Polio is a disease that should be long dead by now. Some readers will be old enough to remember rooms full of ‘iron lungs’ – grotesque life-support machines that did the breathing for children left paralysed by this deadly infection. With their small heads poking out through a tight rubber seal, steam engine-like contraptions sucked and pressed on the child’s chest in the hope that their strength would recover. Polio infection was also called ‘infantile paralysis’ and it struck terror into the hearts of parents everywhere. The viral disease starts out like a mild flu then attacks the brain and spinal cord. A blight on humankind, children who survived could be left with monstrous deformities. Read more
Tag: children
Mario turns 30! How playing video games can be good for us (sometimes)
Happy Birthday Mario! The large-nosed plumber, famous as Nintendo video game character who jumps down pipes and collects mushrooms, has just turned just turned thirty*. And he now the iconic video game star has a real reason to jump for joy. Research is increasingly showing us that video games could be good for us, which means all of us could benefit from a bit of Mario-time every once in a while.
Originally a tiny 130 pixel graphic, the mustachioed 1985 superhero went on to spawn a franchise worth over $10 million and in 1993 inspired the first Hollywood movie to feature a video game. (Called Mario Bros. it stared Bob Hoskins, but was awful.) Today’s photorealistic games are a far cry from these early days and are no longer the preserve of closeted teenage boys. People of all ages play computer games in their front rooms, often together. This hasn’t stopped parents and doctors being concerned, however, and photorealistic action games tend to cause the most controversy. Read more
What not to tell a child: “Clear your plate or there’s no dessert!”
Tonight’s meal will be steak with all the trimmings and I can’t wait. Nothing – bar a heard of wildebeest running through the dining room – will stop me from finishing it. For I know it will be delicious and that the meat was expensive. My mother has taught me well: ‘waste not, want not.’
Many of us believe it is important to eat everything on our plate. I have yet to find anyone who wasn’t told by their parents at some point to “Clear your plate – and think of all the starving children in ______” It’s the kind of parenting instruction that seems common-sense but it not taught everywhere; in several East Asian cultures, for example, it is far more courteous to leave some leftovers at the end of a meal. Our peculiar attitudes to plate-clearing are almost certainly a throwback to wartime health campaigns. In years of hardship through both World Wars, government posters would read “Leave a clean dinner plate: thousands are starving in Europe”. Oh, how times change: In 2015, one in four adults in the UK are obese (in the USA, it is one in three). Frighteningly, childhood obesity is also on the rise and today a third of all UK 10-11 year olds are overweight or obese.
Pester Power! Sweets at the Checkout: Supermarkets ban them. Again.
Parents, there are times when I feel for you. I pity you especially when you are queuing at the supermarket. You have coaxed a seven year old up and down a dozen aisles; successfully negotiated a wonky trolley past other similarly wonky trollies, and then are forced to anxiously wait to part plastic for a carefully chosen pile of food and toilet rolls. Anxious – not because the car parking is about to run out – but because little Isabel is about to notice to sweets.
Too late – she’s spotted them… “…oh, but pleeeaaaasssee!?…” No, darling, for the fifteenth time, you can’t have a chocolate bunny. Why, oh why, does food shopping have to be like this? Read more
What’s inside that energy drink? Sugar, acid, caffeine + ‘fairy dust’
It is 7 a.m. and I am investigating the world’s most popular mind-altering drug. Having scrutinised the latest data, it’s time for a hands-on experiment. The substance in question is a potent white powder called 1.3 7- trimethylxanthine. Its use has reached endemic levels in children – and health care professionals are concerned. You will know this drug as caffeine. And the formulation under scrutiny is called an ‘energy drink’.
Ever since highly caffeinated energy drinks charged onto the scene twenty years ago, they have been branded “dangerous” and “harmful” by the media. Today, one in ten British teenagers drink an energy drink on most days, and a frightening 25% of children under ten have drunk one in the past year. I’ve decided to discover out what’s really inside them – and find out what they taste like. Read more
4 Fascinating Facts on Why You Are Easily Distracted (and not likely to read all of this)
Go on and admit it, you have a terrible attention span.
But it’s not all your fault. This is the internet after all and everyone knows that the ‘information superhighway’ is a candy store of virtual distractions – endless images, buttons and flashing graphics all competing for your attention. Right now, there’s probably four or five other things you’d quite like to be doing: Shopping on ebay, browsing YouTube for funny videos, reading emails or checking Facebook (who knows, someone might have commented on your oh-so-witty status update)!
Exposed! Britain’s ‘Energy Drink’ Child-Addicts
What did you used to spend your pocket money on? I clearly remember the excitement of going to the corner shop and getting as many handfulls of strawberry shoelaces and cola ice-pops that my 50p could buy. Kids these days are far less likely to buy sweet treats: confectionary sales have stangated as a new ‘vogue’ has hit the schools . Push-pops are most definately ‘out’ and the new cool is ‘energy drinks‘.
Despite the the recession, sales of caffeine-fuelled fizzy-pop are at an all time high; Read more
Artificial Intelligence
Will computers become the new form of life on Earth?
Yesterday, I read a news article about alien intelligence on the BBC news website ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11041449 ). Astronomer Dr Seth Shostak announced that it was likely that if alien intelligence existed then it was likely it would be ‘artificial’. Read more