Strollerderby : science

PBS Launching Dinosaur Train for Science Kids

JeanneSager — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:01:00 GMT

For parents who have fallen in love with Sid the Science Kid (who hasn't?), good news! PBS is going prehistoric this fall with a new show aimed at expanding their offerings for our little scientists.

Dinosaur Train will let our kids hop onboard with Buddy, a young T-Rex adopted by a family of Pterandons

I haven't seen the show yet, but I'm A. loving that there's a show out there for all those dinosaur fans - and we all know there are many and B. digging the fact that there's an adopted kid on TV for adopted kids to relate to . . . even if it is a kid with two giant feet and two teeny hands!

Produced by The Jim Henson Company, the show will feature two eleven-minute segments daily with live-action interestitials featuring paleontologist Scott Sampson (you've seen him on Discovery Channel's Dinosaur Planet) dishing out dino nuggets (with no extra calories). The train alluded to in the name will take Buddy and his family and friends on adventures through time, chugga-chugga-ing to the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

Can't wait? Set your Tivo for Sept. 7.

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The Thermodynamics of Porridge Cooling in Goldilocks

Miriam Axel-Lute — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

If you thought I was a nitpicker when I went after science errors in children's books that were trying to be realistic, you'll have a conniption about this: some of bloggers over at scienceblogs.com have started taking on fairy tales: the thermodynamics of cooling porridge in Goldliocks and the physics of hair rope-ladders in Rapunzel. (hat tip: Jake)

In each case, much like with my own post, the commenters make it all worthwhile, kibbitzing about mother bear's potential drinking habit (adding whiskey cooled her porridge down faster) and whether it matters if the hair ladder would hold if it would take 180 years to grow.

Of course there is the question of where do we start to critique fairy tales. I'll admit (or brag) that I'm nerdy enough to have noticed and been bothered by the porridge cooling anomaly myself on one Goldilocks-reading marathon. ("Again!") Likewise the wolf falling into a pot of boiling water at the end of Three Little Pigs and just being hurt enough to be mad and jump up and run out the door howling. (Granted the Richard Scarry tome I'm working from clearly contains cleaned up versions for kids, not the originals.)

Matt Springer, who wrote about Rapunzel, says "Suspension of disbelief requires that we grant the story the ability to say wild things so long as it does so in an internally consistent way." I agree.

They are internally consistent in that animals talk, for example, and we don't complain about that. But even before you get to the laws of physics, there's a whole lot of non-hard science issues in fairy tales to deep breathe through: In the Wolf and the Seven Kids, the kids are fooled into mistaking a wolf paw for their mother's hoof because he gets it dusted in flour? How does that work? It's a paw. In the Three Little Pigs, how is it that the bricklayer just gives away a house's worth of bricks?

In the end, of course, I do (mostly) suspend disbelief when we're in the realm of fairy tales. I know the value of a metaphor and an archtypal story line. But sometimes it does feel good to step back with other nitpickers and catalog the bites on our tongues.

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They Say - Older Fathers Spawn Dumber Kids

Brett Singer — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

A study conducted in Australia has found that "Children of older fathers appear to perform less well in intelligence tests during infancy and childhood." Children with older mothers, however, score higher on the same tests.

Hmmm...

So if dad is old, the kid is dumber. If mom is old, the kid is smarter.

Now, it should be pointed out that "dumber" and "smarter" are not really the correct terms. We're talking about intelligence tests, which may or may not be a good indicator of actual smartiness. The data that the Aussie researchers used is "from intelligence tests taken by 33,437 children who were born between 1959 and 1965 in the United States." I don't know about you, but I think my kids are smarter than I was at their age. So I'd like to see results based on more recent humans.

Scientists theorize that the reason for the "older dad = lower scores, older mom = higher scores" result is... drum roll, please... mutated sperm.

Yes, gray-haired daddies, your sperm is mutates as you get older! What does that mean? I have to admit that I have no idea. By "mutation" do they mean "dumber"? I guess they do.

In case you can't tell, I don't take much stock in this. For some reason I find it difficult to take science of this sort seriously. What's the point? Let's say there were lock solid proof that having kids past a certain age meant that said kids would only be able to achieve a certain level of intelligence. Would people use that as a reason not to have kids? I doubt it. So why do the study? Why not spend time on something more important, like space travel?

And when they say "mutation," I think of the X-Men. Let's find a way to have that mutated sperm lead to super powers! Isn't it about time science started doing something useful?

Source: Reuters

Image: SXC

4 Year Old Brings Pot To School, School Bans Backpacks

TV Is Neither Good Nor Bad For Babies

George W. Bush Visits Texas Elementary School

Photo - Obama Shocked by Schoolkids

Morning News - Watchmen, Wiper Fluid and the World Wide Web

Brett Singer — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:30:00 GMT

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday! (You need to hear that in the voice of a 1980's era Monster Truck radio ad announcer. That reference either makes sense or it doesn't. Apologies if it doesn't.)

