Just keep swimming – through the pee, plasters and human hair | Sally Goble

Look. If you are of a delicate disposition, best not take up swimming. Don’t venture down to your local pool, strip off your clothes, wade through a slightly wet and dirty changing room and immerse yourself into what is, effectively, a communal bath full of the hoi polloi and all their bodily fluids. Just don’t do it.

If you are of a delicate disposition, you won’t end up feeling relaxed, with a sense of wellbeing and a healthy glow. You’ll be too concerned about verrucas, or cross and suffering from “lane rage”. You’ll complain about everything from people peeing in the water – which scientists have found is a frequent occurrence – to the quantity of the pool chemicals needed to counteract the peeing, to the water being too cold (or too hot).

You’ll be unhappy about the plasters and miscellaneous hairs that have sunk to the bottom of the pool. You’ll be irritated by the kids screaming and about swimmers splashing arrogantly; or women slowly breaststroking in twos and chatting while still in full makeup. You’ll feel as if your swim has been ruined.

I’ve swum in many pools – probably more than 100 – and I can tell you that every one has its fair share of annoyances. And they all, undoubtedly, have users who pee in the water. Every pool in the UK (where, for some reason, we don’t require swimmers to wear bathing caps) has great billowing clouds of hair floating around waiting to get caught repulsively between your fingers.

Many pools aren’t as clean as we’d like, but public pools are often underfunded. The staff who work at these places are often poorly paid and on casual shifts. The lifeguards who keep order, and whom we trust to save our lives, if necessary, are often required to do most of the cleaning, and to regulate the chemicals and temperatures of the water. Cut them some slack.

In most pools, just as there are cleanliness issues, there are people issues too. Every leisure centre has a weirdo who spends too much time in the shower. Every swim features a strange encounter with a near-naked stranger.

If you are of a delicate disposition you won’t end up feeling relaxed. You’ll be too concerned about verrucas

Last weekend, as I was doing lengths at my local pool, I noticed a woman standing at the end of the pool, at the deep end. She stood for about five minutes on the pool deck, with her arms folded, staring at the swimmers already in the water. It was disconcerting. Every time I swam up to the deep end, I wondered if she would jump on top of me as I reached the wall to turn.

Instead, after a while, she got into the lane next to me and swam breaststroke – badly – clad in swimwear that left little to the imagination, splendidly displaying much of her bottom as she glided along.

The weekend before, there was a strange man practising “free diving”. This moustachioed fellow would periodically swoop down to the bottom of the pool where he would stay for minutes at a time, staring in a trance at the tiles, barely moving. If you didn’t know what he was doing, you’d think he had drowned. It slightly unnerved me as I swam over the top of him, metres above.

And every week, no matter where I swim, there is always some beefy guy in beach shorts who gets in the same lane as me. This bloke will assume that he can swim faster than me because he’s a bloke and I am a middle-aged woman. So he will wait until I am about to turn at the end of the lane and push off in front of me and then hold me up by swimming more slowly than me. I take great pleasure in overtaking while simultaneously, very deliberately, eyeballing him.

But I don’t get exercised. I don’t complain to the lifeguards. It’s not my pool, I think. It’s there for us all to share. Live and let live. Your swim is just as valid as my swim. I embrace your chattering, your free-diving, your breaststroke screw-kick and your bikinis. I embrace the floating plasters and the overwhelming smell of chlorine. And if your kid (or you) have peed in the water, I don’t really care about that either.

But if the thought of urine, sweat and snot (and worse) appals you, and if you don’t want to swim too close to someone who is almost naked and cooperate with them, then do yourself – and me – a favour. Walk up a deserted mountain instead.

Just keep swimming – through the pee, plasters and human hair | Sally Goble

Dementia Diaries: "It"s like trying to go through a brick wall" – video

Dementia Diaries is an audio diary project that captures people’s diverse experiences of living with dementia, now the leading cause of death in the UK. While the origin of the disease is still unclear and symptoms can vary greatly, these recordings, here with accompanying film, aim to capture some of the complexity of each caller’s individual perspectives

Dementia Diaries: "It"s like trying to go through a brick wall" – video

Seeing stroke recovery through music reminded me why I love my job

I’ve been working as an occupational therapist with stroke patients for the past three years. It’s a privilege to be let into people’s lives and to get to know them and their families; but if they’re not getting better, it can be heartbreaking.

Working for a full stroke service in Hull, I am always busy. It is stressful and even though I know we do a good job, we always know we could be doing better if only we had the time to sit down and really work it out. Although the day-to-day reality of my job is always different, I could never have envisaged the impact one project would have on me, my colleagues and our patients.

In December 2014, I was asked to go to a workshop with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), which was coming to run music sessions with us as part of its community outreach work.

We met Tim Steiner from the RPO to brainstorm what the issues might be for people with cognitive and physical problems. My first thought was: “We’re very busy, how are we going to fit this in?” I’ve done group work before and while it can be really powerful, it’s hard. I was concerned but I could also see this was an amazing opportunity if we could pull it off.

We went through the instruments and thought about the problems that someone attending the group might have – from whether they could hold it to any discomfort they might experience. We adapted some of the instruments and arranged for a healthcare professional to sit with patients who might have problems concentrating, communicating or processing information at speed.

At the first session with the patients, none of us, not even the therapists, really knew what we were doing or what was going to happen. I was very nervous. The instruments looked like the ones we had used at school and I was worried that it would be a bit demeaning. But by the end of the session, we’d structured this incredible piece of music and that suddenly made me realise what this could potentially do.

Over the course of the project, Strokestra, I saw all these people go on a similar journey. At first, they felt embarrassed to pick up an instrument and make a sound. But after six months we did a performance of the work they had done in the city hall.

I remember how Steiner set us a task where we all had to clap at the same time and hold a rhythm. He’d stop and we’d carry on because we weren’t paying attention. It seems trivial but it was so funny and it helped us realise that it was OK to make mistakes and not be perfect. A lot of people told us this was the first time they had belly laughed since their stroke.

There were also times when people broke down in tears. Sometimes it’s difficult for people to realise what they’ve lost and Strokestra brought that into focus. Because the group became such good friends and everybody had been through a similar thing, people could understand and knew what that person was experiencing.

I noticed a change in confidence among the participants. Some people would come in their wheelchair but by the end, they’d start to walk. I saw a massive improvement in concentration.

I’m reticent to say that the group directly impacted on things, but I definitely saw some people being able to process information better and I wonder if it helped one person return to driving. It feels like that was part of his journey.

I love my job and I think what I do is really important but I have been doing it a long time and sometimes you can forget what you do, what you contribute and the importance of it. Strokestra brought that into sharp relief. I saw myself through a new set of eyes and thought: “Actually, what I do is pretty cool.”

Having an orchestra come in to help us was snazzy but I felt that I had an ownership of the project. It was about therapy and how we were using this music to help people recover. They were bringing their expertise of music and how to structure a music group and we were helping them with how we needed to adapt things for people with particular needs.

We’ve not stopped since. We’re running our own groups using music in one of our rehab units. We’re starting small but we’ve got big ideas to run this for the long-term. It’s given us the confidence to use music in therapy and to have an orchestra come and show us the potential of it has given us the confidence to carry on.

