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Tag: children

  • Emergency department visits for attempted suicides rose globally among youth during pandemic

    Emergency department visits for attempted suicides rose globally among youth during pandemic

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    Newswise — Calgary, AB – Even though pediatric emergency department visits decreased greatly overall during the COVID-19 pandemic, a newly published study led out of the University of Calgary shows there was also a sharp increase in emergency department visits for attempted suicide and suicide ideation among children and adolescents in that same period of social isolation. 

    Dr. Sheri Madigan, a clinical psychologist in the Department of Psychology, is the lead author on the study, published today (March 9) in Lancet Psychiatry, which provides a meta-analysis of 42 studies representing over 11 million pediatric emergency department visits across 18 countries, comparing the data on visits prior to the pandemic with those that took place during the pandemic, up to July 2021. 

    The numbers show that while there was a 32 per cent reduction in pediatric emergency department visits for any health-related reasons during the pandemic, there was still a 22 per cent increase in children and adolescents going to emergency departments for suicide attempts, and an eight per cent increase in visits for suicide ideation.  

    Madigan says, “What this 22% increase means is that in an average emergency department setting, there were 102 child and adolescent visits per month for suicide attempts before the COVID-19 pandemic, which increased to 125 per month during the pandemic.”

    While Madigan is, of course, troubled by these findings, they don’t necessarily come as a shock. In the summer of 2021, her research team led a study which found that depression and anxiety symptoms doubled in children and adolescents during the first year of the pandemic, and she cautioned it was a global mental health crisis. 

    These new concerning findings seem to bear witness to that warning. 

    “In our earlier work on mental health in the pandemic, we determined that kids were in crisis, and that we needed to bolster services and resources, or it was going to get worse,” says Madigan, who is a Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development. “There’s been a debate during the pandemic as to whether the kids are alright or not alright. Now that more data have been published and analyzed, we can more precisely answer that question. The kids are, in fact, not alright.”

    At face value, there seems to be a confusing discrepancy between the overall reduction in pediatric emergency department visits during the pandemic, on the one hand, and the spike in visits associated with suicide attempts and suicide ideation, on the other. But, beneath the surface, it makes perfect sense, says Madigan, who co-authored the Lancet Psychiatry study with researchers from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, the University of Ottawa, and University College Dublin. 

    Fear of COVID-19 infection and other factors kept people away from emergency departments for most health conditions during the pandemic. But in that same period the proven risk factors for mental illness for children and adolescents increased dramatically. Children’s screen time rose greatly during the pandemic as physical activity levels dwindled. Many families were in turmoil as jobs were lost, family violence increased, and the mental health of parents deteriorated. 

    “These are all accelerants to mental distress,” says Madigan. “Children have an ability to show resilience in difficult times, but they were pushed past what is tolerable, beyond their capacity-to-cope threshold. And now, far more kids and teens are in crisis then was the case before the pandemic.” 

    The researchers included studies published between January 2020 and July 2021 that contained data on pediatric emergency department visits before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, up to the summer of 2021. 

    Because ongoing studies on the more recent administrative health data have yet to be published, Madigan says the Lancet Psychiatry article findings provide the clearest snapshot of the pandemic up to about July 2021. Madigan says: “We will continue to monitor the incoming data to see if this trend of increasing emergency department visits for suicide attempts and suicide ideation among children and adolescents continues to climb as the pandemic changes and evolves.”  

    Before the pandemic, says Madigan, about one in five children worldwide were experiencing some form of mental illness, but only 25 per cent in serious need of treatment received it. As mental health stressors escalated overwhelmingly during the pandemic, the need for mental health resources increased in kind, and services and supports are still insufficient to meet the overwhelming demand for mental health treatment. 

    “We can’t ignore that the mental health of children and adolescents is in crisis,” Madigan says. “We need to prioritize the creation of mental health resources, supports, and services now, to help children shift from languishing to flourishing.” To do so, she suggests that governments need to invest in community resources and infrastructure to support the identification and treatment of mental illness, as well as school programs that focus on prevention and mental health literacy.

     

    Sheri Madigan is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, and a member of Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, the Owerko Centre at ACHRI, the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the Mathison Centre of Mental Health Research and Education at the Cumming School of Medicine. She is a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development.

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    University of Calgary

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  • Many kids need tutoring help. Only a small fraction get it

    Many kids need tutoring help. Only a small fraction get it

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    David Daniel knows his son needs help.

    The 8-year-old spent first grade in remote learning and several weeks of second grade in quarantine. The best way to catch him up, research suggests, is to tutor him several times a week during school.

    But his Indianapolis school offers Saturday or after-school tutoring — programs that don’t work for Daniel, a single father. The upshot is his son, now in third grade, isn’t getting the tutoring he needs.

    “I want him to have the help,” Daniel said. Without it, “next year is going to be really hard on him.”

    As America’s schools confront dramatic learning setbacks caused by the pandemic, experts have held up intensive tutoring as the single best antidote. Yet even as schools wield billions of dollars in federal COVID relief, a small fraction of students have received school tutoring, according to a survey of the nation’s largest districts by the nonprofit news organization Chalkbeat and The Associated Press.

    In eight of 12 school systems that provided data, less than 10% of students received any type of district tutoring this fall. To compare, in a federal survey, school officials said half of all U.S. students started this school year behind grade level in at least one subject.

    A new tutoring corps in Chicago has served about 3% of students, officials said. The figure was less than 1% in three districts: Georgia’s Gwinnett County, Florida’s Miami-Dade County, and Philadelphia, where the district reported only about 800 students were tutored. In those three systems alone, there were more than 600,000 students who spent no time in a district tutoring program this fall.

    The startlingly low tutoring figures point to several problems. Some parents said they didn’t know tutoring was available or didn’t think their children needed it. Some school systems have struggled to hire tutors. Other school systems said the small tutoring programs were intentional, part of an effort to focus on students with the greatest needs.

    Whatever the reason, the impact is clear: At a crucial time for students’ recovery, millions of children have not received the academic equivalent of powerful medication.

    “It works, it’s effective, it gets students to improve in their learning and catch up,” said Amie Rapaport, a University of Southern California researcher who has analyzed students’ access to intensive tutoring. “So why isn’t it reaching them?”

    The Indianapolis school district last year launched two tutoring programs that connect students with certified teachers over video. One is available to all students after school, while the other is offered during the day at certain low-performing schools.

    District officials say a trial run boosted student test scores. Parents give it high marks.

    “The progress that he made in just a couple months last semester working with his tutor was kind of far beyond what he was grasping and doing at school,” said Jessica Blalack, whose 7-year-old, Phoenix, opted in to after-school tutoring.

    Still, the two programs combined served only about 3,200 students last fall, or roughly 17% of students in district-run schools. Two additional tutoring programs operate at a handful of schools.

    Only 35% of the students who registered for after-school tutoring last fall attended more than one session, according to district data.

    Indianapolis Public Schools spokesperson Marc Ransford said the district is working to improve attendance and hopes to enroll more students in tutoring next school year. It’s also trying to accelerate student learning in other ways, including with a new curriculum and summer school.

    Nationwide, schools report that about 10% of students are receiving “high-dosage” tutoring multiple days a week, according to a federal survey from December. The real number could be even lower: Just 2% of U.S. households say their children are getting that kind of intensive tutoring, according to the USC analysis of a different nationally representative survey.

    Schools trying to ramp up tutoring have run into roadblocks, including staffing and scheduling. Experts say tutoring is most effective when provided three times a week for at least 30 minutes during school hours. Offering after-school or weekend tutoring is simpler, but turnout is often low.

    Harrison Tran, a 10th grader in Savannah, Georgia, struggled to make sense of algebra during remote learning. Last year, his high school offered after-school help. But that wasn’t feasible for Harrison, who lives 30 minutes from school and couldn’t afford to miss his ride home.

    Without tutoring help, he started this school year with gaps in his learning.

    “When I got into my Algebra II class, I was entirely lost,” he said.

    Relatively low family interest has been another challenge. Though test scores plunged during the pandemic, many parents do not believe their children experienced learning loss, or simply are unaware. The disconnect makes it more important to offer tutoring during school, experts say.

    “Parents just aren’t as concerned as we need them to be,” said USC education professor Morgan Polikoff, “if we’re going to have to rely on parents opting their kids into interventions.”

    Even when students want help, some have been let down.

    In Maryland’s Montgomery County, 12th grader Talia Bradley recently sought calculus help from a virtual tutoring company hired by the district. But the problem she was struggling with also stumped the tutor. After an hour trying to sort it out, Talia walked away frustrated.

    “My daughter was no farther along,” said Leah Bradley, her mother. “Having an option for online tutoring makes sense, but it can’t be the primary option if you’re looking for good results.”

    Repeated in-person tutoring tends to be more effective than on-demand online help, but it’s also harder to manage. District rules add complexity, with safeguards like tutor background checks and vendor bidding rules slowing the process.

    In Wake County, North Carolina, the school district began planning a reading tutoring program last summer. The program did not launch until November, and district officials last month said volunteers are tutoring fewer than 140 students — far fewer than the 1,000 students the program was designed to reach.

    “We’re always looking to serve more students,” said Amy Mattingly, director of K-12 programs at Helps Education Fund, the nonprofit managing that program and another serving about 400 students. But, she added, it’s important to “see what’s working and make tweaks before trying to scale up.”

    Some districts defended their participation numbers, saying tutoring is most effective when targeted.

    In Georgia’s Fulton County, 3% of the district’s 90,000 students participated in tutoring programs this fall. Most of the tutoring was offered by paraprofessionals during the school day, with one hired to give intense support in each elementary school.

    The district says time and staffing limit how many students can get frequent, intensive tutoring.

    “We don’t want to water it down, because then you don’t get the impact that the research says is beneficial for kids,” said Cliff Jones, chief academic officer for the system.

    Others worry too few are getting the help they need even as programs continue to grow.

    This school year, about 3,500 students are getting reading tutoring from the North Carolina Education Corps. Meanwhile, in fourth grade alone, more than 41,000 students statewide scored in the bottom level on a national reading test last year.

    “Who we are serving,” said Laura Bilbro-Berry, the program’s senior director, “is just a drop in the bucket.”

    ___

    The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • In ‘junk fee’ fight, US details airline family seating rules

    In ‘junk fee’ fight, US details airline family seating rules

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    The Transportation Department is rolling out a “dashboard” to let travelers see at a glance which airlines help families with young children sit together at no extra cost.

    The announcement Monday comes as the department works on regulations to prevent families from being separated on planes.

    It’s the latest salvo in the Biden administration’s efforts to clamp down on what it calls “ junk fees ” and to put pressure on airlines to improve service.

    The dashboard rewards airlines with a green check if they guarantee that an adult family member can sit next to their young children if seats are available. On Monday, only three of the 10 U.S. airlines listed on the website received a green check: Alaska, American and Frontier.

    The site also includes links to each airline’s customer policies.

    “Parents traveling with young kids should be able to sit together without an airline forcing them to pay junk fees,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a release announcing the dashboard. He gave his department credit for pressuring airlines, “and now we’re seeing some airlines start to make this common-sense change.”

    Airlines “already work to accommodate customers who are traveling together, especially those traveling with children, and will continue to do so,” said Hannah Walden, a spokeswoman at Airlines for America, a trade group whose members include the six largest U.S. carriers. “Each carrier has established individual policies, but all make every effort to ensure families sit together.”

    This year, several carriers have pledged to make changes in their seating policies.

    Last month, Frontier Airlines said it would automatically seat at least one parent next to any child under 14.

