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Tag: children

  • 2 arrested in central California shooting that left 6 dead, including mother clutching 10-month-old son | CNN

    2 arrested in central California shooting that left 6 dead, including mother clutching 10-month-old son | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two suspects were taken into custody, one after a shootout, in a “cartel-style” massacre last month that left six people dead in central California, including a young mother and her 10-month-old son, authorities announced Friday.

    The suspects, identified in charging documents as Angel Uriarte, 35, and Noah Beard, 25, are known members of the Norteño gang, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said during a news conference. He said the January 16 shooting was the likely result of a conflict with members of the Sureños, a rival gang.

    “The suspects and the victims have a long history of gun violence, heavily active in guns, gang violence, gun violence, and narcotics dealings,” Boudreaux said, adding, “the motive is not exactly clear at this point.”

    Authorities said Uriarte was injured in a shootout with ATF agents before he was taken into custody. He is hospitalized, and in stable condition, according to ATF Acting Special Agent in Charge Joshua Jackson. Beard was taken into custody without incident.

    Beard is accused of killing 16-year-old Alissa Parraz and her 10-month-old son, Nycholas, as they fled the overnight shooting at a home in Goshen, a farming community about 30 miles southeast of Fresno. Authorities showed surveillance video Friday showing the young mother lifting her son over a fence and climbing over. Both were found dead in the street outside the home.

    Along with the mother and her son, the four other victims were identified as Marcos Parraz, 19; Eladio Parraz, 52; Alissa’s grandmother, Rosa Parraz, 72; and Jennifer Analla, 49.

    Boudreaux said all the victims died of gunshot wounds, most were shot in the head, including the 10-month-old boy.

    thumb avlon gun laws

    The surprising history of gun laws in America

    “This was clearly not a random act of violence. This family was targeted by coldblooded killers,” Boudreaux said.

    The arrests were part of a multiagency effort dubbed Operation Nightmare, which included searches of several California prisons and 24/7 surveillance of the suspects over the last 10 days. DNA left at the scene was credited with quickly leading law enforcement to zero in on the pair.

    Uriarte and Beard are each facing six counts of murder, according to Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward, along with enhancements relating to the use of a firearm, and that the acts were committed in participation of a criminal street gang. The suspects may eventually face the death penalty if convicted.

    CNN is trying to determine if both suspects have legal representation.

    The massacre came before a series of back-to-back mass shootings in California late last month, including an attack during a Lunar New Year Celebration in suburban Monterey Park, just west of Los Angeles. That shooting on January 21 left 11 people dead.

    Another attack on January 23 left four dead at a California mushroom farm in Half Moon Bay. That night, another shooting, this time in Oakland, left one dead and seven others injured.

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    Mass shootings are ‘uniquely American experience,’ Dem Senator says

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  • 2 abducted Missouri children found in a Florida supermarket

    2 abducted Missouri children found in a Florida supermarket

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    HIGH SPRINGS, Fla. — Two abducted children who had been missing from Missouri for almost a year were found in a central Florida grocery store with their non-custodial mother, who was taken into police custody, authorities said.

    Kristi Gilley was arrested last Wednesday on an out-of-state fugitive warrant. Court records show Gilley, 36, remained in jail on Sunday.

    High Springs police officers found Gilley and the two children in a Winn Dixie super market after running a routine vehicle tag check that indicated the vehicle’s owner was a fugitive, the High Springs Police Department said in a news release. High Springs is located about 22 miles (35.4 km) northwest of Gainesville, Florida.

    The children had been missing from Clay County, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City, since last March.

    The High Springs Police Department said the children were turned over to the Florida Department of Children and Families and would be reunited with family members in Missouri.

    Gilley’s court-appointed lawyer from the local public defender’s office didn’t respond to an emailed inquiry on Sunday.

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  • Republicans across the country push legislation to restrict drag show performances | CNN Politics

    Republicans across the country push legislation to restrict drag show performances | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A slew of bills, mostly in Republican-led states, are looking to restrict or prohibit drag show performances in the presence of children, part of a larger fight over a burgeoning culture war issue.

    Republicans say the performances expose children to sexual themes and imagery that are inappropriate, a claim rejected by advocates, who say the proposed measures are discriminatory against the LGBTQ community and could violate First Amendment laws.

    As transgender issues and drag culture are increasingly becoming more mainstream, such shows – which often feature men dressing as women in exaggerated makeup while singing or entertaining a crowd, though some shows feature bawdier content – have occasionally been the target of attacks, and LGBTQ advocates say the bills under consideration add to a heightened state of alarm for the community.

    Bills in at least 11 states across the country are working their way through legislatures, though none have yet been signed into law, according to a CNN review.

    Legislation in Tennessee and Arizona, which seek to limit “adult cabaret performances” on public property so as to shield them from the view of children, threaten violators with a misdemeanor and repeat offenders with a felony. A bill in the Texas legislature would include restaurants and bars that host drag performances under the state’s definition of a “sexually oriented business.”

    Under the terms presently being considered in West Virginia, parents or guardians of children who are either involved in drag shows or permit their children to be in the presence of one could be “required to complete parenting classes, substance abuse counseling, anger management counseling or other appropriate services” as determined by the state.

    Shangela, a drag performer who has competed on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” told CNN in an interview that as the drag community has gained visibility, “it becomes a greater target and a greater point of possible division.”

    “Now (people are) seeing drag. They’re seeing it on their cable networks, they’re seeing it in film, and it’s being represented authentically. And it’s forcing, it’s driving conversations that have never had to be had before. And some people are afraid of that,” she said.

    Jonathan Hamilt, the executive director of Drag Story Hour, a non-profit organization that features performers reading to children, believes bigotry is the motivation behind the bills.

    “If drag wasn’t rooted in gay culture and rooted in queer community, I don’t think it’d be up for debate,” Hamilt said. “Nobody is banning clowns, nobody is banning miming. This is nothing new, this is just the 2023 trending version of what homophobia looks like.”

    “Drag meddles in stories about gender, beauty, and culture,” drag queen Sasha Velour wrote for CNN in 2017. “Even in the act of lip syncing, we choose a song – a preexisting story that’s deemed ‘straight’ or ‘normal’ or ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ – and then we squeeze our beautiful queer bodies into it, shifting the meaning, disrupting the total effect. Drag makes room for us queers as we are (or perhaps more importantly, as we imagine ourselves) in the center of every recognizable narrative.”

    Republican sponsors of some bills, however, claim such performances are adult in nature and potentially harmful to children.

    “When you take one of these little kids and put them in front of drag queens that are men dressed like women, do you think that helps them or confuses them in regard to their own gender?” Arkansas state Sen. Gary Stubblefield, a Republican who sponsored legislation that passed in the state Senate last month, asked during floor remarks.

    “This bill is not anti-drag. It is pro-child,” Tennessee state Sen. Jack Johnson told CNN in a statement. “I am carrying the legislation to protect children from being exposed to sexually explicit drag shows that are inappropriate for minor audiences. It is similar to laws that prohibit children from going to a strip club.”

    Johnson’s press secretary, Molly Gormley, insisted to CNN that the bill, which looks to limit “entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest,” is specifically aimed at “sexually explicit” drag performances and that the senator is “not taking issue with drag shows or children at drag shows.”

    A Montana bill, which flatly seeks to prohibit children from attending drag shows, would block drag performances at publicly funded libraries or schools, a reference to events such as Drag Queen Story Hours, which have occasionally faced backlash from far-right groups. During an event last year, Proud Boys interrupted as drag queen Panda Dulce was reading to children at the San Lorenzo Library in California.

    Several sponsors to whom CNN spoke said some constituents complained about the shows, while others offered anecdotal examples of performances they described as sexually explicit.

    “You have the constitutional right as an adult to engage in sexual activity, you have the constitutional right to go to a drag performance. And no one in Texas is actually trying to stop that,” said Texas state Rep. Nate Schatzline, a Republican. “I think when we see minors involved in activities that are inappropriate for a child to be involved in, that’s where we as legislators have to step up and say, ‘Hey, we have to draw a line,’ because ultimately it’s our job to protect the liberties of those that are citizens in the state of Texas and to protect those that can’t protect themselves.”

    Advocates of LGBTQ and free speech rights fear that the laws, if passed, would have a chilling effect on the performances and argue that the language is vague.

    “It’s not clear to me that a trans man for example, who wrote a book, would be able to do a book reading at a local book store under these bills. A high school couldn’t perform a Shakespeare play like Twelfth Night because Twelfth Night explicitly in its plot includes a woman dressed as a man,” said Kate Ruane, the director of Pen America’s US Free Expression program.

    Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, noted that the bills don’t amount to outright bans on drag performances but “libraries, book stores, regular theaters and restaurants would have to comply with all adult business regulations, and they are unlikely to do that so they’re more likely to cancel the shows.”

    Some drag shows indeed may be inappropriate for children, Shangela acknowledged. But, she said, “you can’t characterize the world of the drag by one particular type of show, the same way that you can’t characterize the way a television film by one particular program.”

    “The world of drag is no different than any other aspect of entertainment in our world,” she said. “If you are a parent that is concerned about what your child is seeing, then you stay involved in what you’re allowing your child to be exposed to.”

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  • I’m a parent with an active social media brand: Here’s what you need to check on your child’s social media right now | CNN

    I’m a parent with an active social media brand: Here’s what you need to check on your child’s social media right now | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll know I wear a lot of hats: romance author, parent of funny tweenagers, part-time teacher, amateur homesteader, grumbling celiac and the wife of a seriously outdoorsy guy.

    Because I’m an author with a major publisher in today’s competitive market, I’ve been tasked with stepping up my social media brand: participation, creation and all. The more transparent and likable I am online, the better my books sell. Therefore, to social media I go.

    It’s rare to find someone with no social media presence these days, but there’s a marked difference between posting a few pictures for family and friends and actively creating social media content as part of your daily life.

