The U.S. Department of Education has identified 16 "key components" in state bullying legislation, including a statement of scope, listing of enumerated groups, process of district policy review, definitions and reporting guidelines. Minnesota ranks last in the country with its state bullying law only covering two of the 16 components, according to an Education Department analysis of state bullying laws released in December. Nebraska ranks second-to-last by covering four of the 16 components.

Statement of scope, one of the most common components of state bullying laws, establishes where legislation applies and what conditions must exist for schools to have authority over student conduct.

According to the Education Department report, Minnesota is one of just three states -- alongside Wisconsin and Arizona -- that prohibits bullying but doesn't define that behavior. The state also doesn't provide for its districts a model bullying policy, and at a mere 37 words, its anti-bullying law is the shortest one in the country:

Each school board shall adopt a written policy prohibiting intimidation and bullying of any student. The policy shall address intimidation and bullying in all forms, including, but not limited to, electronic forms and forms involving Internet use.

Consistent with previously published research, parent BMI change was the only significant predictor of child’s weight loss.

Still allowing plastic in your kitchen? In your food? In your children's toys?

Children and adolescents participating in moderate to vigorous physical activity have a lower cardiometabolic risk profile. [Physical activity correlated with better waist circumference, blood pressure, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, and insulin in study subjects] regardless of the amount of time they spend sedentary.
[Based on the findings,] children should be encouraged to increase their participation in physical activity] rather than decrease the amount of time they spend sedentary, "as this appears more important in relation to cardiometabolic health."
[In pooled data from 14 studies (1998-2009) connected to the International Children's Accelerometry Database.] the time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity has a weak to moderate association with the amount of time children spend sedentary, and this had suggested that both variables might be independently associated with cardiometabolic risk.
[A]ctivities ingrained early in life set the stage for what individuals do in their later and older years. "We're living in an age right now where it's so easy to do no physical activity at all...kids can basically go through an entirely normal childhood existence where, unless they're forced or choose to play sports, they don't have to do anything. This study shows that the more activity that you do, even if it's outside the context of typical exercise, really does make a difference."
In the ICAD analysis, 20,871 children and adolescents from Australia, Brazil, Europe, and the US had [physical-activity levels] monitored for an average of 5.2 days using the accelerometer, and the mean daily time spent engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity was 30 minutes. The mean daily time spent sedentary was 354 minutes.
Kids in the [most active] tertile spent more than 35 minutes per day engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity, whereas those in the bottom tertile were moderately or vigorously active just 18 minutes per day. The mean difference in waist circumference between the most active and least active kids with the most sedentary time was 5.6 cm [and 3.6 cm] in those with less sedentary time. Similarly, the difference in systolic blood pressure between the most active and least active kids with the most sedentary time was 0.7 mm Hg[, while there was a 2.6-mm-Hg difference] between the most active and least active kids who reported less sedentary time. The variations in HDL cholesterol, insulin, and triglyceride levels were similar when analyzed by physical-activity levels and sedentary time.
Overall, the results showed that higher levels of physical activity were associated with better cardiometabolic risk factors across the tertiles of sedentary time. In contrast, sedentary time was not associated with any of metabolic outcomes independent of the time engaged in moderate and vigorous activities. The researchers note that they did not qualify what specific activities the children were engaged in while being sedentary. For this reason, reducing television viewing time is still considered an important goal of parents and public-health policy because TV watching is also associated with other unhealthy behaviors, such as snacking and drinking soda.

Awareness Day Social Media February 2012

In general, the risk of diabetes for a sibling of a patient with type 2 diabetes is about the same as that in the general population. However, there are some exceptions to this general statement. If the patient developed diabetes despite being lean, then the sibling’s risk is about twice the general population risk. Or, if the patient has a parent with type 2 diabetes, the sibling’s risk is almost three times the general population risk. If both parents have type 2 diabetes, the sibling has a fourfold risk, or nearly a 50% chance of developing diabetes.
The genetics of type 2 diabetes is complex. While type 2 diabetes may have a strong genetic basis in some patients (something less than a third of them), the development of diabetes in most patients is dependent upon the effects of environmental and behavioral factors (obesity and sedentary lifestyle) on an underlying susceptibility that is poorly understood....
Joslin researchers and others have identified about six genes that produce MODY[—maturity-onset diabetes of the young, a rarer form of type 2—but they only account for the diabetes in about one-third of affected] families....Similar patterns can be found in studies of families with the more common form of type 2 diabetes, only the age of onset differs.
The susceptibility to certain diabetes complications also seems to be linked in some ways with genetics. For patients with susceptibility genes for complications, good blood glucose control is still an important mitigating factor.