If you would like to contribute to our Blood, sweat and tears series which is about memorable moments in a healthcare career, please read our guidelines and get in touch by emailing sarah.johnson@theguardian.com.

Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to read more about issues like this. And follow us on Twitter (@GdnHealthcare) to keep up with the latest healthcare news and views.

Seeing stroke recovery through music reminded me why I love my job

Masturbation: Read Through This Article if You Think You Know Everything about It

Some people find masturbation as a funny word even though for most of us, it is simply a part of life. Still, others consider masturbation as a component of healthy sexuality.

A freelance writer, R. Morgan Griffin states in and article titled “Male Masturbation : 5 Things You Didn’t Know’ that if there is one thing that almost every guy is an expert at, it should be masturbation. He further states that after years of extensive hands-on experience, most people think they know everything about masturbation. On the other hand, according to some experts, their presumption might be misleading.

Why do People Masturbate?

The answer is people do it for various reasons. The most common reasons you would hear from adults are to relieve sexual tension, to achieve sexual pleasure, to have sex with oneself when partners are unavailable, and as a means for relaxing.

The thought that some people choose to masturbate when they do not have a sex partner is not true. It might be a fact that people who have regular sex partners are more likely to masturbate than people without any.

How do people masturbate?

Women masturbate by stimulating all parts of the vulva including the clitoris, or parts of the vulva, inner and/or outer labia, the vaginal opening or its canal, and/or the perineum or anus.

Many women prefer rubbing the area adjacent to clitoris as they find direct stimulation of the clitoris creates a very intense sensation. Some may find clitoral stimulation to be very painful. Besides fingers, women use sex toys such as dildos, vibrators or objects resemble a penis such as banana, aubergine or cucumber. Some women enjoy spraying their vagina to a stream of water from shower head as a way to ‘get high’ or feel great pleasure.

Men masturbate by stimulating all parts or certain parts of the penis. Most men use fingers to masturbate by sliding them up and down the shaft, rubbing the glans, fondling the scrotum or rubbing the anus. Some may prefer to stimulate the glans, which is very sensitive part of the penis. Others prefer to using slide the foreskin up and down

While masturbating, both women and men may also touch other sensitive parts of their bodies. There are lots of nerve endings all over the body, including the breasts, nipples, or thighs, all of which create erogenous zones. People may experience great pleasure while masturbating when they touch/rub the erogenous zones simultaneously.

Some men and women prefer to use lubricant or lotions to increase pleasure and protect against irritation.

Are sex fantasies during masturbation normal?

Most people, psychologists, and sexologists think sex fantasies are normal and healthy as it may add to a sexual excitement, either alone or during mutual masturbation. Both men and women may fantasize with their own thoughts or with erotic images or language – in print, on video, or online.

Most people masturbate in private and they seldom share their masturbating experiences openly and publicly. That is the reason why is quite hard for us to estimate how common masturbation is. Masturbation actually is very common. Studies show that approximately 70% adult men and more than 50% adult women masturbate. It is also a common behavior among children and teens.

Most parents in western cultures view masturbation as a normal behavior because they believe human are sexual beings. Nevertheless, many cultures still actively discourage masturbation, partly due to general constraints often placed on sexual behavior.

What is obsessive masturbation?

Obsessive masturbation may fit a definition of compulsive masturbation disorder, which refers to the condition in which one will have an urge to masturbate continuously, with or without using any arousal materials such pornography. In some serious cases, one will need to seek professional medical help to treat associated symptoms, including depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, and incapability to keep a healthy relationship.

When does masturbation become problematic or unhealthy?

Sexologist, Michael Shelton says,

“The answer is false, and, as the postings in this blog series have iterated, masturbation is now recognized as a healthy and normative behavior in the human sexual repertoire.”

But he believes it can become harmful on occasion. He explains,

“…..I have worked with men who have chaffed their penis due to excessive masturbation, had it “caught” or “stuck” in attempts at masturbation without hands via the use of household items (the vacuum cleaner urban legend isn’t necessarily a legend), and damaged relationships when masturbation became the sole outlet in regards to sexual interactions.”

He also believes that masturbation may play a crucial factor in the development and maintenance of paraphilias. Paraphilia is defined by The American Psychiatric Association as recurrent, intense, sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behavior…that causes significant distress or impairment in social, occupational and other areas of functioning.

Some of the more commonly observed paraphilias, including pedophilia, exhibitionism, frotteurism, and transvestic fetish. Lesser known paraphilias that impact the sexual functioning of a significant number of males are coprophilia, necrophilia, klismaphilia, and asphyxiophilia, and many more.

Sexual exhaustion

According to Dr. Richards, sexual exhaustion is a syndrome. He further elaborates by defining sexual exhaustion as,

“…..a group of symptoms that consistently occur together or a condition characterized by a set of associated symptoms. Sexual Exhaustion is not only referring to sexual performance and abilities as is the common misconception. The term was first used as a description of sexual activities, frequently over the top, resulting in numerous ill consequences involving a wide array of systems, organs, and tissues all the way to the base of their very functioning with various hormones, neurohormones, and neurotransmitters being seriously affected.”

He also believes that over (compulsive) masturbation is a factor contributing to sexual exhaustion.

Symptoms of sexual Exhaustion

Symptoms associated with sexual exhaustion are of wide range, including lack of concentration and motivation, tiredness and exhaustion, depression and mood swing, generalized anxiety and cowardly feeling, lower back pain, low libido, various forms of erectile dysfunction, hair loss, vision problems and eye floaters, headaches and migraine, and memory loss.

Sexual exhaustion is also believed to cause bronchitis, sleep disorders, lower back pain, frequent colds/flu, and adrenal fatigue.

Over masturbation

Over masturbation may cause elevated temperature on one side of the body ie; the side of abdomen, for instance, if a man masturbate using right hand then the right side of the abdomen would be affected.

And these side effects of over masturbation are rarely known: over masturbation is believed to cause hemorrhage, angina, and heart attack!

If you take a closer look, you may find that penile glans is quite similar in appearance to the heart. Too much of anything can be harmful to your health. Over masturbation leads to sexual exhaustion, chronically increased cortisol levels and chronic inflammation. So, over stimulation of the glans is believed to constrict arteries, arterioles, and capillaries of the heart to the point of causing a heart attack.

Most of the symptoms of sexual exhaustion and over masturbation are considered as myths by scientists. However, mechanisms that explain of how each symptom develops, which involve various hormones and neurotransmitters, in the end, would satisfy those who view pure science and its branches function to help explain phenomena.

Hypothesis

In the case of sexual exhaustion that remains widely unrecognized in the medical community, the symptoms that believed to be associated with sexual exhaustion and over masturbation without any study performed to show its possible association with sexual exhaustion should be regarded as a hypothesis.

Is there anything wrong with the argument?

