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New blast-proof glass would be less vulnerable to small-scale explosions

September 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 11 (ANI): University of Missouri (MU) researchers are developing and testing a new type of blast-proof glass that will be thinner, lighter and less vulnerable to small-scale explosions.

“Currently, blast-resistant window glass is more than 1 inch thick, which is much thicker than standard window glass that is only one-fourth of an inch thick and hurricane-protected window glass that is one-half of an inch thick,” said Sanjeev Khanna, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the MU College of Engineering.

“The glass we are developing is less than one-half of an inch thick. Because the glass panel will be thinner, it will use less material and be cheaper than what is currently being used,” he added.

Conventional blast-resistant glass is made with laminated glass that has a plastic layer between two sheets of glass.

MU researchers are now replacing the plastic layer with a transparent composite material made of glass fibers that are embedded in plastic.

The glass fibers add strength because, unlike plastic, they are only about 25 microns thick, which is about half the thickness of a typical human hair, and leave little room for defects in the glass that could lead to cracking.

“The use of a transparent composite interlayer provides us the flexibility to change the strength of the layer by changing the glass fiber quantity and its orientation,” Khanna said.

In tests, researchers are observing how the glass reacts to small-scale explosions caused by a grenade or hand-delivered bomb.

They tested the glass by exploding a small bomb within close proximity of the window panel.

After the blast, the glass panel was cracked, but had no holes in the composite layer.

“The new multilayered transparent glass could have a wide range of potential uses if it can be made strong enough to resist small-scale explosions,” Khanna said.

“The super-strong glass also may protect residential windows from hurricane winds and debris or earthquakes,” he added.

Future tests will be done on larger pieces of glass that are equivalent to standard window size, and researchers could potentially test the glass on large-scale explosions. (ANI)

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Scientists use bacteria to make radioactive metals inert

September 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 9 (ANI): A team of scientists is researching the use of sulfate-reducing bacteria to convert toxic radioactive metal to inert substances, a much more economical solution.

The research is being done by Judy Wall, a biochemistry professor at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

The bacteria Wall is studying are bio-corrosives and can change the solubility of heavy metals.

They can take uranium and convert it to uraninite, a nearly insoluble substance that will sink to the bottom of a lake or stream.

Wall is looking into the bacteria’s water cleansing ability and how long the changed material would remain inert.

Wall’s research could also be beneficial to heavy metal pollution from storage tanks and industrial waste.

The bacteria are already present in more than 7,000 heavy metal contaminated sites, but they live in a specific range of oxygen and temperature, making them difficult to control.

“Our research must be done in the absence of air,” Wall said. “Obviously, none but the most committed – and stubborn – will work with them,” she added.

Even if an oxygen-tolerant strain were developed, there are still multiple factors that would make applying the bacteria challenging, and these microbes can contribute to massive iron corrosion.

“Knowledge of the way bacteria live in the environment, in microbial communities, is still in its infancy,” Wall said. “We just don’t know a lot about the communication systems among microbes,” she added.

Wall and researchers from the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California are investigating the bacterium’s basic genetics and hope to determine its growth limits and activity in natural settings, including how to make its interactions with metals sustainable.

They have already identified a few genes that are critical to converting uranium. (ANI)

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Pitt brands Cruise’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’ a ‘ridiculous movie’

August 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 22 (ANI): Brad Pitt has branded Tom Cruise’s new Nazi flick ‘Inglourious Basterds’ “ridiculous”.

“The second World War could still deliver more stories and films, but I believe that Quentin (Tarantino, director) put a cover on that pot. With Basterds, everything than can be said to this genre has been said,” People magazine quoted Pitt as having told the German magazine Stern.

“The film destroys every symbol. The work is done, end of story,” the actor said.

Expressing his opinion about another WWII Hitler assassination movie with a famous Hollywood star, Pitt said there was no comparison.

Reacting to ‘Inglourious Basterds’, which is about a real plot to kill Hitler, Pitt simply said: “It was a ridiculous movie.”

He even said that what movie he does find note-worthy – even life-changing – Saturday Night Fever.

