Why Don’t Babies Talk Like Adults? – Preview

Kids go from goo-goo to garrulous one step at a time
By Joshua Hartshorne

Key Concepts

• As young children learn to talk, they progress through stages of imperfect grammar, such as speaking in one-word sentences or dropping articles and word endings (“Mommy get bowl”).
• Scientists have long questioned whether these stages exist because a toddler’s brains cannot handle complex grammar or whether they are necessary stepping-stones in language development at any age.
• By studying international adoptees of varying ages, researchers found evidence that the stages of language usage are essential and not dependent on mental development.

Editor’s Note : This article was adapted from Mind Matters , www.ScientificAmerican.com/MindMatters , a column edited by Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist at the Boston Globe, and Jonah Lehrer, the science writer behind the blog The Frontal Cortex , http://scienceblogs.com/­cortex

The setting: a nursery. A baby speaks directly to the camera: “Look at this. I’m a free man. I go anywhere I want now.” He describes his stock-buying activities, but then his phone interrupts. “Relentless! Hang on a second.” He answers his phone. “Hey, girl, can I hit you back?”

Preview is all that is posted on – http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-dont-babies-talk

Intel Says Parents More Comfortable Talking Drugs Than Science

Intel Survey Reveals Majority of Parents of Teens Find it Difficult to Help their Kids with Math and Science

• The News: A recent Intel Corporation survey found that parents feel more equipped to talk about drug abuse than math and science with their children.
• The Context: Despite a perceived importance of math and science for success, and an overwhelming willingness to be involved, the survey results reveal that parents, particularly those of teenagers, often find themselves with little more understanding of these subjects than their children and without the necessary resources to bridge this gap.
• Why It Matters: A strong background in math and science is increasingly critical for American prosperity, security, health, environment and quality of life. And yet, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress report released last week, less than 40 percent of fourth- and eighth-graders are proficient in math. Intel believes that to better engage America’s future innovators, we need to understand and appreciate the role that parents play in education and help them inspire their children to take an interest in math and science.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 21, 2009 – When it comes to talking with their kids, parents say the topics of math and science are harder to discuss than drug abuse, according to a survey released by Intel Corporation today.

The survey found that although more than 50 percent of parents rank math or science as the subjects most critical to their children’s future success, they report discomfort talking to their children about these subjects. In fact, nearly a quarter of parents who admit to being less involved in their child’s math and science education than they would like say that a key barrier is their own lack of understanding of these subjects.

Last week, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly called the “nation’s report card,” revealed that fewer than 40 percent of fourth- and eighth-graders in the United States are proficient in math. The NAEP report also found that fourth-graders have not improved since the last test was given in 2007, even though fourth-graders had improved on every NAEP math test since 1990.

“The link between math and science education and American innovation and competitiveness is more apparent than ever,” said Shelly Esque, vice president of Intel’s Corporate Affairs Group. “Our survey points to a difficult reality for our nation’s parents: While they may recognize the importance of math and science, they are unable to engage with their children around these subjects due to limited understanding of the topics and scarcity of resources to help. We need to help parents help their kids make the best choices, including taking math and science courses so they are prepared to succeed.”

Key Survey Findings
The survey also found that American schools are falling far short of parents’ expectations, with nearly 9 in 10 parents saying they believe the U.S. lags behind other countries in math and science, even though 98 percent of parents say these subjects are critical to America’s future.

Parents clearly want to be part of the solution. Ninety-one (91) percent of parents believe parental involvement is crucial to their children’s academic success, with nearly 9 in 10 (89 percent) saying that talking to their children about the importance of math and science in the real world would help improve their children’s performance and interest. Among the findings:

• Despite recognizing the importance of math and science, parents say they are uncomfortable addressing these subjects with their children. More than 50 percent (53 percent) of parents of teenagers admit that they have trouble helping their children with math and science homework. Parents of high school students are also more likely than parents of younger kids to express disappointment in their own ability to help their child with these subjects.
• Nearly a quarter of parents (23 percent) who admit to being less involved in their child’s math and science education than they would like say their own lack of knowledge in these subjects is a key barrier.
• Another 26 percent of parents who are less involved than they would like wish there was a one-stop shop with materials to refresh their existing, but unused math and science knowledge so they can better help their kids.