Masturbation: Read Through This Article if You Think You Know Everything about It

Music shone through my wife’s Alzheimer’s | Letters

Laura Barton’s description of Hannah Peel’s relationship with her gran through music (Waking moments, G2, 23 November) brought back so many memories of my wife’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. Denise died last year having struggled with Alzheimer’s for five years. She had been a music teacher and church organist in her early life but, even though I was able to care for her at home until the end, her memory and recognition failed early on in the disease. However, even when she slept most of the time, hymns would sometimes bring a smile to her lips, not least the weekly Songs of Praise on a Sunday afternoon. Such was the awakening that she would join in with most hymns and was word perfect. As the final credits rolled Denise would close her eyes and return to her abyss of darkness.
Dennis Ruston
Derby

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Music shone through my wife’s Alzheimer’s | Letters

Awakenings: Hannah Peel on how she harnessed music"s power to cut through dementia

‘Whenever I went to see my grandma,” says Hannah Peel, “we always had the same conversation. She would ask me who I was and what I did, and I would say that I was a musician, that I played the violin – that she’d actually given me her younger brother’s violin. I would tell her how she and my grandad used to sing together. And she would always just smile, nod, and say, ‘Mmm, oh, I love you.’ She had no idea at all what I was talking about.”

Peel, a musician known for her work with the Magnetic North and a variety of ambitious solo projects, had been watching her grandmother slowly slip into dementia for years. From the early befuddlement of lost objects, items she thought stolen, to the run of confusions and contradictions that led to her eventual diagnosis, it was a deeply distressing experience for the family.

Then one Christmas, having read about the positive effect music can have on people with dementia, Peel wondered if she could connect with her gran through some of her most familiar songs. “I said to my dad: ‘Why don’t we sing to her and see what happens?’ And from a place of not knowing us at all – from giving her Christmas gifts and her saying, ‘Oh thank you, what’s this for?’ – she completely woke up and started singing the lyrics. She was aware of what was going on around her. As we left she said: ‘Happy Christmas!’”

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Tenderly by Hannah Peel on YouTube

Peel found the effect so overwhelming she began to write a song about her gran. That one song led to her new album, Awake But Almost Dreaming – in part an exploration of dementia, but also a celebration of her gran’s life and of the wonders of the human body. As well as referencing Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities, it features contributions from producer Liam Howe and Hayden Thorpe of Wild Beasts, a cover of Cars in the Garden by the Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan, and recordings of those circuitous conversations she had with her gran.

“All the tracks lead us into her world and wondering where she is,” says Peel. “And so that became the record, starting with the youthfulness and slipping into that world and the rabbit hole of dementia.”

There are 850,000 people with dementia in the UK. By 2025, this number is expected to pass one million. It is now the leading cause of death among British women. While a cure has yet to be found, much has been discovered about the effect that music can have on sufferers, even when the disease is at its most advanced stage. As the neurologist Oliver Sacks said: “Music evokes emotion, and with it memory. It brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can.”

Several viral videos have captured this feeling of life: the sheer delight music can bring. Recently, there was the joyous footage of Ted McDermott, a 79-year-old former Butlins Redcoat who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s three years ago, being driven around by his son as he sang along to Quando Quando Quando. There has also been a raft of projects – from English Touring Opera’s Turtle Song, a songwriting programme for sufferers and their companions, to Arts4Dementia and Music for Life, a long-running scheme at London’s Wigmore Hall that brings together musicians, dementia patients and carers.

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Cars in the Garden by Hannah Peel featuring Hayden Thorpe on YouTube

Because music requires little mental processing, relying instead upon the motor centre of the brain, pairing it with everyday activities can enable patients to develop a rhythm that helps recall the memory of that activity, and improve cognitive ability. Researchers have found that playing music from someone’s young adult years, from around 18 to 25, is likely to provoke the strongest response. As patients enter late-stage dementia, music from their childhood may prove more powerful.

Peel found this to be the case with her gran. “She used to sing around the house when she was younger,” she says. “Apparently, she would sing WB Yeats’s poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree. My father couldn’t remember the melody, but he used to recite the words and say, ‘Mum, can you remember them?’ and she would just recite them. Later, she wouldn’t get that far – but if it was Christmas carols, she would sing along.”

The theory is that the auditory system is the first part of the brain to fully function, meaning that from 16 weeks old you are receptive to music. “So anything you hear early on is soaked into that part,” says Peel, “and that’s the last part of the brain to be affected by dementia. They think, because it’s right deep down in the centre, it’s the last thing to be touched.”

Hannah Peel’s grandparents, Robert and Joyce, on their wedding day.

Peel wanted to understand the science behind the disease, and turned to Selina Wray, a fellow Barnsley native who works at the Institute of Neurology at University College London, researching dementia for Alzheimer’s Research UK. “I grow cells in the laboratory from patients who have dementia and those who don’t – and look at what it is that leads them to die,” says Wray. “We’re trying to understand the very earliest things that go wrong, with the idea that if we can discover what those things are, we can stop them happening.”

For Peel, visiting Wray’s laboratory and seeing dementia cells up close was a chance to find unexpected beauty in the disease. “They take on these complex structures,” says Wray. “And because every cell is made up of thousands of proteins and quite often we’re interested in one or two, we use colours to label them. They look a little like fireworks.” Peel recalls: “As soon as I saw them I thought, ‘It’s like the stars! It’s like astronomy!’ It felt like an awakening – how it all connected, in a scientific and artistic and musical way.”

Peel is about to perform Awake But Always Dreaming at a special event at St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch, east London. “It feels really fitting,” she says, “because it’s not the perfect church – it’s got flaking walls and the pews are a bit rocky. It just feels as if it encompasses everything the mind is.” The evening has been put together with Alzheimer’s Research UK, and there will be readings by the actor Christopher Ecclestone, film and poetry from Lavinia Greenlaw, and new work from the director and choreographer Shelly Love, all tackling dementia. The idea is to show “there is hope and it can be beautiful, because you can still find connections with people through music and poetry”.

This Christmas, Peel’s music also appears as part of Alzheimer’s Research UK’s charity appeal, animated by Aardman and narrated by Stephen Fry. She has also launched Memory Tapes, a project inviting participants to make playlists of their lives. “I think of it like a time capsule,” she says, “so that, if ever I fall into dementia, there would be a mixtape of the songs that connect for my children and grandchildren.”

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All That Matters by Hannah Peel on YouTube

Peel’s gran died earlier this year, at the age of 98, seven years after her diagnosis. “We had to stay with her for nearly two weeks, essentially just watching her breathe. And then she faded away.” Best to remember her as Joyce Peel, the “beautiful soprano” who moved to County Armagh to marry an organist, who loved music and her family and singing in the choir her husband conducted.

The experience has changed Peel’s relationship with the people she loves. She calls home more often, does not take her parents’ presence for granted. Do they, I wonder, discuss the music that binds them? “My mum doesn’t like my music and never has quite got it,” she says frankly. “She’s very direct. I’d do a gig and after she’d say: ‘It’s not my cup of tea.’”

Peel gave her the new album with some trepidation – not even telling her that it had been inspired by her gran. “She rang after about three weeks and said, ‘I’ve been listening to your record every single day.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my god, what’s she going to say?’ But she said, ‘I cannot stop listening to it – it’s the most beautiful thing you have ever done. Every day I discover something more in it.’ She’d never said anything like that before. That’s a kind of breakthrough.”

• Awake But Always Dreaming is out now on My Own Pleasure. Hannah Peel plays St Leonard’s Church, London, on 24 November, in conjunction with Alzheimer’s Research UK and The Vine Collective.

Awakenings: Hannah Peel on how she harnessed music"s power to cut through dementia

More than 250,000 UK babies born through IVF

More than a quarter of a million UK babies have been born as a result of IVF.

