Eating cheese might be the cause of bad dreams, scientists say
Dr. Tore Nielsen, the lead researcher from the Université de Montréal, indicated that adjusting eating habits for individuals with food sensitivities could potentially alleviate nightmares.
The research involved surveying over 1,000 students at Canada's MacEwan University regarding their sleep patterns, dietary habits, and any perceived links between the two.
Findings showed that women constituted the majority of participants reporting poor sleep and nightmares, and they were also more prone to recalling dreams and reporting food allergies or intolerances.
The study concluded that improved awareness of food intolerances could lead to better sleep quality, although further research is needed to confirm these links across diverse populations.
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Why A-level joy may turn to despair for the graduates of tomorrow
There is much to celebrate in this year's A-level results. Teenagers across Britain have jumped for joy that record numbers are heading to university — with more than a quarter of a million being accepted into their first choice of university, a record 82 per cent. In total, 439,180 applicants have been accepted on to higher education courses. This year's students are the second cohort to have their grading returned to pre-pandemic standards across the board. For those who achieved what they wanted, we offer many congratulations and good wishes for the next stage in your education. These results are a testament to the hard work put in by pupils, teachers, schools and their families. And for those who did not fulfil their expectations, they can take comfort in the fact that many who went on to great success did not boast academic prowess. Winston Churchill, for example, was a notoriously poor student and failed the entrance exam to Sandhurst twice. Jeremy Clarkson, who left school with a C and two Us at A-Level, has reminded us in his annual tradition on social media that his life has turned out rather well after all. There are two notable shifts in this year's results. One is that boys have pulled ahead of girls: 9.9 per cent of their entries were marked grade A compared with 9.1 per cent for girls — the first time since 2018 that boys came ahead of their female counterparts. The other is that science subjects appear to be on the rise. Politicians have worried about the lack of appetite for science subjects but this year's results suggest otherwise. The Institute of Physics reports that the number of A-levels for the subject is the highest this century. This may be future-proofing their careers ahead. • Emma Duncan: Did results day prove girls are really cleverer than boys? Yet the world that awaits this future graduate cohort is far from cheerful. Artificial intelligence is already threatening the market for entry-level jobs, with reports suggesting the number of openings has fallen by a third since the end of 2022. The chief executive of Anthropic, an AI company, has warned that half of entry-level white-collar jobs could be eliminated within the next five years. According to the Department for Education, degrees such as medicine and engineering have the highest salaries ten years after graduation. These are as good a bet as any against the gathering storm. But what is just as concerning for new students is debt. The average pile accumulated at university is £53,000, a significantly higher level than graduates can expect to earn in salary for some time. Thanks to inflation, fees have been declining in real terms since 2012 and the cap on what institutions can charge will rise to £9,535. Thanks to the absurdly high interest charged, graduates face a de facto tax from the day they enter the workplace for decades ahead. More transparency is vital on the link between studies and earnings. The government has promised to make such data accessible, albeit with little progress. Pupils should be able to find out which degrees can benefit them the most. The level of debt speaks to a wider rot within the universities sector. Ever since Tony Blair decreed in 1999 that he wanted 50 per cent of young adults to go into higher education, too many students have been studying degrees that are unlikely to reap great rewards — all propped up by ever-rising fees. A drop in international students will worsen the funding challenges. The UK can proudly claim some of the world's finest universities, but it is overdue a serious rethink about what is viable.