    Last week, American Airlines updated its customer-service plan with a guarantee that children 14 and under would be seated next to an accompanying adult at no extra cost.

    United Airlines said it would let families with children under 12 to pick adjoining seats at no extra cost starting in early March in certain fare classes. The announcement seemed to fall short of Transportation standards however, because the department issued a notice last July that it intends to ban extra charges to have a family adult sit next to children up to age 13.

    The new dashboard builds on a site that the Transportation Department started last year to detail compensation for passengers whose flights are canceled or delayed.

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  • CHOP Researchers Find Rate of Fatal Opioid Poisonings Among Children More Than Doubled Over 13-Year Span

    CHOP Researchers Find Rate of Fatal Opioid Poisonings Among Children More Than Doubled Over 13-Year Span

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    Newswise — Philadelphia, March 8, 2023 – Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found opioids were responsible for more than half of all fatal poisonings in children ages 5 and younger, more than double the proportion of fatal poisonings caused by opioids in 2005. Additionally, over-the-counter drugs still contribute to fatal poisonings in this age group despite increased regulation. The findings, published today in the journal Pediatrics, underscore the need for improved intervention to prevent further fatal poisonings.

    More than half of all reported poisonings affect children ages 5 and younger and have the highest rate of emergency department visits for unintentional drug-related poisonings. While child-resistant packaging for many medicines and hazardous products has substantially decreased the number of unintentional fatal poisonings in young children, the escalating opioid epidemic in the United States has contributed to recent child poisoning deaths.

    Studying fatal poisonings in young children on a broad scale in the U.S. has been challenging for researchers. Every state conducts child death reviews, which investigate how and why these deaths happen and what steps can be taken to prevent them. Child death reviews are conducted by teams that often take a multidisciplinary approach when reviewing pediatric fatalities. The National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention provides resources for these child death reviews and maintains a reporting system that collects data from these committees.

    “By comprehensively assessing fatal poisonings among children at a national level, we were able to better understand the scale of this tragic and preventable public health issue,” said first study author Christopher Gaw, MD, a Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellow with the Poison Control Center and the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at CHOP. “We were also able to specifically characterize the proportion of poisoning deaths that could be attributed to opioids each year.”

    The study team used data from 40 states participating in the National Fatality Review-Case Reporting System on deaths attributed to poisonings among children 5 years and younger between 2005 and 2018. During that period, 731 poisoning-related fatalities were reported by child death reviews. 

    The researchers found that more than two-fifths of these poisoning deaths occurred among children 1 year old or younger, and more than 65% of these fatalities occurred at home. Nearly one-third of children who died by poisoning were supervised by someone other than a biological parent. Opioids were the most common substance contributing to death, followed by over-the-counter medications for pain, colds and allergies. In 2005, opioids contributed to 24.1% of deaths, but this proportion increased to 52.2% by 2018. 

    The authors noted that while initiatives focused on reducing opioid prescribing resulted in a transient reduction in these deaths in the early 2010s, in the past decade, new opioid sources—including heroin and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl—have reversed prior public health gains. Additionally, while medication safety initiatives like unit dose packaging have shown promise in reducing these unintended exposures, the approach does not address all prescription opioids or illicit opioids. 

    “It’s clear from these findings that preventing fatal pediatric poisonings requires a multifaceted approach involving caregiver education and community-level interventions,” said senior study author Daniel J. Corwin, MD, MSCE, an attending physician and Associate Director of Research in the Division of Emergency Medicine at CHOP. “One such intervention is improving the availability of naloxone for the public, which can rapidly reverse opioid overdose and is safe and effective for use in children.”

    Gaw et al, “Characteristics of Fatal Poisonings Among Infants and Young Children in the United States.” Pediatrics. Online March 8, 2023. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2022-059016

    About Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: A non-profit, charitable organization, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation’s first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals, and pioneering major research initiatives, the 595-bed hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country. The institution has a well-established history of providing advanced pediatric care close to home through its CHOP Care Network, which includes more than 50 primary care practices, specialty care and surgical centers, urgent care centers, and community hospital alliances throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as a new inpatient hospital with a dedicated pediatric emergency department in King of Prussia. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit http://www.chop.edu.

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    Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

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  • Mexico finds 343 migrants in abandoned truck trailer

    Mexico finds 343 migrants in abandoned truck trailer

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    Mexican authorities say they have found 343 migrants, including 103 unaccompanied minors, in an abandoned freight truck container on the side of a highway

    Mexican authorities have found 343 migrants, including 103 unaccompanied minors, in an abandoned freight truck container on the side of a highway, the authorities said Monday.

    The National Immigration Institute said the trailer was found Sunday night in the steamy Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

    It was on a route often used by smugglers to bring people from southeastern Mexico to the U.S. border.

    The migrants were well, and it was unclear why the driver fled, authorities said.

    Migrants have been found dead inside abandoned freight containers in the past. But the migrants found Sunday were unharmed, and the conditions in the container illustrate the increasing sophistication of migrant smugglers.

    The trailer had fans and ventilation ports cut in the roof, and the migrants wore color-coded bracelets, apparently to identify them as smugglers’ clients.

    Most of the unaccompanied minors were from Guatemala. Migrants who make it to the United States frequently pay smugglers to bring their children afterward.

    The institute said the adult migrants were mainly from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Ecuador.

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  • Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Maryland. And the members of Congress, former government officials and conservative personalities who spoke at the conference on Thursday and Friday made false claims about a variety of topics.

    Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the country. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his regular lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat.

    Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida incorrectly said a former Obama administration official had encouraged people to harass Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina inaccurately claimed Biden had laughed at a grieving mother and inaccurately insinuated that the FBI tipped off the media to its search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. Two other speakers, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, inflated the number of deaths from fentanyl.

    And that’s not all. Here is a fact check of 13 false claims from the conference, which continues on Saturday.

    Marjorie Taylor Greene said the Republican Party has a duty to protect children. Listing supposed threats to children, she said, “Now whether it’s like Zelensky saying he wants our sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine…” Later in her speech, she said, “I will look at a camera and directly tell Zelensky: you’d better leave your hands off of our sons and daughters, because they’re not dying over there.”

    Facts First: Greene’s claim is false. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t say he wants American sons and daughters to fight or die for Ukraine. The false claim, which was debunked by CNN and others earlier in the week, is based on a viral video that clipped Zelensky’s comments out of context.

    19-second video of Zelensky goes viral. See what was edited out

    In reality, Zelensky predicted at a press conference in late February that if Ukraine loses the war against Russia because it does not receive sufficient support from elsewhere, Russia will proceed to enter North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries in the Baltics (a region made up of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) that the US will be obligated to send troops to defend. Under the treaty that governs NATO, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. Ukraine is not a NATO member, and Zelensky didn’t say Americans should fight there.

    Greene is one of the people who shared the out-of-context video on Twitter this week. You can read a full fact-check, with Zelensky’s complete quote, here.

    Right-wing commentator and former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon criticized right-wing cable channel Fox at length for, he argued, being insufficiently supportive of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Among other things, Bannon claimed that, on the night of the election in November 2020, “Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition and not Donald J. Trump, of which our nation has never recovered.” Later, he said Trump is running again after “having it stolen, in broad daylight, of which they [Fox] participate in.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. On election night in 2020, Fox accurately projected that Biden had won the state of Arizona. This projection did not change the outcome of the election; all of the votes are counted regardless of what media outlets have projected, and the counting showed that Biden won Arizona, and the election, fair and square. The 2020 election was not “stolen” from Trump.

    NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND - MARCH 03: Former White House chief strategist for the Trump Administration Steve Bannon speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on March 03, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. The annual conservative conference entered its second day of speakers including congressional members, media personalities and members of former President Donald Trump's administration. President Donald Trump will address the event on Saturday. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    Bannon has a harsh message for Fox News at CPAC

    Fox, like other major media outlets, did not project that Biden had won the presidency until four days later. Fox personalities went on to repeatedly promote lies that the election was stolen from Trump – even as they privately dismissed and mocked these false claims, according to court filings from a voting technology company that is suing Fox for defamation.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that Biden, “on day one,” made “three key changes” to immigration policy. Jordan said one of those changes was this: “We’re not going to deport anyone who come.” He proceeded to argue that people knowing “we’re not going to get deported” was a reason they decided to migrate to the US under Biden.

    Facts First: Jordan inaccurately described the 100-day deportation pause that Biden attempted to impose immediately after he took office on January 20, 2021. The policy did not say the US wouldn’t deport “anyone who comes.” It explicitly did not apply to anyone who arrived in the country after the end of October 2020, meaning people who arrived under the Biden administration or in the last months of the Trump administration could still be deported.

    Biden did say during the 2020 Democratic primary that “no one, no one will be deported at all” in his first 100 days as president. But Jordan claimed that this was the policy Biden actually implemented on his first day in office; Biden’s actual first-day policy was considerably narrower.

    Biden’s attempted 100-day pause also did not apply to people who engaged in or were suspected of terrorism or espionage, were seen to pose a national security risk, had waived their right to remain in the US, or whom the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement determined the law required to be removed.

    The pause was supposed to be in effect while the Department of Homeland Security conducted a review of immigration enforcement practices, but it was blocked by a federal judge shortly after it was announced.

    Rep. Ralph Norman strongly suggested the FBI had tipped off the media to its August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort in Florida for government documents in the former president’s possession – while concealing its subsequent document searches of properties connected to Biden.

    Norman said: “When I saw the raid at Mar-a-Lago – you know, the cameras, the FBI – and compare that to when they found Biden’s, all of the documents he had, where was the media, where was the FBI? They kept it quiet early on, didn’t let it out. The job of the next president is going to be getting rid of the insiders that are undermining this government, and you’ve gotta clean house.”

    Facts First: Norman’s narrative is false. The FBI did not tip off the media to its search of Mar-a-Lago; CNN reported the next day that the search “happened so quietly, so secretly, that it wasn’t caught on camera at all.” Rather, media outlets belatedly sent cameras to Mar-a-Lago because Peter Schorsch, publisher of the website Florida Politics, learned of the search from non-FBI sources and tweeted about it either after it was over or as it was just concluding, and because Trump himself made a public statement less than 20 minutes later confirming that a search had occurred. Schorsch told CNN on Thursday: “I can, unequivocally, state that the FBI was not one of my two sources which alerted me to the raid.”

    Brian Stelter, then CNN’s chief media correspondent, wrote in his article the day after the search: “By the time local TV news cameras showed up outside the club, there was almost nothing to see. Websites used file photos of the Florida resort since there were no dramatic shots of the search.”

    It’s true that the public didn’t find out until late January about the FBI’s November search of Biden’s former think tank office in Washington, which was conducted with the consent of Biden’s legal team. But the belated presence of journalists at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the Trump search in August is not evidence of a double standard.

    And it’s worth noting that media cameras were on the scene when Biden’s beach home in Delaware was searched by the FBI in February. News outlets had set up a media “pool” to make sure any search there was recorded.

    Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a former college and high school football coach, said, “Going into thousands of kids’ homes and talking to parents every year recruiting, half the kids in this country – I’m not talking about race, I’m just talking about – half the kids in this country have one or no parent. And it’s because of the attack on faith. People are losing faith because, for some reason, because the attack [on] God.”

    Facts First: Tuberville’s claim that half of American children don’t have two parents is incorrect. Official figures from the Census Bureau show that, in 2021, about 70% of US children under the age of 18 lived with two parents and about 65% lived with two married parents.

