This column isn’t about young children or children who accidentally come across unwanted sexual material. Those are different issues. The question I want to explore is how a parent should react if they discover their growing child — typically 12 or older — is deliberately looking at sexually explicit material on the Internet.

Nothing new or unusual

First, recognize that there’s nothing new about teens looking at such material.

We didn’t have the Internet when I was 14, but that didn’t stop kids from getting their hands on copies of Playboy. Porn has been around for centuries and we’re far from the first generation of parents who have had to deal with it.

There are a number of reasons why kids look at pornography. For some, it’s to be “cool.” There are reported cases of relatively young children using porn to impress their friends, much as kids sometimes smoke to show their independence.

Sometimes it’s curiosity, but in many cases — especially for males past puberty — it’s for stimulation at times when no one else is around.

Interest in sex and voyeuristic behavior to satisfy sexual urges are completely normal. Whether the young person makes up images in his head, gets them from television shows, movies, magazines or images on the Internet, the process is much the same.

Engage but don’t overreact

The first answer is not to freak out. Take a deep breath and spend some time thinking about the situation before you do anything. If possible, talk it over with the child’s other parent before confronting the child.

Don’t overreact. How you respond to the situation can have more of an effect than the exposure itself, according to Richard Toft, a child psychologist in Palo Alto, California.

“Parents,” said Dr. Toft, “need to approach porn the same way they approach any issue about their child’s sexuality. There are laws involved, there is responsibility involved, and there is a life long impact of everything they do whether they want to admit it or not.” Dr. Toft added, “Parents are going to do best if they do not consider porn isolated from sexuality. They need to address their moral feelings about sex, and porn is part of that. It is also best addressed ahead of time not after the fact.” He added, “A parent’s reaction can have a tremendous impact, and you could make it traumatic by ranting, raving and threatening reprisals.”‘

Porn and sexuality

Dr. Marty Klein, a Silicon Valley-based marriage counselor, psychotherapist, and sex therapist, said that “many parents are blissfully ignoring their kids’ sexuality. They don’t talk about sex with their children when they’re young and when they trip over their kid’s porn at age 14, they suddenly realize their kid is a sexual being. ” Finding that your kid is using porn, said Dr. Klein, “can be a teachable moment. It can be turned into a positive thing. It may be long overdue for a parent to have a few conversations about sex with their kid.” He added,” we don’t wait around for our kids to ask about taking care of their teeth. We teach them dental hygiene when they’re young. It’s the same with sex.” Dr. Klein argues that “you can’t talk about porn without talking about your kid masturbating. One of the reason parents don’t want their kids looking at porn is because they’re uncomfortable with their kid masturbating.” Klein said that there is no evidence that masturbation is harmful or dangerous unless the child is doing it so much that it’s interfering with other activities.

Dr. Daniel Broughton, a pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota who for 13 years served as chairman of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, says to be careful to distinguish the child’s behavior from the feelings that may be behind it.

“What the kid has done may be an issue, but what a kid is feeling or thinking is not the problem. You don’t say `You’re a bad kid for thinking this,’ even if you do feel that he has been a naughty kid for doing it.”

You don’t need a psychologist or a pediatrician to recognize how this can be an extremely embarrassing situation for you and your child. After all, you’re entering into the child’s private space. While having sex involves another person, viewing pornography often involves only the child and the screen.

Broughton cautions parents not to send their child to a psychologist or psychiatrist at the first sign of such exposure.

“You might want to seek professional advice yourself on how to deal with it, but that doesn’t mean you should seek professional care for your child,” he said.

Both Toft and Broughton feel it’s appropriate for a parent to talk with their child so the child knows how the parent feels about pornography and the child’s behavior. Again, both professionals caution parents not to make their child feel as if he is somehow abnormal or perverted.

Role models

Cordelia Anderson, a Minneapolis-based prevention consultant in the field of sexual health, recommends parents counter the messages their kids may see when viewing porn. “Parents may want to be the main sexuality educator for their children rather than by omission having it be pornography.” She said that parents “should think about the messages it contains about gender, equity and sex and sexuality” as well as the “role and expectation of being male or female in this culture, about respect for your partner and sex in the context of a caring respectful relationship, and what kinds of images and practices they want to shape their arousal.”

