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Bedtime Reading Beneficial
Reading to young children stimulates their development and gives them a head start when they reach school, according to researchers who have reviewed studies on the effects of reading.
Apart from helping their reading, sharing a bedtime story with a child promotes their motor skills, through learning to turn the pages, and their memory. It also improves their emotional and social development, the Guardian said.
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Sharing a bedtime story with a child promotes their motor skills, through learning to turn the pages, and their memory.
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“You can imagine if someone technologically came up with a widget that would stimulate all aspects of a two-year-old’s development, everyone would want to buy it,“ said Professor Barry Zuckerman, of the department of paediatrics at Boston University school of medicine, who led the study.
Studies show that children who are read to from an earlier age have better language development and tend to have better language scores later in life. Getting children to grip pages with their thumb and forefinger improves their motor skills.
Most important, though, said Zuckerman, is that reading aloud is a period of shared attention and emotion between parent and child. This reinforces reading as a pleasurable activity.
“Children ultimately learn to love books because they are sharing it with someone they love,“ he said.
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Why You Gotta Wear Sunglasses
Sunglasses are not just a fashion statement; their lenses block harmful UV rays that, in severe cases, can cause permanent damage to the eyes in the form of cataracts, pterygium and possibly retinal degeneration.
Cheap sunglasses may cost you less, but are they just as likely to protect against the effects of harmful UV rays as expensive sunglasses?
According to Dr. Donald J. D’Amico, chair of ophthalmology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, there is no certain way for consumers to be sure they are getting ultraviolet or UV protection from their sunglasses--even if they are labeled “UV absorbing“ or “UV blocking.“ Cost is no indicator of UV protection, ScienceDaily wrote.
An expensive pair of sunglasses does not guarantee sufficient protection from the sun.
“There is no government regulating power for the classification of sunglasses,“ says Dr. D’Amico. As a result, company information may misrepresent how much protection their sunglasses offer; and, unfortunately, consumers sometimes assume all sunglasses have protection if they are dark in color.
Dr. Stephen Trokel, an ophthalmologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, advises that consumers buy sunglasses from reputable companies to ensure that they block both UVA and UVB rays. Another tip is to pair sunglasses with a large-brimmed hat to protect the eyes from sunlight that may enter from above and from the sides of glasses. Wraparound sunglasses and those with large temples also provide important side protection.
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Detecting Subtle Brain Injuries
A new way of analyzing MRI data can detect a subtle but serious kind of brain injury and help determine how a patient may recover, say researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
According to HealthDay, this kind of injury, called diffuse axonal injury (DAI), occurs when the head suddenly stops moving, such as during a motor vehicle crash, and axons are damaged or deformed. Axons are long, thin extensions that reach from one area to another.
“(DAI) may account for up to half of the traumatic brain injuries in accidents,“ according to study author Dr. Ramon Diaz-Arrastia, a professor of neurology, said in a prepared statement.
DAI doesn’t show up on CT scans, and MRI hasn’t been able to reliably detect it. The UT Southwestern team developed a mathematical analysis, called diffusion tensor tractography, to detect DAI on MRI scans. This type of analysis looks at how easily water moves around in areas surrounding brain cells.
When axons are damaged, they swell and absorb the water around them, leaving less that can move between cells. As axons die, they release the water, which increases the amount of water surrounding cells.
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Iranian Named ISI
Scientist
An associate professor of Kashan University has been named an Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) scientist in two fields of chemistry and engineering.
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Massoud Salavati-Niyasar
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Massoud Salavati-Niyasar has acquired this status in view of his frequent enlistment in scientific and research references, IRNA reported.
A while ago, he was named Iran’s young international scientist.
Salavati-Niyasar is on the verge of earning the title of professorship in inorganic chemistry. Some 130 scientific and research papers of Salavati-Niyasari have been printed in the most reputable international publications.
