http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/giot-ccf041714.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 18-Apr-2014
Contact: Brett Israel
Georgia Institute of Technology
Counterfeit contraceptives found in South America
More than a quarter of emergency contraceptives were falsified or substandard
A survey of emergency contraceptive pills in Peru found that 28 percent of the batches studied were either of substandard quality or falsified. Many pills released the active ingredient too slowly. Others had the wrong active ingredient. One batch had no active ingredient at all.
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Drugs are considered fake or falsified when someone makes a pirate copy of copies a patented drug, with criminal intent. Recent research has found that falsified drugs are a major problem in developing countries. Falsified emergency contraceptives have been reported in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Angola, South America and even the United States. Fake drug manufacturers will copy everything from the pill to the package.
Just as concerning as counterfeit medications are other poor quality medications, such as degraded or substandard drugs. Degraded drugs were once good quality, but lost their efficacy over time, for example after prolonged exposure to the sun in an open air market. Substandard drugs are made by an approved factory, but they don't contain the right active ingredient, contain less active ingredient than they should, or might not dissolve properly. These pills either result from factory error or negligence.
Falsified drugs are the most worrisome, because they may not contain the expected active ingredient, or they may contain the wrong ingredients, including toxic compounds.
In the survey of emergency contraceptives from Peru, the researchers found that seven of the 25 batches analyzed had inadequate release of the active ingredient (levonorgestrel). One batch had no detectable level of the active ingredient.
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"Many fakes are very sophisticated. They have the right active ingredient and they may even have the right amount, but the excipients or coatings may not be the right ones," Fernandez said.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Study Shows Financial Incentives Help Economically-Disadvantaged Pregnant Smokers Quit
http://www.uvm.edu/medicine/?Page=news&storyID=18327&category=comresne
04-19-2014
By Jennifer Nachbur
The University of Vermont
Smoking during pregnancy – particularly among economically-disadvantaged women – leads to a host of poor pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriage, preterm birth, SIDS, and additional adverse effects later in life. Without a formal treatment intervention, women in this population continue to smoke, and their babies suffer. Vermont Center on Behavior and Health Director Stephen Higgins, Ph.D., and colleagues, have developed an effective behavioral economic approach that offers women financial incentives for quitting.
The groups’ most recent findings, published online this month in Preventive Medicine, demonstrated that providing incentives more than doubled smoking abstinence rates during pregnancy and increased fetal growth. They also examined whether altering the way the incentives were offered might get still more women to quit, without increasing costs, but that strategy was not successful.
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“More than 40 percent of women with a high school GED report regular smoking versus eight percent of college graduates and six percent of those with graduate degrees,” Higgins says. While about 20 percent of smokers quit without formal treatment soon after learning of a pregnancy, the vast majority of the largest segment of this group smoke through the pregnancy if there is no formal intervention.
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04-19-2014
By Jennifer Nachbur
The University of Vermont
Smoking during pregnancy – particularly among economically-disadvantaged women – leads to a host of poor pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriage, preterm birth, SIDS, and additional adverse effects later in life. Without a formal treatment intervention, women in this population continue to smoke, and their babies suffer. Vermont Center on Behavior and Health Director Stephen Higgins, Ph.D., and colleagues, have developed an effective behavioral economic approach that offers women financial incentives for quitting.
The groups’ most recent findings, published online this month in Preventive Medicine, demonstrated that providing incentives more than doubled smoking abstinence rates during pregnancy and increased fetal growth. They also examined whether altering the way the incentives were offered might get still more women to quit, without increasing costs, but that strategy was not successful.
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“More than 40 percent of women with a high school GED report regular smoking versus eight percent of college graduates and six percent of those with graduate degrees,” Higgins says. While about 20 percent of smokers quit without formal treatment soon after learning of a pregnancy, the vast majority of the largest segment of this group smoke through the pregnancy if there is no formal intervention.
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Study of gut microbes, antibiotics: Clues to improving immunity in premature infants
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/chop-sog041714.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 20-Apr-2014
Contact: Alison Fraser
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Study of gut microbes, antibiotics: Clues to improving immunity in premature infants
CHOP researchers' animal study suggests that improving newborns' bacterial environment could fend off infections
Mothers give a newborn baby a gift of germs—germs that help to kick-start the infant's immune system. But antibiotics, used to fend off infection, may paradoxically interrupt a newborn's own immune responses, leaving already-vulnerable premature babies more susceptible to dangerous pathogens.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 20-Apr-2014
Contact: Alison Fraser
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Study of gut microbes, antibiotics: Clues to improving immunity in premature infants
CHOP researchers' animal study suggests that improving newborns' bacterial environment could fend off infections
Mothers give a newborn baby a gift of germs—germs that help to kick-start the infant's immune system. But antibiotics, used to fend off infection, may paradoxically interrupt a newborn's own immune responses, leaving already-vulnerable premature babies more susceptible to dangerous pathogens.
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New approach may help manage the most troubling symptoms of dementia, lessen use of drugs
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uomh-nam042114.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Apr-2014
Contact: Kara Gavin
University of Michigan Health System
New approach may help manage the most troubling symptoms of dementia, lessen use of drugs
Technique called DICE empowers caregivers, patients and health providers to work together to reduce behavioral problems
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new approach to handling agitation, aggression and other unwanted behaviors by people with dementia may help reduce the use of antipsychotics and other psychiatric drugs in this population, and make life easier for them and their caregivers, a team of experts says.
Publishing their recommendations under the easy-to-remember acronym of "DICE", the panel of specialists in senior mental health hope to spark better teamwork among those who care for dementia patients at home, in residential facilities and in hospitals and clinics.
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Most people with Alzheimer's disease and other memory-affecting conditions also get aggressive, agitated, depressed, anxious, or delusional from time to time, says senior author Helen C. Kales, M.D., head of the U-M Program for Positive Aging and Geriatric Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Health System and investigator at the VA Center for Clinical Management Research. Or, they might have delusions, hallucinations, or lose inhibitions.
"Often more than memory loss, behavioral symptoms of dementia are among the most difficult aspects of caring for people with dementia. These symptoms are experienced almost universally, across dementia stages and causes," she says. "Sadly, these symptoms are often associated with poor outcomes including early nursing home placement, hospital stays, caregiver stress and depression, and reduced caregiver employment."
Doctors often prescribe these patients medications often used in patients with mental health disorders, despite little hard evidence that they work well and despite the risks they can pose -- including hastening death. Meanwhile, studies have shown promise from non-medication approaches to changing dementia patients' behavior and reducing triggers for behavioral issues in their environment and daily life. But too few health teams are trained in their use.
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Dubbed "DICE" for Describe, Investigate, Evaluate, and Create, it details key patient, caregiver and environmental considerations with each step of the approach and describes the "go-to" behavioral and environmental interventions that should be considered.
Briefly described, the components are:
•D: Describe - Asking the caregiver, and the patient if possible, to describe the "who, what, when and where" of situations where problem behaviors occur and the physical and social context for them. Caregivers could take notes about the situations that led to behavior issues, to share with health professionals during visits.
•I: Investigate – Having the health provider look into all the aspects of the patient's health, dementia symptoms, current medications and sleep habits, that might be combining with physical, social and caregiver-related factors to produce the behavior.
•C: Create – Working together, the patient's caregiver and health providers develop a plan to prevent and respond to behavioral issues in the patient, including everything from changing the patient's activities and environment, to educating and supporting the caregiver.
•E: Evaluate – Giving the provider responsibility for assessing how well the plan is being followed and how it's working, or what might need to be changed.
The authors say that doctors should prescribe psychotropic drugs only after they and the patient and caregiver have made significant efforts to change dementia patients' behavior through environmental modifications and other interventions, with three exceptions related to severe depression, psychosis or aggression that present risk to the patient or others.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Apr-2014
Contact: Kara Gavin
University of Michigan Health System
New approach may help manage the most troubling symptoms of dementia, lessen use of drugs
Technique called DICE empowers caregivers, patients and health providers to work together to reduce behavioral problems
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new approach to handling agitation, aggression and other unwanted behaviors by people with dementia may help reduce the use of antipsychotics and other psychiatric drugs in this population, and make life easier for them and their caregivers, a team of experts says.
Publishing their recommendations under the easy-to-remember acronym of "DICE", the panel of specialists in senior mental health hope to spark better teamwork among those who care for dementia patients at home, in residential facilities and in hospitals and clinics.
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Most people with Alzheimer's disease and other memory-affecting conditions also get aggressive, agitated, depressed, anxious, or delusional from time to time, says senior author Helen C. Kales, M.D., head of the U-M Program for Positive Aging and Geriatric Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Health System and investigator at the VA Center for Clinical Management Research. Or, they might have delusions, hallucinations, or lose inhibitions.
"Often more than memory loss, behavioral symptoms of dementia are among the most difficult aspects of caring for people with dementia. These symptoms are experienced almost universally, across dementia stages and causes," she says. "Sadly, these symptoms are often associated with poor outcomes including early nursing home placement, hospital stays, caregiver stress and depression, and reduced caregiver employment."
Doctors often prescribe these patients medications often used in patients with mental health disorders, despite little hard evidence that they work well and despite the risks they can pose -- including hastening death. Meanwhile, studies have shown promise from non-medication approaches to changing dementia patients' behavior and reducing triggers for behavioral issues in their environment and daily life. But too few health teams are trained in their use.
-----
Dubbed "DICE" for Describe, Investigate, Evaluate, and Create, it details key patient, caregiver and environmental considerations with each step of the approach and describes the "go-to" behavioral and environmental interventions that should be considered.
Briefly described, the components are:
•D: Describe - Asking the caregiver, and the patient if possible, to describe the "who, what, when and where" of situations where problem behaviors occur and the physical and social context for them. Caregivers could take notes about the situations that led to behavior issues, to share with health professionals during visits.
•I: Investigate – Having the health provider look into all the aspects of the patient's health, dementia symptoms, current medications and sleep habits, that might be combining with physical, social and caregiver-related factors to produce the behavior.
•C: Create – Working together, the patient's caregiver and health providers develop a plan to prevent and respond to behavioral issues in the patient, including everything from changing the patient's activities and environment, to educating and supporting the caregiver.
•E: Evaluate – Giving the provider responsibility for assessing how well the plan is being followed and how it's working, or what might need to be changed.
The authors say that doctors should prescribe psychotropic drugs only after they and the patient and caregiver have made significant efforts to change dementia patients' behavior through environmental modifications and other interventions, with three exceptions related to severe depression, psychosis or aggression that present risk to the patient or others.
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People Selectively Remember the Details of Atrocities That Absolve In-Group Members
No surprise. People selectively remember everything.http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/people-selectively-remember-the-details-of-atrocities-that-absolve-in-group-members.html?utm_source=pressrelease&utm_medium=eureka&utm_campaign=justifyingatrocities
April 21, 2014
Conversations about wartime atrocities often omit certain details. According to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, these omissions can lead people to have different memories for the event depending on social group membership.
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The results showed that participants were more likely to forget justifications for the atrocities committed by Afghan soldiers that had been recounted in the videos compared to justifications for the atrocities that hadn’t been recounted. The results indicate that hearing the stories repeated without the original justifications led participants to forget those justifications, just as the researchers expected.
But participants showed no memory impairment for unrepeated justifications when the perpetrator was American. That is, in-group membership made participants more likely to remember the reasons why the soldier committed the act, even though they had not been reminded of those reasons in the video.
“What we learn from this research is that moral disengagement strategies are fundamentally altering our memories,” explains Coman. “More specifically, these strategies affect the degree to which our memories are influenced by the conversations we have with one another.”
These findings are important, the researchers argue, because the ways in which people recall justifications could “influence attitudes and beliefs, the willingness to pay reparations, and the level of aggression toward out-groups.”
Teachers' scare tactics may lead to lower exam scores
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/apa-t042114.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Apr-2014
Contact: APA Public Affairs
American Psychological Association
Teachers' scare tactics may lead to lower exam scores
Students not threatened by bad consequences of failing perform better on tests
WASHINGTON -- As the school year winds down and final exams loom, teachers may want to avoid reminding students of the bad consequences of failing a test because doing so could lead to lower scores, according to new research published by APA.
"Teachers are desperately keen to motivate their students in the best possible way but may not be aware of how messages they communicate to students around the importance of performing well in exams can be interpreted in different ways," said lead author David Putwain, PhD, of Edge Hill University in Lancashire, England.
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Students who said they felt threatened by their teachers' messages that frequently focused on failure reported feeling less motivated and scored worse on the exam than students who said their teacher used fewer fear tactics that they considered less threatening, the study found.
A message such as, "If you fail the exam, you will never be able to get a good job or go to college. You need to work hard in order to avoid failure," was an example of attempting to motivate by fear. Messages focusing on success might include, "The exam is really important as most jobs that pay well require that you pass and if you want to go to college you will also need to pass the exam," according to the study.