Dr. Money forced the twins to rehearse sexual acts involving "thrusting movements" with David playing the bottom role. As a child, David Reimer painfully recalled having to get "down on all fours" with his brother, Brian Reimer, "up behind his butt" with "his crotch against" his "buttocks". In another sexual position, Dr. Money forced David to have his "legs spread" with Brian on top. Dr. Money also forced the children to take their "clothes off" and engage in "genital inspections". On at "least one occasion", Dr. Money took a "photograph" of the two children doing these activities. Dr. Money's rationale for these various treatments was his belief that "childhood 'sexual rehearsal play'" was important for a "healthy adult gender identity".
For several years, Money reported on Reimer's progress as the "John/Joan case", describing apparently successful female gender development, and using this case to support the feasibility of sex reassignment and surgical reconstruction even in non-intersex cases. Money wrote: "The child's behavior is so clearly that of an active little girl and so different from the boyish ways of her twin brother." Notes by a former student at Money's lab state that during the followup visits, which occurred only once a year, Reimer's parents routinely lied to lab staff about the success of the procedure. The twin brother, Brian, later proved to be schizophrenic.
Reimer had experienced the visits to Baltimore as traumatic rather than therapeutic, and when Dr. Money started pressuring the family to bring him in for surgery during which a vagina would be constructed, the family discontinued the follow-up visits. From 22 months into his teenaged years Reimer urinated through a hole surgeons had placed in the abdomen. Estrogen was given during adolescence to induce breast development. Having no contact with the family once the visits were discontinued, John Money published nothing further about the case to suggest that the reassignment had not been successful.
Reimer's account, written with John Colapinto two decades later, described how - contrary to Money's reports - when living as Brenda, Reimer did not identify as a girl. He was ostracized and bullied by peers, and neither frilly dresses (which he was forced to wear during frigid Winnipeg winters) nor female hormones made him feel female. By the age of 13, Reimer was experiencing suicidal depression, and told his parents he would commit suicide if they made him see John Money again. In 1980, Reimer's parents told him the truth about his gender reassignment, following advice from Reimer's endocrinologist and psychiatrist. At 14, Reimer decided to assume a male gender identity, calling himself David.

David Reimer was born an identical (non-intersex) twin boy in 1965. At the age of 8 months, David and his brother each had a minor medical problem involving his penis, and a doctor decided to treat the problem with circumcision. The doctor botched the circumcision on David, using an inappropriate method and accidentally burning off virtually all of David’s penis. At the advice of psychologist John Money at Johns Hopkins University, David’s parents agreed to have him “sex reassigned” and made into a girl via surgical, hormonal, and psychological treatments—i.e., via the system Money advocated for intersex children.

For many years, John Money claimed that David (known in the interim as “Brenda”) turned out to be a “real” girl with a female gender identity. Money used this case to bolster his approach to intersex —the approach that is still used throughout much of the U.S. and developed world—one that relies on the assumption that gender identity is all about nurture (upbringing), not nature (inborn traits), and that gender assignment is the key to treating all children with atypical sex anatomies.

As it turns out, Money was lying. He knew Brenda was never happy as a girl, and he knew that as soon as David found out what happened to him, David reassumed the social identity of a boy.

The case of David Reimer has been used by the proponents of the “gender is inborn” (nature) theory as proof that they are right. We like to point out that what the story of David Reimer teaches us most clearly is how much people are harmed by being lied to and treated in inhumane ways. We don’t think we can ever predict, with absolute certainty, what gender identity a person will grow up to have. What we can predict with a good degree of certainty is that children who are treated with shame, secrecy, and lies will suffer at the hands of medical providers who may think they have the best of intentions and the best of theories.

Anderson and colleagues suggest that this association between early childhood experiences and teen obesity has origins in the brain. The limbic system in the brain controls responses to stress as well as the sleep/wake cycle, hunger and thirst, and a variety of metabolic processes, mostly through the regulation of hormones.
“Sensitive parenting increases the likelihood that a child will have a secure pattern of attachment and develop a healthy response to stress,” Anderson said. “A well-regulated stress response could in turn influence how well children sleep and whether they eat in response to emotional distress – just two factors that affect the likelihood for obesity.”
Obesity may be one manifestation of dysregulation in the functioning of the stress response system. Parents help children develop a healthy response to stress by protecting children from extreme levels of stress, responding supportively and consistently to normal levels of stress, and modeling behavioral responses to stress.
“The evidence here is supportive of the association between a poor-quality maternal-child relationship and an increased chance for adolescent obesity,” Anderson said. “Interventions are effective in increasing maternal sensitivity and enhancing young children’s ability to regulate their emotions, but the effect of these interventions on children’s obesity risk is not known, and we think it would be worth investigating.”

The boys had been taking awhile, so their father eventually came in. He saw the game, and the controller, and started in on the youngest about how he needs to pick something different. Something more manly. Something with guns and fighting, and certainly not a purple controller. He tried to convince him to get the new Zombie game "Dead Island" and the little boy just stood there repeating, "Dad, this is what I want, OK?" Eventually it turned into a full-blown argument complete with Dad threatening to whoop his son if he didn't choose different items.