    With a whopping 95% of teens polled having access to smartphones (and 98% of teens over 15), according to an August Pew Research Center survey on teens, social media and technology, it doesn’t look like social media platforms are going away anytime soon.

    Not only are they key social tools, but they also allow teens to feel more a part of things in their communities. Many teens like being online, according to a November Pew Research Center survey on teen life on social media. Eighty percent of the teens surveyed felt more connected to what is happening in their friends’ lives, while 71% felt social media allows them to showcase their creativity.

    So, while posting online is work for me, it’s a way of life for the tweens and teens I see creating and publishing content online. As a parent of two middle schoolers, I know how important social media is to them, and I also know what’s out there. I see the good, the bad and the viral, and I’ve have put together some guidelines, based on what I’ve seen, for my fellow parents to watch for.

    Here are eight questions to ask yourself as you check out your children’s social media accounts.

    If you don’t, it’s time to start. It’s like when I had to look up the term “situationship,” I saw that ignorance is not bliss in this case. Or really any case when it comes to your children. Both of my children have smartphones, but even if your children don’t have smartphones, if they have any sort of device — phone, tablet, school laptop — it’s likely they have some sort of social media account out there. Every app our children wish to add to their smart devices comes through my husband’s and my phone notifications for approval. Before I approve any apps, I’ll read the reviews, run an internet search and text my mom friends for their experience.

    Most tweens and teens use social media for socializing with local friends.

    If I’m still uncertain about an app, I’ll hold off on approving it until I can sit down with my children and ask them why they want it. Sometimes just waiting and forcing a short discussion is enough to convince them they no longer want it. In our household, I avoid any apps that run social surveys, allow anonymous feedback or require the individual to use location services.

    If you don’t have your family phone plan all hooked together with parental controls, I’d advise setting that up ASAP. Because different devices and apps have different ways to monitor and set up parental controls, it’s impossible to link all the options here. However, a quick search will give you exactly the coverage you are comfortable with, including apps that track your child’s text messages and changing the settings on your child’s phone to lock down at a certain time every night.

    The top social media platforms teens use today are YouTube (95% of teens polled), TikTok (67%), Instagram (62%) and Snapchat (59%), according to the Pew Research Center survey on teens and social media tech. Other social media platforms teens use less frequently are Twitter, Reddit, WhatsApp and Facebook. Most notably, Facebook is seeing a significant downturn in teen users. This list isn’t exhaustive, however. I would check out your children’s devices for group chat apps (such as Slack or Discord) and also scroll through their sport or activity apps where group chat capabilities exist.

    I’ve seen preteens and teens using their real names, birthdate, home address, pets’ names, locker numbers or their school baseball team. Any of that information could be used to identify your child and location in real life or using a quick Google search. All of that is an absolute “no” in our house.

    I also tell my kids not to answer the fun surveys and quizzes that invite children to share their unique information and repost it for others to see. These can be useful tools for predators and people trying to steal your children’s identity.

    What I do: I made the choice a long ago to withhold the names of my children and partner. It’s not an exact science, and I know some clever digging could find them. For my husband, it’s for the sake of his privacy and also the protection of his professionalism. Just because he’s married to a romance author doesn’t mean he should have to answer for my online antics, whatever they may be. For my children, I want to avoid anything embarrassing that could be traced back to them during their college application season.

    Even if your children keep their social media profiles private (more on that later), their biographical information, screen name and avatar or profile picture are public information.

    Do an internet search of your child’s name to see what’s out there and scroll through images to make sure there isn’t anything you wouldn’t want to be made public. In our household, I’ve asked my children to use generic items or illustrated avatars in their social media bios.

    What I do: Parents who do have active social media accounts may want to do a search of their own names. When my first book was published in 2019, I did a search of my name and images and found many photos of my children that came directly from my social media pages. I hadn’t posted pictures of them, but I did use a family photo as my profile photo and those are public record. Once I deleted them, the photos disappeared.

    Another “no” in our household is posting videos or photos of our home or bedrooms. Something that feels innocent and innocuous to your middle schooler may not feel that way to an adult seeking out inappropriate content.

    I learned this from one of my children’s Pinterest accounts. My kid loves to create themed videos using her own photos and stock pictures, and she’s gained over 500 followers in a short period of time. She has completely followed our rules and I know, because I check and follow her myself — but it hasn’t stopped the influx of adult men following her content.

    What we do: Over the holidays, I sat with her and went through each follower one by one and blocked anyone we decided was there for the wrong reasons. In the end, we blocked close to 30 adult men on her account. (I also know that some predators cleverly disguise themselves as children or teens, and we may not catch them all, but this is still a worthy exercise.)

    We also talk to our children about how to protect themselves. They wouldn’t want those strangers standing in their bedroom; therefore, they don’t want to post videos of their bedroom or bathroom or classroom for strangers to view.

    This is a tricky one for lots of reasons. For content creators to build their following, they need to remain public on social media. If your child is an entrepreneur or artist hoping to grab attention, locking down their account will prevent that from happening.

    That said, a way around this is to have two accounts. First, a private one, locked down and only used for family and close friends, and second, a public one that lacks identifiers but showcases whatever branding the child is hoping to grow. I’ve come across some well-managed public accounts for children who have giant followings and noticed they are usually run by parents, who state that right in the profile. I like this. If your children want public profiles because they are hoping to catch the attention of a talent scout, having the accounts monitored by a responsible adult who has their best interest in mind is a healthy compromise.

    This is the exception, however. Most tweens and teens today use their social media for socializing with local friends. The benefit of keeping their account as private (or as private as can be) is threefold. It allows them to screen who follows their content, thus preventing our Pinterest fiasco. It prevents strangers from accessing their content and making it viral without their permission. And it protects them from unsolicited contact with strangers.

    Not all social media platforms have the option to make your account “private.” For example, YouTube has parental controls that can be adjusted at any time. TikTok and Instagram can be made private (which means users must approve followers) by making the change in the account settings. Once the account is private, a little padlock will show next to the username.

    Snapchat allows users to approve followers on a case-by-case basis as well as turn off features that disclose a user’s location. Notably, Snapchat also informs users when another user takes a screenshot of their story, which is a feature other social media platforms don’t have yet.

    Most group chat apps don’t have the ability to go private so much as they ask users to approve of follower requests. Take time to discuss with your children who they allow to follow them and what personal information they allow those followers to know. It’s also a great time to teach them the art of “blocking” those individuals who are unsafe or unkind.

    My suggestion is to log in, scroll around and even ask your children to teach you about the platforms they use. Then, when they roll their eyes at you, go ahead and tell them about your first Hotmail email address and the way you picked the perfect emo playlist on your Myspace page … and when they’re bent over laughing, sneak a peek at their follower list. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.

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  • Man given 16 years for shooting at kids throwing snowballs

    Man given 16 years for shooting at kids throwing snowballs

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    MILWAUKEE, Wis. — A Wisconsin man convicted of shooting at a group of children who threw snowballs at his car in 2020 received a 16-year prison sentence on Friday.

    WITI-TV reports that prosecutors had asked for a 25-year prison sentence after jurors found William Carson guilty of two counts of first-degree reckless injury and five counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety in November.

    According to court records, seven children were throwing snowballs at passing cars on Milwaukee’s north side in January 2020. A driver later identified as Carson turned his car around, got out and fired a gun at the group.

    Prosecutors have said two of the children were hurt after being shot in the thigh and arm. A third child’s jacket was grazed by a bullet.

    Judge Michael Hanrahan also included 10 years of extended supervision in Carson’s sentence.

    “There is this other side of you that is impulsive, reckless, violent – I think self-centered,” Hanrahan said during a sentencing hearing on Friday in Milwaukee.

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  • “Time is not what it used to be”: Children and adults experience time differently

    “Time is not what it used to be”: Children and adults experience time differently

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    Newswise — Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University have investigated whether the perception of time changes with age, and if so, how, and why we perceive the passage of time differently. Their study was published in Scientific Reports.

    Time can do tricks. Many of us experienced the illusion that those long summers during childhood felt so much longer than the same 3 months feel like now as an adult. While we can argue why one summer may appear longer than the other and how the percept of time can compress and dilate durations depending on various factors, we can easily set up an experiment to gain more insights.

    The researchers just did that. They asked how eventfulness affects our duration estimates when probing at different milestones during our cognitive development. They set aside three age groups, 4-5, 9-10, and 18 years and older, and made them watch two videos, 1 minute each. The two videos were extracted from a popular animated series, balanced in visual and acoustic features, except for one feature: eventfulness. One video consisted of a rapid succession of events (a policeman rescuing animals and arresting a thief), and the other was a monotonous and repetitive sequence (six shady prisoners escaping on a rowing boat). The researchers played the two clips in a balanced order of 50%, watching the eventful first. After watching both videos, they asked only two questions: “Which one was longer?” and “Can you show the durations with your arms?” Easy to understand questions even for a 4-year-old.

    The results showed a strong bias in each age group but for pre-kindergarteners, surprisingly, in the opposite direction.

    While more than 2/3rd of pre-kindergarteners perceived the eventful video as longer, 3/4th of the adult group felt the same about the uneventful video. The middle group expressed a similar but more moderate bias than the adult. By the inclusion of the middle group (9-10-year-olds), the inflection point could be estimated around the age of 7. Regarding the arm-spread orientation, and distance, there was an increasing trend of using horizontal arm spreading with age. While pre-kindergarten-age kids used 50-50% vertical and horizontal gestures, by school age, that ratio changed to 80-90% in favor of horizontal arm expressions. 

    The result is unexpected because none of the biological models of time perception could have predicted it. How can we interpret this result? Biological models of time perception fall under two categories: pacemaker-like neurons in the brain and neurons that display a declining firing rate with time. Still, “who” would interpret those signals in the brain remains elusive. Both model classes assume a continuous age-dependent improvement with age. However, this is not what the researchers found. Instead, what they found was a switch of perceived duration ratios between the youngest and the two older groups, with a turning point at 7. How can we explain such a bias reversal? 

