They are less successful motivators if they reward students for reaching a certain level of performance, such as achieving a passing score on a test, according to research by Roland Fryer.

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In 2000 King acquired a research outfit that is working on an injectable stress-test drug for heart disease suspects who are unable to hit the treadmill to get their heart rate up.

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Responding to the study, Malayka Rahman from the charity Asthma UK said the results were "really encouraging" but more research was needed before a decision could be made on introducing such a test.

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Building on earlier research, which showed that egg cells from rabbits could be fertilised in test tubes when sperm was added, Edwards developed the same technique for humans.

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The new outfit, Transcelerate Biopharma, was created out of a regular meeting of drug company research chiefs and will focus on five areas where the clinical trials that are used to test medicines wastefully duplicate procedures like training physicians, running websites, or creating procedures to document the benefits and side effects of new medicines.

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The team, led by Dr David Roth, director of haemophilia research at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre, said the test has been carried out on another six patients, but that these results are not ready.

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"We beta-test things on the Abilene network, " says John Jameson, director of research education markets for Juniper.

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