Just how long is pregnancy supposed to be? It's not exactly the nine months you may have thought of.
"It's 10 four-week months, or 280 days," Dr. Kurt Finberg said. That's 40 weeks of pregnancy. But again, too many babies have been born weeks before that.
"Keep your baby in as long as possible, it can mean the world to them."
"About 40 percent of the brain development occurs in the last two weeks," Johah said. "Their lungs may not be property developed."
http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/health/117284358.html
Data from a National Vital Statistics report shows the national rate of pre-term births has shot up nearly 36 percent in the last 20 years.
Some reports say much of that has been due to scheduled C-sections, and the concern is the number of those procedures where there was no medical need, called "low-risk." The Kern County Public Health Department provided some data.
For the years of 2005 through 2007, in Kern County the low-risk C-sections accounted for an average of eight of every 100 births at San Joaquin Hospital. In that time, these births accounted for 10 of 100 births at Delano Regional and Bakersfield Memorial, and eleven per 100 births at Kern Medical Center. Mercy Hospital had an average of 14 of these births per 100, and it was 22 at Ridgecrest Regional Hospital.
Experts say C-sections pose risks to mothers, even death. The numbers in Kern County are also troubling. We tracked down local statistics from the Office of State Health Planning and Development.
In 2005 there were no "maternal deaths" linked to C-section deliveries. But in 2006, one of these deaths was reported at Kern Medical Center, and in 2007 there was one death at each KMC and Mercy Hospital.
In 2008, two maternal deaths related to C-section happened at Delano Regional Medical Center. No deaths like this were reported in 2009 in Kern County. During these years the total number of local births ranged from 13,326 to 14,591.
"As you can see, the death totals are small and for some years none occurred at all," OSHPD spokesman David Byrnes responded in an e-mail.
With the risks to mothers and babies, why do early births happen? Local doctors see a variety of reasons.
"There's a common feeling in late pregnancy that, yes they're tired of being pregnant, and they want to get delivered sooner," Finberg said.
Some doctors say expectant mothers may have friends or relatives who scheduled a C-section or induced labor early, and so they think it's OK.
"Maybe there's family members there at a certain time," Jonah added. But, she also mentioned a more troubling possible reason for more C-sections. "There's also concerns that possibly because maybe the reimbursement for a surgical delivery rather than natural delivery is a little bit more, that could play into it."
Some reports show C-sections cost twice what regular births do.
The March of Dimes is focusing strong efforts on reducing the number of early births, particularly deliveries from 37 to 39 weeks of pregnancy. Eyewitness News discovered hospitals in Kern County are already taking action.
"You have to have a medical condition that would dictate that you need to be delivered earlier, in order to deliver before 39 weeks," Finberg said. Jonah said that is now also the policy at Mercy, San Joaquin, KMC and Ridgecrest Regional.
Some doctors already see results.
"Our rate of pre-term births are much reduced," Bhogal said. She added that before the policy change at Memorial, she'd hear from parents who had decided on an elective, early birth. "They'd say, 'I wish I had waited.'"
In some cases, mothers may not be exactly sure how far along their pregnancy is. Bhogal said they have four criteria to determine gestational age, and that's more important now with the hospital's policy on no elective births before 39 weeks.
One criteria is referring to an ultra-sound test. But, it's important to have an ultra-sound early in the pregnancy.
Finberg agrees. "Early ultra-sounds are much more accurate than late ultra-sounds in terms of defining maternal age," he said. And Finberg stresses it's important for many reasons to get medical care as early as possible in a pregnancy. The goal is healthy babies and mothers.
Bhogal is glad more information is going out on the dangers of early, elective deliveries. It's much better for mothers to wait.
"I know it's hard when you're late in pregnancy, and you want to just get the baby out," Bhogal said. "But it's important to stay, because mom is the best incubator."
Jonah says even the final few weeks of pregnancy are vital. "Those extra couple weeks, when you end up with a healthy baby, is well worth it."
And Gonzalez didn't have a choice on when her baby could be delivered, but she had a message to mothers who might consider an early birth.
7.3.11
Language bootstrapping the brain
Language is one of the most demanding cognitive tasks faced by humans early in their development.
The classic language areas have their own developmental biases emerging from the functions of nearby cortical areas. The frontal cortex area immediately rostral to Broca's area develops earlier as a center for processing action sequences. Other areas involved in language processing lie usefully near auditory and association areas. The visual cortex seems like it should be outside the loop.
Language has sharp elbows. It muscles its way into the brain, crowding out other neural functions. Language has the most powerful weapons at hand -- a baby's first word prompts an entire language community to pull the dopamine and serotonin levers of emotion and attention.