    The authors called upon the concept of heuristics, introduced in cognitive science by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. They define heuristics as mental shortcuts or proxies that enable one to make quick decisions. To understand why we need heuristics for comparing durations, let us look at what else we can rely on. Since the brain has neither a reliable central clock nor a direct sensory mapping of durations, unlike distances or pitch, we must use a proxy. A proxy to “duration” is something concrete yet related to the time content, like “Which one can I talk more about?”. If the first video was packed with actions, they could tell a lot about it, thinks the 5-year-old. While the other movie could be summarized with a single verb, such as “rowing”. The eventful video consisted of three episodes, a perfect example of a story. The uneventful video, in contrast, had no episodes and no storyline. In terms of heuristics, the difference can be captured by representativeness heuristics. The eventful video had more representative story examples than the uneventful one. Therefore, relying on a representativeness heuristic, the kindergarteners would feel the eventful video was longer (see the left side of the figure).

    If this notion of duration provides a good proxy for “time”, why do we switch to another system at 7? The researchers argue that the answer is switching to another class of heuristics, namely, sampling heuristics. At around the age of 6 to 10, kids learn the concept of “absolute time”. We all rely on the concept of absolute and universal time when we make appointments, organize our tasks, and follow timelines. All these actions reinforce the concept of universal time that is independent of the observer and entirely consistent with Newton’s classical mechanics. We start thinking about time as a physical entity, independent of the events that it connects, and we become aware that our subjective experience of time as observers may change or be a subject of illusions. The best we can do to eliminate subjectivity is to check the flow of time.

    We can check the flow of time by frequently sampling it. Looking at the clocks or just staring out the window and watching the traffic flow. The more often we check, the more reliable the estimate we get. However, our brain is not always available for tracking time. When our attention is occupied with another task, then this sampling of the absolute time may skip cycles. In contrast, when waiting for somebody who is late for an appointment, time slows down as the brain counts the seconds while impatience and irritation increase. 

    In light of these heuristics, representativeness, and sampling, let us see how we sample the absolute time when we are asked to guess the duration of an exciting and captivating video versus a boring one. When watching a captivating movie, the mind is completely immersed in the story because the sequence of actions unfolds so fast that one does not have time to think about anything else, such as life, work, or a to-do list. Instead, the mind is hijacked by the alternative reality of the movie plot. In contrast, when watching a boring movie, one is going to check the watch or think about where else one could be at that time, and all these distractions enable us to sample the flow of absolute time (right side of the figure). Hence, the two types of heuristics explain the bizarre switch at about age 7 and the persistent bias that the boring meetings appear longer than they are, which stays with us for the rest of our life.  

    While the enigma of time has been and will continue to intrigue the human mind, it is essential to realize that these fundamental concepts, like time and space, are more complex than we can pin down by certain types of neurons in the brain. To wrangle such abstract concepts, one needs to connect all biological and cognitive pieces. Will we ever complete that jigsaw puzzle? Only time will tell.

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  • Michigan man says son, 6, ordered $1K in food from Grubhub

    Michigan man says son, 6, ordered $1K in food from Grubhub

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    CHESTERFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A Michigan man says he was left with a $1,000 bill after his 6-year-old son ordered a virtual smorgasbord of food from several restaurants last weekend, leading to a string of unexpected deliveries — and maybe a starring role in an ad campaign.

    Keith Stonehouse said the food piled up quickly at his Detroit-area home Saturday night after he let his son, Mason, use his cellphone to play a game before bed. He said the youngster instead used his father’s Grubhub account to order food from one restaurant after another.

    The boy’s mother, Kristin Stonehouse, told The Associated Press on Thursday that Grubhub has reached out to the family and offered them a $1,000 gift card. The company also is considering using the family in an online promotional campaign, she said. Grubhub officials did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comment.

    Keith Stonehouse said he was alone with his son while his wife was at the movies when Mason ordered jumbo shrimp, salads, shawarma and chicken pita sandwiches, chili cheese fries and other foods that one Grubhub driver after another delivered to their Chesterfield Township home.

    “This was like something out of a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit,” Keith Stonehouse told MLive.com.

    He added: “I don’t really find it funny yet, but I can laugh with people a little bit. It’s a lot of money and it kind of came out of nowhere.”

    Keith Stonehouse said his son ordered food from so many different places that Chase Bank sent him a fraud alert declining a $439 order from Happy’s Pizza. But Mason’s $183 order of jumbo shrimp from the same restaurant went through and arrived at the family’s house.

    Stonehouse said it took the arrival of a few orders of food for him to realize what was going on. By that time, there was nothing he could do to stop the orders from coming.

    Kristin Stonehouse told the AP that Mason is extremely intelligent and has been reading since he was 2 1/2 years old.

    “He’s very smart,” she said. “He’s not your average 6-year-old.”

    She said her husband had just used the Grubhub app on his phone to order dinner before she left and probably just left the app open. She said her son took the phone, hid in the basement and proceeded to order his feast.

    She said she and her husband had a talk with Mason on Sunday morning and told him what he did was akin to stealing.

    “I don’t think he grasped that concept at first,” she said.

    To drive the point home, she and her husband opened up Mason’s piggy bank and pocketed the $115 he had gotten for his birthday in November, telling him the money would go to replenish their accounts. That didn’t seem to faze the boy.

    “Then he found a penny on the floor and said he could start all over again,” she said.

    Keith Stonehouse said most of the food went into the family’s refrigerators. He said he also invited some neighbors over to eat some of it.

    He said he’s heard of things like this happening to other parents, but not at the level he experienced last weekend. He recommends making sure important apps are not readily available for children to click on when they’re using a parent’s phone. He said he’s changing his password.

    “I knew this could happen, but you just don’t think your kid is going to do something like this. He’s definitely smart enough, I just didn’t expect it,” Keith Stonehouse said.

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  • Crowds decry gender-affirming treatment ban in West Virginia

    Crowds decry gender-affirming treatment ban in West Virginia

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    CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Crowds at the West Virginia state Capitol pleaded with lawmakers Thursday to show as much compassion for saving the lives of transgender children as they showed for unborn fetuses when they voted to ban abortion just months ago.

    Over and over, dozens of doctors, parents and LGBTQ people told the Republican supermajority during a hearing that a decision to ban gender-affirming care for youth would put children’s lives at risk. West Virginia is among 26 states considering bans to restrict gender-affirming care for minors or young adults, with the most recent action being in South Dakota and in Utah, where the Republican governor just signed that state’s bill into law. A judge is reviewing whether to strike down Arkansas’ law after temporarily blocking it last year.

    Transgender and gender nonconforming children attempt suicide at a disproportionately high rate, and West Virginia has the largest per capita population of transgender youth in the nation.

    “You all like to use rhetoric about not killing children as a justification for passing legislation, as you did this summer. You will kill children if you pass this,” said the Rev. Jenny Williams, a United Methodist pastor in Preston County. “If you oppose the killing of children like you say you do, I would hope that you apply your principals consistently.”

    Multiple people told lawmakers they would have blood on their hands if they advance the bill to ban gender-affirming treatments for minors, which has moved out of two House committees and is now up for consideration before the full House of Delegates. West Virginia has a Republican governor and one of the largest Republican majorities in any state legislature in the country, and the legislation has a high chance of becoming law.

    Some of the handful of lawmakers in attendance watched attentively, others looked at their phones or laptops or averted their eyes. People were given one minute to talk before they were cut off and told to sit down. Almost 80 people spoke against the bill. Two spoke in support.

    Paula Lepp, who said she is a Christian parent of a Christian transgender child, told lawmakers she believes the bill is contrary to the teachings of Jesus to care for the most marginalized.

    “The bottom line is this: I would rather have a live daughter than a dead son, and this bill puts that at risk,” she said.

    Republicans in other states who have moved to limit access to the treatments for minors have often characterized the treatments as medically unproven and potentially dangerous in the long term, as another political battle against liberal ideologies. They also say teenagers shouldn’t undergo irreversible surgeries.

    Braden Roten, one of the two people who spoke in support of the bill, urged lawmakers to look past the crowds of people who showed up to speak against it and think about what conservatives would want.

    “Despite the crowd opposing this bill, this is a red state and there’s a big push in the conservative movement for this bill,” he said, as people watching from the chamber galleries and floor booed. “If you don’t vote on this bill we will vote you out.”

    At least 88 bills seeking to restrict gender affirming care for minors or young adults have been introduced across 26 states. West Virginia’s measure prohibits gender-affirming surgery and hormone therapy for youth.

    Many doctors, mental health specialists and medical groups have argued that treatments for young transgender people are safe and beneficial, though rigorous long-term research is lacking. Federal health officials have described the gender-affirming care as crucial to the health and wellbeing of transgender children and adolescents.

    Charleston pediatric physician Dr. Allison Holstein spoke Thursday on behalf of West Virginia chapter the American Academy of Pediatrics. She said the bill interferes with doctors ability to provide the best medical care to their patients.

    “The bill is dangerous, it’s an intrusion on the physician-patient relationship,” she said. “The attempt to insert politics into medical practice are troubling and very concerning.”

    Staff from the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia — formerly West Virginia’s only abortion provider, before the procedure was practically outlawed — also spoke against the bill. The clinic, which offers services predominately to low-income people on Medicaid, began offering gender-affirming hormone therapy when abortion was banned.

    Executive Director Katie Quiñonez read a statement on behalf of a transgender man who said prior to coming out as transgender, he attempted suicide four times. The first time he was 12.

    “If you’re so pro-life, why are you trying to kill trans kids?” Quinonez said.

    Women’s Health Center Communications Director Kaylen Barker, who is a member of the LGBTQ community, said she’s tired of having to come to the Capitol to justify her existence and the experiences of people she loves.

    “Leave us alone,” Barker cried. “Find something useful to do with your time, like fix the damn roads.”