“When I was a teenager, I saw Saturday Night Fever at our drive-in, but it wasn’t the dancing that electrified me. It was the life and culture in Brooklyn. I’m from Missouri, the southern part of the Midwest in the U.S., and I never heard families talk that way to each other. From that point on, I wanted out to see more of the country and of life,” he said. (ANI)

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Students’ healthy relationship with teachers improves their success rates

July 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 1 (ANI): Students who share a healthy relationship with their teachers and schools tend to have higher success rates, suggests a new study.

According to a research review co-authored by Christi Bergin and David Bergin, the University of Missouri, students with positive attachments to their professors and institutions display higher grades and higher standardised test scores.

Christi, associate professor in the MU College of Education, said: “In this era of accountability, enhancing student-teacher relationships is not merely an add-on, but rather is fundamental to raising achievement. Secure student-teacher relationships predict greater knowledge, higher test scores, greater academic motivation and fewer retentions or special education referrals. Children who have conflicted relationships with teachers tend to like school less, are less self-directed and cooperate less in the classroom.”

The experts found that kids with healthy relationships can be in command of their emotions, and are more socially skilled and willing to face demanding learning tasks in the classroom.

David Bergin, an associate professor of Educational Psychology, said: “To be effective, teachers must connect with and care for children with warmth, respect and trust.

“In addition, it is important for schools to make children feel secure and valued, which can liberate them to take on intellectual and social challenges and explore new ideas.”

The review, entitled “Attachment in the Classroom”, has been published in Education Psychology Review. (ANI)

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Agroforestry is the future of agriculture, say scientists

June 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 28 (ANI): Scientists have said that agroforestry is the future of agriculture, as it can create greater economic value, enhance biodiversity, and improve soil, water and air quality on many sites.

Agroforestry is an integrated approach of using the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock.

It combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems.

From large-scale installations of riparian buffers to family-scale forest farming, agroforestry is a technology that has truly “come of age.”

According to authors of the book “North American Agroforestry: An Integrated Science and Practice,” published by the American Society of Agronomy, there is a willingness to adopt agroforestry practices more so than ever before.

Agroforestry provides many opportunities to meet the needs of landowners and natural resource professionals while keeping the family farm economically viable and the environment in which we live healthy.

“I am certain that millions of hectares of land and millions of people will benefit from the knowledge brought together in this book,” said Marcus M. Alley, president of the American Society of Agronomy.

Readers of the 400-page, hardcover book will learn the fundamentals of the main agroforestry practices, with detailed case studies and examples, as well as strategies for addressing the financial viability of new practices, marketing, and navigating policy.

New topics in this edition include tree-crop interactions, product markets and marketing, and wildlife benefits. Each chapter includes a set of study questions.

The authors of the 13 chapters are recognized authorities in their fields, and their chapters represent the state-of-the-art on each topic.

Taken collectively, these writings clearly demonstrate that agroforestry has the potential to advance North America’s land stewardship by converting degraded lands, protecting sensitive lands, and diversifying farm and forest production components and systems.

“When properly designed and integrated, agroforestry can protect crops and improve crop yields, shelter livestock, reduce animal stress while improving weight gain, and enhance resource stewardship and land conservation,” said the book’s editor, H.E. Garrett, Center for Agroforestry, the School of Natural Resources, University of Missouri-Columbia. (ANI)

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Social competition gave humans bigger brains, suggests study

June 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 23 (ANI): Scientists at the University of Missouri say that social competition is the major cause of a three-fold increase in the size of the human brain in the past two million years.

The researchers collected data from 153 hominid (humans and our ancestors) skulls from the past 2 million years, and examined the locations and global climate changes at the time the fossil was dated, the number of parasites in the region and estimated population density in the areas where the skulls were found.

They found that population density had the biggest effect on skull size and thus cranial capacity.

“Our findings suggest brain size increases the most in areas with larger populations and this almost certainly increased the intensity of social competition. When humans had to compete for necessities and social status, which allowed better access to these necessities, bigger brains provided an advantage,” said David Geary, Curator’s Professor and Thomas Jefferson Professor of Psychosocial Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science.

According to the researchers, they also found some credibility to the climate-change hypothesis, which assumes that global climate change and migrations away from the equator resulted in humans becoming better at coping with climate change.