A function that was strongly specified by genetics, patterned early in brain development, would not plant itself in spare neurons like a weed in a vacant lot. Only a system that bootstraps itself upon experiencing language inputs could have such plasticity. The structure of the language environment fosters the development of the classic language areas, biased to appear in those particular places by prenatal developmental trajectories, but not built according to a genetic blueprint.
The blind subjects tell us that the ground for language processing is almost as fertile elsewhere in the cortex. Many brain areas have the genetic equipment to recruit and organize neurons into useful circuits for language processing.
Language development is developmentally robust because it can rely on a rich language environment, not because of genetic standardization. The basic problems of language evolution must be explained by showing how robust language communities emerged. I don't preclude genetics, far from it -- weaker language environments may have become stronger because of evolutionary change. But that evolution must have been substantially domain-general, because language processing is not specifically canalized by genetics.
I like this scenario because it means we shouldn't be looking for lots of language-specific genetic changes in the last few hundred thousand years. The Neandertal genome suggests that there may not have been any at all.
My second speculation: If the language environment determines the instantiation of language processing, then brains must be substantially different in the way they process language.
Children experience different language environments -- not only different languages, but different microenvironments within language communities. Only strong genetic controls could canalize brains despite the differences in their language environments. In brains where language processing emerges readily in the visual cortex, genetic controls cannot possibly synchronize brains in the face of environmental variation.
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/language/bedny-blind-visual-cortex-language-2011.html
The classic language areas have their own developmental biases emerging from the functions of nearby cortical areas. The frontal cortex area immediately rostral to Broca's area develops earlier as a center for processing action sequences. Other areas involved in language processing lie usefully near auditory and association areas. The visual cortex seems like it should be outside the loop.
Language has sharp elbows. It muscles its way into the brain, crowding out other neural functions. Language has the most powerful weapons at hand -- a baby's first word prompts an entire language community to pull the dopamine and serotonin levers of emotion and attention.
A function that was strongly specified by genetics, patterned early in brain development, would not plant itself in spare neurons like a weed in a vacant lot. Only a system that bootstraps itself upon experiencing language inputs could have such plasticity. The structure of the language environment fosters the development of the classic language areas, biased to appear in those particular places by prenatal developmental trajectories, but not built according to a genetic blueprint.
The blind subjects tell us that the ground for language processing is almost as fertile elsewhere in the cortex. Many brain areas have the genetic equipment to recruit and organize neurons into useful circuits for language processing.
Language development is developmentally robust because it can rely on a rich language environment, not because of genetic standardization. The basic problems of language evolution must be explained by showing how robust language communities emerged. I don't preclude genetics, far from it -- weaker language environments may have become stronger because of evolutionary change. But that evolution must have been substantially domain-general, because language processing is not specifically canalized by genetics.
I like this scenario because it means we shouldn't be looking for lots of language-specific genetic changes in the last few hundred thousand years. The Neandertal genome suggests that there may not have been any at all.
My second speculation: If the language environment determines the instantiation of language processing, then brains must be substantially different in the way they process language.
Children experience different language environments -- not only different languages, but different microenvironments within language communities. Only strong genetic controls could canalize brains despite the differences in their language environments. In brains where language processing emerges readily in the visual cortex, genetic controls cannot possibly synchronize brains in the face of environmental variation.
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/language/bedny-blind-visual-cortex-language-2011.html
No screen time for kids under age 2
By Mary Klute
Based on a review of the literature, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a set of recommendations back in February 2001. There is a long list of recommendations, including:
no screen time for kids under age 2 limiting older children’s screen time to 1 to 2 hours of quality programming per day. However, 2001 was 10 years ago—a lot has changed since then. More research has been conducted on this topic in the last 10 years and children’s programming has changed (in part based on the results of the research).
I came across two recent research articles about children and TV. The first was an article by Suzy Tomopoulos and her colleagues that was published last December in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. She and her colleagues examined a group of six month olds from low-income families. Their research was innovative in that they didn’t just look at how much screen time children were exposed to, they also looked at the content. They divided media into three types: educational programming aimed at young children, non-educational programs aimed at young children, and media aimed at older children or adults.
On average, these 6 month olds viewed about 2.5 hours of media per day, and about 60% of it fell into that last category—media aimed at older children or adults. They found that 6 month old children who viewed more minutes of media per day were likely to have lower cognitive and language skills at age 14 months, supporting the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations.
The researchers wondered if the impact of amount of media exposure would vary depending on the type of media kids were watching. Indeed they found this to be true. When children were exposed to more minutes of older child/adult oriented media, their cognitive and language skills were lower when they were 14 months than children who had been exposed to fewer minutes. They found no association for the other two types of media.