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  • IQ changes over time may help track development, guide intervention in autistic youth

    IQ changes over time may help track development, guide intervention in autistic youth

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    Newswise — A long-term study by UC Davis MIND Institute researchers confirms that changes in the IQ level of autistic children may help predict their path of communication and behavioral development as adolescents.

    The new work builds on a previous MIND Institute study of IQ trajectories in autistic children ages 2-8. It expands the findings to older youth.

    The study, published in JCPP Advances, has identified three distinct paths of intellectual development in autistic children: persistent intellectual disability, an increase in IQ, or an IQ that remained average or above.

    “Once more, we have shown that we can use IQ to identify a subtype of autism,” said lead author Marjorie Solomon. She is the MIND Institute’s associate director and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “Given that IQ is perhaps the strongest predicter of later outcomes in autistic children, we believe that studying IQ trajectories in childhood is very important. It provides clues about their potential different future paths and how we can help individuals to flourish.”

    Study methods

    The study’s participants were from the MIND Institute’s Autism Phenome Project, one of the world’s most comprehensive longitudinal studies of its kind. Researchers have been following a group of autistic children from about age 3 through adolescence

    The study included 373 (115 females, 258 males) autistic participants ranging from age 2 to age 12. Importantly, individuals with all levels of intellectual ability were part of the sample.

    Assessments of behavior and autistic characteristics were collected across childhood. IQ was evaluated at three timepoints: T1 (mean age of 3 years), T2 (mean age of 5.6 years) and T3 (mean age of 11.5 years).

    Licensed clinical psychologists specializing in autism evaluated the participants using autism assessment tools. These included the ADOS (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule), ADOS-2, ADI-R (Autism Diagnostic Interview – Revised), and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS).

    Based on these assessments, the participants were divided into three subgroups:

    • “Changers” described those who began with low IQs in early childhood, followed by a substantial increase that slowed as they entered middle childhood. “Changers” made up 39% of the participants.
    • “Persistent Intellectual Disability” described the individuals who began with a below average IQ that persisted across childhood. Around 45% of the participants were in this group.
    • “Persistently High IQ” described the individuals who began with an average or above average IQ and remained relatively stable throughout childhood. Sixteen percent belonged to this group.

    Results

    The researchers analyzed changes in autism traits and communication adaptive functioning. This is the ability to understand language, engage in meaningful verbal expression, and read and write, over time.

    They also looked at internalizing behaviors, such as anxiety or depression, and externalizing behaviors, such as impulsivity or aggressiveness.

    Of the 191 participants with assessments at two timepoints or more, 10 lost their autism diagnosis. This included about 5% of the “Changers,” 10% of the “Persistently High IQ” group and none of those in the “Persistent Intellectual Disability” group. Identifying what makes the “Changers” group different from those in the groups with more stable IQs is a major goal of the research.

    Individuals with stronger early communication adaptive function and lower autism ‘severity’ scores were more likely to be in the “Persistently High IQ” group versus the “Persistent Intellectual Disability” group by adolescence.

    Both the “Changers” and “Persistent Intellectual Disability” groups had lower IQ scores in early childhood. However, those that showed improved communication adaptive function and decreased externalizing behaviors into adolescence were more likely to be in the “Changers” group compared to the “Persistent Intellectual Disability” group.

    “It is striking that we found so much overlap in individuals following different trajectories of intellectual development when assessed at the early childhood and adolescent time points,” Solomon said. “Of course, many other factors are involved in determining outcomes, but intellectual ability level is a core feature and an important starting point.”

    Brain differences among the three autistic groups

    Last year, a closely related MIND Institute study compared MRI scans of the three IQ subgroups at age 3. The researchers evaluated two brain networks associated with intellectual functioning: the frontoparietal network and the default mode network.

    The frontoparietal network is involved in sustained attention, problem-solving and working memory. The default mode network contributes to remembering, thinking about the future and mind wandering.

    The 2022 study was led by Joshua Lee, an assistant professional researcher in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. The team found that the “Changers” and “Intellectual Disability” groups, which both had low IQs at age 3, differed from the group with average IQs in several regions of the frontoparietal network.

    In contrast, the default mode network differed between the “Changers” group and the other two groups. This difference suggested that this network may be involved in mechanisms related to improving intellectual function.

    “The findings of both studies provide clues about how brain differences between autistic individuals with and without intellectual disability during early childhood might predict future outcomes,” said Christine Wu Nordahl, director of the Autism Phenome Project, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a coauthor on both studies. “Future studies will evaluate brain structure and function development across childhood and how they differ across various subgroups of intellectual development in autism.”

    Additional coauthors on the new study included Billy Cho, Ana-Maria Iosif, Brianna Heath, Apurv Srivastav, Emilio Ferrer and David G. Amaral, all of UC Davis.

    This study received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH106518, R01MH103284, R01MH103371 and R01MH104438); National Institutes of Health (R01MH104438); the T32 Ruth L. Kirchstein Institutional National Research Service Award (T32 MH073124); The MIND Institute Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (P50 HD103526); and an Autism Center of Excellence grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development (P50 HD093079).

    Read the full study.

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  • Surgeon General says 13 is ‘too early’ to join social media | CNN

    Surgeon General says 13 is ‘too early’ to join social media | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says he believes 13 is too young for children to be on social media platforms, because although sites allow children of that age to join, kids are still “developing their identity.”

    Meta, Twitter, and a host of other social media giants currently allow 13-year-olds to join their platforms.

    “I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early … It’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships and the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children,” Murthy said on “CNN Newsroom.”

    The number of teenagers on social media has sparked alarm among medical professionals, who point to a growing body of research about the harm such platforms can cause adolescents.

    Murthy acknowledged the difficulties of keeping children off these platforms given their popularity, but suggested parents can find success by presenting a united front.

    “If parents can band together and say you know, as a group, we’re not going to allow our kids to use social media until 16 or 17 or 18 or whatever age they choose, that’s a much more effective strategy in making sure your kids don’t get exposed to harm early,” he told CNN.

    Adobe Stock

    New research suggests habitually checking social media can alter the brain chemistry of adolescents.

    According to a study published this month in JAMA Pediatrics, students who checked social media more regularly displayed greater neural sensitivity in certain parts of their brains, making their brains more sensitive to social consequences over time.

    Psychiatrists like Dr. Adriana Stacey have pointed to this phenomenon for years. Stacey, who works primarily with teenagers and college students, previously told CNN using social media releases a “dopamine dump” in the brain.

    “When we do things that are addictive like use cocaine or use smartphones, our brains release a lot of dopamine at once. It tells our brains to keep using that,” she said. “For teenagers in particular, this part of their brain is actually hyperactive compared to adults. They can’t get motivated to do anything else.”

    Recent studies demonstrate other ways excessive screen time can impact brain development. In young children, for example, excessive screen time was significantly associated with poorer emerging literacy skills and ability to use expressive language.

    Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who recently published an op-ed in the Bulwark about loneliness and mental health, echoed the surgeon general’s concerns about social media. “We have lost something as a society, as so much of our life has turned into screen-to-screen communication, it just doesn’t give you the same sense of value and the same sense of satisfaction as talking to somebody or seeing someone,” Murphy told CNN in an interview alongside Murthy.

    For both Murphy and Murthy, the issue of social media addiction is personal. Both men are fathers – Murphy to teenagers and Murthy to young children. “It’s not coincidental that Dr. Murthy and I are probably talking more about this issue of loneliness more than others in public life,” Murphy told CNN. “I look at this through the prism of my 14-year-old and my 11-year-old.”

    As a country, Murphy explained, the U.S. is not powerless in the face of Big Tech. Lawmakers could make different decisions about limiting young kids from social media and incentivizing companies to make algorithms less addictive.

    The surgeon general similarly addressed addictive algorithms, explaining pitting adolescents against Big Tech is “just not a fair fight.” He told CNN, “You have some of the best designers and product developers in the world who have designed these products to make sure people are maximizing the amount of time they spend on these platforms. And if we tell a child, use the force of your willpower to control how much time you’re spending, you’re pitting a child against the world’s greatest product designers.”

    Despite the hurdles facing parents and kids, Murphy struck a note of optimism about the future of social media.

    “None of this is out of our control. When we had dangerous vehicles on the road, we passed laws to make those vehicles less dangerous,” he told CNN. “We should make decisions to make [social media] a healthier experience that would make kids feel better about themselves and less alone.”

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  • Why urgent care centers are popping up everywhere | CNN Business

    Why urgent care centers are popping up everywhere | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    If you drive down a busy suburban strip mall or walk down a street in a major city, chances are you won’t go long without spotting a Concentra, MedExpress, CityMD or another urgent care center.

    Demand at urgent care sites surged during the Covid-19 pandemic as people searched for tests and treatments. Patient volume has jumped 60% since 2019, according to the Urgent Care Association, an industry trade group.

    That has fueled growth for new urgent care centers. A record 11,150 urgent care centers have popped up around the United States and they are growing at 7% a year, the trade group says. (This does not include clinics inside retail stores like CVS’ MinuteClinic or freestanding emergency departments.)

    Urgent care centers are designed to treat non-emergency conditions like a common cold, a sprained ankle, an ear infection, or a rash. They are recommended if patients can’t get an immediate appointment with their primary care doctor or if patients don’t have one. Primary care practices should always be the first call in these situations because they have access to patients’ records and all of their health care history, while urgent care sites are meant to provide episodic care.

    Urgent care sites are often staffed by physician assistants and nurse practitioners. Many also have doctors on site. (One urgent care industry magazine says, in 2009, 70% of its providers were physicians, but that the percentage had fallen to 16% by last year.) Urgent cares usually offer medical treatment outside of regular doctor’s office hours and a visit costs much less than a trip to the emergency room.

    Urgent care has grown rapidly because of convenience, gaps in primary care, high costs of emergency room visits, and increased investment by health systems and private-equity groups. The urgent care market will reach around $48 billion in revenue this year, a 21% increase from 2019, estimates IBISWorld.

