Health & WellnessS


Health

Under-fives to be subjected to 500 developmental targets



child_play
©N/A
Leaders of teachers groups fear that the pre school national curriculum will encourage a tick box culture in nurseries

A new national curriculum for all under-fives risks producing a "tick-box" culture in nursery schools that relies too heavily on formal learning and not enough on play, teachers' leaders will claim today.

Health

Subliminal messages make us work harder

Bad news for hard pressed workers: a subliminal "pep talk" can make people work harder, even though they do not realise it.

Take 2

Here's Looking At You, Kids

Sociologists have begun to question the narcissistic self-promoting tendencies in young people, which are fueled by media, reality TV and online social networks. Can today's young people form durable identities off-camera, or are they so used to producing their images for outside consumption that images have replaced their essences? Will a generation for whom all secrets are fair game and every private moment can become public trust each other and form intimate relationships?

Question

Colorado: Tap-Water Salmonella Inquiry Narrows

ALAMOSA, Colo. - Officials said Monday they have ruled out wastewater contamination, disgruntled workers and terrorism as sources of salmonella bacteria in drinking water that have sickened more than 200 people.

Heart

Medicine's Cutting Edge: Re-Growing Organs

Imagine re-growing a severed fingertip, or creating an organ in the lab that can be transplanted into a patient without risk of rejection. It sounds like science fiction, but it's not. It's the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine, in which scientists are learning to harness the body's own power to regenerate itself, with astonishing results. Correspondent Wyatt Andrews brings you to the scientific frontier.


Alarm Clock

UK: Recruitment drive as mentally ill teachers asked back to school

Teachers who have been declared unfit to work in the classroom are being approached in a "desperate" recruitment drive to fill vacancies in key subject areas, the National Union of Teachers said yesterday.

Eye 1

Narcissism: College students think they're so special

NEW YORK - Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."

Smiley

Students turn a profit from candy sales

VICTORVILLE - With candy sales banned on school campuses, sugar pushers are the latest trend at local schools. Backpacks are filled with Snickers and Twinkees for all sweet tooths willing to pay the price.

"It's created a little underground economy, with businessmen selling everything from a pack of skittles to an energy drink," said Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville.

Bulb

Schizophrenia memory differences

People with schizophrenia use different areas of their brain to process some short-term memories, research suggests.

The finding by US scientists might help explain why the condition is often linked with enduring memory problems.

The study, by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, found healthy subjects used the right side of the brain to remember specific locations.

Image
©Unknown
The scans showed up areas of activity in the brain

Briefcase

Children's Memory May Be More Reliable Than Adults' In Court Cases

The U.S. legal system has long assumed that all testimony is not equally credible, that some witnesses are more reliable than others. In tough cases with child witnesses, it assumes adult witnesses to be more reliable. But what if the legal system had it wrong?

Researchers Valerie Reyna, human development professor, and Chuck Brainerd, human development and law school professor--both from Cornell University--argue that like the two-headed Roman god Janus, memory is of two minds--that is, memories are captured and recorded separately and differently in two distinct parts of the mind.