Listen carefully to the crying of your newborn baby and you may recognise the cadences of your own voice, especially if you are the mother. European researchers have discovered that even within the first week after birth, babies imitate the melodic patterns of voices they have heard while still in the womb. And that includes the “tunes” typical of the mother tongue.

Thus, German babies cry in German -- with a falling melody contour, and French babies cry in French, with a rising contour. And they all prefer “motherese”, the particular contours of maternal speech and its emotional content. They have been tuned in, suggests biologist Kathleen Wermke, during the last three months of pregnancy.

Isn’t that smart? And yet there are philosophers who see newborns as only potentially human and suitable for “weeding out” if they have defects. It is also very interesting, as Dr Wermke says,… click here to read whole article and make comments

While defenders of unborn life waged a successful battle in the United States House last weekend, winning a provision to exclude abortion coverage from health reform legislation, an international gathering in Spain was defining abortion as “mega-genocide” and pledging to fight harder to protect human life.

The Declaration of Saragossa, signed by 31 countries represented at the Fourth Prolife World Congress, noted that the six million “legal” deaths of the Nazi genocide are outnumbered by the total of more than 800 million “legal” abortion deaths up until now in countries where abortion has been legalised. The document says that this also constitutes “a crime against humanity” that, because of the numbers involved and their global spread, should now be known as mega-genocide.

It called on authorities at all levels of society from the family to government to promote a number of positive measures to take care of human life… click here to read whole article and make comments

Fast food, as we all know, tends to make you fat. But even slow food cooked lovingly at home and eaten at the table could do the same if you ate it too fast.

Researchers in Greece have found that bolting your food upsets metabolism and leaves you feeling less satisfied than if you ate more slowly.

In this study, people consumed the same test meal, 300ml of ice-cream, at different rates. Blood samples were taken to measure glucose, insulin, plasma lipids and gut hormones before the meal and at 30 minute intervals after the beginning of eating, until the end of the session, 210 minutes later. Those who took the full 30 minutes to finish their ice cream had higher concentrations of gut hormones PYY and GLP-1, and also tended to have a higher fullness rating.

“Our findings give some insight into an aspect of… click here to read whole article and make comments

If there is one thing the financial crisis has taught us it is the need society has for people who take a (well-founded) pride in their work.

Pat Fagan and Althea Nagai at the Heritage Foundation have analysed United States household survey data to find out who these people most likely are. They found that over 80 per cent of people who attend religious services more than once a month take pride in the type of work they do (which presumably would not include selling mortgages to penniless people) compared to 76.6 per cent of those who worship less than once a month, and 66.7 per cent of those who never attend religious services.

The researchers cite other studies which support their findings, and they point out that part of the religious effect, so to speak, comes from the fact that the same people are married --… click here to read whole article and make comments

The battle over the mental health effects of abortion continues, the latest shot being fired by a New Zealand researcher who says that abortion does lead to “significant distress” in some women.

Professor Fergusson, of the University of Otago, has been running a lifetime study of a group of New Zealanders born in the early 1970s. The abortion data comes from more than 500 women who have been interviewed six times between the ages of 15 and 30, each time being asked whether they were pregnant and, if so, what the outcome had been.

More than 85 per cent of women reported a least one negative emotional reaction, including sorrow, sadness, guilt, regret, grief and disappointment. A similar number reported at least one positive reaction, including relief, happiness and satisfaction.

The study found that women who reported at least one negative reaction had rates of mental… click here to read whole article and make comments

Yes, shocking as it may seem, that's what the headline said.

"I can't conceive of any way that could possibly help," commented Peter Janes about an article dated 23 October in the London Free Press of Canada.

The story was reporting that doctors were urging pregnant women to get their swine flu vaccinations.

Thanks to World Wide Words for this timely explanation.

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Do your children make you happy? When different researchers ask parents questions like that they tend to get contradictory results. The latest issue of the Journal of Happiness Studies reports on a British study that finds having children does increase the happiness of married couples; in fact the more kids they have, the happier these couples are.

Married, you notice. For unmarried individuals, raising children has little or no positive effect, the study by Luis Angeles of the University of Glasgow finds. Dr Angeles says previous research that showed children added nothing, or almost nothing, to their parents’ happiness did not take marital status and other variables, such as gender, age income and education into account

An example of the latter is a University of York study by Dr Nattavudh Powdthavee. This expert on the economics of happiness explained his results by suggesting that the “widespread belief” that… click here to read whole article and make comments

You might have heard of the odour of sanctity; today’s equivalent is The Smell of Virtue -- the title of a study by some management professors into the effects of a clean-smelling environment on behaviour.

A couple of puffs of air-freshener is all it takes to lift ethical standards in the workplace, making people act in fairer and more generous ways, the research suggests. If only we had known about that before Wachovia and Lehman Brothers fell over; perhaps the whole sub-prime mortgage disaster could have been averted.

The researchers, led by Katie Liljenquist of Brigham Young University, already knew from previous studies that scents play a role in reviving positive or negative experiences, and that there is a link between morality and physical cleanliness. This time they wanted to find out if a clean environment would bring out the best in people.

They got… click here to read whole article and make comments

Now that spanking is taboo, what are parents using as a last resort? Screaming, say people who are in the know.

And moms -- who seem to be the main screamers -- are feeling guilty about it, according to an article in the New York Times. Instead of a swift whack on the pants for the four-year-old who -- presumably as the climax to spell of defiant behaviour -- tears a page out of book or pours milk on the floor, the mom at the end of her tether “loses it” and yells at the child, “Why did you do that? Why would you do that?”

“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. “This… click here to read whole article and make comments

A cat has been used as evidence in a British court case that a cohabiting couple had a settled “family life” and therefore a right not to have it disturbed by the deportation of the male partner. No kitting.

The Bolivian man and his girlfriend had been together for four years, according to his lawyer, Barry O’Leary, who said they should have benefited from a Home Office policy on unmarried partners which gives credit to couples who have been together for more than two years.

Exactly why the man was to be thrown out is not clear, but when the case was appealed to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, the fact that the couple had purchased the cat together and had it for some time counted as one piece of evidence of “the genuine nature and duration of their relationship,” said O’Leary.

An immigration judge on the… click here to read whole article and make comments