    About 22% of children lived with only a mother, about 5% with only a father, and about 3% with no parent. But the Census Bureau has explained that even children who are listed as living with only one parent may have a second parent; children are listed as living with only one parent if, for example, one parent is deployed overseas with the military or if their divorced parents share custody of them.

    It is true that the percentage of US children living in households with two parents has been declining for decades. Still, Tuberville’s statistic significantly exaggerated the current situation. His spokesperson told CNN on Thursday that the senator was speaking “anecdotally” from his personal experience meeting with families as a football coach.

    Tuberville claimed that today’s children are being “indoctrinated” in schools by “woke” ideology and critical race theory. He then said, “We don’t teach reading, writing and arithmetic anymore. You know, half the kids in this country, when they graduate – think about this: half the kids in this country, when they graduate, can’t read their diploma.”

    Facts First: This is false. While many Americans do struggle with reading, there is no basis for the claim that “half” of high school graduates can’t read a basic document like a diploma. “Mr. Tuberville does not know what he’s talking about at all,” said Patricia Edwards, a Michigan State University professor of language and literacy who is a past president of the International Literacy Association and the Literacy Research Association. Edwards said there is “no evidence” to support Tuberville’s claim. She also said that people who can’t read at all are highly unlikely to finish high school and that “sometimes politicians embellish information.”

    Tuberville could have accurately said that a significant number of American teenagers and adults have reading trouble, though there is no apparent basis for connecting these struggles with supposed “woke” indoctrination. The organization ProLiteracy pointed CNN to 2017 data that found 23% of Americans age 16 to 65 have “low” literacy skills in English. That’s not “half,” as ProLiteracy pointed out, and it includes people who didn’t graduate from high school and people who are able to read basic text but struggle with more complex literacy tasks.

    The Tuberville spokesperson said the senator was speaking informally after having been briefed on other statistics about Americans’ struggles with reading, like a report that half of adults can’t read a book written at an eighth-grade level.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed of Biden: “The president of the United States stood in front of Independence Hall, called half the country fascists.”

    Facts First: This is not true. Biden did not denounce even close to “half the country” in this 2022 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He made clear that he was speaking about a minority of Republicans.

    In the speech, in which he never used the word “fascists,” Biden warned that “MAGA Republicans” like Trump are “extreme,” “do not respect the Constitution” and “do not believe in the rule of law.” But he also emphasized that “not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.” In other words, he made clear that he was talking about far less than half of Americans.

    Trump earned fewer than 75 million votes in 2020 in a country of more than 258 million adults, so even a hypothetical criticism of every single Trump voter would not amount to criticism of “half the country.”

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed that “average citizens need to just at some point be willing to acknowledge and accept that every single facet of the federal government is weaponized against every single one of us.” Perry said moments later, “The government doesn’t have the right to tell you that you can’t buy a gas stove but that you must buy an electric vehicle.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. The federal government has not told people that they can’t buy a gas stove or must buy an electric vehicle.

    The Biden administration has tried to encourage and incentivize the adoption of electric vehicles, but it has not tried to forbid the manufacture or purchase of traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines. Biden has set a goal of electric vehicles making up half of all new vehicles sold in the US by 2030.

    There was a January controversy about a Biden appointee to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., saying that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and that “any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the commission as a whole has not shown support for a ban, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a January press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

    Rep. Ralph Norman claimed that Biden had just laughed at a mother who lost two sons to fentanyl.

    “I don’t know whether y’all saw, I just saw it this morning: Biden laughing at the mother who had two sons – to die, and he’s basically laughing and saying the fentanyl came from the previous administration. Who cares where it came from? The fact is it’s here,” Norman said.

    Facts First: Norman’s claim is false. Biden did not laugh at the mother who lost her sons to fentanyl, the anti-abortion activist Rebecca Kiessling; in a somber tone, he called her “a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl.” Rather, he proceeded to laugh about how Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had baselessly blamed the Biden administration for the young men’s deaths even though the tragedy happened in mid-2020, during the Trump administration. You can watch the video of Biden’s remarks here.

    Kiessling has demanded an apology from Biden. She is entitled to her criticism of Biden’s remarks and his chuckle – but the video clearly shows Norman was wrong when he claimed Biden was “laughing at the mother.”

    Rep. Kat Cammack told a story about the first hearing of the new Republican-led House select subcommittee on the supposed “weaponization” of the federal government. Cammack claimed she had asked a Democratic witness at this February hearing about his “incredibly vitriolic” Twitter feed in which, she claimed, he not only repeatedly criticized Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh but even went “so far as to encourage people to harass this Supreme Court justice.”

    Facts First: This story is false. The witness Cammack questioned in this February exchange at the subcommittee, former Obama administration deputy assistant attorney general Elliot Williams, did not encourage people to harass Kavanaugh. In fact, it’s not even true that Cammack accused him at the February hearing of having encouraged people to harass Kavanaugh. Rather, at the hearing, she merely claimed that Williams had tweeted numerous critical tweets about Kavanaugh but had been “unusually quiet” on Twitter after an alleged assassination attempt against the justice. Clearly, not tweeting about the incident is not the same thing as encouraging harassment.

    Williams, now a CNN legal analyst (he appeared at the subcommittee hearing in his personal capacity), said in a Thursday email that he had “no idea” what Cammack was looking at on his innocuous Twitter feed. He said: “I used to prosecute violent crimes, and clerked for two federal judges. Any suggestion that I’ve ever encouraged harassment of anyone – and particularly any official of the United States – is insulting and not based in reality.”

    Cammack’s spokesperson responded helpfully on Thursday to CNN’s initial queries about the story Cammack told at CPAC, explaining that she was referring to her February exchange with Williams. But the spokesperson stopped responding after CNN asked if Cammack was accurately describing this exchange with Williams and if they had any evidence of Williams actually having encouraged the harassment of Kavanaugh.

    Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana boasted about the state of the country “when Republicans were in charge.” Among other claims about Trump’s tenure, he said that “in four years,” Republicans “delivered 3.5% unemployment” and “created 8 million new jobs.”

    Facts First: This is inaccurate in two ways. First, the economic numbers for the full “four years” of Trump’s tenure are much worse than these numbers Kennedy cited; Kennedy was actually referring to Trump’s first three years while ignoring the fourth, which was marred by the Covid-19 pandemic. Second, there weren’t “8 million new jobs” created even in Trump’s first three years.

    Kennedy could have correctly said there was a 3.5% unemployment rate after three years of the Trump administration, but not after four. The unemployment rate skyrocketed early in Trump’s fourth year, on account of the pandemic, before coming down again, and it was 6.3% when Trump left office in early 2021. (It fell to 3.4% this January under Biden, better than in any month under Trump.)

    And while the economy added about 6.7 million jobs under Trump before the pandemic-related crash of March and April 2020, that’s not the “8 million jobs” Kennedy claimed – and the economy ended up shedding millions of jobs in Trump’s fourth year. Over the full four years of Trump’s tenure, the economy netted a loss of about 2.7 million jobs.

    Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and an adviser to his 2020 campaign, claimed that the last time a CPAC crowd was gathered at this venue in Maryland, in February 2020, “We had the lowest unemployment in American history.” After making other boasts about Donald Trump’s presidency, she said, “But how quickly it all changed.” She added, “Under Joe Biden, America is crumbling.”

    Facts First: Lara Trump’s claim about February 2020 having “the lowest unemployment in American history” is false. The unemployment rate was 3.5% at the time – tied for the lowest since 1969, but not the all-time lowest on record, which was 2.5% in 1953. And while Lara Trump didn’t make an explicit claim about unemployment under Biden, it’s not true that things are worse today on this measure; again, the most recent unemployment rate, 3.4% for January 2023, is better than the rate at the time of CPAC’s 2020 conference or at any other time during Donald Trump’s presidency.

    Multiple speakers at CPAC decried the high number of fentanyl overdose deaths. But some of the speakers inflated that number while attacking Biden’s immigration policy.

    Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, claimed that “in the last 12 months in America, deaths by fentanyl poisoning totaled 110,000 Americans.” He blamed “Biden’s open border” for these deaths.

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed: “Meanwhile over on this side of the border, where there isn’t anybody, they’re running this fentanyl in; it’s killing 100,000 Americans – over 100,000 Americans – a year.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that there are more than 100,000 fentanyl deaths per year. That is the total number of deaths from all drug overdoses in the US; there were 106,699 such deaths in 2021. But the number of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, primarily fentanyl, is smaller – 70,601 in 2021.

    Fentanyl-related overdoses are clearly a major problem for the country and by far the biggest single contributor to the broader overdose problem. Nonetheless, claims of “110,000” and “over 100,000” fentanyl deaths per year are significant exaggerations. And while the number of overdose deaths and fentanyl-related deaths increased under Biden in 2021, it was also troubling under Trump in 2020 – 91,799 total overdose deaths and 56,516 for synthetic opioids other than methadone.

    It’s also worth noting that fentanyl is largely smuggled in by US citizens through legal ports of entry rather than by migrants sneaking past other parts of the border. Contrary to frequent Republican claims, the border is not “open”; border officers have seized thousands of pounds of fentanyl under Biden.

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  • Thar she blows! Canadian woman wins Key West conch contest

    Thar she blows! Canadian woman wins Key West conch contest

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    A Canadian woman and a pediatric cardiologist from Georgia are winners in Key West’s annual Conch Shell Blowing Contest

    A Canadian woman and a pediatric cardiologist from Georgia won the men’s and women’s contests at Key West’s annual Conch Shell Blowing Contest, using different techniques to impress Saturday’s judges.

    Brian Cardis of Macon, Georgia, played the Jimmy Buffett song “Fins” on a a pink-lined conch shell with holes so it can be played like a flute, while Carol Whiteley of Ontario, Canada, blew a long, loud blast with her shell to best other competitors.

    Cardis said he began blowing the marine mollusk shell about 10 years ago during a family visit to Key West, adapting techniques he learned playing the trumpet as a child.

    “You sort of have to just buzz your lips when you’re blowing into it,” Cardis said. “You have to make a ‘pffft’ noise with your lips in order to generate the sound.”

    Whiteley said she plays the shell at her riverside home to celebrate sunsets.

    Judges evaluated entrants ranging from children to seniors on the quality, novelty, duration and loudness of sounds they produced.

    Other winners included Michael and Georgann Wachter, a couple from Avon Lake, Ohio, who performed a conch-shell-and-vocal duet parodying Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” that drew cheers and laughter from spectators.

    The conch shell, an enduring symbol of the Florida Keys, has been used as a maritime signaling device in the region for more than two centuries. The island chain is nicknamed the Conch Republic.

    The contest was conceived by the Old Island Restoration Foundation in 1972 and took place in the garden of Key West’s Oldest House Museum.

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  • As Tennessee, others target drag shows, many wonder: Why?

    As Tennessee, others target drag shows, many wonder: Why?

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — “If I hadn’t been a girl, I’d have been a drag queen.”

    Dolly Parton has uttered those words famously and often. But if she really were a drag queen, one of Tennessee’s most famous daughters would likely be out of a job under legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday.

    Lee signed off on the legislation without issuing a statement or having a public ceremony. The bill goes into effect July 1.

    Across the country, conservative activists and politicians complain that drag contributes to the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Several states are considering restrictions, but none has acted as fast as Tennessee. The efforts seek to extinguish popular “ drag story hours ” at which queens read to kids. Organizers of LGBTQ Pride events say they put a chill on their parades. And advocates note that the bills, pushed largely by Republicans, burden businesses in an un-Republican fashion.

