As a scientist, I like to collect data.  So, here’s the data on objects that have been found in odd places since my daughter’s birth.

I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking, “Um, okay?”

The article goes on to describe that the equation can be used to figure out properties of other things made from fibers, like fur.  It could also help animators and artists be able to make hair more realistic.  Apparently,  this was something da Vinci was quite concerned about.

Okay, so this may not be the best example of “Huh?” science actually being useful in the “real world,” unless you’re an artist or a graphic designer.  Still, it’s always great to see science being fun.

Okay, so Baby Roz doesn’t have a human sibling.  She has the world’s awesomest, handsomest, silliest, greyhound sibling, Kiba.  And there is definitely some rivalry between the two.

Every morning, when I wake up, I nurse Roz.  At the same time, Kiba decides that he must also be in my lap.  This is quite the site to see, considering Kiba is about 80 lbs!  Roz will sometimes kick Kiba in the head to get him off.  Fortunately, Kiba has an ultra-thick skull, and doesn’t seem to notice.

One of Roz’s favorite activities is pulling all the toys out of the box.  Unfortunately, it’s Kiba’s toy box.  We’ve unearthed a few toys he hasn’t played with in a while.  He doesn’t care about Roz’s adventures, though.  He prefers to spend his time attacking Roz’s stuffed animals.

Then there are the times when the three of us go for a walk.  I tell Kiba to let the baby through the door first.  So, he goes ahead of us.  I know, I know, greyhounds don’t understand English.  But sometimes I wonder…

And lastly, there was tonight.  Roz wanted to help in the kitchen while I was making dinner.  So, to distract her, I gave her a pot and a spoon to play with.  Kiba decided they were toys for him.  He started licking the pot.  Then, he started licking the spoon.  The same spoon that she was chewing on.  So on one end of the spoon, I have Roz.  On the other end, I have Kiba.

At least they can share nicely.

*disclaimer: while ScienceMomma holds a PhD, EconomicsDadda holds a Bachelor’s degree in his field and claims much less expertise

If the title seems familiar, it is a play on the economics column and book More Sex Is Safer Sex (this book is similar to other popular economics books like Freakanomics or Hidden Order).  Where the reasoning in that book is a bit more unorthodox by arguing that counterintuitive ideas may actually be rational, I assure you my little article here is quite straightforward.

The yearly study done by the US Dept. of Agriculture estimates the average child born this year will cost parents $221,800 to raise until age 17 (in current US Dollars, which means future inflation is accounted for).  The article by USA Today almost suggests people should have larger families because every subsequent child costs less to raise.  The article is rather ambiguous with some of their numbers, and the usda.gov article it references adds no additional information, so some of the following figures are just guesses to what they mean.  All ratios should be correct, but absolute figures may be off.  I will identify any values that may be incorrect with an asterisk (*).  In the reports, most comparisons are made to families with two children, so I am assuming an “average child” is one in a two-child household.

The average child in this report will cost $221,800.  This value can change depending on the income of the parents, going up to $377,040 and down to $163,440 based on the income brackets.  With a little arithmetic, I came up with how much each child costs:

1^st child – $245,889* (what I will call 100% cost)

2^nd child – $166,975* (60% cost)

If you add together the 1^st and 2^nd child costs, the total cost is $443,600 and gives the $221,800 average.

3^rd child – $56,772* (21% cost**) ($500,372 total cost**)

When you go from 2 children to 3 children, each child costs 22% less, which, as you can see, is actually a much larger drop in cost than it sounds like.

**This number may be corrupted because I don’t know how normalized their data is for income and family size.  As I mentioned, higher income families spend more on raising children and they also tend to have smaller families.  This may be a reason why this number begins to drop so significantly.

Most of the reason costs are lower for each additional child is that the biggest cost is housing.  Children can share rooms.  Cribs, toys, clothes and other things can be handed down from sibling to sibling.  This makes figuring out the cost of twins or triplets off by a bit, since you will need multiple items of most things, but the spending on housing is the biggest saving.  So don’t think all these savings are not yours by having kids all at once.

I would imagine beyond the 3^rd child, the additional costs will vary slightly, but the figure will not be much lower than the 3^rd child.  While dollar value costs decrease with each child, a limiting factor seems to be time.  Additional children do enjoy similar economies of scale with time because they can entertain each other and taking one kid to an amusement park, pool, other fun place…takes nearly as much time as multiple children.  However, parents feel a time constraint on two ends – one is they don’t get to spend as much time with each child individually in a larger family and the other is these extra costs do mean a larger income might be needed to support the family and one way to boost income is to work more.

For more exact figures, the USDA has a calculator to estimate child raising costs here.

Does this encourage you to consider planning a larger family?

