'We hate it when parents undermine the education and growth of their children. That's it, plain and simple.'

When our children are born, we study their every eyelash and marvel at the perfection of their toes, and in no time become experts in all that they do.

Like any ambitious toddler, they need to understand that you have to learn to walk before you can run.

'Kids can be given the opportunities [to become passionate about a subject or activity], but they can't be forced,'

All that money we have spent to get kids into P.E. might be better spent helping schools to serve fresh fruits and vegetables at lunch instead of tater tots.

But could it be that the underlying assumption behind the program is wrong?

The relationship between smiling and divorce also held up among townspeople, even though many sent photographs of themselves as children.

An ancient smile may predict a modern divorce

The best outcome for most North Koreans must presumably be for the Kim regime to crumble, despite the risks that might follow, including huge refugee flows, civil war and quantities of weapons of mass destruction falling into the wrong hands.

Either path would mean a new regional security order even less of China's making than the current one.

Even if North Korea refuses to rejoin six-party talks, they can still have a useful function

A drill today will help to spare millions of lives in the future.

The more people who have the virus, the more virus particles there are for that one, fatal mutation to appear in.

It's deadly seriousso even if the current threat fades, the world needs to be better armed

The second half of 'The Morbid Age' concentrates on the British reaction to political turmoil in Europe and the arrival on the scene of Hitler.

The period between the two world wars was a time of anxiety and foreboding. Much like our own ageonly more so

Nothing comes for nothing, it seems, and genius has its price.

The cortical columns of those on the autistic spectrum are narrower than those of neurotypicals, and their cells are organised differently.

As she observes, obsessional interests and repetitive behaviours would allow someone to practice, albeit inadvertently, whichever skill they were obsessed by.

There is strong evidence for a link between genius and autism. In the first of three articles about the brain this week, we ask how that link works, and whether 'neurotypicals' can benefit from the knowledge

Demand for garden plots is growing faster than supply

Children with stressed lives, then, find it harder to learn. Put pejoratively, they are stupider.

How poverty passes from generation to generation is now becoming clearer. The answer lies in the effect of stress on two particular parts of the brain

Many of the children Ms Evans sees do not want to talk at all, regarding grown-ups as untrustworthy or irrelevant.

At the time of his death, Cheever's lasting fame seemed the safest of safe bets. But 27 years later, his star has dimmed.

His mother opened a gift shop that Cheever would describe as 'an abysmal humiliation'

The archaeological evidence for ancient cookery is equivocal.…Dr. Wrangham is relying on a compelling chain of logic. And in doing so he may have cast light not only on what made humanity, but on one of the threats it faces today.

Without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body's energy) could not keep running. Dr Wrangham thus believes that cooking and humanity are coeval.

Lincoln exhorts us to take risks. Bet on America. But never lose sight of the goal: economic freedom for individuals the right to rise and prosper.

Lincoln maintained that the way to save the system was to pump more money into it. He was convinced that once confidence was restored and commerce began humming again, the public works roads, canal routes, widened rivers and rail lines.