    The protestations have arisen fairly suddenly around a form of entertainment that has long had a place on the mainstream American stage.

    Milton Berle, “Mr. Television” himself, was appearing in drag on the public airwaves as early as the 1950s on “Texaco Star Theater.” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Highly popular drag brunches bring revenue to restaurants. That such spectacles are now being portrayed as a danger to children boggles the minds of people who study, perform and appreciate drag.

    “Drag is not a threat to anyone. It makes no sense to be criminalizing or vilifying drag in 2023,” said Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, a professor of culture and gender studies at the University of Michigan and author of “Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance.”

    “It is a space where people explore their identities,” said La Fountain-Stokes, who has done drag himself. “But it is also a place where people simply make a living. Drag is a job. Drag is a legitimate artistic expression that brings people together, that entertains, that allows certain individuals to explore who they are and allows all of us to have a very nice time. So it makes literally no sense for legislators, for people in government, to try to ban drag.”

    Drag does not typically involve nudity or stripping, which are more common in the separate art of burlesque. Explicitly sexual and profane language is common in drag performances, but such content is avoided when children are the target audience. At shows meant for adults, venues or performers generally warn beforehand about age-inappropriate content.

    The word “drag” does not appear in the Tennessee bill. Instead, it changes the definition of adult cabaret in Tennessee’s law to mean “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors.” It also says “male or female impersonators” now fall under adult cabaret among topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers and strippers.

    The bill then bans adult cabaret from public property or anywhere minors might be present. It threatens performers with a misdemeanor charge, or a felony if it’s a repeat offense.

    The bill has raised concerns that it could be used to target transgender people, but sponsors say that is not the intent.

    The Tennessee Pride Chamber, a business advocacy group, predicted that “selective surveillance and enforcement” will lead to court challenges and “massive expenses” as governments defend an unconstitutional law that will harm the state’s brand.

    “Tourism, which contributes significantly to our state’s growth and well-being, may well suffer from boycotts disproportionately affecting members of our community who work in Tennessee’s restaurants, arts, and hospitality industries,” chamber President Brian Rosman wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Corporations will not continue to expand or relocate here if their employees — and their recruits — don’t feel safe or welcomed in Tennessee.”

    John Camp, a Pride organizer in Knoxville, said the event in Tennessee’s third-largest city will be somber this October — describing it as “more of a march than a celebration.” There were 100 drag performers last year, he said, but he is unsure how many can participate this year.

    Several other states, including Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma and Utah, are considering similar bans. And the Arkansas governor recently signed a bill that puts new restrictions on “adult-oriented” performances. It originally targeted drag shows but was scaled back following complaints of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

    “I find it irresponsible to create a law based on a complete lack of understanding and determined willful misinterpretation of what drag actually is,” Montana state Rep. Connie Keogh said in February during floor debate. “It is part of the cultural fabric of the LGBTQ+ community and has been around for centuries.”

    Tennessee state Sen. Jack Johnson, the Republican sponsor, says his bill addresses “sexually suggestive drag shows” that are inappropriate for children.

    Months ago, organizers of a Pride festival in Jackson, west of Nashville, came under fire for hosting a drag show in a park. A legal complaint spearheaded by a Republican state representative sought to prevent the show, but organizers reached a settlement to hold it indoors, with an age restriction.

    And in Chattanooga, false allegations of child abuse spread online after far-right activists posted video of a child feeling a female performer’s sequined costume. Online commentators falsely said the performer was male, and it has gone on to be used as a rationale to ban children from drag shows.

    “Rather than focus on actual policy issues facing Tennesseans, politicians would rather spend their time and effort misconstruing age-appropriate performances at a library to pass as many anti-LGBTQ+ bills as they can,” Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement last week.

    At times, the vitriol has become violence. Protesters, some of them armed, threw rocks and smoke grenades at one another outside a drag event in Oregon last year.

    The Tennessee drag bill marks the second major proposal targeting LGBTQ people that lawmakers in the state have passed this year. Last week, lawmakers approved legislation that bans most gender-affirming care. Lee also signed that bill into law on Thursday.

    Lee was fielding questions Monday from reporters about the legislation and other LGBTQ bills when an activist asked him if he remembered “dressing up in drag in 1977.” He was presented with a photo that showed the governor as a high school senior dressed in women’s clothing that was published in the Franklin High School 1977 yearbook. The photo was first posted on Reddit over the weekend.

    Lee said it is “ridiculous” to compare the photo to “sexualized entertainment in front of children.” When asked for specific examples of inappropriate drag shows taking place in front of children, Lee did not cite any, only pointing to a nearby school building and saying he was concerned about protecting children.

    ___

    McMillan reported from northeastern Pennsylvania. Associated Press writers Jonathan Matisse in Nashville and Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana, contributed to this report.

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  • As Tennessee, others target drag shows, many wonder: Why?

    As Tennessee, others target drag shows, many wonder: Why?

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — “If I hadn’t been a girl, I’d have been a drag queen.”

    Dolly Parton has uttered those words famously and often. But if she really were a drag queen, one of Tennessee’s most famous daughters would likely be out of a job under legislation passed Thursday and soon heading to Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who has promised to sign it.

    Across the country, conservative activists and politicians complain that drag shows contribute to the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Several states are considering restrictions, but none has acted as fast as Tennessee to ensure drag shows cannot take place in public or in front of children. Organizers of LGBTQ Pride events say such bans put a chill on their popular parades. And advocates note that the bills, pushed largely by Republicans, burden businesses in an un-Republican fashion.

    The protestations have arisen fairly suddenly around a form of entertainment that has long had a place on the mainstream American stage.

    Milton Berle, “Mr. Television” himself, was appearing in drag on the public airwaves as early as the 1950s on “Texaco Star Theater.” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Highly popular drag brunches bring revenue to restaurants. That such spectacles are now being portrayed as a danger to children boggles the minds of people who study, perform and appreciate drag.

    “Drag is not a threat to anyone. It makes no sense to be criminalizing or vilifying drag in 2023,” said Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, a professor of culture and gender studies at the University of Michigan and author of “Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance.”

    “It is a space where people explore their identities,” said La Fountain-Stokes, who has done drag himself. “But it is also a place where people simply make a living. Drag is a job. Drag is a legitimate artistic expression that brings people together, that entertains, that allows certain individuals to explore who they are and allows all of us to have a very nice time. So it makes literally no sense for legislators, for people in government, to try to ban drag.”

    Drag does not typically involve nudity or stripping, which are more common in the separate art of burlesque. Explicitly sexual and profane language is common in drag performances, but such content is avoided when children are the target audience, such as at drag story hours. At shows meant for adults, venues or performers generally warn beforehand about age-inappropriate content.

    The word “drag” does not appear in the Tennessee bill. Instead, it changes the definition of adult cabaret in Tennessee’s law to mean “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors.” It also says “male or female impersonators” now fall under adult cabaret among topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers and strippers.

    The bill then bans adult cabaret from public property or anywhere minors might be present. It threatens performers with a misdemeanor charge, or a felony if it’s a repeat offense.

    The Tennessee Pride Chamber, a business advocacy group, predicted that “selective surveillance and enforcement” will lead to court challenges and “massive expenses” as governments defend an unconstitutional law that will harm the state’s brand.

    “Tourism, which contributes significantly to our state’s growth and well-being, may well suffer from boycotts disproportionately affecting members of our community who work in Tennessee’s restaurants, arts, and hospitality industries,” chamber President Brian Rosman wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Corporations will not continue to expand or relocate here if their employees — and their recruits — don’t feel safe or welcomed in Tennessee.”

    John Camp, a Pride organizer in Knoxville, said the event in Tennessee’s third-largest city will be somber this October — describing it as “more of a march than a celebration.” There were 100 drag performers last year, he said, but he is unsure how many can participate this year.

    Several other states, including Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, Montana and Oklahoma, are considering similar bans. And the Arkansas governor recently signed a bill that puts new restrictions on “adult-oriented” performances. It originally targeted drag shows but was scaled back following complaints of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

    “I find it irresponsible to create a law based on a complete lack of understanding and determined willful misinterpretation of what drag actually is,” Montana state Rep. Connie Keogh said in February during floor debate. “It is part of the cultural fabric of the LGBTQ+ community and has been around for centuries.”

    Tennessee Sen. Jack Johnson, the Republican sponsor, says his bill addresses “sexually suggestive drag shows” that are inappropriate for children.

    Months ago, organizers of a Pride festival in Jackson, west of Nashville, came under fire for hosting a drag show in a park. A legal complaint spearheaded by a Republican state representative sought to prevent the show, but organizers reached a settlement to hold it indoors, with an age restriction.

    And in Chattanooga, false allegations of child abuse spread online after far-right activists posted video of a child feeling a female performer’s sequined costume. Online commentators falsely said the performer was male, and it has gone on to be used as a rationale to ban children from drag shows.

    “Rather than focus on actual policy issues facing Tennesseans, politicians would rather spend their time and effort misconstruing age-appropriate performances at a library to pass as many anti-LGBTQ+ bills as they can,” Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement last week.

    At times, the vitriol has become violence. Protesters, some of them armed, threw rocks and smoke grenades at one another outside a drag event in Oregon last year.

    The Tennessee drag bill marks the second major proposal targeting LGBTQ people that lawmakers in the state have passed this year. Last week, lawmakers approved legislation that bans most gender-affirming care. Lee says he plans on signing the bill.

    Lee was fielding questions Monday from reporters about the legislation and other LGBTQ bills when an activist asked him if he remembered “dressing up in drag in 1977.” He was presented with a photo that showed the governor as a high school senior dressed in women’s clothing that was published in the Franklin High School 1977 yearbook. The photo was first posted on Reddit over the weekend.

    Lee said it is “ridiculous” to compare the photo to “sexualized entertainment in front of children.” When asked for specific examples of inappropriate drag shows taking place in front of children, Lee did not cite any, only pointing to a nearby school building and saying he was concerned about protecting children.

    ___

    McMillan reported from northeastern Pennsylvania. Associated Press writers Jonathan Matisse in Nashville and Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana, contributed to this report.

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  • Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Develops Liquid Biopsy Test for Pediatric Solid Tumors

    Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Develops Liquid Biopsy Test for Pediatric Solid Tumors

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    Newswise — Pediatric solid tumors make up approximately 40% of all childhood cancers. While pediatric cancer is rare, children can develop a wide range of tumor types, located in different parts of the body, which can make the differential diagnosis challenging. Investigators at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have developed a liquid biopsy for solid tumors that has the potential to aid in reaching a specific diagnosis when surgery or a tissue biopsy is not feasible. The study findings were published on February 23 in the journal npj Precision Oncology. 

    “This is one of the first clinically validated liquid biopsy tests to be launched at a pediatric academic medical center,” says Jaclyn Biegel, PhD, Chief of Genomic Medicine and Director of the Center for Personalized Medicine at CHLA.

    “We created a test that may be helpful in making a diagnosis, determining prognosis, and potentially identifying an effective therapy for children with solid tumors,” says Fariba Navid, MD, Medical Director of Clinical Research in the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at CHLA. Dr. Navid and Dr. Biegel are co-senior authors of this study.

    A specific test for pediatric tumors is required because the genetics of tumors that affect adults differ from those in children. Adult tumors tend to be caused by mutations—sequence-based changes in a gene— so most liquid biopsy tests have been developed specifically to identify these mutations. However, pediatric tumors arising from mutations are less common. In children, copy number changes—losing or having extra copies of one or more genes—or rearrangements of genes that result in gene fusions, are more characteristic. For their research study, the CHLA team combined a technique known as Low-Pass Whole Genome Sequencing (LP-WGS) with targeted sequencing of cell-free DNA from plasma to detect copy number changes, as well as mutations and gene fusions, that are characteristic of pediatric solid tumors.  An important feature of the study was that it required a much smaller volume of sample than is required for liquid biopsy studies in adults.  Since an infant or young child has a smaller blood volume, the assays needed to be scaled down to accommodate this difference.  