They, however, added that the importance of coping with climate was much smaller than the importance of coping with other people.

“Brains are metabolically expensive, meaning they take lots of time and energy to develop and maintain, making it so important to understand why our brains continued to evolve faster than other animals. Our research tells us that competition, whether healthy or not, sets the stage for brain evolution,” said Drew Bailey, MU graduate student and co-author of the study.

The study has been published in Human Nature. (ANI)

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Understanding plants’ immune system will help researchers build better crops

May 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 28 (ANI): Researchers at the University of Missouri, US, have identified important suppressors that negatively regulate the responses of the immune system in the plant species Arabidopsis thaliana, which would allow breeders to create better yielding crop plants.

“The immune system provides plants with strong protection from pathogens,” said Walter Gassmann, associate professor of plant sciences in the MU Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center and the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

“However, this response has the potential to be highly deleterious to the plant and needs to be tightly controlled. Certain suppressors protect the plant from responding to harmless stimuli and from overreacting to pathogens. If there is a mutation in these suppressors, the immune system can actually do more damage than good,” he added.ne way that plants fight pathogens is through effector-triggered immunity (ETI), which relies on the detection of pathogen effector proteins (proteins that are deployed by pathogens to interfere with the plant immune system).

After the detection of a pathogen, specific proteins in the plant, known as resistance proteins, elicit an effective defense response.

The plants’ resistance proteins are regulated by suppressors to achieve minimal side effects to the plant while providing optimal responses to pathogens.

However, when the ETI is overly activated, it can cause stunted growth and poor seed production.n the study, MU researchers examined plants with genetic mutations that resulted in heightened plant immunity.

By examining this mutation, researchers were able to identify specific genetic components that may negatively regulate the immune system and thus contribute to an appropriate immune response.The general control of effector-triggered signaling is poorly understood,” Gassmann said.

“Better insight into the immune system response will allow us to develop plants with more durable safeguards against pathogens,” he added. (ANI)

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Brad Pitt, brother donate $600k to Missouri university

May 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 20 (ANI): Brad Pitt and his younger brother Doug have together made a contribution of 600,000 dollars to a university in Missouri to help its sporting arena land an eco-friendly title.

The Hollywood heartthrob and his sibling donated the amount to Drury University in their native Springfield to lend a helping hand to the institution’s O’Reilly Family Event Center get a Gold Leadership in Environmental Energy and Design (LEED) certification.

According to PerezHilton.com, the arena, now the first one to boast of the title, has “low-flow water fixtures, a dedicated recycling area and a solar-reflective roof and pavement materials”, reports Contactmusic.

And in a bid to recognise the generous efforts of the brothers, school officials have decided to rename the court of the arena after their father.

It is now to be called as the William A. Pitt Court. (ANI)

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The truth about Bob Dylan’s reclusive life revealed

May 5, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 5 (ANI): Even though American singer Bob Dylan is very well known as a music legend, and for being one of the most influential songwriters, not much is known about his life behind the scenes.

Dylan, 67, who has just become the oldest musician to have a No. 1 album in the UK, when his ‘Together Through Life’ was released last week, still manages to intrigue many, and following are some of the quirks that made the man.

When on tour, Dylan never stayed at luxury hotel suites and preferred budget accommodation like Travelodges, and his entourage would strip the beds of all linen in the morning, in case his dirty sheets appeared on eBay for sale.

Dylan married Sara Lownds in secret on November 1965 in front of just two witnesses. Wanting to keep his life private, he denied being married and was reported to have bundled her into a walk-in wardrobe backstage in Vancouver after hearing two radio announcers were nearby.

He later married his back-up singer Carol Dennis in 1986, but the marriage was kept a secret until 2001, nine years after they divorced.

During a show in Belfast in 1991, he ignored the car sent by the promoter and waited at a bus stop instead, and his arrival was captured by the local evening news.

In the 90s, when he spoke to fellow songwriter Marshall Crenshaw about joining his band, Dylan advised him to eat chilli peppers every day.

When on tour, Dylan would be cycling around the towns he was playing, and he also revealed that he lived to tour.

“A lot of people can’t stand touring, but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it,” the Mirror quoted him as having said once.