Intel believes that young people are the key to solving global challenges, and a solid math and science foundation coupled with skills such as critical thinking, collaboration and digital literacy are crucial for their success. Over the past decade alone, the company has invested more than $1 billion, and its employees have donated more than 2.5 million hours toward improving education in 50 countries. The results of this survey help Intel, and others, better understand the role parents play in inspiring today’s youth to take an interest in math and science. To learn more about the Intel Education Initiative, visit www.intel.com/education. To join Intel’s community of people sharing their stories with the hope of becoming a catalyst for action and a voice for change in global education, visit www.inspiredbyeducation.com.

This survey of parents in the United States was conducted online between Sept. 23 and 28, 2009 by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates on behalf of Intel. Participants included 561 adults with children ages 5 to 18. The margin of error is +/- 4.14 percent.

http://hothardware.com/News/Intel-Says-Parents-More-Comfortable-Talking-Drugs-Than-Science/

F.D.A. to Clarify Standards for the Front of Food Labels

Food companies often use the front labels to promote positives, like the seal from the Smart Choices campaign.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it would seek to clear up the confusion caused by a surge of upbeat nutritional claims — for everything from Froot Loops to mayonnaise — that manufacturers have begun to make on packaged food labels.

By early next year, officials said, the agency will issue proposed standards that companies must follow in creating nutrition labels that go on the front of food packaging.

That could force manufacturers to deliver the bad news with the good, putting an end to a common practice in which manufacturers boast on package fronts about some components, such as vitamins or fiber, while ignoring less appealing ingredients, like added sugar or unhealthy fats.

The F.D.A.’s move could present a challenge to the Smart Choices program, a nutrition labeling campaign begun this summer with much fanfare by some of the nation’s largest food companies. That program has drawn fire because it gives a nutritional seal of approval to many foods, including sugary cereals and high-fat mayonnaise, that many nutritionists consider to be unhealthy.

“We believe in the science behind the Smart Choices program,” Mike Hughes, the program’s chairman, said in a statement. “We also look forward to the opportunity to participate in F.D.A.’s initiatives on front-of-package labeling.”

Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, said that under the changes being discussed, putting nutrition information on the front of packages would be voluntary. But if manufacturers chose to do so, then they would have to comply with the new F.D.A. rules.

Smart Choices is one of several labeling programs embraced by the food industry, in which critics charge that sound nutritional advice was diluted by the need to sell products.

“It is clear that at the present time this vast array of different approaches is adding confusion rather than clarity,” Dr. Hamburg said. “We believe we can offer important benefits in terms of developing the science- and nutrition-based criteria for the use of dietary guidance claims.”

Officials said that the proposed rules would be issued within a few months and that they could be finalized before the end of next year.

The new labels would be meant to give consumers quick access to key dietary information, most of which is already included in the familiar Nutrition Facts box on the back or side of packages.

Speaking in a telephone call with reporters, Dr. Hamburg said that she expected package-front labels would be required to include information on saturated fat, salt, added sugar and calories.

Dr. Hamburg repeatedly mentioned a package-front labeling program in Britain that uses red, yellow or green dots — like traffic signals — to indicate the relative amounts of important ingredients.

She said that could provide a model for the F.D.A. as it sought to find the best way to provide information to American consumers.

Discussion of package-front nutrition labeling heated up over the summer when the F.D.A. sent a warning letter to the Smart Choices program saying it would be concerned if the program led consumers to choose highly processed foods over fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

Then last week, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said that he was investigating the program and some of the companies that participate in it, including Kellogg’s and General Mills, to see if they had violated a consumer protection law that bars deceptive marketing claims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/21food.html

The Ten Most Expensive U.S. Colleges

This fall, as unemployment surged and the economy continued to hurt, students at both public and private colleges across the country saw a significant increase in the cost of their education. And tuition at the priciest schools in America is simply staggering.

Campusgrotto.com compiled a list of the 100 colleges with the highest price tags (hat tip to Consumerist). (Note: The ranking adds the advertised cost of tuition with room and board, and doesn’t take into account how much the average student at each school actually pays after financial aid.) Sarah Lawrence College, a tiny liberal arts school, tops the list.

