Let's not forget, 3 million Indian expats happily living in Saudi Arabia!

Madikeri, Feb 23: Back-to-back floods and landslides in the last two years, has led to a fall in the number of tourists coming to the coffee-growing region of Kodagu, forcing the district administration to intervene and take confidence-building measures, telling tourists that Kodagu was safe to visit.

According to the statistics of the Karnataka State Tourism Department, Kodagu recorded a moderately good number of tourists in 2018 and 2019, the years that the district witnessed devastating floods and landslides.

The Department’s statistics reveal that 17 lakh tourists visited Kodagu in 2018 and 18 lakh in 2019. This means the flood-ravaged years did attract tourists contrary to what the stakeholders had claimed.

Washington D.C., May 8: The prime time for brain development in a child's life is the first year, where the infant spends most of the time asleep. It is the time when neural connections form and sensory memories are encoded.

However, when sleep is disrupted, as occurs more often among children with autism, brain development may be affected, too.

New research led by the University of Washington finds that sleep problems in a baby's first 12 months may not only precede an autism diagnosis but also may be associated with altered growth trajectory in a key part of the brain, the hippocampus.

The study, which was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, researchers report that in a sample of more than 400 taken of 6- to 12-month-old infants, those who were later diagnosed with autism were more likely to have had difficulty falling asleep.

It also states that this sleep difficulty was associated with altered growth trajectories in the hippocampus.

"The hippocampus is critical for learning and memory, and changes in the size of the hippocampus have been associated with poor sleep in adults and older children.

As many as 80 per cent of the children with autism spectrum disorder have sleep problems," said Annette Estes, director of the UW Autism Center and senior author of the study.

"In our clinical experience, parents have a lot of concerns about their children's sleep, and in our work on early autism intervention, we observed that sleep problems were holding children and families back," added Estes, who is also a UW professor of speech and hearing sciences.

"It could be that altered sleep is part-and-parcel of autism for some children. One clue is that behavioural interventions to improve sleep don't work for all children with autism, even when their parents are doing everything just right. This suggests that there may be a biological component to sleep problems for some children with autism," said Estes.

To consider links among sleep, brain development, and autism, researchers at the IBIS Network looked at MRI scans of 432 infants, surveyed parents about sleep patterns, and measured cognitive functioning using a standardized assessment.

At the outset of the study, infants were classified according to their risk for developing autism: Those who were at higher risk of developing autism -- about two-thirds of the study sample -- had an older sibling who had already been diagnosed.

Infant siblings of children with autism have a 20 per cent chance of developing autism spectrum disorder -- a much higher risk than children in the general population.

In the current study, 127 of the 432 infants were identified as "low risk" at the time the MRI scans were taken because they had no family history of autism.

They later evaluated all the participants at 24 months of age to determine whether they had developed autism. Of the roughly 300 children originally considered "high familial risk," 71 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at that age.

Problems with sleep were more common among the infants later diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, as were larger hippocampi. No other subcortical brain structures were affected, including the amygdala, which is responsible for certain emotions and aspects of memory, or the thalamus, a signal transmitter from the spinal cord to the cerebral cortex.

The authors note that while parents reported more sleep difficulties among infants who developed autism compared to those who did not, the differences were very subtle and only observed when looking at group averages across hundreds of infants.

Sleep patterns in the first years of life change rapidly as infants transition from sleeping around the clock to a more adult-like sleep/wake cycle. Until further research is completed, Estes said, it is not possible to interpret challenges with sleep as an early sign of increased risk for autism.

Bengaluru, Jul 8: The expert committee constituted by the Karnataka government to look into imparting online education in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdown submitted its report on Tuesday to the Minister for Primary and Secondary Education, S Suresh Kumar.

Amid growing pressure by educational institutions to allow them to run online classes for the students, the government set up the committee headed by noted educationist M K Sridhar.

The Minister told reporters that some schools wanted to run online classes, including for LKG and UKG students. It had also come to the government's notice that schools were reportedly charging hefty fees in the name of online teaching, he added.

"To address the concerns of parents, schools, and the future of the children, the committee was formed,"Kumar said. He further said that the government would study the recommendations and hold discussions with officials and various stakeholders before arriving at a decision.

The Education Department said that the committee, in its report, titled "Continuation of Learning in School Education of Karnataka: Guidelines During COVID-19 Pandemic for Technology Enabled Education and Beyond", has recommended teaching online or by using printed material. The committee suggested that children in the age group of three to six be taught online by way of story-telling, rhymes and games strictly in the presence of parents thrice a week just for one session a day For students from class one to three, it advised two periods a day and three days a week for online teaching.

Students from class three to five would have classes five days a week and two classes for 30 minutes a day. For students from class six to eight, there could be three classes a day for a duration of 30 minutes to 45 minutes each, while for students of class nine and 10 there would be four sessions a day between 30 and 45 minutes each.

The committee also suggested usage of Doordarshan and Akashwani for the government school children. Suresh Kumar said there were a few petitions filed in the Karnataka High Court regarding online teaching to the children.