That's when big brother stepped in. He said to his dad, "It's my money, it's my gift to him. If it's what he wants, I'm getting it for him, and if you're going to hit anyone for it, it's going to be me." Dad just gave his oldest son a strong stern stare-down, and then left the store. Little brother was crying quietly. I walked over and ruffled his hair (yes, this happened all in front of me). I said, "I'm a girl, and I like the color blue, and I like shooting games. There's nothing wrong with what you like. Even if it's different than what people think you should." I smiled, he smiled back (my heart melted!). Big brother then leaned down, kissed little brother on the head, and said, "Don't worry, dude."

Mental Health & Substance Abuse
Comorbidity/Co-occurring Disorders/ Dual Diagnosis

SAMHSA's Office of Applied Studies provides national estimates on mental health problems. As of 2001, state-level estimates on mental health measures are available. Such data includes maps showing the prevalence ranks by States. The latest available national data on serious mental problems are for 2006 and the latest State level data are for 2005. See Mental Health Variables by State, 2005.

Mental health reports:

* All mental health reports from OAS
* Latest national data on mental health problems
* State level mental health data
* Mental health treatment

Special mental health topics:

* Children's mental health
* Co-occurring disorders
* Depression
* Education & mental health
* Employment & mental health
* Homeless
* Mental health in Hurricane Katrina/Rita areas
* Mental health in State treatment planning areas
* Race/ethnicity, education & employment and mental health
* Serious psychological distress
* Suicide
* Unmet mental health treatment need
* Violence
* Youth and mental health issues (highlights)



Mental health data tables:

* OAS data tables on mental health topics
* State treatment planning area mental health data tables
* National Outcome Measures (NOMs) for co-occurring disorders

Public use data files:

* Analyzing mental health data in SAMHSA's OAS data sets

Methodology:

* Methods used for mental health measures in OAS reports

Other resources:

* SAMHSA's Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
* Mental health statistics from SAMHSA's CMHS
* SAMHSA's National Clearinghouse on Mental health information (NMHIC)
* SAMHSA's Mental Health Services Locator
* Mental health objectives in Healthy People 2010
* Hurricane Katrina/Rita areas

Matko stood silent with 2 signs: "Put abused kids first" and "Don't be fooled, they all knew. [E]veryone must go." Fans poured expletives and beer on him, and kicked his signs to the ground and stomped them. "Abuse flew at Matko from young and old, students and alumni, men and women. No one intervened. No one spoke out." | A PSU student named Emily wrote: "Truth is, if not for Paterno's philanthropy and moral code (until his fatal lapse of judgment), I and thousands of others wouldn't be here right now....Paterno made a huge mistake, but that doesn't mean he's not a good man." | Bullshit. Emily's words ring as false as the apologists for the Vatican, Wall Street, the military command at Abu Ghraib...The moral code that Emily praises absolutely cannot be the same moral code that covers up child rape...Emily's gratitude...can't justify defending Paterno. To do so, makes you complicit in the crimes and the cover-up. It also ensures that such a thing could happen again.

Mollison’s new book, “Where Children Sleep,” had its origins in a project...for a children’s charity several years ago. As he considered how to represent needy children around the world, he wanted to avoid the common devices: pleading eyes, toothless smiles. When he visualized his own childhood, he realized that his bedroom said a lot about what sort of life he led. So he set out to find others.
His subjects came from Boy Scout troops and sumo wrestling clubs. They were introduced through friends of friends. Mr. Mollison posed his young subjects—more than 200 of them—in front of blank white backgrounds for their portraits, leaving their bedrooms to do the talking. More than 50 pairings are in the book, which has a glow-in-the-dark cover (a nod to the glow-in-the-dark stars on so many childhood ceilings).
As much as the project is about the quirkiness of childhood, it is, more strikingly, a commentary on class and on poverty. But the diversity also provides a sense of togetherness.

“Mommy, Kurt and Blaine are boyfriends.” <br />
“Yes, they are,” I affirm. <br />
“They don’t like kissing girls. They just kiss boys.” <br />
“That’s true.” <br />
“Mommy, they are just like me.”

A corpus of nearly 150,000 maternal word-tokens used by 53 low-income mothers in 263 mother-child conversations in 5 settings (e.g., play, mealtime, and book readings) was studied. Ninety-nine percent of maternal lexical input consisted of the 3,000 most frequent words. Children's vocabulary performance in kindergarten and later in 2nd grade related more to the occurrence of sophisticated lexical items than to quantity of lexical input overall. Density of sophisticated words heard and the density with which such words were embedded in helpful or instructive interactions, at age 5 at home, independently predicted over a third of the variance in children's vocabulary performance in both kindergarten and 2nd grade. These two variables, with controls for maternal education, child nonverbal IQ, and amount of child's talk produced during the interactive settings, at age 5, predicted 50% of the variance in children's 2nd-grade vocabulary.

