Post-Covid, children have become rude, says study
After the Covid pandemic, there has been a noticeable spike in classroom incivility with more students texting in class, speaking over teachers, interrupting, yelling at each other, and struggling to pay attention in class, says a new study from Brock University, Ontario (Canada).
The study highlights incremental disruptive behaviour in Ontario classrooms after the unprecedented lockdown and shift to online learning. Brock University researchers conducted two surveys — in 2019 and 2022. They interviewed 101 primary teachers about their classroom experiences and 308 children in the 9-14 years age group. They were asked to fill out a survey form, posing questions related to good/rude behaviour.
“Our research indicates that teachers and students are aware that such behaviour can have negative effects. There was general agreement that if left unchecked, it can escalate to a higher level of anti-social behaviour,” says Natalie Spadafora, a post-doctoral fellow and adjunct professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University and study lead.
Smoking one cigarette cuts 20 minutes of life expectancy
Smoking one cigarette could shorten life expectancy by 20 minutes, reveals a new study of University College London (UCL). Commissioned by the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care, the study says smoking a pack of 20 cigarettes can shorten an individual’s life by seven hours.
Smoking is the #1 cause of preventable death, disability and ill health in the UK, causing around 80,000 deaths a year and one in four of all cancer deaths. “It’s vital for people to understand just how harmful smoking is and how much quitting can improve their health and life expectancy. Evidence suggests the sooner a person stops smoking, the longer they live. Quitting at any age substantially improves health and the benefits start almost immediately. It’s never too late to make a positive change for your health and there are a range of effective products and treatments that can help smokers quit for good,” says Dr. Sarah Jackson, principal research fellow at UCL’s alcohol and tobacco research group.
Dark chocolate reduces risk of Type 2 diabetes
Those who choose dark over milk chocolate might find a hidden benefit in that they are at lesser risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, says a new study of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health published in BMJ.
Researchers led a study on the health and eating habits of 111,654 nurses, who in a series of surveys conducted in the 1970s and 1980s logged the type of chocolate they consumed. The biggest takeaway, based on an average 25-year follow-up: eating five or more servings of dark chocolate a week was linked to a 21 percent drop in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with rarely or never eating chocolate. Moreover, dark chocolate seemed to help them avoid weight gain. However, no such link was found between milk chocolate and type 2 diabetes, which was instead linked with increase in body mass.
“We were surprised by the clear split between dark and milk chocolate’s impact on diabetes risk and long-term weight management,” says lead author Qi Sun, associate professor in the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology. “Even though dark and milk chocolate have similar levels of calories and saturated fat, evidence suggests that the rich polyphenols in dark chocolate offset the effects of saturated fat and sugar on weight gain and diabetes. It’s an intriguing difference that’s worth further exploration.”
Human heart may have the ability to heal itself
After severe heart failure, capability of the human heart to heal by regenerating new cells is very low. However, with a surgically implanted heart pump, the capacity of a damaged heart to repair itself with new muscle cells becomes significantly higher — at a rate more than six times than in healthy hearts, reveals a new study of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden published in the journal Circulation (November).
“The results suggest that there might be a hidden key to kick-start the heart’s own repair mechanism,” says Olaf Bergmann, senior researcher at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Karolinska Institute. The findings open the possibility of developing new therapies for patients, he adds.