In the second crib recall in as many weeks, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a recall yesterday of 170,000 drop-side cribs sold by C&T International/Sorelle, of East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Prior to 2003, the cribs were also sold under the brand Golden Baby Inc.) The recall was prompted by 104 reports of
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Studies have linked excessive TV-watching in young children to all manner of ills: an increased risk of childhood obesity and high blood pressure, problems with attention and language development, and a decrease in the quality of relationships between children and parents.
Now new research, published Monday in the Archives of …
Not knowing where your food will come from, where you will live, or if there will be heat in your home day to day or week to week can certainly be stressful for anyone. But, according to new research published this week in the journal Pediatrics, the cumulative effect of these hardships can be detrimental to children’s health. The impact
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While applauding the First Lady’s efforts to combat childhood obesity through the Let’s Move initiative, researchers from the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco say that the campaign’s efforts focused primarily on behavioral and nutritional intervention—in school or at home—will yield “limited
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A new study published online earlier this week by the British medical journal The Lancet suggests that the number of women dying during pregnancy or childbirth has dropped by more than one third in the past three decades, from half a million annual deaths in 1980 to 343,000 as of 2008. The study, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates
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After steadily growing from 2003 to 2006 and reaching an all-time high in 2007, the U.S. birth rate declined in 2008, coinciding with the economic downturn, according to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center. Utilizing 2008 birth and economic data available for 25 states, researchers noticed that in most states the birth rate
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In 1897, in a book on suicide, French sociologist Emile Durkheim suggested that being a parent made people less likely to take their own lives. And in the time since, a few studies have explored this hypothesis, consistently finding that women who had children were less likely to take their own lives, and that the more children a woman
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A large scale study of children between the ages of 2 to 19 finds that a growing number of young children are extremely obese—or have a body mass index greater than 35 kg/m. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), children who are in the 85th up to 95th percentile (or have a BMI higher than 25 kg/m,
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Women who have taken the pill may live longer because they face less risk of heart disease and cancer, according to new study led by Dr. Philip Hannaford from Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. The study, published this week in the British Medical Journal, followed more than 46,000 female patients from 1,400 medical practices throughout
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Slate.com reported on a horrifying story yesterday about parents who, after giving birth to a child with some health complications, whiled away their time raising a cyber baby and left their real-world infant to starve. The South Korean parents met online, and soon developed a romantic relationship that resulted in the birth of a
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A recent surge in eye injuries among small children caused by exposure to capsules of liquid detergent prompted eye specialists to issue a warning about keeping the soap packets out of children’s reach. Writing in the British Medical Journal this week, a team of British eye doctors said that problems caused by exposure to the capsules
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The topic of virtual violence in video games resulting in real life aggression has long been controversial—and many courts have tested the limits of the “video games made me do it” defense. Now a new study published this week in the March issue of the Psychological Bulletin adds to the debate with findings suggesting that, while
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According to the family of Mary Robbins, who died of cancer in early February at age 71, on her deathbed Robbins changed her mind about willing her body to a non-profit organization for cryogenic preservation. In 2006 Robbins signed an agreement with Alcor Life Extension Foundation—the same group that preserved the head of baseball
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