"Both messages highlight to students the importance of effort and provide a reason for striving," said Putwain. "Where these messages differ is some focus on the possibility of success while others stress the need to avoid failure."
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Apr-2014
Contact: APA Public Affairs
American Psychological Association
Teachers' scare tactics may lead to lower exam scores
Students not threatened by bad consequences of failing perform better on tests
WASHINGTON -- As the school year winds down and final exams loom, teachers may want to avoid reminding students of the bad consequences of failing a test because doing so could lead to lower scores, according to new research published by APA.
"Teachers are desperately keen to motivate their students in the best possible way but may not be aware of how messages they communicate to students around the importance of performing well in exams can be interpreted in different ways," said lead author David Putwain, PhD, of Edge Hill University in Lancashire, England.
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Students who said they felt threatened by their teachers' messages that frequently focused on failure reported feeling less motivated and scored worse on the exam than students who said their teacher used fewer fear tactics that they considered less threatening, the study found.
A message such as, "If you fail the exam, you will never be able to get a good job or go to college. You need to work hard in order to avoid failure," was an example of attempting to motivate by fear. Messages focusing on success might include, "The exam is really important as most jobs that pay well require that you pass and if you want to go to college you will also need to pass the exam," according to the study.
"Both messages highlight to students the importance of effort and provide a reason for striving," said Putwain. "Where these messages differ is some focus on the possibility of success while others stress the need to avoid failure."
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Almost one-third of Canadian adults have experienced child abuse
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/cmaj-aoo041514.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Apr-2014
Contact: Kim Barnhardt
Canadian Medical Association Journal
Almost one-third of Canadian adults have experienced child abuse
Increased link to mental disorders, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts
Almost one-third of adults in Canada have experienced child abuse — physical abuse, sexual abuse or exposure to intimate partner (parents, step-parents or guardians) violence in their home. As well, child abuse is linked to mental disorders and suicidal ideation (thoughts) or suicide attempts, found an article published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
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People between 35 and 64 years of age were more likely than those aged 18 to 34 years to report having been abused as a child.
"All 3 types of child abuse were associated with all types of interview-diagnosed mental disorders, self-reported mental conditions, suicide ideation [thoughts of suicide] and suicide attempts in models adjusting for sociodemographic variables," write the authors.
Drug abuse or dependence, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts remained associated with all types of child abuse even in the most adjusted models. The least severe type of physical abuse (being slapped on the face, head or ears or hit or spanked with something hard) showed a strong association with all mental conditions in models adjusting for sociodemographic variables. Exposure to more than one type of abuse increased the odds of having a mental condition.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Apr-2014
Contact: Kim Barnhardt
Canadian Medical Association Journal
Almost one-third of Canadian adults have experienced child abuse
Increased link to mental disorders, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts
Almost one-third of adults in Canada have experienced child abuse — physical abuse, sexual abuse or exposure to intimate partner (parents, step-parents or guardians) violence in their home. As well, child abuse is linked to mental disorders and suicidal ideation (thoughts) or suicide attempts, found an article published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
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People between 35 and 64 years of age were more likely than those aged 18 to 34 years to report having been abused as a child.
"All 3 types of child abuse were associated with all types of interview-diagnosed mental disorders, self-reported mental conditions, suicide ideation [thoughts of suicide] and suicide attempts in models adjusting for sociodemographic variables," write the authors.
Drug abuse or dependence, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts remained associated with all types of child abuse even in the most adjusted models. The least severe type of physical abuse (being slapped on the face, head or ears or hit or spanked with something hard) showed a strong association with all mental conditions in models adjusting for sociodemographic variables. Exposure to more than one type of abuse increased the odds of having a mental condition.
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Lower birth weight, less breastfeeding linked to adult inflammation and disease
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/nu-lbw041814.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Apr-2014
Contact: Hilary Hurd Anyaso
Northwestern University
Lower birth weight, less breastfeeding linked to adult inflammation and disease
Public awareness, interventions could help erode intractable disparities in health
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Individuals born at lower birth weights as well as those breastfed less than three months or not at all are more likely as young adults to have higher levels of chronic inflammation that contributes to cardiovascular disease, according to a new Northwestern University study.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Apr-2014
Contact: Hilary Hurd Anyaso
Northwestern University
Lower birth weight, less breastfeeding linked to adult inflammation and disease
Public awareness, interventions could help erode intractable disparities in health
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Individuals born at lower birth weights as well as those breastfed less than three months or not at all are more likely as young adults to have higher levels of chronic inflammation that contributes to cardiovascular disease, according to a new Northwestern University study.
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Child's autism risk rises with increasing age of parents
http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2014/April/Autism-Risk-Older-Parents/
April 22, 2014
Drexel University School of Public Health
Older parents are more likely to have a child who develops an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than are younger parents. A recent study from researchers from the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia and Karolinska Institute in Sweden provides more insight into how the risk associated with parental age varies between mothers’ and fathers’ ages, and found that the risk of having a child with both ASD and intellectual disability is larger for older parents. - See more at: http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2014/April/Autism-Risk-Older-Parents/#sthash.Jb4bievK.dpuf
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The risk of having a child with ASD had a more complicated relationship to age in women than in men – whose risk of fathering a child with ASD increased linearly with age across their lifespan. Among women giving birth before the age of 30, the risk of ASD in the child showed no association with age -- it was simply very low. But for babies born to mothers aged 30 and older, the chance of developing ASD rose rapidly with the mother's age. - See more at: http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2014/April/Autism-Risk-Older-Parents/#sthash.Jb4bievK.dpuf
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Multiple mechanisms could be in play to account for the different patterns of risk, including environmental risk factors occurring in women after age 30. Factors such as complications in pregnancy could also underlie the effect of mothers’ ages on a child’s ASD risk but not a paternal age effect. The linear, steady increase in risk associated with fathers’ ages is consistent with the hypothesis of increased genomic alterations over the father’s lifespan that can increase risk of ASD, Lee said. - See more at: http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2014/April/Autism-Risk-Older-Parents/#sthash.Jb4bievK.dpuf
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April 22, 2014
Drexel University School of Public Health
Older parents are more likely to have a child who develops an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than are younger parents. A recent study from researchers from the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia and Karolinska Institute in Sweden provides more insight into how the risk associated with parental age varies between mothers’ and fathers’ ages, and found that the risk of having a child with both ASD and intellectual disability is larger for older parents. - See more at: http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2014/April/Autism-Risk-Older-Parents/#sthash.Jb4bievK.dpuf
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The risk of having a child with ASD had a more complicated relationship to age in women than in men – whose risk of fathering a child with ASD increased linearly with age across their lifespan. Among women giving birth before the age of 30, the risk of ASD in the child showed no association with age -- it was simply very low. But for babies born to mothers aged 30 and older, the chance of developing ASD rose rapidly with the mother's age. - See more at: http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2014/April/Autism-Risk-Older-Parents/#sthash.Jb4bievK.dpuf
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Multiple mechanisms could be in play to account for the different patterns of risk, including environmental risk factors occurring in women after age 30. Factors such as complications in pregnancy could also underlie the effect of mothers’ ages on a child’s ASD risk but not a paternal age effect. The linear, steady increase in risk associated with fathers’ ages is consistent with the hypothesis of increased genomic alterations over the father’s lifespan that can increase risk of ASD, Lee said. - See more at: http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2014/April/Autism-Risk-Older-Parents/#sthash.Jb4bievK.dpuf
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Speed-Reading Apps May Impair Reading Comprehension by Limiting Ability to Backtrack
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/speed-reading-apps-may-impair-reading-comprehension-by-limiting-ability-to-backtrack.html?utm_source=pressrelease&utm_medium=eureka&utm_campaign=speedreading
April 22, 2012
To address the fact that many of us are on the go and pressed for time, app developers have devised speed-reading software that eliminates the time we supposedly waste by moving our eyes as we read. But don’t throw away your books, papers, and e-readers just yet — research suggests that the eye movements we make during reading actually play a critical role in our ability to understand what we’ve just read.
April 22, 2012
To address the fact that many of us are on the go and pressed for time, app developers have devised speed-reading software that eliminates the time we supposedly waste by moving our eyes as we read. But don’t throw away your books, papers, and e-readers just yet — research suggests that the eye movements we make during reading actually play a critical role in our ability to understand what we’ve just read.
Life Stressors Trigger Neurological Disorders, Researchers Find
http://childrensnational.org/pressroom/NewsReleases/life-stressors-trigger-neurological-disorders-researchers-find.aspx
When mothers are exposed to trauma, illness, alcohol or other drug abuse, these stressors may activate a single molecular trigger in brain cells that can go awry and activate conditions such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and some forms of autism.
Until now, it has been unclear how much these stressors have impacted the cells of a developing brain. Past studies have shown that when an expectant mother exposes herself to alcohol or drug abuse or she experiences some trauma or illness, her baby may later develop a psychiatric disorder, including some forms of autism or post-traumatic stress disorder, later in life.
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When mothers are exposed to trauma, illness, alcohol or other drug abuse, these stressors may activate a single molecular trigger in brain cells that can go awry and activate conditions such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and some forms of autism.
Until now, it has been unclear how much these stressors have impacted the cells of a developing brain. Past studies have shown that when an expectant mother exposes herself to alcohol or drug abuse or she experiences some trauma or illness, her baby may later develop a psychiatric disorder, including some forms of autism or post-traumatic stress disorder, later in life.
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Newly-Approved Brain Stimulator Offers Hope for Individuals With Uncontrolled Epilepsy
http://www.rush.edu/webapps/MEDREL/servlet/NewsRelease?id=1758
April 21, 2014
Rush University Medical Center is the first in the country to use the device along with a unique electrode placement planning system
A recently FDA-approved device has been shown to reduce seizures in patients with medication-resistant epilepsy by as much as 50 percent. When coupled with an innovative electrode placement planning system developed by physicians at Rush, the device facilitated the complete elimination of seizures in nearly half of the implanted Rush patients enrolled in the decade-long clinical trials.
That’s good news for a large portion of the nearly 400,000 people in the U.S. living with epilepsy whose seizures can’t be controlled with medications and who are not candidates for brain surgery.
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2010, epilepsy affected approximately 2.3 million adults in the U.S. and 467,711 children under the age of 17.
April 21, 2014
Rush University Medical Center is the first in the country to use the device along with a unique electrode placement planning system
A recently FDA-approved device has been shown to reduce seizures in patients with medication-resistant epilepsy by as much as 50 percent. When coupled with an innovative electrode placement planning system developed by physicians at Rush, the device facilitated the complete elimination of seizures in nearly half of the implanted Rush patients enrolled in the decade-long clinical trials.
That’s good news for a large portion of the nearly 400,000 people in the U.S. living with epilepsy whose seizures can’t be controlled with medications and who are not candidates for brain surgery.
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2010, epilepsy affected approximately 2.3 million adults in the U.S. and 467,711 children under the age of 17.
Happy Earth Day!
See the link below for photos of our lovely home:http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2668
By: Dr. Jeff Masters, 11:50 AM GMT on April 22, 2014
Today is Earth Day, a day to celebrate the beauty of the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere of the planet that sustains us. As is my tradition on Earth Day, I present my favorite wunderphotos uploaded to our web site over the past year.
March 2014 was 4th Warmest March Globally
And we are still at points in several weather cycles that normally bring cooler than average temps. One of these might change in the next few month, as an El Nino may be developing, so we might have record high temps this year or next.http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/comment.html?entrynum=267
Looking at the maps at the following link, which show the departure from average for areas around the world, the Eastern half of the U.S. is an obvious exception.
By: Christopher C. Burt , 6:59 PM GMT on April 22, 2014
NOAA released its global March 2014 summary today (April 22nd) which stated that it was the 4th warmest March on record over global land and ocean surfaces since 1880. The global average temperature for the month was 12.3°C (54.1°F) which was 0.71°C (1.28°F) above the 20th century average.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Kentucky Inmate Starves to Death
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ap-exclusive-kentucky-inmate-starves-death-23408005?singlePage=true
April 21, 2014
By BRETT BARROUQUERE Associated Press
A prison doctor has been fired and two other staffers are in the midst of being dismissed after an inmate at the Kentucky State Penitentiary starved himself to death, a case that has exposed lapses in medical treatment and in how hunger strikes are handled at the facility. Prison officials have asked prosecutors to investigate after The Associated Press began asking questions about the inmate's death.
James Kenneth Embry, 57 and with just three years left on a nine-year sentence for drug offenses, began to spiral out of control in the spring of 2013 after he stopped taking anti-anxiety medication. Seven months later, in December, after weeks of erratic behavior — from telling prison staff he felt anxious and paranoid to banging his head on his cell door — Embry eventually refused most of his meals. By the time of his death in January of this year, he had shed more than 30 pounds on his 6-foot frame and died weighing just 138 pounds, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
An internal investigation determined that medical personnel failed to provide him anti-anxiety medication that may have kept his suicidal thoughts at bay and didn't take steps to check on him as his condition worsened. The internal review of Embry's death also exposed broader problems involving the treatment of inmates — including a failure to regularly check inmates on medical rounds and communication lapses among medical staff.
