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 childhood


Mum gives CPR to her baby with rare condition after seizure in Tesco

BBC News

A baby with a rare neurological disorder, airlifted to hospital after collapsing in a supermarket, is not out of the woods yet, said his father. Seven-month-old Rupert Smith, from Broughton, Flintshire, stopped breathing in a Tesco store in Broughton Park, on Monday. His mother Siobhan, 35, immediately called for help and administered CPR before emergency services, including paramedics, police and an air ambulance arrived. Rupert, who has a disorder called alternating hemiplegia of childhood (AHC), was flown to Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool for treatment. Dad Dave Smith said Rupert had continued to have quite significant seizures [in hospital] so they have been giving him medication and he has undergone various different tests.



Adolescence lasts into 30s - new study shows four pivotal ages for your brain

BBC News

The brain goes through five distinct phases in life, with key turning points at ages nine, 32, 66 and 83, scientists have revealed. Around 4,000 people up to the age of 90 had scans to reveal the connections between their brain cells. Researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that the brain stays in the adolescent phase until our early thirties when we peak. They say the results could help us understand why the risk of mental health disorders and dementia varies through life. The brain is constantly changing in response to new knowledge and experience - but the research shows this is not one smooth pattern from birth to death.


Evaluating LLMs on Generating Age-Appropriate Child-Like Conversations

Hassan, Syed Zohaib, Halvorsen, Pål, Johnson, Miriam S., Lison, Pierre

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Large Language Models (LLMs), predominantly trained on adult conversational data, face significant challenges when generating authentic, child-like dialogue for specialized applications. We present a comparative study evaluating five different LLMs (GPT-4, RUTER-LLAMA-2-13b, GPTSW, NorMistral-7b, and NorBloom-7b) to generate age-appropriate Norwegian conversations for children aged 5 and 9 years. Through a blind evaluation by eleven education professionals using both real child interview data and LLM-generated text samples, we assessed authenticity and developmental appropriateness. Our results show that evaluators achieved strong inter-rater reliability (ICC=0.75) and demonstrated higher accuracy in age prediction for younger children (5-year-olds) compared to older children (9-year-olds). While GPT-4 and NorBloom-7b performed relatively well, most models generated language perceived as more linguistically advanced than the target age groups. These findings highlight critical data-related challenges in developing LLM systems for specialized applications involving children, particularly in low-resource languages where comprehensive age-appropriate lexical resources are scarce.


Beware the eye in the sky! AI traffic cop catches thousands of drivers texting behind the wheel

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Marjorie Taylor Greene's revenge mission: Ex-GOP strategist reveals why firebrand has turned on Trump administration Accountant arrested after'opening fire on MAGA supporter' in row over Trump sign... as victim recalls bullets whizzing past his head'Half the internet' goes down after Amazon cloud outage leaving millions unable to use Ring, Alexa, and banking apps - as experts say we'can't rule out a cyberattack' This is exactly how I look this good at 68 - and you can too: World-famous make-up guru BOBBI BROWN reveals her 10 beauty tricks to hide wrinkles, tighten skin... and the one thing that's almost as good as a facelift Shocking behavior that led to little girl's horror plunge from Disney cruise ship is revealed for first time Keri Russell, 49, SLAMS plastic surgery trends in Hollywood and admits it feels'strange' to look natural Doctors expose the truth about melatonin... as terrifying side-effects soar Trump drops expletive as he issues blunt response to millions of'No Kings' protesters Shock new twist in death of ex-NFL star Doug Martin, 36, as it emerges he died'after brief struggle with police' How I lost 4st fast WITHOUT weight-loss jabs. Virginia Giuffre's memoir appears in book shops a day early: Prince Andrew accuser details multiple encounters with the disgraced royal and reveals how her traumatic childhood made her'perfect victim' for Epstein Greedy waitress chases down customer and calls cops because he didn't tip her: 'Who said he's obligated to tip?' Bailey Zimmerman debuts new cosmetic procedure after revealing he's been'insecure' about it since childhood Are you anxious, tired and have difficulty concentrating? You could be suffering from this common but widely misunderstood condition - and here's how to help yourself: DR MAX PEMBERTON Biden's former mouthpiece Karine Jean-Pierre reveals how ex-president left her'enraged and heartbroken' as she turns on Democrats Sarah Ferguson could turn on Andrew to'save her own skin' if cash runs low - as he faces potential police probe into'dirt digging' after losing his titles Sharon Stone played her mother who tied her to a bed to go party now the real daughter tells the story'Casino' didn't dare show Beware the eye in the sky! READ MORE: How AI cops are already patrolling Britain's streets Whether it's sending a quick text or casting an eye over your emails, those tempted to look at their phone while driving are finally being caught out. UK trials of an AI'traffic cop' have successfully detected thousands of drivers using their phone behind the wheel.


Autism Is Not a Single Condition and Has No Single Cause, Scientists Conclude

WIRED

Research reveals that those diagnosed with autism early show distinct genetic and developmental profiles from those diagnosed later. New research from the University of Cambridge suggests that autism should not be understood as a homogeneous condition with a single cause. Scientists found that people diagnosed in early childhood often have a different genetic profile than those diagnosed later in life, broadening the understanding of how the condition develops. The study analyzed the behavior of autistic people during childhood and adolescence in the United Kingdom and Australia. It also evaluated genetic data of more than 45,000 patients with the condition from diverse cohorts in Europe and the United States.


Why we forget our childhoods

Popular Science

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. My earliest memories are more like nostalgic flickers. The candle I burned my finger on. The plastic toy set that occupied my playtime. These disparate and vague recollections are all most of us can remember of our first years of life.


Developmentally-plausible Working Memory Shapes a Critical Period for Language Acquisition

Mita, Masato, Yoshida, Ryo, Oseki, Yohei

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Large language models possess general linguistic abilities but acquire language less efficiently than humans. This study proposes a method for integrating the developmental characteristics of working memory during the critical period, a stage when human language acquisition is particularly efficient, into the training process of language models. The proposed method introduces a mechanism that initially constrains working memory during the early stages of training and gradually relaxes this constraint in an exponential manner as learning progresses. Targeted syntactic evaluation shows that the proposed method outperforms conventional methods without memory constraints or with static memory constraints. These findings not only provide new directions for designing data-efficient language models but also offer indirect evidence supporting the role of the developmental characteristics of working memory as the underlying mechanism of the critical period in language acquisition.


The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood

The Atlantic - Technology

Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you've likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States--fairly stable in the 2000s--rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent. The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and beyond. By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data. The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to "The Nation's Report Card," scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s. As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less, having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likely to live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens, and managers say they are harder to work with.


Pushing Buttons: Why Fortnite is suddenly the most popular game in the world once more

The Guardian

Over the weekend, almost 45 million people returned to Fortnite. The beginning of the battle royale shooter's's "OG" event saw the map restored to its 2018 state, back before the entire in-game island was memorably sucked into a black hole. Those people played for a combined 102m hours in a single day, an all-time record, according to developer Epic Games. Not bad for a game that has been available for more than six years, and been a topic of playground conversation for half a decade. That's 10 times the number who watched the premiere of The Last of Us, and more people than have ever bought a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.