High pollution levels in towns and cities are linked to an increased chance of premature births.
The “toxic” chemicals emitted by urban traffic damages the health of unborn babies as well as their mothers, a study of 100,000 births has found.
Scientists can now extract, record and return information to the brain
Information is now moveable in the brain.
This is uncanny: A Tel Aviv University team lead by Professor Matti Mintz have developed a synthetic cerebellum that can receive sensory inputs from the brain, analyze them, and return information to other parts of the brain!
The device is now working in rats, and has effectively restored lost brain functions caused by damaged tissue. However, the most important thing is that this proves that brain-to-machine communication can work in a bi-directional way, with a machine getting information from the brain, analyzing it and then talking back to the brain. As Mintz puts it…
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Cost of raising middle-income child in USA increases by 40% in ten years
Costs have risen dramatically for raising children.
According to the US Dept of Agriculture, the cost of raising a child in a middle-income family has increased by 40 percent over the past ten years. Every major category of child-rearing expense has seen steep increase: day-care, education, food, gas, medical insurance, and so on. At this rate, childrearing may become a luxury item for America’s increasingly wealthy super-rich…
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Birth Control Pills found to affect memory
Birth control affects more than previously thought.
Women who use contraceptives like birth control pills experience memory changes, according to new UC Irvine research. Their ability to remember the gist of an emotional event improves, while women not using the contraceptives better retain details.
“What’s most exciting about this study is that it shows the use of hormonal contraception alters memory,” UCI graduate researcher Shawn Nielsen said. “There are only a handful of studies examining the cognitive effects of the pill, and more than 100 million women use it worldwide.”
She stressed that the medications did not damage memory. “It’s a change in the type of information they remember, not a deficit.”
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China’s c-section baby boom
Medical staff deliver a baby by cesarean section at a hospital in China.
Caesarean sections are on the rise globally. But China’s sky-high C-section rate is out of control and they are trying to get a handle on it.
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Boys reach sexual maturity younger and younger
Male maturity age has shifted again.
Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century. Joshua Goldstein, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (MPIDR), has used mortality data to demonstrate this trend, which until now was difficult to decipher. What had already been established for girls now seems to also be true for boys: the time period during which young people are sexually mature but socially not yet considered adults is expanding…
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Scientists have new help finding their way around brain’s nooks and crannies
Brains from a new perspective.
Like explorers mapping a new planet, scientists probing the brain need every type of landmark they can get. Each mountain, river or forest helps scientists find their way through the intricacies of the human brain…
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Blood test can determine fetal sex at seven weeks
The test analyzes fetal DNA found in the mother’s blood and can establish sex weeks earlier than other options.
A baby’s sex can be determined as early as seven weeks into pregnancy by a simple blood test. The test is highly accurate if used correctly, a finding that experts say is likely to lead to more widespread use by parents concerned about gender-linked diseases, those who are merely curious and people considering the more ethically controversial step of selecting the sex of their children.
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A font for dyslexia
Watching my kids learning how to read made me truly appreciate how difficult it can be to distinguish letters of the Roman alphabet. If you think about it, a lot of the letters are truly alike – b and p are the same thing with different rotation, v and w look almost the same and so on. Dyslexics have even greater trouble because their brains constantly “mix up” these letters…
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Akshat Saxena has most fingers and toes: Guinness World Records
Who’s got the most digits?
Count’em up. This young man born with 34 fingers and toes set a Guinness World Record for most digits.
Akshat Saxena had seven fingers on each hand and 10 toes on each foot when he was born in India in 2010, a Guinness spokeswoman told The Huffington Post.
“I was so happy to see my baby as it was our first child,” his mother Amrita Saxena told NDTV. “But later, when I saw his fingers, I was shocked and surprised.”
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The untold story behind abortion drug RU-486
A new report from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reveals a listing of “adverse events” regarding use of mifepristone (RU-486). According to the data, 14 women have died using the abortion drug and 2,207 American women have sustained injuries. Approx 1.5 million women have taken the drug so far.
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‘Born in the USA’ – More chinese women traveling to U.S. to give birth
When Chinese children are born in America, they automatically become U.S. citizens.
An increasing number of well-off Chinese women are going to the United States to give birth to their children. Having an American passport can certainly be beneficial, it can also be more of a hassle than one might expect.
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