Investigations
Open-door
sexuality
William Parish says
that in 50 years, China's sex life will mimic that of Western Europe.
When China opened its doors to international
markets in the early 1980s, it inadvertently let in another modern phenomenon-the
West's sexual culture. Signs of Western influence are apparent, for example, in
the changing lifestyles of contemporary Chinese women, who read local versions
of Cosmopolitan, and particularly female novelists, who discuss formerly unmentionable
topics such as picking up men in discos, living with boyfriends, and masturbating.
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Spoon-feeding
anorexics
For the parents of a teenager with anorexia
nervosa-an eating disorder that strikes 1 to 2 percent of American women and has
one of the highest death rates of any mental-health condition-being told to have
a family picnic can seem like strange counsel. No
carefree Sunday outing, this family meal takes place on a small table in the office
of Daniel le Grange, assistant professor of psychiatry at Chicago's Pritzker School
of Medicine. All family members, including siblings, must attend. The parents
are told to bring ordinary food to help their daughter-in almost all cases the
anorexic is female-regain weight.
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Babies
can't count
Although many people would like
to think that their babies are bright enough to count before their first birthdays-and
some child psychologists have suggested they can-that possibility is in dispute
as the results of a ten-year evaluation by University of Chicago scholars are
released. "Earlier claims of infants' quantitative skill are greatly exaggerated,"
says Janellen Huttenlocher, the William S. Gray professor of psychology and an
author of Quantitative Development in Infancy and Early Childhood (Oxford University
Press, 2002). "Infants start with only a crude awareness of amount, which
slowly evolves into an ability to distinguish between numbers of discrete objects."
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Low-carb
diet, high-risk kidneys
Popular low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets
may result in rapid weight loss, but they also appear to pose serious health problems,
including increased risk of kidney stones and bone loss," report researchers
from the University of Chicago and the University of Texas Southwestern in the
August American Journal of Kidney Diseases.
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