Hart and Risley’s Three Key Findings:<br />
<br />
1. The variation in children’s IQs and language abilities is relative to the amount parents speak to their children.<br />
<br />
2. Children’s academic successes at ages nine and ten are attributable to the amount of talk they hear from birth to age three.<br />
<br />
3. Parents of advanced children talk significantly more to their children than parents of children who are not as advanced.<br />
<br />
* “With few exceptions, the more parents talked to their children, the faster the children’s vocabularies were growing and the higher the children’s IQ test scores at age three and later.”<br />
* “The data revealed that the most important aspect of children’s language experience is its amount.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
* “Differences in the amount of cumulative experience children had ... were strongly linked to differences at age three in children’s rates of vocabulary growth, vocabulary use, and general accomplishments and strongly linked to differences in school performance at age nine.”

A brief narrative description of the journal article, document, or resource. Notes that vocabulary has long been recognized as a strong determinant of reading success. Discusses how children's vocabulary knowledge is largely determined by informal factors, such as parental interaction and other sources, such as the television. Addresses individual differences in vocabulary acquisition; amount of vocabulary needed for successful learning; the predictable sequence of vocabulary acquisition; the need for direct instruction for vocabulary growth; and methods of promoting vocabulary knowledge. (PM)

Talking and listening to young children develops [social and literacy skills; reading aloud is a good way to practise.]. <br />
Babies love [parents' voices and reading aloud can calm during times of distress or unease. [Their favourite book or character can soothe your child and help build bonds.] <br />
Books [help children learn to express] thoughts and emotions. <br />
Stories [help overcome adult inhibitions about talking and listening to children, and provide topics.]<br />
Reading together gives babies and young children the chance to respond. A gurgle in anticipation of a favourite story ending, or a smile of enjoyment, shows [that even the youngest children like to communicate.]. <br />
Characters, words and sounds [in books can be talked about outside story] time. Books are an important source of new vocabulary....<br />
Reading aloud combines the benefits of talking, listening and storytelling...and helps to build the foundation for language development. <br />
[Most] brain development occurs in the first 3 years...

Read yourself! Set a good example by sharing your reading. Let your children see that you value books and keep them at home.<br />
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Keep books safe. Make your child their own special place to keep their books. Show them how to turn pages carefully.<br />
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Point out words all around you. Help your child to read the words around them: on food packets in the supermarket, on buses, in newspapers, in recipes.<br />
<br />
Visit your library – it’s free to join! All libraries have children’s sections. Many also have regular storytelling sessions.<br />
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Make time to read. Read a bedtime story with your child every night. Encourage them to share reading with grandparents, brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles.<br />
<br />
Keep in touch with school. Make sure your child swaps their home reading books regularly at school and try to make a regular time slot of about 10 minutes to hear them read.<br />
<br />
If English is not your family’s first language: You can buy dual language books. You can talk about books and stories in any language.

Children's test scores were lowest when poverty had persisted across the generations, and highest when material advantage was long-lasting. <br />
Parents' cognitive abilities and other childhood circumstances [correlate strongly to the gap between test scores of richer and poorer children. Nearly one-fifth of the gap suggested a 'direct' link between childhood cognitive abilities of parents and] of their children [even after controlling for a wide range of environmental factors and taking into account channels through which cognitive ability might operate, such as parents’] educational attainment, adult socio-economic position and attitudes to education....<br />
[A strong intergenerational correlation showed]between a] variety of other attitudes and behaviours, such as whether a parent reads to their child every day, and parental expectations for advanced education. The passing of such traits across generations [corresponds to the persistent disadvantage] children from poor backgrounds face...

Children living in wealthy households have far superior vocabularies and problem-solving skills than their poorer peers by the age of 5... <br />
The ground-breaking study, which assessed the abilities of 14,000 youngsters, found a gap in academic ability between children from different socio-economic backgrounds has already opened up by the time they are 3 years old. <br />
At the age of 5, youngsters with wealthier parents educated to degree level are on average 18 months ahead of their less well-off peers with their vocabulary. <br />
They are also 13 months ahead on problem-solving ability. The study found the gap in vocabulary ability widened between the ages of 3 and 5. <br />
Children whose parents were educated to a lower level also tend to perform more poorly and are less likely to catch up either before or after they start attending school.... <br />
[P]oor early communication skills will likely persist through the preschool period with little or no relative improvement.

Babies who are slow to develop their motor skills at 9 months are significantly more likely to be identified as behind in their cognitive development, and also likely to be less well behaved at age 5... <br />
London University's Institute of Education analysed the progress of 14,853 children, born in 2000 and 2001...The children's cognitive development was assessed at the age of 5 through a series of vocabulary, spatial reasoning and picture tests, and their results compared with those from separate assessments years earlier. <br />
The results at 5 were strongly linked to the babies' abilities in tests for gross motor development, such as crawling, and fine motor development, such as holding objects with their fingers, at 9 months. The researchers also found that children who are read to every day at 3 are likely to [flourish] in a wide range of subjects by the age of 5. <br />
The correlation [was] significant even after the researchers considered the impact of poverty on children's development.

Recent research commissioned by the educational charity, the Sutton Trust, has found that children growing up in the poorest families are almost a year behind middle-income families in their vocabulary levels by the time they start school.<br />
<br />
The research was based on 12,500 British five-year-olds in 2006 and 2007 in the Millennium Cohort Study. It found that just under half of children from the poorest families were read to daily at the age of three, compared with eight in ten from the richest families. This lead the researchers to conclude that good parenting and a supportive home environment were the most important factors leading to better test scores at the age of five.