Putting it into context

It’s also important to put the activity into context. An occasional peek at pornography or use of pornography for sexual stimulation, according to Toft, is not as much of a mental health concern as are cases where children are obsessed with the material. If the child is looking at pornography for hours at a time, or is collecting it, then you may have a more serious problem that requires professional help.

When it could be more serious

Though it’s rare, there are cases where adults have used pornography as part of the grooming process to make the child more susceptible to sexual exploitation. It can also be a financial issue if the child uses a credit card to get access to paid sites.

Also, if any of the images are of people under 18, the child might be accessing illegal child pornography. If so, put an immediate end to it and destroy any copies that may be printed or stored on a computer or phone. Possession of child pornography is a serious crime that could lead to prosecution and being required to register as a sex offender. This is especially important if the images are of pre-pubescent children, but even if your child is looking at images of teens and even if you think it may be “age appropriate,” it may still be illegal. Minors can be prosecuted and the law is sometimes applied even when kids receive or send sexually explicit photos to other kids (so-called “sexting”).

Consequences yet restraint

Broughton says parents need to dish out consequences for inappropriate behavior, but shouldn’t lash out with severe punishment the first time. “If the parents feel that the child has done something wrong, there needs to be a penalty, but it needs to be commensurate to the issue. The first time the penalty should be relatively mild like, `You can’t use the computer unless a parent is there for two days.’ As the offenses become more repeated, the consequences should become more severe.”

When talking with your child, consider bringing up some of the consequences of spending time on these types of sites. For one thing, the depictions on some Internet sites go far beyond pictures of naked people. There is often very graphic sex as well as a variety of divergent sexual practices that can be especially problematic for someone who has little or no sexual experience.

Violent vs. non-violent material

The type of material a child is looking at can have an impact on their behavior said according to a study published in the January/February 2011 issue of Aggressive Behavior. A research team led by Dr. Michele Ybarra found that “intentional exposure to violent x-rated material over time predicted an almost 6-fold increase in the odds of self-reported sexually aggressive behavior, whereas exposure to nonviolent x-rated material was not statistically significantly related.”

After reviewing empirical studies, Christopher Ferguson, Associate Professor of Psychology and Criminal Justice” at Texas A&M International University, concluded, “Overall, pornography viewing effects on minors appears to be fairly minimum for most outcomes, particularly for “regular” non-violent porn. There appears to be little evidence overall that viewing non-violentpornography increases sexual aggression. Even for violent pornography the evidence is inconsistent at best.” He added that “the research also indicates what is called ‘violent porn’ is actually very rare.”

There is a lot of concern about the type of porn that’s online compared to what was easily available in the past. Porn is more explicit and it sometimes depicts acts that fantasize behavior that appears to be hurtful. Dr. Klein said that parents can help kids distinguish between fantasy and reality when it comes to sexually explicit material. Parents should explain to children that people in porn films are “actors and actresses and that they’re not really hurting each other.” He likened it to watching the 3 Stooges poke each other or kids playing with guns: “Just like some kids like to play with guns and would never hurt anyone, some adults like to play games with sex, but wouldn’t really hurt each other.”

Blocking and monitoring porn

If you feel that your child needs some restraint beyond what you can accomplish through conversation or house rules, you can put a filter on whatever devices the child uses. There are programs for computers and apps for smart phones that do a reasonably good job of blocking sexually explicit material without blocking appropriate sites. These programs are not perfect and they are not for every child but they can help a child control his or her impulses. If you use such a program, it’s best to discuss it with your child so he knows why it’s there. You should also consider removing the software or lessening its restrictions as your child shows signs of self-control.

To prevent accidental exposure, consider configuring your search engine for “Safe search.” You can do that within Google, but as easier option is to use SafeKids.com Child Safe Search page that’s powered by Google. Yahoo also has a safe search setting, as does Microsoft’s Bing.

Of course there are ways around filters (including using a different device — porn can be viewed on any Internet-connected device including game consoles, phones, tablets and even an iPod Touch) and ultimately your child will reach an age where you have no ability to control what they do, so remember that the best filter isn’t the one that runs on a device, but the one that runs on the computer inside the child’s head.