The 250,000th IVF baby was born in February last year, according to figures released by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

The British Fertility Society welcomed the milestone, saying it was great news for patients and their families. The figures show a sharp rise in the number of IVF and other assisted-reproduction treatments over the 25 years since the HFEA was established.

In 1991, 6,146 women received 6,609 IVF treatments, resulting in 1,226 live births. By 2013 this had risen to 52,288 women receiving 67,708 cycles of IVF, from which 15,283 babies were born.

The success rate for IVF has risen from 14% in 1991 to 26.5% in 2014, according to the figures, released during national fertility awareness week.

“When the HFEA was set up in 1991 we could never have imagined that over 250,000 babies would be born just 25 years later through assisted reproduction,” said the HFEA’s chair, Sally Cheshire. “These babies are among the 5 million [IVF produced children] born worldwide and I am delighted that so many people have been able to have their much-longed-for family.”

Prof Adam Balen, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said: “Over the years IVF success rates have improved and more people have access to treatment. However, as a society we are still extremely concerned about some CCGs [clinical commissioning groups] limiting access to treatment and going against the current National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance.”

Susan Seenan, chief executive of leading patient charity Infertility Network UK, said: “It is heart-warming and reassuring to hear … that a quarter of a million IVF babies have now been born in the UK. However, it is important to remember that IVF cannot help everyone.

“Our recent UK survey shows that if you do need IVF you must face a series of emotional, social and financial hurdles. These include often having to pay crippling amounts of money for your own medical treatment, not receiving appropriate medical information from your GP, a lack of affordable, accessible counselling and emotional support, a paucity of workplace support and the deterioration of core relationships. Far more needs to be done to help individuals through the far-reaching devastation that fertility issues wreak.”

More than 250,000 UK babies born through IVF

Boys conceived through IVF technique have lower than average fertility

Boys conceived using an assisted reproductive technique in which sperm is injected directly into the egg have lower fertility than average, scientists have found.

The results come from the first generation of boys conceived using a technique called intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), who are just reaching adulthood, and show that the young men have lower sperm quantity and quality than those conceived spontaneously.

ICSI is normally used to help couples conceive when the man has a low sperm count, or where there are abnormalities in the shape or movement of the sperm. The latest findings suggest that these problems tend to be passed on to the next generation – there is no suggestion that they are caused by the technique itself.

The study found that the men conceived through ICSI, who were aged between 18 to 22, had almost half the sperm concentration and half as many motile sperm (sperm that can swim well) than naturally-conceived men of a similar age.

ICSI men were nearly three times more likely to have sperm concentrations below the World Health Organisation’s threshold for “normal” fertility.

“These findings are not unexpected,” said Andre Van Steirteghem, emeritus professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, who led the work. “Before ICSI was carried out, prospective parents were informed that it may well be that their sons may have impaired sperm and semen like their fathers. For all the parents this information was not a reason to abstain from ICSI because, as they said: ‘If this happens ICSI can then also be a solution for our sons.’”

The findings confirm for the first time that the problems that had caused the father’s infertility – usually genetic factors – appear to be inherited by their sons.

Scientists believe these genetic flaws would be passed on regardless of whether their children were conceived naturally or using ICSI.

“These first results from the oldest group of ICSI-conceived adults worldwide indicate that a degree of ‘sub-fertility’ has indeed been passed on to sons of fathers who underwent ICSI because of impaired semen characteristics,” said Van Steirteghem.

ICSI differs from conventional IVF treatments because the sperm is injected directly into the egg, rather than many sperm being mixed together with an egg and waiting for fertilisation to occur.

In 2014, the most recent year for which figures are available, around half of all IVF cycles in the UK involved ICSI, according to a report by the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority.

Nick Macklon, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology within medicine at the University of Southampton, said: “This was always going to be a concern, and couples were counselled that sons might inherit genetic flaws that nature was trying to get rid of by rendering the man infertile. It justifies our cautious approach. It isn’t any cause for alarm.”

Prof Richard Sharpe, an expert in male reproductive health at the University of Edinburgh, said: “In showing, as a group, that the ICSI sons have starkly abnormal semen quality compared with normal, non-ICSI-derived sons, the results suggest strongly that male fertility problems severe enough to require ICSI may be inheritable.

Importantly, the results are a reminder to us that Icsi is not a treatment for male infertility, but simply a way of bypassing a problem and leaving it for the next generation to deal with – something my generation seem horribly adept at doing.”

Prof Simon Fishel, managing director of Care Fertility, said that the findings were useful but not unexpected. “Just having low semen parameters is not evidence for the requirement of ICSI or IVF technologies,” he said. “We know many men with such are indeed able to conceive naturally. More follow up studies will be required to ascertain meaningful outcomes.”

Boys conceived through IVF technique have lower than average fertility

After Sifting Through The Data The Verdict Is: Eat Real Food

After Sifting Through The Data The Verdict Is: Eat Real Food

Situs inversus and my "through the looking glass" body

What links Catherine O’Hara, Enrique Iglesias, Donny Osmond, and me? At face value, at least, not a lot. Look beneath the skin, however, and you would see a striking similarity: our hearts beat on the right, not the left. In fact it goes beyond mere dextrocardia, which would mean only the heart is transposed; instead, all our organs are placed in mirror image to the norm. We are linked by abnormality: we all have situs inversus.

Situs inversus is a rare congenital condition in which all of an individual’s internal organs in the thorax and abdomen are positioned on the opposite side to where they should be. The liver, for instance, is now on the left, the spleen on the right. Flipped, for want of a better word.

In some cases a person can live most of their life without realising they have situs inversus. Indeed, it has been reported that Donny Osmond was only aware of his condition after his case of appendicitis was overlooked because his appendix wasn’t where the doctor expected it to be. As such, and with an estimated occurrence of one in every 10,000 births, situs inversus totalis – the full term for complete anatomical reversal – has intrigued scientists for centuries. Many believe the condition holds clues to understanding how our bodies differentiate right from left, and the significance behind such a preference.

I was diagnosed with situs inversus totalis at six months old. Often, recorded signs of a reversed anatomy are dismissed as an error of the x-ray technician, the left and right labels supposedly mixed-up. It was only when I was taken to hospital with unrelated breathing problems that doctors began to consider the possibility that I had situs inversus. “Sit down and listen to everything I tell you”, the doctor told my parents, who, even after listening intently, were left in a state of disbelief. Several medical staff hurried into the room, excited. Medics may only come across one case of situs inversus in their careers, and I was later invited to take part in a Guess What’s Wrong With The Baby trainee doctor event.

For the last twelve years I have worn a MedicAlert bracelet on my left wrist to notify people of my rare condition. Turn it over and emergency medical staff are informed that I have “Complete Situs Inversus Normal Ciliary”. Rather than being simply an accessory or conversation piece, it serves the valuable purpose of preventing the somewhat unfortunate-sounding possibility of having an operation on the wrong side in an emergency.

Since all my organs have assumed the exact opposite location, situs inversus does not affect my overall health. I was very lucky; had only a few of my organs moved, or had they grown in random positions – as is the case with situs ambiguus – the condition would have been very serious. Of those born with situs inversus, 25% have Kartagener Syndrome (also referred to as primary ciliary dyskinesia), a defect in the cilia that line important organs and tracts, such as the respiratory tract, causing bronchitis, and reducing male fertility.

