Thursday, March 30, 2006

Smart Kids Develop Later

The LA Times reports:
Smart children have a different rhythm in their heads — a seesaw pattern of growth that lags years behind other young people — say government scientists who mapped the brains of hundreds of children.

Seeking a link between neural anatomy and mental ability, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health and McGill University in Montreal discovered it where they least expected — not in sheer brain size or special structures, but in the patterns of childhood growth.

Brain development in children with the highest IQ peaked four years later than among average children, the researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"Smart children really do develop differently, and here is the first physical evidence of that," said UCLA neuroscientist Paul Thompson, an expert on imaging and brain development. "You'd think they'd develop faster and earlier than normal kids. The surprise is they don't."

posted by nattietodd @ 4:54 AM 0 Comments

Bird Flu Vaccine Failure

The LA Times is reporting that the vaccine being tested for avian flu does not work half the time.

Exerpt:
The experimental bird flu vaccine required 12 times the dose of the seasonal inoculation. That in effect would cut down the nation's stockpile of the vaccine, purchased for about $160 million, to approximately 4 million courses — enough to inoculate only some healthcare and vaccine workers.

The current pandemic flu plan, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in November, calls for enough vaccine for 20 million people, though it does not set a timetable for acquiring the shots.
While only 180 cases of avian flu have been recorded, according to a report from the World Health Organization, 105 of those have died.

posted by nattietodd @ 3:20 AM 0 Comments