    To create the test, the researchers collaborated with clinical teams and research investigators at CHLA including Jesse Berry, MD, Director of Ocular Oncology and CHLA’s Retinoblastoma Program, as well as investigators involved in Oncology, Neurosurgery and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Leo Mascarenhas, MD, MS, Deputy Director of the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at CHLA was also involved in the design and support of the project. 

    The first version of the test, launched in Nov. 2022, evaluates chromosomal copy number changes in blood samples, cerebrospinal fluid and the aqueous humor of the eye to aid in the clinical diagnosis for patients with solid tumors, brain tumors and retinoblastoma, respectively.

    The next version of the clinical assay, available in about six months, will include detection of mutations and gene fusions.

    The liquid biopsy-based genetic tests join the CHLA-developed OncoKids cancer panel, a next-generation sequencing-based assay designed to detect changes in DNA or RNA that are associated with pediatric leukemias, brain and solid tumors; the CHLA Cancer Predisposition Panel; RNAseq for cancer, a transcriptome-based assay using RNA sequencing; VMD4Kids, a panel for vascular and mosaic disorders; as well as methylation array-based profiling for pediatric brain tumors.

    Eirini Christodoulou, PhD, and Venkata Yellapantula, PhD, both at CHLA, are co-lead authors on the study. Additional authors, all at CHLA, include: Jennifer Cotter MD, Xiaowu Gai PhD, Dejerianne Ostrow, PhD, and Moiz Bootwalla, MS, of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Katrina O’Halloran MD, James Amatruda MD, PhD, Anya Zdanowicz of the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute; and Liya Xu, PhD, of The Vision Center. 

    About Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is at the forefront of pediatric medicine, offering acclaimed care to children from across the world, the country, and the greater Southern California region. Founded in 1901, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is the largest provider of care for children in Los Angeles County, the No. 1 pediatric hospital in the Pacific region and California, and among the top 10 in the nation on U.S. News & World Report’s Honor Roll of Best Children’s Hospitals. Clinical expertise spans the pediatric care continuum for newborns to young adults, from everyday preventive medicine to the most advanced cases. Inclusive, kid- and family-friendly clinical care is led by physicians who are faculty members of the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and proven discoveries reach patients faster through The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles—among the top 10 children’s hospitals for National Institutes of Health funding. The hospital also is home to the largest pediatric residency training program at a freestanding children’s hospital in the western United States. To learn more, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter, and visit our blog at CHLA.org/blog.

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  • Jonathan Majors flexes his acting muscle, turns heavyweight

    Jonathan Majors flexes his acting muscle, turns heavyweight

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    NEW YORK — The order came before he arrived. French fries and a glass of milk.

    Jonathan Majors shortly after slides into a table in the back of the bar at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. On the table he places a small cup off to the side. In his backpack he has pens, a notebook he writes poetry in, a clown nose, the book he’s reading (James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice”) and a speaker for music. He doesn’t go anywhere without Paulo Coelho’s “Warrior of the Light.”

    Majors points to the cup. This one he’s had since Yale, where he attended the graduate acting program. It’s one of four he rotates, a symbol of his mother’s long-ago advice: “Don’t let anyone fill up your cup.” And those things in his backpack? Totems not unlike the lucky stones and sticks he used to gather as a kid, he says, “to keep my frequency where I want it to be.”

    There’s much in Majors’ life right now buzzing at a high frequency. In the days prior to meeting a reporter, Majors had been at t he megawatt premiere of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” He was courtside at the NBA slam dunk contest, sitting near Spike Lee. After casting Majors in “Da 5 Bloods,” Lee took to calling him “Morehouse” for his character’s T-shirt. Now, Lee calls him “Big Time.”

    “I woke up this morning and thought: I’m very exposed. Everything’s very exposed,” Majors says. “But there’s also a great deal of confidence because it’s like I’m ahead of it. It’s like I’m watching it in slow motion.”

    To everyone else, Majors is moving very fast, indeed. After breaking through in 2019’s “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” the 33-year-old Majors has been steadily bulking up as an actor, expanding his formidable screen presence in “Devotion,” “The Harder They Fall” and

    But 2023 is the year Majors turns heavyweigh “Lovecraft Country,” which earned him an Emmy nomination. t.

    Majors is the new movies-spanning villain of Marvel-dom: the time-traveling supervillain Kang the Conqueror. He is Michael B. Jordan’s friend-turned-foe in “Creed III,” which opens Friday in theaters. And in Elijah Bynum’s prize-winning Sundance entry “Magazine Dreams,” Majors – in a performance that could well earn him an Academy Award nomination next year – is an amateur bodybuilder warped by childhood trauma.

    Majors’ ascendance, to anyone who’s been watching, is not even a little surprising. The Texas son of a pastor, a Yale School of Drama-trained theater actor, a published poet, a classical and soulful performer, Majors is in a weight class by himself. Uncommonly sensitive as an actor, lyrical and loquacious as a person, Majors, a profound admirer of Sidney Poitier, is a rare and potent combination of serious thespian, thirsted-after hunk and devoted artist. And he’s now stepping into, as Spike said, the big time. Global, magazine-cover fame is rapidly descending.

    “Though I’ve not seen the boogeyman, I know it’s out there,” Majors says, smiling. “And I’ve been around to know it’s comin’. I won’t go down my rabbit hole of death, but it’s comin’. But you outrun it. You just stay out of the frame. I’ll stay out of the frame, make my work.”

    For each role this year, Majors has physically transformed himself. A diet of six meals a day and intense workouts made him a muscular mass. Yet the eye-catching metamorphosis belies the steadfast interiority of Majors’ performances. Each character – a brawny but tender trio stretching from villain to antihero – is leaden with pain. The discomfort is what attracted him to the roles, especially Killian Maddox of “Magazine Dreams.”

    “I was curious if I could actually do that. Not even do it. If I was brave enough to go there for myself,” Majors says. “To feel something that’s inside of all of us, that rage, that awkwardness, that constant heartbreak that I do carry. I can’t hide from it. I have a beautiful daughter. I have a beautiful life. But there’s something inside that’s extremely unsatisfied. Extremely.”

    Where Majors’ pain comes from and how it applies to his acting is something you can’t help watching him in “Magazine Dreams” (Searchlight Pictures will release it later this year) or in “Creed III,” in which he plays a man newly freed from prison after a long incarceration for a violent but justifiable crime.

    Majors, who has a 9-year-old daughter, grew up poor. His family were at times briefly homeless. His father was absent for most of his life. But putting that rags-to-riches narrative — that frame — around his journey as an actor is something that doesn’t quite fit. Majors has no “insta-trauma,” he says, to fuel him.

    “I have no moment in my life where I go: That’s what I pull from all the time. I was afraid of that in drama school. My dad just vanished when I was 9 years old,” Majors says. “Yeah, you’re working through that stuff. But I remember saying very clearly: What’s going to happen when I no longer have that pain? When that thought of my dad doesn’t break my heart? Because we grow up. At some point it won’t mist you. What are you going to do then?”

    That doesn’t mean he doesn’t still sometimes sound haunted. “How could the best father in the world leave me? How could that happen?” says Majors. “My dad was a great guy. I have no bad memories of that man. I actually have no bad memories of my father, just his absence.”

    But Majors’ focus is more outward.

    “When you open up your life — any of us — to the suffering of what’s really happening, it gets deep,” he says, rattling off a list of everything from the history of slavery to the George Floyd movement to the heartache of raising a child. “All those things break your heart if you care. And I care a great deal. I don’t know the level to which other people care because I’m not in their skin. But I know the stakes are always extremely high for me. It’s always life or death.”

    That, too, was Bynum’s experience working with Majors on “Magazine Dreams.” Their long talks, he says, weren’t therapy sessions. To Bynum, Majors is “a conduit for human empathy.”

    “The intelligence that he has and the instincts he has an actor are one thing, and those are wonderful,” says Bynum. “But his understanding and feeling for people is really what separates him.”

    “He’s a pretty singular individual and incredibly cerebral and has been that way before any sort of attention has come his way for being that way,” Bynum adds. He’s not concerned about what fame might do to Majors, but he is worried about his schedule. “Making another movie is going to be tough,” says Bynum, “because he’s locked up in Marvel Land for God knows how long.”

    But there aren’t too many in the MCU who are simultaneously publishing poetry. Majors has had two poems recently in The New Republic and is planning to publish a collection soon. In some of them, you can see reflections of Majors’ character work. In “On an Aeroplane” he writes, “It becomes clear to me/ How society converts a hero/ How the villain finds virtue.”

    “Writing’s interesting because it’s the subconscious made clear,” Majors says. “You can examine it. What poems warn you not to do is explain it. Not explaining it and living in the ellipses, you get infinite understanding. Yeah, writing is an integral part to my existence but also to crafting characters.”

    What’s clear is that Majors’ mind is always working. Even in the background right now, in between late-show appearances and premieres, part of his focus is on his next role in an adaptation of Walter Mosley’s “The Man in My Basement.” The building of a character, Majors says, is gentle. But it’s constant.

    “I actually work very slow,” he says. “I just don’t stop working. I am always working. And my body knows when it’s go-time.”

    All the other stuff ultimately has no bearing on where Majors’ head is at. To explain it, he goes back to a formative moment for him, when he realized he wanted to be in actor. It was watching his theater teacher in a Dallas regional production of “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.” It struck Majors like a thunderclap how his teacher transformed with laser-like focus into someone else on stage.

    “I thought: Holy smokes. I want to do that,” says Majors. “That’s where I’m at these days. I’m not shy, but I don’t really like to be bothered. I kind of stick to my stuff. I can be out and chatting and it doesn’t take away from what I’m going to do on screen. It makes no difference.”

    ___

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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  • TikTok sets new default time limits for minors

    TikTok sets new default time limits for minors

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    TikTok said Wednesday that every account held by a user under the age of 18 will have a default 60-minute daily screen time limit in the coming weeks. The changes arrive during a period in which there are growing concerns among different governments about the app’s security and ability to alter its algorithm to push certain posts.

    The update also mirrors gaming rules imposed on minors in China, where TikTok’s parent company ByteDance was formerly based. ByteDance now says it has no headquarters because it is a global business and that instead it has leaders in Singapore, New York and elsewhere managing its business. In 2021, Chinese authorities issued new rules that let minors play online games for only an hour a day and only on Fridays, weekends and public holidays – an effort to curb internet addiction.

    In the U.S., families have struggled with limiting the amount of time their children spend on the Chinese-owned video sharing app. According to the Pew Research Center, about two-third of Americans teens use TikTok.

    Cormac Keenan, head of trust and safety at TikTok said in a blog post Wednesday that when the 60-minute limit is reached, minors will be prompted to enter a passcode and make an “active decision” to keep watching. For accounts where the user is under the age of 13, a parent or guardian will have to set or enter an existing passcode to allow 30 minutes of extra viewing time once the initial 60-minute limit is reached.

    TikTok said it came up with the 60-minute threshold by consulting academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital.

    There have long been concerns about what minors are exposed to on social media and the potential harm it might do. A report released late last year suggested that TikTok’s algorithms are promoting videos about self-harm and eating disorders to vulnerable teens. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook parent Meta, has also faced similar accusations.