Even though the study doesn’t go into much detail, it might be because of hormones released when an adult hears a baby cry.  It’s part of evolution- human adults should want to respond efficiently to crying human babies.

Unfortunately, I think the most important fact of this study has been overlooked:

Whack-A-Mole has finally received the recognition it deserves as a valuable scientific tool.

Also, bonus points to anyone nerdy enough to laugh at the picture.

H5N1 bird flu is fatal in about 60% of human cases, though the number of people infected is small, as infection generally involves close contact with lots of poultry.  There are a few isolated cases of people getting bird flu without being near poultry, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

There’s been some controversy about how many details the researchers should provide in their publications.  The basic fear is that terrorists are going to get this information, and engineer their own virus and use it as a biological weapon.  It’s reminiscent of the study done a few years ago sequencing the 1918 flu genome.  As I recall, that sequence was published, and terrorists have yet to infect us all.

Besides, based on one of the recent bird flu studies, Mother Nature is equipped just fine to spread the virus herself.  Synopsis: a few key mutations allowed H5N1 bird flu to spread easily into human cells in culture, but not from ferret-to-ferret (ferrets spread and contract flu in a manner similar to humans, so they’re the animal of choice for flu studies).  However, if the researchers passaged the virus through ferrets by infecting the animal nasally, removing the secretions and infecting the next animal nasally, and so on, the virus was able to spread from mammal-to-mammal.  This is an example of the laboratory strain adapting to a mammalian host, which is something that could happen in the real world, too.  That’s why it’s important to study these mutations- to make sure we’re prepared for the worst.

Fortunately (or not, depending on how you look at it), we had a practice breakout with the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus.  While many people are skeptical that things were overhyped, it did give public health agencies the opportunity to see how efficacious their routines are with a virus that was milder than, say, H5N1 or the 1918 virus.  While it is certainly sad to see anyone becoming sick or dying, it showed exactly how prepared we are to deal with a pandemic.  In addition, it brought a new light to hygiene.  Dispensers with alcohol-based hand sanitizer are available everywhere now- in university hallways, at stores, next to gas pumps.  People seem to be pushing the cover-your-mouth-when-you-sneeze rule with their kids.

On another bright note, even though our ability to easily travel the globe will certainly facilitate the movement of the a pandemic flu virus, our ability to communicate about it will be even faster.  After all, it takes 20 hours to fly from China to America, but it only takes a few seconds to read an e-mail.  If an outbreak is apparent, we’ll be able to quickly spread the word and take protective measures.  Even if an outbreak of flu is upon us within the next few years, we shouldn’t expect something as dramatic as the 1918 pandemic.  After all, we have antivirals to fight the flu, antibiotics to fight secondary infection, and easy ways to pass information amongst ourselves.

That’s okay, because this is more of an opinion piece.  Since I had Gestational Diabetes during my pregnancy, I immediately click on any link to a news article about diabetes in general.  This particular news article was reviewing a study that concluded exercise during pregnancy does NOT prevent Gestational Diabetes.

This conclusion upset me for a number of reasons.  Without having read the actual study, like most Americans, my information comes from the popular press, which tends to sensationalize everything.  This, in and of itself, is a problem.  The title might encourage pregnant women, particularly those at risk for or with Gestational Diabetes that they don’t need to exercise.  That’s definitely not true- exercise is a great way to help control blood sugar!

There’s also the fact that the study design may not yield entirely accurate results.  In the study, a large group of pregnant women were assigned to either maintain their normal routine, or exercise three times per week.  Besides the fact that this kind of study is impossible to do double-blind (where neither researchers nor participants know who is which group), it relies a lot of human honesty.  I’m not saying the participants were trying to deceive the researchers, but it’s human nature to try to impress someone in a white lab coat.  So maybe you exaggerate a little- you power-walked 3 miles last night, when you actually waddled 1.  Add to this the fact that it’s impossible to control for the various activity levels of the study participants, and you can see how the data might not be 100% accurate.

While I think it’s important to understand why any type of diabetes occurs, the conclusion presented makes me worry.  I just hope pregnant women and their care providers don’t interpret these results as permission to avoid exercise.  Importantly, I hope I’ve convinced a few readers to think critically when reading any health article in the popular press (except mine, because I’m awesome).

O157:H7 is the strain of E. coli most often associated with food poisoning and outbreaks.  It can form biolfilms, layers of bacteria encased in a protective barrier, and causes hemorrhages on the intestine.  The big problem with biofilm formation is that they are notoriously hard to get rid of.  The bacteria layer on top of each other, almost as though they’re working together.  They become sticky.  Antibiotic  and immune compounds can’t easily get into the base layers.  It’s great for the bacteria; not so much for the patient.

