Anyone looking forward to a new season of Doctor… WHO??
Here is what I am reading today:
“”I had heard women reporting changes in their shoe size with pregnancy, but found nothing about that in medical journals or textbooks,” says Neil Segal, M.D., UI associate professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation. “In order to study this more scientifically, we measured women’s feet at the beginning of their pregnancy and five months after delivery. We found that pregnancy does indeed lead to permanent changes in the feet.” The UI study followed 49 pregnant women and collected static and dynamic arch measurements during the first trimester of pregnancy and again about five months after childbirth. The researchers found that for about 60 to 70 percent of the women in the study, their feet became longer and wider.”
“”Current information we give families may not be enough to reduce exposures,” said Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, lead author on the study and an environmental health pediatrician in the UW School of Public Health and at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. She is a physician at Harborview Medical Center’s Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit, and a UW assistant professor of pediatrics.
Phthalates and bisphenol A, better known as BPA, are synthetic endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Previous studies have linked prenatal exposure to phthalates to abnormalities in the male reproductive system. Associations have also been shown between fetal exposure to BPA and hyperactivity, anxiety, and depression in girls.”
infection and stress play a role in schizophrenia
“…a research group headed by Urs Meyer, a senior scientist at the Laboratory of Physiology & Behaviour at ETH Zurich, has now made a breakthrough: for the first time, they were able to find clear evidence that the combination of two environmental factors contributes significantly to the development of schizophrenia-relevant brain changes and at which stages in a person’s life they need to come into play for the disorder to break out. The researchers developed a special mouse model, with which they were able to simulate the processes in humans virtually in fast forward. The study has just been published in the journal Science.”
“”Action video games enhance many aspects of visual attention, mainly improving the extraction of information from the environment,” said Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua and the Scientific Institute Medea of Bosisio Parini in Italy. “Dyslexic children learned to orient and focus their attention more efficiently to extract the relevant information of a written word more rapidly.””
“Cannabis is second only to alcohol for causing impaired driving and motor vehicle accidents. In 2009, 12.8% of young adults reported driving under the influence of illicit drugs and in the 2007 National Roadside Survey, more drivers tested positive for drugs than for alcohol. These cannabis smokers had a 10-fold increase in car crash injury compared with infrequent or nonusers after adjustment for blood alcohol concentration.”
9 Comments
kategraceOL · March 2, 2013 at 8:59 pm
As we learned in class, cells migrate via glial cells and in prenatal development, there is a lot going on in the growth of our brain but does not hit its peak until the age of 25. In the article, by Bob Yirka, it suggests through recent research, that developing fetuses can, “tell the difference between female versus male voices, and to distinguish between the syllables “ba” and “ga””. This new research is surprising because it is phenomenal that an unborn infant’s brain can detect differences and understand sound. Yet, from my personal experience, this new study does not surprise me, because being around babies and their learning abilities of language is incredible. I live-in nanny with a family this year and am around a five year old little girl, and a one year-old little boy, and being around the little baby as he is learning to talk and understand more has been so fun. He surprises me when he can say big words like “elephant”, “hallelujah” and then phrases like, “I love you”. Being that this little boy can put together phrases, and know the difference of his mom or dad’s voice, –it is even more impressive that a fetus still developing in the womb can detect sound.
kategraceOL · March 2, 2013 at 9:18 pm
The article, “Pregnancy Permanently Changes Foot Size” is interesting in that I had never thought that being pregnant could cause lasting skeletal affects. From my personal view, my mom had lasting affects from pregnancy like bigger veins, or even her hair became less curly (most likely due to hormone changes). But learning from this study, that the arch is flattened and even shoe size may change was at first difficult to believe. According to the article, provided by the University of Iowa, “the extra weight and increased laxity of the joints associated with pregnancy” is the causation to the flatness of the foot following a pregnancy. It will be interesting to see for myself when I’m pregnant if this study will seem to be true, but that is the fascinating factor—it will be awhile until then!
kfrance · March 3, 2013 at 10:45 am
In response to want to boost your kids reading skills… allow them to play video games
I thought this article was very interesting. My dad has dyslexia and I have never really understood what it entailed besides the fact that he had trouble reading and spelling as a kid. It was interesting to find out it deals with visual information and lack of being able to attend to visual input. It is funny to read that video games can potentially help with this because I feel like every parent wants their child to stop play the games so much. Hopefully more studies will support these findings to help children with dyslexia improve their abilities to better attend and further them in their reading capabilities.
sisandhu · March 3, 2013 at 11:51 pm
My response to: “Action Video Games Boost Reading Skills, Study of Children With Dyslexia Suggests”
I found this article quite fascinating, the main bit of information that caught my eye was, “12 hours of video game play did more for reading skills than is normally achieved with a year of spontaneous reading development or demanding traditional reading treatments.”
