TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| In praise of … God | Editorial The universe just ramped itself up. Simple. And yet doubts remain - spontaneous creation is, for most folk, just a contradiction in terms"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; / I am always about in the quad." This was the divine response, as imagined by Ronald Knox, to the inquisitive undergraduate who, following Bishop Berkeley's line of thought, wondered whether a tree in the college quadrangle would still exist if God was not there to sustain it. Now someone rather higher in the academic hierarchy has raised the question in a different form. Professor Stephen Hawking says in his new book that there is no place for God in theories about how the universe got started: "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something." Anyone who has ever watched in amazement as a piece of domestic equipment, say a washing machine, suddenly swings into action, even though no human hand has touched any buttons, will be able to grasp something of what Hawking is hinting at here. The universe just ramped itself up. Simple. And yet doubts remain. One accepts that if God were to choose one day to explain the universe to Hawking, the professor would be one of the few people on the planet with any serious chance of understanding the conversation. But spontaneous creation is, for most folk, just a contradiction in terms. God may or may not find all this amusing. The thing is – how to put this gently to Professor Hawking? – that God does not necessarily follow the ins and outs of our many arguments about His existence. Who could blame Him if, after all this time, He has become tired of them? Meanwhile, there is still a tree in the quad.ReligionStephen Hawkingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Bike Sharing Expands in Washington A plan for 100 sharing stations and 1,100 bicycles in Washington and in Arlington, Va. feeds.nytimes.com |
Hyperactive children may suffer from genetic disorder, says study Report claims ADHD could be more of a neurodevelopmental condition than a behavioural problemParents of hyperactive children should not be blamed for failing to bring up their offspring properly, according to scientists who today publish evidence that the condition is genetic.Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) find it hard to concentrate and can be wild and uncontrollable both at home and at school. Controversy has raged around the drug most widely used to calm such children, Ritalin, which is of the amphetamine family. In the US, such drugs became popular among families who wanted their lively (non-ADHD) boys to do better in class, while in the UK they were tagged chemical coshes. Meanwhile, parents have often tacitly been blamed for lack of discipline or giving their children a sugar and additive-laden diet.But today the furore around ADHD moves into a different space. Researchers, funded not by drug companies but by the Wellcome Trust and other bodies, are publishing the results of a study which for the first time identifies genetic changes in children diagnosed with ADHD.And the particular DNA markers they found are in the same area of the brain as genetic variants linked to autism and schizophrenia. That means, say the authors of the paper in the Lancet, that ADHD would be better classified as a neurodevelopmental disorder than a behavioural problem."We hope that these findings will help overcome the stigma associated with ADHD," said Professor Anita Thapar from the MRC Centre in Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics at Cardiff University, one of the authors."Too often, people dismiss ADHD as being down to bad parenting or poor diet. As a clinician, it was clear to me that this was unlikely to be the case. Now we can say with confidence that ADHD is a genetic disease and that the brains of children with this condition develop differently to those of other children."One in 50 children is affected by ADHD, and while it used to be thought that they grow out of it, many continue to have problems in adult life.A genetic link has been suggested for some time, but not proven. Past investigations have shown that ADHD is more likely in a child who has a parent that suffers from the disorder, and that if one twin has ADHD, the other twin has a 75% chance of also having it.But the study has found the first direct evidence by analysing DNA samples from 366 children diagnosed with ADHD, aged five to 17, and 1,047 children without the condition. They found the children with ADHD were more likely to have certain small segments of DNA either duplicated or missing than the other children. Although this finding was limited to 16% of all the children with ADHD, they say it is highly likely the rest have other genetic variants that have not yet been identified.The researchers point out that they have not found a single gene that is responsible for the condition, and environmental circumstances will also be part of the picture – although as yet they do not know what those are. "ADHD is a very complex disorder which will have a number of different causes. A number of different genetic factors will be involved along with other, non-genetic factors," said Dr Kate Langley, another of the authors.The findings will not be used for diagnosing ADHD, they add, but they result in new treatments. The stimulant drugs most commonly used to control the symptoms have been around since the 1950s.ADHD support groups warmly welcomed the findings, which they said would make life easier for families."This is indeed extremely welcome news of clear evidence to confirm that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is indeed a brain development disorder with closer links to autism than was previously thought," said Simon Hensby of Adders, an online information organisation."I hope this will be a welcome relief to the many families who have to face criticism and ridicule on a daily basis, when trying to explain the behaviour of their ADHD child. I hope also that many adults with ADHD will feel much better knowing that their condition wasn't something to do with their upbringing or diet."Extremely low self esteem is probably the biggest common factor in those diagnosed with ADHD, both children and adults. Now we can point to proof that it is a neurodevelopmental disorder. Let us hope that this leads to a better understanding and treatment for children and adult sufferers alike."Sheena Crankson, who has been diagnosed with ADHD herself and whose 13-year-old son Jesse has the condition, said that people blamed her all the time. "So many parents will have been told it's them, for years, in spite of the fact that your child is struggling and their self-esteem is going down and down and your self-esteem is too," she said.Crankson, who lives in New Maldon, Greater London, once took her son to an NHS sleep and behaviour clinic, even though, she said, "we should have been upstairs talking to the psychiatrist about ADHD". The nurse she saw "said I think most of it is your fault". Crankson added: "I felt worse by the time they'd finished than when I went in."She is trying to get her son, who also has other problems, a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder because, she said, ADHD is not taken seriously enough.Attention deficit hyperactivity disorderChildrenHealthNeuroscienceSarah Boseleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