    The growth highlights the crisis in the US primary care system. A shortage of up to 55,000 primary care physicians is expected in the next decade, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

    But many doctors, health care advocates and researchers raise concerns at the proliferation of urgent care sites and say there can be downsides.

    Frequent visits to urgent care sites may weaken established relationships with primary care doctors. They can also lead to more fragmented care and increase overall health care spending, research shows.

    And there are questions about the quality of care at urgent care centers and whether they adequately serve low-income communities. A 2018 study by Pew Charitable Trusts and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that antibiotics are overprescribed at urgent care centers, especially for common colds, the flu and bronchitis.

    “It’s a reasonable solution for people with minor conditions that can’t wait for primary care providers,” said Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University. “When you need constant management of a chronic illness, you should not go there.”

    Urgent care centers have been around in the United States since the 1970s, but they were long derided as “docs in a box” and grew slowly during their early years.

    They have become more popular over the past two decades in part due to pressures on the primary care system. People’s expectations of wait times have changed and it can be difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to book an immediate visit with a primary care provider.

    Urgent care sites are typically open for longer hours during the weekday and on weekends, making it easier to get an appointment or a walk-in visit. Around 80% of the US population is within a 10-minute drive of an urgent care center, according to the industry trade group.

    “There’s a need to keep up with society’s demand for quick turnaround, on-demand services that can’t be supported by underfunded primary care,” said Susan Kressly, a retired pediatrician and fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    Health insurers and hospitals have also become more focused on keeping people out of the emergency room. Emergency room visits are around ten times more expensive than visits to an urgent care center. During the early 2000s, hospital systems and health insurers started opening their own urgent care sites, and they have introduced strategies to deter emergency room visits.

    Additionally, passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 spurred an increase in urgent care providers as millions of newly insured Americans sought out health care. Private-equity and venture capital funds also poured billions into deals for urgent care centers, according to data from PitchBook.

    Urgent care centers can be attractive to investors. Unlike ERs, which are legally obligated to treat everyone, urgent care sites can essentially choose their patients and the conditions they treat. Many urgent care centers don’t accept Medicaid and can turn away uninsured patient,s unless they pay a fee.

    Like other health care options, urgent care centers make money by billing insurance companies for the cost of the visit, additional services, or the patient pays out of pocket. In 2016, the median charge for a 30-minute new insured patient visit was $242 at an urgent care center, compared with $294 in a primary care office and $109 in a retail clinic, according to a study by FAIR Health, a nonprofit that collects health insurance data.

    “If they can make it a more convenient option, there’s a lot of revenue here,” said Ateev Mehrotra, a professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School who has researched urgent care clinics. “It’s not where the big bucks are in health care, but there’s a substantial number of patients.”

    Mehrotra research has found that between 2008 and 2015, urgent care visits increased 119%. They became the dominant venue for people seeking treatment for low-acuity conditions like acute respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, rashes, and muscle strains.

    Some doctors and researchers worry that patients with primary care doctors – and those without – are substituting urgent care visits in place of a primary care provider.

    “What you don’t want to see is people seeking a lot care outside their pediatrician and decreasing their visits to their primary care provider,” said Rebecca Burns, the urgent care medical director at the Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

    Burns’ research has found that high urgent care reliance fills a need for children with acute issues but has the potential to disrupt primary care relationships.

    The National Health Law Program, a health care advocacy group for low-income families and communities, has called for state regulations to require coordination among urgent care sites, retail clinics, primary services, and hospitals to ensure continuity of patients’ care.

    And while the presence of urgent care centers does prevent people from costly emergency department visits for low-acuity issues, Mehrotra from Harvard has found that, paradoxically, they increase health care spending on net.

    Each $1,646 visit to the ER for a low-acuity condition prevented was offset by a $6,327 increase in urgent care center costs, his research has found. This is in part because people may be going to urgent care for minor illnesses they would have previously treated with chicken soup.

    There are also concerns about the oversaturation of urgent care centers in higher-income areas that have more consumers with private health care and limited access in medically underserved areas.

    Urgent care centers selectively tend not to serve rural areas, areas with a high concentration of low-income patients, and areas with a low concentration of privately-insured patients, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco found in a 2016 study. They said this “uneven distribution may potentially exacerbate health disparities.”

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  • Lloyd Morrisett, who helped launch ‘Sesame Street,’ dies

    Lloyd Morrisett, who helped launch ‘Sesame Street,’ dies

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Lloyd Morrisett, the co-creator of the beloved children’s education TV series “Sesame Street,” which uses empathy and fuzzy monsters like Abby Cadabby, Elmo and Cookie Monster to charm and teach generations around the world, has died. He was 93.

    Morrisett’s death was announced Monday by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit he helped establish under the name the Children’s Television Workshop. No cause of death was given.

    In a statement, Sesame Workshop hailed Morrisett as a “wise, thoughtful, and above all kind leader” who was “constantly thinking about new ways” to educate.

    Morrisett and Joan Ganz Cooney worked with Harvard University developmental psychologist Gerald Lesser to build the show’s unique approach to teaching that now reaches 120 million children. Legendary puppeteer Jim Henson supplied the critters.

    “Without Lloyd Morrisett, there would be no ‘Sesame Street.’ It was he who first came up with the notion of using television to teach preschoolers basic skills, such as letters and numbers,” Cooney said in a statement. “He was a trusted partner and loyal friend to me for over 50 years, and he will be sorely missed.”

    “Sesame Street” is shown in more than 150 countries, has won 216 Emmys, 11 Grammys and in 2019 received the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime artistic achievement, the first time a television program got the award (Big Bird strolled down the aisle and basically sat in Tom Hanks’ lap).

    Born in 1929 in Oklahoma City, Morrisett initially trained to be a teacher with a background in psychology. He became an experimental educator, looking for new ways to educate children from less advantaged backgrounds. Morrisett received his bachelor’s at Oberlin College, did graduate work in psychology at UCLA, and earned his doctorate in experimental psychology at Yale University. He was an Oberlin trustee for many years and was chair of the board from 1975 to 1981.

    The germ of “Sesame Street” was sown over a dinner party in 1966, where he met Cooney.

    “I said, ‘Joan, do you think television could be used to teach young children?’ Her answer was, ‘I don’t know, but I’d like to talk about it,’” he recalled to The Guardian in 2004.

    The first episode of “Sesame Street” — sponsored by the letters W, S and E and the numbers 2 and 3 — aired in the fall of 1969. It was a turbulent time in America, rocked by the Vietnam War and raw from the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the year before.

    Children’s programming at the time was made up of shows like “Captain Kangaroo,” “Romper Room” and the often violent cartoon skirmishes between “Tom & Jerry.” “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” was mostly teaching social skills.

    “Sesame Street” was designed by education professionals and child psychologists with one goal: to help low-income and minority students aged 2-5 overcome some of the deficiencies they had when entering school. Social scientists had long noted kids who were white and from higher-income families were often better prepared.

    The show was set on an urban street with a multicultural cast. Diversity and inclusion were baked into the show. Monsters, humans and animals all lived together peacefully.

    It became the first children’s program to feature someone with Down syndrome. It’s had puppets with HIV and in foster care, invited children in wheelchairs, dealt with topics like jailed parents, homelessness, women’s rights, military families and even girls singing about loving their hair.

    It introduced the bilingual Rosita — the first Latina Muppet — in 1991. Julia, a 4-year-old Muppet with autism, came in 2017 and the show has since offered help for kids whose parents are dealing with addiction and recovery, and children suffering as a result of the Syrian civil war. To help kids after 9/11, Elmo was left traumatized by a fire at Hooper’s store but was soothingly told that firefighters were there to help.

    The company said upon the news of his death that Lloyd left “an outsized and indelible legacy among generations of children the world over, with ‘Sesame Street’ only the most visible tribute to a lifetime of good work and lasting impact.”

    He is survived by his wife, Mary; daughters Julie and Sarah; and granddaughters Frances and Clara.

    ___

    Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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  • Monterey Park, an Asian cultural hub, shaken by shooting

    Monterey Park, an Asian cultural hub, shaken by shooting

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    MONTEREY PARK, Calif. (AP) — For decades, Monterey Park has been a haven for Asian immigrants seeking to maintain a strong cultural identity — and a culinary heaven worth visiting for anybody near Los Angeles craving authentic Asian cuisine.

    Signs across the vibrant suburb are written in English and Chinese. Families raise bilingual children. And residents in their golden years enjoy karaoke, the Chinese tile game mah jong and — as the outside world learned last week after a horrific mass shooting — ballroom dancing.

    “It’s a very quiet, humble place. And we mind our own,” says Denny Mu, a second-generation American who runs the popular Mandarin Noodle House started by his grandfather.

    That sense of peace was shattered after a gunman killed 11 people in their 50s, 60s and 70s and wounded nine others last Saturday during a Lunar New Year celebration at the Star Dance Ballroom. But while residents of the tight-knit community work through the trauma — just as they did during the coronavirus pandemic, when anti-Asian sentiment rose nationwide — the tragedy has only sharpened their feelings about what makes Monterey Park so special, and worth protecting.

    Kristina Hayes, who started staging tango events at Star Ballroom when the studio reopened after the pandemic, said dance is “hugely important” for Monterey Park’s seniors.

    “It’s a pastime, hobby and even competitive — but in the best way possible.”

    Mu, whose restaurant is known for its scallion pancakes and beef noodle soup, said he has no plans of leaving Monterey Park, and believes the slowdown in visitors over the past week will be fleeting.

    “It’s the food mecca, especially if you like any sort of Asian food,” said Mu, who is Chinese.

    Monterey Park’s transformation to a predominantly Asian city was the brainchild of Fred Hsieh, a Chinese immigrant who was also a savvy real estate developer. He is credited with first coining the city’s nickname of the “Chinese Beverly Hills.” In the ’70s and ’80s, he used that phrase in Asian newspapers abroad to lure people from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the land of opportunity. He cleverly highlighted the city’s area code, 818. In Chinese culture, the number eight is seen by some as a symbol of prosperity and good fortune.

