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James Trefil articulates the who, what, where, when, and why of stem-cell research in this article. He answers most of the questions you wanted to know about stem cells, cloning, and genetic engineering. The history of in-vitro fertilization and DNA manipulation in the 1970s is followed by an up-to-date statement of President George Bush’s position on stem cells.
Will human cloning represent the dawn of a new age in biology and medicine? What are the moral and ethical concerns of making genetic materials from cloned humans? Will researchers stop with therapeutic cloning for treatment of diseases or move to reproductive cloning to make new humans? These issues are discussed by three researchers who are very involved in cloning.
Prenatal diagnosis in the twenty-first century will assess the health of unborn babies and predict future physical development very early in pregnancy. Fetal DNA analysis will also allow more fetal surgery to repair malformations. A transmitter in the uterus may prevent preterm deliveries. This article also gives 10 tips for a healthy pregnancy without using technological assistance.
The genetic basis of diabetes and other diseases is undisputed. However, new research suggests that conditions during gestation influence the risk of manifesting adult disease. This new health paradigm is creating a plethora of suggestions for altering nutrition, stress, exercise, and drug use during the prenatal period.
Environment affects prenatal development. This article reviews known dangers (e.g., alcohol and drug use, viral infections) and recently discovered endocrine disrupters (e.g., chemicals in our air, food, and water). The author gives advice on exercise, nutrition, and health maintenance to optimize the physical and cognitive status of the offspring.
In this article, Joanna Lipari explains the synthesis of important aspects of areas of infant development—genetic inheritance, physical development, cognitive skills, and emotional attachment—into a new view that equates parenting behaviors to software that promotes the growth of the baby’s brain (hardware). Lipari discusses attachment theory and compares “old thinking” about raising baby with research-guided “new thinking.”
The human infant arrives in the world with physically developed senses, which are fine-tuned at a rapid pace. The most rapid brain metabolism occurs in the areas that process vision, hearing, and touch in the first 3 months. This article describes each of the senses and gives suggestions for how they can be exercised to maximize cognitive abilities.
What happens to self-esteem and emotional/personality development when babies are rushed to do everything sooner and better than others? The author contends that parenting and infancy should be more about love of learning. Through play, babies discover their individuality and genetically driven interests. Pressuring them to conform to gender-appropriate activities (e.g., sports, ballet) or academic pursuits is miseducation.
The “Mozart effect” suggests that playing classical music in early childhood stimulates cognition. New research supports the idea that genetically preprogrammed children’s brains learn early and quickly. Education should emphasize language and playful interactions with emotionally attached caregivers as well as music.
Early childhood is a time of sexual curiosity. Parenting and caregiving practices that are open, honest, and accepting of this fact encourage emotional health, self-esteem, and gender identity. The author discusses physical and cognitive development, sexuality, and the major theories regarding psychosexual development.
Parents are held responsible for ethics and morality training during early childhood. Our culture has fewer moral role models than before and more and more aggression and violence, increasing the urgency for moral lessons. Karen Springen relays the advice of several experts on how to help preschoolers learn right from wrong.
How much intelligence is genetically predetermined and how much depends on education? Stephen Ceci presents a dozen research-supported facts about cognition and IQ that will surprise many readers. There are many types of intelligences and some of them are correlated with simple things like nutrition and reflex speed.
Jean Piaget, named one of the top 100 people of the twentieth century, was neither an education nor a psychology expert, yet he founded the field of cognitive science. His creative genius took children’s thoughts and language seriously. Children, he correctly states, are creative. They test theories like scientists do. Their ways of learning require that they be given time to do so.
Cognitive development that reflects on itself is called metacognition. Understanding intellectual performance will allow parents, teachers, and others to help children develop effective metacognitive awareness. Deanna Kuhn suggests that knowledge of metastrategies will help us to understand how education occurs or fails to occur.
This article raises questions about the widespread use of assessment tests to judge the performance of students and schools. The frenzy for higher performance and accountability is shackling creative teaching, driving out good teachers, and creating undue student stress. Are tests culturally biased? Will a testing backlash lower educational standards?
The author argues that the computer culture will benefit education. Creative individuals can develop software with many cognitive advantages. However, the improvements will not happen until teaching undergoes a major alteration. Parents, politicians, and citizens must want this to happen.
In the Foxfire approach to education, students help create curriculum and decide how they will learn. Their self-esteem as well as their grades improve when they are allowed to make academic and ethics choices. The authors argue that academic choice and academic integrity can be interdependent without anarchy.
The violence in New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, touched the lives of schoolchildren in a profound way. A culture of terrorism fed their imaginations and rocked their self-esteem. Ilene and Michael Berson suggest the importance of education about diversity in peers and others. Adults help when they understand students’ vulnerabilities, hopelessness, powerlessness, and impaired performance. Students need to discuss feelings and regain a sense of safety.
This article is packed with excellent advice on care that creates self-esteem and emotionally happy and cognitively achieving children. Alice Honig stresses the need to educate parents early, even before the birth of their child, especially if parents have experienced depression, drug abuse, or family violence. Family aides must be sensitive to different cultures.
