Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts

Cause of Sudden Death in Young People is Genetic

Sudden death in young people has a genetic cause - Long QT syndrome.
There is a predilection for some young adults to suddenly die. In a way it is similar to cot death: until now the cause was unknown. The "disease" has been identified and is called Long QT syndrome. A third of sudden "unexplained" deaths in people up to their mid thirties die of heart rhythm complications due to the inherited illness. The heart problem is not always evident in autopsies.
Long QT syndrome
Parents can also die of the condition in later life. The faulty gene runs in families and is generally passed on to some offspring. A gene testing study of children having symptoms of heart disease is showing that many carry the gene. 

Ongoing monitoring of youngsters is saving lives.  However, there is no official program that tests all children.  Some, of course are not diagnosed early and it is these who are at risk of sudden death.  It is heart breaking for a family to lose a child in this way,Ea
 Genetics by Ty Buchanan 
cGenetics by Ty Buchanan
Australian Blog
            Australian Blog   Adventure Australia
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)
long, qt, syndrome, genetic, dna, tests, study, young, people, children, disease, cause, parents, inherited, articles news politics economics society anthropology historiography history sociology people nations country asia europe africa u.s. south america central Mediterranean eastern western interesting funny technology adventure australia blog australian blog free news sex

Genetics Gives Children Mathematical Aptitude

Genetics: genetic predisposition makes girls or nboys good at maths.
The money poured into education to encourage girls and more boys to study maths and science could be a waste.  Research on twins shows that numerical aptitude is 75 per cent genetic.  Either both twin children are good at dealing with numbers or both are not.  There is also a 50 per cent genetic predilection for writing skills.
Girl student good at maths
Despite parents helping their children with homework and the like, it had little influence on academic achievement.  Furthermore, teachers and the schools attended whether private or public had no impact.  Children took to maths or English according to their genetic makeup.

It is not clear if teachers are evenly well trained so students are benefiting evenly across the nation.  However, this is clutching at straws.  We all remember the lazy, bad teachers who threw a chapter of a book at use to scribble the lesson away while he/she played around at the desk or in the book cupboard.  It really seems that teachers have no effect on teaching per se in regard to student outcomes.
 Genetics by Ty Buchanan 
 Australian Blog
            Australian Blog   Adventure Australia
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)
aptitude at maths or writing is caused by genetics dna articles news politics economics society anthropology historiography history sociology people nations country asia europe africa u.s. south america central Mediterranean eastern western interesting funny technology free news sex

Dyslexia

When I went to school many long years ago, dyslexia was barely accepted as a problem. Children with the malady did the best they could and parents assumed they just didn't like school. Today, a great deal is known about it.
Child boy with dyslexia problem with reading
The main issue with dyslexia is word jumble. Reading "smile" for the word "slime" and so on. This means that teachers assume such student have difficulty spelling when they don't. Dyslexia sufferers also do not have a poor memory.

Unfortunately, there is no cure and the severity of the "disease" varies. Phonics offers something. This is teaching syllable sounds with actual reading. Lastly, there is no genetic cause for dyslexia.
Genetics by Ty Buchanan 
            Australian Blog   Adventure Australia
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
dyslexia health problem issue student children sufferers reading spelling treatment
DYSLEXIA IS NOT GENETIC
#dyslexia #health #treatment #school #classroom #teachers
#health   #classroom #dyslexia   #reading   #write   #teacher   #words  #spelling

Forcing STEM Graduates to the Bush Will Not Work

The number of school students doing maths and science is woefully inadequate in city areas. Numbers in rural areas are even worse! A new plan is in progress to improve the situation. Unfortunately, it will prove to be a total failure and waste of money.

Culture has inertia. It takes about half a century to alter established beliefs. Rural children believe that maths and science are too difficult for them so they do not even attempt them. They stay with the social subjects. The new "curative" program to solve the matter will ignore city students and concentrate on rural regions.
Students in a rural bush outback school teacher teaching
There is a noticeably low number of rural students doing education, engineering and science degrees.  Note that 74 per cent of teachers in city areas have STEM experience, while only 17 per cent of rural teachers have done STEM work.  The intention is to send high quality STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) teachers to the bush - they will love that! It is like sending the trainer of the winner of the Melbourne Cup to train horse riders in the sticks, an absolute waste of resources.

Advanced teachers are not the answer. Those who can teach the basics are needed because going with the horse analogy, getting over the first jump is the most difficult problem. If students get this achievement they will at least choose base maths. Australia has the silliest curriculum with up to five levels of maths. When I was young we all did the same compulsory arithmetic then maths. Arithmetic has been forgotten. Bureaucrats do not see that this subject is the foundation for all math.

State schemes such as "go to" the bush for an annual $10,000 check have not worked. Teach For Australia is going to forcibly place graduates in rural schools. The experience will be part of their career training. We will see what teachers unions have to say about this. They will not accept it lying down.

