The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| More TV, less sleep for children Posted: 14 Apr 2014 09:08 PM PDT Researchers from MassGeneral Hospital for Children and Harvard School of Public Health found a small but consistent association between increased TV viewing and shorter sleep duration. The study involved more than 1,800 children aged 6 months to eight years old, China's Xinhua news agency reported. The presence of a television in the room where a child sleeps was also associated with less sleep particularly in minority children, the researchers said. The study participants, children and their mothers were enrolled in Project Viva, a long-term investigation of the health effects of several factors during pregnancy and after birth. From the time the children were six months old and on a yearly basis for the next seven years, mothers reported how much time each day infants were in a room where a TV was on, how much time older children watched TV daily, whether children aged four to seven slept in a room where a TV was present, and their child's average daily amount of sleep. The researchers found each additional hour of TV viewing was associated with seven fewer minutes of sleep daily, with the effects appearing to be stronger in boys than in girls. For racial and ethnic minority children, the presence of a bedroom TV reduced average sleep around a half-hour per day. The results support previous short-term studies finding that both TV viewing and sleeping in a room with a TV decrease total sleep time, which can have negative effects on both mental and physical health. The findings were published in the US journal Pediatrics. – Bernama, April 15, 2014. |
| Gaza cops trade bullets for laser-tech in training Posted: 14 Apr 2014 05:53 PM PDT In a converted gym, four uniformed officers aim at targets with Kalashnikov assault rifles converted to fire beams of laser light, whose path is recorded on a computer in a control room and monitored by an instructor. "Electronic shooting has great advantages," said Colonel Mohammed al-Nakhala, head of training in Gaza's National Security organisation. "This is a leap forward in training provided by the interior ministry which saves a great deal of ammunition, money and work," he told AFP. The ministry's training director, Mahmud Shubaki, says the simulators allow trainees to practise extensively before graduating to use of live fire. "On a real shooting range we are limited by the number of rounds we can fire," he said. Shubaki said four Kalashnikovs had been converted to fire electronically and fitted with an air-powered mechanism to simulate the recoil of shooting live rounds. The 32-year-old Shubaki, who received military training in Algeria, said the new system had cut the cost of a firearms course from US$20,000 to US$1,000 (RM65,000 to RM3,250). But trainee Omar al-Halabi, a 32-year-old lieutenant, said he prefers live fire exercises over the simulator which "feels like a video game". Hamas, shunned as a terrorist movement by Israel, the United States and the European Union, seized control of Gaza from the rival Fatah after a week of fierce fighting in 2007 but is undergoing a worsening budget crisis. The Strip's borders with Israel are tightly controlled by land sea and air, and passage across the frontier with neighbouring Egypt has been severely restricted since last July when its army deposed Hamas's ally, president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Last month a Cairo court barred the militant Islamic group from operating in Egypt and said it would seek to seize the movement's assets there. After Morsi's overthrow, the army destroyed hundreds of smuggling tunnels under the border, reducing the flow of cash to Hamas coffers. It is now struggling to pay the wages of 51,000 civil servants and budget cuts will no longer be able to spare the security services. Hamas officials and security personnel, whose fuel bills were in the past paid in full by the government are now being asked to pay half from their own pockets, security sources say. And police are moving over more and more to using motorcycles rather than cars because of constant fuel shortages. The destroyed tunnels were widely used for the import of fuel, food, construction materials and military supplies. – AFP, April 15, 2014. |
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