The AP, tipped off to Embry's death, obtained scores of documents under Kentucky's Open Records Act, including a report detailing the investigation into Embry's death, an autopsy report and personnel files. Along with interviews with corrections officials and correspondence with inmates, the documents describe Embry's increasingly paranoid behavior until his death and the numerous opportunities for various prison staff to have intervened.
"It's just very, very, very disturbing," said Greg Belzley, a Louisville, Ky.-based attorney who specializes in inmate rights litigation and reviewed some of the documents obtained by the AP. "How do you just watch a man starve to death?"
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A nurse checked on Embry on Jan. 4, finding him weak and shaky, and advised him to resume eating. Embry responded that it had been too long for him to start taking food again. Nine days later, on the very day he died, an advanced practice registered nurse named Bob Wilkinson refused a request from other medical staffers to move him to the infirmary at 11:51 a.m. and said the inmate should be taken off a hunger strike watch, according to the internal investigative report. Guards found Embry unresponsive in his cell hours later, his head slumped to the side. He was pronounced dead at 5:29 p.m.
Lyon County Coroner Ronnie Patton classified Embry's death as a suicide and listed dehydration as the primary cause of death, with starvation and several other medical ailments as secondary
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The internal investigation found that Hiland and Wilkinson didn't check on inmates as they should have during routine visits. The report also documented multiple communication problems among medical staff and allegations that other nurses were intimidated by Wilkinson, a contract staffer who works for Nashville, Tenn.-based Correct Care Solutions.
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April 21, 2014
By BRETT BARROUQUERE Associated Press
A prison doctor has been fired and two other staffers are in the midst of being dismissed after an inmate at the Kentucky State Penitentiary starved himself to death, a case that has exposed lapses in medical treatment and in how hunger strikes are handled at the facility. Prison officials have asked prosecutors to investigate after The Associated Press began asking questions about the inmate's death.
James Kenneth Embry, 57 and with just three years left on a nine-year sentence for drug offenses, began to spiral out of control in the spring of 2013 after he stopped taking anti-anxiety medication. Seven months later, in December, after weeks of erratic behavior — from telling prison staff he felt anxious and paranoid to banging his head on his cell door — Embry eventually refused most of his meals. By the time of his death in January of this year, he had shed more than 30 pounds on his 6-foot frame and died weighing just 138 pounds, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
An internal investigation determined that medical personnel failed to provide him anti-anxiety medication that may have kept his suicidal thoughts at bay and didn't take steps to check on him as his condition worsened. The internal review of Embry's death also exposed broader problems involving the treatment of inmates — including a failure to regularly check inmates on medical rounds and communication lapses among medical staff.
The AP, tipped off to Embry's death, obtained scores of documents under Kentucky's Open Records Act, including a report detailing the investigation into Embry's death, an autopsy report and personnel files. Along with interviews with corrections officials and correspondence with inmates, the documents describe Embry's increasingly paranoid behavior until his death and the numerous opportunities for various prison staff to have intervened.
"It's just very, very, very disturbing," said Greg Belzley, a Louisville, Ky.-based attorney who specializes in inmate rights litigation and reviewed some of the documents obtained by the AP. "How do you just watch a man starve to death?"
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A nurse checked on Embry on Jan. 4, finding him weak and shaky, and advised him to resume eating. Embry responded that it had been too long for him to start taking food again. Nine days later, on the very day he died, an advanced practice registered nurse named Bob Wilkinson refused a request from other medical staffers to move him to the infirmary at 11:51 a.m. and said the inmate should be taken off a hunger strike watch, according to the internal investigative report. Guards found Embry unresponsive in his cell hours later, his head slumped to the side. He was pronounced dead at 5:29 p.m.
Lyon County Coroner Ronnie Patton classified Embry's death as a suicide and listed dehydration as the primary cause of death, with starvation and several other medical ailments as secondary
-----
The internal investigation found that Hiland and Wilkinson didn't check on inmates as they should have during routine visits. The report also documented multiple communication problems among medical staff and allegations that other nurses were intimidated by Wilkinson, a contract staffer who works for Nashville, Tenn.-based Correct Care Solutions.
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Top court declines Exxon's appeal in water pollution case
An example of how the media can distort the news while reporting it. The Reuters article points out that this poisonous additive was not required by the law, and that Exxon Mobile knew it was poisonous before they decided to use it. The business-oriented Bloomberg News leaves out this information, and makes it sound like Exxon Mobile was just obeying the law.
For the current supreme court, with a majority of justices having been chosen by Republican presidents, and being partial to big business & the very rich, to uphold this judgement seems especially significant to me, how indefensible Exxon Mobile's decision to use this chemical was.
Neither the Bloomberg nor the Reuters article about the supreme court decision talked about why Exxon Mobile chose to use this chemical instead of safer ones. Anybody who's followed such things for a few years would expect it was the cheapest alternative. And I found that this was indeed at least part of the reason.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/21/us-usa-court-environment-idUSBREA3K0L720140421
By Lawrence Hurley
Apr 21, 2014
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a ruling against Exxon Mobil Corp that ordered the company to pay $105 million in damages for polluting New York City's groundwater with a toxic gasoline additive.
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In 2009, a jury concluded that Exxon contaminated water supply wells when the additive, methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), leaked from its underground storage tanks in the borough of Queens.
The appeals court rejected Exxon's arguments that it was required to use the additive under the federal Clean Air Act. An oxygen-containing substance that is added to gasoline to promote more complete combustion and reduce air pollution, MTBE was one of several additives recommended by regulators to reduce emissions.
It has now largely been phased out of the U.S. fuel supply because of its danger to groundwater.
New York City claimed Exxon went ahead and used the chemical in the 1980s through the first half of the 2000s despite warnings from its own scientists and engineers that it could be harmful in areas that relied on groundwater for drinking.
MTBE has been identified as an animal carcinogen and a possible human carcinogen and causes water to smell foul and taste bad.
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========================================
http://insideepa.com/201307292442283/EPA-Daily-News/Daily-News/2nd-circuit-rejects-exxons-bid-to-use-air-law-mandate-as-mtbe-defense/menu-id-986.html
Posted: July 29, 2013
Chris Knight
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has upheld a $105 million jury verdict that found Exxon Mobil Corp. responsible for contaminating New York City groundwater with the gasoline oxygenate methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), rejecting Exxon's claim that Clean Air Act mandates to use MTBE are a defense against the suit.
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The Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 required the use of oxygenated gasoline in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution, but did not specifically require MTBE, according to EPA's website. "Most refiners have chosen to use MTBE over other oxygenates primarily for its blending characteristics and for economic reasons," EPA adds.
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Even if MTBE was the only safe, feasible oxygenate, the opinion says that of the four claims for which the jury awarded damages, "mere use of MTBE" would not have caused groundwater contamination, but also required additional conduct, such as failure to use reasonable care when storing gasoline with MTBE.
=========================================
If you refer to the article on this from the business-oriented Bloomberg news, it does not mention that there are other methods to comply with the law that are not so toxic.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-21/exxon-rejected-by-court-on-105-million-new-york-award.html
By Greg Stohr Apr 21, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM)’s appeal of a $105 million jury verdict it was ordered to pay for contaminating underground water in New York City with a gasoline additive.
The Irving, Texas-based oil and gas company argued unsuccessfully that any award was premature because the city isn’t planning to use the disputed wells in southeastern Queens for another 15 to 20 years.
Exxon used the additive, methyl tertiary butyl ether, to comply with a 1990 federal law that required an increase in the oxygen content of gasoline in the smoggiest parts of the country. New York later banned MTBE, as the additive is known, because of contamination concerns.New York sued Exxon Mobil and other oil companies in 2003, alleging that they knew MTBE would pollute groundwater. A New York-based federal appeals court last year upheld the 2009 jury verdict against the company.
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===================================
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/09/exxon_mobil_must_pay_236m_in_nh_pollution_case/
Exxon Mobil must pay $236M in NH pollution case
Tuesday, Apr 9, 2013
Lynne Tuohy, Associated Press
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A jury in New Hampshire has ordered Exxon Mobil to pay $236 million in damages after finding the oil giant liable in a long-running lawsuit over groundwater contamination by the gasoline additive MTBE.
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=================================
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/nhs_236m_suit_against_exxon_mobil_to_go_to_jury/
NH’s $236M suit against Exxon Mobil to go to jury
Monday, Apr 8, 2013
Lynne Tuohy, Associated Press
-----
Attorney Jessica Grant for the state said Exxon Mobil should pay $236 million to offset the state’s cost to monitor and treat wells contaminated with MTBE. She said the oil giant ignored its own internal memos dating back to 1984 that raised ethical and environmental concerns about MTBE’s ability to contaminate faster and further than non-treated gasoline.
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Grant said Exxon Mobil put MTBE in gasoline five years before the government mandate in 1990 that the company use one of seven oxygenators available, including ethanol. She argued Exxon’s decision to keep using MTBE — even in the face of growing evidence of environmental liabilities — was motivated by profit.
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Sunday, April 20, 2014
In West Bank, teen offenders face different fates
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20140420/DAD9VBMG1.html
Apr 20, 12:29 PM
By DANIEL ESTRIN and JOSEF FEDERMAN
BEIT UMAR, West Bank (AP) - The boys were both 15, with the crackly voices and awkward peach fuzz of adolescence. They lived just a few minutes away from one another in the West Bank. And both were accused of throwing stones at vehicles, one day after the other.
But there was a crucial difference that helped to shape each boy's fate: One was Israeli, and the other Palestinian.
The tale of the two teens provides a stark example of the vast disparities of Israel's justice system in the West Bank, a contested area at the heart of the elusive search for a lasting peace.
While Israeli settlers in the West Bank fall mostly under civilian rule, Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law. Israeli and Palestinian youths face inequities at every stage in the path of justice, from arrests to convictions and sentencing, according to police statistics obtained by The Associated Press through multiple requests under Israel's freedom of information law.
-----
Only 53 Israeli settler youths were arrested for stone-throwing over the past six years, the data shows, and 89 percent were released without charge. Six were indicted. Four of those were found "guilty without conviction," a common sentence for Israeli juveniles that aims not to stain their record. One was cleared. The sixth case was still in court as of October, the most recent information available.
By contrast, 1,142 Palestinian youths were arrested by police over the same period for throwing stones, and 528 were indicted. All were convicted. Lawyers say the penalty is typically three to eight months in military prison.
-----
On Feb. 20, 2012, the Israeli boy joined a group of youths pelting a bus with rocks at the entrance to Bat Ayin, according to police reports. The settlement, located in the southern West Bank between Jerusalem and the biblical city of Hebron, is known for its hardline population.
Police said they targeted the bus because the driver was Arab. The rocks damaged the bus but did not harm the driver.
The boy, whose name cannot be published under local law because he is a minor, was brought to the Hebron region police station at 9 p.m., with his father by his side. In his interrogation, the boy invoked his right to remain silent. He spent a night in the station and four days under house arrest. Then he was freed without charge.
The following day, according to police reports, the Palestinian boy lobbed rocks at Israeli cars zipping past his hometown of Beit Umar, a farming town of 14,000 people perched near an Israeli military tower. Police said he and others wanted to show solidarity with a high-profile Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike in an Israeli jail.
The rocks shattered the front windshield of a white Mazda and damaged three other vehicles on a busy highway. There were no injuries. The incident was caught on tape and broadcast on Israeli evening news.
Two weeks later, at 3:30 a.m., Israeli soldiers kicked down the door to the Palestinian boy's bedroom, carried him to a jeep, blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he said. He was slapped by soldiers, kept awake all night and placed in a military jail cell with 10 other Palestinian youths, he said.
It would be more than nine months before he could go free.
-----
Apr 20, 12:29 PM
By DANIEL ESTRIN and JOSEF FEDERMAN
BEIT UMAR, West Bank (AP) - The boys were both 15, with the crackly voices and awkward peach fuzz of adolescence. They lived just a few minutes away from one another in the West Bank. And both were accused of throwing stones at vehicles, one day after the other.
But there was a crucial difference that helped to shape each boy's fate: One was Israeli, and the other Palestinian.
The tale of the two teens provides a stark example of the vast disparities of Israel's justice system in the West Bank, a contested area at the heart of the elusive search for a lasting peace.
While Israeli settlers in the West Bank fall mostly under civilian rule, Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law. Israeli and Palestinian youths face inequities at every stage in the path of justice, from arrests to convictions and sentencing, according to police statistics obtained by The Associated Press through multiple requests under Israel's freedom of information law.
-----
Only 53 Israeli settler youths were arrested for stone-throwing over the past six years, the data shows, and 89 percent were released without charge. Six were indicted. Four of those were found "guilty without conviction," a common sentence for Israeli juveniles that aims not to stain their record. One was cleared. The sixth case was still in court as of October, the most recent information available.
