To hear Mikia Hutchings speak, one must lean in close, as her voice barely rises above a whisper. In report cards, her teachers describe her as “very focused,” someone who follows the rules and stays on task. So it was a surprise...
In 2008, five years into a long and expensive conflict, economists Joseph Stiglitz and Laura Bilmes surprised even the Iraq War’s critics with their estimation of its true cost. The calculations in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War...
“We are good,” Donald Pfaff declares early on in The Altruistic Brain. By this he means that all humans are innately moral, not in a philosophical/religious sense, but as a matter of objective science. “[T]he human brain is wired for goodwill,” he argues, “which propels us toward empathic displays of altruism.” The human brain is altruistic, and altruism is good; therefore humans are good. It’s a neat syllogism—but, unfortunately,...
It is among the most familiar calls New York City police officers answer: a person acting erratically, possibly emotionally disturbed and potentially armed. But the young officers who confronted a man with a knife in Brooklyn early Tuesday morning,...
The Center for Youth Wellness is starting to post photos and videos from the California ACEs summit , Children Can Thrive, that took place last month in San Francisco. Here are a couple of short videos. The first is an 1.5-minute overview, and the...
A national anti-smoking campaign featuring tips from former smokers was highly successful and cost-effective, a new study reports. The 2012 Tips From Former Smokers campaign spent $480 per smoker who quit and $393 per year of life saved, the...
It's a sunny autumn afternoon and a good time to make apple crisp at Pathstone Living, a memory care facility and nursing home in Mankato, Minn. Activities staffer Jessica Abbott gathers half a dozen older women at a counter in the dining area,...
An online contest for data scientists has produced a great leap forward in efforts to predict when someone with epilepsy is going to have a seizure. The winning team used data on electrical activity in the brain to develop an algorithm that...
Like a lot of people in journalism, I began my career, briefly, as a police reporter. As the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases have unfolded, I’ve found myself thinking back to those days. Nothing excuses specific acts of police brutality,...
http://www.aecf.org/resources/using-brain-science-to-design-new-pathways-out-of-poverty/ "This report, by Crittenton Women’s Union (CWU) is based on evidence of the effects of poverty on the brain and a series of specific brain...
As U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) left a November 20 roundtable on traumatic stress in Native American communities, she said she was leaving the Indian Affairs Committee room—after many times being there—“for the first time with...
Washington, D.C. attorney Dan Press (front right) responded like so many of us when he learned about the ACE Study—the findings resonated deeply with him, seemed to explain the inexplicable, and propelled him to dig deeper. For decades he has...
This brief article describes an interesting study that uses the drawings that children typically produce at younger ages to identify the level of stress or chaos - which may pave the way for trauma - in their home. According to the research, 6...
Texans are improving their health. The state has seen major improvements this year in smoking, child immunizations and mental health, according to data gathered by United Health Foundation. Texas now has the sixth-lowest incidence of smoking...
The vast majority of California’s foster youth plan to graduate from college, but a much smaller percentage of them have the academic background they need to succeed, according to a new survey of 17-year-old foster youth in the state. The...