Quick comment: I have to say that when I said I would fill in for Madeline for a few days, the last thing I thought I would be writing about was former President George W. Bush. Not that I mind, but it seems strange. I had an item about him yesterday, and there's one today. I'm not looking for them, believe me.

And now -- the news!

Update from Nerdy Movie Land (which, surprisingly, is not located at my house): 'Watchmen' dropped to second place, losing the top spot to 'Race to Witch Mountain.' Proving... nothing, really. Personally, I want 'Watchmen' to do well so that studio executives keep greenlighting superhero movies. So far it's made about $85 million, which is pretty good for two weeks. Unfortunately, there are reports that many people are walking out of the film before it's over, which doesn't really help with that whole word of mouth thing.

The guy who pretty much invented the World Wide Web – Tim Berners-Lee, not Al Gore – once got scammed online when buying a Christmas present. He's also warning people against "website snooping" and talking about keeping your personal data safe. Good idea, Tim, but if even you got scammed, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Campbell's Soup is not planning to cut their prices. Got that? How is this a headline? Seems that the company feels that prices are low enough, and sales are growing anyway. Hence, no price lowering. I repeat -- why tell anyone this? I prefer the organic stuff, myself, and my kids wouldn't eat soup if they were starving, so it doesn't affect me. But if I did eat Campbell's Soup, hearing this might make me NOT buy it. Just saying.

President Barack Obama wants to block bonus payments to AIG execs, and NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wants to know who is getting the money. This is not going to end anytime soon, methinks.

In other financial news, former White House spokeswoman Dana Perino says that her former boss deserves some of the credit for a recent bounce in the stock market. I didn't realize that being a Presidential flack was a lifetime position.

Lindsay Lohan will NOT, repeat NOT, be arrested. C'mon, you know that makes you happy. Her arrest warrant was recalled and she "enroll in a new alcohol education program." TMZ reports that she had a "personality conflict" with the program she was in before. What does that mean, that she wanted to drink while she was there?

The kids who drank the wiper fluid are OK, which is good. I'm still not clear on why this stuff tastes good. Wouldn't that flavoring have to be an additive of some kind? And if it is, why include it? Is it possible that wiper fluid just tastes sweet naturally? That would be, as my son might say, weird.

And finally, Shannon tells us about a new dinosaur, more specifically "a new species of pliosaur." The photo (above) is just flat out cool. Apparently this particular pliosaur was "more powerful than T Rex, with a head twice its size, a set of 12-inch teeth, and a weight of about 45 tons." Yowsa. Show this one to your kids, unless you think it'll give them nightmares. Heck, it might give me nightmares. Look at those teeth...

That's all for today - more tomorrow...

Photo: Guardian

Superman Comic Sells For Over 300k

Morning News - Cheney, Duct Tape, Outer Space

UPDATE - Austrian Incest Dad Pleads Guilty To Some Charges

They Say: Breastmilk Fights Respiratory Viruses Better in Girls

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Science gets particularly exciting when it turns up things no one was expecting. Researcher Fernando Polack, working in Buenos Aires investigating how much protection breastmilk provides for very-low-birthweight babies against the wicked metapneumovirus (no vaccine yet developed), was surprised to find stark gender differences in his results:

Girls who were not breastfed had a much higher risk of rehospitalization for respiratory illness than boys, but breastfed girls were almost never rehospitalized. In boys, the difference between breastfed and not was insignificant. (The researchers hasten to point out that there are plenty of other benefits of breastfeeding that still hold true for boys.)

The fascinating part of this is that a gender difference may point to breastmilk's protective properties working differently than previously supposed. Maybe it's not just delivering mom's immunities until the kid gets its own—why would there be a gender difference in that? Could breastmilk prompt anti-viral protection in the absence of exposure to viruses somehow, interacting directly with the baby's developing immune system? (Of course, why would there be a gender difference in that either?) The report from Vanderbilt Medical Center speculates maybe, though they have no idea how.

Sounds to me for now like another thing to throw on the "we don't know what breastmilk is well enough to replicate it" evidence pile.

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Whoopie Cushion Scientist Wants You

JeanneSager — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:23:00 GMT

If your sense of humor runs toward that of an eight-year-old boy (and in the direction of the bathroom), I have found the site for you.

The guy who created the world's biggest whoopie cushion - an attempt to teach kids about the science of sound - has a compiled a series of farting whoopie cushions and captured them all on soundbites.

Now he needs your (our) help. He wants to know what sound is the funniest. Take your kids over there - he is looking for every age group - and get voting. There are a total of twenty different cushions have with twenty different sounds, from the short puff of air to the long drawn out juicy one. You get to hear just six in your test, but if everyone in the family wants to give it a go, Professor Trevor Cox wants to know - what do you think Sounds Funny?