Reading on further, it is explained in detail how playing video games taught the children to focus in and extract information from their surroundings. These abilities were in fact what helped them become better readers. I hope the information provided here can be used in schools and institutions to help aid children with dyslexia.
shelbyromuk · March 5, 2013 at 12:01 pm
In response to: “Infection During Pregnancy and Stress in Puberty Play Key Role in Development of Schizophrenia”.
I found the information that this article discussed very interesting. From my biopsychology class, one factoid that has really stuck with me was regarding the importance of sleep in relation to genetic mental disorders. I recall Dr. Freberg mentioning that in people who have a family history of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, one “all-nighter” or night without sleep can be enough to trigger the disorder in said person. That really stuck with me because I do have a family history of bipolar disorder. It is very interesting but actually makes sense that the prenatal environment plays such a large role. As we discussed in class regarding sexuality, it is obvious that the environment has influence on many different factors. But it is great to know that we are making progress in ways that may allow mothers to positively impact their baby if there is a family history of such schizophrenia. I would also hope that research on other serious mental disorders is furthered in light of this discovery.
shelbyromuk · March 5, 2013 at 12:07 pm
In response to: “Action Video Games Boost Reading Skills, Study of Children With Dyslexia Suggests”.
Although I agree with the “chagrin” of the parents regarding a good finding in long term video games effects, I think it is how we utilize these findings in the future that truly matters. I think that video games have many negative side effects from exposure to situations and “evils” at too early of an age, to a problem with addiction and antisocial behaviors. However, if they have concluded that playing games have such drastically positive effects then I cannot disagree with utilizing them. It will be important to develop games that are specific for the treatment of dyslexia; that are educational and age appropriate while also keeping the attention of the player and holding interest. It is a slight comfort that technology that I personally have seen and believe to reap mainly negative effects, may have a positive aspect for children and young adults after all.
nfuentes25 · March 7, 2013 at 7:41 pm
In response to: “Action Video Games”
It doesn’t come as very much of a surprise that this is a popular topic, but I feel that it is almost laughable. I for one would like to know what games the children were playing that they were able to make these findings. I would assume that playing war shooter games such as Call of Duty would only help them associate certain weapon names with pictures, however I feel like no actual reading would occur after the first couple of days playing the game as they would be pretty much accustomed to all of the general text that shows up from match to match. I also feel like it depends on whether or not the games have online interaction as there may be more colorful chatter when the internet is also involved. Even though I’d be pretty happy at using this study as an excuse as a kid, I would still find it really hard to convince my parents otherwise
rachel.simons · March 12, 2013 at 1:08 pm
In response to “Driving skills going to pot”
This article provides some very convincing facts. It never occurred to me that pot related driving accidents caused the amount of accident that they do. In a time where the legalization of marijuana is big news, people need to hear all the facts. They need to hear both sides of the argument. As we learned in class today, marijuana has many adverse effects (such as contributing to schizophrenia) that many people have never heard about or realized. I think that people need to become better informed about the subject.
lily gomez · March 13, 2013 at 7:04 pm
Hard to avoid the bad stuff we are eating today.
In early childhood years it is very difficult to choose our eating habits, which is what parents typically do for us. The food labels can be very deceiving, so how can we really make good choices, as the article points out. I have taken a course were they discussed BPA and Phthalates and it is a frightening thought to know that we have high levels of BPA that may cause physical and mental problems. Foods that are suppose to be healthy or safe for you to eat arent always that way. Organic foods are always being promoted as being high in nutritional value and low in pesticides, but that is not the case anymore. We need to watch out what we it, but it is difficult because that would only limit our food choices.