Grabbing the honour for the physics prize were Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati,  Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, whose study “Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins”, was published in December 2007 in the Journal of Nature.

As a once pregnant woman, I’ve got to admit the question has merit — your entire centre of gravity is off thanks to that foetal load (really wish I’d know that term when I was preggers — sounds so much better than “thing hanging under my growing boobs”).

So what’s the answer? Straight from the research: “Human females have evolved a derived curvature and reinforcement of the lumbar vertebrae to compensate for this bipedal obstetric load”. Which is fancy shcmany scientific talk for “because woman are highly evolved creatures”, right?

The Ig Nobel awards are given for research that makes people laugh…and then think. This one sounds more qualified than most.

Congrats to the winners — and to all you pregnant women who have managed not to tip over. It’s hell trying to get back up.

Via: Daily Telegraph

Image: Tourist on Earth via Flickr

New research based on that model, that looks at issues like dyslexia, can now predict that babies are prone to the condition and start early interventions that can lessen or prevent it in the majority of kids who would get it.

Central principles that are coming to light in this multidisciplinary approach are that learning is computational, social, and driven by brain circuitry. In regular person language, that means that babies can learn patterns far earlier than originally thought, that they learn far better from people than from technology, and that students who identify with their teachers learn better.

And many of the kind of things that help babies learn – reading to them, teaching them patterns (as simply as singing songs or playing with blocks), etc. are actually fun. I remember asking a woman I know who’s well versed in early learning how I could help my then-newborn baby learn better, and she told e something that’s stuck with me: “Talk, play, sing, every day.”

Sounds natural – and really pretty fun.

Baby botanists get ready, get set, get digging.

The Young Scientists Club has a new spring kit for little kids to get their thumbs – and the rest of their fingers – dirty. The Science on a Garden Adventure set is stocked with a small plastic terrarium, peat pellets and seeds for spinach, wheat, marigold and zinnias – plus all they need to put together a real science experiment.

There’s the makings of a sun dial, mini garden tools for mini garden makers and pH tests to cover all the bases (and acids too).

And in case this is sounding too much like science class, they threw in a few sheets of stickers and a pack of plastic bugs to make this educational adventure a whole lot of fun.

Get the kit from Kid Science Kits.

Girls who were not breastfed had a much higher risk of re-hospitalisation for respiratory illness than boys, but breastfed girls were almost never re-hospitalised. In boys, the difference between breastfed and not was insignificant. (The researchers hasten to point out that there are plenty of other benefits of breastfeeding that still hold true for boys.)

The fascinating part of this is that a gender difference may point to breastmilk’s protective properties working differently than previously supposed. Maybe it’s not just delivering mum’s immunities until the kid gets its own—why would there be a gender difference in that? Could breastmilk prompt anti-viral protection in the absence of exposure to viruses somehow, interacting directly with the baby’s developing immune system? (Of course, why would there be a gender difference in that either?) The report from Vanderbilt Medical Center speculates maybe, though they have no idea how.

Sounds to me for now like another thing to throw on the “we don’t know what breastmilk is well enough to replicate it” evidence pile.

What sort of sound could possibly perk up and pop out your sagging girls?

A baby’s cry, naturally.

Hideto Tomabechi, researcher of artificial intelligence and the mind, wants to show that sounds affect more than just the mind — they also affect our bodies. So he took a recording of a crying baby and stripped it down to its essential sounds. He hypothesises (generalisation alert!) that women will respond physiologically to the recorded sound of a crying baby in the same way they respond to the real sound. By responding so frequently, their breasts will grow.

Does he mean women all over Tokyo are going to be letting down every time the phone rings? Or do women respond in some way to babies’ cries that I’m not aware of. I’m willing to concede that I (and my lactating boobs) respond physiologically to the sound of a crying baby … NOW … ever since having my first. But before ever having kids, I’m not entirely convinced I could even tell the difference between a crying baby and, say, an angry cat. Besides, if all it takes is a baby’s cry, I should look like Pamela Anderson by now.

Of course, this Tomabechi guy is the same man authorities called on to de-program the Aum Shinrikyo cult members (of sarin gas on the subway fame), and he’s held up as some kind of mad genius. So maybe the nation’s dissatisfied flat-chested should download the baby wails and answer the call to a more confident and happier you.