This research has two main take-home messages. First, exposing your baby to media not designed for them can be harmful. I doubt too many parents are seeking out shows like Law & Order or Hannah Montana for their children to watch intently. It is more likely that babies are exposed to this type of media while being held by an adult or because they are doing something else (playing, eating) in a room where the TV is on.
I’d also venture a guess that many of these parents assume that their children aren’t paying much attention to what’s on the TV—and they are probably right, at least some of the time. However, the authors hypothesize that time spent watching TV together is harmful because time spent watching TV is time that adults are not spending playing with and interacting with babies…and face to face, responsive play does wonders for babies' cognitive and language development.
The second take home message is that there is no evidence from this study of a positive effect of so-called “educational” media for children this young. Why is that? Researchers have done a lot of experiments in recent years to try to sort that out, and that was precisely the topic of the second research article I came across recently. I’ll write more about that next month…but in the meantime, what are your ideas for why “educational” media for children don’t seem to have a big impact?
http://www.claytonearlylearning.org/blog/?cat=21
Based on a review of the literature, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a set of recommendations back in February 2001. There is a long list of recommendations, including:
no screen time for kids under age 2 limiting older children’s screen time to 1 to 2 hours of quality programming per day. However, 2001 was 10 years ago—a lot has changed since then. More research has been conducted on this topic in the last 10 years and children’s programming has changed (in part based on the results of the research).
I came across two recent research articles about children and TV. The first was an article by Suzy Tomopoulos and her colleagues that was published last December in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. She and her colleagues examined a group of six month olds from low-income families. Their research was innovative in that they didn’t just look at how much screen time children were exposed to, they also looked at the content. They divided media into three types: educational programming aimed at young children, non-educational programs aimed at young children, and media aimed at older children or adults.
On average, these 6 month olds viewed about 2.5 hours of media per day, and about 60% of it fell into that last category—media aimed at older children or adults. They found that 6 month old children who viewed more minutes of media per day were likely to have lower cognitive and language skills at age 14 months, supporting the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations.
The researchers wondered if the impact of amount of media exposure would vary depending on the type of media kids were watching. Indeed they found this to be true. When children were exposed to more minutes of older child/adult oriented media, their cognitive and language skills were lower when they were 14 months than children who had been exposed to fewer minutes. They found no association for the other two types of media.
This research has two main take-home messages. First, exposing your baby to media not designed for them can be harmful. I doubt too many parents are seeking out shows like Law & Order or Hannah Montana for their children to watch intently. It is more likely that babies are exposed to this type of media while being held by an adult or because they are doing something else (playing, eating) in a room where the TV is on.
I’d also venture a guess that many of these parents assume that their children aren’t paying much attention to what’s on the TV—and they are probably right, at least some of the time. However, the authors hypothesize that time spent watching TV together is harmful because time spent watching TV is time that adults are not spending playing with and interacting with babies…and face to face, responsive play does wonders for babies' cognitive and language development.
The second take home message is that there is no evidence from this study of a positive effect of so-called “educational” media for children this young. Why is that? Researchers have done a lot of experiments in recent years to try to sort that out, and that was precisely the topic of the second research article I came across recently. I’ll write more about that next month…but in the meantime, what are your ideas for why “educational” media for children don’t seem to have a big impact?
http://www.claytonearlylearning.org/blog/?cat=21
Critical period of language acquisition
Bringing children up in a bilingual home provides many benefits and learning opportunities, and can be a real gift to them. Not only do they learn the two languages they are exposed to, but they also assimilate an understanding of grammar and how sentences are made across different languages.
Further, early exposure to two languages is advantageous to toddlers and preschoolers when there is a critical period of language acquisition, making it easier for them to learn new languages at a later age within the formal setting of schools and college.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2011/0301/1224291075281.html
Further, early exposure to two languages is advantageous to toddlers and preschoolers when there is a critical period of language acquisition, making it easier for them to learn new languages at a later age within the formal setting of schools and college.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2011/0301/1224291075281.html
3.3.11
Will Cheryl Cole's Newcastle accent work in America
Marina Tyndall, a voice coach specialising in accent and dialect, rejects the notion that some vocal styles are intrinsically clearer to American listeners than others.
Cole, she says, could quite easily accommodate her accent to unfamiliar Stateside ears without abandoning it. Techniques she suggests include "chunking" words into shorter phrases with brief pauses, allowing listeners time to catch up - and using facial expressions and pitch changes to signpost key words.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12619718
Cole, she says, could quite easily accommodate her accent to unfamiliar Stateside ears without abandoning it. Techniques she suggests include "chunking" words into shorter phrases with brief pauses, allowing listeners time to catch up - and using facial expressions and pitch changes to signpost key words.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12619718
Graduates - the new measure of power
At the beginning of the last century, the power of nations might have been measured in battleships and coal. In this century it's as likely to be graduates. There has been an unprecedented global surge in the numbers of young people going to university. China's plans are not so much an upward incline as a vertical take-off.
