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Home births are still rare in the United States but it is a growing trend.
Jessica Wilcox thinks her in-laws still view her ideas about childbirth as kind of out there, but it’s hard to argue with success: In the last five years or so, Wilcox has given birth to two boys and two girls — [...]
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Sex-selective feticide is warping the balance between male and female births and consequently skewing the sex ratios for the rising generation.
The world over the past three decades has come to witness an ominous and entirely new form of gender discrimination: sex-selective feticide. The feticide is implemented through the practice of surgical abortion with the assistance [...]
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Twin birth rate rose 76 percent from 1980 through 2009.
Over the past three decades, the number of twins born to American women has risen dramatically, a new government study shows.
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It’s just not fair: Middle children are in a bad spot
Throughout your childhood, not only did your big brother steal your Halloween candy, but as an adult he probably makes more money than you, too, say recently released survey findings.
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What can a fetus sense when?
As a fetus grows, it’s constantly getting messages from its mother. It’s not just hearing her heartbeat and whatever music she might play to her belly; it also gets chemical signals through the placenta. A new study, which will be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for [...]
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The U.S. birth rate has fallen sharply since hitting a high in 2007.
There is further evidence to add to the theory that the nation’s economic hard times have caused some families to delay having kids, according to a new report.
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High pollution levels in towns and cities are linked to an increased chance of premature births.
The “toxic” chemicals emitted by urban traffic damages the health of unborn babies as well as their mothers, a study of 100,000 births has found.
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Information is now moveable in the brain.
This is uncanny: A Tel Aviv University team lead by Professor Matti Mintz have developed a synthetic cerebellum that can receive sensory inputs from the brain, analyze them, and return information to other parts of the brain!
The device is now working in rats, and has effectively restored lost brain [...]
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Costs have risen dramatically for raising children.
According to the US Dept of Agriculture, the cost of raising a child in a middle-income family has increased by 40 percent over the past ten years. Every major category of child-rearing expense has seen steep increase: day-care, education, food, gas, medical insurance, and so on. At this rate, [...]
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Birth control affects more than previously thought.
Women who use contraceptives like birth control pills experience memory changes, according to new UC Irvine research. Their ability to remember the gist of an emotional event improves, while women not using the contraceptives better retain details.
“What’s most exciting about this study is that it shows the use of [...]
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Medical staff deliver a baby by cesarean section at a hospital in China.
Caesarean sections are on the rise globally. But China’s sky-high C-section rate is out of control and they are trying to get a handle on it.
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Male maturity age has shifted again.
Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century. Joshua Goldstein, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (MPIDR), has used mortality data to [...]
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Brains from a new perspective.
Like explorers mapping a new planet, scientists probing the brain need every type of landmark they can get. Each mountain, river or forest helps scientists find their way through the intricacies of the human brain…
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The test analyzes fetal DNA found in the mother’s blood and can establish sex weeks earlier than other options.
A baby’s sex can be determined as early as seven weeks into pregnancy by a simple blood test. The test is highly accurate if used correctly, a finding that experts say is likely to lead to more widespread use [...]
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Watching my kids learning how to read made me truly appreciate how difficult it can be to distinguish letters of the Roman alphabet. If you think about it, a lot of the letters are truly alike – b and p are the same thing with different rotation, v and w look almost the same and [...]