In 2000, head honchos from Sony Records had been promised a meet-and-greet with Dylan. It kept getting cancelled until the last night of the UK tour at Wembley when he was found in the car park lying under a tour van with his head on a pillow.

When reminded he had the meet-and-greet, he replied simply: “Yeah. Why do you think I’m lying here?”

During the 70s and 80s, Dylan’s mastiff hounds travelled with him everywhere.

When he recently wandered into the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri, unannounced and alone, the curator spotted him and asked if it was really “him”.

“I guess I am,” Dylan said before disappearing.

“Being noticed can be a burden,” he later said.

“Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot,” he added. (ANI)

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Forensic artist re-constructs face of first European

May 4, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 4 (ANI): A forensic artist has reconstructed the face of the first anatomically-modern human to live in Europe, who inhabited the ancient forests of the Carpathian Mountains in what is now Romania about 35,000 years ago.

According to a report in The Independent, the reconstruction by forensic artist Richard Neave, of a face that could be male or female, is based on the partial skull and jawbone found in a cave where bears were known to hibernate.

The facial features indicate the close affinity of these early Europeans to their immediate African ancestors, although it was still not possible to determine the person’s sex.

Neave based his assessment on a careful measurement of the bone fragments and his long experience of how the soft tissues of the face are built around the bones of the skull.

The reconstruction was made for the forthcoming BBC 2 series “The Incredible Human Journey”, which documents human origins and evolution, from our birthplace in Africa to the long migratory routes that led us to populate the most distant parts of the globe.

It is impossible from the bones to determine the skin colour of the individual, although scientists speculate it was probably darker than modern-day Europeans, reflecting a more recent African origin.

Neave’s clay head of the “first modern European” now sits on the desk of Alice Roberts, the Bristol University anthropologist who will introduce the BBC series.

“It’s really quite bizarre. I’m a scientist and objective, but I look at that face and think ‘Gosh, I’m actually looking at the face of somebody from 40,000 years ago’, and there’s something weirdly moving about that,” said Dr Roberts.

“Richard creates skulls of much more recent humans and he’s used to looking at differences between populations. He said the skull doesn’t actually look European, or Asian, or African. It looks like a mixture of all of them. And you think, well, that’s probably what you’d expect of someone who was among the earliest populations to come to Europe.” she added.

According to Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology at Washington University in Missouri, and one of the first specialists to study the bones in detail, the jaw was the oldest, directly-dated modern human fossil.

“Taken together, the material is the first that securely documents what modern humans looked like when they spread into Europe,” he said. (ANI)

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American photographer Robert Adams wins Hasselblad Award

April 16, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Stockholm – American photographer Robert Adams, known for his black and white photographs of the American West, was Wednesday named winner of the 2009 Hasselblad Award. Adams received the award worth 500,000 kronor (60,000 dollars) along with a diploma and a gold medal on Tuesday in San Francisco, Bo Myhrman, managing director of the Hasselblad Foundation that funds the prize, said.

A five-member international panel cited Adams as “one of the most important and influential photographers of the last 40 years.”

The jury said that “as photography has altered and fragmented, he (Adams) has refined and reaffirmed its inherent language, adapting the legacies of 19th century and modernist photography to his own very singular purpose. Precise and undramatic.”

His work was “a formidable document, reflecting broader, global concerns about the environment,” the jury said.

Adams was born in 1937 in Orange, New Jerseyin the US. He has for many years lived and worked in Oregon, in the north-west of the country.

His numerous awards include the 1994 John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation Award and the Deutsche Boerse Photography Prize (2006).

He has published several books including The New West (1974), From the Missouri West (1980), and Turning Back (2005).

An exhibition on his work was to open November 6 at the Hasselblad Centre in the Swedish west coast city of Gothenburg.

The Hasselblad Centre and award were named after Victor Hasselblad (1906-1978) who invented the Hasselblad cameras that have been used in NASA space programmes and by a number of famed photographers.

Former Hasselblad Award winners include Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, Richard Avedon, Sebastiao Salgado, Hiroshi Hamaya, Susan Meiselas, Ernst Haas, Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, and Lennart Nilsson. In 2007 it was awarded to Nan Goldin of the United States and last year to Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide.

