AMANDA GARDNER, - Health Magazine
Stephan: This is what our society is doing to our children.
Girls in the United States are entering puberty at earlier ages than they have in the past, a new study reports.
More than 10 percent of white 7-year-old girls in the study, which was conducted in the mid-2000s, had reached a stage of breast development marking the start of puberty, compared to just 5 percent in a similar study conducted in the early 1990s.
Black and Hispanic girls continue to mature faster than white girls, on average. Nearly one-quarter of black girls and 15 percent of Hispanic girls had entered puberty by age 7, according to the new study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics.
But the trend toward earlier puberty is not as pronounced among blacks as it is among whites, the researchers say. Although the rate of early puberty among black girls in the study (23 percent) was higher than that observed in the early 1990s (15 percent), the increase was not statistically significant.
‘White girls are catching up,’ says Frank Biro, M.D., the lead author of the study and the director of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
Experts aren’t sure what’s behind the increase in earlier puberty, but it’s likely due to a combination of factors, including the childhood obesity epidemic […]
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Stephan:
Our personalities stay pretty much the same throughout our lives, from our early childhood years to after we’re over the hill, according to a new study.
The results show personality traits observed in children as young as first graders are a strong predictor of adult behavior.
‘We remain recognizably the same person,’ said study author Christopher Nave, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside. ‘This speaks to the importance of understanding personality because it does follow us wherever we go across time and contexts.’
The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Tracking personalities
Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse schoolchildren (grades 1 – 6) in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of those individuals 40 years later.
They examined four personality attributes – talkativeness (called verbal fluency), adaptability (cope well with new situations), impulsiveness and self-minimizing behavior (essentially being humble to the point of minimizing one’s importance).
Among the findings:
Talkative youngsters tended to show interest in intellectual matters, speak fluently, try to control situations, and exhibit a high degree of intelligence as adults. Children who rated low in verbal fluency were observed […]
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Stephan: It is important to remember, particularly in matters of reproduction, that we are mammals. Think about that for a moment.
Not only does breast milk contain a perfect balance of nutrients, but these nutrients are in a form that infants can better digest and absorb.
Numerous major health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dietetic Association, strongly support breastfeeding. Their position statements urge women when possible, to exclusively breast feed their babies for the first six month of life and to continue breastfeeding with complimentary foods from six months to at least 12 months of age.
The belief is that this pattern provides optimal nutrition and health protection for the baby. It can be especially important for pre-term and low birth weight babies.
When the recommendations state ‘exclusively,’ they mean attempting breast feeding shortly after birth and not giving the infant supplemental bottles of formula, water, other liquids, or pacifiers. Doing so appears to lower the success rate of initiation and continuation of breastfeeding, and reduces the nutrition the baby receives.
Not only does breast milk contain a perfect balance of nutrients, but these nutrients are in a form that infants can better digest and absorb. This potentially means a reduced risk of digestive problems and optimal nutrient uptake. The amounts of the various nutrients are also at a level […]
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Stephan:
A piece of ice four times the size of Manhattan island has broken away from an ice shelf in Greenland, according to scientists in the U.S.
The 260 square-kilometer (100 square miles) ice island separated from the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland early on Thursday, researchers based at the University of Delaware said.
The ice island, which is about half the height of the Empire State Building, is the biggest piece of ice to break away from the Arctic icecap since 1962 and amounts to a quarter of the Petermann 70-kilometer floating ice shelf, according to research leader Andreas Muenchow.
‘The freshwater stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for more than two years. It could also keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days,’ Muenchow said.
Muenchow’s team is studying ice in the Nares Strait separating Greenland from Canada, about 1,000 kilometers south of the North Pole.
Satellite data from NASA’s MODIS-Aqua satellite revealed the initial rupture which was confirmed within hours by Trudy Wohlleben of the Canadian Ice Service, according to the University of Delaware website.
Muenchow said the island could block the Nares Strait as it drifts south, or break into smaller islands and continue […]
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Stephan: Further evidence of a society pulling itself apart. We are developing two populations that live in essentially different worlds with few points of tangency. This is deeply unhealthy for reasons that should be obvious.
Considering the U.S. economy is still struggling, newly-released data showing an all-time record number of food stamp recipients – 40.8 million in May, up by 400,000 compared to April – shouldn’t surprise many people.
On the other hand, it may seem peculiar that there was a sharp increase in the number of millionaires.
Yet, according to a newly released report from wealth tracking consultants Capgemini, the number of millionaires across ten major U.S. metropolitan areas increased 17.5 percent in 2009 over 2008. New York City has the most millionaires, 667,000, up 18.7 percent.
The swelling ranks of the millionaires’ club comes even as a growing number of people, nearly 40 million at last count, are living in poverty. But trying to draw any hard conclusions from these two seemingly opposing trends is no walk down easy street, even for those specializing in economic research.
‘There are going to be commentators who say this shows a greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands or that the rich are soaking the poor, but it’s not necessarily the case,’ said Kristin Seefeldt, a researcher affiliated with the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan.
‘I do think the fact that there are more millionaires at the same […]
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