By contrast, 1,142 Palestinian youths were arrested by police over the same period for throwing stones, and 528 were indicted. All were convicted. Lawyers say the penalty is typically three to eight months in military prison.
-----
On Feb. 20, 2012, the Israeli boy joined a group of youths pelting a bus with rocks at the entrance to Bat Ayin, according to police reports. The settlement, located in the southern West Bank between Jerusalem and the biblical city of Hebron, is known for its hardline population.
Police said they targeted the bus because the driver was Arab. The rocks damaged the bus but did not harm the driver.
The boy, whose name cannot be published under local law because he is a minor, was brought to the Hebron region police station at 9 p.m., with his father by his side. In his interrogation, the boy invoked his right to remain silent. He spent a night in the station and four days under house arrest. Then he was freed without charge.
The following day, according to police reports, the Palestinian boy lobbed rocks at Israeli cars zipping past his hometown of Beit Umar, a farming town of 14,000 people perched near an Israeli military tower. Police said he and others wanted to show solidarity with a high-profile Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike in an Israeli jail.
The rocks shattered the front windshield of a white Mazda and damaged three other vehicles on a busy highway. There were no injuries. The incident was caught on tape and broadcast on Israeli evening news.
Two weeks later, at 3:30 a.m., Israeli soldiers kicked down the door to the Palestinian boy's bedroom, carried him to a jeep, blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he said. He was slapped by soldiers, kept awake all night and placed in a military jail cell with 10 other Palestinian youths, he said.
It would be more than nine months before he could go free.
-----
Saturday, April 19, 2014
What It’s Like to Spend 20 Years Listening to Psychopaths for Science
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/psychopath-brains-kiehl/
By Greg Miller
04.17.14
Kiehl [Kiehl] is a neuroscientist at the Mind Research Network and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and he’s devoted his career to studying what’s different about the brains of psychopaths — people whose lack of compassion, empathy, and remorse has a tendency to get them into trouble with the law.
-----
Kiehl recounts the story in a new book about his research, The Psychopath Whisperer. He has been interviewing psychopaths for more than 20 years, and the book is filled with stories of these colorful (and occasionally off-color) encounters.
-----
WIRED: How do real life psychopaths differ from ones we see on TV or in movies?
Kent Kiehl: One of the biggest differences is that psychopaths are way more common than people believe. About one in 150 people will meet the stringent clinical criteria for the disorder. That means hundreds of thousands of them are out and about in the population. The majority of them don’t commit violent crimes, but they lead this sort of disorganized, nomadic life, and they tend to eventually end up in some sort of trouble. Hollywood hasn’t done a good job of portraying the average psychopath. For the most part, they’ve taken the extreme view, with the Hannibal Lecters and more sensationalized people like that. It’s actually far more common and banal.
WIRED: People also tend to confuse psychopathy and psychosis — what’s the difference?
Kiehl: Right. With psychopathy the main features are lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse — and impulsivity. Psychosis is a fragmentation of the mind where you have hallucinations and delusions. It’s a very different disorder. You almost never find someone who has psychotic delusions and even moderate levels of psychopathic traits.
-----
WIRED: What is known at this point about what’s different about their brains?
Kiehl: We’ve found that psychopaths have 5 to 10 percent reduced gray matter density in and around the limbic regions [a network deep in the brain that's important for emotional processing]. We’ve also found — and a group in Germany has published a similar finding — that the tissue that connects the limbic system to the frontal lobes is disrupted. There have also been lots of studies published showing reduced responsivity in those circuits during emotional processing and moral decision making.
-----
WIRED: Can psychopaths change?
Kiehl: I’m so encouraged by the pioneering work that’s occurring at places like the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center in Wisconsin, where people are taking high risk youths [who show signs of developing psychopathic traits] and treating them with various intensive programs to try to reduce the odds that they’ll reoffend.
The treatments that seem to be making a big difference emphasize positive reinforcement rather than punishment. Yes, they’re incarcerated at the time and that’s their punishment for the crimes they’ve done, but the facilities instead of only punishing them when they do something bad actually reward them when they do something good. If they interact positively with staff they’re given a small reward, like maybe a video game in their cell for the weekend. Similarly, with this segment of the population, if you use positive reinforcement they’re much more likely to do what you want them to do.
-----
WIRED: Does it really make sense to devote the resources for intensive therapy to such a small minority?
Kiehl: If you look at just the published literature on the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center, for every $10,000 the state of Wisconsin has invested on that program, it returned over $70,000 in reduced incarceration and criminal justice costs in the next four years. Boys that go through the treatment stop accumulating infractions that lengthen their sentence. When they get out, they stay out longer and they commit less violent crime, which is the most expensive kind of crime from a societal perspective.
WIRED: If we already have interventions that work, why do we need all the brain research?
Kiehl: The current programs aren’t perfect. They reduce violent recidivism by 50 percent. But 10 to 15 percent of kids still reoffended violently, despite the best psychological treatment. What the brain science might do is help inform the cognitive treatment process so maybe you could determine that the easy to treat kids might be ready for release after six months, but these other kids need a full year or more of treatment. You might be able to use the neuroscience to improve the decision making. That’s the sort of thing we’re hoping to do.
-----
By Greg Miller
04.17.14
Kiehl [Kiehl] is a neuroscientist at the Mind Research Network and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and he’s devoted his career to studying what’s different about the brains of psychopaths — people whose lack of compassion, empathy, and remorse has a tendency to get them into trouble with the law.
-----
Kiehl recounts the story in a new book about his research, The Psychopath Whisperer. He has been interviewing psychopaths for more than 20 years, and the book is filled with stories of these colorful (and occasionally off-color) encounters.
-----
WIRED: How do real life psychopaths differ from ones we see on TV or in movies?
Kent Kiehl: One of the biggest differences is that psychopaths are way more common than people believe. About one in 150 people will meet the stringent clinical criteria for the disorder. That means hundreds of thousands of them are out and about in the population. The majority of them don’t commit violent crimes, but they lead this sort of disorganized, nomadic life, and they tend to eventually end up in some sort of trouble. Hollywood hasn’t done a good job of portraying the average psychopath. For the most part, they’ve taken the extreme view, with the Hannibal Lecters and more sensationalized people like that. It’s actually far more common and banal.
WIRED: People also tend to confuse psychopathy and psychosis — what’s the difference?
Kiehl: Right. With psychopathy the main features are lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse — and impulsivity. Psychosis is a fragmentation of the mind where you have hallucinations and delusions. It’s a very different disorder. You almost never find someone who has psychotic delusions and even moderate levels of psychopathic traits.
-----
WIRED: What is known at this point about what’s different about their brains?
Kiehl: We’ve found that psychopaths have 5 to 10 percent reduced gray matter density in and around the limbic regions [a network deep in the brain that's important for emotional processing]. We’ve also found — and a group in Germany has published a similar finding — that the tissue that connects the limbic system to the frontal lobes is disrupted. There have also been lots of studies published showing reduced responsivity in those circuits during emotional processing and moral decision making.
-----
WIRED: Can psychopaths change?
Kiehl: I’m so encouraged by the pioneering work that’s occurring at places like the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center in Wisconsin, where people are taking high risk youths [who show signs of developing psychopathic traits] and treating them with various intensive programs to try to reduce the odds that they’ll reoffend.
The treatments that seem to be making a big difference emphasize positive reinforcement rather than punishment. Yes, they’re incarcerated at the time and that’s their punishment for the crimes they’ve done, but the facilities instead of only punishing them when they do something bad actually reward them when they do something good. If they interact positively with staff they’re given a small reward, like maybe a video game in their cell for the weekend. Similarly, with this segment of the population, if you use positive reinforcement they’re much more likely to do what you want them to do.
-----
WIRED: Does it really make sense to devote the resources for intensive therapy to such a small minority?
Kiehl: If you look at just the published literature on the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center, for every $10,000 the state of Wisconsin has invested on that program, it returned over $70,000 in reduced incarceration and criminal justice costs in the next four years. Boys that go through the treatment stop accumulating infractions that lengthen their sentence. When they get out, they stay out longer and they commit less violent crime, which is the most expensive kind of crime from a societal perspective.
WIRED: If we already have interventions that work, why do we need all the brain research?
Kiehl: The current programs aren’t perfect. They reduce violent recidivism by 50 percent. But 10 to 15 percent of kids still reoffended violently, despite the best psychological treatment. What the brain science might do is help inform the cognitive treatment process so maybe you could determine that the easy to treat kids might be ready for release after six months, but these other kids need a full year or more of treatment. You might be able to use the neuroscience to improve the decision making. That’s the sort of thing we’re hoping to do.
-----
Friday, April 18, 2014
Study: Half of jailed NYC youths have brain injury
A neurologist who studied adult violent criminals found evidence that most of them had brain damage, usually due to child abuse from their parents.http://apnews.myway.com/article/20140418/DAD8PIE81.html
Apr 18, 2014
By JAKE PEARSON
About half of all 16- to 18-year-olds coming into New York City's jails say they had a traumatic brain injury before being incarcerated, most caused by assaults, according to a new study that's the latest in a growing body of research documenting head trauma among young offenders.
Experts say the findings, published this week in The Journal of Adolescent Health, could lead to better training for correction officers on how to deal with the possible symptoms of such trauma, which include problems with impulse control and decision-making.
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The peer-reviewed study was based on medical brain injury questionnaires given to 300 boys and 84 girls inside the nation's second-largest jail system in 2012.
The study found nearly 50 percent of both boys and girls reported traumatic brain injuries that resulted in a loss of consciousness, amnesia or both. And they said 55 percent of those injuries were caused by assaults. [And there must be more injuries that are not remembered, or that did not cause such dramatic symptoms.]
Previous studies show the rate of traumatic brain injury among adolescents who aren't incarcerated is about 15 to 30 percent, said Dr. Homer Venters, an assistant health commissioner in New York City and one of the study's authors.
Brain injuries are often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed because people with them don't necessarily show obvious, immediate signs of injury. But research about them has increased in recent years, as combat veterans and children who play contact sports have displayed symptoms, experts said.
A growing body of research shows that inmates whose brains have been jolted by trauma are linked to higher rates of breaking jailhouse rules, substance abuse and greater difficulty re-entering society after detention, said John D. Corrigan, a professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Ohio State University and a national expert on head injuries.
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"What's happening with many of these kids, these young adults in the criminal population, is they're having them early in life," and their consequences aren't noticed until later, he said.
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An estimated 60 percent of adult prisoners have a brain injury, according to a study of prisoners in South Carolina. Not all correction departments screen inmates for the injury - a practice public health officials say should change.
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And in the United Kingdom, a national campaign on the issue has resulted in a commission that found almost two-thirds of young inmates suffered from head trauma, which University of Exeter researchers found in 2010 is associated with earlier, repeated and more time spent in custody.
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Pennsylvania Teen Convicted Of A Crime For Recording Bullies At School
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/04/15/3427016/boy-with-disabilities-bullied/
By Carimah TownesApril 15, 2014
A 15-year old boy with ADHD, comprehension delay disorder, and an anxiety disorder recorded classmates bullying him in school. But instead of reprimanding the tormentors, school officials targeted the boy for wiretapping — and he was later convicted of disorderly conduct by a district judge.
Using an iPad, a student at South Fayette High School in Pennsylvania whose name is undisclosed, recorded a seven minute video of his peers trying to harass him. In the recording, two other students discuss pulling the victim’s pants down, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. And a loud noise is heard further into the recording, after which a student said, “I was just trying to scare him.”
According to the victim, being bullied is a daily occurrence. Speaking to South Fayette District Judge Maureen McGraw-Desmet, he explained, “This wasn’t just a one-time thing. This always happens every day in that class.” He revealed that he used the iPad to expose what was happening to him. “Because I always felt like it wasn’t me being heard,” the boy told McGraw-Dismet.
The high school staff knew about the bullying prior to the iPad incident. Assistant Principal Aaron Skrbin testified that Shea Love, the victim’s mother, previously voiced concerns about the tormentors. Last October, she approached the school when a classmate targeted the victim with spitwads — but Skrbin did not “[classify] that as bullying.”
When school officials learned about the recording, Principal Scott Milburn contacted local police on February 12, for what he considered a “wiretapping incident.” After approaching the boy for questioning, South Fayette Lieutenant Robert Kurta told him to dispose of the recording, and charged him with disorderly conduct. In Pennsylvania, the low-level crime is known as a “summary offense,” and does not typically result in jail time for juveniles. Nonetheless, they can stay on a juvenile’s criminal record. McGraw-Desmet later upheld the charges, fining the student “a minimum of $25.” The 15-year old was also ordered to pay court costs. Love is currently trying to get the decision reversed.
Statistics show that millions of students are bullied every year, and that teachers only intervene in 4 percent of incidents.
