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POPSGirls entering puberty by the age of six - but are drugs the answer?
"Early puberty has even been linked to watching too much television. A few years ago, Italian scientists found that children who watched three hours a day produced less of the sleep hormone melatonin - low levels of the hormone play an important role in the timing of puberty. But perhaps more worrying is the theory that it's exposure to environmental chemicals which is causing the drop in the age of puberty. These chemicals mimic the effect of hormones, disrupting the normal timing of sexual maturing. Whatever the cause, growing numbers of children are being deprived of childhood and are turning, physically, into mini-adults at an increasingly young age. But without the emotional maturity to deal with these changes, they are vulnerable to exploitation. In Britain, it is now estimated that up to at least one in six children under ten is affected. Indeed, there is a belief that schoolgirls as young as six are entering puberty".
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POPSRare Photos Of Isolated Korowai "Tree People" (thanks, openthink) The Korowai have been reported to practice cannibalism as recently as the early 1990s. Anthropologists suspect that cannibalism is no longer practiced by the Korowai. Recent reports suggest that the Korowai people have been coaxed into encouraging tourism by perpetuating the myth that it is still an active practice. A lot of new photos of the tribe: http://www.georgesteinmetz.com/index.php?section=11&page=view_photos
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POPSReality Lord of the Flies Drop a bunch of kids in an abandoned town and see if they get crazy enough to make some must-see TV. Yes, it's exploitative and a frightening snapshot of our voyeuristic society, but how can you not watch this?
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POPSJihadist Video Shows 12 Year Old Boy Beheading Man 12! 12! 12! What the F@#$. The Boy was 12 and doing this crap. Now you tell me, Where will the outrage be say, from the CAIR organization, denouncing such a horrible act. The BOY was 12 for God sake. He did not need to be part of a beheading. If Islam and Muslims do not speak out then there is no hope for Islam.
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POPSCan we learn to love uncertainty? "... Yet they are all defined in terms of the unsettling lack of something positive or better. It is perhaps for that reason that the stories of those who discovered these uncertainties have been largely overlooked. This is why I made Dangerous Knowledge for BBC television: to champion the incomplete, the uncomputable and the uncertain."
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POPSChildhood "ending sooner", survey finds A survey finds that today's children stop believing in imaginary creatures much earlier than their parents did, and that many children are pressured by parents to perform well in school and extracurricular activities (this is new?).
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POPSThe Role of Light on Human Health Rea envisions "real-time light prescriptions" to help people receive or avoid light at the appropriate times. Simple measures to control when and how much circadian light we receive could help nightshift workers stay alert on the job and sleep more effectively during the day, help cure jet lag, decrease depression, and generally help everyone get a proper night's sleep. The ability to modify circadian rhythm could potentially mitigate the negative health effects that some researchers believe are brought on by disruptions to the light-dark cycle. Recent studies have found a link between health and changes in the natural circadian rhythm. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published a series of articles, for example, that showed night shift workers had a higher incidence of breast cancer; and, last year, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer cited night work as a potential breast cancer risk factor.