Breastfeeding has benefits beyond childhood.Credit:U.S Department of Agriculture on Flickr.
The benefits of breastfeeding for children health and development are not in dispute. It strengthens mother-child bonding, protects children against early childhood diseases and stimulates brain development. In a recent study, Dr. Bernardo Lessa Horta of the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil, has established that breastfeeding has benefits beyond childhood. It can persist even to adulthood.
He found that longer duration of breastfeeding is linked with increased intelligence in adulthood, longer schooling and higher adult earnings.
This study was conducted on nearly 6000 infants born in Pelotas for 30 years, starting from 1982. In the study, he discounted for well-known facts about breastfeeding such as the linkage between duration of breastfeeding and social class and income, effect of mother’s smoke on childhood development, and the effect of parents’ education on the child. In Pelotas, every mother breastfeeds her baby irrespective of social class, income or education.
The results of the study showed that infants breastfeed for at least a year had more significant adulthood gains than infants breastfed for less than a month, and that the longer the duration of breastfeeding, the greater the gains. Such gains included a full four IQ points, 0.9 more years of schooling and a higher income, of about 341 reais per month, when they get to the age of 30.
According to Dr. Horta, the likely mechanism at work are long-chain saturated fatty acids (DHA) found in breast milk which are essential for brain development.
Roadable Aircraft - Jess Dixon's flying automobile, c. 1940Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Cars kill people. Cars lose you time. They cause pollution of the environment. Building roads for cars, trucks and major vehicles costs money, planning time and involves infrastructure overhaul. Cars are cheaper and getting faster, you’ll agree. But can cars fly?
Yes, cars can fly. Prototypes have been tested and they are workable. Welcome the “Flying Roadster” by AeroMobil (the video). Version 3.0, according to official sources, will be available in 2017. Jacob Hall, who covered a South By South West (SXSW) pitch by AeroMobil for the Entrepreneur.com quotes AeroMobil co-founder and CEO Juraj Vaculik as saying: "We deeply believe we need a revolution in personal transportation.”
In another related development, which is no longer news because Apple, a rival technology company has publicly made its intention of going into electric cars known, Google has announced that its driverless cars will be available to the public come 2020.
Imagine cars that change colors on-demand, or bridges and buildings whose colors reflect the amount of strain or stress applied to them. We would all benefit from such innovation.
Last week, March 12, researchers at the University of California, (UCL), Berkeley, announced the creation of a thin semiconductor film of silicon, 120 nanometers thick, that when flexed or bent can reflect colors on a wide variety of the light spectrum; a color-changing sensor film.
Attempts at creating a color changing sensor is not new. Last year, in a research funded by the National Science Foundation, (NSF), researchers at the same University, but the Riverside campus, created a nanosphere-laced polymer that changes color under stress using gold nanoparticles. What differentiates the silicon film from other sensors is that the range of reflected light is much flexible and the material used was much more permeable to bending or flexing.
The colors of a butterfly excites the emotions.Credit: Stux on Pixabay.
The idea behind the invention came from nowhere but nature. They conceived the idea of imitating butterflies and beetles who create iridescent displays of colors.
According to one of the researchers, "the next step is to make this larger-scale and there are facilities already that could do so," said Chang-Hasnain. "At that point, we hope to be able to find applications in entertainment, security, and monitoring."
Cars of tomorrow might respond like a chameleon to its environment, or change to colors reflecting the amount of pressure applied to the body, or in relation to the amount of stress or strain undergone during its lifetime. The possibilities are enormous.
You will not believe it. The house of the world’s number one terrorist, before his death, looks like an everyday house you can find on the streets of Lagos.
It’s not his house actually; just a hideaway in Pakistan.
This series of 21 pictures on Time.com shows a man running away from the world, lost to worldly splendor but surrounded by death, destruction and disaster. A man who had seen his dying days and that of the terror organization he helped to create.
The room has an ordinary bed, common wardrobes and looks like an everyday suburban house.
One would have hoped his hideout was somewhat luxurious; with the wealthy and powerful of Pakistan. Wishful thinking!
Osama Bin Laden's Paskistan Hideaway.
Choices are a basic fact of life. Some choices can be a turning point in our lives while some are inconsequential and will only satisfy some ego.
Whatever choice you are making, now and in the future, judge the merits of the possible outcomes of that choice before taking the leap.
Take a look at the picture below. This is a horrible sight. The deed is a barbaric act. The victim concerned has accepted her fate; look at how calm and composed she appears! Justice will never come to her aid. The mob has decided on her. The mob is justice.
This is barbaric, oh Nigerians!Credit: Onlinenigeria.com
That is the face of Nigerian law. The rule of law has vanished. It exists only for the well-to-do. As a Nigerian, who reads the daily news, I understood that the people, our people, are scarred beyond repair, both mentally, physically and emotionally. The stories of crimes that go perpetrated without the criminals getting punished, rather the criminals become victors, is aplenty. The quest for riches and money is beyond imagination.
These and many more reasons have made people to resort to taking laws into their hands.
The rule of law can go to hell, a typical Nigerian on the street will tell you. If you cross check his stories, he’ll turn out speaking the truth.
Does it mean our society should endure mob injustices like this?
No matter the crime she must have committed, as a human, she deserves to be taken to the authorities; handed over to the police. The law should be a constraint upon human behavior and not something to be shunned because the poor and the weak are not protected since they do not have the money to fund a case.
In Nigeria, let respect for human rights be a platform we should be standing on.
Do you have cataract? It is a disease of old age. Most times, cataract affects an individual due to exposure to radiation, chemicals and other environmental factors that reduce the ability of the eyes to function properly. Cataract, as a disease, is due to the lens that captures light in the eyes becoming opaque, thereby preventing light from passing through to the photoreceptor cells at the retina.
I wrote an article this week on the dress that caused a sensation on social media circles because of the difficulty it imposes on a viewer as to light perception. Persons who suffer visual problems like cataract do not enjoy and revel in the sensation of light and color as others. French impressionist, Claude Monet, is in that class. Her visual problems made her paintings imprecise and muted in colors. If you suffer from visual problems, you have to cope with inefficient light reception.
Is it white and gold, or blue and black?Credit: User swiked on www.tumblr.com
Apart from the cones and the rods in the retina which distinguishes daylight from night vision, there is another group of cells in front of the retina which work towards our enjoying color.
Those cells are called Müller cells or müller glia. These cells function as light and color filters. Their position in front of the retina makes sure that the light getting to the rods and cones are already sorted, filtered and organized. Clever, not so?
Müller cells, according to Dr Erez Ribak from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, are at just the “the right height, and their light-bearing trunks are just the right width, to filter the wavelengths correctly”.
So, as you look at the dress again, and if you wonder why so many persons disagree on what color they perceive, you could place the müller cells as one of the candidates at the heart of their visual problems, if not a disease like cataract.
Choices are a basic fact of life. Some choices can be a turning point in our lives while some are inconsequential and will only satisfy some ego.
Whatever choice you are making, now and in the future, judge the merits of the possible outcomes of that choice before taking the leap.