1. Play lays the foundation for literacy. Through play children learn to make and practise new sounds. They try out new vocabulary...and exercise their imagination through storytelling. <br />
3. Play encourages adults to communicate with [children]. Adults support play by giving children the opportunity to [play, and by knowing when and whether] to intervene. <br />
7. Play gives adults the chance to learn how to play again. One of the most challenging parts of play is incorporating yourself in it. <br />
8. Play allows adults to learn their child’s body language. Knowing when you should incorporate yourself in your child’s play is key. <br />
9. Play teaches adults patience and understanding. If you do choose to join in your child’s play make sure that you do not try to take it over and force incorporation of your ultimate learning objectives into their play. Structured adult-led activities have their time and place but remember to allow for time for children to control and decide their own play.

[A child saying 'Give me that teddy!' communicates their wish but lacks an understanding of] appropriate language. A child's developing language skills are...inextricably linked to their personal, social and emotional development. <br />
In the early years setting, children must specifically:<br />
* [Develop] knowledge and understanding about how language works.<br />
* Develop a range and variety of vocabulary...<br />
* [Develop awareness of] audience—to whom they are speaking. ([Evidence suggests that by age 4, children learn] to adjust their speech according to different audiences).<br />
* Think about [appropriate language according to circumstances].<br />
* [Speak with confidence.] <br />
'Children will learn to understand and be aware of other points of view [by observing] strategies such as listening, turn-taking and initiating and sustaining a conversation gently and respectfully. They will increase their knowledge and use of such conventions, such as for asking, initiating, refusing and greeting...'

* The most avid reader reads in two days what the most reluctant reads in a year.<br />
* The amount that someone reads makes a difference not just to development of reading ability, but to the growth of vocabulary and general knowledge.What you know is directly related to the amount that you read. <br />
* Children with poor reading skills and habits are in danger of low educational attainment....<br />
Books are the source of most of the new words that children learn once they are in school. Of course, children learn new words from television and through conversation, but the research shows that the majority of new vocabulary comes from books. <br />
<br />
Research has also shown that children who read more have wider vocabularies. This is not just to do with social advantage or intellectual ability - research has found that the beneficial relationship between reading ‘volume’ (amount) and vocabulary is not affected by a child’s intellectual ability.

[Children in the poorest fifth of families are already nearly a year behind children from middle income families in vocabulary by age 5] according to research commissioned by the Sutton Trust... <br />
Good parenting and a supportive home environment emerge as the most important determinants of better test scores at age 5, accounting for half of the explained gap between low-income and middle-income children... <br />
[J]ust under half (45%) of children from the poorest fifth of families were read to daily at age 3, compared with 8 in 10 (78%) of children from the richest fifth of families[. N]early half (47%) of children from the poorest fifth of families were born to mothers aged under 25; just under two-thirds (65%) do not live with both biological parents by the time they are five...<br />
[G]ood parenting behaviour, such as reading daily to children or ensuring regular bedtimes, is associated with more advanced development at age 5 - whether children are from the poorest or richest households.

Part of the explanation can be traced to gender differences in the cognitive abilities of middle-school students. In late elementary school, females outperform males on several verbal skills tasks: verbal reasoning, verbal fluency, comprehension, and understanding logical relations (Hedges & Nowell, 1995). Males, on the other hand, outperform females on spatial skills tasks such as mental rotation, spatial perception, and spatial visualization (Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). Males also perform better on mathematical achievement tests than females. However, gender differences do not apply to all aspects of mathematical skill. Males and females do equally well in basic math knowledge, and girls actually have better computational skills. [Tests of] mathematical reasoning and geometry shows the greatest difference (Fennema, Sowder, & Carpenter, 1999). Males also display greater confidence in their math skills[:] a strong predictor of math performance (Casey, Nuttall, & Pezaris, 2001).

pedagogy ethnicity identity senstive issues censorship

there is work from a lot of other labs that suggests that as a function of growing up bilingual, babies are learning something more general.<br />
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FLATOW: So we should not try to teach them just one language. Having a bilingual family is an advantage.<br />
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Dr. WERKER: Well, I think that's what the work shows. And I don't think it's the case that if you are monolingual you should run out tomorrow and try to learn a new language so that you can grow - you know, so you can speak two languages to your child and give them the opportunity to grow up bilingual.<br />
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I think what the work shows is that if you - if in your home more than one languages is spoken, that that's something to be comfortable with, and it's an opportunity to provide your infant with both languages because there may be advantages that accrue.

LiveScience: Is there any reason to think these differences could affect other types of learning, beyond language?<br />
<br />
Werker: Well, yeah. I think Aggie Kovács and Jacques Mehler's work suggests it can lead to more flexibility in learning more generally. In learning one rule, and then learning a second rule. So that's really interesting.<br />
<br />
So I think there is evidence that growing up with two languages confers certain cognitive advantages. But I wouldn't go so far as to say you have to grow up bilingual to have those cognitive advantages. I think this is one natural route. And I think more generally what the work shows is that babies are just as prepared to learn two languages from birth as they are one, and that if parents speak two languages in the home they should be comfortable continuing to do so.

