Give up smoking for a happy baby

All mothers to be, if you want your baby to have a sunnier nature with regular sleeping and eating patterns, quit smoking, experts have suggested.

According to a new study, women who smoked heavily during pregnancy had the most difficult infants. It stated the babies of recent quitters were even more easy-going than those born to women who had never smoked or had stopped years earlier.

“Women who are strongly motivated to give up smoking in pregnancy are very positive about the decision and the outcomes for the baby,” lead researcher Kate Pickett said. The study of 18,000 British children at the age of nine months found women who smoke heavily in pregnancy, more than ten cigarettes a day, had the most difficult infants with the worst moods.

Mothers who kicked the habit ended up with the best behaved babies. These babies had the lowest chances of unpredictable behaviour, were receptive to new things and had regular eating and sleeping patterns.
The study assessed infants’ temperaments with scales designed to pick up positive mood, receptivity to new things, and eating and sleeping patterns.

Chemicals from cigarettes are known to harm the development of the brains of babies in the womb. They are also linked to low birth weight, birth defects and increased risk of cot death.

Controlling breast cancer

There is hope for several women, suffering from breast cancer. Scientists announced they have discovered a way to stop the spread of the disease.

“The gene, called SATB1, is thought to control the use of around 1000 others to promote the spread,” says Dr Terumi Kohwi-Shigematsu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California.

American teams of scientists find breast cancer trigger Scraps stop breast cancer in its tracks Aspirin ‘can cut breast cancer risk by 20 per cent’. Their finding clears the way for the development of medicine which could stop the spreading of the disease and  thus save the lives of about 44,000 women diagnosed with the illness every year.

Stress damages memory

Long-term stress impairs memory, it is often claimed. Now, a new research has revealed that even short-term stress can have the same effect.

Researchers at the University of California have found that short periods of stress lasting as little as a few hours can affect brain cell communication and undermine learning as well as memory.

According to lead researcher Tallie Z Baram of the university’s School of Medicine, “Stress is a constant in our lives and cannot be avoided”.

In their study on rodents, the researchers identified a novel process by which stress caused these effects.
They found that rather than involving the widely known stress hormone cortisol which circulates throughout the body, acute stress activated selective molecules called corticotropin releasing hormones, which disrupted the process by which the brain collects and stores memories.

Height of jealousy

Shorter men are more likely to be jealous husbands and boyfriends than their taller counterparts, suggests a
research, which may finally have proof for the controversial ‘Napoleon complex’.

The study, believes it reflects insecurities among men who are not society’s “ideal” height. The much-talked about ‘short man syndrome’ is a phenomenon where short men compensate for their lack of height by inculcating aggressive tendencies, often associated with Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler and Attila the Hun.

In the study carried out by the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, researchers asked men and women how jealous they were in their current relationships. The findings suggested that shorter men were far more likely to say they were jealous than taller ones.

A ‘reasoning’ character

Scientists have created a digital character which they claim has reasoning abilities of that of a child.
The character named ‘Eddie’ is a four-year-old child who can reason about his own beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age, according to the researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

“Current avatars in massively multiplayer online worlds, such as Second Life, are directly tethered to a user’s
keystrokes and only give the illusion of mentality. Truly convincing autonomous synthetic characters must possess memories; believe things, want things, remember things,” said lead researcher Selmer Bringsjord, the head of Rensselaer’s Cognitive Science Department.