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Youths See All Parental Control Negatively When There's A Lot of It


ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:00 UTC
A new study has found that young people feel differently about two types of parental control, generally viewing a type of control that's thought to be better for their development more positively. However, when parents are very controlling, young people no longer make this distinction and view both types of parental control negatively.

The study, conducted in the United States by researchers at Örebro University in Sweden, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development. Unlike a lot of prior research on parenting that's focused on control, this study looked at how adolescents view and react to parental control.

Scholars tell us that parental control falls into two categories: behavioral control (when parents help their children regulate themselves and feel competent by providing supervision, setting limits, and establishing rules) and psychological control (when parents are manipulative in their behavior, often resulting in feelings of guilt, rejection, or not being loved). It's thought that behavioral control is better for youngsters' development.
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Child Psychology: Tips on Taming the 'Boogie Monster'


ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:00 UTC
Many parents of preschoolers struggle with their children's fears of real and imaginary creatures. A new study offers some ideas on how they can better manage their children's worries.

The study, which was carried out by researchers at the University of California, Davis, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

Researchers studied about 50 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds in an effort to identify coping strategies that can be carried out by children. The children listened to a series of short illustrated stories. Each story featured a child alone or with another person who came into contact with something that looked like a real or an imaginary frightening creature, such as a snake or a ghost. Children were asked to predict how intensely afraid each of the children in the stories were, to give a reason why each child felt that way, and to offer a way to help the child in the story feel less afraid.
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To Make Memories, New Neurons Must Erase Older Ones


ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:00 UTC
Short-term memory may depend in a surprising way on the ability of newly formed neurons to erase older connections. That's the conclusion of a report in the November 13th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, that provides some of the first evidence in mice and rats that new neurons sprouted in the hippocampus cause the decay of short-term fear memories in that brain region, without an overall memory loss.

The researchers led by Kaoru Inokuchi of The University of Toyama in Japan say the discovery shows a more important role than many would have anticipated for the erasure of memories. They propose that the birth of new neurons promotes the gradual loss of memory traces from the hippocampus as those memories are transferred elsewhere in the brain for permanent storage. Although they examined this process only in the context of fear memory, Inokuchi says he "thinks all memories that are initially stored in the hippocampus are influenced by this process."

In effect, the new results suggest that failure of neurogenesis will lead to problems because the brain's short-term memory is literally full. In Inokuchi's words, we may perhaps experience difficulties in acquiring new information because the storage capacity of the hippocampus is "occupied by un-erased old memories."
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Bacteria in Intestines Play Role Key Role in Weight Gain, Study Finds

Thomas H. Maugh II
The Los Angeles Times
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:00 UTC
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© Photo: Business Wire This Big Carl from Carl's Jr. boasts twice the meat and twice the cheese as a Big Mac...maybe twice the Firmicutes, too?
A high-fat, high-sugar diet alters the composition of bacteria in the gut, making it easier to gain weight and harder to lose it.

A high-fat, high-sugar diet does more than pump calories into your body. It also alters the composition of bacteria in your intestines, making it easier to gain weight and harder to lose it, research in mice suggests. And the changeover can happen in as little as 24 hours, according to a report Wednesday in the new journal Science Translational Medicine.

Many factors play a role in the propensity to gain weight, including genetics, physical activity and the environment, as well as food choices. But a growing body of evidence, much of it accumulated by Dr. Jeffrey I. Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis, shows that bacteria in the gut also play a key role.
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Achoo! Girl, 12, is Sneezing 10 Times a Minute

Mike Celizic
MSNBC
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:44 UTC
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© Today ShowLauren Johnson, a 12-year-old from Virginia, has been unable to stop sneezing for more than two weeks.
Lauren Johnson has been sneezing thousands of times a day for weeks

With metronomic regularity, the girl's right arm rises to her face, her hand balled into a fist and partially covered by her sleeve. If Lauren Johnson is talking, she stops when her hand arrives at her nose. Then she sneezes. It's not a big sneeze, but she has to stop to let it out. Then the hand drops and she resumes whatever she was doing. A few seconds later, the action is repeated.

Talk. Sneeze. Play. Sneeze. Sit still. Sneeze. Eat. Sneeze.

As many as 12 times a minute and 12,000 times a day, 12-year-old Lauren sneezes. And there's nothing that six professionals, including doctors, a psychologist and a hypnotist, have been able to do to stop it.

"It gets old after a while," said Lauren. Even that short sentence was bracketed by the sneezes that began on Nov. 1 and haven't stopped since.
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Neural Mechanism Reveals Why Dyslexic Brain has Trouble Distinguishing Speech from Noise

Cathleen Genova
Medical News Today
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:00 UTC
New research reveals that children with developmental dyslexia have a deficit in a brain mechanism involved in the perception of speech in a noisy environment. The study, published by Cell Press in the November 12 issue of the journal Neuron, provides the first direct evidence that the human auditory brainstem exhibits remarkable moment-to-moment plasticity and undergoes a fine tuning that is strongly associated with noise exclusion.

