NewsBites for Kidz Oct 20-26 2003

Virginia, U.S.A., Oct. 20 - Contrary to commonly held beliefs, avoiding pets doesn't prevent allergies in children, and exposure to them may actually help to prevent developing them, researchers have found.

A study carried out on children in Sweden found that while being allergic to cats was the most common airborne childhood allergy, keeping cats didn't necessarily increase the risk of developing allergies in 7-to-11-year- olds.

"Our research has found no increased risk of sensitization in children due to exposure to pets in the home, says study author Eva R�nmark. "Sensitization is genetic and the big risk factor for getting it is if you already have it in your family." If that's the case, she says, it's wiser not to keep pets in the home.

The joint Swedish-U.S. study found children who had continuously owned cats or dogs actually developed less allergies to them than new pet owners, or those who had only been exposed earlier in life; among children who were allergic to cats, 80 percent had never kept a cat at home.

R�nmark, an allergy expert at the Department of Medicine at the Central Hospital of Norrbotten in Lulea-Boden, Sweden, and colleagues from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville conducted the research. They studied 2,454 children in Northern Sweden, 7 and 8 years old, on a yearly basis, and gave them skin sensitization tests every four years.

Parents were also asked to complete annual questionnaires on their children's risk factors.

"Parents need to be aware also, that just because you don't have a pet, your child won't develop sensitization," adds R�nmark. "Cat [and other] allergens can also be found where there are no cats -- for example, in schools, where they can be transferred by clothes."

The study found persistently high exposure to cat and dog allergens appeared to protect both boys and girls equally from developing allergies.

"If there are symptoms of sensitization, of course you should not keep the cat, and [that] can be sometimes difficult for kids," says R�nmark. "But at this time, though, we don't really know why these high exposure levels decrease the risks."

Researchers note that when a child with an existing allergy comes into contact with a cat or dog, naturally they begin to show more symptoms, and traditional thinking had been to assume that avoiding pets altogether would prevent these allergies.

The study suggests the new findings, to be published in the October issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, are antithetical to these traditional views that exposure causes more severe symptoms.

More information

Learn about cutting down on pet and other indoor allergens from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and the Nemours Foundation.

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/uncomp/articleshow?msid=243721

Chinese, French and German U.N. leaders raise their hands in support of offering more help to Iraq.

The resolution gives the U.N. a larger role in rebuilding Iraq and encourages countries to offer more money. European leaders have said they have no plans to send troops or money to Iraq. Earlier this week, Japan said it would provide $1.5 billion in aid immediately.

Coming Together for Iraq
Secretary of State Colin Powell has been working hard to get support for the resolution. After the resolution passed, Powell said, "We have come together to help the Iraqi people and put all of our disagreements of the past into the past."

The vote was good news for President George W. Bush, who has been under pressure to improve the situation in Iraq. He has been criticized for the continuing violence in the country and the high cost of rebuilding Iraq.

Opponents of War Vote to Help
Several of the countries that voted "yes" on the resolution were strongly against the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Russia, Germany and France were the most outspoken against the war but voted "yes" because they said it is a good step toward helping the Iraqi people.

Representatives of those countries also said more could have been done to help Iraqis. Their leaders say the U.N. should have been given an even larger role in rebuilding. They also say the U.S. should have given a timeline of when control of Iraq would be the complete responsibility of Iraqi citizens.

The U.N. Security Council wants independence for Iraq as soon as possible. According to the resolution, the "day when Iraqis govern themselves must come quickly."

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http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20031015/Note2.asp

Memories Are Made with Sleep

Emily Sohn, Science News for Kids

Oct. 15- Don't forget to sleep!

If you're studying for a test, rehearsing for a play, or memorizing a difficult piece of music, the best thing you can do for your memory is to get to bed on time. Two new studies suggest that we form memories in several stages, and sleep may be the most important part of all.

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Sleep can help restore memories.

In the first study, 84 college students learned to identify a series of similar-sounding words produced by a machine. Right after the training, participants performed well on a word recall test. Later in the day, they didn't do as well. After a good night's sleep, however, their performance rebounded to where it had been the morning before.

For the second study, a different group of researchers taught 100 adults to press a specific sequence of five number keys on a keyboard. The adults had to do it again and again as accurately and quickly as possible. Six hours later, they remembered the original sequence even when they had just learned a second sequence. A night's sleep helped them do still better.

Memory formation may require more than just one night of good sleep, the researchers found. On the second day, if participants were tested on the first sequence and then immediately learned a second sequence, their memory for the first faded badly by day 3. If they weren't retested on the first before learning a second sequence, the adults remembered both sequences the following day.

These results suggest that briefly recalling something a day after you learned it can actually get in the way of future recall, especially if you're learning something new right after. Lasting memories don't seem to form all at once. Instead, you need sleep to help reinforce memories and keep them from fading away.

So, if you really want to remember something, study until bedtime. But don't stay up all night. You may learn less, but you'll remember a whole lot more.

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http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20031015/Note3.asp

Weekend Weather Really Is Different

Emily Sohn, Science News for Kids

Do you ever feel like the weather is out to get you? All week long, it seems, you sit inside at school while the sun shines outside. Then, as soon as the weekend comes, the sky turns gray. There's rain in the forecast.

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Is a storm arriving just in time for the weekend?

In some ways, you may be right. Weekend weather differs from weekday weather in certain places, say researchers who studied more than 40 years of weather data from around the world. They focused on temperature differences between daytime highs and nighttime lows. This difference measurement is called the diurnal temperature range, or DTR.

Part of the study involved 660 weather stations in the continental United States. At more than 230 of these sites, the average DTR for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday was different from the average DTR for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the researchers found. The difference was small�only several tenths of a Celsius degree�but the pattern was striking enough to make the scientists take notice.

In the southwestern U.S., temperature ranges were typically broader on weekends. In the Midwest, weekdays saw larger daily temperature variations.

This sort of weekly rise and fall doesn't line up with any natural cycles, the researchers say. Instead, they blame human activities, possibly air pollution from those activities, for these weather effects. For example, tiny particles in the air could affect the amount of cloud cover, which would in turn affect daily temperatures.

So, tiny windborne particles from California, generated on weekdays, might first affect weather close to home in the southwest, then later influence midwestern weather.

It looks like your weekend weather has a lot do with which way the wind blows and where it comes from.

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