For the record - I must have an eight-year-old boy hiding somewhere inside me - I thought they all sounded funny. So did my three-year-old.

Image: Sounds Funny

They Say: Want to Know If Baby is Cute? Ask a Woman on the Pill

Jen Chaney — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:50:00 GMT

From the Dept. of Scientific Studies That Probably Don't Mean Anything comes this piece of breaking news: Premenopausal woman -- especially ones who are taking the pill -- are better at recognizing cute babies.

Psychologists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland reached this conclusion after a study in which they showed photos of infants to a group of men and women, both young and old. The images were of various baby faces, each one carefully altered to demonstrate subtle, differing degrees of cuteness. Apparently the younger women, in particular the ones taking oral contraceptives, were more adept at identifying the facial features that lend themselves to adorability. In other words, hormones make all the difference, and that could explain (in part) what helps moms connect with their children.

Of course, the immediate question that came to my mind was: Does this mean that ugly kids can't bond with their mothers? Then came the next, perhaps more important question: Who is defining what "cute" is? That's obviously subjective, to some degree. I mean, a baby with eyes in the back of his head would, empirically, probably be seen as not so cute. Benjamin Button as a baby? Yeah, also not cute. But for the most part, we all perceive attractiveness differently, which makes me wonder how one can do a study around the issue. And apparently, I'm not the only one.

"It’s tough to know what to make of these findings without knowing the ways in which cute babies differ from uncute babies,” psychologist Steven Gangestad of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque told Science News.

To be fair, before conducting the study, the researchers did use an independent rating system to help them come up with the look of the "average" cute face.So there was an attempt to make this less subjective and more scientific. But I'm still not convinced that we should take this data terribly seriously.

All that said, the next time a girlfriend looks at your newborn and doesn't rave over how adorable he is, there is no need to take personally. Just assume she's not on the pill and, therefore, doesn't know what she's talking about.

Image: Science News

Morning News: Doctors Who Delivered Octuplets Say 'Don't Look at Us'

Madeline Holler — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Doctors who delivered the California octuplets have come forward to defend their role in the pregancy. Which is to say, we're not responsible. They told the LA Times that they explained to her she could have a selective reduction in order to carry fewer children but that she decided to go ahead with the pregnancy. Here's the really interesting part:

She met with the doctors after she was already 12 weeks pregnant. This leaves everyone to speculate just how she got pregnant with so many. Fertility researchers are scrambling to get the word out that eight babies isn't a medical triumph and that eight babies is not a goal anyone should want.

The Illinois Senate voted to impeach (now former) governor Rod Blogojevich. Before the vote, he accused lawmakers of having it out for him because of his heartfelt desire and actions to get better health care to senior citizens and children, essentially saying he did it for the children. Blogo didn't change any minds. The vote to impeach was unanimous.

Women's health advocates were outraged when family planning funding was taking out of the stimulus bill -- a move that was made to placate Republicans. But sources say that family-planning aid will be written into law as soon as next week.

Good news if you're into Michelle Obama for what she's done rather than what she's worn. Feminist leaders say she'll be a trusted voice for minorities while reshaping how whites see women of color and how society regards its obligations to working parents.

Iceland's new prime minister, who took office after a mass government resignation, is the first openly gay leader of a country. The former flight attendant will serve as interim PM until elections in May. Cold as Iceland is, it's experiencing a huge meltdown financially and the normally docile citizenry has finally gotten pissed amid the turmoil.

If you thought Elisabeth Hasselbeck had been looking somewhat bedraggled for the past couple of months, you were right! Only no judgment, because America's favorite chattering mother is pregnant! She told the ladies on The View yesterday. An angel descended. The set glowed.

Science finally tells us what armpits smell like. For women, it's onions. For men, it's cheese. Rub them together you've got a lovely tarte flambee!

Photo: SignonSanDiego.com

Mom Stuns Docs With Extra Baby, Stuns Us With Ambitious Feeding Plans

Pulling the Plug on Plural Pregnancies

They Say: Crack Babies? Not Such a Big Deal

Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don't (Breastfeed, That is)

No Great Outpouring for Quintuplets

Babble Podcast for January 26, 2009 (now with a working player)

They Say: Duh...Common Chemicals Lower Fertility

They Say: Apple Juice a Day Keeps Alzheimer's Away

JeanneSager — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:09:00 GMT

I was feeling good about dosing my daughter's apple juice now and again with corn syrup when she was feeling a little, well, backed up - until Shannon came along with her post on mercury rising.

If you were with me on that one, keep reading.

There's still good news - our kids are getting apple juice. And apple juice, researchers have found, may delay the onset of Alzheimer's.

Two cups of apple juice (or, for kids like mine who have half juice/half water, more like four cups) were found to do the trick in a study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The juice (and it had to be apple, not apple pear or pomegranate peach) stemmed production of beta amyloid, a protein fragment found in the brains of most folks diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The experiments were all done on mice, which performed better in maze trials when they received a steady supply of apple juice.

