The biggest problems parents face these days all seem to have one in common: smart devices. Compared to generations before, it is a fact that children today suffer more mental health issues. Kids also sleep much less than they should, and this behavior affects their well-being, learning, and development.

Over the recent years, reading and writing skills have been on a decline in Australia, and, despite the frequent promises and reforms, students’ learning in other areas seem to not be getting any better.

Professor Pasi Sahlberg often visits schools and meets parents who ask him what’s wrong with their kids who seem to spend up to eight hours a day on their smartphones and other digital devices. He has this to say:

First, I say that there is no point demonising smartphones. The problem is not the device but what we do with it.

But parents, schools and policymakers have not caught up on what devices, which practically all teenagers now have, are "replacing" in the lives of children and what this leads to.

Quite simply, smartphones and digital media have taken over the time that children used to have for reading and playing outdoors. And all of the benefits of that play time gained cumulatively over the years in a child’s life have been lost as a result.

Find out more about this over at The Sydney Morning Herald.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

During his visit to Thailand in two weeks, Pope Francis will wear robes made of Thai silk. According to a statement by Thai Catholic officials, twelve tailors work 10 hours a day to make over 200 vestments that the Pope and his accompanying bishops will wear.

There are two designs of chasubles, or the outermost vestment worn by clergy when presiding a mass.

The gold and white chasuble will be worn by Pope Francis during the Holy Mass at the National Stadium on Nov. 21, while the red chasuble has been chosen for the Holy Mass for youths at Assumption Cathedral on Nov. 22.

More details about this over at Khaosod English.

(Image Credit: Khaosod English)

Chengdu, China — Want your dog to look like a panda? It only takes 1,500 yuan ($212.28) for this pet cafe in southwest China to make your canine look like the black-and-white animal considered to be the country’s national treasure.

The cafe, which opened last month in the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province, has gone viral on social media after owner Lu Yunning dyed his six chow-chow puppies to look like pandas.

“There are many dog cafes, cat cafes, raccoon cafes, alpaca cafes and duck cafes,” said Lu, as the puppies, their limbs, ears and fur around the eyes dyed black, playfully chased a fish toy on a cord.

“We think they are not creative. We wanted something novel,” added the 21-year-old, who estimates his cafe draws 70 to 80 customers a day, nearly doubling since he posted social media pictures of his dyed dogs.

Until now, however, customers still do not sign in on the dye services the cafe offers; they are only interested in taking photos with Lu’s dog.

Moreover, some animal groups don’t approve of the cafe’s dye services, such as PETA, which urge people to keep away.

More details about this over at Reuters.

(Image Credit: Reuters/ Fang Nanlin)

Japan is popular for its cat, rabbit, and hedgehog cafes. Last year, however, a new kind of cafe opened in the Meguro neighborhood in Tokyo. It is a micropig cafe. The cafe, called Mipig, became a hit that it was able to open a second branch in Shibuya’s Harajuku district, which is a more central location. Staff of SoraNews24 were able to stop by at the place before its November 8 grand opening, and they were able to see what it looks like on the inside.

Located just behind the Alta complex on Takeshita Street, the new cafe is easy to find, especially with its eye-catching wood-like appearance. When we arrived outside, we walked through the hollowed out stump of a tree, and as we stepped inside and took off our shoes, there was a sense that we had now entered the world of the pig.

Check out what they found out over at the site.

(Image Credit: SoraNews24)

Scout the golden retriever has been filmed howling at the top of his lungs in the back of the car after he was given anesthetic. He was forced to get surgery because he developed a hematoma (collection of clotted blood after injury to blood vessel walls).

The 'big and independent' pet's allergies and ear infection caused him to scratch so much that he developed it.

Bleeding or bruising are two symptoms of the hematoma which causes blood to leak in to the surrounding tissue of the blood vessels.

Scout's six feet tall and 150-pound weight meant he was given a high dose of anesthetic and was filmed looking away with the fairies. 

In the heartwarming clip, he holds his snout up to the air and lets out a long howl in Wenatchee, Washington.

See the full video on Daily Mail.

(Image Credit: ViralHog/ Daily Mail)

When Lindsay Needham brought her son Brody home, her cat Zora became very excited. Lindsay told The Dodo, “I was holding him in my arms after we got home from the hospital and she jumped up on the chair and started sniffing Brody’s head.” She also was purring immediately.

Last month, Needham got even more proof of Brody and Zora’s special bond when she caught the two secretly chatting after lights out. 

Needham and her husband were watching TV after putting Brody down for the night when they heard meowing coming from upstairs. Somehow Zora had broken into Brody’s room — but that wasn’t all.

“We open the baby monitor app on our phone and, sure enough, we see Zora sitting on the chair meowing next to the crib and Brody is standing up meowing right back at her, looking like they were having an actual conversation,” Needham said. “My husband and I couldn’t help but just watch and laugh hysterically.”

This is so cute!

(Video Credit: ViralHog/ YouTube)

This is Pipkin, an adorable young bunny. In order to wake him up, an unseen man puts carrots around him, and finally pokes him a little with a carrot. The bunny, now slightly awake, suddenly smells the carrots around him, and quickly opens his eyes. Pipkin hurriedly tries to eat the carrot that the man even helped him to stand up.

How adorable.