    Social media algorithms work by identifying topics and content of interest to a user, who is then sent more of the same as a way to maximize their time on the site. But social media critics say the same algorithms that promote content about a particular sports team, hobby or dance craze can send users down a rabbit hole of harmful content.

    TikTok also said Wednesday that it will also begin prompting teens to set a daily screen time limit if they opt out of the 60-minute default. The company will send weekly inbox notifications to teen accounts with a screen time recap.

    Some of TikTok’s existing safety features for teen accounts include having accounts set to private by default for those between the ages of 13 and 15 and providing direct messaging availability only to those accounts where the user is 16 or older.

    TikTok announced a number of changes for all users, including the ability to set customized screen time limits for each day of the week and allowing users to set a schedule to mute notifications. The company is also launching a sleep reminder to help people plan when they want to be offline at night. For the sleep feature, users will be able to set a time and when the time arrives, a pop-up will remind the user that it’s time to log off.

    Outside of exorbitant use by some minors, there is growing concern about the app around the world. The European Parliament, the European Commission and the EU Council have banned TikTok from being installed on official devices.

    That follows similar actions taken by the U.S. federal government, Congress and more than half of the 50 U.S. states. Canada has also banned it from government devices.

    House Republicans are pushing a bill that will give President Joe Biden the ability to ban the app nationwide, which has faced opposition from some civil liberties organizations who argue such a move would be unconstitutional. The legislation passed the Republican-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday along party lines. The bill must still get a vote on the floor of the House and Senate.

    ______

    AP Business Writer Haleluya Hadero contributed to this report from New York.

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  • ‘A form of resistance’: More Black families are choosing to homeschool their children | CNN

    ‘A form of resistance’: More Black families are choosing to homeschool their children | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Tracie Yorke grew concerned about the quality of education her son was receiving after his school moved to remote learning during the pandemic in 2020.

    Yorke, of Hyattsville, Maryland, described her fourth grader’s Zoom classes as chaotic – it looked as if teachers had not been trained in virtual instruction, she said.

    That summer, the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked a national racial reckoning. With only one Black teacher at the school and none past the fourth grade, Yorke said her son Tyce, who is now 13 years old, had no one he could relate to.

    “There was a lot of mayhem,” said Yorke. “I really realized, ‘I don’t think this environment is healthy for my child.’”

    Yorke decided to homeschool Tyce, and has done so for the last three years. She has put together a curriculum that meets his specific needs and can teach him about race and African American history without the risk of politicians intervening.

    While homeschooling isn’t new, advocates say a growing number of Black parents are educating their children at home so they can exercise more control over what they are taught and how they are treated. Many made the switch to homeschooling during the pandemic, but interest is growing as national debates over teaching systemic racism and Black history in the classroom continue, advocates say.

    Sherri Mehta and her older son Caleb work on an assignment at their home in Laurel, Mayland. She first turned to homeschooling in 2020.

    In the last few years, lawmakers, mostly Republicans, have called on schools to remove critical race theory – a concept that legal scholars say acknowledges that racism is both systemic and institutional in American society – from their curriculums. (Educators argue that critical race theory itself is generally not included in the grade school curriculum.) There have also been widespread efforts by lawmakers, parents and school boards to ban books about race, gender and sexuality. And most recently, Florida’s Department of Education rejected an Advanced Placement African American studies course.

    According to census data, the number of Black households homeschooling their children jumped from 3.3.% at the start of the pandemic in 2020 to 16.1% by the fall of that year. That jump was the largest of any racial group. Meanwhile, the proportion of homeschooled children in the US overall nearly doubled from 2.8% before the pandemic to 5.4% in the 2020-21 school year, according to the US Department of Education. The data may not present a complete count of families because every state regulates and tracks homeschooling differently.

    Cheryl Fields-Smith, a professor in elementary education at the University of Georgia, cited several reasons why more Black families are choosing to homeschool, including the disproportionate rates of discipline against Black students, the resegregation of schools, the denied access to gifted education in Black and brown communities, and bullying compounded by school safety concerns.

    Fields-Smith said while these issues are often researched in isolation, many Black families are having to face them all at the same time. So they are developing learning routines that fit their children’s needs and forming homeschooling co-op groups with other families to teach their children together and socialize them, Fields-Smith said.

    “I conceptualize it as a form of resistance,” Fields-Smith told CNN. “Instead of accepting the status quo, families are resisting what’s happening in their schools.”

    Some families say they chose to homeschool because they were living in majority White school districts and wanted to teach their children to have confidence in their Black identity. Others expressed a desire to shield their children from the nation’s polarizing racial climate.

    Sherri Mehta, of Laurel, Maryland, said she first turned to homeschooling in 2020 to help her young son who wasn’t doing well with remote learning as a kindergartner.

    Sherri Mehta watches Caleb practice the piano.

    Gabriel Mehta stands on the stairs while his brother Caleb lounges on a bean bag chair during a break between lessons.

    Mehta said she was also becoming concerned about her two children facing a “cultural gap” or racism because they were not around teachers who looked like them in their school district. And she saw few Black children included in the school’s gifted program.

    With homeschooling, Mehta said she and her husband can split the responsibilities of teaching different subjects, teaching the truth about Black history and slavery, and can rely on co-op groups for hands-on learning, such as woodworking.

    Mehta said she doesn’t want her children to experience the same racial trauma she experienced in public school. She recalled growing up in Richmond, Virginia, and competing against sports teams with names such as the Rebels and the Confederates.

    “There is a sort of innocence lost and I just think my kids are deserving of something different,” Mehta said. “They’ll face racism. It’s not going away. But having the experience they have now of being surrounded by this nurturing of their entire being, I think what they have now will help them face challenges as they get older.”

    The Mehta family poses for a portrait in front of their Maryland home.

    Carlos Birdsong, of Charlotte, North Carolina, said he wanted his two daughters to have “a greater sense of cultural identity” amid the political divisiveness in the country.

    “We moved here from South Carolina to this area because these public schools were supposedly good,” Birdsong said. “The charter schools in our area are mostly White. The private schools are White. They are very good schools, but they may not be the best fit because they’re majority White,” he said.

    Some families who homeschool are driven by their own experiences with traditional schooling or because they want to emphasize religious training in their instruction.

    Aurora Bean, a mother of three from Matawan, New Jersey, began homeschooling her children four years ago because she was uncomfortable with schools discussing gender identity issues at a young age and wanted to be able to teach her children about their faith. She was also opposed to the Covid-19 vaccine requirements many schools introduced during the pandemic.

    She supplements her children’s learning with coursework provided through Acellus Academy, an online K-12 private school that offers classes in Spanish, history and other subjects. Bean said she has embraced the freedom homeschooling provides, including the ability for her family to spend several months traveling the world as part of a Christian discipleship training program later this year.

    “It’s so important for my kids to see beyond our nice neighborhood,” Bean said. “It’s important for them to see the other side of things, more of the world, less of the privilege.”

    Khari, 5, practices reading with his mother, Aurora Bean.

    Bean begins each day by teaching her family about devotion and their faith. Most mornings she wakes up before the kids to have time to herself and to read the Bible.

    Many families have leaned on support groups and virtual education providers such as Outschool – which Yorke uses – to help them navigate teaching their children at home.

    Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman and Fields-Smith created the group Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars in 2020 to help families who want to homeschool but don’t know where to start. Ali-Coleman, now the organization’s sole owner and managing director, said she had homeschooled her daughter, Khari, off and on for years. And Khari was later able to attend the University of San Francisco on a full scholarship, she said.

    Families who homeschool come from all socioeconomic backgrounds, Ali-Coleman and Fields-Smith say.

    “When I homeschooled, I was not upper-middle-class, married – although I live with my partner who is my daughter’s father – Christian or politically conservative,” Ali-Coleman told CNN.

    She advises parents who want to homeschool to start with a mission statement spelling out their goals, and she holds virtual teach-ins to help families navigate challenges. Ali-Coleman said some families turn to homeschooling because institutional schoolwork isn’t challenging enough.
    “We’re now seeing the way people are speaking out loud about how they have a problem with the way we’re teaching history,” Ali-Coleman said.

    Ali-Coleman also said homeschooling requires parents to adjust their thinking and potentially change what they do to earn money. While homeschooling, she worked jobs that offered her flexibility, she said.

    “This gig economy that is now more formalized is something homeschooling parents have been doing for ages,” she said. “You have to think ‘what are the unique needs of your family and what are the support systems you need to create?’ I never want to give the impression that it’s easy. It’s always based on what the unique needs of the family are. Adjustments are definitely required and that’s something that you need to go in knowing.”

    Bean holds her son, Khari, in her arms while they look at a map of the world. The book they were reading mentioned Paris so she asked him if he could point to it on a map.

    Back in Maryland, the Yorkes explore Black history all year as part of Tyce’s curriculum. Last year, he studied Amharic, an Ethiopian language not offered in most schools and took a course on “Blacks in Comics” through a local Black homeschool co-op. This year, he took a class on astronomy that highlighted African and Black contributions to the field.

    “I’ve always had concerns about educating a young Black boy, with the perceptions and stereotypes and coming off of George Floyd,” Yorke said. “I want to be able to discuss race in the classroom.”

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  • Free Dental Care Provided to Mark Annual National February Observance of Give Kids a Smile Day

    Free Dental Care Provided to Mark Annual National February Observance of Give Kids a Smile Day

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    Newswise — In observance of National Children’s Health Dental Health Month, and to mark Give Kids a Smile (GKAS) Day, the dentistry teams at Hackensack Meridian Hackensack University Medical Center and Hackensack Meridian JFK University Medical Center provided free dental care for children ages 12 and younger. Treatment was provided as part of the American Dental Association’s (ADA) annual February push to tackle tooth decay in children. 

    “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tooth decay is the most common chronic disease of childhood in the United States,” said Steven t. Hobson, DMD, clinical director, Department of Dentistry, JFK University Medical Center. “Studies point to the fact that children who have poor oral health often miss more school and have problems learning, but can also have issues eating and speaking due to dental problems.” 

    “We are very proud that for more than a decade now we have been addressing these dental health issues by giving back to the community during this national observance,” said James A. Ruggiero, DMD.  “Hundreds of children have benefited from this program at our hospitals.” 

    At JFK University Medical Center, Dr. Steven Hobson and his team provided care to children who became superheroes for the day during their visit to the clinic which was decorated for a two-day clinic event.  Children received a t-shirt in celebration of their visit.   

    Children who came to The Center for Dentistry at Hackensack University Medical Center and at JFK University Medical Center received:

    • a comprehensive dental exam
    • oral healthcare instruction
    • fluoride treatments 
    • free dental hygiene goodies

    Last year, in New Jersey alone, more than 2,000 children visited nearly 100 sites across the state, including Hackensack Meridian Health dental clinics.. Each year approximately 6,500 dentists and 30,000 dental team members volunteer at local 

    GKAS events to provide free oral health education, screenings, preventive and restorative treatment.

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    Hackensack Meridian Health

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  • How does wildfire smoke affect pregnancy and children?

    How does wildfire smoke affect pregnancy and children?

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    Newswise — How does exposure to wildfire smoke affect pregnant people and their developing babies? UC Davis Health researchers hope to answer that question, thanks to a new two-year, $1.35 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

    The study is led by molecular epidemiologist Rebecca J. Schmidt, an associate professor in Public Health Sciences, and Miriam Nuño, a professor in the Division of Biostatistics.

