Japan is struggling to boost children's interest in science.

Japan’s science minister said he hoped aliens existed so children would become more interested in space, as a debate on UFOs continued to demand the attention of the cabinet.
“It would be fun if they existed,“ education and science minister, Kisaburo Tokai told reporters, said AFP.
“There have been films like ’ET.’ Children may grow up with ambitions regarding space,“ he said, referring to Steven Spielberg’s 1982 classic about a boy’s friendship with an extraterrestrial.
Japan has an increasingly ambitious space program, with a major lunar probe launched in September. But it is struggling to boost children’s interest in science with a survey this month showing Japanese students came last internationally in the percentage seeking science careers.
Tokai said the cabinet, despite other pressing issues and a new poll showing a sharp fall in public support, started its regular meeting with a lively discussion about UFOs.
But he declined to take sides on whether he personally believed in alien life-forms.
“The government is not considering a study on UFOs but I want to ask various things if I meet experts,“ he said.
The science minister’s comments came a day after Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba said he was looking at how Japan’s military could respond to an alien invasion under the pacifist constitution.
The debate was set off when the government, asked for its position by an opposition lawmaker, stated it had no knowledge of UFOs.
The statement prompting a surprise rebuttal from chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura, who said: “Personally, I absolutely believe they exist.“

A mother's soft lullaby helps an infant not only in acquiring linguistic skills but also in learning social interactions of human beings.

Not only does it soothe the savage beast, but music also makes unruly children calmer while at the same time honing their cognitive skills and physical coordination, according to a leading expert.
A mother’s soft lullaby, granddad’s whistling or granny’s humming in the kitchen or the dulcet tones of father singing in the shower--all of these seemingly innocuous musical activities serve to help an infant not only in acquiring linguistic skills but also in learning how human beings interact on a social level, IANS said.
“Experiments have shown that unborn babies in the womb appear to relax in response to certain music and also that they seem to recognize this music after birth,“ says Professor Michael Schulte-Markwort, head of child psychology at Hamburg’s University Hospital in Germany.
“From the outset, music helps the language centers in the brain to develop so that children who have been exposed to music at an early age tend to learn to speak earlier than those who are born into non-musical homes,“ he says.
“Music also helps in the development of motor skills while at the same time reducing tension,“ says Dr Schulte-Markwort.
“Learning the tunes and lyrics to songs also aids in developing memory skills for other tasks,“ he adds.

Researchers in the US said, children who have long, frequent or aggressive temper tantrums may be at risk of depression or disruptive disorders.
They said tantrums were often the sign of a sick, hungry or overstimulated child. For most parents, they were a normal part of development and should be viewed as a teaching opportunity, reported Reuters.
But parents of children who hurt themselves or others and those who cannot calm themselves without help should seek medical help, they found. Healthy children tended to have less aggressive and generally shorter tantrums.
“I think parents to some degree should expect their children to have tantrums,“ said Dr. Andy Belden of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, whose study appeared in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Belden added, “If they are having extreme tantrums consistently. If almost every time they are having a tantrum they are hurting themselves or other people, that is a valid reason to go and talk to your pediatrician.“
His team analyzed parent reports of tantrum behaviors in 279 children aged 3 to 6. They compared tantrums in healthy children with those in children previously diagnosed with depression or some type of disruptive disorder, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or oppositional defiant disorder.
From their observations, Belden’s team devised five high-risk tantrum styles: Tantrums marked by self injury; tantrums marked by violence to others or objects; tantrums in which children cannot calm themselves without help; tantrums lasting more than 25 minutes; and tantrums occurring more than 5 times a day, or between 10 and 20 times a month.
Of those, Belden said tantrums in which children harm themselves were most often associated with depression and should be considered very serious.
He said any of those high-risk behaviors would warrant a call to the doctor.
“If it gets to the point where the parent is uncomfortable leaving the house because they are so fearful their child will have tantrum, that should be a sign to the parent (to seek help)“, he said.