Photo: NoiseAddicts.com

Keep Kids At School Longer For Core Skills
The OECD has called on Australian education authorities to consider raising the school leaving age to ensure children have core reading and maths skills. The Australian

Infant Disorders: Biological Clock Ticks For Men, Too
Children born to older fathers perform less well in intelligence tests during infancy and early childhood, research shows, adding to the body of evidence linking paternal age to neuro-developmental disorders in offspring. SMH

Australians Refused Insurance Because Of Poor Genes
Australians have been refused insurance protection because of their genetic make-up, researchers have shown in the first study in the world to provide proof of genetic discrimination. SMH

Primary Schools Give Sex Education To Children As Young As Seven After The Alfie Patten Case
Dozens of primary schools have started giving sex education to children as young as seven in the wake of child father Alfie Patten’s story, it emerged today. Daily Mail

Scientists doing a survey in Columbia have found ten new species of amphibians there. By “new,” they mean previously unknown to scientists. The tiny, beautiful creatures are considered some of the most vulnerable to changes in the environment from climate change to toxic contamination. But the discovery of new species is happy news for biologists concerned about preservation.

The Guardian offers a slideshow of the animals. Call your four-year olds over to the computer screen, cozy up and enjoy these little jewels of nature!

Image: thedailygreen.com

It’s a fact of life that nothing is ever as good as it was when you were a kid. Take chemistry sets. Back in the 1940s (OK, older than me), they included sodium cyanide in their kits. You know, the stuff of suicide capsules. Today, you don’t even get chemicals that go bang. Boring!

Make zine has put together a great set of photos of old chemistry sets and instructions on how to re-create them, within legal limits.

If you’re not ready to ask for suspicious-sounding chemicals at photography stores, Make also recommends a few modern kits that pass muster.

[Make via Gizmodo]

On the one hand, the official word from many co-sleeping advocates is that it should only be the mum (and only a breastfeeding mom at that, yo). In fact, they even say that a co-sleeping baby should not be placed between mum and dad, but between mum and a bedrail. Folks taking this position generally say that breastfeeding mothers are more "tuned in" to their babies, aware of their location, instinctually place them in a safe sleeping position, and wake in tandem with them throughout the night. Certainly if you are breastfeeding, one of the points of co-sleeping is having the breastfeeding mother right there to increase lactation and nursing frequency and duration.

On the other hand, I haven't actually seen any studies of specifically dads and co-sleeping, but I've certainly known plenty of dads who describe for themselves perfectly my own experience of being hyper-aware of the presence and location and motion of their infants, even as they sleep. Is it possible that advocates on the defensive against "cosleeping = death"
hysteria are being overcautious/biased on this one?

It's worth noting that dads, at least engaged ones, do actually go through hormonal changes themselves as they begin to parent, including modestly increased levels of prolactin, the lactation hormone. (I'd wager this probably also happens for non-bio mums in queer couples.) It's not like we're talking random person off the street here. But it's also not biological motherhood either.

What do you think? Is the only-mums-should-sleep-next-to-baby thing an acknowledgement of basic biology, or just more sexism trying to sneak in under the cloak of science?

Photo by davef3138, via Flickr.

"Some worry that the technique could be used to hunt for the rapidly growing list of genetic markers that merely signal an increased risk for cancer, diabetes, mental illness, obesity, addiction and other conditions later in life. Someday, similar tests could perhaps even vet foetuses for traits associated with beauty, personality or intelligence."

And in a broader look at concerns, disabled rights groups worry that insurance companies may start refusing to cover treatment for conditions discovered through this testing, pressuring women to terminate pregnancies they might otherwise desire to continue:

"We want disabled children to be welcomed into the world. My fear is we're moving in the opposite direction," said Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People With Disabilities. "If we decide to use prenatal testing to eliminate gene-based disabilities, that's what the Nazis were trying to do, in their own crude way. I think we're saying that certain types of lives aren't worth living."

The old anxiety about "designer" babies comes up again in the article.  I am of two minds about it.  On the one hand, I think this fear is overblown–most parents will probably not be interested in screening for eye color or other meaningless traits.  But on the other hand, the grey area the article mentions–genetic markers for a "tendency" to traits like obesity, certain cancers or other health problems or socially undesirable features may make it to the routine list someday.  And at this point the technology is a dull enough instrument that many gene "markers" leave much unknown about what exactly their effects are in a real, live person.  As a lesbian, I personally worry about parents terminating fetuses with genetic markers for same-sex orientation–that holy grail so many gay rights acitvists hope for but that I hope fervantly against.

As with any tool, it is imperitive that people be properly educated and trained to use it.  The answer is not to refuse such new technologies, but to step up the education people receive about how to understand what it tells us.