    The researchers are gathering birth and health records as well as data about wildfire smoke exposure in California. They’ll look for links between pollution from wildfire smoke and low birth weight, developmental delays and autism.

    The team is also partnering with regional organizations to educate underserved communities about the impact of smoke and provide strategies to reduce exposure.

    “This is a California study, but the whole country is being exposed to wildfire smoke,” explained Schmidt, who is also a faculty member at the UC Davis MIND Institute, the Perinatal Origins of Disparities (POD) Center, and the Environmental Health Sciences Center. “It’s important to find out what the real concerns during pregnancy may be — including perhaps at what times during pregnancy we need to have moms be the most careful about their exposure.”

    Schmidt has a history of studying the impacts of wildfire smoke on pregnancy and children. Her previous research involved collecting hair, blood and other samples from pregnant people and newborns. Her findings from that study will complement this new work. 

    Collecting data on smoke exposure, births and health

    Wildfire seasons are becoming longer and more severe. It is estimated that wildfire smoke is linked to 339,000 premature deaths each year worldwide.

    In California, where massive wildfires such as the Camp, Caldor and Dixie fires have affected both urban and rural areas, hundreds of thousands of pregnant people have been exposed to wildfire smoke.

    “Studies have shown associations between wildfire smoke and lower birth weight or preterm birth, which are linked to later health outcomes,” Schmidt said.

    The study has four areas of focus:

    1. Find out which areas of California were exposed to the most wildfire air pollution.
    2. Study wildfire smoke exposures before pregnancy and during each trimester of pregnancy. Researchers will look at these in relation to birth weight and gestational age as well as factors like neighborhood and local environment.
    3. Explore associations between wildfire smoke exposure and autism and developmental delays.
    4. Work with community partners to share research results and tools to help reduce smoke exposure in vulnerable populations.

    “Our first step is to see who has the greatest exposures to these repeated wildfire events,” Schmidt explained. “Then we’ll look at how that varies by factors such as race, ethnicity, rural versus urban location, poverty level and exposure to other pollutants.”  

    The study will include all people born in California between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2021 — roughly 11 million births. However, when looking at autism and developmental delays, researchers will only include people over 3 years of age by the end of 2021. Autism diagnosis is typically more reliable after this age.

    Researchers will use state birth records, historical air monitor readings and health records from the California Department of Developmental Services.

    Empowering vulnerable populations

    The study aims to identify vulnerable populations where people are exposed not only to wildfire smoke but also to other pollution and pesticides and have less access to health care.

    “Even though we are all exposed to wildfire smoke, we all have different risks,” explained Nuño. “If you have can work from home versus having an outdoor job, this is where these differences really manifest.”

    The researchers are partnering with the March of Dimes, Empower Yolo and the Knights Landing One Health Center, which provides health care in the rural Central Valley community.

    Together, they’ll deliver their findings and strategies for reducing exposure to wildfire smoke to underserved communities. This will include providing the materials and training to help people make Corsi-Rosenthal Air Boxes. This is a low-cost filtration system that’s been shown to be effective at removing particulates from indoor air. Creator Richard L. Corsi, dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering, is a partner on the project.

    “This project will advance solutions to challenges lying at the intersection of climate change and environmental justice, both here in California and in communities around the country,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Martha Guzman. “Advancing scientific research that helps protect public health and the environment is central to EPA’s mission and this project will have lasting results for years to come.”

    Environmental justice is a major focus, notes Nuño, who is also the interim director of the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research.

    “Pregnant women are stressed about the impact of wildfires — especially those who are more vulnerable. Justice calls for empowering these women with this information,” she said.

    Other collaborators include:

    • Beate Ritz, professor of epidemiology, environmental health and neurology at UCLA
    • Irva Hertz-Picciotto, director of the Environmental Health Sciences Center
    • Kathryn Conlon, assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences and School of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Medicine and Epidemiology
    • Michael Kleeman, professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
    • Sean Raffuse, associate director of software and data, UC Davis Air Quality Research Center
    • Deborah Bennett, professor, Department of Public Health Sciences
    • Natalia Deeb-Sossa, professor, Chicana/o Studies

    Link to EPA Press Release about award.

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    UC Davis MIND Institute

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  • ‘Take It Down:’ a tool for teens to remove explicit images

    ‘Take It Down:’ a tool for teens to remove explicit images

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    “Once you send that photo, you can’t take it back,” goes the warning to teenagers, often ignoring the reality that many teens send explicit images of themselves under duress, or without understanding the consequences.

    A new online tool aims to give some control back to teens, or people who were once teens, and take down explicit images and videos of themselves from the internet.

    Called Take It Down, the tool is operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and funded in part by Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook and Instagram.

    The site lets anyone anonymously — and without uploading any actual images — create what is essentially a digital fingerprint of the image. This fingerprint (a unique set of numbers called a “hash”) then goes into a database and the tech companies that have agreed to participate in the project remove the images from their services.

    Now, the caveats. The participating platforms are, as of Monday, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Yubo, OnlyFans and Pornhub, owned by Mindgeek. If the image is on another site, or if it is sent in an encrypted platform such as WhatsApp, it will not be taken down.

    In addition, if someone alters the original image — for instance, cropping it, adding an emoji or turning it into a meme — it becomes a new image and thus need a new hash. Images that are visually similar — such as the same photo with and without an Instagram filter, will have similar hashes, differing in just one character.

    “Take It Down is made specifically for people who have an image that they have reason to believe is already out on the Web somewhere, or that it could be,” said Gavin Portnoy, a spokesman for the NCMEC. “You’re a teen and you’re dating someone and you share the image. Or somebody extorted you and they said, ‘if you don’t give me an image, or another image of you, I’m going to do X, Y, Z.’”

    Portnoy said teens may feel more comfortable going to a site than to involve law enforcement, which wouldn’t be anonymous, for one.

    “To a teen who doesn’t want that level of involvement, they just want to know that it’s taken down, this is a big deal for them,” he said. NCMEC is seeing an increase in reports of online exploitation of children. The nonprofit’s CyberTipline received 29.3 million reports in 2021, up 35% from 2020.

    Meta, back when it was still Facebook, attempted to create a similar tool, although for adults, back in 2017. It didn’t go over well because the site asked people to, basically, send their (encrypted) nudes to Facebook — not the most trusted company even in 2017. The company tested out the service in Australia for a brief period, but didn’t expand it to other countries.

    But in that time, online sexual extortion and exploitation has only gotten worse, for children and teens as well as for adults. Many tech companies already use this hash system to share, take down and report to law enforcement images of child sexual abuse. Portnoy said the goal is to have more companies sign up.

    “We never had anyone say no,” he said.

    Twitter and TikTok so far have not committed to the project. Neither company immediately respond to a message for comment Sunday.

    Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, said Take It Down is one of many tools the company uses to address child abuse and exploitation on its platforms.

    “In addition to supporting the development of this tool and having, reporting and blocking systems on our on our platform, we also do a number of different things to try to prevent these kinds of situations from happening in the first place. So, for example, we don’t allow unconnected adults to message minors,” she said.

    The site works with real as well as artificial intelligence-generated images and “deepfakes,” Davis said. Deepfakes are created to look like real, actual people saying or doing things they didn’t actually do.

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  • Do These 5 Things to Protect Your Kids From Ingesting Marijuana Edibles

    Do These 5 Things to Protect Your Kids From Ingesting Marijuana Edibles

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    Newswise — As marijuana has become legal in more states across the U.S., a recent analysis has found that the drug is accidentally ending up in the hands—and mouths—of children. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has some tips for keeping kids away from cannabis.

    According to figures from the National Poison Data System, between 2017 and 2021 there were more than 7,000 cases of exposure to edible cannabis in kids under 6 years old. During that five-year span, the number of incidents rose from 207 in 2017 to 3,054 in 2021—a 1,375% increase. About 1 in 4 of these children ended up hospitalized, many with severe complications such as breathing difficulties that landed them in critical care units.

    The most devastating finding: In more than 90% of cases, children obtained the toxic edibles from inside the home.

    What can you do to keep from adding to these statistics? We asked Colleen Kraft, MD, MBA, Attending Physician in the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, for her best five tips on how to keep cannabis products away from children. She says having a pot-free house, of course, is the only fail-safe method: “The best way to keep your kids safe from marijuana edibles is not to have them in your home.”

    But if you’re going to have edibles around, Dr. Kraft says to take these precautions to make sure your children can’t get to them.

    1. Store them away. Dr. Kraft tells parents to treat their edible marijuana like they would medication—meaning, keep it out of kids’ reach. First, remove the edibles from their packaging and put them into child-resistant containers. Next, affix a “marijuana edibles” label onto the containers and place them into a locked cabinet.
    2. Buy edibles with less enticing packaging. Edibles are packaged to look like treats—gummy candies or brownies, usually—which makes them naturally appealing to children. “These products often come in ‘copycat’ packaging that looks like real candy,” Dr. Kraft says. “This is particularly dangerous for kids who are too young to read.” The doctor advises the simplest solution: Don’t buy edibles that are packaged to look like candy.
    3. Do not eat them in front of your kids. This is commonsense advice, but it’s worth saying. Your kids are instantly curious about anything you’re eating, especially if it appears to be candy or some other sweet treat. Since edibles can trigger their curiosity, it’s better to consume them where your kids can’t see you.
    4. Ask other adults to do the same. If your child visits other households where the adults consume marijuana edibles, you must have a talk with them about storing cannabis edibles safely—and they need to listen. “If family and friends use these products, they need to take the same precautions you would take,” Dr. Kraft says.
    5. Be alert, know the facts and respond. If your child consumes a marijuana edible, look at its wrapper to see how much tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) it contains. THC is the toxic psychoactive component in cannabis, and because of a child’s small size, “just one cookie or candy bar can lead to an overdose,” Dr. Kraft says. She explains that the body takes longer to process ingested THC than inhaled THC, so be aware that symptoms of marijuana poisoning, such as vomiting, slurred speech and breathing difficulties, may not appear until hours after the edible is consumed.

    And finally … If you believe your child has ingested edible marijuana, the first step to take is to call the poison control hotline—1-800-222-1222—to determine what to do. If your child’s symptoms are severe, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room immediately.

     

     

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  • She grew up watching ‘Sesame Street.’ Then she made history as the show’s first Black female puppeteer | CNN

    She grew up watching ‘Sesame Street.’ Then she made history as the show’s first Black female puppeteer | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Megan Piphus Peace has always found magic in puppets.

    The self-trained ventriloquist and puppeteer grew up watching the sock puppets on “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along,” the hand puppets of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” and the muppets of “Sesame Street.” As a child, the characters seemed so alive, and it was only later that she learned what it took to create that sense of reality.

    “Puppets allow us to enter the imagination of a child,” Piphus Peace told CNN. “You think of a child playing. Their toys can talk. Their cars can move. So you’re speaking their imaginative and creative language when you’re allowing a puppet to come to life.”

    Ever since Piphus Peace discovered that puppetry could be an art form, it’s been a passion – one that she’s pursued throughout her life. These days, she’s the voice of 6-year-old Gabrielle on “Sesame Street,” and the first Black woman puppeteer in the show’s more than 50-year history.

    Piphus Peace learned about puppeteering early on.

    When she was 10, a woman at her church wanted to start a puppetry team to perform for the children in the congregation, and assembled a group to attend a puppetry conference. There, Piphus Peace was inspired by the female performers she saw – so much so that when she came home, she told her parents she wanted to be a ventriloquist.