A new study says, children who go out of the house without adult supervision are likely to stay active, get health benefits and perform better in their social life than those who are constantly supervised.
The research by University College London reported in a special edition of the journal ’Built Environment’ looked at 330 students from two schools in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, all aged between 8 and 11, IANS reported.
Children completed the questionnaires, kept travel diaries, had their movements logged using global positioning system (GPS) monitors and wore portable motion sensors to measure their speed of travel, health portal The News Medical reported.
The scientists also recorded their changes in direction and the number of ’activity calories’ they consumed.
Activity calories are those burnt during activities, rather than those used to maintain core bodily functions.
“We asked children whether they were allowed out without an adult and then looked at where they go and how they behave,“ said Roger Mackett, who is one of the authors.
He added, “In general, children who aren’t constantly supervised, tend to leave the house more often--exploring their surroundings, playing with other children and using up more calories than their sedentary, housebound peers.“
Children walk faster and take a more direct route when an adult is present, but they do not use more energy than unaccompanied children, the study said.
This is because unsupervised children move in a more meandering fashion as they investigate their environment and socialize with other children, the study found.
“Letting a child out to play is one of the best things a parent can do for their child’s physical health and personal development.’
But the scientists warn that fears over road safety and “stranger danger“ need to be balanced against soaring levels of childhood obesity and poor health.
“The health benefits are clear, but without action the less tangible benefits of increased independence, self-reliance and general ’growing up’ are in danger of being lost“, according to the study.

Children who grow up in an orphanage are likely to have lower intelligence quotient (IQ) than children who grow up in foster families, a new study shows.
Although psychologists have long suspected that growing up in an institution like an orphanage stunts children’s mental development, they never had direct evidence to back up their view.
In the latest experiment conducted in Romania, scientists compared the effects of foster care with those of institutional child rearing.
They found that toddlers placed in foster families developed significantly higher IQs by the time they reached four years of age, on an average, than peers who spent those years in an orphanage, reported MSN.com.
The difference was large, eight points, and the study found that the earlier children joined a foster family, the better they did.
Children who moved from institutional care to families after they attained two years made a few gains on average, though the experience varied from child to child.
Both groups, however, had significantly lower IQs than a comparison group of children raised by their biological families.
“Institutions and environments vary enormously across the world and within countries,“ Charles A Nelson III of Harvard and Children’s Hospital in Boston said.
“But I think these findings generalize too many situations, from kids in institutions to those in abusive households and even bad foster care arrangements,“ he added.
“The evidence seems to suggests that for humans, we need a lot of responsive care giving, an adult who recognizes our distinct cry, knows when we’re hungry or in pain, and gives us the opportunity to crawl around and handle different things safely, when we’re ready,“ said Seth Pollak, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the research.

A child plays in the snow on Tochal slope, northern Tehran. (Photo by Mahsa Qavi Qalb)

Spanish parents will be banned from smacking their children, congress voted.
Until now parents have been allowed to “reasonably and moderately correct“ their children, but deputies deleted that clause and rewrote Spain’s civil code to make clear a child’s physical and psychological integrity should be respected, Reuters said.
Spain’s Socialist government, which pushed through the change, has often been accused by the conservative Popular Party opposition of undermining traditional values.
Popular Party deputies, who voted against the change, said the measure would leave parents powerless, but Socialists said the law shut the door to any chance of misunderstanding.
Around 16 European countries have already banned smacking at school and in the home.
In October the British government rejected the banning of corporal punishment at home as long as parents did not leave bruises, grazes or swelling.

Four years after the United States invaded Iraq , the country’s children continue to face a litany of problems from disrupted educations to unsafe drinking water, detentions and violence, UNICEF reported.
Violence and displacement often kept Iraqi children out of school this year. The organization estimates that 2 million educations were interrupted, especially among primary-school students.
The report says that only 28 percent of 17-year-olds in Iraq took final exams this summer, and fewer than half passed. However, UNICEF-supported programs to distribute classroom materials rebuild schools and provide more learning opportunities benefited 4.7 million children.
Health took a hit, too, as children living in remote areas were faced with poor nutrition and diseases such as cholera.
The full report, based on statistics from UNICEF, Iraq’s government and the US military, will be released in early 2008.

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