-----
By Carimah TownesApril 15, 2014
A 15-year old boy with ADHD, comprehension delay disorder, and an anxiety disorder recorded classmates bullying him in school. But instead of reprimanding the tormentors, school officials targeted the boy for wiretapping — and he was later convicted of disorderly conduct by a district judge.
Using an iPad, a student at South Fayette High School in Pennsylvania whose name is undisclosed, recorded a seven minute video of his peers trying to harass him. In the recording, two other students discuss pulling the victim’s pants down, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. And a loud noise is heard further into the recording, after which a student said, “I was just trying to scare him.”
According to the victim, being bullied is a daily occurrence. Speaking to South Fayette District Judge Maureen McGraw-Desmet, he explained, “This wasn’t just a one-time thing. This always happens every day in that class.” He revealed that he used the iPad to expose what was happening to him. “Because I always felt like it wasn’t me being heard,” the boy told McGraw-Dismet.
The high school staff knew about the bullying prior to the iPad incident. Assistant Principal Aaron Skrbin testified that Shea Love, the victim’s mother, previously voiced concerns about the tormentors. Last October, she approached the school when a classmate targeted the victim with spitwads — but Skrbin did not “[classify] that as bullying.”
When school officials learned about the recording, Principal Scott Milburn contacted local police on February 12, for what he considered a “wiretapping incident.” After approaching the boy for questioning, South Fayette Lieutenant Robert Kurta told him to dispose of the recording, and charged him with disorderly conduct. In Pennsylvania, the low-level crime is known as a “summary offense,” and does not typically result in jail time for juveniles. Nonetheless, they can stay on a juvenile’s criminal record. McGraw-Desmet later upheld the charges, fining the student “a minimum of $25.” The 15-year old was also ordered to pay court costs. Love is currently trying to get the decision reversed.
Statistics show that millions of students are bullied every year, and that teachers only intervene in 4 percent of incidents.
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Poor People’s Lives Are Getting Shorter
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/04/18/3428500/rich-poor-life-expectancy/
By Tara Culp-ResslerApril 18, 2014
Although life expectancy has been rising for Americans as a whole, the people who live in this country aren’t necessary sharing those gains equally. Wealthy people are enjoying longer lifespans than lower income Americans, according to a new analysis from Brookings Institute researchers, and the gap is threatening to get wider.
By the age of 55 years old, the average American man in the richest 10 percent of the county can expect to live another 35 years. But the average man in the poorest 10 percent only has about 24 years left. And the discrepancy is even starker among women, since low-income women’s life expectancy has actually been declining:
----- [See link above for graphs. Live expectancy has decreased for the bottom 40% of women!
It’s not entirely surprising that poverty is an indicator of a shorter life span. Economic insecurity has a long list of negative effects on physical and mental health. People living in poverty are less likely to have access to quality food and clean air, and they’re more likely to struggle to afford the medical care they need.
What’s most concerning is the fact that poverty is worsening, and extreme income inequality continues to widen the gulf between the richest and the poorest sectors of the country.
-----
A recent study conducted by Harvard researchers estimated that as many as 17,000 people will die directly as a result of their states refusing to expand Medicaid.
By Tara Culp-ResslerApril 18, 2014
Although life expectancy has been rising for Americans as a whole, the people who live in this country aren’t necessary sharing those gains equally. Wealthy people are enjoying longer lifespans than lower income Americans, according to a new analysis from Brookings Institute researchers, and the gap is threatening to get wider.
By the age of 55 years old, the average American man in the richest 10 percent of the county can expect to live another 35 years. But the average man in the poorest 10 percent only has about 24 years left. And the discrepancy is even starker among women, since low-income women’s life expectancy has actually been declining:
----- [See link above for graphs. Live expectancy has decreased for the bottom 40% of women!
It’s not entirely surprising that poverty is an indicator of a shorter life span. Economic insecurity has a long list of negative effects on physical and mental health. People living in poverty are less likely to have access to quality food and clean air, and they’re more likely to struggle to afford the medical care they need.
What’s most concerning is the fact that poverty is worsening, and extreme income inequality continues to widen the gulf between the richest and the poorest sectors of the country.
-----
A recent study conducted by Harvard researchers estimated that as many as 17,000 people will die directly as a result of their states refusing to expand Medicaid.
Wealthiest Households Accounted for more than 80% of Postrecession Rise in Incomes
This continued the trends already established before the recession/depression.http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/04/17/wealthiest-households-accounted-for-80-of-rise-in-incomes-in-recessions-aftermath/?mod=WSJBlog
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A recent article by Labor Department senior economist Aaron Cobet highlights the sharp disparity between the wealthiest and poorest Americans in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 recession.
“While average income has returned to pre-recession levels, income gains have been distributed unevenly,” Mr. Cobet said.
The economist mined Labor Department data to show that the top 20% of earners accounted for more than 80% of the rise in household income from 2008-2012. Income fell for the bottom 20%.
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The International Monetary Fund has warned that rising income inequality is weighing on global growth.
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In American Politics, the Wealthy Get What They Want - See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/17/American-Politics-Wealthy-Get-What-They-Want#sthash.cpOcA2Ch.dpuf
Not news, just comfirmation of the obvious.http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/17/American-Politics-Wealthy-Get-What-They-Want
Rob GarverThe Fiscal Times
April 17, 2014
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Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern conducted an extensive study of how major questions of public policy were decided over the course of the 20 years between 1981 and 2002. Their conclusions, scheduled for publication in the Fall issue of the journal Perspectives on Policy, were not happy ones for people who believe that the United States is a majoritarian democracy.
“When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” they write.
This is not to say that the average voter’s policy choices are never realized. The study found that in a large number of cases, the policy preferences of the median voter and the economic elite coincide. The most significant finding relates to the instances where the majority of voters disagree with the economic elite.
“In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes,” the study finds. “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.”
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the data suggests “the net alignments of the most influential, business oriented groups are negatively related to the average citizen’s wishes.”
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
California Drought/Polar Vortex Jet Stream Pattern Linked to Global Warming
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2665
By: Dr. Jeff Masters , 6:56 PM GMT on April 16, 2014
From November 2013 - January 2014, a remarkably extreme jet stream pattern set up over North America, bringing the infamous "Polar Vortex" of cold air to the Midwest and Eastern U.S., and a "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" of high pressure over California, which brought the worst winter drought conditions ever recorded to that state. A new study published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, led by Utah State scientist S.-Y. Simon Wang, found that this jet stream pattern was the most extreme on record, and likely could not have grown so extreme without the influence of human-caused global warming. The study concluded, “there is a traceable anthropogenic warming footprint in the enormous intensity of the anomalous ridge during winter 2013-14, the associated drought and its intensity."
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By: Dr. Jeff Masters , 6:56 PM GMT on April 16, 2014
From November 2013 - January 2014, a remarkably extreme jet stream pattern set up over North America, bringing the infamous "Polar Vortex" of cold air to the Midwest and Eastern U.S., and a "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" of high pressure over California, which brought the worst winter drought conditions ever recorded to that state. A new study published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, led by Utah State scientist S.-Y. Simon Wang, found that this jet stream pattern was the most extreme on record, and likely could not have grown so extreme without the influence of human-caused global warming. The study concluded, “there is a traceable anthropogenic warming footprint in the enormous intensity of the anomalous ridge during winter 2013-14, the associated drought and its intensity."
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GM Risked Lives to Save 25 Cents Per Car
Adds up to a lot that can go to the CEO.http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/17/GM-Risked-Lives-Save-25-Cents-Car
Eric PianinThe Fiscal Times
April 17, 2014
Until now, one of the most perplexing questions in the General Motors scandal is why the storied manufacturer waited more than a decade to recall 1.6 million compact cars with faulty ignition switches that contributed to more than a dozen deaths across the country.
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Yet, on Wednesday, two prominent highway safety advocates charged that GM in 2001 intentionally chose an inferior design for an ignition switch that it installed in Chevrolet Cobalts, Saturn Ions and other compact cars that the company now concedes contributed to at least 31 crashes and 13 fatalities – many of them involving young people.
The failure of airbags to deploy in many of those accidents has been linked to a serious defect in the ignition switch.
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The question of whether to address the faulty ignition switch came up again in 2005, the same year that a 16-year-old girl named Amber Marie Rose was killed in a crash in Maryland while driving a 2005 Cobalt when her air bag failed to deploy. GM decided not to change the faulty ignition switch because by then it would have added about a dollar to the cost of each car, according to an internal GM document provided to congressional investigators.
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“It was cost over safety,” Ditlow said in an interview yesterday. “GM made a decision in 2001 to pick the cheaper part over the safer part at a cost savings of no more than 25 cents and that decision then cost the consumers’ untold numbers of lives over the years. Basically GM was saying that consumers’ lives weren’t worth 25 cents.”
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Wednesday, April 16, 2014
At least 1 in 20 adult outpatients misdiagnosed in US every year
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/bmj-al1041414.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 16-Apr-2014
Contact: Stephanie Burns
BMJ-British Medical Journal
At least 1 in 20 adult outpatients misdiagnosed in US every year
Equal to 12 million people nationwide; half of errors potentially harmful, say researchers
At least one in 20 adults is misdiagnosed in outpatient clinics in the US every year, amounting to 12 million people nationwide, and posing a "substantial patient safety risk," finds research published online in BMJ Quality & Safety.
Half of these errors could be potentially harmful, say the authors, who add that their findings should prompt renewed efforts to monitor and curb the numbers of misdiagnoses.
To date, patient safety improvements have largely focused on hospital stays and issues such as infections, falls, and medication errors, say the authors. But most diagnoses are made in outpatient clinics, where patients are looked after by several different healthcare teams and few safety concerns are ever reported.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 16-Apr-2014
Contact: Stephanie Burns
BMJ-British Medical Journal
At least 1 in 20 adult outpatients misdiagnosed in US every year
Equal to 12 million people nationwide; half of errors potentially harmful, say researchers
At least one in 20 adults is misdiagnosed in outpatient clinics in the US every year, amounting to 12 million people nationwide, and posing a "substantial patient safety risk," finds research published online in BMJ Quality & Safety.
Half of these errors could be potentially harmful, say the authors, who add that their findings should prompt renewed efforts to monitor and curb the numbers of misdiagnoses.
To date, patient safety improvements have largely focused on hospital stays and issues such as infections, falls, and medication errors, say the authors. But most diagnoses are made in outpatient clinics, where patients are looked after by several different healthcare teams and few safety concerns are ever reported.
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Did GM Reject Safer Ignition Switch Design in 2001 Because of Cost?
http://www.nbcnews.com/#/storyline/gm-recall/did-gm-reject-safer-ignition-switch-design-2001-because-cost-n81526
By Rich Gardella and Talesha Reynolds
Apriil 16, 2014
Newly released internal GM documents reveal that the company in 2001 considered -- and rejected – an ignition switch design that two prominent safety advocates say could have avoided the problem that led the automaker to recall millions of vehicles this year. The company’s decision to reject the safer switch was motivated by cost, the advocates say.
They say GM documents show that design was the same one GM quietly began providing years later, in 2006, as a replacement part, and is now beginning to add to all recalled vehicles.
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GM has recalled 2.6 million vehicles -- Chevy Cobalts and HHRs, Pontiac G5s, Pursuits and Solstices and Saturn Ions and Skys, from model years 2003 to 2007 – because the ignition switch problem could cause ignitions to slip from “run” to “accessory” or “off” positions while being driven. That could cause vehicles to stall, shutting down power brakes and power steering and preventing airbags from deploying. GM acknowledges that the faulty ignition switch has been linked to 32 crashes and 13 deaths.
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By Rich Gardella and Talesha Reynolds
Apriil 16, 2014
Newly released internal GM documents reveal that the company in 2001 considered -- and rejected – an ignition switch design that two prominent safety advocates say could have avoided the problem that led the automaker to recall millions of vehicles this year. The company’s decision to reject the safer switch was motivated by cost, the advocates say.
They say GM documents show that design was the same one GM quietly began providing years later, in 2006, as a replacement part, and is now beginning to add to all recalled vehicles.
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GM has recalled 2.6 million vehicles -- Chevy Cobalts and HHRs, Pontiac G5s, Pursuits and Solstices and Saturn Ions and Skys, from model years 2003 to 2007 – because the ignition switch problem could cause ignitions to slip from “run” to “accessory” or “off” positions while being driven. That could cause vehicles to stall, shutting down power brakes and power steering and preventing airbags from deploying. GM acknowledges that the faulty ignition switch has been linked to 32 crashes and 13 deaths.
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Online piracy is bad. Here's how to make sure your kids understand that.
http://dfm.denverpost.com/article/online-piracy-is-bad-heres-how-to-make-sure-your-kids-understand-that/1ea01316c3b25513c777ca0f5c3004f3
Susan Jennings, Digital First Media
April 10, 2014
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It wasn’t until years later while working as a journalist in a newsroom that was getting ready to add a pay wall that I began to fully understand the real-world effect of expecting that all online content should be free.