And think of it this way - the more apple juice they drink, the better they poop. So no more corn syrup!

Image: FindMeaCure

Kids Explain How Babies Are Made

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

In this entertaining (if a bit overdone) video about the outrageous myths kids believe about the way babies come into the world, a man admits that he used to believe "pregnancy particles" were floating in the air. "I was nervous many times," he says. "I thought I might get pregnant." Another man admits that he used to think anything he put his penis in would get pregnant. After testing out this theory on a tree in his backyard, he was turned off to sex for years.

The video is worth watching to the end, for the adorable kids who explain their own—much more accurate—understanding of the miracle of life.

What baby-making myths did you believe as a child? At what age do you think kids are old enough to learn the truth about reproduction?

Photo: SodaHead

Video: Doing Science Experiments on Your Kids

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:46:00 GMT

After writing about a new generation of scientists who are increasingly using their own kids as test subjects, I found this fascinating (and often adorable) video about a scientist, Deborah Linebarger, who has conducted experiments with her four children.

For me, the upshot of these interviews with ethicists, scientists, and children test subjects is that Linebarger struggles with balancing her career and her family, making mistakes with her older kids that she doesn’t repeat with her younger kids, worrying unnecessarily about her children's development. In other words, she struggles, like everyone, with being parent. She just happens to hope that she’ll make a huge scientific breakthrough while playing with her kids—and hey, what’s wrong with that?

Photo: New York Times

Is It Ethical for Scientists to Use Their Kids as Test Subjects?

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:10:00 GMT

Here’s a reason for wanting a baby that you don’t hear everyday: “I really want to study him and do experiments with him.” This was the thinking of Dr. Sinha, an MIT neuroscience professor, upon the birth of his son.

According to the New York Times, Dr. Sinha is just one of many scientists using their kids as test subjects in large part because “children make reliable participants in an era of scarce research financing.” Is this creepy or just practical?

Numerous kids of scientists have been instrumental in research on everything from brain scans to the effects of media on children. In an extreme example, scientist Deb Roy recorded nearly 70 percent of his son’s waking hours for the first three years of his life in order to study language development.

Many scientists argue that using their own children as subjects proves the safety of the experiments: why would they put their own kids, whom they love above all else, at risk? Furthemore, review boards establish rules for safe experimentation, including a prohibition on videotaping toilet training, which could prove embarrassing later.

I understand this argument, and don't doubt that well-meaning scientists would never willingly put their children at risk. However, I do question the ways experimenting on children can affect parent-child relationships. So does Robert M. Nelson, the director of the Center for Research Integrity at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The role of the parent is to protect the child,” he said. “Once that parent becomes an investigator, it sets up an immediate potential conflict of interest.”

Like most parenting issues, this question defies a black-and-white answer. Some grown children of scientists look back on their time as test subjects as a fun way to bond with their parents, while others remember the experiments as stressful, colored by an uncomfortable need to please their parents.

Do you think there’s a surefire way to predict whether experiments with children will be harmless or harmful? If not, is it wrong for scientists to use their children in the service of scientific inquiry?

Photo: New York Times

Kid Gets Tongue Stuck on a Metal Pole

JeanneSager — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:13:00 GMT

Somewhere in Indiana, a family is rethinking the annual viewing of A Christmas Story.

A fourth grader at an elementary school in Indiana told emergency workers a friend dared him to stick his tongue to the metal pole. Surprise, suprise, in the middle of January, it was ten degrees in Indiana, and you can guess where this is going.

Just like Ralphie's friend Flick's tongue, it stuck. Of course, since this wasn't a Christmas movie from the eighties, the kid simply yanked hard enough that it came off. Emergency workers reportedly instructed his mom on how to stop the bleeding and went on their ways (probably trying to rein in the laughter). She admitted to the AP that her son was testing the reality of television.

What does this prove - other than the fact that this family might be the only one in America to miss the marathon airings of A Christmas Story in future Decembers? The same doofy pranks we pulled? Our kids are going to pull them too.

Technology might be better, but what they'll do for the sake of a bet is just as simple as ever.

Image: Gothamist

Mystery Solved: Dog Swallowed Fifteen Pacifiers

Daddy Club Rule: Don't Argue Kids Shows

School to Parents: Donate Toilet Paper

They Say: Smoking While Pregnant Makes Kids Aggressive

Brett Singer — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

I thought it was generally acknowledged that it was a bad idea for women to smoke while pregnant. A new study provides another reason: the kids could end up aggressive. The likelihood of aggressive behavior increases if the family makes less than $40,000 per year. This is according to a study conducted by Canadian doctors that was published in the academic journal Development and Psychopathology.