To willingly draw skilled young teachers to rural schools will take money and lots of it. The federal government is cutting back payments to states. And states are running deficits. Forcing movement to the bush where even basic services are not available like a decent water supply and courier deliveries, by making rules to achieve it, will not work. City born, city live is the motto of young people.
Education by Ty Buchanan 
            Australian Blog   Adventure Australia
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
schools students degrees maths science technology teach rural bush outback rules career

Day of Frankenstein has Arrived

The day of Frankenstein has arrived. New human beings have been born. The path of human evolution has been changed, and should I say damaged, forever. Even though a person can have three parents it should never have been done. Heaven knows what the long term consequences for the human species will be. Man could die out because natural selection has been bypassed for the first time in human evolution.
Now that Britain has passed legislation to allow such births, do-gooders in other countries are calling for its adoption too. Do they have the right to play God? They certainly do not! This affects every person living now and in the future. Consider the legal problems ahead for inheritance. Offspring will ultimately try to claim the wealth of a "host" egg provider when she dies. Your ancestors will be impossible to trace because some members of the population have three or more generations of three parents.

The problem with politicians is - They take knee jerk reactions and they are employed to run ministries in which they have no qualifications or skills. This also applies to voting in houses of parliament. Some politicians are as thick as a post and seem to have no commonsense whatsoever. Read the book Brave New World and see that it is really a stupid different world.
Evolution by Ty Buchanan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
     Australian Blog                         
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)

Australian Binge Drinking Problem

Australia is a society that "molds" itself around a culture of high alcohol consumption. Other countries also have this problem. Germany, Ireland, Scotland and England also have a reputation for excessive drinking behavior. None, though have the strong established culture as that in Australia.

The young learn from the old. Australian youth spend their weekends in a blur of binge drinking. Their parents have openly consumed alcohol at parties, barbecues and in pubs, since the youth were toddlers. And in Australia, children can be brought into pubs.

Cultural change is called for by the federal government. However, cultural norms of behavior are nearly impossible to change unless people feel a real crisis. The Ebola catastrophe in Africa have forced citizens to change their burial habits. Unfortunately, Australians do not take the alcohol crisis seriously. They think it does no apply to them.

The intention to charge mothers with a crime for damage to their unborn babies through heavy alcohol consumption is a step in the right direction. It could also be extended in the future to cover the obesity crisis as well. Regrettably, laws have not stopped illegal drug use. People are stubborn. It is like believing that you can change someone - individuals can change in the short term. They go back to their old ways in the long run.
Science by Ty Buchanan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
     Australian Blog                         
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)

Memories Are Not Real the "Specialists" Say

Childhood memories are figments of your imagination. If you believe that, you'll believe anything. Children in the UK were asked to recall memories of things their parents said didn't happen. But how do we know if children were trying to please their parents? Most children live in a dream land anyway. So asking them to recall seeing Santa Claus is just "baiting". And asking them about flying through the air is "hypnotising" for dream recall.

If you broke your leg as child you would certainly remember that, and whether the sun was out when it happened. The pain makes it stay in your mind. One thing that really remains is the care one receives from others. You remember things done with grandma because she was always kind and forgiving. Furthermore, really horrible events like being involved in a road accident and then being taken to hospital remain as clear as the day they occurred.

We wouldn't have an identity without memories. We are the sum of our experiences. Taking that away from someone is condemning that person to live in the forever "now". Debate is rife about whether learning is anything of value. For example, a day after taking exams most of it is forgotten. But a university degree or any other academic test is something the individual values and society values. Whether you actually remember things taught is quite irrelevant. You have gone down that road and reached the destination. Surely, that is what life is about: having experiences chronologically with the past leading to the present and into the future and remembering certain milestones.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conservation
Australian Blog                         
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)

Times Get Tougher for Sole Mothers

There is little sympathy for sole mothers from others in society or government. Social security payments have been tightened up by the federal Government. If sole mothers do not work they must go back to school, probably learning something that is useless for their future.

Not many full-time workers have brought up children as well without paying someone else to care for their babies and toddlers. Older children are consistently being left alone as mothers do some sort of part-time work. This is reality. Part-time jobs do not pay well enough to provide money for carers. When Single mothers come home they not only look after their children, they must do all the household chores as well as do repair work to the home.

The government's new harsher policy comes into force next January. Welfare payments will fall. Even those working part-time will lose some of the part-payment they get from social security. Children will be the real losers as food and heating/cooling are reduced. As the number of sole parents below the poverty line increases from 10 per cent to 20 per cent, things will be tough. The loss of $40 a week from next year for those fully reliant on welfare payments is a massive amount. Two thousand dollars a year is a significant fall in income.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Society

Housing Not Affordable for the Young

The concept of building one and two bedroom houses instead of the traditional three and four bedroom homes seems doomed to failure.  More adult children than ever are going back home to live with their parents.  A single person simply cannot earn enough  to get a loan for a house.  If you are a labourer or a TAFE trained worker this is  increasingly the case.  As many as 70 per cent of people aged under 35 cannot buy a  home of their own.

