Do you know why outdoor activity protects children from myopia?

Prof. Know Why answers for your general knowledge and awareness on: Do you know why outdoor activity protects children from myopia?

We all know that the more children are allowed to play outdoor sports, the better it is for their health in the growing days. But a recent study found that time spent outdoors even protects children against myopia.

The study has suggested that time spent in the open appears to protect children from near-sightedness, adding a new factor for a common condition that has long been blamed on extensive reading or genes.

Researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia, believe the intensity of outdoor light may be an important, but till now unrecognized, factor that influences the development of myopia, which usually begins during school years.

“Increasing outdoor activity may be a way to counter factors that might be contributing to myopia,” said Kathryn Rose, an ophthalmologist who led the study that involved more than 4,000 schoolchildren in Australia. It was published last week in the journal Ophthalmology.

The researchers found that 12-year-olds with the highest outdoor activity had the lowest rates of myopia, independent of the amount of reading or other near work they did. Myopia was most common in children with low levels of outdoor activity and high near work.

Long hours of indoor playtime or sports had no effect on myopia levels. “It appears to be the effect of intense light,” Rose said.

Myopic eyes are mildly elongated, front to back. The scientists believe that in response to light, the retina releases a chemical called dopamine and prevents eye elongation. The pupils also constrict in intense light, increasing the distance at which objects can be seen.

Near-sightedness has long been attributed to genetics. Children with parents who have myopia are at risk. “But we still can’t say whether it’s the effect of genes or whether the parents create an environment that promotes myopia,” Rose said.

“What has held out over the years is that children with strong scholastic achievements tend to have myopia. Our new study shows that children who do a lot of schoolwork and spend time outdoors appear protected.”

Independent studies in the US and Singapore appear to support these findings, she said.

The researchers have recommended more studies to try and establish the connection more firmly, and explore the mechanism of how exposure to daylight by means of outdoor activity, can prevent myopia.

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Do you know why children are at risk from passive smoking?

Prof. Know Why answers for your general knowledge and awareness on why children are at risk from passive smoking:

Babies, infants and children on the whole don’t smoke or so do we think! But, the reality says something different. In fact, infants and children belonging to smoker parents are forced to smoke because of ignorance by the latter – yes, I’m talking about passive smoking! But do you know about the consequences?

Well, children who are exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke that is passive smoking, early in life are at greater risk of being hospitalized for infections than those brought up in a smoke-free environment, researchers from Hong Kong reported, recently.

The risk of being hospitalized was greatest among babies 6 months old and younger, but the increased risk persisted up until the children were 8 years old, Dr. M. K. Kwok of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues found in their research. Children who were premature or had low birth weight were particularly vulnerable.

The findings suggest that passive smoking exposure may not only be harmful to children's respiratory tracts, but to their immune systems as well, the researchers Kwok and colleagues noted in their report in the journal Tobacco Control.

Even if smoking is banned in public places, babies and children may still be exposed to passive smoking at home. So, the risks remain.

While the danger that passive smoking poses, to children's developing respiratory systems is well understood, less is known about its effects on overall infection risks. To investigate, the researchers looked at a group of 7,402 children born in 1997 who were followed up until age 8. At the study's outset, nearly 42% were exposed to passive smoking at home.

Children who had been within 3 meters (or about 9.8 feet) of a person smoking cigarettes at any point during their first 18 months of life were 14% more likely to be hospitalized for any type of infection by 8 years of age, the researchers found.

The greatest difference was seen among infants, with 1 in 3 exposed babies being hospitalized for an infection by the time they were one year old. Exposure during the first 3 months of life had the strongest effect.

Premature and low birth weight infants seemed to be more vulnerable to the effects of passive smoking and they were twice as likely to be hospitalized for an infection by age 8 than unexposed children.

The researchers concluded that passive smoking exposure in early infancy, instigates all infectious illnesses and not just respiratory and related infections. And again, this may even have a larger and more long-lasting impact in developmentally more vulnerable subgroups, such as premature or low birth weight infants.

So, if you fall among the ignorant smoker parent’s group, just do bother to keep your children away from passive smoking, at least from now on – that is of course, if you care! Gift your children a smoke-free home and not hospital!

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Do you know why English and Chinese languages affect dyslexia differently?

Prof. Know Why answers for your general knowledge and awareness:

Millions of children worldwide are affected by dyslexia, a language-based learning disability that can include problems in reading, spelling, writing and pronouncing words. According to the International Dyslexia Association, approximately 8 to 15 percent of the students worldwide (if not more) suffer from this problem.