In other circumstances, the failure of one of the organs to move to the other side can further complicate the individual’s health, by causing entanglement. This often proves fatal.

There is also a strong probability that people born with situs inversus have heart problems. Speaking with adult congenital cardiologist Dr Dan Halpern at New York University’s Langone Medical Centre in July, I began to fully understand the condition’s implications. “You are the rarity,” he said, before delving into an animated description of the cardiovascular impact a reversed anatomy can have.

The most common heart problem, Halpern told me, is the transposition of the great arteries: instead of the great vessels arising from the heart criss-crossing over each other as they should, they lie in parallel. Alongside this, the main ventricles of the heart are inverted, or the great vessels arise from the wrong chamber. In the event of heart surgery, situs inversus can involve complications, since organs such as the heart are chiral – ie. they can be distinguished from their mirror image. Just think what would happen if you tried, for example, to attach a left hand to a right wrist. A similar geometric problem occurs if a donated heart from a non-situs inversus donor is transplanted into someone with situs inversus. The donor’s heart must be placed into the reversed position, and the surgeon needs to consider aspects such as the different weighting and the need to ensure the reattachment of the asymmetric blood vessels. It is almost like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle with the wrong pieces.

Thankfully, twenty years on from my surprise diagnosis I have been able to lead a perfectly normal life – albeit one with a growing curiosity for what situs inversus entails; the history of its discovery, its wider cultural implications and why it occurs.

Although Aristotle cited two cases of transposed organs in animals,situs inversus was first discovered in Naples by the anatomist and surgeon Marco Severino, in 1643. A century later the Scottish physician Matthew Baillie recorded the reversal as situs inversus, from the Latin situs, as in “location”, and inversus for “opposite”. Situs solitus is the normal structure, while isolated levocardia refers to when the heart alone remains on the left – an even rarer condition.

Baillie’s 1788 account of the discovery during a seminar at the Hunterian School of Medicine conveys the shock the room of young doctors felt as they were faced with the mirror image. His text explains that from the outside the deceased man appeared to be of normal disposition, but that “upon opening the cavity of the thorax and abdomen, the different situation of the viscera was so striking as immediately to excite the attention of the pupils”. While the right lung is usually divided into three lobes, the pupils discovered “‘exactly contrary to what is found in ordinary cases”. He goes on to explain that “the apex of the heart was found to point to the right-side nearly opposite to the sixth rib, and its cavities as well as large vessels were completely transposed.”

The account also tells of the “considerable pains” Baillie took to establish how the condition had affected the man while he was alive. In researching the life of the deceased it was established that “the person, while alive, was not conscious of any uncommon situation of his heart.” It seems probable that if such a finding had been made in medieval times, a person with situs inversus would most certainly have been branded a witch or demon posthumously.

Artists and writers have explored the implications of situs inversus. Understandably so: it makes for a cracking plot twist. The titular character in Ian Fleming’s 1958 James Bond novel Dr No is saved from a bullet because of his dextrocardia. In Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger introduces situs inversus during the postmortem of a twin. During the period 1452-1519, Leonardo Da Vinci is alleged to have been one of the first to depict the situs inversus anatomy – but then again, he did write back to front.

We consciously seek to attribute symbolism to structures that are formed in nature, investing our belief in the left-right asymmetry norm. Most notably, the heart and its position has always held an important cultural significance. America’s pledge of allegiance relies on the belief that the heart veers to the left of the thorax. In the Middle East, placing a hand over one’s heart after shaking hands with someone conveys respect, but also forges trust. The playground promise “cross my heart and hope to die”, started life as a religious oath, Christian in origin. “Hand on heart” suggests a sense of truth. Are these pledges and customs compromised if the right hand covers flesh and nothing more?

Of course, bodies come in many forms. Beneath the skin the illusion of regularity can be overturned, the body’s complexity brought to the light.

Situs inversus and my "through the looking glass" body

Shaping mental health support through data

If you’re experiencing a mental health issue, one of the people you probably least want to speak to about it is your employer. Disclosing depression or anxiety has long been seen as the last workplace taboo, for fear of repercussions. This is despite the existence of the Equality Act 2010, which protects employees with physical and mental disabilities from discrimination.

But just over a third of workers with a mental health condition discuss it with their employer, according to a survey of 1,388 employees carried out by Willis PMI Group, one of the UK’s largest providers of employee healthcare and risk management services. The research found that 30% of respondents were concerned that they wouldn’t receive adequate support, 28% believed their employer wouldn’t understand, and 23% feared that disclosing it would lead to management thinking less of them.

A culture of fear and silence can have a huge impact on productivity – the charity Mind estimates [pdf] that mental ill health costs the economy £70bn a year. The challenge is that seeking help involves taking ownership of the problem, says Mark Brown, development director of social enterprise Social Spider and founder of the now defunct mental health and wellbeing magazine One in Four. And finding support online can be a time-consuming and frustrating experience.

“Just serving up ever great slabs of information – the internet is awash with it – isn’t going to help anyone to know what to do,” says Brown. “We often confuse the provision of information with the solving of problems. Knowing information is different from knowing how to put that information into action.”

Brown believes that bringing together information with public and open data into a single digital space is one way that could innovate how advice is delivered.

Plexus is aiming to achieve just this. Built by the digital studio M/A, with funding from the Open Data Institute, the knowledge base is being used to design resources for people with mental health conditions, their families, and even employers, to find support available in local areas, seek advice on how best to cope with returning to work after a period off and understand employee rights and employer responsibilities.

Plexus has pooled data from a couple of dozen organisations including NHS Choices, Department for Work and Pensions, the Office for National Statistics and Citizens Advice. In some cases the information has been pulled from APIs; in other instances it has been scraped using web data platform import.io.

The first tool Plexus developed is a chatbot called Grace, which is currently in beta testing. It enables users to record thoughts and feelings anonymously, receive feedback in the form of a newsletter and log in to an online dashboard to see a more detailed analysis, including whether there are any patterns in mood emerging over a period of time. The tool also offers guidance from the various governmental and charity websites under easy-to-navigate sections, such as legal rights and preparing for work.

“Through machine learning, Grace will intuitively know when our users are mostly likely to want to speak with us, be able to see the positive and negative nature of the user’s reply, and adapt the questions to encourage more positive responses,” explains Martin Vowles, creative director and co-founder of M/A. “We’re hoping this approach will allow us to offer a unique tool to each user which helps them understand and develop their mental wellbeing.”

Brown says that the potential for machine learning to tailor information and services is exciting. “It’s very good at looking at big piles of data for patterns. When we know certain things to be correct from one dataset, it can begin to make guesses about lots of other things based on what the machine is being fed.”

The sensitive nature of data being submitted by users on a platform like Grace, though, means many people are likely to be uneasy about their data being made accessible. To get round this, Plexus allows users to decide how their data is shared, with data licences lasting between 13 and 26 weeks. Vowles hopes that “as users become more trusting of Grace and what it can do for them, they’ll become more trusting with [us] using their anonymised personal data.”

Plexus aims to release a series of open datasets, including qualitative, quantitative and information on resources accessed by Grace users, to enable NGOs and local authorities to understand the country’s mental health provision. It’s hoped that they’d then use the knowledge to devise new strategies and ensure targets are met and resources and services available in local areas are of an acceptable standard.