[Infants raised in homes where both Catalan and Spanish were spoken could discern different languages at four, six and eight months old,] whereas monolingual infants who also had the ability to discern those languages at four and six months lost this ability by the time they were eight months old.... <br />
The infants who were part of the study were shown silent videos of talking faces speaking English and French[; researchers] found that the bilingual-exposed babies were able to distinguish between French and English simply through facial clues. <br />
"These findings, together with our previous work on newborn infants, provide even stronger evidence that human infants are equally prepared to grow up bilingual as they are monolingual," said Werker, Canada Research Chair in Psychology and director of UBC's Infant Studies Centre. <br />
"The task of language separation is something they are prepared to do from birth -with bilinguals increasingly adept over time."

Children who have acquired a level of fluency in two languages have been reported to have higher levels of metalinguistic awareness, greater and earlier awareness of language structure, wider perspectives, and more social skills (Ben Zeev, 1977; Genesee, Tucker, & Lambert, 1975; Goodz, Legare, & Bilodeau, 1987; Ianco-Worrall, 1972). The acquisition of fluency in more than one language is accompanied by a greater awareness of the linguistic features of languages and the cultural ways in which the respective languages are used in various interactions (Thompson, 1999). This body of recent research supports the conclusion that children acquire language knowledge not only at the linguistic level, but at the metalinguistic knowledge level and level of metalinguistic knowledge verbalization as well.

By supporting their children’s wish to dress as gender-benders, parents may inadvertently put them at greater risk for taunting. When Harry, the Los Angeles boy whose father gave him a Barbie, was 2, he attended a dress-up birthday party for his sisters’ friend, in costume. One father called him “Little Liberace;” another compared him to an L.A. drag queen. The second-grade brother of CJ, star of the Raising My Rainbow blog, is teased. “The boys say, ‘Why does your brother like girls’ toys, that’s so gay,’ and run from him,” his mother said. <br />
Parents say their job is not to change their children, but to help them withstand cruel comments. A 2010 study by the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University that focused mainly on adolescents found strong correlations between positive family attitudes toward their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children and decreased risks of depression, substance abuse and suicide.

According to these data, prevalence of pica was estimated at 2.44%. This value may seem an underestimation when compared to the values reported in the medical literature, which range from 9 to 25%. Additionally, among the 108 hospitalized infant patients, none fulfilled DSM IV criteria, which is surprising, as pica is relatively common in childhood.

65 years old or older. Aging can weaken the heart muscle. Older people also may have had diseases for many years that caused heart failure. Heart failure is the most common reason for hospital visits among people on Medicare. <br />
African Americans are more likely than people of other races to have heart failure. They’re also more likely to have symptoms at a younger age, have more hospital visits due to heart failure, and die from heart failure. <br />
Excess weight puts strain on the heart. Being overweight also increases your risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. These diseases can lead to heart failure. <br />
Additionally, men have a higher rate of heart failure than women. <br />
Children who have congenital heart defects also can develop heart failure. These defects occur if the heart, heart valves, or blood vessels near the heart don’t form correctly while a baby is in the womb. Congenital heart defects can make the heart work harder and weaken the heart muscle, leading to heart failure.

[Increased risk for diabetes and coronary heart disease can be predicted even from "normal" BMI (<25 Kg/m2). Each one-unit rise in BMI correlates to ~10% increased risk for early adulthood DM2, and a 12% increase in heart disease risk. Higher risk is significant at an age-17 BMI of ≥ 23.4 Kg/m2 for diabetes and ≥ 20.9 Kg/m2] for heart disease. <br />
[BMI at age 17 predicts diabetes risk mainly by correlating with BMI later in life. For heart disease, BMI at adolescence and at adulthood independently predict risk].... <br />
"[A teen with relatively high BMI who becomes a lean adult practically eliminates added diabetic risk. That person's heart disease risk remains elevated compared to the lean teen who became a lean adult, though still] lower than that of the heavier teen who became an obese adult.... <br />
[Eating habit modification can halt and even reverse] progression of atherosclerosis, the underlying process of heart disease.

Constantly engaging this executive control function is a form of mental exercise, explains Bialystok, and some researchers, including herself, believe that this can be beneficial for the brain. Bilingual speakers have been shown to perform better on a variety of cognitive tasks, and one study Bialistok did found that dementia set in four to five years later in people who spent their lives speaking two languages instead of one.<br />
<br />
"They can get a little extra mileage from these cognitive networks because they have been enhanced throughout life," said Bialystok.<br />
<br />
And the advantages of bilingualism may be due to more than just "mental fitness." Bialystok says there's some preliminary evidence that being bilingual may physically remodel parts of the brain. It's something researchers are only beginning to look into, but she says there is reason to believe that speaking a second language may lead to important changes in brain structure as well.