But very recently an interesting finding, reported in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, opened up a new angle to look at the problem on the whole - Dyslexia affects different parts of children's brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese.

"This finding was very surprising to us. We had not ever thought that dyslexics' brains are different for children who read in English and Chinese," said lead author Li-Hai Tan, a professor of linguistics and brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Hong Kong. "Our finding yields neurobiological clues to the cause of dyslexia."

Reading an alphabetic language like English requires different skills than reading Chinese, which relies less on sound representation, using symbols to represent words.

Past studies have suggested that the brain may use different networks of neurons in different languages, but none has suggested a difference in the structural parts of the brain involved.

Tan's research group studied the brains of students raised reading Chinese, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. They then compared those findings with similar studies of the brains of students raised reading English.

The research speculates that different genes may be involved in dyslexia in Chinese and English readers. The new findings suggest that treating Chinese speakers with dyslexia may use working memory tasks and tests relating to sensor-motor skills, while current treatments of English dyslexia focus on letter-sound conversions and sound awareness.

In their paper, the researchers noted that imaging studies of the brains of dyslexic children using alphabetic languages like English have identified unusual function and structure in the left temporo-parietal areas, thought to be involved in letter-to-sound conversions in reading; left middle-superior temporal cortex, thought to be involved in speech sound analysis, and the left inferior temporo-occipital gyrus, which may function as a quick word-form recognition system. When they performed similar imaging studies on dyslexic Chinese youngsters, on the other hand, they found disruption in a different area, the left middle frontal gyrus region.

If anything, this new research finding will help treating this learning disability, more scientifically and the therapists may now seek different methods of assisting dyslexic children from different cultures.

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Do you know why curvaceous women produce smart kids?

Prof. Know Why answers:

With a legion of male admirers, curvaceous Salma Hayek or Penelope Cruz may brighten up the screen, every time they popup, but a new academic study suggests that their appeal, and that of other curvy and well-endowed women, is based on more than just the purely physical aspect.

Scientific studies have consistently demonstrated that men through the ages have found women with hourglass figures more attractive. According to a study published last year, even the ancient Egyptian men have sought out curvaceous women. Although the reasons for the attraction have never been conclusively proven, many scientists believed that a shapely figure suggested to a man that a woman would be good at bearing children and have a longer life expectancy.

The new research adds that the buxom beauties are also cleverer. The study, published recently, shows that men who admire women with hourglass figures do so because they are more intelligent and therefore produce more intelligent children than waif-like women or those with "apple-shaped" proportions.

The scientists, from the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Pittsburgh, concluded that women with lower waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) produced children with better intellectual abilities.

They found that voluptuous women's hips and thighs contained omega-3 fatty acids, which help nurture both mother and baby's brains during pregnancy. Fat around the waist, however, contains higher levels of omega-6 fatty acids, which does not help brain growth. "Shapely hips and thighs hold essential nutrients that nurse brains and could produce smart kids, too," said one researcher, Steven Gaulin, of the University of California at Santa Barbara. His colleague, William Lassek, from the University of Pittsburgh, said: "Men respond because it's reproductively important."

The researchers tested 16,000 women and girls and found that women with a greater difference between their waist and hip measurements scored significantly higher in the tests, as did their children. The research suggests that children born to teenagers do worse in cognitive tests because their mothers did not have enough of the omega-3 acids stored in their hips.

So, all you men – now you have got another reason to love curves!

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Do you know why playing with blocks helps children?

Prof. Know Why answers:

Playing with blocks helps young children gain language skills, a recent study says. It was found that after six months, language scores among half of 175 children aged 1½ to 2½ years who were sent plastic blocks were 15% higher than a matched group that did not receive the free blocks, according to the study by researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle.

For the research, parents were given ideas about how to help their children play with the blocks. They also maintained diaries of their children’s activities over the time period. Finally, all the parents filled out questionnaires that assessed their child’s vocabulary, grammar, and other language abilities. The study proved again - which was believed over years that unstructured play with blocks, stimulates thinking, memory and physical mastery of objects at a time when a child’s brain is growing rapidly.

So young mothers, just make sure that your toddlers, apart from other fancy playing tools, are encouraged to play with blocks to enhance their intelligence level. After all, who doesn’t want her kid to be ahead of the rest?

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