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Nature vs. nurture?  When it comes to literacy, a professor is saying it's nurture , all the way. According to newswise.com, a University at Buffalo education professor has found that a child’s ability to read "depends mostly on where that child is born, rather than on his or her individual qualities." Ming Ming Chiu says that individual characteristics make up only 9% of the differences between a child who can read and one who cannot. What affects this heavily is the country in which a child is born, says Chiu, lead author of an international study that explains this connection and a professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction in UB’s Graduate School of Education. He adds that this largely determines whether he or she will have at least basic reading skills, according to newswise.com. The Web site reports that it's clearly a case where 'nurture' — the environment and surroundings of the child — is more important than 'nature — the ...

Really.  A new survey says there are two reasons patients are having difficulty understanding, or getting their  medical conditions right. One, they rely too much on the Internet (to which, I can personally attest, after being diagnosed with breast cancer), where the information is often, if not inaccurate, not always applicable to every person.  And two, the reading level of educational materials medical professionals have on hand are often confusing and too hard to understand for most anyone who's not a doctor. According to a story at Reuters Health, "The average reading level of the online materials by groups ranging from the American Society of Anesthesiologists to the American Psychiatric Association fell anywhere from ninth grade to the sophomore year of college." What's the level recommended by the American Medical Association?  Fourth to sixth grade.  While that sounds pretty low, keep in mind that we're talking about very technical terms and situa...