Things to help you sleep...The University of Manchester yesterday unveiled new technology which could revolutionize displays in televisions, smartphones, projectors, computer screens and tablets. The researchers – who published their European Research Council funded study in the journal Sleep– say the technology could also mean that night workers are less likely to fall asleep at a computer. The device - which the researchers call a ‘melanopic display’ allows users to control the alerting effects of screen use and can also enhance the visual appearance of screens, say the team. The technology allows the amount of cyan light in images to be altered while keeping colours true. Conventional display is made up of red green and blue primary colours, which match up with three types of photoreceptors in our eyes. The team added a fourth ‘primary colour’ (cyan) which controls melanopsin cells in the eye which detect light, normally in the daytime. When the cyan light was turned up, the eleven participants in the trial felt more alert; when turned down, they felt more sleepy.
Things about sepsis...
Children’s immune systems could hold the key to preventing life-threatening infections and sepsis, a new study has revealed. The ground-breaking research conducted by an international team of scientists at the University of Sheffield and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has identified the key response that children use to control infections - making them resilient to many severe infections and sepsis. The new study, which is the first of its kind, has helped scientists identify key differences in cell-pathway activity in the blood of septic adults and children. Establishing the pathways that help prevent sepsis is a powerful new way to discover drugs for intervention against sepsis and provides direct insight into potential cures for the disease. The findings of the study are now being used to design drugs for research into prevention of other pathological diseases including Alzheimer’s.Things about fathers...
Father involvement with children has increased in recent decades. Research has demonstrated the positive contributions fathers make to their children’s health and well-being. For instance, father involvement has been linked to decreased risk of prematurity and infant mortality. It has also been associated with the father’s parenting confidence, positive father-child interactions, future father involvement,10 and healthier coparenting relationships. Father involvement benefits fathers themselves; men who are involved with their children report greater physical and mental health.Despite the accumulating evidence for the benefits of father involvement,
few early parent education programs have focused on including fathers. In this systematic review, they examined father-inclusive perinatal parent education
programs in the United States as they relate to a range of father outcomes.
Things about eating patterns...
Childhood nutrition is important in optimising growth, development and future health. This study compared dietary intakes of Australian children aged 4–8 years with
(i) Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (AGHE) food group recommendations and
(ii) age‐specific Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs), in addition to
(iii) describing food group intakes of children meeting key NRVs.
Significant discrepancies existed between contemporary dietary patterns of Australian children and national recommendations.
Things about sugar...
Children in England are on track to consume around 4,800 cubes of sugar by the end of the year, more than double the maximum recommendation. Children aged 4 to 10 years should have no more than the equivalent of 5 to 6 cubes of sugar each day, but are consuming on average 13 cubes. This means they are on track to consume around 4,800 cubes of sugar by the end of the year, more than double the maximum recommendation. Sugary soft drinks remain one of the main contributors of free sugars to children’s diets, more than ice cream and puddings combined. Apart from fruit juice, which counts as one of our 5 A Day, the other main sources of sugar in children’s diets are:
- Sugary soft drinks (including squashes, juice drinks, energy drinks, cola and other fizzy drinks) 10%
- Buns, cakes, pastries and fruit pies 10%
- Sugars, including table sugar, preserves and sweet spreads 9%
- Biscuits 9%
- Breakfast cereals 8%
- Chocolate confectionery 7%
- Sugar confectionery 7%
- Yoghurt, fromage frais and other dairy desserts 6%
- Ice cream 5%
- Puddings 4%
Things about child mortality...
England and Sweden are both prosperous Western European countries with universal social security and healthcare, so one might expect mortality rates to be similar: not so. A major study in The Lancet highlights how badly England is doing compared with Sweden The authors looked at national data for mortality between 2003 and 2012 for children aged 2 days to 4 years (deaths on days 0 and 1 were excluded because of possible discrepancies in live birth vs stillbirth classification). They identified a range of diagnostic and clinical data that were collected universally, and could be meaningfully compared between the two countries. Their interpretation is that excess child mortality in England compared with Sweden was largely explained by the unfavourable distribution of birth characteristics in England. Socioeconomic factors contributed to these differences through associations with adverse birth characteristics and increased mortality after 1 month of age. Policies to reduce child mortality in England could have most impact by reducing adverse birth characteristics through improving the health of women before and during pregnancy and reducing socioeconomic disadvantage.
Things to eat...
Well the exciting news is that after several months I now have a means of cooking food without having to use the microwave...just in time for a heatwave when we will want to eat salads! So as I have spinach leaves growing in the garden I think I will try this seedy spinach salad out....and I will need the cooker to fry the seeds.
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