Old age may have its downsides, but losing the ability to grow new brain cells isn’t one: healthy people in their seventies seem to produce just as many new neurons as teenagers. The discovery overturns a decades-old theory about how our brains age and could provide clues as to how we can keep our minds sharper for longer. To read more of Helen Thomson's article (via a subscription), please click here.
There is a reckoning taking place in America over how we remember our history. Much of the focus has been on whether or not to take down monuments that celebrate the Confederacy. But this story is about a new monument going up in Montgomery, Alabama. It documents the lynchings of thousands of African-American men, women and children during a 70 year period following the Civil War. The project is being led by criminal defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, who is determined to shed light on a dark...
In 1996, right after voters in California banned affirmative action in employment and college admissions, minority student enrollment at two and four-year institutions plummeted. What has happened since though, is pretty remarkable. Of the 2.8 million students attending college in California today, two out of three come from racially and ethnically diverse populations. The most eye-popping increase in enrollment has been among Latinos. They now make up 43 percent of all college students in...
In Arizona in 2015, a riot broke out in a private prison where previously three inmates had escaped and murdered a vacationing couple. After order was restored, the state revoked the contract of Management & Training Corporation and hired another private prison firm, the GEO Group. Three years earlier, the GEO Group had surrendered its contract to run a Mississippi prison after a federal judge ruled that the inmates had not been protected from gang violence. The replacement: Management...
The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) was honored this month by a state charity for its efforts to proactively help low-income families access state benefits. DHHS was the recipient of the Compassion in Action Award, given out each year by the Matt Talbot Kitchen and Outreach Center (MTKO), a Lincoln-based nonprofit with a mission to prevent hunger and homeless. “The DHHS team has gone above and beyond to answer, or find the answer to, questions that do not necessarily...
ATLANTA—It was not until a few years after he moved in that Zachary Anderson realized that he was not, in fact, the owner of the house he thought he’d purchased. Anderson had already spent tens of thousands of dollars repairing a hole in the roof, replacing a cracked sidewalk, and fixing the ceilings of the small two-bedroom home where he lives in southwest Atlanta. He was trying to get a reduction in his property taxes when his brother, who was helping him with his taxes, looked up the...
Shortly after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated outside his motel room in Memphis on April 4, 1968, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller issued a public statement. A true memorial to King, he said, “cannot be made of stone, it must be made of action.” Five days later, the governor was in Atlanta to attend the civil rights leader’s funeral, and he expected to go to sleep that night having followed through on his statement. Rockefeller had been elected governor in 1958; he’d already left...
We’ve known for some time now that Americans are increasingly dying younger , but the scale and nature of the problem has been a little bit murky. There was speculation that the downturn in American life expectancy was all thanks to “deaths of despair ,” but some experts have said that might not be the full story , and that obesity and tobacco are still major factors in American mortality. A new study out today in the Journal of the American Medical Association drills down into which states...
RACINE - If it fulfills its pledges, Foxconn Technology Group is destined to shatter job-creation records. Its flat-screen manufacturing campus in southeastern Wisconsin could eclipse Boeing’s footprint in Seattle, Tesla’s in Nevada and some of the biggest factories in China. Fully built out, it would be three times the size of the Pentagon, the world's largest office building. And yet, despite its multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidy, Foxconn’s jobs boom might ripple right past Wisconsin’s...
CII is pleased to announce our 11th Annual Fatherhood Solution Conference The Westin Los Angeles Airport 5400 West Century Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90045 Friday, June 15, 2018 from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM (PDT) FAMILY VALUES Discover new ways to build and strengthen relationships between fathers and their children. Who should attend: community service providers, policy advocates, government representatives, mental health professionals, public health professionals, and concerned community members...
Learn4Life is taking an organization-wide approach to educational service delivery grounded in understanding trauma, its consequences and promoting healing and resilience. To help staff better understand the approach, training was recently conducted for Learn4Life leaders including teachers, counselors, and administrative staff. The training is designed to increase understanding of proactive, practical, trauma-informed approaches to create cultures of inclusivity. The goal is the have all...
We are very excited to introduce this new program at the Wexford / Missaukee Friend of the Court as our part of a larger scale initiative to build resilience in families and our community as a whole. As it relates to our clients here at FOC, our Gear Up program helps parents to identify separation and divorce as a common adverse childhood experience which can have lifelong negative affects throughout the lifespan. We hope parents will take away from it real tools they can use to minimize...
STOCKTON, Calif. — In California, known for decades as one of the nation’s most avid jailers, the trajectory of law and order is shifting. Through litigation, legislation and a series of ballot initiatives, the state’s prison population has dropped 25 percent over the past decade. The photographer Joseph Rodriguez has been documenting crime and punishment in California for years and recently focused his gaze on the migration home, in Stockton — a barren outpost in California’s Central...
Racism is an epidemic that is killing black Americans all across the country, regardless of their level of education or income, health professionals report. According to David Williams, a Harvard professor and leading researcher on race and health, more than 200 black Americans die every day, who would not have died if the health status of blacks and whites were equal. That’s the equivalent of a fully loaded passenger airline crashing every single day, Williams said in one lecture. [For more...
Educators nationwide are recognizing that early psychological traumas can have a huge impact on children's brain development and learning. Just how teachers and schools can support students affected by adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, is not quite a science. That's where Algonquin-based Community Unit District 300's new initiative called DREAM Academy -- for Dedicated Reinforcement, Engagement And Motivation -- comes in. [For more on this story by Madhu Krishnamurthy, go to...