Most people have little trouble carrying on a conversation with a friend in a noisy restaurant thanks to the highly adaptive auditory system which manages to focus in on the predictable, repeating pitch of the friend's voice and effectively tune out the random, fluctuating background noise. Although it may be a routine occurrence, exactly how the nervous system manages to accomplish this feat is still a mystery.

"Understanding the relationship between the adaptive auditory system and perception of speech in noise is clinically relevant because recent studies have demonstrated that the 5% of school-age children who are diagnosed with developmental dyslexia can be particularly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of background noise," explains senior study author Dr. Nina Kraus, who directs the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University.
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Theory about Long and Short-term Memory Challenged by New Research


ScienceDaily
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:00 UTC
The long-held theory that our brains use different mechanisms for forming long-term and short-term memories has been challenged by new research from UCL, published in PNAS.

Neuroscientists formed this theory based on observation of patients with amnesia, a condition that severely disrupts the ability to form long-lasting memories. Typically, amnesia is caused by injury to the hippocampi, a pair of brain structures located in the depth of the temporal lobes.

Despite the condition devastating long-term memory, such patients are quite proficient in rehearsing a phone number over short periods of time, as long as their attention is not distracted. This led to a hypothesis that the hippocampus supports long-term but not short-term memory. However, the UCL study shows that this distinction now needs to be reconsidered.

The team studied patients with a specific form of epilepsy called 'temporal lobe epilepsy with bilateral hippocampal sclerosis', which leads to marked dysfunction of the hippocampi. They asked the patients to try and memorise photographic images depicting normal scenes, for example chairs and a table in a living-room. Their memory of the image was tested and brain activity recorded using MEG (magnetoencephalography) after a short interval of just five seconds, or a long interval of 60 minutes.
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Virginia Teen Athlete in Wheel Chair After H1N1 Vaccine Shot

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:00 UTC
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© Brendan Smialowski
A teenage Virginia athlete is in a wheel chair now after suffering Guillain-Barre Syndrome within hours after receiving an H1N1 swine flu vaccine shot. 14-year-old Jordan McFarland developed severe headaches, muscle spasms and weakness in his legs after being injected. He will need "extensive physical therapy" to recovery, reports MSNBC. Plus, he'll need the help of a walker for four to six weeks.

Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) is the name given to anyone who exhibits a particular set of neurological symptoms including muscle weakness and muscle spasms. GBS is now increasingly occurring following H1N1 vaccine injections. It was diagnosed in thousands of patients following the 1976 swine flu vaccine scare, and it appears to be recurring here in 2009 as the swine flu vaccine makes it into more widespread distribution.

Health authorities, however, remain adamant that H1N1 vaccines are never the cause of GBS, and that such diagnoses are "pure coincidence." This blatantly unscientific P.R. tactic is designed to dismiss any and all concerns over the neurological side effects of H1N1 vaccines by simply denying they exist. To date, the CDC has received reports of five additional people being diagnosed with GBS following swine flu vaccinations, but it dismisses them all as coincidence. "It's much less than we'd expect," says CDC official Dr. Claudia J. Vellozzi. (Which is sort of interesting all by itself, because it reveals that the CDC expects a lot more people to get GBS following vaccine injections...)
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When Antibiotics Fail, Nurses Turn to Maggots And Manuka Honey to Beat Superbugs

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:00 UTC
Faced with a growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, hospitals in the United Kingdom are adopting traditional medicinal techniques to fight infection, such as maggots and honey.

Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other drug-resistant infections kill or hasten the death of 8,000 British patients per year, while MRSA now kills more people in the United States annually than AIDS.

At the Royal United Hospital in Bath, England, many wounds are now being disinfected with Manuka honey rather than pharmaceutical antibiotics.

"Honey has been used in healing for centuries, but now new products have overcome the problems associated with using conventional honey and bring it into a modern healthcare setting," said the hospital's Kate Purser.
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Antioxidant in Ginkgo May Protect Cells from Radiation Damage

S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:00 UTC
According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), the Ginkgo biloba (G. biloba) is one of the oldest types of trees in the world. Ginkgo herbal treatments have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years to treat a host of ills including asthma, bronchitis, fatigue, and tinnitus (ringing or roaring sounds in the ears). Now 21st century scientists may have discovered yet another Ginkgo-based therapy.

According to a study just published in the International Journal of Low Radiation, antioxidant extracts of the leaves of the G. biloba tree may protect cells in the human body from radiation damage. The discovery could offer a way to protect cancer patients from side effects produced by radiotherapy. G. biloba might also offer protection from medical tests that involve radiation, such as X-rays.

Chang-Mo Kang of the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences in Taegu and colleagues have been investigating well-known herbal remedies to see what actual medicinal effects they may have. They specifically decided to study extracts made from G. biloba leaves because these substances are known to contain several antioxidant compounds, called ginkgolides and bilobalides, that are thought to protect cells in the body from damage caused by free radicals and other reactive oxidizing species. Free radicals are generated by the body's normal metabolism and are also produced in excess as a result of certain diseases and from exposure to pollution or radiation. If left unchecked, they can damage proteins and DNA and even kill cells.
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