    “Onstage, you got to see the interaction between a human and an inanimate object that was coming to life,” Piphus Peace said. “That just had so much magic to me, and I wanted to do the same.”

    Her parents were incredibly supportive, she said, and helped her find a puppet and videotapes of ventriloquists for her to learn from. Soon, she was performing for her classmates, and then the entire elementary school.

    “I realized how you can captivate the attention of a child with a puppet,” she said. “My soul was just lifted by being able to make kids anywhere from kindergarten to sixth grade smile and laugh.”

    During her teenage years, Piphus Peace performed across her hometown of Cincinnati and around the country. Her talents were also on display during her high school valedictorian speech, earning her the nickname “Valedictorian Ventriloquist.” As a college student at Vanderbilt University, she became known as the “Vanderbilt Ventriloquist,” appearing on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” in 2012 and on “America’s Got Talent” in 2013.

    After getting her undergraduate degree in 2014 and a master’s of science in finance in 2015, Piphus Peace embarked on a career in real estate finance. But all the while, she kept pursuing her interests in ventriloquism and puppetry. She would wake up early to write material, practice in the evenings after work and find opportunities to perform on the weekends.

    “I just couldn’t give up the feeling of making audiences smile,” she said.

    In 2020, Piphus Peace said she was contacted by “Sesame Street” performers Matt Vogel and Martin Robinson, who asked if she’d be willing to learn the signature muppet-style puppetry of the show.

    It was definitely an adjustment, Piphus Peace said. She was used to doing stage ventriloquism, which involved interacting with puppets without moving the lips. Muppet-style puppetry meant keeping the body out of the camera frame and using monitors to see how the puppets looked on screen.

    She was also working a full-time job and happened to be pregnant with her second child. But she honed her skills in the mornings before work and in the evenings after putting her son to bed. She sent videos to Vogel and Robinson, who in turn would send feedback and notes on her performances. She also joined the “Sesame Street” mentorship program, and practiced puppeteering with fellow mentees.

    Later that year, Piphus was asked to play Gabrielle in a CNN and “Sesame Street” town hall on racism. It was a daunting prospect for her first “Sesame Street” appearance – she would be a part of helping children process George Floyd’s killing and the Black Lives Matter protests. But she said having the support of seasoned “Sesame Street” veterans got her through.

    Cookie Monster and Gabrielle.

    “For my first experience with ‘Sesame Street,’ (we were) covering something so necessary in the community and a very necessary discussion,” she said.

    In 2021, she joined “Sesame Street” as a full-time cast member. But it was by happenstance that she discovered she was a trailblazer.

    Piphus Peace was at the famed Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, New York, for her first in-person recording of the show when she came across a wall decorated with photos of the cast and crew. As she looked at the faces of the puppeteers that came before her, she noticed none were Black women.

    She asked if there had been other Black female puppeteers on “Sesame Street,” and a producer later informed her that she was the first.

    “I realized in that moment that I had made history in a show that had already been around for over 50 years,” Piphus Peace said. “I realized that it would open doors for other Black women, women of color, little boys of color, entering the entertainment space to really see that they can be absolutely anything – no matter how niche or unique.”

    Through her character Gabrielle, Piphus Peace has been able to model joy, curiosity and self-love for a new generation of “Sesame Street” viewers.

    “Gabrielle is a sweet, 6-year-old Black girl muppet,” she said. “She loves everything about her community and her friends. Gabrielle loves to sing and to dance, and she’s had lots of experiences on ‘Sesame Street’ where she’s gotten to sing about colors, about loving her hair.”

    While Piphus Peace was a shy child, Gabrielle is the confident girl that she aspired to be, she said. And she hopes that Gabrielle can serve as an inspiration to other kids.

    “I hope that kids can learn that we all have beautiful unique differences, but in many ways we’re the same,” she said. “I hope that they learn an unwavering sense of self-confidence.”

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  • Opinion: The one critical step Congress could take to protect kids online | CNN

    Opinion: The one critical step Congress could take to protect kids online | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He is also a former senior policy adviser to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on Twitter. The views expressed in this piece are his own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    This week the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that raised thorny questions over algorithms and free speech on the Internet. In Gonzalez v. Google, lawyers for the parents of a teenager killed in an Islamic State attack are arguing that YouTube should be held liable for promoting content from the group.

    The political debates over how much speech protections online cover Big Tech firms have inflamed the right for years. In the oral arguments, at least, the justices seemed uncertain about how best to proceed with the complex issues at play.

    But new research shows some issues surrounding tech don’t have a political divide. A new report I wrote for the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Institute for Family Studies shows widespread concern around kids online. And a set of policy proposals that aim to restore parents’ ability to shepherd their kids on the wild west that is the Web all recorded high levels of support across parents from both political sides.

    This issue is something that nearly every parent has to navigate. A recent report from Common Sense Media found that the average age of first exposure to pornography is now 12, and that three-quarters of teens had seen porn online by age 17.

    But parents have plenty to worry about kids online in addition to early exposure to pornography. All manner of online content can impact a child’s life. As this week’s Supreme Court case reminds us, youth can be lured into extremism or self-harm via online content. Parents might want to know if their child is becoming increasingly drawn toward figures who share racist or misogynistic views online.

    Documents released by a whistleblower indicated Facebook’s (now known as Meta, Instagram’s parent company) internal data showed the site made “body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls,” and also led to more severe and self-destructive thoughts. While the company disputed the claims, it also postponed an “Instagram for Kids” offering. Cyberbullying and non-consensual nude photo sharing have plagued high schools.

    These concerns are resonating with policymakers. Current law and decades of Supreme Court precedent establish much more leeway for Congress to protect kids online without having to hash out the complexities of more wide-ranging free speech concerns.

    A bipartisan effort to take modest steps to protect kids online might bear fruit. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal have been pushing their colleagues to pass their Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would update the framework for how tech companies serve minors online.

    Among other things, it would require social media sites to default minors into the strongest possible privacy protections and give parents new tools to monitor harmful content. It would mandate social media platforms mitigate harms to minors, such as by restricting or eliminating content relating to self-harm, suicide and eating disorders. And it would set up require an annual audit of risks to minors, including providing broader data access to researchers to study the impact of social media on kids’ development.

    The bill was opposed by some civil rights and LGBTQ groups, who worried that putting greater content restrictions on what kids may come across online could prevent them from accessing information about sexual education without their parents’ knowledge. But that concern may ring hollow with parents who believe they should have better tools to know if their 13- or 14-year-old child is searching for information about birth control.

    Some say parents should be the ultimate gatekeeper of their kids online, which is true. But we have laws relating to the minimum age to consume alcohol or drive a car precisely because we know adolescents’ brains are still developing, and the potential to cause harm to oneself or others is high. After all, unless a critical mass of families agree to move social life offline, minors who don’t have access to Instagram, TikTok or Facebook may be missing out on crucial information or opportunities to socialize.

    Moreover, while some tools exist for helping keep kids safe online, they are often easily circumvented. Asking individual parent to be an expert on the plethora of user settings, filters and options for keeping age-inappropriate content away from their kids places an undue burden on families. Establishing age-based controls, and policing them effectively, would be an appropriate step for Congress to take.

    Indeed, some say the Blackburn-Blumenthal framework doesn’t go far enough. The policy solutions polled in our recent report are more aggressive than those included in KOSA, and still receive support from three in four parents.

    For example, nearly 9 in 10 Republican parents, and 77% of all parents, agreed with a proposal to require social media platforms to grant parents full access to what their children are seeing and who they are communicating with online, the most popular policy polled among that subgroup. 81% were in favor of a law that would require social media platforms to get parents’ permission before allowing minors to open an account. Another two-thirds of parents agreed or strongly agreed that internet service providers should be required to obtain age verification (like a drivers’ license or credit card) before allowing individuals to view pornography.

    Future action will likely take up these concerns. Just last week, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a bill that would bar users from under age 16 from opening a social media account. While the implementation mechanism would likely need to be improved on – relying on Big Tech companies to keep copies of every American’s drivers’ license safe may not work out – the direction of the legislation is laudable, recognizing that American parents are looking for bold action when it comes to keeping kids safe online.

    The battles over Big Tech and accusations of algorithmic bias may be what gets the Republican base riled up. But in a divided Congress, both parties should listen to the parents who make up their base – giving families more tools to protect their kids online is not only long overdue, it’s a political winner.

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  • Common pregnancy complications may slow development of infant in the womb, study finds

    Common pregnancy complications may slow development of infant in the womb, study finds

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    Newswise — Gestational diabetes and preeclampsia may be linked to slower biological development in infants, according to a new study led by USC.

    The research, published today in JAMA Network Open, found that newborns exposed to these two pregnancy complications were biologically younger than their chronologic gestational age. The infants’ biological or “epigenetic” age is based on molecular markers in their cells.

    The results raise intriguing questions about how common pregnancy complications may affect infants and health outcomes later in childhood. Could they create developmental delays? Could some exposures advance biological age prematurely, even in the womb? What about stressors such as exposures to environmental pollution?

    “In aging research, if your epigenetic ‘clock’ shows an older age than your chronological age — due to exposures to various stressors — that’s viewed as bad, as putting people at increased risks for illness,” said corresponding author Carrie Breton, a professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “We wondered how far back we could take this concept; could we take it to the womb?

    “In this case we found the opposite — pregnancy complications led to babies with a younger biological age. This raises a ton of questions about the impact later in life. This is a fairly new metric and very little is known about it.”

    For the study, researchers collected DNA samples from 1,801 newborns from 12 cohorts across the U.S. The participants were born between 1998 and 2008 to mothers who had preeclampsia, gestational diabetes or hypertension during pregnancies and compared to pregnancies without any of these complications.

    The researchers used these samples to evaluate each infant’s epigenetic age. They then compared the epigenetic age to the infant’s chronological age at birth, measured in pregnancy weeks.

    The researchers found that babies who were exposed to preeclampsia or gestational diabetes while they were developing in the womb were biologically younger than babies without the exposures, indicating that these exposures may have slowed down the babies’ biological development. The difference was more noticeable in female babies compared to male babies. Exposure to hypertension didn’t have a measurable impact.

    “In the future, we plan to continue our research with a larger sample of participants and investigate whether these biological changes detected at birth are linked to health outcomes later in childhood,” said Breton. “If so, doctors and researchers could use that knowledge to develop targeted interventions that can reduce the adverse effects of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes on children’s health.”

    In addition to Breton, other authors of the study are Elizabeth Vang, Sahra Mohazzab-Hosseinian, Zhongzheng Niu and Daniel Weisenberger of the Keck School; Christine Ladd-Acosta, Xingyu Gao, Meredith Palmore, Ashley Song and Heather Volk of Johns Hopkins University; Emily Barrett of Rutgers University; Catherine Bulka, Rebecca Fry and Michael O’Shea of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Nicole Bush of the University of California, San Francisco; Andres Cardenas of the University of California, Berkeley; Dana Dabelea of the University of Colorado; Anne Dunlop, Anna Knight, Elizabeth Kennedy and Alicia Smith of Emory University; Jaclyn Goodrich of the University of Michigan; Julie Herbstman of Columbia University; Marie-France Hivert of Harvard University; Linda Kahn and Leonardo Trasande of New York University; Margaret Karagas of Dartmouth College; Andréanne Morin of the University of Chicago; Douglas Ruden of Wayne State University; Rebecca Schmidt of the University of California, Davis; and Eliot Spindel of Oregon Health & Science University.

    The research was supported by the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes Program (ECHO) at the National Institutes of Health.

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    University of Southern California (USC)

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