A recent study released in the journal Infection and Immunity showed that an antioxidant call phloretin, found in fruit such as apples and strawberries, can be effective against E. coli O157:H7 in biofilms.  Importantly, phloretin did not seem to hurt E. coli K-12, the normal strain of E. coli found in human intestines.

This is great news for all of us who love eating raw cookie dough.

But babies aren’t exactly known for their sleeping skills.  Even newborns, who sleep on average 14+ hours a day only sleep in 20-minute increments, interspersed with crying/eating/pooping.  It’s no wonder parents can amass large collections of books on the subject, in hopes of finding much needed rest.  There are a variety of methods, including cry-it-out and no-cry methods, and it’s important for families to find the right method for them.

Unless, of course, you’re Psychology Today.  In a very nasty, completely-biased article, the author talks about the severe psychological and physical damage that can occur from this method.  However, after reading the piece, one can’t help but imagine parents purposely making their kids cry (“You want the toy, Junior?  Too bad!  Mine!  Bwa ha ha ha ha ha) and then letting them carry on for an indefinite time.  In reality, sleep methods termed cry-it-out aren’t quite that harsh, as pointed out in this much more balanced review of the article.  In addition, the strategy is recommended for older babies, not newborns.  Plus, every family is different, and different solutions work better than others.

I will admit- I have read Marc Weissbluth’s book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, and followed a lot of advice in it.  Dr. Weissbluth’s book is very compassionately written, even though he (gasp!) says it’s okay to let your child cry when needed.

We had tried a lot of sleep methods.  We started with Ferber, but got little in the way of results.  It’s hard to have the resolve to go check on your baby every 15 minutes till she falls asleep starting at 2:00 am.  We then bought a no-cry book, and tried out a few of the ideas in there, to help our daughter to fall asleep in the crib.  After two months and anti-progress (yea, it got worse), I couldn’t stand it.  I was so exhausted, I didn’t feel capable of taking care of her.  Something needed to change.

The first night was Hell.  And then, it wasn’t bad.  She cried less than an hour when we put her down, which is less than I expected.  She woke up twice (a big improvement from the 4+ before).  And she only woke up twice to nurse, then went straight back to sleep.

Yea, that’s right.  You can nurse your baby at night when doing the “cry-it-out” stuff.  Seriously, if you think that it might be the solution to your sleep problems, read one of the books.  You don’t just put your kid in the crib at 7:00pm and pick her up at 7:00am.  There’s a lot more to it than you’ll find in an internet article.  Despite what Psychology Today thinks, “cry-it-out” can actually be a very compassionate, healthy thing to do for your baby, when done right.   No toy stealing necessary.

You can always play with the baby’s toys while she’s sleeping.

Raw cookie dough is one of my favorite guilty pleasures.  What’s not to love?  It’s cookie, but it’s creamy.  The butter and sugar and chocolate chips taste so much better before they’re cooked!  You can pick out the individual flavors, and in my mind, there is nothing more pure and wonderful than margarine creamed with brown sugar.  Yummy!

Unfortunately, as parents and as people who had parents raising us, we’ve told and been told not to eat raw cookie dough.  It’ll get you sick.  I’ve never actually met anyone who listens to that, but it’s still something that people say.  Well, an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning in 2009 was traced to premade raw cookie dough, proving that maybe we should listen to our parents, and ourselves.

Of course pre-packaged raw cookie dough is meant to be cooked.  That’s what the commercials on TV tell us!  But raw cookie dough, as mentioned before, has been scientifically proven to be delicious!  (Data: I am a scientist.  Cookie dough is delicious.  Therefore, cookie dough has been scientifically proven to be delicious).  And the message is clear: cookie dough is a great pick me up, after a bad day at work, a breakup, a day when baby decides not to nap.  TV has told us this, as well.  Some of the patients even admitted to buying the cookie dough specifically to eat it raw.

So, does this outbreak mean that we should stop eating raw cookie dough?  Well, it might not be the best idea, particularly if you’re immuno-compromised in some way (chronic illness, pregnancy, super young, or super old).  However, there’s not enough information available at this point.  Were the people who got sick enough to go the hospital immuno-compromised in any way?  What ages were they?  And most importantly, how much cookie dough did they eat?  When I eat raw cookie dough, I’m normally just licking the beaters, spoons, bowls, etc.  However, a lot of people may be tempted to just take a spoon to the cookie dough, and this might be the case for these patients.

Moral of the story:

Yes, you can get sick from eating raw cookie dough.  You can get sick from eating a lot of things, though.  Just be smart to keep yourself and your family as safe as you can.  Wash your produce before eating, keep your food out of your baby’s diapers, and most importantly: don’t overdo the raw cookie dough.  Better just stick to ice cream.