Here are the top ten:

1. Sarah Lawrence College — $54,410
2. New York University — $51,991
3. The George Washington University — $51,730
4. Bates College — $51,300
5. Skidmore College — $51,196
6. Johns Hopkins University — $51,190
7. Georgetown University — $51,122
8. Connecticut College — $51,115
9. Harvey Mudd College — $51,037
10. Vassar College — $50,875

To see the full list, go to CampusGrotto.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/the-ten-most-expensive-us_n_328498.html

Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn

CAN TWO WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT?: Not knowing the answer can be a good thing. Magdalena Tworkowska

New research makes the case for hard tests, and suggests an unusual technique that anyone can use to learn

By Henry L. Roediger and Bridgid Finn

For years, many educators have championed “errorless learning,” advising teachers (and students) to create study conditions that do not permit errors. For example, a classroom teacher might drill students repeatedly on the same multiplication problem, with very little delay between the first and second presentations of the problem, ensuring that the student gets the answer correct each time.

The idea embedded in this approach is that if students make errors, they will learn the errors and be prevented (or slowed) in learning the correct information. But research by Nate Kornell, Matthew Hays and Robert Bjork at U.C.L.A. that recently appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition reveals that this worry is misplaced. In fact, they found, learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors.

People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning. It’s an idea that has obvious applications for education, but could be useful for anyone who is trying to learn new material of any kind.

In one of their experiments, students were required to learn pairs of “weak associates,” words that are loosely related such as star-night or factory-plant. (If students are given the first word and asked to generate an associate, the probability of generating the target word is only 2 or 3 percent.) In the pretest condition, students were given the first word of the pair (star- ???) and told to try to generate the second member that they would have to later remember. They had 8 seconds to do so. Of course, almost by definition, they nearly always failed to generate the correct answer. They might generate bright in the case of star-???. At that point they were given the target pair (star–night) for 5 seconds. In the control condition, students were given the pair to study for 13 seconds, so in both conditions there were a total of 13 seconds of study time for the pair.

Article Continues – http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-it-wrong

Colbert Lets 5th Grader Andy Gellman Argue Against Longer School Hours On Economic Grounds

Fifth Grader Andrew Gellman took over for Stephen Colbert last night, doing the “Word” segment with the same ironic arguments and flare for the absurd as his older counterpart. Andy “sided” with Fox News’s Gretchen Carlson arguing that the future of summer camps and after school programs is more important than the future of our children. (PS — We now want Andy Gellman to blog for us!)

Video Clip -http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/251045/october-05-2009/the-word—learning-is-fundamental

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/06/colbert-lets-5th-grader-a_n_310804.html

Stock Graphs Can Mislead: People Prefer Stocks With Shorter Runs

Can the way stock information is presented lead investors to make the wrong decisions? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that when investors use charts, they are likely to make a baseless decision about the riskiness of a stock based on its run-length.

Stock graphs are everywhere, available on financial and public websites to be loaded and customized by users. Authors Priya Raghubir (New York University) and Sanjiv R. Das (Santa Clara University) found that investors believe that stocks with shorter up-and-down movements are less risky than those with longer run-length. This is called the “run-length” effect.

They tested three groups—affluent Californians, undergraduates, and general investors—and found that all three judged a stock with a shorter run-length more favorably. They found that the run-length effect increases with greater education and frequency, length, and diversity of trading experience.

They conclude that because of the large amount of data presented on a graph, investors simplify their task by sampling points from a financial instrument’s price history to estimate trend and noise. The sampling strategy leads to perceptual biases when the sample points are not representative of the price series.

The authors believe there are public policy implications that might lead to how data is presented because “systematic biases in risk perceptions may permeate the market uniformly, resulting in persistent biases in prices. . . From a consumer perspective, individual investors should be made aware of their biases in appraising and comparing stocks using charts.”

“These results have implications for how financial information is communicated to investors,” the authors write. The visual display of stock information has increased and the number of commercial purveyors of stock analysis information has mushroomed…From a public policy perspective, regulators should consider imposing guidelines about how financial information is presented to individuals, akin to mandatory labeling by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090921162240.htm

Mathematicians Solve ‘Trillion Triangle’ Problem

The 3-4-5 triangle has area 6. (Credit: Image courtesy of American Institute of Mathematics)

Mathematicians from North America, Europe, Australia, and South America have resolved the first one trillion cases of an ancient mathematics problem. The advance was made possible by a clever technique for multiplying large numbers. The numbers involved are so enormous that if their digits were written out by hand they would stretch to the moon and back. The biggest challenge was that these numbers could not even fit into the main memory of the available computers, so the researchers had to make extensive use of the computers’ hard drives.

According to Brian Conrey, Director of the American Institute of Mathematics, “Old problems like this may seem obscure, but they generate a lot of interesting and useful research as people develop new ways to attack them.”

