Rise in diabetes among children

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Parents and teachers have a leading role to play in controlling this situation.

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We have kept you informed on several occasions about the steps you need to take to maintain a healthy and balanced life. Eating a nutritious, balanced diet is one way to do this. An unhealthy diet can lead to many illnesses such as diabetes and heart diseases.

You may think that these diseases won't affect children, but you are wrong! They are very much prevalent in children and the rate of children being afflicted by them has been on the increase.

According to the latest findings of the Healthcare and Nutrition Ministry, diabetes among Sri Lankan children has increased from 15 per cent to 17 per cent during the recent past. One of the main reasons attributed to this development is the sedentary lifestyle led by most children in the country.

It has been found that the majority of Lankan schoolchildren are intensely focused on studies and do not take part in any sports or physical activities. To aggravate this condition, most of them are also addicted to fast food and soft drinks, which contain very high amounts of sugar. Most children rarely eat healthy meals, depending entirely on these unhealthy varieties of food.

The need to take steps to curb this alarming situation has been stressed many times by the Government.

Parents and teachers have a leading role to play in controlling this situation along with the assistance of doctors.

New look for post offices

Some people hold the view that post offices are slowly dying out due to the advent of new technology such as IT, email and SMS. But it is unlikely that they will completely disappear in countries such as Sri Lanka, at least in the near future, as advances in technology have been slow in penetrating all areas of the country.

Therefore, post offices are very much operational and need to be developed so that they can cater to the demand within the country.

One way to do this is to infuse modern technology into the post office network.

This has already begun to happen in Sri Lanka with the new office of the ‘E-Post’ project at the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry, Colombo being inaugurated recently.

This would be the initial step in modernising and giving a facelift to the postal network and introducing electronic technology to give it a boost.

The new scheme has come about as a result of an agreement formed in 2007 between the Ministry and iTopia Malaysia. Under this agreement, traditional postal services at 4,700 post offices island-wide would be streamlined to keep in line with developments in the 21st Century.

The pilot project, launched on January 21, would cover 26 post offices. Rural people are expected to greatly benefit from this project.

International Year of Astronomy

Did you know that 2009 has been declared as the International Year of Astronomy? The inauguration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 took place recently at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Headquarters in Paris.

Hundreds of people including members of royal families, ministers, Nobel Prize winners, scientists from around the world and astronomy students from more than 100 countries took part in the event.

The International Year of Astronomy 2009 is a global celebration of astronomy and its contribution to society and culture.

The events to do with the year would place strong emphasis on education, public participation and the involvement of young people.

The year represents astronomy as a peaceful global scientific endeavour that unites astronomers in an international, multi-cultural family of scientists, working together to find answers to some of the most fundamental questions that humankind has ever asked.



 

CSDP workshop

A workshop organised by the Children Skills Development Programme (CSDP) to identify and develop extra-curricular talents and skills of children would be conducted from 9.00am to 2.00pm on February 8 at the Sinhala Cultural Institute (Sudarshi), No. 375, Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo 7 (opposite BMICH).

Children between the ages of five and 18 who are talented in areas such as singing, playing instruments, dancing, acting and announcing, as well as their parents can take part in the workshop free of charge.

Selecting participants for a cultural tour of Bangkok and for a teledrama to be produced for the New Year would also take place at this event. All participants would receive certificates.

Those interested in taking part can call the CSDP on 0112672718 or 0112689536 or call over at No. 70/F-6, Rodney Street, Cotta Road, Borella, Colombo 8.

New fresh water fish species found

We recently informed you about the discovery of many new species of animals from the Mekong Delta. New species of animals and plants are sometimes discovered in different parts of the world and Sri Lanka is no exception.

A team of Sri Lankan scientists made a new discovery recently - a fresh water fish which has now been named Puntius kelumi.

The scientific paper on the discovery has been published by Rohan Pethiyagoda, Anjana Silva, Kalana Maduwage and Madhava Meegaskumbura. It appears in the journal The Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters.

Puntius kelumi is believed to be found in large fresh water streams with clear water flowing down mountains. These streams are said to contain rock, pebble and sand in the bottom.

Puntius belongs to the genus of ray-finned fishes in the family Cyprinidae. All known members of this genus are native to Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka.

The name Puntius has originated from the word pungti, which refers to small cyprinids in Bengali.

Puntius fish are commonly known as spotted barbs, but some species display vertical black bands instead of spots.

Ancient bird dung gives clues to pre-human New Zealand

Researchers have managed to get a peek into pre-human New Zealand after finding faeces of giant extinct birds buried in caves and rock shelters in remote areas across southern New Zealand.

The scientists traced most of the 1,500 pieces of dung to the flightless and now extinct moa bird, which weighed as much as 250 kilograms and measured up to three metres in height.

Some of the faeces recovered was up to 15 centimetres in length and dated from about 4,000 to a few hundred years ago, Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide, told Reuters.

Using modern DNA technology, researchers matched the faeces to specific moa species and also matched bits of leaves and seeds embedded in the dung to known plant species.

“We matched leaves, seeds to plants known to us, but where it involved leaves and seeds that have never been identified, they may involve plants that are already extinct,” Cooper said.

- Reuters

Birth and death anniversaries from January 25-31

January 25

W. Somerset Maugham, English writer, was born in 1874.

Sir Francis Molamure died in 1951.

January 26

Dr. Ven. Walpola Rahula Thera was born in 1907.

Poet W. B. Yeats died in 1939.

January 27

Lewis Carrol, English writer, was born in 1832.

January 28

John de Silva, pioneer Sinhala dramatist, was born in 1922.

January 29

Anton Chekhov, Russian writer, died in 1860.

Robert Frost, American poet, died in 1963.

January 30

Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe, the last king of Kandy, died in Vellore, India in 1832.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, American President was born in 1945.

William Gopallawa, Sri Lanka’s first President, died in 1981.

January 31

Norman Mailer, American writer, was born in 1923.

Lord Soulbury, died in 1971.

Special events which took place in history, from January 25-31

January 25

A new Higher Education Act came into effect and all Universities in Sri Lanka were integrated in 1972.

January 26

Salvation Army (Sri Lanka) was founded in 1883.

January 27

The first consignment of coffee was exported from Ceylon in 1827.

January 28

Seven astronauts were killed when US space shuttle ‘Challenger’ exploded in 1986.

January 30

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

January 31

The Kandyan Kingdom was invaded by the British in 1803.

USA launched ‘Explorer I’, its first space satellite, in 1958.

The Rajarata University was opened in 1996.