To clarify, "aggressive behavior" – or "behaviour", as they call it, since some people have to spell things differently – is that which the mothers characterized "as quick to hit, bite, kick, fight and bully others." (I guess spitting is OK. Throwing things, perhaps?) The children studied were between 18 months and three and a half years of age.

"Mothers-to-be whose lives have been marked by anti-social behaviour have a 67 percent chance to have a physically aggressive child if they smoke 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant, compared with 16 percent for those who are non-smokers or who smoke fewer than 10 cigarettes a day. Smoking also seems to be an aggravating factor, although less pronounced, in mothers whose anti-social behaviour is negligible or zero."

Other factors contributing to aggressiveness in preschool kids, sayeth the study: "mothers who are younger than 21, who smoke and who coerce their children to behave." Also, "children from families who earned less than $40,000 per year were at an increased risk for aggressive behaviour." Which I guess means that families earning less than $40,000 are more likely to have aggressive children whether mom puffs or not. But the aggressiveness INCREASED in those families if mom smoked, and DECREASED if she didn't.

Are you bored yet?

Here's my issue with studies like this. We know smoking while pregnant is a bad idea. (Like playing piano in a marching band, as they say on The Animaniacs.) So what exactly is the point of this study? What did we find out, that families with less money and a mother with a nicotine addiction are more likely to have children who exhibit "aggressive behaviour", as defined by a certain specific "behaviours"? So what? How about a study that looks at methods that might help those kids deal with their aggression?

Reading this study makes me feel very aggressive. I need to go bite something. But since my mother doesn't smoke, I'll just bite into a sandwich.

Source: Science Daily

Image: Church Times

Third Hand Smoke Can Harm Your Kids

They Say -- Kids Who Skip Breakfast and Hate Mom Have Sex Sooner

They Say -- Vaccines Work

Mom Shoplifts Parenting Book With Kids in Tow

They Say: Medidation May Help Ease Kids' ADHD

Toddler Injured in Xmas Tree Fight Between Mom and Grandma

5 Nature Facts Kids' Authors Should Tattoo on their Forearms

Miriam Axel-Lute — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

It's not just the creationists and global warming deniers who make us an anti-science society. It's also lazy children's book authors, editors, fact-checkers, and reviewers. The very popular Rachel Isadora can't tell a french horn from a tuba. Even the venerable Richard Scarry depicts corn growing from an already cooked seed and bread being baked before it has risen. It drives me crazy.

Now, before you call me a killjoy, I don’t mean that I have a problem with fantasy and surreality. I love it. The goofier the better. Animals talking, kids flying or shrinking, toys coming alive . . . great. I'm not complaining about Richard Scarry's five-seater pencil car.

But it's generally clear when books are striving to be basically realistic, even educational. You know the type: books about where rainbows come from, or things you see on a fall walk, or world animals. It's when most things are right that the glaring errors bug me. The least we could do, I figure, is not actively teach kids things they’ll have to unlearn later if they ever manage to study biology or ecology. (Cultural errors and biases get into a whole other can of worms.)

Here are five sets of nature facts that children’s book authors (and illustrators and editors) seem to get wrong over and over and over:

(1) Lions, tigers, bears, and kangaroos don’t live side by side anywhere other than a zoo. Neither do polar bears and penguins. This one is at least as old as Dorothy chanting “Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!” and as pervasive as the Wicked Witch’s all-seeing eye. It's so common that plenty of well-educated adults would have to pause and ask themselves where exactly tigers do live and whether Africa has bears.
(2) Bluebirds are not blue from head to toe (and similar confusions). The only bird on this continent that’s blue all over is an indigo bunting. Bluebirds have chestnut chests and white rumps. (Or, for you West Coasters, they're just white underneath.) Also, no adult duck is yellow with an orange beak and seals don’t bark or have ~~whiskers~~ ears (that's sea lions). Field guides, anyone? Or even Google images?
(3) Birds make nests for laying eggs, not for sleeping in. And they don’t build them in the fall.
(4) Bulls never have udders. Several people have told me it drives them round the bend to see an animal with a prominent set of mammary glands going by the pronoun “he.”
(5) The moon is not always/only out at night. I realize that the phases of the moon get a little esoteric, and I can never myself keep straight how to tell at a glance whether that’s a waxing halfmoon or a waning one. But I find it to be strangely symbolic of our penchant for simplifying the facts out of everything that we take a heavenly body that appears during the day half the time and during the night half the time (often then not rising until well after sunset) and persist in pairing them as opposites. (Illustrators also manage to never make the sun or moon rise or set, but just hang in the same part of the sky as a day or night progresses, and the moon stays in the same phase as weeks go by.)

I'm sure there are dozens more, many of which I don't even know enough to catch. (Bruce McMillan, author of nonfiction kids books, says there are tons, and it makes him at least as cranky as it makes me.)

What bloopers get under your skin?