The problem, which was first posed more than a thousand years ago, concerns the areas of right-angled triangles. The surprisingly difficult problem is to determine which whole numbers can be the area of a right-angled triangle whose sides are whole numbers or fractions. The area of such a triangle is called a “congruent number.” For example, the 3-4-5 right triangle which students see in geometry has area 1/2 × 3 × 4 = 6, so 6 is a congruent number. The smallest congruent number is 5, which is the area of the right triangle with sides 3/2, 20/3, and 41/6.

The first few congruent numbers are 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 20, and 21. Many congruent numbers were known prior to the new calculation. For example, every number in the sequence 5, 13, 21, 29, 37, …, is a congruent number. But other similar looking sequences, like 3, 11, 19, 27, 35, …., are more mysterious and each number has to be checked individually.

The calculation found 3,148,379,694 of these more mysterious congruent numbers up to a trillion.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090922095651.htm

Background TV Found To Have Negative Effect On Parent-child Interactions

A new study looks for the first time at the effect of background TV on interactions between parents and young children. Using an experimental design, researchers found that when a TV was on, both the quantity and quality of interactions between parents and children dropped. This study challenges the common assumption that background TV doesn’t affect very young children if they don’t look at the screen.

More than a third of American infants and toddlers live in homes where the television is on most or all the time, even if no one’s watching. A new study looks for the first time at the effect of background TV on interactions between parents and young children—and finds that the effect is negative.

The study, in the September/October 2009 issue of the journal Child Development, was done by researchers at the University of Massachusetts.

The researchers studied about 50 1-, 2-, and 3-year-olds, each of whom was with one parent, at a university child study center. Half of the one-hour session, parents and children were in a playroom without TV; in the other half-hour, parents chose an adult-directed program to watch (such as Jeopardy!). The researchers observed how often parents and children talked with each other, how actively involved the parents were in their children’s play, and whether parents and children responded to each other’s questions and suggestions.

When the TV was on, the researchers found, both the quantity and the quality of interactions between parents and children dropped. Specifically, parents spent about 20 percent less time talking to their children and the quality of the interactions declined, with parents less active, attentive, and responsive to their youngsters.

“Although previous research found that background television disrupts young children’s solitary play, this is the first study to demonstrate its impact on the quantity and quality of parent-child interactions,” according to the researchers. “Given that high-quality parent-child interaction plays an important role in children’s development, the study challenges the common assumption that background TV doesn’t affect very young children if they don’t look at the screen,” the researchers added. “We need to pay greater

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090915100951.htm

Symantec tool calculates your data’s value to thieves

It’s no secret that criminals are stealing credit card and bank account data and selling it underground. But most people would find it shocking to learn just how little their sensitive personal information costs.

Symantec on Thursday is launching its Norton Online Risk Calculator, a tool that people can use to see how much their online information is worth on the black market. The tool also offers a risk rating based on demographics, online activity, and estimated value of online information.

I tried the tool when I was initially briefed on it a few months ago and was surveyed about my gender and age range; online assets (including credit card and bank account data, brokerage accounts, e-mail accounts, and social network accounts) and an estimated value of all that information; whether I use security software; how cautious I am when online; and how much I think my information is worth.

I use security software (and do my financial transactions mostly on a Mac at home), am fairly cautious while Web surfing, and didn’t put a high dollar figure on the value of my digital information. My security risk turned out to be 37 percent, or medium, and the black market worth of my online assets was calculated to be $11.29. Those figures didn’t change when I modified the gender, age, and estimated value of the data.

A recent Microsoft Research report concludes that stolen data offered for sale in underground IRC channels is difficult to monetize because of all the–get this–con artists there.

Regardless of whether the underground revenue figures are overblown, the data is being harvested, sometimes in huge batches, during data breaches at large payment processors, and there is a market for it.

It’s discomfiting to think a criminal could pay as little as $11 to get access to my sensitive personal data for identity fraud purposes, while I could end up spending lots of energy and time–years even–reporting the crime, trying to fix my credit rating, and getting my life back to normal.

Symantec isn’t trying to scare consumers with the Norton Online Risk Calculator, but to raise awareness of the risks, said Marian Merritt, Internet safety advocate at Symantec.

“We still find consumers who think using just antivirus is sufficient,” she said.

Merritt recommends that people use security suites that offer antivirus, firewall, and intrusion detection and prevention software, as well as keep their operating system and browsers updated.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10258549-245.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0