Online students beware: a new study conducted by researchers at Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, indicates that heavy thought might contribute to obesity. The limited study — apparently, there are only 14 obese people in Quebec — suggests that intellectual activity causes increased fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels in your body. Since glucose is the only fuel used by brain cells, the brain may in turn tell the body to replenish the burned glucose by eating more.

In the study, the subjects were given food after three separate activities: relaxing in a chair, writing a 350-word summary of a document and engaging in a comprehensive battery of tests on a computer. Compared to the feeding time after the relaxation period, the subjects ate an average of 203 more calories after writing the summary and 253 more calories after taking the computerized tests. As icing on the fattening cake, they burned only THREE more calories during the “brainy” events than they did while relaxing, resulting in a net 200 and 250 caloric increase after the intellectual activities.

Online students, of course, get the double whammy of not only craving more food due to increased brain function, but also experiencing the decreased physical activity of spending all their time in front of a computer. Linked with other studies that suggest that obesity decreases your brain function, it’s not hard to come up with this bleak equation: studying = weight gain = stupidity. Ergo, studying makes you stupid. (Having drawn that equation, I suddenly need a sandwich.)

Of course, it’s not that simple. There are many other factors that contribute to weight gain — diet, physical activity, heredity — and even if you do find your cravings increase while studying, you can counter them by eating healthy foods and by taking time out to exercise a few minutes a day.

These common New Year’s resolutions will not only make you a little healthier and more alive, they can give you the push you need toward that degree in, uh, hydroponics. Really?

Get up an hour earlier. You’d be surprised how much you can get done, and how little you’ll miss the extra mattress time. Plus, according to the Dartmouth academic skills center, an hour of studying during daylight is worth 2 hours at night. Woo-hoo!

Set and follow a schedule. ADPRIMA says making a schedule to accommodate your daily tasks and following it religiously can keep you on track, so you can use your time wisely and do the things you need to do. Like glue plastic action figures onto the hood of your car.

Work out. According to Associated Content, exercise is the best way to build mental clarity, as well as maintain a positive attitude and good energy levels. Plus, you can meet sporty chicks and hot guys who can, uh, help you with your homework.

Start paying off college loans early. Ok, it won’t help you graduate early, but it will certainly feel better to graduate knowing you’re already shoving off the load of debt most college grads are in. About.com says the best motivation for paying off college loans early is to realize how much they’re costing you. For example, a $28,000 loan paid off over 20 years costs you $7,000 in interest. That’s $7,000 that could have been spent on golf shirts and thigh-high khaki shorts when you’re 20 years older. And that’s a crying shame.

Start that online class. BizSchools.info says online MBAs are cheaper, more accessible, and more schedule-convenient than traditional MBAs. We can comfortably assume this of most online degrees, and as we’ve discussed before, online degrees are steadily becoming more popular with employers. Plus, campuses have mosquitoes and such.

De-stress your online regimen. Discovery Health points out some ways to beat stress, most of which can be accomplished online. For example, it’s easy to give yourself an online news blackout by reading only fun Web sites, relaxation can be accomplished through soothing music on LimeWire, and laughing can be done by reading online humor sites, or your less educated friends’ resumes.

Spend more time with (smart) friends. Besides the destraction-oozing mental wastelands of Myspace and Facebook, you can interact more with educated, enlightened people by making use of education-oriented online forums like these. Yeah, we like linking to that one.

Drink less. Info published by Virginia Tech points out rather obviously that hangovers result in reduced brain capacity for concentration, aka studying. Less obvious is the fact that over the long term, alcohol can also damage connections between nerve cells, effectively braining your damage.

Eat healthier. The Diet Channel, which is apparently run by your mother, says foods like egg yolk, kidney beans, cranberries and sweet potatoes contain valuable nutrients that help boost and maintain brain function. It also says to clean your room and be home by midnight.

Stop smoking. Smoking damages, among other things, the part of the brain that controls REM sleep, says TrueHealth.org. Lack of REM sleep radically diminishes your brain’s ability to function normally, and has actually been used as a form of torture. Was that too preachy?

Subscribe to AceOnlineSchools. We almost don’t need to point out that subscribing to us (by clicking HERE) will give you herds of helpful advice every other student will be clueless about, at least until we get all popular and mainstream. We’ll even be there to give you a high-five as you stroll down the grad isle.

They might need to come out with a new version of that “This is your brain on drugs” ad if a group of scientists get their way. In a paper titled “Towards Responsible Use of Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs by the Healthy” published in Nature, seven scientists from the US and UK advocate the use of brain-enhancing prescription drugs like Adderall and Ritalin as study and work aids in a manner similar to caffeine. Their Peter Tosh-like solution to “legalize it” aims to make these drugs legal, stopping an illicit trade that, according to the article, is sweeping through college campuses around the world.