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Telegraph
10 hours ago
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Girls outperforming boys at school is something we had almost begun to take for granted. Yet while it still holds true throughout primary and secondary education, 2025 is the year the tables turned when it comes to A-levels. This year, 28.4 per cent of male candidates received an A* or A score, compared to 28.2 per cent for their female counterparts. This is the first time boys have taken the lead since 2018, and only for the third time in modern grading history. What or who could explain this unexpected reversal of academic fortunes? Experts were quick to suggest the success was down to boys' subject choices: they tend to favour STEM fields where the right-or-wrong answers allow exam-takers to get closer to full marks than in the humanities or arts. While their soaring popularity is undoubtedly real – with male entrants for further maths up 7.6 per cent on last year and economics up 5.7 per cent – the subjects driving the overall gain are far broader. 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The roughly 28,000 boys producing that result alone dragged their sex's all-round result up by 8.3 per cent. Their newfound prowess in art and design came second (a 7.3 per cent boost), followed by business studies (6.7 per cent). Another hint comes from the headline result split by age. Adding an extra decimal shows the headline difference between the genders across all UK candidates came to 0.26 points (so actually 0.3 when rounding). But looking at the grade distribution for 18-year-old candidates alone, this space shrinks to 0.12 points. Exam-sitters of this age made up the vast majority of candidates – 807,420 out of the total 882,509, or around 91.5 per cent. This suggests that among the 75,000-odd entries in other age groups, such as pupils taking their A-levels early aged 16 or 17 or people who resat them after the age of 18, the male contingent excelled. National figures, meanwhile, suggest English boys deserve particular acclaim. They improved the most of either gender in all three nations, up 1 point from 27.4 to 28.4 per cent. As England makes up the lion's share of all UK candidates – over 9 in 10 of the roughly 400,000 boys that sat exams this year – they had a profound effect. For their part, English girls fought back with a gain of just 0.2 points. Boys also made headway across the Irish Sea (up 0.7 points), where girls saw a modest decline (down 0.3 points). However, as stressed by the official examination board, the swing in favour of boys is quite marginal. The JCQ said fluctuations from one year to the next were inevitable, and that this slim disparity was well within their expected margins. Further down the grading curve, boys are not outperforming girls at all. The latter actually fared better in avoiding the lowest possible grades: 79.6 per cent of them got a C or above, compared to 76 per cent of boys. A total of 12,151 male candidates received a U (ungraded), compared with 10,252 for their female counterparts. Regional disparities Pupils in England were again outshone by their counterparts elsewhere, with 28.2 per cent of entries awarded an A* or A this summer – rising to 29.5 per cent in Wales and 30.4 per cent in Northern Ireland. But this masks stark differences between the English regions, where the proportion of top grades increased everywhere except the North East and the West Midlands, where they declined one percentage point and 0.6 percentage points respectively. Pupils in the East Midlands saw the highest jump in A*s and As to 23.8 per cent – up from 22.5 last year. But London remained by far the strongest region, with 32.1 per cent of A-level entries scooping the top two grades. Rutland tops the counties At an even more granular level, Rutland's reign atop the county charts continued for a seventh year in a row, according to separate data published by Ofqual since 2019. Some 41.2 per cent of candidates in the rural East Midlands shire clinched top marks in 2025, the only area where more than two-fifths of pupils were able to boast as much. Greater Manchester, however, proved the setting for the greatest uplift in grades, rising two points since 2024 from 26.1 to 28.1 per cent A*/As. Overall, just over two-thirds of English counties (68.1 per cent) saw a rise or flatline in top grades. Grammar schools catch up to independents The attainment gap between private schools and the state sector narrowed slightly this year after selective schools posted their best ever results outside of the pandemic. Grammar schools and other selective institutions saw 43.7 per of their A-level entries receive A*s and As – up one percentage point compared to 2024. Meanwhile, the share of top grades in the independent sector slipped by 0.1 percentage points to remain broadly stable at 48.5 per cent. The results come at a crucial moment for private schools as they try to prove their worth, after the Government's VAT policy forced most to raise fees by around a fifth from Jan 1. The narrowed gap between grammar schools and private schools this year will likely toughen competition in the state sector, as fee-paying parents consider their options. Struggles in STEM subjects Maths, psychology and biology remained the most popular A-level subjects this year, alone accounting for just under 30 per cent of all exams sat. Of the three, however, only maths saw an increase in entries. Excluding digital technology, only on offer in Northern Ireland, art and design subjects clocked the highest increase in top grades, rising 3.5 per cent this year, tailed by modern languages other than French, Spanish or German, media studies and English language. The increase follows some concerns that students may be using AI tools such as ChatGPT for coursework-heavy subjects. By contrast, several core STEM (Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics) experienced slight falls, with maths down 0.3 percentage points this year, chemistry down 0.1 points, and further maths down 0.2 points.