There are also plans to make certain data available to employers, but “this has to be on the employee’s terms”. Vowles imagines that involving employers in the process of receiving support could allow them to get a clearer picture of mental health in the workplace. They could then adapt to make employees feel more comfortable and ensure their business has adequate support in place.

The potential to use open data to shape how future mental health support is delivered is an area that has been underexplored. At the end of last year, the Royal Society of Arts launched an interactive platform with Mind that allows members of the public to find out how well local health providers are looking after people with mental health conditions. The full dataset is available to download and includes data extracted from Public Health England, as well as metrics such as percentage of people with a mental health condition in employment in local areas. Plexus, however, is the first tool to use open data with the aim of providing people with a holistic view of their mental wellbeing.

Brown supports the idea of using open datasets and combine them, but stresses that any tool or platform has to benefit users. The data and information must be digestible and it needs to help them understand and take away from it what they need.

“It’s often extremely easy to forget that people with mental health difficulties are people first and foremost – not objects or problems.”

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Shaping mental health support through data

Jeremy Hunt cannot bully his seven-day NHS plans through

The Guardian’s revelation of the Department of Health’s analysis of the risks around seven-day working exposes how a highly political health secretary is meeting his nemesis in the hard graft of policy implementation.

There is nothing remarkable about the existence of a risk register; identifying a range of potentially serious problems is standard practice for any government policy. What is striking is that 13 major risks are rated red or red/amber – meaning they are very likely or likely to occur.

Translating Whitehall-speak into plain English, the document tells us that ministers are not sure what they are trying to achieve, that in all likelihood seven-day working will make little difference to hospital services, that there is little agreement on how it should be delivered, plans that do exist are of poor quality, and there are not enough NHS staff in place to make it all happen.

In short, this is a policy – and a health secretary – in crisis. Jeremy Hunt has been trying to batter seven-day working through by winning the propaganda war with the junior doctors over the introduction of new contracts, and doing so by misrepresenting the evidence. Listening to Hunt, the casual observer would assume that the only thing standing between today’s NHS and effective seven-day working is changing doctors’ shift patterns. This document reveals far more serious obstacles.

It is obvious that Hunt is ignoring advice from his civil servants on the most fundamental aspects of delivering a massive and complex policy. The document states baldly that “the objectives and scope are not fully agreed upon, but delivery has started”. In other words, Hunt has been willing to risk strikes by doctors without being clear what he is trying to achieve.

It appears he has not even established a clear position with Downing Street; the risk that the policy does not meet the expectations of No 10 is rated red – an extraordinary position for such a controversial course of action.

Perhaps the most damning revelation is that Department of Health civil servants endorse one of the major criticisms of Hunt’s seven-day working push – that there are simply not enough staff with the right skills to do it. Again, this risk is rated red. Even with generous funding, the timescales around NHS workforce recruitment, training and deployment are such that it would take years for full seven-day working to be implemented, yet Hunt persists in creating the impression that the only obstacle is the lack of will among NHS staff to do it.

Hunt has also ignored civil service advice on how he has pitched the case for seven-day working to the public. In another document obtained by the Guardian and Channel 4, officials have told him that his repeated allegation of patient safety failings at weekends “has not been helpful”. They have been pushing him to explain the benefits for patients, pointing out that attempting to play on fears of medical accidents is not winning public support.

In his early months as health secretary Hunt demonstrated the skills of a political Houdini. The coalition government had been under fire for months over Andrew Lansley’s botched health reforms, but his replacement was able to distract the public’s attention from the chaotic and expensive changes and take the fight over the NHS to Labour by using the Mid Staffordshire scandal to shift the spotlight to quality and safety.

But eventually, rhetorical flourishes have to give way to the long-haul of planning and implementing change, and this is where Hunt’s tenure as health secretary is starting to unravel. Having scored a success by picking a fight with Labour over Mid Staffs he believed he could chalk up another victory by winning a confrontation with the British Medical Association.

But his officials are trying to tell him that changing the junior doctors’ contract is just a small part of implementing seven-day working across the NHS. Hunt needs to listen to civil service advice by reframing the policy around the benefits for patients, being clear on the objectives, adopting a realistic timescale for implementation and above all securing adequate funding. It is simply not possible to bully this policy through.

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Jeremy Hunt cannot bully his seven-day NHS plans through

A journey through the first ever sound map of the London Underground

We’ve seen plenty of alternative maps of the London Underground, from those plotting average rents by station, to those charting life expectancy at every stop. But what about sound? A group of musicians and sound artists have this week launched the first ever interactive “sound map” of the London Underground, capturing the shrieks, grinds and general patter of 55 tube stations across the capital.

It’s a noisy old world down there – from the “mind the gap” announcements to Londoners’ idiosyncratic curses and drunken late night conversations over illicit tinnies. This is precisely what The Next Station project, the work of Cities and Memory and The London Sound Survey, spent three months earlier this year gathering. And as well as capturing the real-life aural experience, sound artists from around the world were then invited to remix and reimagine the field recordings and create an alternative sound map to complement the real one – you can listen to all of them in one interactive feature.

So why make a sound map of the places we would all rather spend as little time thinking about as possible? Stuart Fowkes, a sound artist and the project’s creator, says London’s underground noises are iconic: “not just nationally but on a global scale” – for residents, tourists, and watchers of London-based films alike. The tube, Fowkes says, defines London in a way that public transport networks in other cities don’t.

Clicking through the sound map, you’ll hear a surprising range of noises: a didgeridoo player at Stratford, someone offering free hugs at Brixton and a bagpipe busker at King’s Cross – as well as all the announcements and clattering train noises that you’d expect. “You might think that one underground station sounds much like another,” says Fowkes, “but they’re as characterful as pet dogs once you get to know them.” King’s Cross would be a yappy terrier, then. Brixton an affectionate labrador.

London’s tube stations: as ‘characterful as pet dogs’? Photograph: Transport for London

And sound matters – what we hear every day on our commute is as much a part of our quotidian experience as our morning coffee. There’s the impact loud noises can have on our ears, for one. An expert working in 2004 recorded sound levels louder than a pneumatic drill on parts of the tube – loud enough to damage the hearing.

Then there’s also the psychological impact of sound: though we might classify many of the noises on the tube as stressful, Fowkes insists they can be reassuring in their familiarity, keeping the whole system moving like clockwork: “the details like the intonation of the automated announcements communicate ‘everything is well’ to commuters subconsciously … the trundle of the escalators, the closing of the sliding doors are all as rhythmic as a heartbeat, and become part of Londoners’ natural functions when they’re underground.”

This idea of the importance of acoustic ecology is not new – R Murray Schafer, considered the father of the debate around it, began talking about the (damaging) effects of sound, especially on people dwelling in the “sonic sewers” he believed cities to be, back in the 1970s. “Noises are the sounds we have learned to ignore,” he wrote. So perhaps this focus on the tube’s sounds will help Londoners’ occasionally listen, as well as simply hear, the underground aural landscape.

A man shouts while boarding a central line train at Oxford Circus station on the night of the launch of the 24-hour tube service. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

“There’s no blue plaque system for preserving important sounds”, Fowkes says, even though “sounds change as much as visual cityscapes, and today’s sounds are tomorrow’s history.” Perhaps it makes sense that we should be working to archive the soon-to-be-lost sounds of our cities.