The people producing that content – whether they’re musicians, actors or writers like me -- are professionals working to support their families. By demanding that their music, films, shows, games or stories be available free of charge, I’m making it more difficult for them to make a living.
A study by the Institute for Policy Innovation found that piracy of sound recordings alone results in an annual loss of $12.5 billion to the U.S. economy, in addition to more than 70,000 lost jobs and $2 billion in lost wages.
I know that when my kids are old enough to go online, we’ll make sure to include a discussion about digital piracy along with conversations about safely using social media and protecting their online identities.
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Any of these actions could subject you to civil or criminal liability. Offenders could face paying thousands of dollars in damages or fines and end up with a felony record and jail time.
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Beyond all the legal concerns, there’s always a potential that you could put your computers and mobile devices at risk for malware and unwanted viruses when downloading files from an unknown source.
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These days, there are plenty of places you go to find legitimate and affordable entertainment online.
If your kids are looking for options, point them to iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody or Spotify for music or Hulu, Netflix or Amazon for video. This content can be accessed for free, via a monthly subscription, or for a one-time fee.
And if they whine about having to pay a dollar for their new favorite song, remind them that if they really love the song and the artist, then they should be willing to support them.
Susan Jennings, Digital First Media
April 10, 2014
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It wasn’t until years later while working as a journalist in a newsroom that was getting ready to add a pay wall that I began to fully understand the real-world effect of expecting that all online content should be free.
The people producing that content – whether they’re musicians, actors or writers like me -- are professionals working to support their families. By demanding that their music, films, shows, games or stories be available free of charge, I’m making it more difficult for them to make a living.
A study by the Institute for Policy Innovation found that piracy of sound recordings alone results in an annual loss of $12.5 billion to the U.S. economy, in addition to more than 70,000 lost jobs and $2 billion in lost wages.
I know that when my kids are old enough to go online, we’ll make sure to include a discussion about digital piracy along with conversations about safely using social media and protecting their online identities.
-----
Any of these actions could subject you to civil or criminal liability. Offenders could face paying thousands of dollars in damages or fines and end up with a felony record and jail time.
-----
Beyond all the legal concerns, there’s always a potential that you could put your computers and mobile devices at risk for malware and unwanted viruses when downloading files from an unknown source.
-----
These days, there are plenty of places you go to find legitimate and affordable entertainment online.
If your kids are looking for options, point them to iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody or Spotify for music or Hulu, Netflix or Amazon for video. This content can be accessed for free, via a monthly subscription, or for a one-time fee.
And if they whine about having to pay a dollar for their new favorite song, remind them that if they really love the song and the artist, then they should be willing to support them.
How to get rich: blackmail
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/jerk-operator-personal-info-facebook-ftc-article-1.1748946
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The Federal Trade Commission says Jerk.com operator John Fanning improperly harvested personal information from Facebook to create “Jerk” and “Not a Jerk” profiles.
Fanning, 50, who previously co-founded the music-download service Napster, violated federal fair-trade laws when he falsely led consumers to believe that the Jerk.com content was created by users, according to an FTC complaint.
From 2009 to 2013, Jerk.com created profiles for more than 73 million people and allowed users to post remarks like, “Omg I hate this kid he’s such a loser,” the FTC says.
People were told they could revise their status by paying $30, according to the complaint, which seeks a court order against Jerk.com and its use of the personal information.
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The Federal Trade Commission says Jerk.com operator John Fanning improperly harvested personal information from Facebook to create “Jerk” and “Not a Jerk” profiles.
Fanning, 50, who previously co-founded the music-download service Napster, violated federal fair-trade laws when he falsely led consumers to believe that the Jerk.com content was created by users, according to an FTC complaint.
From 2009 to 2013, Jerk.com created profiles for more than 73 million people and allowed users to post remarks like, “Omg I hate this kid he’s such a loser,” the FTC says.
People were told they could revise their status by paying $30, according to the complaint, which seeks a court order against Jerk.com and its use of the personal information.
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Hotelier Harris Rosen pledges college money for Parramore kids
Thank you, Mr. Rosen
April 10, 2014|By Lauren Roth, Orlando Sentinel
Hotelier Harris Rosen is pledging to pay for the college educations of children in Orlando's Parramore neighborhood, modeling the effort after the nationally recognized Tangelo Park program that he started 20 years ago.
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Orlando Commissioner Daisy Lynum said the guarantee of college scholarships has the potential to transform Parramore, a downtown community with about 2,000 children that has struggled for decades with poverty and crime.
"This is a great big deal," Lynum said. "The ultimate result could be being able to bring African-American middle-class families back into Parramore, which has been our goal."
Rosen hasn't specified yet exactly how much he would contribute. He would not comment for this story, saying his efforts are still in the early stages.
To make it happen, Rosen envisions an early-childhood program that aligns preschools with a full-day pre-kindergarten, as well as completion of a public kindergarten-to-eighth-grade school slated to open in 2017 in Parramore, de la Portilla said.
Rosen made national news after he promised to pay for the educations of every Tangelo Park student who got into college.
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Several years ago, frustrated that other philanthropists haven't started similar programs, he began looking into duplicating it himself, his advisers said.
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http://www.today.com/news/millionaire-uses-fortune-help-kids-struggling-town-1C9373666
Scott Stump
April 17, 2013
Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement.
Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent. Having amassed a fortune from his success in the hotel business, Rosen decided Tangelo Park needed some hospitality of its own.
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Rosen, 73, began his philanthropic efforts by paying for day care for parents in Tangelo Park, a community of about 3,000 people. When those children reached high school, he created a scholarship program in which he offered to pay free tuition to Florida state colleges for any students in the neighborhood.
In the two decades since starting the programs, Rosen has donated nearly $10 million, and the results have been remarkable. The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.
"We've given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We've given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing."
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Tomgram: Astra Taylor, Misogyny and the Cult of Internet Openness
I am certainly aware of the fact that women tend to have less time for doing things outside of housework and taking care of men and children. Even an elderly gay man who dislikes women will have women willing to drive him to church and other events, and bring him meals.http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175829/tomgram%253A_astra_taylor%252C_misogyny_and_the_cult_of_internet_openness/
Posted by Astra Taylor at 7:53am, April 10, 2014
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: We’ve got a special offer for you today. Below, you’ll get a taste of Astra Taylor’s new book about the Internet as a system for inequality, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. (Musician David Byrne, no less, praises her “inspiring insights” and calls her book “beautifully written and highly recommended.” As is obvious from her intro, Rebecca Solnit also considers it a milestone book.) For a donation of $100 to this website, Taylor will sign a personalized copy of the book to you. And believe me, since TomDispatch is not exactly Google and takes no advertising, every dollar you give really does help keep us afloat. Check out our donation page for more details on the offer. (And one note: Taylor is, at the moment, on tour with a band. She won’t be back in New York to sign books until the 23rd, so be patient and it will come.) Tom]
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The Internet arose with little regulation, little public decision-making, and a whole lot of fantasy about how it was going to make everyone powerful and how everything would be free. Free, as in unregulated and open, got confused with free, as in not getting paid, and somehow everyone from Facebook to Arianna Huffington created massively lucrative sites (based on advertising dollars) in which the people who made the content went unpaid.
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And at a certain juncture, she turns to gender. Though far from the only weak point of the Internet as an egalitarian space -- after all, there’s privacy (lack of), the environment (massive server farms), and economics (tax cheats, “content providers” like musicians fleeced) -- gender politics, as she shows in today’s post adapted from her book, is one of the most spectacular problems online.
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As a start, in the perfectly real world women shoulder a disproportionate share of household and child-rearing responsibilities, leaving them substantially less leisure time to spend online. Though a handful of high-powered celebrity “mommy bloggers” have managed to attract massive audiences and ad revenue by documenting their daily travails, they are the exceptions not the rule. In professional fields like philosophy, law, and science, where blogging has become popular, women are notoriously underrepresented; by one count, for instance, only around 20% of science bloggers are women.
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Many prominent women have spoken up about their experiences being bullied and intimidated online -- scenarios that sometimes escalate into the release of private information, including home addresses, e-mail passwords, and social security numbers, or simply devolve into an Internet version of stalking. Esteemed classicist Mary Beard, for example, “received online death threats and menaces of sexual assault” after a television appearance last year, as did British activist Caroline Criado-Perez after she successfully campaigned to get more images of women onto British banknotes.
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Those posting with female usernames, researchers were shocked to discover, received 25 times as many malicious messages as those whose designations were masculine or ambiguous.
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Over the last few months, a number of black women with substantial social media presences conducted an informal experiment of their own. Fed up with the fire hose of animosity aimed at them, Jamie Nesbitt Golden and others adopted masculine Twitter avatars. Golden replaced her photo with that of a hip, bearded, young white man, though she kept her bio and continued to communicate in her own voice. “The number of snarky, condescending tweets dropped off considerably, and discussions on race and gender were less volatile,” Golden wrote, marveling at how simply changing a photo transformed reactions to her. “Once I went back to Black, it was back to business as usual.”
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It’s not that women and people of color aren’t doing innovative work in reporting and cultural criticism; it’s just that they get passed over by investors and financiers in favor of the familiar.
As Deanna Zandt and others have pointed out, such real-world lack of diversity is also regularly seen on the rosters of technology conferences, even as speakers take the stage to hail a democratic revolution on the Web, while audiences that look just like them cheer. In early 2013, in reaction to the announcement of yet another all-male lineup at a prominent Web gathering, a pledge was posted on the website of the Atlantic asking men to refrain from speaking at events where women are not represented. The list of signatories was almost immediately removed “due to a flood of spam/trolls.”
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In a similar vein, collaborative filtering sites like Reddit and Slashdot, heralded by the digerati as the cultural curating mechanisms of the future, cater to users who are up to 87% male and overwhelmingly young, wealthy, and white. Reddit, in particular, has achieved notoriety for its misogynist culture, with threads where rapists have recounted their exploits and photos of underage girls got posted under headings like “Chokeabitch,” “Niggerjailbait,” and “Creepshots.”
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Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Stressful environments genetically affect African-American boys
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/puww-seg040914.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 9-Apr-2014
Contact: B. Rose Huber
Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Stressful environments genetically affect African-American boys
Stressful upbringings can leave imprints on the genes of children as young as age 9, according to a study led by Princeton University and Pennsylvania State University researchers. Such chronic stress during youth leads to physiological weathering similar to aging.
A study of 40 9-year-old black boys, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that those who grow up in disadvantaged environments have shorter telomeres — DNA sequences that generally shrink with age — than their advantaged peers. The researchers also report that boys with genetic sensitivities to their environment have shorter telomeres after experiencing stressful social environments than the telomeres of boys without the genetic sensitivities. These sensitivities are based on gene variants related to the serotonin and dopamine pathways — neurotransmitters essential for relaying information between the brain and body.
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The researchers wanted to focus on African American boys because past studies have shown that boys may be more sensitive to their environment.
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the researchers found that living in a disadvantaged environment was associated with 19 percent shorter telomeres by age 9. For boys predisposed to being sensitive to their environment, this negative association was even stronger.
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I think it's very striking that these findings are in children at age 9, because you are talking about accelerated aging or stress-mediated wear and tear on your body, which make you more vulnerable to all kinds of illnesses and diseases. To say that you can see this by 9 years old is a very strong statement," Geronimus said.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 9-Apr-2014
Contact: B. Rose Huber
Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Stressful environments genetically affect African-American boys
Stressful upbringings can leave imprints on the genes of children as young as age 9, according to a study led by Princeton University and Pennsylvania State University researchers. Such chronic stress during youth leads to physiological weathering similar to aging.
A study of 40 9-year-old black boys, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that those who grow up in disadvantaged environments have shorter telomeres — DNA sequences that generally shrink with age — than their advantaged peers. The researchers also report that boys with genetic sensitivities to their environment have shorter telomeres after experiencing stressful social environments than the telomeres of boys without the genetic sensitivities. These sensitivities are based on gene variants related to the serotonin and dopamine pathways — neurotransmitters essential for relaying information between the brain and body.
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The researchers wanted to focus on African American boys because past studies have shown that boys may be more sensitive to their environment.
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the researchers found that living in a disadvantaged environment was associated with 19 percent shorter telomeres by age 9. For boys predisposed to being sensitive to their environment, this negative association was even stronger.
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I think it's very striking that these findings are in children at age 9, because you are talking about accelerated aging or stress-mediated wear and tear on your body, which make you more vulnerable to all kinds of illnesses and diseases. To say that you can see this by 9 years old is a very strong statement," Geronimus said.
Rabbits kept indoors could be vitamin D deficient
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uoia-rki040914.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 9-Apr-2014
Contact: Diana Yates
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rabbits kept indoors could be vitamin D deficient
Rabbits that remain indoors may suffer from a lack of vitamin D, researchers report in a new study. In rabbits kept as pets or used in laboratory studies, the deficiency could lead to dental problems, undermine their cardiovascular health, weaken their immune systems and skew scientific findings.