More information can be found on: www. hasselbladfoundation. org. (dpa)

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The Obamas will go the full distance to get their favourite pizzas!

April 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 11 (ANI): U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama had a St. Louis chef flown all the way to Washington, D.C., to make pizzas for them in the White House’s kitchen.

Chris Sommers, who runs a pizza place in St. Louis called Pi, flew to the nation’s capital Thursday to make 20 pizzas for the Obama family and staff.

“It’s surreal, it’s a huge honour,” People magazine quoted Sommers, 33, as saying.

Obama first tried Sommers’ San Francisco-style pies while campaigning in Missouri last fall.

Sommers wanted to deliver a few frozen pies to the President after the election, but was unable to do so due to security reasons.

Finally, Obama’s closest aide Reggie Love arranged to have the chef bring 20 pounds of dough and three gallons of sauce at Sommers’s expense to the White House kitchen and cook there on Friday.

“It will be casual lunch,” says Sommers.

Helping him will be his girlfriend Anne Schuermann, 24, and Pi chef Ryan Mangialardo, 27.

“Hopefully we’ll have a chance to say hello to the President,” Sommers said. (ANI)

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Tornado hits Arkansas town, causes minor injuries

April 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

MENA, Arkansas: A tornado has struck a small town in Arkansas, making a direct hit on the county’s courthouse and causing minor injuries.

The twister was part of a severe weather system steaming across Arkansas and Missouri on Thursday night.

Arkansas state emergency spokeswoman Renee Preslar says the town of Mena was struck just after 8 pm. Twelve minor injuries were reported there.

Troopers and local police reported heavy damage downtown. Authorities were going door-to-door at homes checking for injuries in the town of about 5,700 in western Arkansas, near the Oklahoma state line.

In southern Missouri, hail, high winds and funnel clouds were reported.

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Soon, breath and urine tests to detect cancer, asthma diabetes

March 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 11 (ANI): It may soon be possible to detect cancer or diabetes using breath or urine samples, says a University of Missouri researcher.

Xudong “Sherman” Fan, investigator in the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center is developing a sensor device that will analyze breath or urine samples for volatile markers inside the body that indicate whether a patient has breast cancer, diabetes or asthma.

The volatile markers, such as alkanes, acetones or nitric oxide, give doctors clues about what is happening inside the body and can be used as a diagnostic tool.

“Little traces of certain gas molecules in the breath or urine tell us if anything unusual is going on in the body,” said Fan,

“Measuring these volatile markers would be a non-invasive way to determine if a disease is present without having to draw blood or complete a biopsy. In addition to the biomarkers already discovered, many more potential volatile markers are still under investigation,” he added.

The sensor device known as the opto-fluidic ring resonator (OFRR) is an optical gas sensor that consists of a polymer-lined glass tube that guides the flow of a gas vapor and a ring resonator that detects the molecules that pass through the glass tube.

As the gas vapor enters the device, molecules in the vapor separate and react to the polymer lining. Light makes thousands of loops around the gas or liquid sample.

The more the light loops around the sample, the more the light energy interacts with the gas vapor. These repetitive interactions enable the detection of vapor molecules down to a very small quantity.

The use of OFRR is not restricted to medical industry it can have even broader implications in the field of defence.

The device can improve the detection of explosives on the battlefield.

“We hope to design a vapor sensor that has ultra-high sensitivity, specific and rapid response to a certain molecule, as well as the ability of on-the-spot chemical analyses, which usually requires the sensor to be small, portable, reusable and have less power consumption,” said Fan.

“If the gas sensor is portable, military personnel can determine more quickly whether an area is dangerous,” he added. (ANI)

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Running more beneficial for bones than resistance training

March 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 28 (ANI): High-impact activities like running are better than resistance training in making bones strong, according to University of Missouri researchers.

Resistance training often is recommended to increase and prevent loss of bone mineral density (BMD), despite earlier studies produced varied results.

In the new study, the researchers found that running might have a greater positive effect on BMD than resistance training.

“The results of the study confirm that both resistance training and high-impact endurance activities increase bone mineral density. However, high-impact sports, like running, appear to have a greater beneficial effect,” said Pam Hinton, an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology in the MU College of Human Environmental Sciences.