New research supports the current American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation to begin solid foods at four to six months of age. The study involved data from 847 children who are part of a broader study known as Project Viva, which included a questionnaire that asked mothers about the timing of the first introduction of 10 solid foods‚ including cereal‚ vegetables‚ fruit‚ eggs‚ and sweets. At four months‚ 67 percent of the 847 babies were at least partly breast-fed and 33 percent were only formula–fed. The formula–fed babies who were given solid food before four months had a six–fold increase in the risk of becoming obese at age three compared with the formula–fed babies who first received solid food between four and five months. Children were considered obese at age three if they had a body–mass index at or greater than the 95th percentile on children's growth charts‚ which can indicate obesity later in life‚ putting them at risk of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

Feeding Babies Solids Early Tied to Obesity: Formula-fed infants who start on solid foods before the age of four months have a higher risk of obesity by three years compared to those who start solid foods later‚ according to Harvard researchers. Researchers found no association between the timing of weaning and obesity in breast–fed infants. This new research supports the current American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation to begin solid foods at four to six months of age. The study involved data from 847 children who are part of a broader study known as Project Viva. The formula–fed babies who were given solid food before four months had a six–fold increase in the risk of becoming obese at age three compared with the formula–fed babies who first received solid food between four and five months.

It is well established that [type 2 diabetes and its risk factors] at this early stage of life significantly increases the likelihood of suffering from heart disease and other chronic conditions. [Now there is] a connection to weak bones. <br />
For the study, investigators examined 140 overweight children between the ages of 7 and 11. They measured the participants' body fat percentage, blood sugar levels and bone density and asked questions about how much physical activity they got on a regular basis. <br />
The researchers found a strong association between risk factors for Type 2 diabetes and poor bone health. A total of 30 percent of the participants showed signs of poor blood sugar regulation. These children had an average of 4 to 5 percent less bone density than participants with healthy blood sugar regulation. <br />
Given the fact that a large percent of an individual's lifetime bone density is developed before reaching puberty, the researchers said that their findings depict a major problem.

There’s a group of people in America [whose] life’s mission is to: <br />
* Cut taxes <br />
* Cut government spending on healthcare, education. the arts, news and information services <br />
* Stop the government from regulating pollution-causing industries, food, toys, business in general <br />
* Stop the government from reacting to climate change <br />
* Teach creationism and abstinence-only sex education <br />
* End abortion and teenagers’ access to contraception <br />
* Stop same-sex couples from marrying and adopting.... <br />
What will we get from all this?... <br />
[U]nwanted children, who will not be immunized...not receive proper health care...not be properly fed...not be properly educated, who will end up having more sick, uneducated, and unwanted children of their own, all of whom will not be cared for at all because the state won’t pay for them because Republicans want to cut taxes. <br />
And yet, we have loving, willing, desperately-wanting same-sex couples ready and able to raise children, create families, and get married.

RT @ebertchicago: What's it like to believe anyone deserves eternal torment?

[Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba,] who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq [has confirmed via the Daily Telegraph:] “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency”.... <br />
The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons...Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken....<br />
“I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”[...] <br />
Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick”...

[Wakefield violated ethical standards by ordering unnecessary, invasive tests on children for his research....Wakefield profited to the tune of about $750,000 US] from advising lawyers representing parents who planned to sue vaccine manufacturers—without disclosing this to The Lancet prior to publication of his article. He had also filed for a patent on his own measles vaccine, from which he planned to profit further after he discredited the MMR vaccine...
[Publicity about Wakefield’s transgressions began with Brian Deer’s 2004 reporting in the London Times....Ten of Wakefield’s twelve co-authors] issued a partial retraction of the 1998 article....
The Lancet‘s total retraction of Wakefield’s article made international headlines. [Wakefield] resigned from his job as research director at Thoughtful House, a facility for autistic children that he helped found in Austin, Texas. [In May 2010, the General Medical Council] banned Wakefield.from practicing medicine in the UK.

Right Wing politics and Fundamentalist religion made a devil’s bargain a long time ago. They would both work to undermine science, thereby rendering the population ever so more open to manipulation and control. This paves the way for unregulated industry (read as: unlimited profit) and for the mixing of temporal power with spiritual (read as: theocracy). Economic conservatism and social conservatism. The two banes of modern America’s existence. <br />
This is great news for the rest of world. As we become dumber and dumber and more technologically unsophisticated, we are unintentionally seceding the role of world leader to whoever can claim it first. Someone else will make it to Mars first. Someone else will invent the new, virus free, internet. Someone else will create the first quantum computer. Someone else will perfect nanotechnology. We’ll just be their customers. We’ll have terrible credit and won’t understand the instruction manual.