The study found that regular exposure to artificial ultraviolet B light for two weeks doubled rabbits' serum vitamin D levels – an increase not seen in animals raised in artificial light lacking UVB radiation. Future studies will seek to determine optimal levels of UVB exposure and vitamin D levels in rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas and other animals.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 9-Apr-2014
Contact: Diana Yates
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rabbits kept indoors could be vitamin D deficient
Rabbits that remain indoors may suffer from a lack of vitamin D, researchers report in a new study. In rabbits kept as pets or used in laboratory studies, the deficiency could lead to dental problems, undermine their cardiovascular health, weaken their immune systems and skew scientific findings.
The study found that regular exposure to artificial ultraviolet B light for two weeks doubled rabbits' serum vitamin D levels – an increase not seen in animals raised in artificial light lacking UVB radiation. Future studies will seek to determine optimal levels of UVB exposure and vitamin D levels in rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas and other animals.
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New Attacks on Smart Phones
http://www.cis.syr.edu/~wedu/attack/
Scanning 2D barcodes, finding free Wi-Fi access points, sending SMS messages, listening to music, and watching MP4 videos: these are very common activities that we do using our smartphones. Can you imagine that simply doing these things can get your smarphones infected with "worms" that can not only steal personal information from your phone, but also infect your friends's phones.
Sound scary? It will not be long before worms like this spread among smartphones. What makes the attacks feasible is an emerging technology called HTML5-based app development, and it has been rapidly gaining popularity in the mobile industry. When the adoption of this technology reaches certain threshold, attacks like this will become quite common, unless we do something to stop it. A recent Gartner report says that by 2016, fifty percent of the mobile apps will be using HTML5-based technologies.
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Scanning 2D barcodes, finding free Wi-Fi access points, sending SMS messages, listening to music, and watching MP4 videos: these are very common activities that we do using our smartphones. Can you imagine that simply doing these things can get your smarphones infected with "worms" that can not only steal personal information from your phone, but also infect your friends's phones.
Sound scary? It will not be long before worms like this spread among smartphones. What makes the attacks feasible is an emerging technology called HTML5-based app development, and it has been rapidly gaining popularity in the mobile industry. When the adoption of this technology reaches certain threshold, attacks like this will become quite common, unless we do something to stop it. A recent Gartner report says that by 2016, fifty percent of the mobile apps will be using HTML5-based technologies.
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Lashing out at your spouse? Check your blood sugar
I have seen children come into a restaurant cranky & crying, and after eating become smiling & happy.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 14-Apr-2014
Contact: Brad Bushman
Ohio State University
Lashing out at your spouse? Check your blood sugar
Lower levels of blood sugar may make married people angrier at their spouses and even more likely to lash out aggressively, new research reveals.
In a 21-day study, researchers found that levels of blood glucose in married people, measured each night, predicted how angry they would be with their spouse that evening.
At the end of the 21 days, people who had generally lower levels of glucose were willing to blast their spouses with unpleasant noises at a higher volume and for a longer time than those who had higher glucose levels.
The study shows how one simple, often overlooked factor – hunger caused by low levels of blood glucose - may play a role in marital arguments, confrontations and possibly even some domestic violence, said Brad Bushman, lead author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University.
Blood glucose levels can be brought up most quickly by eating carbohydrates or sugary foods.
"People can relate to this idea that when they get hungry, they get cranky," Bushman said.
It even has a slang term: "hangry" (hungry + angry).
"We found that being hangry can affect our behavior in a bad way, even in our most intimate relationships," he said.
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"Even those who reported they had good relationships with their spouses were more likely to express anger if their blood glucose levels were lower."
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Why does low blood sugar make people more prone to anger and aggression?
Bushman said that glucose is fuel for the brain. The self-control needed to deal with anger and aggressive impulses takes energy, and that energy is provided in part by glucose.
"Even though the brain is only 2 percent of our body weight, it consumes about 20 percent of our calories. It is a very demanding organ when it comes to energy," he said.
"It's simple advice but it works: Before you have a difficult conversation with your spouse, make sure you're not hungry."
Lower salt intake likely to have had key role in plummeting cardiovascular disease deaths
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/bmj-lsi041014.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 14-Apr-2014
Contact: Stephanie Burns
BMJ-British Medical Journal
Lower salt intake likely to have had key role in plummeting cardiovascular disease deaths in past decade
Average salt intake fell by 15 percent in 2003-11 in England; heart disease and stroke deaths fell by around 40 percent
The 15% fall in dietary salt intake over the past decade in England is likely to have had a key role in the 40% drop in deaths from heart disease and stroke over the same period, concludes research published in the online journal BMJ Open.
But average intake across the nation is still far too high, warn the authors. And much greater effort is needed to curb the salt content of the foods we eat, they insist.
Dietary salt is known to increase blood pressure, which is itself a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 14-Apr-2014
Contact: Stephanie Burns
BMJ-British Medical Journal
Lower salt intake likely to have had key role in plummeting cardiovascular disease deaths in past decade
Average salt intake fell by 15 percent in 2003-11 in England; heart disease and stroke deaths fell by around 40 percent
The 15% fall in dietary salt intake over the past decade in England is likely to have had a key role in the 40% drop in deaths from heart disease and stroke over the same period, concludes research published in the online journal BMJ Open.
But average intake across the nation is still far too high, warn the authors. And much greater effort is needed to curb the salt content of the foods we eat, they insist.
Dietary salt is known to increase blood pressure, which is itself a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.
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UT Dallas study: Youth who fail to envision future commit more crimes
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 14-Apr-2014
Contact: Brittany Hoover
University of Texas at Dallas
UT Dallas study: Youth who fail to envision future commit more crimes
In a UT Dallas study involving serious youth offenders, the answer to one open-ended question predicted the teenagers' offending patterns for the next seven years: "How long do you think you'll live?"
According to the study, having little hope for the future encourages offending over time.
Author Dr. Alex Piquero said the study found those who don't view a very long life ahead of them offend at very high rates and commit more serious offenses, while those who believe they're going to die much later in life offend much less.
"In a lot of distressed communities and for a lot of offenders, they don't see a future," said Piquero, Ashbel Smith Professor of criminology at UT Dallas. "They think, 'Why do I have to go to school? I'm not going to make it past 21.' And in many of our interviews with these kids, they basically said, 'I'm not going to make it until next week, so why would I even care?'"
The youths' perceptions about how long they would live also impacted how they interpreted the consequences of offending, according to the study.
Teens who anticipated early death were more likely to focus on "the here and the now," Piquero said. They're impulsive; they don't think about the risks of their behavior.
The paper, published online in Justice Quarterly on March 27, used data from a seven-year study of serious youth offenders to examine what has been a relatively uncharted area of empirical research.
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"How do we get them to think about a long future?" Piquero asked. "We have to tell them there are rewards for educational and employment investments down the road. The rewards will be fruitful. They'll take some hard work, and they'll take some time, but you can attain those kinds of things."
people of color live in neighborhoods with more air pollution than whites
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 15-Apr-2014
Contact: Rhonda Zurn
University of Minnesota
Groundbreaking nationwide study finds that people of color live in neighborhoods with more air pollution than whites
Gap results in an estimated 7,000 deaths each year among people of color from heart disease alone
A first-of-its-kind study by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that on average nationally, people of color are exposed to 38 percent higher levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) outdoor air pollution compared to white people.
Nitrogen dioxide comes from sources like vehicle exhaust and power plants. Breathing NO2 is linked to asthma symptoms and heart disease.
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The health impacts from the difference in levels between whites and nonwhites found in the study are substantial. For example, researchers estimate that if nonwhites breathed the lower NO2 levels experienced by whites, it would prevent 7,000 deaths from heart disease alone among nonwhites each year.
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The researchers found that in most areas, lower-income nonwhites are more exposed than higher-income whites, and on average, race matters more than income in explaining differences in NO2 exposure. They also found that New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois had the largest exposure gaps between whites and nonwhites, irrespective of income.
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New Method of Screening Children for Autism Spectrum Disorders Works at 9 Months Old
http://www.childrensnational.org/pressroom/NewsReleases/new-method-of-screening-children-for-autism-works-at-nine-months.aspx
April 14, 2014
Researchers, including a team from Children’s National Health System, have identified head circumference and head tilting reflex as two reliable biomarkers in the identification of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in children that are between 9 and 12 months of age.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ASD is identifiable as early as two years old, although most children are not identified until after the age of four. While a number of studies have reported that parents of children with ASD notice developmental problems in children before their first birthday, there has yet to be a screening tool to identify those children.
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“As with all developmental delays, especially ASD, the sooner we can identify those children who are at risk, the sooner we can intervene and provide appropriate treatment. In other words, the sooner we identify these delays, the better the outcome for those affected.”
April 14, 2014
Researchers, including a team from Children’s National Health System, have identified head circumference and head tilting reflex as two reliable biomarkers in the identification of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in children that are between 9 and 12 months of age.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ASD is identifiable as early as two years old, although most children are not identified until after the age of four. While a number of studies have reported that parents of children with ASD notice developmental problems in children before their first birthday, there has yet to be a screening tool to identify those children.
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“As with all developmental delays, especially ASD, the sooner we can identify those children who are at risk, the sooner we can intervene and provide appropriate treatment. In other words, the sooner we identify these delays, the better the outcome for those affected.”
Charitable donation discrepancies: Why are some countries more generous than others?
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 15-Apr-2014
Contact: Mary-Ann Twist
University of Chicago Press Journals
Charitable donation discrepancies: Why are some countries more generous than others?
When it comes to charitable giving, some countries open their collective wallets more than others. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, people who live in countries that promote equality in power and wealth are more likely to donate money than those who live in societies that expect and accept inequality.
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Across several studies, the authors looked at the extent to which a country's overall power distance—the extent to which a society expects and accepts inequality in power or wealth—impacts prosocial behaviors like donating money, volunteering time, or helping a stranger.
Their findings indicated that people in countries with higher levels of inequality feel less responsibility for helping others. Examining the issue even further, the authors asked study participants to donate to a cause for which the need was uncontrollable (providing food after a natural disaster) versus controllable (offering nutrition and health education for obese and sedentary individuals).
When the need was uncontrollable, power distance did not have a negative effect on charitable behavior. Also, the authors noted that when individuals are focused on communal relationships, they saw a genuine concern for others and a greater sense of responsibility to offer help.
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"It's not always the case that individuals in societies with inequality are less charitable. Rather, there are some conditions in which people feel less responsibility to offer aid due to the acceptance of inequality and are therefore less likely to engage in charitable behavior." the authors conclude.
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Study examines vitamin D deficiency and cognition relationship
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/wfbm-sev041514.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 15-Apr-2014
Contact: Bonnie Davis
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
Study examines vitamin D deficiency and cognition relationship
WINSTON-SALEM – April 15, 2014 – Vitamin D deficiency and cognitive impairment are common in older adults, but there isn't a lot of conclusive research into whether there's a relationship between the two.
A new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center published online ahead of print this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society enhances the existing literature on the subject.
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"With just the baseline observational data, you can't conclude that low vitamin D causes cognitive decline. When we looked four years down the road, low vitamin D was associated with worse cognitive performance on one of the two cognitive tests used," Wilson said. "It is interesting that there is this association and ultimately the next question is whether or not supplementing vitamin D would improve cognitive function over time."
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 15-Apr-2014
Contact: Bonnie Davis
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
Study examines vitamin D deficiency and cognition relationship
WINSTON-SALEM – April 15, 2014 – Vitamin D deficiency and cognitive impairment are common in older adults, but there isn't a lot of conclusive research into whether there's a relationship between the two.
A new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center published online ahead of print this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society enhances the existing literature on the subject.
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"With just the baseline observational data, you can't conclude that low vitamin D causes cognitive decline. When we looked four years down the road, low vitamin D was associated with worse cognitive performance on one of the two cognitive tests used," Wilson said. "It is interesting that there is this association and ultimately the next question is whether or not supplementing vitamin D would improve cognitive function over time."
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Cultivating happiness often misunderstood
Of course we would like to be "happy", but that is not the only goal for most people.http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/giving-and-happiness-041414.html
Stanford Report, April 14, 2014
The paradox of happiness is that chasing it may actually make us less happy, a Stanford researcher says.
So how does one find happiness? Effective ways exist, according to new research.
One path to happiness is through concrete, specific goals of benevolence – like making someone smile or increasing recycling – instead of following similar but more abstract goals – like making someone happy or saving the environment.
The reason is that when you pursue concretely framed goals, your expectations of success are more likely to be met in reality. On the other hand, broad and abstract goals may bring about happiness' dark side – unrealistic expectations.
Those are the conclusions of a study recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by Jennifer Aaker, a social psychologist and the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Co-authors are Melanie Rudd, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Houston, and Michael Norton, an associate professor of business at Harvard University. Rudd, who studied under Aaker at Stanford as a doctoral student, was the lead author on the study.
