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A study has been following 'gifted' kids for 45 years. Here's what we've learned.

Some of what we used to think about gifted kids turned out to be wrong.

What can we learn from letting seventh graders take the SAT?

In the 1960s, psychologist Julian Stanley realized that if you took the best-testing seventh graders from around the country and gave them standard college entry exams, those kids would score, on average, about as well as the typical college-bound high school senior.

However, the seventh graders who scored as well or better than high schoolers, Stanley found, had off-the-charts aptitude in quantitative, logical, and spatial reasoning.

In other words, they were gifted.

In the 1970s, Stanley and his team launched a full-scale study, identifying many of America's gifted kids and tracking them throughout their lives.

The study, called the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth never ended and is now nearly 45 years in the making. It has followed countless kids from middle school into their careers as some of America's top politicians, scientists, CEOs, engineers, and military leaders.

Stanley passed away in the mid-2000s, but psychologist David Lubinski helped bring the study to Vanderbilt University in the 1990s, where he now co-directs it with Camilla P. Benhow.

It's not a stretch to call this the biggest and most in-depth study on intellectual "precociousness." The results of the study thus far are equal parts fascinating and genuinely surprising — a deeply insightful look into the minds and lives of brilliant children.

1. Some of what we used to think about gifted kids turned out to be wrong.

Ever heard the saying "early to ripe, early to rot"? It basically means doing "too much" to foster a kid's special talents and abilities at too young an age could actually cause harm in the long term.

That's not even remotely true, at least not according to Lubinski.

That might be an outdated example. But Lubinksi says there are plenty of other misconceptions still alive today, like the idea that gifted kids are so smart that they'll "find a way" to excel even if those smarts aren't nurtured and developed.

Not so fast. "They're kids," he explains. "They need guidance. We all need guidance."

2. Intelligence is not the same as passion.

Quick, what's the "smartest" career you can think of. Doctor? Scientist?

While you do have to be pretty brilliant to work in medicine or science, those are far from the only career paths gifted kids choose later in life.

"Quantitatively, gifted people vary widely in their passions," Lubinski says. Many of the students in the study did end up pursuing medicine, but others went into fields like economics or engineering. Others still were more gifted in areas like logical or verbal reasoning, making them excellent lawyers and writers.

"There are all kinds of ways to express intellectual talent," Lubinski explains.

When it comes to doing what's best for a gifted student, it's just as important for parents and educators to know what the student is passionate about rather than pigeonholing them in traditionally "smart" fields and registering them in a bunch of STEM courses.

3. Hard work definitely still matters.

Measuring a student's aptitude, their natural abilities, is only one part of the equation when it comes to determining how successful they'll be in life. Aptitude scores can identify a particularly strong natural skill set but tell us very little about how hard that person might work to excel in that field.

Effort, Lubinski says, is a critical factor in determining how far someone's going to go in life. "If you look at exceptional performers in politics, science, music, and literature, they're working many, many hours," he says.

(And for the record, there are a lot more important things in life than just career achievement, like family, friends, and overall happiness.)

4. Regardless of aptitude, every kid deserves to be treated as though they were gifted.

The study's focus is specifically on kids within a certain range of intellectual ability, but Lubinski is careful to note that many of its findings can and should be applied to all students.

For example, the kids in the study who were given an opportunity to take more challenging courses that aligned with their skills and interests ultimately went on to accomplish more than the students who were not afforded the same opportunity.

"You have to find out where your child's development is, how fast they learn, what are their strengths and relative weaknesses and tailor the curriculum accordingly," Lubinski says. "It's what you would want for all kids."

It may sound a bit like a pipe dream, but it's a great starting point for how we should be thinking about the future of education in America.

If you'd like to learn more about the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, check out this short film on the project created by Vanderbilt University:

Quick Learners; High Achievers: Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth

This article originally appeared on 09.22.17

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His colleagues were skeptical, but this odd idea may help us grow new organs one day.