Finally, recognize that conversations like this are part of parenting. Difficult as they are, they can ultimately be good for your children and your relationship with them. Huffington Post

Perhaps the most inspiring exercise science published in 2011 involved the effects that working out can have on the brain. By studying both lab rodents and people, scientists this year showed that exercise increases cognitive sharpness, even if the amount of exercise is small. In a representative experiment involving mice, which I wrote about in September, scientists at the University of South Carolina found that the equivalent of about 30 minutes of jogging a day changed the animals’ brain cells at a molecular level. After a few months of running, their neurons contained more mitochondria, a cell component that produces energy, than did the neurons of sedentary mice. In effect, their brain cells had become more robust and physically fit, thanks to the jogging.

Similarly, other studies published this year found that even in volunteers who were not distance runners or mice, activity significantly improved cognitive function. One fascinating study of elderly Canadians that I wrote about this summer showed that those who regularly walked around the block, gardened, cleaned the house, cooked or otherwise remained active without formally exercising, scored much better on tests of memory and other mental skills than older people who were almost completely inactive.

This study and the many others now linking activity and improved mental functioning represent “a wake-up call,” Dr. Eric Larson, the vice president of research at Group Health Research Institute in Seattle and author of an editorial that accompanied the study, told me.

“None of us wants to lose our minds,” he said — a sentiment with which I fervently agree — so we “have to find ways to get everybody moving.”

One means might be to direct people to the most popular column I wrote this year, in terms of both the number of page views and the number of comments, about the effect of exercise on aging. In the study highlighted in that column, Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, a professor of pediatrics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, took rats bred to age at an accelerated rate and had them start running.

After a few months, by which time the non-running control rats were frail, bald and dying, the runners still had virtually all of their youthful muscle mass, balance, mental acuity and fur and, unlike the sedentary animals, had not developed shrinkage in their hearts, brains or gonads. I have rarely skipped an exercise session since reading that study, and am happy to report that I still have a full head of fur.

Not all of the exercise science this year was quite so encouraging, however. Another column that inspired considerable interest and comments involved several new studies intimating that too much running might – and I would stress the word “might” – produce scarring or other damage in the heart. In one study, M.R.I. scans of a small group of lifelong elite male endurance athletes found signs of scarring in some of the men’s heart muscles.

A separate study of rats that had undergone the equivalent of years of marathon training showed similar signs of scarring within their hearts.

But these results, although certainly provocative, are preliminary and may turn out to be meaningless, as the scientists who conducted the studies acknowledge. There is no evidence that heart muscle scarring, if it occurs, leads to heart problems. And as Dr. Paul Thompson, the chief of cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and an expert on sports cardiology, told me, “Too much exercise has not been a big problem in America. Most people just run to stay in shape, and for them, the evidence is quite strong that endurance exercise is good” for the heart.

Just as the evidence is increasingly strong that it is good for your brain, muscles, mitochondria and gonads.

Which is why I plan to continue running — and biking, hiking, walking, gardening and weight training — in 2012, although I may leave the housecleaning to my husband. In reviewing the year in fitness, in fact, what struck me most strongly was that, although this column covers science, it is also sneakily about me. I’m a middle-aged lifelong exerciser with an increasingly leaky memory and sometimes-wavering resolve. I’ve found inspiration and encouragement in the fitness science this year, although I do wish that it could have discovered that typing constitutes a workout. At least fidgeting counts. By Gretchen Retnolds, The New York Times

The first of the Baby Boomers began reaching age 65 this year.

By 2030, the number of people 65 and older will comprise 20 percent, or about 71 million people, of the U.S. population, according to research conducted by Prudential in 2010.

Over the last several years, boomers have proven their resilience and strength in continuing to work full- or part- time jobs, although for many it’s a necessity.

Ruth Savage, marketing director for Spring Oaks, assisted living facility, discussed the options individuals and families need to consider for loved ones who are about to retire or are above retirement age.

“Those who are the seniors must realize they are only one fall away from not being able to take care of themselves,” she said.

People need to know what their options are, Savage added.

Of those who use home- or community-based services, about 1 million receive home-delivered meals and nearly 500,000 get case management services, according to the U.S. Administration on Aging. Other services provided include homemaking, personal care, transportation, chore assistance and adult day care.

Savage suggests people should look at what they can afford and which type of community fits their needs best.

Communities range from independent living to assisted living to nursing homes. Residency is based on the level of assistance the resident requires.

Many families have someone who takes a loved one into their home, becoming the primary caregiver.

“It is one of the primary steps toward care planning for the retirement years,” Savage said.