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They Say -- Kids Who Skip Breakfast and Hate Mom Have Sex Sooner

Brett Singer — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Sometimes I read a news story and feel like I'm actually reading The Onion. Does that ever happen to you?

For example: this report from Japan that finds a link between middle school students and teen sex. Basically, middle schoolers who do not partake of the most important meal of the day are more likely to get a head start on making the out-of-wedlock beast with two backs. (That's an unnecessarily silly way of saying "having sex.")

What exactly inspires a study like this one? Were researchers conducting interviews with sexually active middle schoolers in the morning hours and thought that they looked a little hungry? Not exactly. The survey isn't talking about sexually active middle schoolers. That would be creepy. It specifically found that the "average age of first-time sex for those who said they ate breakfast every day as a middle school student was 19.4, while for those who skipped breakfast, the average age was 17.5."

It gets better. I'm going to quote this line because it may be one of the greatest sentences in the history of journalism: "The average age of first-time sex was lower for those who found their mother annoying." (See what I mean? Doesn't that sound like it should have been in The Onion?) Those who "said they disliked their mother" starting gettin' it on at the age of 16, on average. Folks who "appreciated their mother" didn't lose their virginity until the ripe old age of 19.

No word on whether or not girls with "daddy issues" were slutty, or whether or not sibling rivalries were the main cause of homosexuality. (I'm kidding, of course. But if that's the next survey this association conducts, I won't be all that shocked.)

Kunio Kitamura, executive director of the Japan Family Planning Association, conducted the survey. The quotes attributed to Kitamura are hopefully the result of a poor translation from Japanese: "The fact that people can't eat breakfast may show something about their family environment. Before blaming individuals for having sex at an early age, it may be necessary to look into the sort of homes they are from." In other words, it's not your kids' fault they're having sex. It's because the muffins were stale that morning. Oh, and you're a crummy parent. And your kids don't respect you as a mother. Or all of the above.

Hey, here's an idea. How about studying the TYPE of breakfast consumed? That is, are middle schoolers who consume mostly oatmeal in the morning more or less likely to engage in sexual activity before they turn 18 than children who eat pancakes? And what about if they have bacon with their pancakes? And why stop at breakfast? What about lunch? Does french fry consumption increase or decrease the likelihood of future sexual activity?

So if you don't want your kids to start having sex too young, make sure they eat breakfast. In middle school.

Ah, science. We have come so far. And yet, not so far at all.

Source: Reuters

Image: tamarackwv.com

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How to Choose a Chem Set for Your Kid

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:30:00 GMT

Worried that gender-specific toys are hampering your daughter's math and science prospects? Longing to have your garage blown up so you have an excuse to build a better one? Nostalgic for the days when we believed in better living through chemistry?

The folks from Make magazine have got you covered with their chemistry gift guide. Don't be put off by some of the expensive stuff up front—it gets more reasonable, on average, as you scroll down. If you're ambitious (maybe for next year), there are articles on collecting the materials to make your own. Think of it as a DIY project that doesn't really take skill, just chutzpah.

You might want to be careful about older sets from places like eBay—they could contain mercury thermometers and the like. On the other hand, the newer ones might contain nothing all that interesting, in the name of safety, so you'll have to judge the tradeoff.

As for me, I feel like I ought to be excited by all these options, and instead I'm reminded that fact that I find chemistry more interesting in a book than in the flesh means I had no business completing a chemistry degree. But at least it's more interesting than having a misbegotten English major. Someday I'll give my kids a chance to be more experimental, as it were, than I was.

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Students Watch Autopsy of Teen From School

JeanneSager — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:04:00 GMT

I'm not really crazy about sending my kid out to watch an autopsy to begin with. Yes, even in the name of science. But when the body a class of teens is watching the medical examiner cut up belongs to a fourteen-year-old from their school district, you've lost me completely.

It's exactly what happened at a Michigan ME's office; even after the teacher was warned that the teenagers in her high school science class would be subjected to the autopsy of a middle school student from the same school district who had committed suicide.

The Detroit News reported the teacher put it out to her students, kids in the eleventh and twelfth grades at Waterford Kettering High School. None of the kids actually knew the girl, although one student knew the deceased's brother. The ME's office in Oakland County has decided to stop all future high school tours because of the case, but I'd say all the adults involved here need to be reviewing their actions. Kids watching dead kids be examined? It's the stuff that can cause some pretty severe nightmares, not to mention a host of issues for the child's family.

That older teens might be sent to see an autopsy as part of their exploration of potential careers is one thing. Personally I think that kind of thing should be limited to kids who have expressed an interest in the medical field, not required viewing for a regular upper-level science class. If kids feel they're going to be upset by watching a body carved up, by all means, let them stay back in the school building and do busy work.

