Sisters Wade

Dyslexia (specific reading disability) is among quite common types of learning disabilities which can occur in young children. Currently, this type of learning disability affects more than 5% elementary-age children in the U.S. Dyslexia can be diagnosed when a child has problems with reading and translating written words or sentences into some meaningful images or concepts in his brain. Sometimes children with this disorder also have problems with spelling and rhyming the words, but not always. Specialists do not consider dyslexia to be an intellectual disability, because children with absolutely normal mental development and abilities may be dyslexic.

Usually, it is not easy to recognize dyslexia in a child before he/she starts school, but there are some symptoms, which may help parents to indicate possible disorder. If a child started talking much later than his peers did, or if he/she speaks slowly, has problems with memorizing, learning new words and expanding his/her vocabulary, then this child is under some risk of becoming dyslexic. As soon as such the child enters school, dyslexic features can become more obvious. In particular, such children may face difficulties in understanding what they hear, be unable to repeat an unknown word, to fulfill a sequence of commands or memorize a sequence of some ideas. Also, they may not see the similarities and differences between written symbols and letters, for example, confuse the letters “b” and “d”. Besides, they may have a tendency to reversal reading and demonstrate lower level of reading abilities than the peers.

Specialists found out that dyslexia is caused by some malfunctions of the areas in human brain connected with language. Therefore the origins of this disorder are supposed to be neurological. Also, the studies showed that this disorder can have genetic nature, because frequently dyslexia can be observed in families. In order to diagnose dyslexia in children specialists should evaluate a number of factors, including (1) psychological factors, aiming to determine that there are no psychological causes (like depression, fear, anxiety, etc.) which can affect child’s learning abilities; (2) neurological factors, attempting to find out whether the child has some neurological disorders (problems with vision or hearing, etc.), which also can affect learning abilities; (3) educational factors, usually can be evaluated by offering some educational tests; (4) cognitive factors, (4) sensory-processing factors, etc.

There is no specific medication or a cure which can fix the brain malfunction and solve the problem of dyslectic children. Nevertheless, there are some educational treatment programs, which involve regular effective training on a variety of methodologies. The most effective techniques include systematic development of phonetic decoding skills, reading comprehension, individual tutoring in improving listening skills and oral expressive language, and so on.
Undoubtedly, a child with any sort of diagnosed learning disability including dyslexia requires a lot of extra attention, as well as some good care and special help from people around him: parents, friends, teachers, etc. Parents have to be very loving and supportive. Providing a proper learning environment (a well-organized place to study, etc.) is another crucial point. Besides, parents have to explain the child that dyslexia is not a serious defect, not a trauma or failure, so the child is absolutely normal.

It is also necessary to provide children with dyslexia or other learning disabilities with some special educational programs and extensive teachers’ support. Before specifying the most effective teaching approaches for each particular case, it is necessary to introduce general requirements and techniques for teachers, who have students with dyslexia. First of all, it is very important to learn as much as possible about the details and particularities of the disorder itself. Second, it is necessary to create individual approach to every student. Finally, the teacher has to identify specific personal needs and characteristics of every problematic child in the class.

Experts suggest that such teaching strategy as “team approach” is very effective in all situations with problematic children. A student with disabilities must feel involved and welcomed in social group of the classmates. But, in order to avoid academic failures and frustrations, teachers must favor such students by granting better locations in the classroom, giving extra explanations and more time to complete the assignments, supervising their behavior, praising for successes, expressing tolerance and patience, etc. Children with dyslexia and other learning disabilities can achieve success in their life provided proper assistance and support are granted by their parents, educators and medical specialists. The key points for such achievements and psychological improvements include correct treatment and coordination of all educational efforts between home, school and therapeutic environment.

Within its long history, humanity survived a lot of devastating epidemic attacks and mass deaths caused by the bacterial infections, like bubonic plague, tuberculosis and many others. After long years of scientific studies, using the knowledge of ancient civilizations and modern time’s knowledge of organic chemistry and medicine, humanity invented antibiotics as the most powerful weapon in the fight against all known bacterial diseases. However, by using antibiotics for the last 6 decades, we are now facing the results of the process caused by genetic changes and mutations in bacteria. This can be explained by one of the basic principles of evolution: natural selection, which suggests that the fittest and the strongest survive, and the weakest disappear.

Bacteria are one-celled organisms, which are very vulnerable to mutations. It is a known fact that the most of the mutations affect the organisms. But, certainly, there are some chances of positive outcomes of mutations as well. Mitosis of bacteria is a very fast process, which results in a rapid growth of the population. Since there are billions of bacteria, the chances of positive mutations are higher, therefore, more and more bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics treatment.

Nowadays, different types of pathogen bacteria can already survive the existing antibiotics, and by using an excessive amount of antibiotics we dramatically fastened the process of natural selection in bacteria evolution. This situation threatens the effectiveness of traditional treatment methods to bacterial diseases. That is why the leading world’s scientists are facing the necessity of searching for new antibiotics by either modifying the existing ones or looking for something absolutely different.

According to a recent research of the Harvard School of Public Health, in 2006 “..more than 40% of Streptococcus pneumoniae strains in the United States could resist both penicillin and erythromycin”. Other researches and studies based on mathematical modeling showed that in the nearest future more and more species of bacteria will be able to resist old antibiotics. Therefore, if no new antibiotics are available, we’ll become totally unprotected against hard diseases, like tuberculosis, etc.