“Most decisions are based on what a person’s needs are and affordability.”

It is important for family members to include the person needing help as part of the process, she added.

* * * * *

Of individuals 65 or older, 70 percent will need some type of long-term care during their “golden years,” research shows.

According to research conducted by AARP, there are an estimated 50 million-plus unpaid caregivers who provide care and support to their loved ones. The value is approximately $375 billion to the U.S. economy and provides the majority of long-term care services.

The average annual cost for a private room in a nursing home is estimated at about $80,000; an assisted living facility is about $38,000.

“The most common misconception people have is the thought ‘the government will take care of me,’” Savage said.

“Social security income does not cover most of the costs for assisted living care.”

* * * * *

Assisted living facilities are private pay entities, she added.

“Those who qualify for the Medicaid community diversion program or VA benefits help cover the costs, but the wait can be more than a year as the Medicaid programs have had over 7,000 on the wait list for assistance,” Savage said.

Medicaid accounts for almost 50 percent of national long-term-care spending; Medicare accounts for 20 percent, with 18 percent as out-of-pocket and 7 percent for private insurance, according to a 2005 study.

Medicare offers limited coverage for nursing home and home health care.

Many have been placed in a nursing home because ALFs were not an option due to financial restrictions, she added.

“The Florida Assisted Living Association lobbies for changes to correct this problem, and we should see changes coming for 2013,” Savage said. “Changes include the possibility of many who do not need nursing home care being shifted into assisted living facilities.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, as of Oct. 2010, people are no longer required to meet an institutional level of care to qualify for home- and community-based services.

“Long-term care insurance is a good option to save a person’s retirement and pension,” Savage said.

* * * * *

Trying to care for an older family member at home can have consequences for the caregiver.

“Families try to take on the responsibility of taking their older loved ones into their home,” said Savage.

“This can add stress to the marriage and family.”

Respite care offers short-term care. Also, check into local support groups for caregivers, advised Savage.

“Another option is considering independent living,” said Savage. “If a person’s home is too much to take care of, an independent living community may be a good fit.”

According to a study by geriatric specialists from the National Institutes of Health, breakdowns such as senile squalor syndrome, also known as Diogenes syndrome, are often characterized by domestic squalor, excessive self-neglect, social withdrawal, apathy and hoarding behavior.

However, the study pointed out that not all individuals diagnosed with Diogenes syndrome hoard.

* * * * *

For those who do, health and safety are major concerns. Being trapped in their environment with heaps of what they accumulate can cause health and fire risks.

Items hoarded can include newspapers, books, stuff scavenged from Dumpsters, sentimental objects and just plain garbage. Hoarding and obsessive-compulsive disorder are commonly associated.

However, “hoarding appears unrelated to OCD and is more likely to affect older age groups,” states another study according to the NIH and Psychiatry, a peer-reviewed journal.

For the elderly who begin to hoard, experts suggest it could be a reaction to stresses and the personality of the individual.

* * * * *

The CLASS Act (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act) was enacted in the Affordable Care Act to establish a voluntary insurance program for long- term care, federally administered.

CLASS, for about the first 10 years, is estimated to save the federal government $38 billion.

But it’s also projected to decline when benefit payments begin. This begs the question: Is the program sustainable? By Anna Lamy,Hernando Today

“Our models tell us that if there is water present in the Martian sub-surface, then it could be habitable,” said doctoral student Eriita Jones from the Planetary Science Institute of the Australian National University.

“We know that there is a hot, deep biosphere on Earth that extends to around five kilometres. If there is a hot deep biosphere on Mars, our modelling shows that it could extend to around 30 kilometres,” study co-author Charley Lineweaver added.

The same scientists had modelled the earth earlier and identified water that was inhabited and water that was not, the Astrobiology Journal reported.

In this research, they applied the same technique to Mars and found that a large fraction of the Martian sub-surface could be harbouring habitable water, according to a university statement.

“We found that about three percent of the volume of present-day Mars has the potential to be habitable to terrestrial-like life. This is compared to only about one percent of the volume of the Earth being inhabited,” said Lineweaver.

“Our conclusion is that the best way to find water – or potentially microbes – on Mars is to dig. Sadly, NASA’s Curiosity Rover, which is scheduled to land on Mars in August, has a limited capacity to scratch the surface to 10 or 20 centimetres,” he added. Zeenews

The survey by the British Association of Anger Management found that an increasing number of women in positions of power are bullying colleagues and employees.

