Science and Medicine

“One has to examine the health of the family system and address the problem at that level.”

Women who are depressed are more likely than other mothers to needlessly wake their babies from a sound sleep out of worry.

“We found that mothers with high depressive symptom levels are more likely to excessively worry about their infants at night than mothers with low symptom levels, and that such mothers were more likely to seek out their babies at night and spend more time with their infants than mothers with low symptom levels,” said Douglas M. Teti, professor of human development, psychology, and pediatrics and associate director of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State.

“This in turn is linked to increased night waking in the infants of depressed mothers, compared to the infants of non-depressed mothers,” Teti said. “Especially interesting about this was that when depressed mothers sought out their infants at night, their infants did not appear to be in need of parental help. They were either sound asleep or perhaps awake, but not distressed.”

In contrast, mothers with low levels of worry and depressive symptoms rarely wake their infants out of a sound sleep and hardly went to their infants at night unless the infants were distressed.

Read more: Depressed Moms Disrupt Babies’ Sleep

Ecologists have discovered these changes in human diet have a dramatic impact on the diet of wild animals

Many Christians give up certain foods for Lent but ecologists have discovered these changes in human diet have a dramatic impact on the diet of wild animals. In Ethiopia, members of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church stop eating meat and dairy products during a 55-day fast before Easter. As a result, spotted hyenas too change their eating habits—from scavenging waste from butchers and households to hunting—new research in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology has found.

Spotted hyenas are supremely adaptable mammals, capable both of adapting to habitats with dense human populations and to eating whatever food is available. While they are efficient hunters, they are also opportunistic scavengers, eating everything from birds, mammals, fish and reptiles to garbage, cooked porridge and dung. And they have digestive systems to match, says Gidey Yirga from Mekelle University.

Read more: Fasting for Lent Forces Hyenas to Change Diet