Month: March 2017

Experts say a common, needle-free treatment for adults with migraines may be a good option for kids, too. They presented their findings on March 5 at the annual meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology in Washington, D.C.

Your sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG) is a cluster of nerves pressed against the back wall of your nasal cavity. These nerves help inform the brain of all kinds of sensations, including pain, and have been a target for migraine treatments since the early 1900s. Today, adults with migraines and other head pain may be given an SPG block, in which a small catheter of local anesthetic is pushed into their nostril to numb the cluster of nerves. Doing so can bring fast relief and disrupt the debilitating migraine cycle.

The SPG block has been proven to be safe and effective—at least in adults. To find out if it could help kids, too, researchers at Phoenix Children’s Hospital recruited 85 migraine patients between the ages of 7 and 18. Each kid was asked to rate their pain on a scale of one to 10 before the treatment and again 10 minutes afterward.

Like their grownup counterparts, juvenile patients saw fast, significant pain relief with the SPG block. Post-treatment pain levels went down an average of more than two points on the 10-point scale. A two-point decrease may not sound like much, but it could help a kid with a migraine avoid missing school or—in the most severe cases—hospitalization.

Paper co-author Robin Kaye is section chief of interventional radiology at the hospital. She says the block has a lot of advantages, including eliminating the need for additional treatments. “By reducing the need for medications that come with serious side effects or intravenous therapies that may require hospital stays, children don’t have to miss as much school and can get back to being a kid sooner,” she said in a statement.

The treatment is currently only available at Phoenix Children’s, but Kaye says that will likely change soon, as she’s received a lot of interest from other pediatric radiologists.

She told mental_floss: “Until then, parents should either talk to their child’s pediatrician about the best plan of action to treat their child’s migraines, or seek out a pediatric neurologist that specializes in headaches and ask him/her about the possibility of their child receiving this treatment.”

Editor’s note: This post has been slightly updated for clarity.

Following years of being left off of many elementary school curriculums, cursive handwriting is starting to resurface. As the Associated Press reports, public schools across the U.S. are making lessons in writing loopy, unbroken longhand a requirement.

It wasn’t so long ago that learning cursive was considered a grade school rite of passage. But since the start of the new millennium, students have traded in their contraband gel pens for smartphones and transitioned to the digital world. Teachers have also switched focus from handwriting to typing. In recent years, schools in many states have abandoned the old-fashioned writing style in favor of courses on “keyboard proficiency.”

But something has shifted: In 2016, Alabama and Louisiana passed laws implementing cursive in all public schools. They joined 12 additional states with similar laws mandating proficiency in traditional script. One of the most encouraging signs for the future of handwriting happened in fall 2016, when the New York City public school system, the largest in America, recommended their teachers introduce students to cursive writing in the third grade.

New York State Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis told the AP that cursive became an issue for her following a voter registration event she attended. After asking an 18-year-old to sign his name, she watched him spell it out in print, the only way he knew how to write by hand.

In addition to teaching kids how to sign their own names, those in the pro-cursive camp say the skill has other uses. Pre-computer era documents, such as letters written by an ancestor or a founding father, require a familiarity with cursive to read. Opponents, on the other hand, say that teaching cursive presents unnecessary hurdles to kids learning to read and write. And as a 2016 article from Nautilus pointed out, there’s virtually no research suggesting that cursive has any cognitive benefits.

Whether or not it’s useful, some students in New York City at least seem to appreciate it. Third-grader Camille Santos told the AP that cursive is “actually like doodling a little bit.” Senior Emily Ma said, “It’s definitely not necessary but I think it’s, like, cool to have it.”

[h/t U.S. News]

If you’ve ever had to spend a few minutes waiting around with nothing but a bottle of water to amuse you, you’ve probably noticed a strange symbol appearing on the bottom: a triangle with a single-digit number.

The swishing-arrow design is, of course, the widely-recognized symbol for recycling. But what do those numbers inside the logo mean?

Business Insider recently helped clarify things. The stamp is a Resin Identification Code, or RIC, and the numbers indicate exactly what type of plastic is being used for that particular container: “1,” for example, is polyethylene terephthalate, a linguistic nightmare of a plastic typically found in soda bottles and peanut butter jars. High-density polyethylene is designated “2,” a sturdier plastic that can accommodate heavier products like a gallon of milk or laundry detergent. Low-density polyethylene (“4”), in contrast, is pretty flimsy, and you’ll typically find it used for grocery bags or shrink-wrap.

The series goes up to “7,” which indicates a mixture of plastics being used. The codes help local recycling centers sort their returns and indicates to consumers which containers can be turned in. Not all centers are equipped to deal with every type of plastic, especially PVC, or “3” and “7,” which can be found in everything from sunglasses to bulletproof material.

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