Sir Richard has spent the past 14 years studying the effect on attitudes to child care and child development of his father John's work, summarized in the document extract here. He has also incorporated recent findings from peer-reviewed studies.

The biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II has sent a collective shudder among apartment dwellers, college students and business travelers across the nation.

The bugs - reddish brown, flat and about the size of a grain of rice - suck human blood. They resist many pesticides and spread quickly in certain mattress-heavy buildings, such as hotels, dormitories and apartment complexes.

Two shelters have closed temporarily in Charlotte, N.C. , because of bedbugs, a Yahoo chat group dedicates itself to sufferers and countless bedbug blogs provide forums for news, tips and commiseration. State inspectors say that more emphasis may be needed to tackle the creatures.

By observing the pattern of activity in the brain, scientists have discovered they can "read" whether a person just heard words spoken in anger, joy, relief, or sadness. The discovery, reported online on May 14th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, is the first to show that emotional information is represented by distinct spatial signatures in the brain that can be generalized across speakers.

"Correct interpretation of emotion in the voice is highly important - especially in a modern environment where visual emotional signals are often not available," for instance, when people talk on the phone, said Thomas Ethofer of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. "We demonstrated that the spatial pattern of activity within the brain area that processes human voices contains information about the expressed emotion."

Forty years ago, the research psychologist Dr Paul Ekman was addressing a group of young psychiatrists in training when he was asked a question whose answer has kept him busy pretty much ever since. Suppose, the group wanted to know, you are working in a psychiatric hospital like this one, and a patient who has previously attempted suicide comes to you. "I'm feeling much better now," the patient says. "Can I have a pass out for the weekend?"

You also know, of course, that psychiatric patients routinely make such claims, and that some, if they are granted temporary leave, will try to take their lives. But this particular patient swears they are telling the truth. They look, and sound, sincere. So here's the question: is there any way you can be sure they are telling the truth?

It set Ekman thinking. As part of his research, he had already recorded a series of 12-minute interviews with patients at the hospital. In a subsequent conversation, one of the patients told him that she had lied to him. So Ekman sat and looked at the film. Nothing. He slowed it down, and looked again. Slowed it further.

And suddenly, there, across just two frames, he saw it: a vivid, intense expression of extreme anguish. It lasted less than a 15th of a second. But once he had spotted the first expression, he soon found three more examples in that same interview. "And that," says Ekman, "was the discovery of microexpressions: very fast, intense expressions of concealed emotion."

Popeye was the poster boy for spinach, at least in the cartoons. He could swallow down a can and be able to knock out Bluto who was twice his size. Popeye was probably pretty healthy too, avoiding the pitfalls of aging and disease that come from a diet lacking in flavonoids and other nutrients found in spinach. Recent research has highlighted how well these nutrients work to safeguard health.

Spinach gives a knock out punch to cancer

Scientists in Japan recently studied some of the glyconutrients from spinach and found they inhibited destruction of DNA, cancer cell growth, and tumor growth. They used the nutrients to suppress the growth of colon adenocarcinoma in mice. After a two week period of ingesting the nutrients, a 56.1% decrease in solid tumor volume occurred without any side effects. And the nutrients reduced the ability of tumors to supply themselves with blood which they need to fuel their growth. Markers of cell proliferation were drastically reduced. (Lipids, August, 2008)

Spinach is good for combating ovarian cancer too. A newly released study from the Harvard Medical School evaluated the association between dietary flavonoid intake and ovarian cancer risk. Of all the flavonoids they tested, apigenin found in spinach as well as parsley, showed the highest correlation. (International Journal of Cancer, April)

The cellular phones that hospital doctors and nurses bring to work are widely contaminated with dangerous pathogens, even when the health workers wash their hands regularly, a new study has found.

"Our results suggest cross-contamination of bacteria between the hands of health care workers and their mobile phones," wrote the researchers from Turkey's Ondokuz Mayis University in the Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials.

"These mobile phones could act as a reservoir of infection which may facilitate patient-to-patient transmission of bacteria in a hospital setting."

Researchers tested the dominant hands and mobile phones of 200 doctors and nurses in hospital intensive care units and operating rooms for bacteria capable of causing illness. While most of the health care workers followed hand washing guidelines, 95 percent of their phones tested positive for at least one dangerous form of bacteria. Almost 35 percent of phones contained two bacterial strains, while more than 11 percent contained three or more.

Thinking about adding a few plants this spring? Anyone who is striving to become more self-sufficient might want to think about putting in some Aronia berry bushes. Aronia berries, also known as Chokeberries, are produced on easy to grow, low maintenance shrubs that add beauty to almost any landscape. Best of all, the berries produced by these native North American plants have one of the highest levels of anti-aging, disease fighting antioxidants of any food on the planet.

High quality antioxidants help keep away signs of aging and disease

When oxygen interacts with cells, oxidation is inevitable. Cells die and are replaced with fresh, new cells. It is a natural process that keeps the body healthy. Although the body is created to process oxygen very efficiently, a small percentage of cells get damaged in the oxidation process and turn into free radicals. They are "free" because they are missing a critical molecule that would keep them stable. To find their missing molecule, they go on a rampage in the body, stealing molecules where they can. In this process, the DNA of other cells can be damaged, with aging and disease as the result.

Free radicals trigger a chain reaction. When a free radical oxidizes a fatty acid, it changes that fatty acid into another free radical, which can then damage another fatty acid and so on. Eventually, the body's natural free-radical defense system becomes overwhelmed. People living in the modern world have a much heavier oxidative burden than people living a few generations ago, due to environmental pollution and stress. They also have a greater awareness of what causes aging and disease, and realize the need for an added natural antioxidant defense network. The result is an exploding demand for foods and supplements high in antioxidants that can support the body's defense against free radicals.

Do you ever find yourself living vicariously through other people? If so, researchers now say they can tell you which areas of the brain you're exerting when you experience that sort of empathetic connection with a stranger.

When we begin finding ourselves similar to other people and enjoying their victories as our own, researchers say that two particular regions of the brain responsible for feelings concerned with self and reward are talking to each other.

In a Brevium published 15 May in Science, Dean Mobbs from the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK muses on the fundamental issue: "Games shows are one of the most popular and enduring genres in television culture. Yet why we possess an inherent tendency to enjoy seeing unrelated strangers win in the absence of personal economic gain is unclear."

There's a stink that envelops a smoker on their return from a ciggie break, and they know it.

A new Australian study suggests this embarrassing fact could be used as a potent motivator to quit, even more powerful than gruesome images of tobacco-related disease.

University of Sydney Department of Psychology PhD candidate Emily Kothe brought together 28 current and former smokers to test the effectiveness of the latest anti-smoking advertisements.

While the television ads were shown to reduce cravings and inspire a sense of "disgust" and "worry" in current smokers, worryingly they also reported feeling the images did not relate to them.

"Many smokers did not feel the advertisements were enough to make them quit," Ms Kothe said.

Chicago is the first city in the nation to ban bisphenol A (BPA) from plastic baby bottles and sippy cups for children under the age of 3. The Chicago City Council voted to approve the ban yesterday, which would be implemented early next year, and Mayor Richard Daley said he will sign the ordinance. "The F.D.A. continues to be recalcitrant and very slow about taking any action on BPA," said Chicago Alderman Manuel Flores, one of two city officials who proposed the ban last year, after hearing concerns about the potentially harmful effects of the chemical to young children.