While such behaviour is more commonly linked with male bosses, the survey found that a fifth of female bosses admit to shouting or being verbally abusive at work, a trend which has given rise to a new phenomenon called the nightmare female boss, a media report said.

Ten per cent of women executives admit to blaming and shaming colleagues when things go wrong. Almost 90 per cent of those surveyed, however, said they had experienced an increase in stress, with more than 60 per cent citing poor management as the reason for their anxiety.

Mike Fisher, the association’s director, said high-flying women are now encountering the psychological problems that have historically blighted the lives of men at the top.

He said: “The main reason for an increase in anger is the inability to deal with stress. Women tend to pay more attention to detail than men so they sweat over the small things.

“They can be short-tempered and abrupt, and make underhanded critical remarks. It can be interpreted by colleagues as bullying.” Indian Express

The report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that on any given day, 53 percent of 18 to 29 year-olds go online just to have fun or pass time.

That should explain all those kitten videos.

The report finds that the amount of time people spend tooling around on the Web doing nothing corresponds with age. Only 12 percent of people over 65 say they went online the previous day for no particular reason. Of those aged 50 to 64, the study found 27 percent answered yes to the same question.

In all, 58 percent of all adults said that they use the Internet to pass time or have fun at least occasionally. Of adults who use the Internet, nearly three-quarters surf the Web for no reason.

The survey didn’t define “fun,” so people could interpret it broadly. For some people, gossip blogs might be fun, for others, they’re serious research.

Pew is releasing the study on Friday. The phone survey was conducted from July 25 to Aug. 26 among 2,260 American adults. By Barbara Ortutay, Lexington Herald-Leader

Granted, it may take a while to catch on. And it won’t be cheap.

The first lab-grown hamburger would cost around e250 000 (R2.73 million) to produce, said Mark Post, a vascular biologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, who hopes to unveil such a delicacy soon.

Experts say the meat’s potential for saving animals’ lives, land, water, energy and the planet could be enormous.

“The first one will be a proof of concept, just to show it’s possible,” Post said from his Maastricht lab. “I believe I can do this in the coming year.”

It may sound and look like some kind of imitation. Although in-vitro or cultured meat is a real animal-flesh product, it has never been part of a complete, living animal.

It is quite different from imitation meat or meat substitutes aimed at vegetarians, and made from vegetable proteins like soy.

Stem cells

Using stem cells harvested from leftover animal material from slaughterhouses, Post nurtures them with a feed concocted of sugars, amino acids, lipids, minerals and all other nutrients they need to grow in the right way.

So far he has produced whitish, pale muscle-like strips, each around 2.5cm long, less than 1cm wide and so thin as to be almost see-through.

Pack enough of these together – probably around 3 000 of them in layers – throw in a few strips of lab-grown fat, and you have the world’s first “cultured-meat” burger.

“This first one will be grown in an academic lab by highly trained academic staff. “It’s hand-made, and it’s time- and labour-intensive, that’s why it’s so expensive to produce.”

Not to mention a little unappetising. Since Post’s in-vitro meat contains no blood, it lacks colour. At the moment, it looked a bit like the flesh of scallops, he said.

Like all muscle, these lab-grown strips need to be exercised so they can grow and strengthen rather than waste away.

To do this Post exploits muscles’ natural tendency to contract and stretches them between Velcro tabs in the Petri dish to provide resistance and help them build up strength.

Supporters of the idea of man-made meat, like Stellan Welin, a bioethicist at Linkoping University in Sweden, say this is no less appealing than mass-producing livestock in factory farms where growth hormones and antibiotics are commonly used to boost yields and profits.

Conventional meat production is also notoriously inefficient. For every 15g of edible meat, you need to feed the animals around 100g of vegetable protein, an increasingly unsustainable equation.

This meant finding new ways of producing meat was essential if we were to feed the enormous and ever-growing demand for it across the world, Welin said.

Not sustainable

“Of course you could do it by being vegetarian or eating less meat. But the trends don’t seem to be going that way. With cultured meat we can be more conservative – people can still eat meat, but without causing so much damage.”

The World Health Organisation said annual meat production was projected to increase from 218 million tons between 1997 and 1999 to 376 million tons by 2030, and demand from a growing world population was seen rising beyond that.

