeking meaning’, ‘achieving’, and ‘lack of purpose’, and lower scores on ‘time management’ and ‘fear of failure’. The full model accounted for 9.6% of the variance related to the occupational therapy students’ GPA.
To improve academic performance among occupational therapy students, it appears important to increase their personal search for meaning and motivation for achievement, and to reduce their fear of failure. The results should be interpreted with caution due to small effect sizes and a modest amount of variance explained by the regression model, and further research on predictors of academic performance is required.
Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Bonsaksen T, Brown T, K Fong. PApproaches to studying predict academic performance in undergraduate occupational therapy students: a cross-cultural study. 2017;17(1):76. Published 2017 May 2. doi: 10.1186/s12909-017-0914-3.S
Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusions are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5414187/#__ffn_sectitle.

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Physical activity (PA) has been central in the life of our species for most of its history, and thus shaped our physiology during evolution. However, only recently the health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle, and of highly energetic diets, are becoming clear. It has been also acknowledged that lifestyle and diet can induce epigenetic modifications which modify chromatin structure and gene expression, thus causing even heritable metabolic outcomes. Many studies have shown that PA can reverse at least some of the unwanted effects of sedentary lifestyle, and can also contribute in delaying brain aging and degenerative pathologies such as Alzheimer’s Disease, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. Most importantly, PA improves cognitive processes and memory, has analgesic and antidepressant effects, and even induces a sense of wellbeing, giving strength to the ancient principle of “mens sana in corpore sano” (i.e., a sound mind in a sound body). In this review we will discuss the potential mechanisms underlying the effects of PA on brain health, focusing on hormones, neurotrophins, and neurotransmitters, the release of which is modulated by PA, as well as on the intra- and extra-cellular pathways that regulate the expression of some of the genes involved.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Di Liegro CM, Schiera G, Proia P, Di Liegro I. Physical Activity and Brain Health. Genes (Basel). 2019;10(9):720. Published 2019 Sep 17. doi:10.3390/genes10090720.
Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusions and Perspectives are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6770965/.