And the kids who choose to make the trip? They should not be watching the process being done on another child, especially one who they might know in one way, shape or form. Adults have a hard enough time stomaching the thoughts of harm having come to a child. Professionals who deal with this type of thing on a daily basis, despite all their attempts to become immune to the horrors specific to the loss of a child, still struggle. Ask any district attorney who has had to prosecute the case of a child's death if he doesn't go home at night and hug his kids just that much tighter. To expect teenagers, still kids themselves, to process that sort of thing - or to think that asking them beforehand if they're OK with it and expecting their teenaged-bravado not to get in the way - is a failure to protect a piece of their innocence.

Yes, they can see this sort of thing on CSI. But a fake body on a screen has nothing on a real body laid out in front of them, the body of a child they know has walked through the same halls where they once studied math and science.

Let's let kids be kids - as long as we can.

Image: The Detroit News

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Brain Wave Study Sheds Light On Autism

Brett Singer — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Interesting news item from The Discovery Channel (via AP) -- "unique brain wave patterns" have been found in children with autism.

Using an imaging helmet that resembles a big salon hair dryer, researchers discovered what they believe are "signatures of autism" that show a delay in processing individual sounds.
That delay is only a fraction of a second...[but] Imagine if it took a tiny bit longer than normal to understand each syllable. By the end of a whole sentence, you'd be pretty confused.

I find this fascinating. More importantly (yes, I acknowledge that there are things in this world more important than what I personally find intriguing), these findings could help parents of autistic immensely. Doctors could potentially discover and diagnose the disorder "in children as young as age 1", according to the article. That would enable parents to begin a treatment program much earlier than usual.

It's all very sci-fi looking – check out the photo. The article says that the device looks like a "salon hair dryer", but I think it looks more like something out of the X-Men. Anyway, I love trumpeting technological advances that are used to help parents and children. It's a reminder that tech isn't all about video games and cellphones that make pancakes. (Apologies to the late George Carlin, from whom I borrowed that line about pancakes. Mmmm... pancakes...)

I'd be curious to hear from anyone with more knowledge of autism than I (doctors, parents) if this treatment sounds promising, and/or if this is something that you have heard about, and whether or not you feel it will be helpful. It certainly sounds to me like it could.

Source: AP via Discovery.com

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NY Times (and I) Post Crap Study on Bullying

Kelly Mills — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:31:00 GMT

I'm a big fan of digging deep when it comes to science reporting. It generally isn't that hard to find some serious flaws: Small samples, questionable methodology, and conclusions that stretch far are sometimes par for the course. But when I posted about a study showing bullies may actually enjoy inflicting pain on others, I didn't poke into it much at all.

At least I'm in venerable company, because the New York Times did the same thing.

At Slate they point out some very serious problems with the study, which used MRIs to study the response of "bullies" to images of pain inflicted on others. For example, the study didn't image brains during actual bullying, so the results have more to do with how subjects responded as observers than perpetrators. And teh sample was made up of people who could probably be more accurately characterized as sociopaths than just bullies. The results of the scans themselves are open to pretty wide interpretation.

Slate uses this story to show how the Times reporter just drew from the press release with very little independent reporting. I'm on this one because it was a good reminder to me to think critically when looking at studies getting a pass in the press. Especially when I'm adding to the chorus.

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Palin Mocks Autism Research

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT

No one should be too surprised at this point to hear that one of McCain’s top advisers referred to Sarah Palin as a “whackjob.” Or that Alaska’s largest newspaper enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama for president. But it remains fun (in that stomach-churning way) to take a peak at some of the myriad reasons why Palin is widely disliked and distrusted even among her own people.

Take fruit flies, for instance. In Palin’s recent speech on special needs children, one of her more awkward blunders pertained to earmarks:

"Where does a lot of that earmark money end up, anyway? [...] You've heard about, um, these -- some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense, and sometimes these dollars they go to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not!"

As the Huffington Post points out, fruit flies have been essential to autism research, showing that a protein called neurexin plays a huge role in proper brain functioning. Considering that this speech was supposed to be about helping special needs families, it’s truly baffling why Palin would have chosen to bash research that is widely known to be integral to understanding and treating autism.

Furthermore, fruit flies are the basic research tool of modern genetics, as anyone who has taken a biology class knows. To sneer at such research displays either extreme stupidity or a dangerous lack of concern for the opinions of the vast majority of her would-be constituents.

Photo: wizbangblog.com

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Broccoli Spheres and Carrot Air: Kid-Friendly Veggies

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:35:00 GMT

If you’re not inclined to take Dr. Brazelton’s advice to forget all about vegetables and just buy a multivitamin for your kids, you may be interested in Sara Dickerman’s experiments with something called “molecular gastronomy.” In an effort to get her picky three-year-old (AKA the Critic) to eat vegetables, she tried out chef Ferran Adrian’s recipes for “spherified” vegetables, which are basically gelatinous globules with liquid centers.