[Experiments at UCSF show] that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory. <br />
[Imaging studies of people's brains show major cross sections becoming surprisingly active during downtime, suggesting] that periods of rest are critical in allowing the brain to synthesize information, make connections between ideas and even develop the sense of self... <br />
[T]hese studies have particular implications for young people, whose brains have more trouble focusing and setting priorities. <br />
“Downtime is to the brain what sleep is to the body...But kids are in a constant mode of stimulation...[B]ring back boredom,” added [Harvard's] Dr. Rich, who last month gave a speech to the American Academy of Pediatrics entitled, “Finding Huck Finn: Reclaiming Childhood from the River of Electronic Screens.”

The Ryan Report entries that detail the desolate existence of the mostly poor children in so-called industrial schools read like a cross between Charles Dickens and Dan Brown: “I was beaten and hospitalized by the head brother and not allowed to go to my father’s funeral in case my bruises were seen” and “I was tied to a cross and raped while others masturbated at the side.” <br />
The Murphy Commission—headed by Yvonne Murphy, a circuit-court judge—noted...that as cases of abuse became public, church officials repeated the refrain that they had not dealt with abusers properly because they were on “a learning curve.” The commission roundly dismissed that claim. The interests of church officials “were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets,” the report concluded. “All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities.”

The stories Haggis found on the Internet of children drafted into the Sea Org appalled him. “They were ten years old, twelve years old, signing billion-year contracts—and their parents go along with this?” Haggis told me. “Scrubbing pots, manual labor—that so deeply touched me. My God, it horrified me!” The stories of the Sea Org children reminded Haggis of child slaves he had seen in Haiti.

Gupta: There has been a lot of scrutiny of [childhood vaccines—] is there a connection with autism...Dr. [Andrew] Wakefield wrote a paper about this [in The Lancet in 1998] saying he thought there was a connection. And there were lower vaccination rates over a period of time as a result in Britain, then the United States.... <br />
Gates: Well, Dr. Wakefield has been shown to have used absolutely fraudulent data. He had a financial interest in some lawsuits, he created a fake paper, the journal allowed it to run. All the other studies were done, showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts—you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.

Two north central Idaho parents who police say severely neglected the health of their 16-year-old daughter have pleaded not guilty to felony injury to a child. Duane and Deborah Wadsworth of Harpster made the pleas Friday in 2nd District Court. A jury trial is scheduled for May 31. <br />
The Lewiston Tribune reports that authorities filed charges last month after the Wadsworths brought their daughter to St. Mary's Hospital in Cottonwood. Doctors and nurses who testified at a previous hearing described the girl as severely malnourished and covered by bed sores with signs of gangrene on her fingers and toes. <br />
Officials said the girl was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis four years ago but the parents opted for herbal and homeopathic treatments.The girl is now being treated at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center at Spokane, Wash.

The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets, which contains a secret ending to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a fudge recipe, and excerpts from Dahl’s many horrid report cards. How horrid? In 1931, his teacher wrote, “Vocabulary negligible, sentences malconstructed. He reminds me of a camel.”

Pimps will traffic thousands of under-age prostitutes to Texas for Sunday's Super Bowl, hoping to do business with men arriving for the big game with money to burn, child rights advocates said....<br />
[Among businesses attracted by the event is] the multimillion dollar, under-age sex industry, said activists and law enforcement officials working to combat what they say is an annual spike in trafficking of under-age girls ahead of the Super Bowl. <br />
"The Super Bowl is one of the biggest human trafficking events in the United States," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told a trafficking prevention meeting in January.... <br />
Up to 300,000 girls between 11 and 17 are lured into the US sex industry annually, according to a 2007 report sponsored by the Department of Justice and written by the nonprofit...Shared Hope International. <br />
Some 90% of runaways and children whose parents force them to leave home fall into the trade and are often beaten, drugged, raped or imprisoned to force compliance...

[Scientific ignorance] demeans the human sense of wonder that thinking about the universe should provoke....The actual story of our human struggle from near extinction...—through hundreds of thousands of years of slow and fascinating development, from the first inklings of cognition to the development of sophisticated tools and symbolic representations...from language to the forgotten dreams of our ancestors who drew images of the animals they hunted on the dark inner walls of a cave in what is now the French countryside—is both inspiring and magical. <br />
[Intellectual poverty is the lot of] those who miss the rich cultural and intellectual opportunities afforded by...our past when they decide the real story of our development must be replaced by an abbreviated and redundant myth. It [ill serves] the spirit of adventure and curiosity that we should nurture in our children to rob them of the opportunity to be inspired by nature, and for some...to go on to make profound new discoveries.

Both simple visual patterns and text activated a similar area of the visual cortex, while both written and spoken words caused activity in both the temporal and frontal language areas. [In this case, literacy seems to use brain structures] already specialized for specific tasks.
However the activity within the visual cortex was distributed differently in literate and non-literate individuals. [The visual word form area] was activated by text to the exclusion of other categories, such as images or patterns....Literate individuals [showed] reduced activity when looking at [faces, and increased activity when looking at text-like patterns—black-and-white images, horizontal checkerboards].
[Decreased activity in response to faces occurred in those who learned to read as children (one of the only differences between them and adult learners). T]he area that responds to faces normally expands with age, and learning to read may limit this expansion by putting nearby brain areas to other uses.