Obese children suffer physically and emotionally. In the United States, one in three children is overweight or at risk of becoming so. Health problems due to obesity affect 6 million American children. Physical education classes have vanished in a majority of schools. Family/parenting recommendations include more exercise and better nutrition, including portion control, for children to achieve vigor and self-esteem benefits.
A child’s emotional intelligence may have a genetic basis, but family/parenting skills can help children fit in better with peers and in social situations. This article discusses early signs of emotional disability. Play and kindness stories in school and at home can foster more empathy. Social skills therapy may also help both parents and children.
American culture, parents, and schools are struggling with boys. Gender differences include more aggression and impulsivity but less efficient learning, less emotional control, and less peer intimacy. Male emotions are linked more with action than words. Consequences include moral problems, insults to self-esteem, and depression.
Violence (abuse, severe injuries, natural disorders) leaves children at risk for stress disorders, emotional/personality disorders, health problems, cognitive disorders, and depression. Such negative experiences cause abnormal neuronal activity that, in turn, disrupts brain development, creating greater risks to the neurons now than in adulthood. Interventions to prevent further maltreatment and to promote resiliency are suggested.
Is gender convergence creating more aggression in the peer culture of bitchy adolescent girls? This article describes “mean girls,” “wannabes,” and “Gamma girls.” The latter are emotionally healthy, attached to their parents, self-confident, and physically fit, engaging in exercise and extracurricular activities.
Quotes from experts on adolescent psychology and neurobiology show that aggression/violence probably requires a particular environment of stress, lack of morality training, and/or negligent parenting imposed on a temperamentally vulnerable child with a genetic predisposition to an antisocial personality. Such doubly jeopardized youth lack the skills to restore their sense of self-esteem when faced with perceived injustices.
Adolescents are reexamining their moral values, drug use, language, racism, gender roles, and career choices in the wake of September 11, 2001. Family and patriotism have become cool again. Many more students want to understand Arabs and Islam than react aggressively against them. Reducing stress and seeking peace are goals of youth.
Emotional maturity is equated with expressing feelings in contemporary culture. In 50 years, gender stereotypes have reversed: women are how being considered more mature than men. School girls are 3 years ahead of boys in language skills. Male self-esteem is plummeting. Are males’ genetic traits being feminized by estrogen-like modern chemicals? The author explores this possibility.
In the United States and Canada, collaborative law is making happier divorces as well as happier marriages possible for young adults. Old gender interests are set aside and neither man nor woman seeks to be victor over loser. The couple’s primary interests are to remain friends and not to harm children. These win-win methods leave everyone emotionally healthier.
The author contends that the young adult culture can create jobs for themselves by attending to trends and getting training and education in coming boom areas. Stressful jobs such as those in health care (e.g., nursing, pharmacy) are already plentiful. Skilled tradespeople, computer experts, administrators, and geologists will be in greater demand as the baby boomers retire.
Testosterone gel does not a man make, according to Jim Thornton. It may increase stamina and contribute to physical status and health. For a while, these changes can boost self-esteem and masculine self-worth. It also increases aggression and reduces sensible self management, occupational achievement, and the wisdom of age.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) replaces estrogen. This improves physical status and feelings of health but increases the risks of breast cancer and blood clots in menopausal women. New studies strongly urge women to stop using HRT because its harmful effects are now considered to outweigh its beneficial ones.
Middle-aged adults are experiencing a galloping rate of physical decline due to type-2 diabetes. Nutrition (especially sugar consumption) and lack of exercise as well as genetics affect this health threat. This article gives warning signs to look for and discusses many new treatment options.
The author lays out rules for defeating depression and soul-crushing emotions at work and in life and emerging a survivor. Ellis Cose’s prescription can contribute to better physical and mental health, improved stress management, and happier marriages and parenting.
Many retirees are becoming involved in education of the next generation rather than disengaging and/or pursuing leisure after retiring. They want to stay active and “feed their souls.” This contributes to greater physical and emotional health, cognitive stimulation, and late-life creativity.
Geoffrey Cowley discusses new brain scans that may be able to provide early warning that the brain is beginning to experience dementia. More importantly, it reviews possible ways to prevent cognitive decline in late adulthood. A vaccination may reduce amyloid deposits. New drugs may prevent neuro-fibrillary tangles. Physical and emotional decline may be delayed in the future.
Almost 700 late adulthood nuns have been part of an innovative study on Alzheimer’s disease since 1986. The results are surprising. Use of complex language, education, and positive emotions are correlated with cognitive maintenance. Mental exercise keeps neurons in better health. Genetic factors, cardiovascular disease, nutritional deficiencies, and lack of exercise may predict or contribute to dementia.
This compilation of data about death and dying was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It includes information about late adulthood, medical and emotional care, and legal and financial assistance. Descriptions of types of end-of-life care (e.g., hospices) and advance directives about such choices are included. The ethics and legality of assisted suicide is also presented.
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.