The remixed sounds on the London Underground sound map – added to “help people to appreciate how sound can form source material for some interesting art,” Fowkes says – are intriguing, if a little high concept. With the field recording made at Piccadilly Circus, Swedish sound artist Anya Trybala has crafted a composition meant to be a meditation on Brexit. Composer and artist Martin A. Smith has reimagined Moorgate by mixing recordings the Northern line with the sound of cigales and church bells recorded in forests in Provence.

And with the tube now rumbling through the night into the early hours, will we see this soundscape changing? “From a field recording perspective, the night tube is really exciting,” Fowkes says. He’s planning to head out, recorder in hand, and capture some of these nocturnal tube sounds. Who wouldn’t want to hear Londoners’ late night, post-party deep and meaningfuls mixed over the sound of Provençal cicadas?

Cities and Memory is continuing to capture sounds, not just below ground, but also above ground in London and in other cities in 55 countries across the globe. Fowkes’ ambition is to “help people appreciate the joy of the sounds that surround them every day.” So maybe then we can stop grimacing at the shriek of the Victoria line as it passes through Pimlico? Perhaps not. But maybe we can look more kindly on that King’s Cross bagpiper at quarter to nine on a Monday morning.

Listen to the London Underground sound map here. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion

A journey through the first ever sound map of the London Underground

Star sings through surgical treatment to conserve her voice

31-yr-previous Alama Kante, who is a skilled singer, underwent throat surgical procedure in France to get rid of her thyroid gland which was a cancer danger.

“I met with the anaesthetist to know how it would go and they called me afterwards to say ‘No we are not going to do it simply because you have a expert occupation with your vocal cords, we cannot consider the danger of sending you to rest and carry out such an operation’.

So they proposed hypnosis so that I sing, so the medical doctor knows in which to locate the vocal cords that he must not touch,” she explained.

Medical hypnosis permits the patient to stay awake and respond throughout the operation.

Supply: ITN

Star sings through surgical treatment to conserve her voice

Hypnotically content star who sang through surgery to conserve her voice

Hypnosis – or hypnotherapy as practitioners favor to contact it, to steer clear of fairground connotations – was typically utilized in operations in the late 19th century ahead of the advent of contemporary anaesthetics.

Provided the other choices – a slug of whisky, biting down on a piece of cloth, being held down on the working table, or hoping you would pass out from the pain – it should have appeared like a very good, if slightly cranky, bet.

“Once ether or chloroform became accessible,” says hypnotherapist Sharon Younger, who has practised in west London for 25 years, “the health care profession grew to become largely allergic to hypnotherapy.” If it was utilised at all, it was only seldom.

In British-ruled India in the 1840s, for instance, Scottish surgeon James Esdaile manufactured a title for himself by giving painless surgery for a plague of tumours triggered by mosquito bites. He utilized “mesmerism” – hypnosis with an additional quasi-religious tinge.

Numerous years later on, Irish surgeon Dr Jack Gibson, who died in 2005, also made use of hypnosis – with no any anaesthetic – no fewer than four,000 instances.

“Jack frequently worked in rural hospitals the place there have been a lot of victims of farm accidents,” explains Younger, who knew him well. “He’d say to them: ‘I am a doctor, do you believe in me?’ And if they explained ‘Yes, doctor,’ he’d place them in a trance whilst he operated. The crucial to how it operates is mind-set and the patient’s inspiration. In Alama’s case, she was motivated because she needed to sing again.”

It all comes down, it seems, to the electrical power of suggestion that lies at the heart of all hypnosis.

In this kind of circumstances, there can be pre-education to build self confidence about being put into a trance during surgical procedure. “There are other motivations, also,” says Young, who operates with Dr John Butler, the hypnotherapist who took element in Hypnosurgery Reside, a ground-breaking 2006 Channel 4 documentary in which a surgeon operated on a hernia with no anaesthetic. “Hypnotherapy is much far more common in American hospitals, for example, due to the fact insurance companies have observed the proof that it shortens recovery periods and for that reason keeps down bills.”

Jack Gibson’s method was controversial – even Dhonneur didn’t try the two hypnotising and surgery – and it was shunned by sceptical colleagues on both side of the Irish Sea in the course of his lifetime. But hypnotherapy has, in current years, observed a modest revival, specially with pregnant women wanting a organic birth, the place hypnobirthing lessons teach expectant mothers how to control ache when in labour.

It has also been utilised towards addictions to smoking, consuming and in excess of-eating, although the Withington Hospital in Manchester reports excellent benefits in countering irritable bowel syndrome.

But a return to the operating theatre is not on anybody’s NHS reform agenda at current. Now a British hospital has an additional Asmaa Khaled, the hypnotherapist who stored Kanté in a trance.

In France and Belgium, nonetheless, pioneering function is in progress. At the University of Liege, Dr Marie-Elizabeth Faymonville has won assistance in battling medical prejudice towards “quack” hypnotherapy, and exhibiting as an alternative how it can be proved to reduce ache, and cut down the use of anaesthetics and their side-results.

She specialises in “hypno-sedation”, in which the patient is put into a trance by a hypnotherapist, but also offered a mild nearby anaesthetic or sedative by medical professionals, adequate to depart them relaxed but awake – the identical method as that used to treat Kanté.

When she felt serious soreness at a single stage in the operation, the singer recalls, the hypnotherapist was capable to dull it once again. “He stated: ‘Don’t worry, it will go away,’ and it did. The ache simply disappeared.”

Hypnotically content star who sang through surgery to conserve her voice

Kids Don"t Read through Books Due to the fact Mother and father Do not Read Books

There is a cultural narrative about how electronic devices are pulling kids away from books. When I meet with other university professors they typically tell me that the college students don’t study anymore due to the fact their eyeballs are glued to their phones. Technophobes feel we are raising a generation that does not comprehend the worth of literature.

The polarization of outdated and new continues. Maybe it is leftover sediment from an anti-display mindset that was often on the fringes of the golden age of tv. It is a trite myth-like story that attempts to cast books as the underdog in battle towards thechno-imperialism. Paper is the great man and Gorilla Glass is the villain.

Widespread Sense Media’s new report, entitled “Children, Teenagers, And Reading,” attempts to offer you a “big-picture perspective on children’s reading habits in the United States and how they might have changed during the technological revolution of current decades.” The huge scary takeaway:

In accordance to government studies, considering that 1984, the % of 13-12 months-olds who are weekly readers went down from 70% to 53%, and the percent of 17-yr-olds who are weekly readers went from 64% to 40%. The percent of 17-year-olds who by no means or hardly ever read through tripled for the duration of this period, from 9% to 27%.

These statistics are startling. But I’m not certain what this has to do with technologies. The framing does not make significantly sense to me.

It seems to me that we at present dwell in a culture that is a lot more heavily text based mostly than any other time in background. Folks study all day long. Google, Twitter, and Facebook provide words. Folks cannot peel their eyes from the smartphone–essentially a text and data distribution mechanism. We really have trouble NOT reading. Individuals are constantly checking their e mail and their text messages. Often it is difficult to pull away from this matrix of letters.

Nonetheless, what are men and women reading through? It looks like they really do not read numerous books. I’m not speaking about youngsters, but rather grownups. Even the technophobes really don’t read books.