The researchers said that the true effects of weight-bearing or resistance exercise are only apparent when controlling for differences in body weight or composition.

Hinton claimed that people who primarily performed non weight-bearing activities would benefit from resistance training that increases lean body mass.

On the other hand, those who engage in activities like cycling, swimming, or rowing should add bone-strengthening activities, such as resistance training or running, to their exercise regimens.

He said: “Exercise programs to increase bone strength should be designed using what is known about how bones respond to exercise. Only the skeletal sites that experience increased stress from exercise will become stronger. For example, performing upper body resistance exercises will not increase bone mineral density of the hips.”

He added: “The response of bone to loading is determined by the magnitude of the force, and the rate and direction(s) at which it is applied. Therefore, high-impact, dynamic, multi-directional activities, including structured jump-training (plyometrics), result in greater gains in bone strength. Playing basketball, volleyball, or soccer are also good options.”

The scientists determined the effects of long-term running, cycling, and resistance training on whole-body and regional BMD, keeping in mind the effects of body weight and composition, in men ages 19 to 45.

They adjusted for differences in lean body mass, and found that runners had greater spine BMD than cyclists.

Hinton said that lean body mass was positively linked with BMD in both resistance-trained individuals and cyclists, but not in runners. Therefore, said the researcher, high-impact activity might score over the benefits of lean body mass on BMD.

The study, “Lean body mass and weight-bearing activity in the prediction of bone mineral density in physically active men,” has been published in the Journal of Strength Conditioning. (ANI)

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Recession linked to increased victimization of minorities

February 16, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 16 (ANI): A new study has revealed that the victimization of both female and male blacks and Latinos increases during or after periods of economic recession.

The study has bee conducted by researchers Karen Heimer of the University of Iowa and Janet Lauritsen of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

They said that heir research is the first of its kind to estimate trends in serious, non-lethal, violent victimization for non-Latino white, non-Latino black, and Latino males and females using data from the 1973-2005 National Crime Victimization Surveys.

“The findings offer new empirical evidence regarding the similarities and differences in risks of serious non-lethal violent victimization across race ethnic-gender groups over time,” Heimer said.

“Minorities experience substantially higher rates of violent victimization than non-Latino whites in the United States.

“Our study shows that the higher rates of poverty, urban residence and differential age distributions of non-Latino blacks and Latinos help to explain these groups’ higher victimization rates.

“Moreover, our study examines data from the early 1970s to the present and documents an association between economic downturn and increases in victimization rates among minorities over this period,” Heimer added.

Heimer said that the findings would be important for police and criminal justice policy-makers, as well as providers of services to victims of crime, who may be concerned about the potential consequences of our current recession for crime and victimization.

The study was presented Sunday, Feb. 15, at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. (ANI)

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US teens show willingness to help parents

February 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, February 6 (ANI): Contrary to the suggestion that American teenagers are selfish and lack moral values, a new study has found that children in the country also feel obligated to help their parents.

Researchers at the University of Rochester, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, have revealed that they studied how teenagers and their parents felt about young people’s obligations to help each other in everyday situations when requests for help clash with personal desires.

Describing their study in the journal Child Development, they revealed that they looked at almost 120 7th and 10th graders from lower-middle- to middle-class families and their parents.

The researchers asked them to react to stories in which either parents or teens asked for help, then judge what the protagonist should do, and whether it was okay to say no due to personal desires.

They observed that teens did not always act out of personal desire or selfishness, but felt relatively obligated to help their parents, even when the requests were small.

The team also found that parents though it’s more acceptable for teens to say no when personal desires conflicted than do the teens themselves.

Adolescents and parents appear to balance and coordinate family members’ requests for help with conflicting personal desires, and to consider both the family role of the person asking for help and how much help is needed.

The researchers revealed that more parents of 10th graders said that it was selfish to ignore requests for help, and satisfy personal desires in situations when the needs were big than did parents of 7th graders.

More middle adolescents said that it was less selfish to meet personal desires in those situations than did young adolescents.

Based on their observations, the researchers came to the conclusion that parents’ and teens’ ratings of selfishness widen with age, perhaps mirroring the increasing conflicts between teens and parents that occur in middle adolescence. (ANI)

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