    When Hiseh died in 1999, Monterey Park had at the time become the only U.S. city with an Asian-majority population, with 65% Asian residents, according to an Associated Press obituary. Today, nearly 70% of the residents are Asian, mostly of Chinese descent.

    As residents deal with the shock and grief that the shooting brought, they hope people will continue to see the city of about 60,000 for the vibrant community it is.

    The backstory of Mandarin Noodle House, which at 43 years old remains one of the oldest restaurants in Monterey Park, is the story of many Asian immigrant families who have stayed faithful to the community and elevated it beyond some cookie-cutter suburb. For decades, the city has been revered as the flagship location in Southern California for authentic Asian food, particularly Chinese cuisine from various regions.

    For the 36-year-old Mu, the regular customers at Mandarin Noodle House are one reason he can’t see himself leaving Monterey Park.

    “It’s nice to go to a restaurant and ask the customer ’How was your day? How was your kid’s dance recital? … All that stuff,” Mu said. “It’s all about community.”

    Hayes said her specialty over the years has been creating dance programs for seniors, especially for those who have lost mobility or have dementia. Some dedicated dancers who came to the ballroom showed up after work and on the weekends.

    “In the Asian American community across the country, seniors have kept ballroom dancing alive,” said Hayes, who is white.

    Betina Hsieh, a second-generation Taiwanese American and an associate professor at Cal State Long Beach’s College of Education, knows at least one person whose parents went to Star Ballroom. Dance halls and churches in Asian communities have traditionally been safe spaces for older people.

    “There is a big separation or tension between immigrant parents and people like me who are second generation,” Hsieh said. “Our families bought into this idea of helping us kids assimilate. But, they remained in their ethnic enclaves and mingled among themselves, which means they have limited spaces to gather as they age.”

    Kevin Mok, 32 and of Chinese descent, runs Japanese dessert shop Mr. Obanyaki with his parents and brother. Since the shooting, he said he still feels “there’s a sense of fear in this community,” because there are less people on the streets.

    “It’s quieter than usual,” Mok said, while eating lunch at Mu’s restaurant. “I feel like my sales have dropped like 15 to 20% at night. Hopefully, it’ll come back.”

    The gunman — a 72-year-old Asian man known in the community — shot and killed himself.

    Hsieh, the professor, grew up in Santa Clarita, but has deep connections to Monterey Park. Her grandparents lived there or went there for doctor’s appointments because it was the only place they could find Mandarin-speaking physicians.

    “It was the first ‘ethnoburb’ in Southern California for Asians,” Hsieh said. “Monterey Park was this place we had before we even knew how to have an Asian American identity, a place where our families could gather and stay connected to their home and culture.”

    Immigrant-run restaurants and shops flourished in the burgeoning ethnoburb because immigrants are the least likely group to tolerate watered-down versions of their food.

    “Within five minutes I can get access to all the good food,” said Yvonne Yiu, a former Monterey Park mayor. “Because they are very competitive, they have to be good. A lot of people travel far away to Monterey Park to eat and dine.”

    Ballroom dancing is also embedded in the city’s culture, and Hayes of Star Ballroom is confident the community will rekindle its dance-floor joy.

    “People are going to come, and they are going to dance again,” she said.

    ___

    Bharath reported from Los Angeles. Tang is a writer on AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at @ttangAP.

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  • FDA vaccine advisers vote to harmonize Covid-19 vaccines in the United States | CNN

    FDA vaccine advisers vote to harmonize Covid-19 vaccines in the United States | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A panel of independent experts that advises the US Food and Drug Administration on its vaccine decisions voted unanimously Thursday to update all Covid-19 vaccines so they contain the same ingredients as the two-strain shots that are now used as booster doses.

    The vote means young children and others who haven’t been vaccinated may soon be eligible to receive two-strain vaccines that more closely match the circulating viruses as their primary series.

    The FDA must sign off on the committee’s recommendation, which it is likely to do, before it goes into effect.

    Currently, the US offers two types of Covid-19 vaccines. The first shots people get – also called the primary series – contain a single set of instructions that teach the immune system to fight off the original version of the virus, which emerged in 2019.

    This index strain is no longer circulating. It was overrun months ago by an ever-evolving parade of new variants.

    Last year, in consultation with its advisers, the FDA decided that it was time to update the vaccines. These two-strain, or bivalent, shots contain two sets of instructions; one set reminds the immune system about the original version of the coronavirus, and the second set teaches the immune system to recognize and fight off Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which emerged in the US last year.

    People who have had their primary series – nearly 70% of all Americans – were advised to get the new two-strain booster late last year in an effort to upgrade their protection against the latest variants.

    The advisory committee heard testimony and data suggesting that the complexity of having two types of Covid-19 vaccines and schedules for different age groups may be one of the reasons for low vaccine uptake in the US.

    Currently, only about two-thirds of Americans have had the full primary series of shots. Only 15% of the population has gotten an updated bivalent booster.

    Data presented to the committee shows that Covid-19 hospitalizations have been rising for children under the age of 2 over the past year, as Omicron and its many subvariants have circulated. Only 5% of this age group, which is eligible for Covid-19 vaccination at 6 months of age, has been fully vaccinated. Ninety percent of children under the age of 4 are still unvaccinated.

    “The most concerning data point that I saw this whole day was that extremely low vaccination coverage in 6 months to 2 years of age and also 2 years to 4 years of age,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders. “We have to do much, much better.”

    Cohn says that having a single vaccine against Covid-19 in the US for both primary and booster doses would go a long way toward making the process less complicated and would help get more children vaccinated.

    Others feel that convenience is important but also stressed that data supported the switch.

    “This isn’t only a convenience thing, to increase the number of people who are vaccinated, which I agree with my colleagues is extremely important for all the evidence that was related, but I also think moving towards the strains that are circulating is very important, so I would also say the science supports this move,” said Dr. Hayley Gans, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.

    Many others on the committee were similarly satisfied after seeing new data on the vaccine effectiveness of the bivalent boosters, which are cutting the risk of getting sick, being hospitalized or dying from a Covid-19 infection.

    “I’m totally convinced that the bivalent vaccine is beneficial as a primary series and as a booster series. Furthermore, the updated vaccine safety data are really encouraging so far,” said Dr. David Kim, director of the the US Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Program, in public discussion after the vote.

    Thursday’s vote is part of a larger plan by the FDA to simplify and improve the way Covid-19 vaccines are given in the US.

    The agency has proposed a plan to convene its vaccine advisers – called the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC – each year in May or June to assess whether the instructions in the Covid-19 vaccines should be changed to more closely match circulating strains of the virus.

    The time frame was chosen to give manufacturers about three months to redesign their shots and get new doses to pharmacies in time for fall.

    “The object, of course – before anyone says anything – is not to chase variants. None of us think that’s realistic,” said Jerry Weir, director of the Division of Viral Products in the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review.

    “But I think our experience so far, with the bivalent vaccines that we have, does indicate that we can continue to make improvements to the vaccine, and that would be the goal of these meetings,” Weir said.

    In discussions after the vote, committee members were supportive of this plan but pointed out many of the things we still don’t understand about Covid-19 and vaccination that are likely to complicate the task of updating the vaccines.

    For example, we now seem to have Covid-19 surges in the summer as well as the winter, noted Dr. Michael Nelson, an allergist and immunologist at the University of Virginia. Are the surges related? And if so, is fall the best time to being a vaccination campaign?

    The CDC’s Dr. Jefferson Jones said that with only three years of experience with the virus, it’s really too early to understand its seasonality.

    Other important questions related to the durability of the mRNA vaccines and whether other platforms might offer longer protection.

    “We can’t keep doing what we’re doing,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, chief of global public health strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation. “It’s been articulated in every one of these meetings despite how good these vaccines are. We need better vaccines.”

    The committee also encouraged both government and industry scientists to provide a fuller picture of how vaccination and infection affect immunity.

    One of the main ways researchers measure the effectiveness of the vaccines is by looking at how much they increase front-line defenders called neutralizing antibodies.

    Neutralizing antibodies are like firefighters that rush to the scene of an infection to contain it and put it out. They’re great in a crisis, but they tend to diminish in numbers over time if they’re not needed. Other components of the immune system like B-cells and T-cells hang on to the memory of a virus and stand ready to respond if the body encounters it again.

    Scientists don’t understand much about how well Covid-19 vaccination boosts these responses and how long that protection lasts.

    Another puzzle will be how to pick the strains that are in the vaccines.

    The process of selecting strains for influenza vaccines is a global effort that relies on surveillance data from other countries. This works because influenza strains tend to become dominant and sweep around the world. But Covid-19 strains haven’t worked in quite the same way. Some that have driven large waves in other countries have barely made it into the US variant mix.

    “Going forward, it is still challenging. Variants don’t sweep across the world quite as uniform, like they seem to with influenza,” the FDA’s Weir said. “But our primary responsibility is what’s best for the US market, and that’s where our focus will be.”

    Eventually, the FDA hopes that Americans would be able to get an updated Covid-19 shot once a year, the same way they do for the flu. People who are unlikely to have an adequate response to a single dose of the vaccine – such as the elderly or those with a weakened immune system – may need more doses, as would people who are getting Covid-19 vaccines for the first time.

    At Thursday’s meeting, the advisory committee also heard more about a safety signal flagged by a government surveillance system called the Vaccine Safety Datalink.

    The CDC and the FDA reported January 13 that this system, which relies on health records from a network of large hospital systems in the US, had detected a potential safety issue with Pfizer’s bivalent boosters.

    In this database, people 65 and older who got a Pfizer bivalent booster were slightly more likely to have a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of their vaccination than people who had gotten a bivalent booster but were 22 to 42 days after their shot.

    After a thorough review of other vaccine safety data in the US and in other countries that use Pfizer bivalent boosters, the agencies concluded that the stroke risk was probably a statistical fluke and said no changes to vaccination schedules were recommended.

    At Thursday’s meeting, Dr. Nicola Klein, a senior research scientist with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, explained how they found the signal.

    The researchers compared people who’d gotten a vaccine within the past three weeks against people who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots because this helps eliminate bias in the data.

    When they looked to see how many people had strokes around the time of their vaccination, they found an imbalance in the data.

    Of 550,000 people over 65 who’d received a Pfizer bivalent booster, 130 had a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of vaccination, compared with 92 people in the group farther out from their shots.

    The researchers spotted the signal the week of November 27, and it continued for about seven weeks. The signal has diminished over time, falling from an almost two-fold risk in November to a 47% risk in early January, Klein said. In the past few days, it hasn’t been showing up at all.

    Klein said they didn’t see the signal in any of the other age groups or with the group that got Moderna boosters. They also didn’t see a difference when they compared Pfizer-boosted seniors with those who were eligible for a bivalent booster but hadn’t gotten one.

    Further analyses have suggested that the signal might be happening not because people who are within three weeks of a Pfizer booster are having more strokes, but because people who are within 22 to 42 days of their Pfizer boosters are actually having fewer strokes.

    Overall, Klein said, they were seeing fewer strokes than expected in this population over that period of time, suggesting a statistical fluke.

    Another interesting thing that popped out of this data, however, was a possible association between strokes and high-dose flu vaccination. Seniors who got both shots on the same day and were within three weeks of those shots had twice the rate of stroke compared with those who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots.

    What’s more, Klein said, the researchers didn’t see the same association between stroke and time since vaccination in people who didn’t get their flu vaccine on the same day.

    The total number of strokes in the population of people who got flu shots and Covid-19 boosters on the same day is small, however, which makes the association a shaky one.

    “I don’t think that the evidence are sufficient to conclude that there’s an association there,” said Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.

    Nonetheless, Richard Forshee, deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance, said the FDA is planning to look at these safety questions further using data collected by Medicare.

    The FDA confirmed that the agency is taking a closer look.

    “The purpose of the study is 1) to evaluate the preliminary ischemic stroke signal reported by CDC using an independent data set and more robust epidemiological methods; and 2) to evaluate whether there is an elevated risk of ischemic stroke with the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine if it is given on the same day as a high-dose or adjuvanted seasonal influenza vaccine,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

    The FDA did not give a time frame for when these studies might have results.

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  • Study finds most U.S. children use potentially toxic makeup products, often during play

    Study finds most U.S. children use potentially toxic makeup products, often during play

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    Newswise — A study by scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Earthjustice found that most children in the United States use makeup and body products that may contain carcinogens and other toxic chemicals.

    Results are published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.  

    The study, based on more than 200 surveys, found that 79 percent of parents say their children 12 or younger use makeup and body products marketed to children, like glitter, face paint, and lip gloss.

    Prior research has shown that these products often have toxic chemicals, like lead, asbestos, PFAS, phthalates, and formaldehyde in them. Toxic chemicals found in children’s makeup and body products (CMBP), like heavy metals, are especially harmful to infants and children. These chemicals, whether intentionally added or present as contaminants, have been linked to cancer, neurodevelopmental harm, and other serious and irreversible health effects.

    “There is increasing evidence of harmful ingredients often included in adult cosmetics and CMBPs, and children are more biologically susceptible to the effects of toxicants,” says study co-first author Eleanor A. Medley, who co-led the study with Kendall E. Kruchten while both completed their MPHs in environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman. 

    “In this context, it is important to uncover how makeup and body products are being used by children to characterize risk and improve safety,” adds Kruchten.

    According to the Columbia and Earthjustice’s study, of the surveyed children, about 54 percent use CMBP at least monthly, 12 percent use CMBP daily, about 20 percent use CMBP for eight hours or more at a time, and a third of them reported unintentionally ingesting the products in the last year. Over one-third of the surveyed children are Latino and 65 percent of those children use CMBP. Compared to other racial groups, Latino children reported using CMBP more often and more for play.

    This study comes as some states, like New York and Washington, consider tightening their consumer regulations around toys, makeup, and personal care products.

    “Children are particularly vulnerable to adverse health risks associated with chemicals often found in makeup and body products,” says study senior author Julie Herbstman, PhD, professor of environmental health sciences and director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. “In addition to dermal exposure through the skin, behavioral patterns such as hand-to-mouth activity may increase exposure to products through unintentional ingestion. Additionally, children’s small body size, rapid growth rate, developing tissues and organs, and immature immune systems make them biologically susceptible to the effects of toxicants.”

    “It is alarming that industry is being allowed to sell makeup and body products marketed to children that contain extremely toxic chemicals. Findings from this study can help federal agencies better understand how children are using these products and will hopefully spur agencies to act to protect children from toxic chemical exposures,” said Earthjustice Attorney Lakendra Barajas. “Unfortunately, currently little is being done at the federal level to protect children from toxic chemicals in children’s makeup and body products.”

    Co-authors include Miranda J. Spratlen, Maricela Ureño, Anabel Cole—all at Columbia Mailman—as well as Rashmi Joglekar at Earthjustice.

    This work was supported in part by the Marisla Foundation.

    The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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    Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health

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  • Monterey Park, an Asian cultural hub, shaken by shooting

    Monterey Park, an Asian cultural hub, shaken by shooting

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    MONTEREY PARK, Calif. (AP) — For decades, Monterey Park has been a haven for Asian immigrants seeking to maintain a strong cultural identity — and a culinary heaven worth visiting for anybody near Los Angeles craving authentic Asian cuisine.

    Signs across the vibrant suburb are written in English and Chinese. Families raise bilingual children. And residents in their golden years enjoy karaoke, the Chinese tile game mah jong and — as the outside world learned last week after a horrific mass shooting — ballroom dancing.

    “It’s a very quiet, humble place. And we mind our own,” says Denny Mu, a second-generation American who runs the popular Mandarin Noodle House started by his grandfather.

    That sense of peace was shattered after a gunman killed 11 people in their 50s, 60s and 70s and wounded nine others last Saturday during a Lunar New Year celebration at the Star Dance Ballroom. But while residents of the tight-knit community work through the trauma — just as they did during the coronavirus pandemic, when anti-Asian sentiment rose nationwide — the tragedy has only sharpened their feelings about what makes Monterey Park so special, and worth protecting.

    Kristina Hayes, who started staging tango events at Star Ballroom when the studio reopened after the pandemic, said dance is “hugely important” for Monterey Park’s seniors.

    “It’s a pastime, hobby and even competitive — but in the best way possible.”

    Mu, whose restaurant is known for its scallion pancakes and beef noodle soup, said he has no plans of leaving Monterey Park, and believes the slowdown in visitors over the past week will be fleeting.

    “It’s the food mecca, especially if you like any sort of Asian food,” said Mu, who is Chinese.

    Monterey Park’s transformation to a predominantly Asian city was the brainchild of Fred Hsieh, a Chinese immigrant who was also a savvy real estate developer. He is credited with first coining the city’s nickname of the “Chinese Beverly Hills.” In the ’70s and ’80s, he used that phrase in Asian newspapers abroad to lure people from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the land of opportunity. He cleverly highlighted the city’s area code, 818. In Chinese culture, the number eight is seen by some as a symbol of prosperity and good fortune.

    When Hiseh died in 1999, Monterey Park had at the time become the only U.S. city with an Asian-majority population, with 65% Asian residents, according to an Associated Press obituary. Today, nearly 70% of the residents are Asian, mostly of Chinese descent.

    As residents deal with the shock and grief that the shooting brought, they hope people will continue to see the city of about 60,000 for the vibrant community it is.

    The backstory of Mandarin Noodle House, which at 43 years old remains one of the oldest restaurants in Monterey Park, is the story of many Asian immigrant families who have stayed faithful to the community and elevated it beyond some cookie-cutter suburb. For decades, the city has been revered as the flagship location in Southern California for authentic Asian food, particularly Chinese cuisine from various regions.

    For the 36-year-old Mu, the regular customers at Mandarin Noodle House are one reason he can’t see himself leaving Monterey Park.

    “It’s nice to go to a restaurant and ask the customer ’How was your day? How was your kid’s dance recital? … All that stuff,” Mu said. “It’s all about community.”

    Hayes said her specialty over the years has been creating dance programs for seniors, especially for those who have lost mobility or have dementia. Some dedicated dancers who came to the ballroom showed up after work and on the weekends.

    “In the Asian American community across the country, seniors have kept ballroom dancing alive,” said Hayes, who is white.

    Betina Hsieh, a second-generation Taiwanese American and an associate professor at Cal State Long Beach’s College of Education, knows at least one person whose parents went to Star Ballroom. Dance halls and churches in Asian communities have traditionally been safe spaces for older people.

    “There is a big separation or tension between immigrant parents and people like me who are second generation,” Hsieh said. “Our families bought into this idea of helping us kids assimilate. But, they remained in their ethnic enclaves and mingled among themselves, which means they have limited spaces to gather as they age.”

    Kevin Mok, 32 and of Chinese descent, runs Japanese dessert shop Mr. Obanyaki with his parents and brother. Since the shooting, he said he still feels “there’s a sense of fear in this community,” because there are less people on the streets.

    “It’s quieter than usual,” Mok said, while eating lunch at Mu’s restaurant. “I feel like my sales have dropped like 15 to 20% at night. Hopefully, it’ll come back.”

    The gunman — a 72-year-old Asian man known in the community — shot and killed himself.

    Hsieh, the professor, grew up in Santa Clarita, but has deep connections to Monterey Park. Her grandparents lived there or went there for doctor’s appointments because it was the only place they could find Mandarin-speaking physicians.

    “It was the first ‘ethnoburb’ in Southern California for Asians,” Hsieh said. “Monterey Park was this place we had before we even knew how to have an Asian American identity, a place where our families could gather and stay connected to their home and culture.”

    Immigrant-run restaurants and shops flourished in the burgeoning ethnoburb because immigrants are the least likely group to tolerate watered-down versions of their food.