We don't have enough kidneys.

There are more than 100,000 people in the United States waiting on a kidney transplant to save their lives. Unfortunately, they may be waiting a long time — the median wait is over three years. For some people, it may be even longer.

"It's been extremely difficult," Amber Reynolds said in an interview. Her mom, Nitrinda "Renay" Reynolds, has been on the kidney waiting list since 2010. Her mom, a school teacher in Acworth, Georgia, had to stop working in September 2012 after too many complications. "Every year, we say this is the year. And now we're six years in," said Amber.

A dialysis machine is, unfortunately, a familiar companion for many people. Image from Irvin calicut/Wikimedia Commons.

One hundred thousand people. That's not even counting the number of people who need livers, lungs, or other organs. And though more than 120 million people are signed up to be organ donors, more than 20 people still die every day waiting for organ transplants.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just grow a new kidney or liver for someone? That's the idea behind artificial organs. And we do have a few — like artificial hearts — but more complicated organs still need a lot of work before we can use them in people.

We may have a new secret weapon in the great quest for lab-grown organs: cotton candy.

Image from Morgan/Flickr.

Yup, cotton candy. Or, more accurately, the machines that make it.

GIF from Vanderbilt University/YouTube.

Professor Leon Bellan and his team at Vanderbilt University are using these cotton candy machines — the same ones you might buy your kid at Target for $39.99 — to build better organs for people who need them.

"Fun for the whole family," reads the product description, though it's unlikely the cotton candy machine manufacturers were thinking of this use when they wrote it.

Here's where things get a little gross. You see, this all has to do with blood.

Your circulatory system is kind of like an internal highway system.

There's an interstate of big, high-capacity vessels. But people don't really live on the interstate. Instead, traffic flows onto smaller streets and neighborhood roads, where the cars can actually pick up people or drop them off. These are your capillaries.

Without capillaries, any large artificial organ is not going to be able to transport the necessary oxygen or nutrients to its cells.

A tuft of cotton candy looks a lot like a tuft of capillaries.

"Some people in the field think this approach is a little crazy," said Bellan. Many other researchers are a little suspicious of something that can look so messy. But after years of work, Bellan's idea is paying off.

To make the artificial organs, the researchers use the cotton candy machine and a special temperature-sensitive polymer to make a bit of pseudo-cotton-candy fluff. Then, they pour a goopy mix of cells and gelatin over the fluff mold. Once it sets, they can adjust the temperature to dissolve the temperature-sensitive polymer threads.

When those threads dissolve, they end up with a big block of cells with a bunch of very fine, very delicate tunnels running through it — kind of like what an organ looks like in real life!

This is what the capillaries in Bellan's gelatin organs look like zoomed in. GIF from Vanderbilt University/YouTube.

This could be a huge tool for anyone who wants to build an organ.

And this is what Bellan's gelatin organs look like zoomed out. Image from Bellan Lab/Vanderbilt University.

This cotton candy method has some key advantages over other attempts. For one, scientists can make the gelatin organs a lot thicker, which could be a big step toward getting them to work like real organs.

And the cells seem pretty happy too — the researchers found that the cells were still up and running even a week after the organ was made.

There's still more work to do, of course. Researchers' next steps will be to try to help the tunnels work more like real blood vessels, to try the technique with a couple different types of cells, and to get the cells to act more like a real organ. But for now, it's significant just to know that they've demonstrated the potential of their technique.

"We're trying to develop a toolbox," Bellan told Upworthy. He and his colleagues want to give both the research and medical communities an entirely new suite of tools that can be used for building real, effective artificial organs.

Imagine a world without a waiting list for an organ transplant. Imagine a world where people don't have to wait years to be healthy.

Wouldn't that be something?

In the meantime, let's hope for the people who are stuck in limbo and praise those selfless enough to literally give away a part of themselves. Let's root for the researchers who might, in the future, make the organ-transplant list a thing of the past. And lastly, let's root for cotton candy.