The stigma of using “drugs” is hard to overcome, but the scientists want us to realize the benefits of medications like Adderall and Ritalin, prescribed primarily to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Positive side effects include increased focus and attention span, enhanced memory, heightened reflexes and the ability to start fires with your mind. (I’ll have to double-check that last one.)

The report argues that these drugs should be no more controversial than brain-boosting activities like reading, sleeping, going to school, using the computer, eating and exercising:

The drugs just reviewed, along with newer technologies such as brain stimulation and prosthetic brain chips, should be viewed in the same general category as education, good health habits, and information technology — ways that our uniquely innovative species tries to improve itself.

However, the scientists do realize the need for further study of the drugs’ effects and, if legalized, the need for their regulation:

We call for enforceable policies concerning the use of cognitive-enhancing drugs to support fairness, protect individuals from coercion and minimize enhancement-related socioeconomic disparities.

The scientists stop short of mandating brain-altering drugs in schools and workplaces (gee, thanks, Big Brother), declaring:

Employers, schools or governments should not generally require the use of cognitive enhancements.

However, they add:

If particular enhancements are shown to be sufficiently safe and effective, this position might be revisited for those interventions.

Could we someday see kids lining up for their shots of Ritalin alongside their mumps and measles vaccines? If so, the sugar cereal industry could go bankrupt.

USA Today has a nice profile on the educational potential of YouTube, something we highlighted a few weeks ago. In particular, it mentions a great non-profit, one-man organization called the Khan Academy, which has published almost 700 videos on YouTube dealing primarily with math but also touching upon finance and banking — including compound interest, home equity loans and the mortgage crisis. The Khan videos have become popular with high school and college students looking to supplement their schoolwork — and no doubt adults hoping to make sense of why their house is now worth less than their car.

Of course, YouTube videos shouldn’t be used as a replacement for formal education; they’re more of a study aide. Think of them as video CliffsNotes, which we all know shouldn’t be read in place of the actual book (ahem). While these videos have the benefits of convenience and replayability, viewers should be wary of both the picture and content quality. If a video claims that Harriet Tubman was Harry Truman’s post-op stage name, for instance, think twice about its reliability.

Imagine this: You’re taking a test for your online economics course, a test you, uh, well, forgot to study for. No problem, you figure. You’re at home, and you’re on the Internet. It shouldn’t take too long to find the answers, pop them into the spaces and ace this thing, right?

Suddenly, a chat window opens, and your professor is live on your screen. He asks you point blank about the causes of economic inflation – which you know was part of the course material. Only you need time to look them up online. But he’s right there waiting, and your cursor is blinking. Now what?

Electronic cheating

For teachers at online colleges, the reality is setting in that without a physical classroom to learn in, and without a teacher physically there in front of them, some students may be more likely to scam their way through the electronic curriculum.

Melvin Greene, a professor who teaches online classes at the University of Maryland University College, discovered this the hard way. Greene suspected Internet answer-mining when he realized some of his online students’ test answers sounded suspiciously Web-sourced.

“I could tell the answers were not their own,” Green was quoted in a BNET article. Realizing he hadn’t instructed his students against plagiarism, he could only make a mental note to take this into consideration next time.

Catching e-cheaters

Their lessons learned, Web-based professors are now taking measures to ensure their online students don’t get away with anything like this. As reported at DegreeTutor, several methods are used during online courses to keep students honest.

One effective method is the pop-up chat quiz. At any time during class time or during a test, the professor will connect to students randomly via the class chat system and do a sort of on-the-spot pop quiz. This ensures the student is actually there during class, and is knowledgeable about the subject matter. It also pushes students to be ready to talk about course material at any time.

Another method is timed, real-time tests. These tests are taken by every student simultaneously, with a set time limit so students don’t have time for any last-second “research.” Often individual questions are even timed, for a more controlled test environment.

One slightly more aggressive method, used for students who test in a testing center or on a campus, is to have on-site assistants monitor students in person as they take the test. The at-home equivalent is using web cams, where professors can monitor students live in order to discourage them doing anything squirrely. Students are found to be much less likely to cut corners when they have someone standing over their shoulder.

These and other measures are part of the developing battle against electronic cheating. With Web sites where entire term papers can be downloaded and a vast ocean of information readily available to students, not to mention students who are increasingly savvy with technology, it’s sure to be an uphill battle.