I’ve met very educated elite people who have advised me they just really don’t have time to go through books. They skim the NY Instances book assessment so they can participate in cocktail celebration conversations. They buy executive summaries from the back of in-flight magazines. I’m shocked by the quantity of people who request me if there are audio versions of my books accessible.

Is the difficulty that little ones don’t go through books, or is the dilemma that no one reads books because our culture has become anti-academic and anti-intellectual? We’d prefer to study magazines and blogs that are subtly self-promotional in their incessant questioning the worth of the humanities, liberal arts training, and those university degrees that are much more dependent on books than algorithms and databases. The common rhetoric tells us we need more STEM schooling, far more engineers, more entrepreneurs. We’re surrounded by an implicit anti-guide agenda, and nonetheless we wonder why children really don’t study books.

I’ll admit that I’m biased. I’m an academic. I get paid to go through. But my children (6 and 8) also study a whole lot on their personal. Not only because I require it–30 minutes of reading is a prerequisite to video game time–but also due to the fact their dad versions very good studying behaviors. Dad is usually ordering new books dad is usually reading them. In my home, becoming an grownup indicates feeling comfy with books. Maturity signifies having extreme familiarity with long-form written word.

The Frequent Sense Media report agrees. “Parents can inspire reading through,” they clarify, “by retaining print books in the residence, reading through themselves, and setting aside time everyday for their young children to study.”

Sturdy correlations exist between these parental actions and the frequency with which youngsters study (scholastic, 2013). For example, among children who are frequent readers, 57% of parents set aside time each and every day for their child to study, compared to sixteen% of mother and father of children who are infrequent readers.

When it comes to books, however, most research display that the text delivery technique is irrelevant. Excellent reading habits has nothing at all to do with engineering. E-readers, tablets, laptop screens are all capable of delivering extended-kind text. Books have absolutely nothing to do with paper. In fact, electronic gadgets only improve accessibility to books. A report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center released earlier this yr explains that “a vast majority of children ages 2 to 10 have entry to a device for electronic reading through: 55% have a multipurpose tablet in the home, and 29% have a devoted e-reader (62% have entry to at least one particular of these devices). Between young children with a single of these devices in the residence, half (49%) engage in electronic reading through, either on their own or with their parent (30% of all kids).” Books matter how youngsters read them doesn’t.

My kids read through on the iPad, the e-reader, and paper. I make confident of it. I read to my kids every night. I study with my children for the duration of the day. I do it due to the fact I see it as a essential piece of their training. I can not just outsource the raising of my youngsters to specialists–and then complain that people teachers are failing. It is apparent to me that mothers and fathers also need to be concerned. They need to have to make certain their kids read books.

Of program, it is simpler to frame the story as paper vs. digital. It offers us permission not to engage with our youngsters. We can blame the video video games and apps rather than blaming ourselves. Mother and father need to have to take obligation for raising thoughtful, empathic, open-minded grownups. Books are a crucial component of the equation. But even if we eliminated each and every digital technologies from our lives, our youngsters even now will not go through books unless we tell them in no uncertain terms that books are an essential part of currently being an adult.

Educate your kids to read. And teach your children that it matters what they study. Renaissance Learning’s annual “What Youngsters Are Reading through Report” tells us a lot about what children are at present reading through and it is not all fairly. Their enormous study “does not summarize income or library information. It uses information from 318 million books go through by 9.8 million college students in the U.S. to establish what the most well-liked books are in a offered 12 months. It is the most extensive report in the U.S. that reflects K12 reading trends.”

3 exciting findings:

1. Gendered reading through starts as early as 1st grade. Elementary-school boys go through tons of “Captain Underpants,” but it doesn’t even make it to the girls’ leading 20 checklist. We’re conditioned to study statistics like this as proof that girls and boys have various preferences, tastes, and attitudes. I really do not believe it. Alternatively, we might study this as evidence that we are generating an increasingly gendered globe where roles and intellectual expectations are divided in accordance to biological reproductive organs. If this is truly what you want, by all indicates, keep at it. If not, there are loads of books that are non-gendered let your little ones know that you feel a lot more hugely of these.

two. Middle schoolers (in distinct 6th graders) are studying the most phrases per pupil. The typical words per student increases via middle college and then starts decreasing once more in high school. I see this as proof that mothers and fathers are sending the incorrect message about books to their kids. We value literacy, cheering on modest kids to understand to read as rapidly as possible. But when these children turn into adolescents they attempt to immediately emulate their adult part models. If adults do not read books then making an attempt to act like an grownup implies not reading books.

three. Books like Twilight and Hunger Games are far more common than literary classics. These days, teachers assign these more usually than Shakespeare or Don Quixote. Most of them will inform you that it is due to the fact they figure any reading is good studying and books like these boost pupil engagement. On the 1 hand, this helps make sense. On the other hand, we ought to don’t forget that popular fiction prioritizes income in excess of content material. They are revenue generators very first and literary explorations of the human situation only afterward. This does not necessarily suggest popular fiction is negative, but there’s also a cause that particular books have transcended the financial, political, and epistemological trends of particular centuries.

At the finish of the day, how our children study and what our youngsters read through says a lot far more about adult attitudes about books than it does about the kids’. Model the behaviors and attitudes you want your kids to emulate.

Jordan Shapiro is author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Manual to Maximum Euphoric Bliss, a guide about how playing video games can transform psychological attitudes. For data on Jordan’s approaching books and events click right here.

Kids Don"t Read through Books Due to the fact Mother and father Do not Read Books

2nd MERS situation detected in passenger flying through London

Professor Nick Phin, Head of Respiratory Conditions for Public Health England said: “As with the incident earlier this month, the risk is quite low. We will be following up with any United kingdom passengers who had been sitting in the vicinity of the passenger with MERS-CoV, as a precautionary measure.

“Any United kingdom based travellers who turn out to be unwell with a fever, cough or shortness of breath inside of 14 days of currently being in the Middle East, need to make certain they contact their medical professional and inform them the place they have travelled.

“Although the supply of MERS-CoV is at the moment unknown, there is increasing proof of the achievable function of camels in transmitting MERS-CoV to people.

“We advise travellers, particularly these with underlying or persistent healthcare circumstances, to keep away from get in touch with with camels in the Middle East. All travellers should practice great hand and respiratory hygiene to lessen the risk of respiratory illness.”

The incubation time period for the condition is up to two weeks.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome was very first identified in September 2013 and has been carried into numerous European nations, such as Britain.

There have been no situations in Britain since February 2013.

2nd MERS situation detected in passenger flying through London

Fly through the smog hovering in excess of London

Record amounts of air pollution will continue to plague the Uk, specialists have warned.

A excellent storm of dust from the Sahara, emissions from the Continent, low south-easterly winds and domestic pollution has brought on air good quality to plummet and the smog-like conditions are not expected to clear right up until tomorrow.

Pollution levels have previously reached degree 9 (large) this morning in the South East, Better London and Eastern England, the Department for Setting, Foods and Rural Affairs (Defra) has reported on its site.

Defra ranks air pollution from a single to 10, with one getting the lowest and ten the highest.

These with lung and heart circumstances have been told to keep away from strenuous activity outside whilst men and women suffering signs of pollution – including sore eyes, coughs and sore throats – need to reduce down the sum they do outdoors, well being authorities explained.

Fly through the smog hovering in excess of London