Blog for Youth

A new imaging research has demonstrated that the reduced brain activity associated with the onset of dyslexia appears to develop before, not after, a child starts to read.

The finding may help clinicians screen for at-risk children at an early pre-reading age.

“We already knew that children and adults with a diagnosis of dyslexia show brain alterations within the left posterior — back — part of the brain,” said study co-author Nadine Gaab, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the neuroscience program at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston. “However, it was unclear whether these alterations are a result of dyslexia [that] show up after years of reading failure or whether they predate the reading onset,” she noted.

“[Here] we could show that they predate reading onset,” Gaab said. “This suggests that children are either born with it or that it develops within the first few years of life.”

The study was published in the Jan. 23 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to Danish researchers, a process linked to natural cell aging has now also been associated with knee osteoarthritis.

The researchers used new technology for closely evaluating the telomeres (lengths of DNA on the ends of chromosomes) of cells taken from the knees of osteoarthritis patients who had joint replacement surgery.

According to the findings published in the Jan. 16 online edition of the journal Arthritis Research & Therapy, the cells had abnormally shorted telomeres and the percentage of cells with ultra-short telomeres increased with proximity to the damaged area in the knee joint.

“The telomere story shows us that there are, in theory, two processes going on in osteoarthritis. Age-related shortening of telomeres, which leads to the inability of cells to continue dividing and so to cell senescence [deterioration], and ultra-short telomeres, probably caused by compression stress during use, which lead to senescence and failure of the joint to repair itself,” study leader Maria Harbo said in a journal news release.

“We believe the second situation to be the most important in osteoarthritis. The damaged cartilage could add to the mechanical stress within the joint and so cause a feedback cycle driving the progression of the disease,” she added.

According to a study published on Wednesday, an exceptionally long-running investigation has backed use of the Pill to ease menstruation pain.

The findings come from health research spanning 30 years and indicated that more than 1,400 Swedish women born in 1962, 1972 and 1982 and who took oral contraceptives reported significant drops in two acknowledged measurements of pain.

The investigation was led by gynecologist Ingela Lindh at Gothenburg University’s Institute of Clinical Sciences and is published online by the European journal Human Reproduction.

Menstrual pain, known as dysmenorrhoea, is believed to account for 600 million lost working hours and two billion dollars in lost productivity annually in the United States alone.

A new analysis of past studies published this week has suggested that children who get more exercise also tend to do better in school.

The finding “just helps to continue to show the importance of exposing kids to physical activity,” said Sandy Slater, who has studied recess and physical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago but wasn’t involved in the new research.

“There’s obviously the long-term links between physical activity and health, but this is another reason to try to continue to keep some dedicated amount of time for physical education or recess or some other types of physical activity in the school day,” she told Reuters Health.

“It might mean going to school by bike… Any kind of physical activity you can think of. It doesn’t mean only the physical education standard class,” said Amika Singh, who worked on the new study.

Most young adults do not understand the importance of regular exercise just as they do not bother much about mother’s cooking.

“The transition from late adolescence to early adulthood represents the most dramatic declines in physical activity across a person’s life,” according to Dr. Matthew Kwan, a researcher at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

“Team sports, varsity activities tend to decrease or drop off entirely,” he explained. “For those who go to college, studies become more important. Then there’s the social aspect that eats up their disposable time as well.”

The research appeared in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

On Wednesday, the European Space Agency has received the first signal from an unmanned Russian spacecraft bound for a moon of Mars since it got stuck in the orbit of Earth two weeks ago.

The space agency of Russia said an ESA tracking facility in Australia got the signal from the Phobos-Ground probe early on Wednesday in the western city of Perth.

ESA’s teams of flight dynamics technicians, who calculate the orbits, and the operational center staff, who actually send up the signal, had been helping to try to communicate with the Russian probe for the past 10 days, said Bernhard von Weyhe a spokesman for ESA, based at its operational headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany.

Roscosmos said in a statement that Russian and European space experts will coordinate further attempts to contact the probe. Weyhe said the next try would occur later Wednesday when the spacecraft is expected to pass over the satellite dishes in Australia.

“We did it as if the probe was on Mars, not only 200 to 340 kilometers (125 to 210 miles) away from Earth,” Weyhe said.

Ruth Stone, an award-winning poet for whom tragedy halted, and then inspired a career, has died in Vermont at the age of 96.

She was surrounded by her daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren when she breathed her last on November 19 of natural causes at her home in Ripton.

Widowed in her 40s and little known for years after, Ruth Stone became one of the country’s most honored poets in her 80s and 90s, winning the National Book Award in 2002 for “In the Next Galaxy” and being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for “What Love Comes To.” She received numerous other citations, including a National Book Critics Circle award, two Guggenheims and a Whiting Award.

“I think my work is a natural response to my life,” Stone once said. “What I see and feel changes like a prism, moment to moment; a poem holds and illuminates. It is a small drama. I think, too, my poems are a release, a laughing at the ridiculous and songs of mourning, celebrating marriage and loss, all the sad baggage of our lives. It is so overwhelming, so complex.”

On Friday, the government of Australia approved SABMiller’s A$11.5 billion ($11.2 billion) deal to acquire Foster’s Group Ltd under foreign acquisitions laws.

The Aussie government however imposed conditions requiring the company to keep brewing operations in Australia.

The government approval is the final regulatory condition to be cleared ahead of the Foster’s shareholders vote set for December 1, which is expected to pass the deal.

Treasurer Wayne Swan, who also approved acquisition of the remaining 50 percent of Pacific Beverages now owned by Coca-Cola Amatil, said SABMiller must keep management of the iconic Australian beer brand in Australia.

SABMiller must also continue to invest in Foster’s, the maker of Victoria Bitter, Carlton Draught and Pure Blonde, and not shift any of Foster’s existing brewing facilities offshore to produce beer for the Australian domestic market, he said.

“SABMiller has agreed to a number of undertakings which recognize the significance of Foster’s to our economy and to our community, and support Australian jobs,” Swan said in a statement.

During a four-month investigation into counterfeit drugs, police in China have seized more than 65 million fake pills and arrested 114 suspects.

A criminal network extending over eight provinces used starch or corn powder to make fake medicines and repackaged drugs past their use-by dates, according to a statement by the Ministry of Public Security.

From news.yahoo.com:

The ministry says police also found animal feed, chemical pigments and other ingredients that are harmful to people.

Police started the investigation after discovering that a woman in central Henan province had substituted genuine medicines with fake products in pharmacies.

1,000 police officers broke up 117 dens that produced or sold fake medicine via websites or advertisements, the ministry said.

According to new research, kids can be tougher on obese peers and others with an “undesirable trait” if they believe it’s the child’s own fault.

“If the students think that the child has tried to change, that tends to positively influence how they anticipate interacting with that peer,” study author Mark Barnett, a psychology professor, said in a university news release. “They really liked kids who are successful in overcoming their problem, but they also really liked kids who tried and put effort into changing.”

From in.news.yahoo.com:

The study included 137 third- through eighth-grade students who were asked to respond to statements about six hypothetical boys who were either a poor student or poor athlete, extremely overweight, extremely aggressive, extremely shy, or had symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

The Kansas State University researchers presented the hypothetical boys as real and said the boys had been asked if they were trying to do anything to fix their undesirable trait and whether their attempts had been successful.

The students then rated their attitudes towards the boys. The results showed that the more the students believed the boy was at fault for his undesirable trait, the more they would tease and make fun of him, and the less they would help him if he needed it.

The study is expected to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Genetic Psychology.