Post said: “Current livestock-meat production is just not sustainable. Not from an ecological point of view, and neither from a volume point of view.

“Right now we are using more than 50 percent of all our agricultural land for livestock.

“It’s simple maths. We have to come up with alternatives.”

A 2006 UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report said industrialised agriculture contributed on a “massive scale” to climate change, air pollution, land degradation, energy use, deforestation and biodiversity decline.

The report, entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow, said the meat industry contributed about 18 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. This proportion was expected to grow as consumers in fast-developing countries, such as China and India, ate more meat.

Hanna Tuomisto conducted a study into the relative environmental impacts of various types of meat, including lamb, pork, beef and cultured meat. She said the lab-grown stuff had by far the least impact on the environment.

Her analysis, published in the Environmental Science and Technology journal earlier this year, found growing our favourite meats in-vitro would use 35 percent to 60 percent less energy, emit 80 percent to 95 percent less greenhouse gas and use around 98 percent less land than conventionally produced animal meat.

“We are not saying we could, or would, necessarily want to replace conventional meat with its cultured counterpart right now.”

Tuomisto led the research at Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit.

But she said cultured meat “could be part of the solution to feed the world’s growing population and at the same time cut emissions and save both energy and water”.

Tasty?

While experts in the field agree that within several years it may be possible to produce in-vitro meat, like sausages or chicken nuggets, in a processed form, producing more animal-like products, like pork chops or steaks, could be much more complex and take many more years to develop.

Post is financed by an anonymous private funder keen to see the Dutch scientist succeed.

He hopes to hand the world its first man-made hamburger by August or September next year. But for the moment he admits what he had grown was a long way from a mouth-watering meal.

He hasn’t yet sampled his creation, but others’ reviews are not great. A Russian TV reporter, who came to his lab, tried one of the strips and was unimpressed.

“It’s not very tasty yet,” Post said. “That’s not a trivial thing and it needs to be worked on.”

But with the right amounts and right types of fat, and perhaps a little lab-grown blood to give it colour and iron, Post is confident he can make his Petri-dish meat look and taste as good as the real thing.

He also hopes the ability to tweak and change things will mean scientists will ultimately be able to make meat healthier – for example, with less saturated and more polyunsaturated fat, or more nutrients.

“The idea is that since we are now producing it in the lab, we can play with all these variables and eventually hopefully turn it in a way that produces healthier meat.

“Whereas in a cow or a pig, you have very limited variables to play with.” By 6Kate Kelland, Independent Online

But be careful how you enjoy it, cautions Dr. Anita Valanju Shelgikar, director of the sleep medicine fellowship program at the University of Michigan.

“It’s truly easier to go this way than in the other direction,” Shelgikar said, referring to the spring-time shift forward an hour. “It does give you an extra hour in the morning to sleep, but it can throw people off, primarily because people say I can stay up a lot later because I have an extra hour in the morning to sleep and ultimately, they sleep deprive themselves.” [Are You Getting Enough Sleep?]

The arrival of winter presents a more difficult transition than the shift back, since, as the days shorten, a gap widens between our internal body clocks and the natural day, she said. This becomes more of an issue farther north, since days become even shorter.

Why turn back the clock?

Daylight saving time, which is now ending, is an attempt to take advantage of the annual fluctuation in the amount of time we see the sun above the horizon. This fluctuation happens because the axis around which the Earth rotates doesn’t stand straight relative to the sun, rather our planet is tilted 23.5 degrees.

This means that as the Earth travels around the sun on its annual course, one hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, getting more than its fair share of light and warmth, while the other is titled away and enduring winter.

This effect becomes stronger as you travel farther north or south away from the equator, so that summer at either pole means 24-hour sunlight, and winter means 24-hour darkness. The continental U.S. experiences a less extreme fluctuation in day length over the course of the year.

Daylight saving time is an attempt to deal with this situation, by shifting the national schedule forward an hour in March to take advantage of lengthening daylight hours, and back again in November as daylight shrinks. The idea was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in 1874.

Dealing with darkness

Light is the most important environmental cue that tells our brains to wake up in the morning, so darkness in the morning makes it hard to get out of bed, Shelgikar said.

She recommends exposing your eyes to light right when you get up. While natural light is probably the best cue, artificial light in your bedroom can still help, she said.