In 1998, there were only about a million students in China. Within a decade, it had become the biggest university system in the world. Figures last month from China's education ministry reported more than 34 million graduates in the past four years. By 2020 there will be 35.5 million students enrolled. The president of Yale described this as the fastest such expansion in human history.
Inextricably linked with this expansion has been another phenomenon - the globalisation of universities.
"Much like in the renaissance in Europe, when the talent class and the creative class travelled among the great idea capitals, so in the 21st century, the people who carry the ideas that will shape the future will travel among the capitals.
Mr Sexton sets out a different kind of map of the world, in which universities, with bases in several cities, become the hubs for the economies of the future, "magnetising talent" and providing the ideas and energy to drive economic innovation.
According to the OECD, in the 1960s South Korea had a similar national wealth to Afghanistan. Now it tops international education league tables and has some of the highest-rated universities in the world.
"Universities are being seen as a key to the new economies, they're trying to grow the knowledge economy by building a base in universities," says Professor Altbach.
If there are parallels with economic and political rivalries, the US remains the academic superpower, not least because of the raw wealth of its top universities. Harvard sits on an endowment worth $27.4bn and spends more than $3.5bn a year. It means that for every one dollar spent by a leading European university such as the London School Economics, Harvard can spend almost $10.
Even the poorest Ivy League university in the US will have an endowment bigger than the gross domestic product of many African countries.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12597811
In 1998, there were only about a million students in China. Within a decade, it had become the biggest university system in the world. Figures last month from China's education ministry reported more than 34 million graduates in the past four years. By 2020 there will be 35.5 million students enrolled. The president of Yale described this as the fastest such expansion in human history.
Inextricably linked with this expansion has been another phenomenon - the globalisation of universities.
"Much like in the renaissance in Europe, when the talent class and the creative class travelled among the great idea capitals, so in the 21st century, the people who carry the ideas that will shape the future will travel among the capitals.
Mr Sexton sets out a different kind of map of the world, in which universities, with bases in several cities, become the hubs for the economies of the future, "magnetising talent" and providing the ideas and energy to drive economic innovation.
According to the OECD, in the 1960s South Korea had a similar national wealth to Afghanistan. Now it tops international education league tables and has some of the highest-rated universities in the world.
"Universities are being seen as a key to the new economies, they're trying to grow the knowledge economy by building a base in universities," says Professor Altbach.
If there are parallels with economic and political rivalries, the US remains the academic superpower, not least because of the raw wealth of its top universities. Harvard sits on an endowment worth $27.4bn and spends more than $3.5bn a year. It means that for every one dollar spent by a leading European university such as the London School Economics, Harvard can spend almost $10.
Even the poorest Ivy League university in the US will have an endowment bigger than the gross domestic product of many African countries.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12597811
1.3.11
Wal-Mart bans sale of flame retardant
According to researchers, PBDEs leach out of household products and end up in dust, air, food and human bodies. As a result, PBDE levels in the environment, human blood and breast milk have drastically increased over the past two decades.
The largest U.S. retailer advised suppliers recently that beginning June 1 Wal-Mart would test products to ensure that the goods do not contain polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs. These are a class of compounds in use since 1976 as flame retardants for electronics, furniture, sporting goods, pet supplies, curtains and toys.
Wal-Mart based its planned ban on studies that linked PDBEs to problems with the liver, thyroid, reproductive systems and brain development in laboratory animals.
Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/briefs/articles/90036684?Wal-Mart%20bans%20sale%20of%20flame%20retardant#ixzz1FKtXVBwb
Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/briefs/articles/90036684?Wal-Mart%20bans%20sale%20of%20flame%20retardant#ixzz1FKtDlOua
The largest U.S. retailer advised suppliers recently that beginning June 1 Wal-Mart would test products to ensure that the goods do not contain polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs. These are a class of compounds in use since 1976 as flame retardants for electronics, furniture, sporting goods, pet supplies, curtains and toys.
Wal-Mart based its planned ban on studies that linked PDBEs to problems with the liver, thyroid, reproductive systems and brain development in laboratory animals.
Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/briefs/articles/90036684?Wal-Mart%20bans%20sale%20of%20flame%20retardant#ixzz1FKtXVBwb
Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/briefs/articles/90036684?Wal-Mart%20bans%20sale%20of%20flame%20retardant#ixzz1FKtDlOua
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