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Aaker said, "Although the desire for personal happiness may be clear, the path to achieving it is indefinite. One reason for this hazy route to happiness is that although people often think they know what leads to happiness, their predictions about what will make them happy are often inaccurate."
One underappreciated way to increase one's own happiness is to focus on elevating the happiness of others.
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when people pursue abstract prosocial goals and expect their relentless giving to result in tremendous and rapid change for the better – and it fails to materialize – they can suffer from "helper burnout," which can negatively impact happiness.
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Real-time audio of corporal punishment shows kids misbehave within 10 minutes of spanking
http://blog.smu.edu/research/2014/04/15/real-time-audio-of-corporal-punishment-shows-kids-misbehave-within-10-minutes-of-spanking/
A new study based on real-time audio recordings of parents practicing corporal punishment discovered that spanking was far more common than parents admit, that children were hit for trivial misdeeds and that children then misbehaved within 10 minutes of being punished.
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“From the audio, we heard parents hitting their children for the most extraordinarily mundane offenses, typically violations of social conventions,” Holden said. “Also, corporal punishment wasn’t being used as a last resort. On average, parents hit or spanked just half a minute after the conflict began.”
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In 90 percent of the incidents, noncompliance was the immediate cause, such as sucking fingers, eating improperly, getting out of a chair, and going outside without permission. In 49 percent of the incidents, the parent sounded angry prior to spanking or hitting. On average, less than 30 seconds elapsed from the time when parents initiated nonviolent discipline to when they used corporal punishment. In 30 of the 41 incidents, the children misbehaved again within 10 minutes of being hit or spanked. The youngest child hit was 7 months old. One mother hit her child 11 times in a row.
Most remarkably, the researchers noted an unusual finding: The rate of corporal punishment exceeded estimates in other studies, which relied on parents self-reporting. Those studies found that American parents of a 2-year-old typically report they spank or slap about 18 times a year.
“The average rate we observed using the real-time audio equates to an alarming 18 times a week,” said Holden, a professor in the SMU Department of Psychology who has carried out extensive research on spanking.
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“Although spanking advocates may acknowledge these incidents as inappropriate use of corporal punishment, evidence indicates that mothers who report their child gets spanked are also more likely to report physical abuse of that child,” the authors noted.
tags: child abuse
A new study based on real-time audio recordings of parents practicing corporal punishment discovered that spanking was far more common than parents admit, that children were hit for trivial misdeeds and that children then misbehaved within 10 minutes of being punished.
-----
“From the audio, we heard parents hitting their children for the most extraordinarily mundane offenses, typically violations of social conventions,” Holden said. “Also, corporal punishment wasn’t being used as a last resort. On average, parents hit or spanked just half a minute after the conflict began.”
-----
In 90 percent of the incidents, noncompliance was the immediate cause, such as sucking fingers, eating improperly, getting out of a chair, and going outside without permission. In 49 percent of the incidents, the parent sounded angry prior to spanking or hitting. On average, less than 30 seconds elapsed from the time when parents initiated nonviolent discipline to when they used corporal punishment. In 30 of the 41 incidents, the children misbehaved again within 10 minutes of being hit or spanked. The youngest child hit was 7 months old. One mother hit her child 11 times in a row.
Most remarkably, the researchers noted an unusual finding: The rate of corporal punishment exceeded estimates in other studies, which relied on parents self-reporting. Those studies found that American parents of a 2-year-old typically report they spank or slap about 18 times a year.
“The average rate we observed using the real-time audio equates to an alarming 18 times a week,” said Holden, a professor in the SMU Department of Psychology who has carried out extensive research on spanking.
-----
“Although spanking advocates may acknowledge these incidents as inappropriate use of corporal punishment, evidence indicates that mothers who report their child gets spanked are also more likely to report physical abuse of that child,” the authors noted.
tags: child abuse
The Single Mother, Child Poverty Myth
The truth is, many of the men available for marriage to poor women would just make things worse for the family.http://www.demos.org/blog/4/14/14/single-mother-child-poverty-myth
Posted by Matt Bruenig on April 14, 2014
I see it often claimed that the high rate of child poverty in the US is a function of family composition.
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One big problem with this claim is that family composition in the US is not that much different from family compositions in the famed low-poverty social democracies of Northern Europe, but they don't have anywhere near the rates of child poverty we have.
A number of studies have tested this family composition theory using cross-country income data and found, again and again, that family composition differences account for very little of the child poverty differences between the US and other countries.
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Why the poverty rates differ so much is not mysterious: it's almost entirely about transfers (i.e. welfare programs). You can see this by looking at the poverty rate of children in single parent homes prior to taxes and transfers compared to the same poverty rate after taxes and transfers:
High poverty rates for children in single mother families is a policy choice. In the US, we decide in favor of it. In the Nordic social democracies, they decide against it.
Of course, it's not just children in single mother households that have elevated poverty rates in the US. The US has massively higher child poverty rates across all family types:
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We plunge more than 1 in 5 of our nation's children into poverty because we choose to. It would be easy to dramatically cut that figure, but we'd rather not.
How to get rich: steal other people's land, kill them if they protest
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/15/surge-deaths-environmental-activists-global-witness-report
Surge in deaths of environmental activists over past decade
Nina Lakhani
theguardian.com, Tuesday 15 April 2014
The killing of activists protecting land rights and the environment has surged over the past decade, with nearly three times as many deaths in 2012 than 10 years previously, a new report has found.
Deadly Environment, an investigation by London-based Global Witness documents 147 recorded deaths in 2012, compared to 51 in 2002. Between 2002 and 2013, at least 908 activists were killed in 35 countries – with only 10 convictions. The death rate has risen in the past four years to an average of two activists a week, according to the report, which also documents 17 forced disappearances, all of whom are presumed dead.
Deaths in 2013 are likely to be higher than the 95 documented to date, the environmental rights organisation warned, with under-reporting and difficulties verifying killings in isolated areas in a number of African and Asian nations.
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"Many of those facing threats are ordinary people opposing land grabs, mining operations and the industrial timber trade, often forced from their homes and severely threatened by environmental devastation," the report said. Others have been killed for protests over hydroelectric dams, pollution and wildlife conservation.
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Oliver Courtney, senior campaigner at Global Witness, said: "There can be few starker or more obvious symptoms of the global environmental crisis than a dramatic upturn in killings of ordinary people defending rights to their environment and livelihoods from corporate and state abuse. Yet those responsible almost always get away with it, because governments are failing to protect their citizens and the international community is not paying enough attention to their plight."
The insatiable global appetite for gold, silver and other minerals is powering extractive industries in countries with weak institutions, and is linked to at least 150 deaths since 2002. This includes 46 extrajudicial killings of demonstrators around mining sites across Peru. There were also deaths linked to protests against contamination, waste disposal and conservation of coastlines and wildlife.
Indigenous communities are particularly hard hit. Several in Guatemala and Honduras told the Guardian that they were unaware their territory has been sold until machinery and security guards working for mining or hydroelectric companies appeared overnight. Their resistance efforts have been denigrated as anti-development and dozens of community leaders face dubious criminal and civil charges.
Surge in deaths of environmental activists over past decade
Nina Lakhani
theguardian.com, Tuesday 15 April 2014
The killing of activists protecting land rights and the environment has surged over the past decade, with nearly three times as many deaths in 2012 than 10 years previously, a new report has found.
Deadly Environment, an investigation by London-based Global Witness documents 147 recorded deaths in 2012, compared to 51 in 2002. Between 2002 and 2013, at least 908 activists were killed in 35 countries – with only 10 convictions. The death rate has risen in the past four years to an average of two activists a week, according to the report, which also documents 17 forced disappearances, all of whom are presumed dead.
Deaths in 2013 are likely to be higher than the 95 documented to date, the environmental rights organisation warned, with under-reporting and difficulties verifying killings in isolated areas in a number of African and Asian nations.
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"Many of those facing threats are ordinary people opposing land grabs, mining operations and the industrial timber trade, often forced from their homes and severely threatened by environmental devastation," the report said. Others have been killed for protests over hydroelectric dams, pollution and wildlife conservation.
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Oliver Courtney, senior campaigner at Global Witness, said: "There can be few starker or more obvious symptoms of the global environmental crisis than a dramatic upturn in killings of ordinary people defending rights to their environment and livelihoods from corporate and state abuse. Yet those responsible almost always get away with it, because governments are failing to protect their citizens and the international community is not paying enough attention to their plight."
The insatiable global appetite for gold, silver and other minerals is powering extractive industries in countries with weak institutions, and is linked to at least 150 deaths since 2002. This includes 46 extrajudicial killings of demonstrators around mining sites across Peru. There were also deaths linked to protests against contamination, waste disposal and conservation of coastlines and wildlife.
Indigenous communities are particularly hard hit. Several in Guatemala and Honduras told the Guardian that they were unaware their territory has been sold until machinery and security guards working for mining or hydroelectric companies appeared overnight. Their resistance efforts have been denigrated as anti-development and dozens of community leaders face dubious criminal and civil charges.
China's air pollution leading to more erratic climate for US, say scientists
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/15/china-air-pollution-pacific-climate-us-national-academy-sciences
Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing theguardian.com
Tuesday 15 April 2014
China's air pollution could be intensifying storms over the Pacific Ocean and altering weather patterns in North America, according to scientists in the US. A team from Texas, California and Washington state has found that pollution from Asia, much of it arising in China, is leading to more intense cyclones, increased precipitation and more warm air in the mid-Pacific moving towards the north pole.
According to the team's findings, which were released on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, these changes could ultimately contribute to erratic weather in the US.
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Mid-latitude storms develop off Asia and they track across the Pacific, coming in to the west coast of the US," said Ellie Highwood, a climate physicist at the University of Reading. "The particles in this model are affecting how strong those storms are, how dense the clouds are, and how much rainfall comes out of those storms."
China is fighting to contain the environmental fallout from 30 years of unchecked growth. Of 74 Chinese cities monitored by the central government 71 failed to meet air quality standards, the environmental ministry said last month.
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Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing theguardian.com
Tuesday 15 April 2014
China's air pollution could be intensifying storms over the Pacific Ocean and altering weather patterns in North America, according to scientists in the US. A team from Texas, California and Washington state has found that pollution from Asia, much of it arising in China, is leading to more intense cyclones, increased precipitation and more warm air in the mid-Pacific moving towards the north pole.
According to the team's findings, which were released on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, these changes could ultimately contribute to erratic weather in the US.
-----
Mid-latitude storms develop off Asia and they track across the Pacific, coming in to the west coast of the US," said Ellie Highwood, a climate physicist at the University of Reading. "The particles in this model are affecting how strong those storms are, how dense the clouds are, and how much rainfall comes out of those storms."
China is fighting to contain the environmental fallout from 30 years of unchecked growth. Of 74 Chinese cities monitored by the central government 71 failed to meet air quality standards, the environmental ministry said last month.
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Study finds signs of brain changes in pot smokers
http://healthyliving.msn.com/health-wellness/study-finds-signs-of-brain-changes-in-pot-smokers
By MALCOLM RITTERAP
A small study of casual marijuana smokers has turned up evidence of changes in the brain, a possible sign of trouble ahead, researchers say. The young adults who volunteered for the study were not dependent on pot, nor did they show any marijuana-related problems.
"What we think we are seeing here is a very early indication of what becomes a problem later on with prolonged use," things like lack of focus and impaired judgment, said Dr. Hans Breiter, a study author.
Longer-term studies will be needed to see if such brain changes cause any symptoms over time, said Breiter, of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital.
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Murat Yucel of Monash University in Australia, who has studied the brains of marijuana users but didn't participate in the new study, said in an email that the new results suggest "the effects of marijuana can occur much earlier than previously thought." Some of the effect may depend on a person's age when marijuana use starts, he said.
Another brain researcher, Krista Lisdahl of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said her own work has found similar results. "I think the clear message is we see brain alterations before you develop dependence," she said.
By MALCOLM RITTERAP
A small study of casual marijuana smokers has turned up evidence of changes in the brain, a possible sign of trouble ahead, researchers say. The young adults who volunteered for the study were not dependent on pot, nor did they show any marijuana-related problems.
"What we think we are seeing here is a very early indication of what becomes a problem later on with prolonged use," things like lack of focus and impaired judgment, said Dr. Hans Breiter, a study author.
Longer-term studies will be needed to see if such brain changes cause any symptoms over time, said Breiter, of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital.
-----
Murat Yucel of Monash University in Australia, who has studied the brains of marijuana users but didn't participate in the new study, said in an email that the new results suggest "the effects of marijuana can occur much earlier than previously thought." Some of the effect may depend on a person's age when marijuana use starts, he said.
Another brain researcher, Krista Lisdahl of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said her own work has found similar results. "I think the clear message is we see brain alterations before you develop dependence," she said.
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