Smart Is As Smart Does

Via PhysOrg: Educate yourself to boost achievement in kids

"If you want your kids to do well in school, then the amount of education you get yourself is important," said Pamela Davis-Kean, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "This may mean that parents need to go back to school.

"A growing number of large-scale, long-term studies now show that increasing parental education beyond high school is strongly linked to increasing language ability in children. Even after controlling for parental income, marital status and a host of other factors, we find that the impact of parental education remains significant."

H1N1 Flu Shots

PhysOrg on making pregnant women a flu shot priority. See: Pregnancy likely to be swine flu shot priority

Pregnant women account for 6 percent of U.S. swine flu deaths since the pandemic began in April, even though they make up just 1 percent of the U.S. population.
On Wednesday a federal vaccine advisory panel is meeting to take up the question of who should be first to get swine flu shots when there aren't enough for everyone. At the top of the list are health care workers, who would be crucial to society during a bad pandemic.
But pregnant women may be near the top of the list because they have suffered and died from swine flu at disproportionately high rates.

It Takes Genes And An Environment

It is time to end the nurture vs nature debate. We are all products of the interaction of our genes and the environment around us.

See PhysOrg: Nature? Nurture? Scientists say neither

Babies And Dogs

I read a story at PhysOrg that was presented as demonstrating the ability of babies to pick up on behavioral cues.

See: Babies understand dogs

Infants just 6 months old can match the sounds of an angry snarl and a friendly yap to photos of dogs displaying threatening and welcoming body language.

But my takeaway of this research is that it is an example of the long history of the relationship of humans and dogs and perhaps represents co-evolution as in early tribes those infants best able to discern a friendly dog from a threatening canine would be the most likely to survive.

A Reason For Fathers

In their parenting roles, fathers (very generally speaking) are engaged in more physical play with their kids than mothers. It seems there may be a biochemical reason for this. This early physical contact may stimulate the brain of young children to be more receptive to the neurotransmitter chemicals that make people social creatures.

At least that is my intuitive leap based on this story at NewSci: Fathers aren't dispensable just yet