The "Yes" Baby is now a "Yes" Boy!!

Learning instrument does not make children more intelligent, experts claim

Common claims that learning music boosts children's IQ and helps them perform better at school can not possibly be true, psychologists said.

Evidence linking musical children to high achievement in school can be better explained by the fact they generally come from more privileged backgrounds, it was claimed.

Children who take music lessons tend to have better-educated, higher-earning parents, and to do more extra-curricular activities than other children their age.

Their upbringing, and not the music lessons themselves, helps the children develop characteristics such as conscientiousness which boost mental processes like memory, learning and reasoning, researchers said.

Prof Glenn Schellenberg, a psychologist from the University of Toronto studied the link between musical training and intelligence in a group of 130 children who were aged 10 to 12.

His team studied whether the association could be explained by two key personality traits, conscientiousness and openness to new experiences.

Prof Schellenberg explained: "We were motivated by the fact that kids who take music lessons are particularly good students, in school they actually do better than you would predict from their IQ, so obviously something else is going on and we thought that personality might be the thing."

Presenting the study at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Sunday, he revealed that the association between music lessons and intelligence was mainly down to the children's personalities.

When researchers took into account the likely contribution of each child's personality to their school grades and IQ scores, and removed it from the overall equation, the link between music training and intelligence disappeared.

The study also showed it was possible to predict how long a child had been taking music lessons based on their answers to a personality questionnaire, Prof Schellenberg added.

"What this means is that kids who take music lessons have different personalities, and many or virtually all of the findings that have shown links between music and cognition may be an artifact of individual differences in personality," he said.

"You can explain almost all of the data that are out there by saying that high-functioning kids take music lessons."

The findings show that paying for a child to take music lessons purely for the presumed educational benefit is a "complete waste of time," he said.

"Primarily the associations are driven from the other direction, in that people with specific personalities and with higher levels of cognitive abilities and from more well-off families are more likely to take music lessons."

Prof Daniel Levitin, a psychologist from McGill University in Montreal, said this did not mean music lessons were of no value, however.

"There are benefits to having a society where more people are engaged with the arts, so even if music instruction doesn't make you a better mathematician or a better athlete, even if it only gives you the enjoyment of music, I think that is a good end in and of itself," he said.

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27岁少妇生了孩子后，半年内衰退变成60岁的老太婆。

Got Food Allergies? You Can Now Test Your Meal On the Spot Using a Cell Phone

Are you allergic to peanuts and worried there might be some in that cookie? Now you can find out using a rather unlikely source: your cell phone.

A team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a lightweight device called the iTube, which attaches to a common cell phone to detect allergens in food samples. The iTube attachment uses the cell phone's built-in camera, along with an accompanying smart-phone application that runs a test with the same high level of sensitivity a laboratory would.

Food allergies are an emerging public concern, affecting as many as 8 percent of young children and 2 percent of adults. Allergic reactions can be severe and even life-threatening. And while consumer-protection laws regulate the labeling of ingredients in pre-packaged foods, cross-contaminations can still occur during processing, manufacturing and transportation.

Although several products that detect allergens in foods are currently available, they are complex and require bulky equipment, making them ill-suited for use in public settings, according to the UCLA researchers.

The iTube was developed to address these issues, said Aydogan Ozcan, leader of the research team and a UCLA associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering. Weighing less than two ounces, the attachment analyzes a test tube-based allergen-concentration test known as a colorimetric assay.

To test for allergens, food samples are initially ground up and mixed in a test tube with hot water and an extraction solvent; this mixture is allowed to set for several minutes. Then, following a step-by-step procedure, the prepared sample is mixed with a series of other reactive testing liquids. The entire preparation takes roughly 20 minutes. When the sample is ready, it is measured optically for allergen concentration through the iTube platform, using the cell phone's camera and a smart application running on the phone.

The kit digitally converts raw images from the cell-phone camera into concentration measurements detected in the food samples. And beyond just a "yes" or "no" answer as to whether allergens are present, the test can also quantify how much of an allergen is in a sample, in parts per million.

The iTube platform can test for a variety of allergens, including peanuts, almonds, eggs, gluten and hazelnuts, Ozcan said.

The UCLA team successfully tested the iTube using commercially available cookies, analyzing the samples to determine if they had any harmful amount of peanuts, a potential allergen. Their research was recently published online in the peer-reviewed journal Lab on a Chip and will be featured in a forthcoming print issue of the journal.

Other authors of the research included graduate student and lead author Ahmet F. Coskun and undergraduate students Justin Wong, Delaram Khodadadi, Richie Nagi and Andrew Tey, all of whom are members of the Ozcan BioPhotonics Laboratory at UCLA. Ozcan is also a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

"We envision that this cell phone-based allergen testing platform could be very valuable, especially for parents, as well as for schools, restaurants and other public settings," Ozcan said. "Once successfully deployed in these settings, the big amount of data -- as a function of both location and time -- that this platform will continuously generate would indeed be priceless for consumers, food manufacturers, policymakers and researchers, among others."

Allergen-testing results of various food products, tagged with a time and location stamp, can be uploaded directly from cell phones to iTube servers to create a personalized testing archive, which could provide additional resources for allergic individuals around the world. A statistical allergy database, coupled with geographic information, could be useful for future food-related policies -- for example in restaurants, food production and for consumer protection, the researchers said.

From:Sciencedaily

Baby Sign Language

Baby Sign Language

CAN be an effective communication tool for infants and young children.

Limited research suggests that using baby sign language may improve a child's ability to communicate and ease frustration, particularly between ages 8 months and 2 years.

http://www.babysignlanguage.com/chart/

Interesting True Fact About Albert Einstein

1.               Einstein Had Speech Difficulty as a Child

As he was a late talker, his parents were worried. At last, at the supper table one night, he broke his silence to say, "The soup is too hot."
Greatly relieved, his parents asked why he had never said a word before.
Albert replied, "Because up to now everything was in order."

2.              When Albert Einstein died, his final words died with him. The nurse at his side didn't understand German.

3.              Albert Einstein was once offered the Presidency of Israel. He declined saying he had no head for problems.

4.              Einstein wasn't present in December 1922 to receive the Nobel prize in physics. Instead he was on a voyage to Japan.

5.              He married his cousin Elsa Lowenthal.

The Effect Of Color On Chidlren’s Brain.

The Effect Of Color On Chidlren’s Brain.

a)  Develop the right brain and intelligence of children

b)  Fostering children’s good character

c)   Affect children emotional intelligence

How to use color to develop children's intelligence ?

 Understanding of color is an indispensable part in theparenting process. The Parenting Experts said the correct color education conducive to fostering children's good character, good on the development of the right brain and intelligence of children.

Intellectual development of color stimulation

"Most parents do not know, to the children 'see' the process, that is, the process of visual development, a process that the future of the child is very important!" Yang Jian, Director of the Child Development Research Center of Wuhan University, believes that the development of children's intelligence, should start to see things from the to the children.

Yang Jian introduced, the human sensory system information into the brain, most of them by "see things", and, as the highly sensitive child daily intake of the brain, the quantity, the quality is high, more clearly and accurately in cerebral cortex form a more visual memory, richer cellular neural connections within the brain, thereby contributing to the development of the brain.

Education have a role in the emotional adjustment of color Red, yellow, blue Guilin Qin Ziyuan teacher willow color will not only affect a child's IQ, but also affect a child's emotional intelligence . Black and white, such as prolonged exposure to adverse impact be interested in the personality of the child.

Willow introduced, babies tend to be more bright colors like yellow, orange, light blue and light green. Children grow up in this color environment, often higher IQ. Conversely, when the baby long-term is rather bleak, people are likely to feel depressed, dull, even suffer from depression, fear and other negative feeling black, brown color environment, their IQ is relatively low, and creativity, self-confidence, etc. are not as good as the former.It is also based on this theory, kindergarten layout usually fully consider the color effect, try to provide children with a cheerful, bright colors.

Willow introduced the character within the child, the parents can choose for his warm clothes, such as red and yellow, to cultivate children's enthusiasm and lively personality, he was excited and agitated in the subconscious. Instead, the character more irritable children, parents can give him a design environment green or blue, to feel green environment, such as children to nature to see the blue sky and white clouds.

Yang Jian, said the development of the child's vision, although simple, but there should be some taboo, is not appropriate for children to see a bad picture, such as the the parents fighting scenes, dirty room.

Details of life, color education

"Education colors everywhere in any one place for children to color education." Willow said, parents can seize the children with the opportunity to go out walking around the scene of the children color education. For example, to tell him that the leaves are green, the sun is red, the sky is blue, the clouds are white ... and then let the child retell.

Course, at home the children color education. Parents can drying clothes with different colors clip children distinguish colors. After children distinguish colors, parents can let children folder with clips of different colors in the clothes of the same color to deepen the impression of children of color , this color games .

In addition, parents can also make use of colored cardboard, spell out a large color swatches, and then use sticky notes to write the name of the color, paste it into the corresponding color above, and then let the children go to identification.

Willow remind children about colors, parents also need to understand their children for what color, like the color, which will parents understand their children a great help.

Grow by this paper has learned how to use color to develop children's intelligence , and want to learn more about the intellectual development of knowledge so stay tuned to the parents class channel the daily Le sources Parenting Network , to provide you with comprehensive professionalbaby educational knowledge, let your baby healthy and happy !

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