The young scientist is the number one man of the world in the field of Zoelite Encapsulation, ranked fourth in the arena of nanocomposite research and third in the field of research.
He also ranked second in the nationwide Nano Technology Festival in March.
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Blood Clots
Long-term exposure to the tiny, dirty particles in polluted air seems to increase the risk of deep vein thrombosis, which are blood clots in the thighs or legs, an Italian study finds.
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Anti-Scar Bandage Developed
Keloid scars are angry red lesions that sometimes form after surgery or injury when the skin ’overheals’ creating an extra tough region of new skin.
Dermatologists believe that one factor in their formation is stretching during healing caused by the patient moving, or by the tissue beneath swelling, NewScientist wrote.
So Geoff Gurtner and colleagues at the Stanford University Medical Center in California have developed bandages that can prevent this kind of stretching.
Their bandages are made of “shape memory“ polymers that set into a rigid shape after being applied to the wound. They are fixed into place using powerful adhesives, or sewn or stapled over the wound during surgery.
The team has tested the idea on mice and says it can significantly reduce the amount of scarring by holding the healing tissue firm.
High-Pressure Spray for Teeth
Cars have been cleaned for years using high-pressure hoses that rely on water droplets moving at high speed to displace dirt. A number of people have thought of trying the same idea with teeth to remove food, bacteria and plaque from the teeth.
But treading the line between damaging the mouth and having no effect at all relies on the distance between the spray head and the teeth, says consumer electronics company Philips, NewScientist reported.
The company has designed a spray head with a couple of probes that project out in front of it. The user simply places these against their teeth to ensure that the head is the optimum distance away.
The company seems to be planning toothbrushes with the sprays built in. A separate Philips patent describes a sensor for a spray toothbrush that reflects a light beam off tooth enamel to measure how clean, allowing the user to be told exactly when to stop.
Another patent describes a version of the spray that can have its temperature controlled by the user.
Neurons Help Interpret Facial Expressions
People who are good at interpreting facial expressions have “mirror neuron“ systems that are more active, say researchers.
The finding adds weight to the idea that these cells are crucial to helping us figure out how others are feeling, NewScientist said.
Mirror neurons are brain cells that fire both when you do something and when you watch someone else do the same thing. Because they allow us to mimic what others are doing, it is thought that these neurons may be responsible for why we can feel empathy, or understand others’ intentions and states of mind. People with autism, for instance, show reduced mirror neuron activity during social cognition tasks.
Now Peter Enticott at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and his colleagues have found evidence supporting this theory. They asked 20 healthy adults to look at pairs of images. In one task, they had to decide if paired images of faces were the same person. In another, they had to decide if both faces were showing the same emotion.
In a separate task, volunteers watched video clips of thumb movement, a hand grasping a pen and a hand while writing, while the activity in the primary motor cortex of the brain, which contains mirror neurons, was recorded. Enticott’s team found that the volunteers who were better at judging people’s emotions had higher mirror neuron activity in the thumb task.
Earth Extinctions Blamed on Cosmic Speed Bump
The sun bounces up and down as it roams the Milky Way, and such wavering might have hurled showers of comets Earth’s way that caused mass extinctions, including the one that killed the dinosaurs, a new study claims.
According to Space, such cosmic impacts might also have spread life to alien worlds, scientists speculate. However, doubts have been raised about these suggestions.
To arrive at the comet showers idea, astronomers calculated the path of our solar system across the Milky Way as it circles the galactic core. As we pass through the densest part of the galactic disk, the gravitational pull of the surrounding gas and dust clouds dislodges comets in the Oort Cloud in the outer solar system, causing these icy goliaths to plunge toward the sun, the researchers said.
The sun passes through this galactic zone every 35 million to 40 million years, raising the chances of comets hurtling inward tenfold, according to calculations. This cycle seems to coincide with evidence of craters and mass extinctions on Earth, which suggest we suffer more collisions roughly every 36 million years.
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