While specialists say tax incentives are needed to enable young people to buy, this is not the problem.  Australia will have a housing shortage for decades because there are  not enough qualified builders in outback Australia.  This is particularly the case in  booming Western Australia with mineral companies being forced to have accommodation  built at great cost.

Giving the young tax breaks and just giving them handouts is not a solution.  It is a  bottom up issue not a top down problem.  Getting trades persons from other countries will not make any difference either.  Countries have unique building codes.  For  example, in the UK houses are built in double brick where the two walls hold up the roof.  In the US they built much larger houses.  In Australia brick veneer is the norm  where timber holds up the roof and bricks are just decoration.

The next Australian government will probably be Liberal/National. They will not be inclined to give handouts.  Moreover, with the push toward a balanced budget next year the current Labor government has no money to spare.
~~~~~Society~~~~~
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Parents and Children Hit by New WA Drug Laws

Western Australia is about to fill up its jails and children's care homes in the war on drugs. New legislation will jail parents and take away children for the cultivation of one cannabis plant. The jail terms are mandatory for the manufacture of small amounts of other drugs.

 The conservative government has certainly lived up to its ideals of trying to turn back the clock a century or so. Transportation to a far off land could be next for "criminals". An earlier Labor government had decriminalized minor marijuana use. Just why the WA government would want to change a situation that seemed to be working is the real question. The premier must know that tough regulation like in the US has failed, totally. If legislation worked, such action would be justified

Even in the UK, people found with a small amount of drugs on their person are given a warning the first time it happens. Only serial offenders are jailed. This is the best idea. Target the dealers not individuals who in many cases are experimenting. We let people damage their health by smoking tobacco. Allowing them to cultivate a small amount of marijuana for their own use is akin to that.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Society

Wild Cockatoos Are Swearing at People

Australian wild cockatoos have been "infiltrated" by domesticated cockatoos who have escaped. Wild birds are copying words learned by escaped household pets. Cockatoos are not the only wild birds being affected in this way. Galahs and corellas shout out words that startle people. Escaped birds breed with their wild counterparts and chicks learn to talk from parents.

The parrot family is extremely good at mimicking sounds they hear. Songbirds and hummingbirds can also do this to a degree. The problem is cockatoos and parakeets are social animals. To wild birds a word is just a new sound to be learned and used socially. Human babbling to learn language is called subsong in birds, where chicks learn by trial and error.

Like humans, cockatoos continue to learn "words" all through their lives. "Natural" cockatoo sounds go together to form a language which has its own grammar. Human words are being integrated into this language.

A pet bird may only hear a word once and the word is remembered for life, particularly swear words that are spoken with some gusto.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Wildlife

Foster Care Is Still an Issue

Australians are not doing their parental duties very well. A record number of children are in government care due to abuse and neglect. Authorities say that out-of-care has grown largely because of improvement in information gathering. However, an increase of 44 per cent in 4 years is worrying.

Putting children in care is seen as making life better for badly treated children. There is debate about this issue. A child living on a quasi temporary basis in an institution or foster family situation certainly grows up with a "skewed" outlook on life. Their upbringing is not "normal". And they know it.

Saying there are multiple issues at home is really a cop out by the government. It doesn't explain why the problem exists nor offer a satisfactory solution. Holding that reuniting them with their families is too much work sounds very much like the department has given up. The desire to be with their families is strong even when they are young adults.

Foster care has always been a second-best cure. Children move from family to family and never trully fit in. They feel isolated and this isolation continues into adulthood. A problem that is never examined is that a child from a family with poor parenting skills grows up to be a bad parent also.
~~~~~Society~~~~~
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Memories Are Not Real

Childhood memories are figments of your imagination. If you believe that you'll believe anything. Children in the UK were asked to recall memories of things their parents said didn't happen. But how do we know if children were trying to please their parents? Most children live in a dream land anyway. So asking them to recall seeing Santa Claus is just "baiting". And asking them about flying through the air is "hypnotising" for dream recall.

If you broke your leg as child you certainly remember that, and whether the sun was out when it happened. The pain makes it stay in your mind. One thing that really remains is the care one receives from others. You remember things done with grandma because she was always kind and forgiving. Furthermore, really horrible events like being involved in a road accident and then taken to hospital remain as clear as the day they occurred.

We wouldn't have an identity without memories. We are the sum of our experiences. Taking that away from someone is condemning that person to live in the forever "now". Debate is rife about whether learning is anything of value. For example, a day after taking exams most of it is forgotten. But a university degree or any other academic test is something the individual values and society values. Whether you actually remember things taught is quite irrelevant. You have gone down that road and reached the destination. Surely, that is what life is about: having experiences, chronologically, with the past leading to the present and into the future and remembering certain milestones.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .