Babies Are Born With Some Math Skills

 

   Melissa Libertus

Before and after. Infants' ability to discern between different numbers of dots predicted their mathematical aptitude several years later.

If a 6-month-old can distinguish between 20 dots and 10 dots, she’s more likely to be a good at math in preschool. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which finds that part of our proficiency at addition and subtraction may simply be something we’re born with.

Researchers have long wondered where our math skills come from. Are they innate, or should we credit studying and good teachers—or some combination of the two? “Math ability is a very complex concept, and there are a lot of actors that play into it,” says Ariel Starr, a graduate student in psychology and neuroscience at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Children's internet use survey offers warning to parents

One in five respondents to study of primary pupils claimed to have met someone they had only previously known online.

Maev Kennedy

 

Almost a fifth of survey respondents said they were regularly awake into the small hours using computers. Photograph: Alamy

Almost one in five primary school age children who responded to a survey on internet use claimed to have met somebody they had only previously known online. Half of those children said they went alone to meetings in parks, cinemas, fast food restaurants, shopping centres and private addresses. For those who did take somebody with them, half of companions were parents.

A sizeable majority of the children who took the survey were aged between nine and 11 and a significant minority were also regularly awake into the small hours on computers in their bedrooms and were never supervised by their parents.

Special report: Coalition in crisis over free schools and academies

Lib Dem leader attacks Conservative policy on educational institutions that don't have to meet core standards.

 

 JANE MERRICK

 

Free schools and academies must employ qualified teachers, Nick Clegg will demand this week, in the first break with the Conservatives on education policy under the coalition government.

The Deputy Prime Minister will deliver a hard-hitting speech that will put pressure on the Conservatives over the lack of appropriately qualified teachers in free schools, including the crisis-hit Al-Madinah school in Derby.

What makes rain smell so good?

A mixture of plant oils, bacterial spores and ozone is responsible for the powerful scent of fresh rain. Image via Wikimedia Commons/Juni

Step outside after the first storm after a dry spell and it invariably hits you: the sweet, fresh, powerfully evocative smell of fresh rain.

If you’ve ever noticed this mysterious scent and wondered what’s responsible for it, you’re not alone.

Back in 1964, a pair of Australian scientists (Isabel Joy Bear and R. G. Thomas) began the scientific study of rain’s aroma in earnest with an article in Nature titled “Nature of Agrillaceous Odor.” In it, they coined the term petrichor to help explain the phenomenon, combining a pair of Greek roots: petra (stone) and ichor (the blood of gods in ancient myth).

Neil Gaiman: Let children read the books they love

Mark Brown

Author says physical books are here to stay during keynote speech on what he sees as future of books, reading and libraries

 

Neil Gaiman believes well-meaning adults can destroy a child's love of reading by giving them 'worthy-but-dull books'. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

Children should be allowed to read whatever they enjoy, the author Neil Gaiman has said as he warned that well-meaning adults could destroy a child's love of reading for ever.

Gaiman was delivering a lecture on Monday night about the future of books, reading and libraries to an audience of arts and literary figures. In a wide-ranging speech he said the rise of ebooks did not mean the end for physical books and made an impassioned plea to stop library closures.

The Landfill Harmonic Orchestra - The Recycled Orchestra

 

 

 

Cateura, Paraguay is a town essentially built on top of a landfill. Garbage collectors browse the trash for sellable goods, and children are often at risk of getting involved with drugs and gangs. When music teacher Fabio set up a music program for the kids of Cateura, they soon have more students than they have instruments.

That changed when Szaran and Fabio were brought something they had never seen before: a violin made out of garbage. Today, there’s an entire orchestra of assembled instruments, now called The Recycled Orchestra.

Our film shows how trash and recycled materials can be transformed into beautiful sounding musical instruments, but more importantly, it brings witness to the transformation of precious human beings.

More information: https://www.facebook.com/landfillharmonicmovie?fref=ts
Kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/405192963/landfill-harmonic-inspiring-dreams-one-note-at-a-t

 

http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2013/6/4/the-landfill-harmonic-orchestra-youtube# 

Forced student labour is central to the Chinese economic miracle

China has an army of student labour making Apple products, Playstation consoles and other gadgets for the west. The teenagers' stories make upsetting reading.

  Aditya Chakrabortty

Employees at a Foxconn factory in China: the company is among the biggest users of student labour in the country. Photograph: Darley Shen/Reuters

You'll hear a lot of pieties about China this week. As George Osborne and Boris Johnson schlep from Shanghai to Shenzhen, they'll give the usual sales spiel about trade and investment and the global race. What they won't talk much about is Zhang Lintong. Yet the 16-year-old's story tells you more about the human collateral in the relationship between China and the west than any number of ministerial platitudes.

Middle-class young 'will fare worse than their parents'

David Cameron's social mobility and child poverty inquiry to issue grim warning as debt and job fears create 'perfect storm'

 

 Daniel Boffey

 

Children growing up will struggle to achieve the same living standards as their parents. Photograph:

 Photononstop/Alamy

Today's middle-class children are on track to be the first in more than a century to be materially less well off in adulthood than their parents, a government commission is expected to warn this week.

Leaked findings reveal the existence of a national trend not experienced since the early 20th century, with children from families with above-average incomes, as well as the most deprived, set to enjoy a worse standard of living when they grow up than their mothers and fathers.

Nobel Prize winner Peter Higgs admits being poor at physics at school

Peter Higgs, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, has admitted that he did “not perform well” at physics while at school.

Peter Higgs smiles after being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics at a press conference at the University of 

Edinburgh Photo: GETTY 

By Richard Gray, Science correspondent

Peter Higgs, who has won the Nobel Prize in Physics, has admitted he did “not perform well” at physics while at school, winning prizes in chemistry and languages instead.

Malala Yousafzai's supporters dismayed by failure to land Nobel peace prize

But many within Pakistan believe schoolgirl campaigner for education, tolerance and women's rights is western stooge

 Jon Boone

Malala Yousafzai in New York: liberals hoped a Nobel victory would prove symbolic in a country where extremism and militancy are on the rise. Photograph: Barcroft Media

Supporters of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan reacted with disappointment to the decision by the Nobel committee not to award her the peace prize on Friday, although many in the country remain hostile to the 16-year-old education campaigner who they regard as a stooge of the west.