A routine also helps. Shelgikar also recommends sticking to a set sleep schedule, with a fixed bedtime and a fixed wake time. By Wynne Parry, Yahoo Daily News

Scientists have for years debated the reasons behind the Ice Age mass extinctions, which caused the loss of a third of the large mammals in Eurasia and two thirds of the large mammals in North America.

They have been arguing on whether climate change or humans are responsible for the extinctions of the large-bodied Ice Age mammals (commonly called megafauna) such as the woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth.

Now the study, led by Professor Eske Willerslev and his group from the Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, has revealed dramatically different responses of Ice Age species to climate change and human impact.

Using ancient DNA, species distribution models and the human fossil record, the findings indicated that neither climate nor humans alone could account for the Ice Age mass extinctions.

“Our findings put a final end to the single-cause theories of these extinctions,” said Willserslev.

The study reported that climate alone caused extinctions of woolly rhinoceros and musk ox in Eurasia, but a combination of climate and humans played a part in the loss of bison in Siberia and wild horse.

While the reindeer remain relatively unaffected by any of these factors, the reasons causes of the extinction of the mammoth remain unresolved.

The study has been published online today in the journal Nature. Newstrack India

Many linguists believe all human languages derived from a single tongue spoken in East Africa around 50,000 years ago. They’ve found clues scattered throughout the vocabularies and grammars of the world as to how that original “proto-human language” might have sounded. New research suggests that it sounded somewhat like the speech of Yoda, the tiny green Jedi from “Star Wars.”

There are various word orders used in the languages of the world. Some, like English, use subject-verb-object (SVO) ordering, as in the sentence “I like you.” Others, such as Latin, use subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering, as in “I you like.” In rare cases, OSV, OVS, VOS and VSO are used. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Merritt Ruhlen and Murray Gell-Mann, co-directors of the Santa Fe Institute Program on the Evolution of Human Languages, argue that the original language used SOV ordering (“I you like”).

“This language would have been spoken by a small East African population who seemingly invented fully modern language and then spread around the world, replacing everyone else,” Ruhlen told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

The researchers came to their conclusion after creating a language family tree, which shows the historical relationships between all the languages of the world. For example, all the Romance languages (Italian, Rumanian, French, Spanish) derive from Latin, which was spoken in Rome 2,000 years ago; that Latin family is itself a branch of an even larger tree, whose other branches include Germanic, Slavic, Greek, Indic and others. Together, all those languages make up the Indo-European language family, which fits like a puzzle piece with all the other language families in the world. [What's the Hardest Language to Learn?]

“These families — all families — are identified by finding words in a set of languages that are similar to each other but not found elsewhere,” Ruhlen explained in an email.

In the language family tree, Ruhlen and Gell-Mann discovered a distinct pattern in how word orders change as languages branch off from their mother tongues. “What we found was that the distribution of the six possible word orders did not vary randomly. … Rather, the distribution of these six types was highly structured, and the paths of linguistic change in word order were clear,” Ruhlen said.

Out of the 2,000 modern languages that fit in the family tree, the researchers found that more than half are SOV languages. The ones that are SVO, OVS and OSV all derive directly from SOV languages — never the other way around. For example, French, which is SVO, derives from Latin, which is SOV.

Furthermore, languages that are VSO and VOS always derive from SVO languages. Thus, all languages descend from an original SOV word order – “which leads to the conclusion that the word order in the language from which all modern languages derive must have been SOV,” Ruhlen wrote.

Was it just an accident that the mother of all mother tongues was probably SOV, rather than one of the other five possibilities? The researchers think not. Predating Ruhlen’s and Gell-Mann’s work, Tom Givon, a linguist at the University of Oregon, argued that SOV had to have been the first word order, based on how children learn language. He found that the SOV word ordering seems to come most naturally to humans. [Why Are 'Mama' and 'Dada' a Baby's First Words?]

And if that’s the case, it seems strange that languages switch word orders as they evolve. Indeed, no one really knows why word orders would switch. “We have found that word changes in very precise ways,” Ruhlen said. “But the fact remains that half of the world’s languages still have SOV word order because, in Murray’s and my opinion, they have not changed word order at all. [Our data] shows how word order changes … but it is unpredictable if word order will change, and I really don’t know why.” By Natalie Wolchover, Yahoo Daily News