Doesn’t exactly sound appetizing to me, but if your kids like Jell-O, why not broccoli spheres? Plus, using Adrian’s cooking methods turns dinner preparation into a science project your kids are likely to be excited about.

$200 will buy you a Texturas kit, which contains the additives Adria uses for his magical concoctions, as well as some tools not normally associated with food. Most importantly, the kit comes with a recipe book. I, for one, would have no idea what to do with a giant syringe, a powder called Xanthana, and broccoli. It turns out that, after mixing all of the ingredients together using the mysterious tools, you drop the food balls into a mixture of sodium alginate and water. There, they congeal into what look like, as you can see from the photo, tadpoles.

After a few failed experiments, Dickerman alights on a dish she calls “homemade carrot air,” which the Critic gobbles down. It’s a pricy, time-consuming way to go, but if you can spare the time and money for vegetal spherification, your own little critics may thank you.

They Say: Don't Eat Your Veggies!

Palin and Biden's Love Child - Take a Look

JeanneSager — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:28:00 GMT

OK, so Palin and Biden didn't really make a love child. Although, if they did, I betcha she'd deliver - even if the amnio said it was going to be a Democrat. And thanks to the wonders of Photoshop (which has done wonders in removing from each family picture the smear of something or other that my daughter has wiped across her cheek juuuust before the shutter was snapped), we now know just what the BiPal would look like.

You might want to lower your speakers, the accompanying music reminds me of one of those movies we used to watch in science class, but definitely take note the smearing on of lipstick. On this, day 26 of the countdown until the election, enjoy!

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I can tell how much you orgasm because of how you walk

Brett Singer — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Let's say a guy tells a group of female college students that he can tell how often they've had orgasms by watching them walk. That guy would likely get a smack for that, right?

But if he's a SCIENTIST… well, that's different.

"A new study found that trained sexologists could infer a woman's history of vaginal orgasm by observing the way she walks. The study is published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine."

Oh! Only TRAINED sexologists. Not those UNtrained sexlogists. (I think every male on the planet qualifies as an "untrained sexologist.")

"Led by Stuart Brody of the University of the West of Scotland in collaboration with colleagues in Belgium, the study involved 16 female Belgian university students. Subjects completed a questionnaire on their sexual behavior and were then videotaped from a distance while walking in a public place. The videotapes were rated by two professors of sexology and two research assistants trained in the functional-sexological approach to sexology, who were not aware of the women's orgasmic history.

"The results showed that the appropriately trained sexologists were able to correctly infer vaginal orgasm through watching the way the women walked over 80 percent of the time. Further analysis revealed that the sum of stride length and vertebral rotation was greater for the vaginally orgasmic women. 'This could reflect the free, unblocked energetic flow from the legs through the pelvis to the spine,' the authors note."

So they videotaped college girls walking and then determined that the way they walked revealed fascinating details about their sexual experiences. Are these guys geniuses or just too nervous to actually get into porn?

I realize I'm not a scientist, but did the Beavis and Butthead Foundation fund this study? "Hey Beavis… heh heh heh heh… I bet I can tell you how many times that chick O'ed by the way she walks…" "Dude, you can't even spell orgasm." Heh heh heh heh…

image: some blog

Source: Science Daily via Morning News

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They Say: no link between autism and measles vaccine

Brett Singer — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:30:00 GMT

This news is unfortunately not likely to solve anyone's questions about whether or not vaccines are a cause of autism.

"Dr. W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, collaborating with a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Trinity College in Dublin, tackled the hot-button question: whether the MMR vaccine causes autism.

"'We are persuaded there is no link,' said Lipkin, director of the center on infection and immunity at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health in Manhattan."

HOWEVER…

"The study was not designed to address other rumored theories of autism's cause, such as thimerosal, the much-debated mercury-based preservative in some other vaccines, Lipkin said."

Now, as usual, the devil is in the details. The 1998 study that linked MMR vaccines to autism was based on a whopping 12 children. I'm no scientist (nor have I played one on TV) but that doesn't sound like a very large sample base.

For this new study, "Lipkin and colleagues searched for traces of genetic material linked to the virus in intestinal tissue taken from 25 children with autism and gastrointestinal problems. They compared the samples to those from 13 children without autism but with intestinal problems. In 24 of the group of 25 and in 12 of the 13, there was no evidence of viral persistence, leading researchers to conclude the vaccine did not cause autism or gastrointestinal problems." So it’s a larger group of kids. Not that many, but on the surface it sounds more valid.

HOWEVER…

Why not do a study on thimerosal, which contains, as Jenny McCarthy calls it, "frickin' mercury"? Wouldn't that be, like, actually useful?

In theory, this study will put to rest parents' fears about this particular vaccine. Of course, as the great Homer Simpson once said, communism works -- in theory. In other words, I doubt this news will do anything to change anybody's mind one way or the other.

source: Newsday

image: timesonline.typepad.com