James Tanner obituary Pioneer in auxology, the study of growth in the human bodyThe human body has been studied for millennia, but it is only relatively recently that scientists have understood how much information can be derived from the analysis of physical growth. Auxology, the study of such change, is largely the creation of James Tanner, who has died aged 90. As he wrote: "A child's growth rate reflects, better than any other single index, his state of health and nutrition, and often indeed his psychological situation."Tanner's research and writings influenced not only paediatrics but also anthropology, development economics, nutrition and economic history. His influence stemmed initially from his work, shortly after the second world war, on the Harpenden growth study, one of the earliest longitudinal studies, in which successive generations at a children's home in Hertfordshire were measured and assessed from childhood through to early adulthood.Tanner, with his collaborator Reginald Whitehouse, became proficient in statistics and the analysis of longitudinal data, richer in information than the more usual cross-sectional data. Crucially, they demonstrated that the analysis of human physical growth – and the assessment of the health and progress of individuals – could be illuminated by charts. The simplest of these charts, now used routinely throughout the world, plot the child's height and weight against an expected average growth pattern. If growth deviates significantly from that pattern, it may indicate deprivation or abuse.Tanner developed more complex charts which reflect the fact that there is not one "normal" pattern of growth in adolescence, but that there are early and late maturers. He supplemented the charts with the Tanner scale, a pictorial representation of change in genitalia, breasts and pubic hair. It is still widely used.Based at Great Ormond Street hospital in London, Tanner became concerned, in the 1950s, with the very small group of children who show a significant delay in growth. He pioneered the use of human growth hormone (HGH) to treat such a delay. The hormone was initially extracted from donors post-mortem. When it was suggested, in the 1980s, that this risked the development of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, he suspended the treatment. It was resumed when genetically engineered HGH became available in the 1990s.With Phyllis Eveleth, Tanner published the book Worldwide Variation in Human Growth (1976), demonstrating the overwhelming importance of the environment in determining children's growth and development. He showed, for example, that although 90% of the adult height of an individual is inherited, changes in the average height of large groups of people are almost entirely caused by their environment. Immigrant communities, for example the Italian or Japanese in the US, rapidly acquire some of the physical proportions of the host population. The data shows the extent of differences in height by social class within many different cultures and the fact that height rises with per capita gross domestic product. The success of economic aid and food supplements in developing countries can be assessed by measuring changing heights. According to Tanner: "A well-designed growth study is a powerful tool with which to monitor the health of a population or to pinpoint subgroups of a population whose share in economic or social benefits is less than it might be."His work inspired research into the long-term consequences of changes in nutritional status – measured by height and weight – on life-chances of all kinds. It has been found that taller people, even within a social class, tend to earn more; that the very young children of unemployed parents are shorter than those of parents with jobs; that tall women tend to marry into a higher social class; that mortality from most diseases falls as height rises, even into old age; that the burden of chronic disease has lifted as nutrition has improved. The policy implications of such findings are profound. Early intervention through good maternal care and childcare can bring benefits decades later.Tanner was a great communicator. His most successful popular work, Foetus Into Man (1990), remains one of the best introductions to human biology and growth studies. He also helped to create a new field of historical study, that of anthropometric history, the study of the history of human height and weight. Always interested in the history of his own subject, in 1981 he published A History of the Study of Human Growth.He advised, over several decades, a growing group of historians, economists and statisticians. My book (with Kenneth Wachter and Annabel Gregory), Height, Health and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750-1980, published in 1990, could not have been written without his help.Tanner was born in Camberley, Surrey, into a military family. His brother was killed in the second world war. James was a champion hurdler and might well have represented Britain at the cancelled Olympics of 1940. He attended Marlborough college and the University College of the South West of England (now Exeter University). He decided on a medical career, starting at the medical school of St Mary's hospital in Paddington, central London, before taking up a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania and working at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore. It was there that he met his first wife, Bernice Alture, with whom he had two children.He spent most of his career at Great Ormond Street and the Institute of Child Health in London. Bernice died in 1991. Tanner later found further happiness in his retirement in Devon with his second wife, Gunilla Lindgren, also an expert on auxology. She survives him, together with his daughter, a stepdaughter and stepson, and three granddaughters. His son predeceased him.• James Mourilyan Tanner, paediatrician, born 1 August 1920; died 11 August 2010Medical researchguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Study says conservation slowing animal extinctions By MALCOLM RITTER 2010-10-27T01:19:13ZNEW YORK (AP) -- On average, 52 species of mammals, birds and amphibians are taking a significant step toward extinction each year, a huge new analysis says.... hosted.ap.org |