The wife's in Argentina, and I hear everything starts late in there. Though I also accept that it's hard to ruin your weekend with alarming parenting news and way-too preliminary research findings if I'm only getting the post out on Sunday.
Wait, the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends cholesterol-lowering drugs for children? Apparently so. A study of fat kids ages 10-16 found they had the arteries of 45-year-olds. "'As the old saying goes, you're as old as your arteries are,' said Dr. Geetha Raghuveer of Children's Hospital in Kansas City, who led one of the studies. 'This is a wake-up call.'" I have never heard that saying. [boston via dt freakout correspondent sara]
A longitudinal study in New Zealand finds that sleep deprivation as a kid makes people fatter. Because you know how new parents are, always trying to get their kids to stay awake. [msnbc]
The March of Dimes has issued its first annual Premature Birth Report Card, and America got a D. There were no A's at all, though Vermont did get a B. 18 states got F's. Does the March of Dimes know what this is going to do to these states' self-esteem? Do they want to ruin the states' chances of ever getting into Harvard? Seriously, they could at least grade on a curve. [marchofdimes.com]
An Indiana University paleoanthropologist's reconstruction of a 1.2 million-year-old pelvis of a female homo erectus shows that the birth canal was 30% bigger than previously thought, which "has led researchers to speculate early man was better equipped than first thought to produce larger-brained babies." When you're in the delivery room, extolling the great service being performed to the cause of human evolution, be sure not so say "early man." Just a suggestion. [abstracts and press releases at stoneageinstitute.org via iu.edu]
Montreal psychology researchers report that babies who receive "incubator care" are up to three times less likely to develop depression by the time they're 21. But doesn't that mean that depriving a newborn of an incubator by selfishly insisting on mother-child bonding actually triples the kid's chances of depression?. This is exactly the kind of study the Friday Freakout was created for. Beauty. [eurekalert]
. On the product safety, class-action lawsuit, and soon-to-be-optioned-by-Jerry Bruckheimer front, Jeremiah from Z Recs gets both CSI and Law & Order on the CEO of Carter's about the company's skin-irritating tagless clothing scare. Incredible grilling and sleuthing. Tagless: The Movie, in theaters Summer 2010. [zrecs]
And finally, there are a million E. coli bacteria on every shopping cart in America, according to scientist Meredith Vieira of NBC's Today Show. Of course, they would say that, since NBC is owned by GE, which is the world's largest manufacturer of quilted shopping cart covers. [msnbc]