-via Laughing Squid

(Video Credit: OneMorePlease/ YouTube)

Post Falls, Idaho — Every morning, 95-year-old Dan Rankin, a World War II veteran, arrives at the Dueling Irons restaurant at the same time. He sits at the same table and orders the same food from his favorite server, Maria. But he hasn’t paid for his breakfast for nearly three years. “Well, all of a sudden, somebody started buying breakfast [for me],” he said. It was someone who noticed his hat. Now, people want to line up for a chance to treat him.

“I just took a look and he has over $200 on there. Sometimes we’ll have little tears and we’ll cry. And he’s just really humble sweet,” says Maria.

Learn more about his life over at Today.

(Image Credit: Today)

In 2014, Police Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown on a street in Ferguson, Missouri. In that same year, police brutality increased rapidly, moving toward the center of the national discourse on race. Activists argued that the police needed more accountability, and the state provided body cameras as the preferred corrective.

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice offered more than $23 million in grants for new cameras in 2015, the year after Brown’s death, and another $20 million in 2016. Then-candidate Hillary Clinton called for mandatory body cameras nationwide. In 2018, a New York judge mandated that all NYPD officers wear them, as part of efforts to end “stop and frisk” tactics. The future of policing, it seemed, had arrived.

But something happened along the way, and some became more worried when body cameras were introduced.

Find out more about this over at The Atlantic.

What are your thoughts about this one?

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At a ripe old age of 90, actor, rancher, and dad Bob Norris, the original Marlboro man, passed away this week at his Colorado Springs ranch. For 12 years, he played the role of a smoking cowboy on billboards, TV, and pages of magazines. But he never actually smoked cigarettes.

Find out more about his life over at Fox News.

(Image Credit: Marlboro/ Fox News)

Assigning household chores is deemed to be an essential component when it comes to child-rearing. However, it turns out that they may not help in improving children’s self-control, a new study published in the Journal of Research found out. The study was made by Rodica Damian, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Houston, along with Olivia Atherton, Katherine Lawson and Richard Robins from the University of California, Davis.

Damian examined data from the UC Davis California Families Project, a 10-year longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth assessed at ages 10, 12, 14, 16 and 19, in which self-control was reported by the children and parents separately. Damian's team examined whether household chores and self-control co-developed from ages 10 to 16.

"We found no evidence of co-developmental associations between chores and effortful or self-control, with four out of four of our hypotheses receiving no empirical support," said Damian, who admits it was not the finding they expected. "These null effects were surprising given the strong lay conceptions and theoretical basis for our predictions." Still, she said, she would not use the results to discourage childhood chores.

While chores may not matter when it comes to personality development, Daiman states that it still can predict future chore behavior. "It is a stable habit and having a tidy home is not something to ignore."

More details about this over at EurekAlert.

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Some 921 to 1,050 people sleep in public spaces like parks and unenclosed lobbies on any given night, a landmark study on homelessness in Singapore discovered. Most of these people are older men who sleep rough since they cannot afford housing, want to be near where they work, or have issues with family members or housemates.

The study was led by assistant professor Ng Kok Hoe at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, with the help of 480 volunteers, social workers mobilised by the government, and NGOs conducting fieldwork over three months.

Of the roughly 1,000 people found sleeping rough, 191 were awake and 88 agreed to be interviewed. Six in 10 of those 88 were employed, most commonly in cleaning, odd jobs, security and retail. Those who were paid monthly earned between S$560 (US$412) and S$3,000, with the monthly median income being S$1,400 – about 60 per cent less than the $3,467 of employed Singapore residents.

Find out more about this shocking, but saddening study over at SCMP.

(Image Credit: TheOnlineCitizen.com/ SCMP)

If you woke up on Thursday welcomed by a weird text message, you’re not alone. Overnight, a mysterious wave of missive swept America’s phones, and largely unintelligible messages were sent to families, friends, and past relationships. The messages seem to have been sent on or around Valentine's Day.

Friends who hadn't talked to each other in months were jolted into chatting. Others briefly panicked.

The best explanation seems to be that old texts sent in the spring suddenly went through. Two people said they figured out the original messages were never received. It's not clear why this months-long delay happened. Phone companies blamed others and offered no further explanations.

Now that’s slower than snail mail.

More details about this odd news over at CBS News.

(Image Credit: terimakashi0/ Pixabay)

A new study finds that invasive grass species make wildfires more frequent in much of the United States. Bethany Bradley, a professor of environmental conservation at the University of Massachusetts, state that there are 12 non-native species that act as “little arsonist grasses.”

Wherever the common Mediterranean grass invades, including California’s southern desert, fires flare up three times more often. And cheatgrass, which covers about one-third of the Intermountain West region of the U.S., is a big-time fire promoter, Bradley said.

“I would not be surprised at all if invasive grasses are playing a role in the current fires,” Bradley said, “but I don’t think we can attribute to them directly.”

Head over at Los Angeles Times to know more about the study.

(Image Credit: Bethany Bradley/University of Massachusetts)

This is the M101, a beautiful spiral galaxy that is found some 170,000 light years across. It is almost twice as big as our own Milky Way Galaxy. It is one of the last entries in Charles Messier’s famous catalog. It is also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy.

M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsonstown. In contrast, this multiwavelength view of the large island universe is a composite of images recorded by space-based telescopes in the 21st century. Color coded from X-rays to infrared wavelengths (high to low energies), the image data was taken from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple), the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (blue), Hubble Space Telescope(yellow), and the Spitzer Space Telescope(red).

Breathtaking.

(Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, JPL - Caltech, STScI)