    “Within five minutes I can get access to all the good food,” said Yvonne Yiu, a former Monterey Park mayor. “Because they are very competitive, they have to be good. A lot of people travel far away to Monterey Park to eat and dine.”

    Ballroom dancing is also embedded in the city’s culture, and Hayes of Star Ballroom is confident the community will rekindle its dance-floor joy.

    “People are going to come, and they are going to dance again,” she said.

    ___

    Bharath reported from Los Angeles. Tang is a writer on AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at @ttangAP.

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  • Study Logs Five-Fold Increase in Autism in New York-New Jersey Region

    Study Logs Five-Fold Increase in Autism in New York-New Jersey Region

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    Newswise — Documented cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the New York–New Jersey metro region increased by as much as 500 percent between 2000 and 2016, with the highest increase among children without intellectual disabilities, according to a Rutgers study.

    This is the opposite of past findings, which have suggested that autism typically co-occurs with intellectual impairment.

    “One of the assumptions about ASD is that it occurs alongside intellectual disabilities,” said Josephine Shenouda, an adjunct professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and lead author of the study published in the journal Pediatrics. “This claim was supported by older studies suggesting that up to 75 percent of children with autism also have intellectual disability.”

    “What our paper shows is that this assumption is not true,” Shenouda said. “In fact, in this study, two-in-three children with autism had no intellectual disability whatsoever.”

    Using biannual data from the New Jersey Autism Study, researchers identified 4,661 8-year-olds with ASD in four New Jersey counties (Essex, Hudson, Ocean and Union) during the study period. Of these, 1,505 (32.3 percent) had an intellectual disability; 2,764 (59.3 percent) did not.

    Subsequent analysis found that rates of ASD co-occurring with intellectual disability increased two-fold between 2000 and 2016 – from 2.9 per 1,000 to 7.3 per 1,000. Rates of ASD with no intellectual disability jumped five-fold, from 3.8 per 1,000 to 18.9 per 1,000.

    Shenouda said there may be explanations for the observed increases, though more research is needed to specify the precise causes.

    “Better awareness of and testing for ASD does play a role,” said Walter Zahorodny, associate professor at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and senior author on the study. “But the fact that we saw a 500 percent increase in autism among kids without any intellectual disabilities – children we know are falling through the cracks – suggests that something else is also driving the surge.”

    ASD prevalence has been shown to be associated with race and socioeconomic status.  The Rutgers study identified that Black children with ASD and no intellectual disabilities were 30 percent less likely to be identified compared with White children, while kids living in affluent areas were 80 percent more likely to be identified with ASD and no intellectual disabilities compared with children in underserved areas.

    Using New Jersey Autism Study data and U.S. census data, the researchers were able to estimate rates of ASD undercounting in the four counties.

    Shenouda said that addressing the findings could help close identification gaps and eventually bring much-needed ASD services to lower-income areas.

    “With up to 72 percent of the ASD population having borderline or average intellectual ability, emphasis should be placed on early screening, early identification and early intervention,” she said. “Because gains in intellectual functioning are proportionate with intense intervention at younger ages, it’s essential that universal screening is in place, especially in underserved communities.

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    Rutgers University-New Brunswick

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  • Pioneering approach advances study of CTCF protein in transcription biology

    Pioneering approach advances study of CTCF protein in transcription biology

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    Newswise — (Memphis, Tenn.—January 25, 2023) CTCF is a critical protein known to play various roles in key biological processes such as transcription. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital used a next-generation protein degradation technology to study CTCF. Their work revealed the superiority of the approach in addition to providing functional insights into how CTCF regulates transcription. The study, published today in Genome Biology, paves the way for more clear, nuanced studies of CTCF.

    Transcription is an essential biological process where DNA is copied into RNA. The process is the first required step in a cell to take the instructions housed in DNA and ultimately translate that code into the amino acid or polypeptide building blocks that become active proteins. Dysregulated transcription plays a role in many types of pediatric cancer. Finding ways to modify or target aspects of the transcriptional machinery is a novel frontier in the search for vulnerabilities that can be exploited therapeutically.

    While the biology of CTCF has been extensively studied, how the different domains (parts) of CTCF function in relation to transcription regulation remains unclear.

    One of the most valuable ways to study a protein is to degrade, or remove, it from a model system. In the protein’s absence, researchers can study the functional changes that occur, providing insight into how the protein influences a cell. One system for degrading proteins is the auxin-inducible degron 1 (AID1) system. However, this system has limitations when investigating the function of CTCF, such as the high dosage dependency of auxin, which causes cellular toxicity that muddles results.

    Scientists at St. Jude applied the second-generation system, auxin-inducible degron 2 (AID2) to CTCF (the system was developed by Masato Kanemaki, Ph.D., at the National Institute of Genetics). This system is superior for loss-of-function studies, overcoming the limitations of the AID1 system and eliminating the off-target effects seen with previous approaches.

    “We’ve cracked open the understanding of the impact of CTCF using a degradation model, the AID2 system,” said co-corresponding author Chunliang Li, Ph.D., St. Jude Department of Tumor Cell Biology. “Using this system, we identified the rules that govern CTCF-dependent transcription regulation.”

    “When the CTCF protein is gone, we and others have observed that very few genes transcriptionally change,” Li said. “We know when we remove most of the CTCF protein in cells, the impact on transcription is minimal. So, the disconnect between the depletion of protein and transcription must be following a mechanism. We identified part of the mechanism. The protein not only relies on binding to the DNA through the recognition of the CTCF DNA binding motif, but also relies on certain domains to bind to specific sequences flanking the motif. For a subset of genes, transcription is regulated only when CTCF binds to these specific sequences.”

    “Swapping system” sheds light on the role of zinc finger domains

    The researchers combined the AID2 system with leading-edge techniques such as SLAM-seq and sgRNA screening to study how the degradation of CTCF alters transcription.

    “With degradation we can create a very clean background, and then introduce a mutant. This switch happens very fast, so we call it a fast-swapping system,” Li said. “This is the first time a clean and fast-swapping system has been used to study individual mutants of CTCF.”

    Through their work the scientists identified the zinc finger (ZF) domain as the region within CTCF with the most functional relevance, including ZF1 and ZF10. Removing ZF1 and ZF10 from the model system revealed genomic regions that independently require these ZFs for binding DNA and regulating transcription.

    “CTCF itself is a multifunctional protein,” said co-first author Judith Hyle, St. Jude Department of Tumor Cell Biology. “It has various roles in a cell from chromatin architecture maintenance to transcription regulation, either as an activator or repressor of transcription. Our interest is how CTCF is involved in transcriptional regulation, and with this new system we were able to degrade CTCF much more rapidly, and home in on the specific targets of CTCF. We were able to assign some function to these peripheral zinc fingers that have not been well understood, showing that certain regions within the genome required or were dependent upon these zinc finger bindings for transcriptional regulation. That was the first time that had been seen or confirmed in a cellular system.”

    An open door for further research

    The superior system allowed the researchers to introduce mutations that could be tracked through their model.  Scientists then conducted functional studies to understand the consequences of such mutations regarding CTCF binding and transcriptional regulation.

    Of the new approach, co-first author Mohamed Nadhir Djekidel, Ph.D., St. Jude Center for Applied Bioinformatics, said “because you can get clean data about the mutants when endogenous protein is degraded, you can actually infer the gene regulatory network, and that opens the door for different downstream analysis to understand how regulation works.”

    The study demonstrates the superiority of the AID2 system for degrading proteins and showcases the importance of studying CTCF in a clear system. This is important verification for other researchers in the field of transcriptional regulation research. The work also revealed new avenues for research on this key protein.

    Authors and funding

    The study’s co-corresponding author is Beisi Xu, Ph.D., St. Jude Center for Applied Bioinformatics. Additional authors are Justin Williams, Shaela Wright and Ying Shao of St. Jude.

    The study was supported by ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization of St. Jude.

    St. Jude Media Relations Contacts

     

    St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

    St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and cures childhood cancer, sickle cell disease and other life-threatening disorders. It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to 80% since the hospital opened 60 years ago. St. Jude freely shares the breakthroughs it makes, and every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists worldwide can use that knowledge to save thousands more children. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing and food — so families can focus on helping their child live. To learn more, visit stjude.org or follow St. Jude on social media at @stjuderesearch.

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    St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

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  • Hundreds of child asylum seekers have gone missing in UK, government admits | CNN

    Hundreds of child asylum seekers have gone missing in UK, government admits | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Hundreds of child asylum seekers have gone missing since the British government started housing minors in hotels due to a strain on the country’s asylum accommodation system, British Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told lawmakers in parliament on Tuesday, amid calls for an investigation into the matter.

    Jenrick said Tuesday that around 200 children have gone missing since July 2021. “Out of the 4,600 unaccompanied children that have been accommodated in hotels since July 2021, there have been 440 missing occurrences and 200 children still remain missing,” he said.

    Approximately 13 of the 200 missing children are under the age of 16, and one is female according to government data. The majority of the missing, 88%, are Albanian nationals, and the remaining 12% are from Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Vietnam, Pakistan and Turkey.

    Jenrick blamed the problem on an increase in migrant boat crossings through the English Channel to the United Kingdom which left the government “no alternative” than to use “specialist hotels” to accommodate minors as of July 2021.

    Although the contracted use of hotels was envisioned as a temporary solution, there were still four in operation as of October with over 200 rooms designated to child migrants, according to a report from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration.

    British charities and migrant rights groups have long complained about the bad conditions in the country’s overwhelmed and underfunded asylum system.

    The number of asylum claims processed in the UK has collapsed in recent years, leaving people in limbo for months and years – trapped in processing facilities or temporary hotels and unable to work – and fueling an intractable debate about Britain’s borders.

    The missing migrant children was first reported in British media on Saturday, when the newspaper The Observer reported that “dozens” of asylum-seeking children were kidnapped by “gangs” from a hotel run by the UK Home Office in Brighton, southern England.

    Calls have since been mounting for an urgent investigation into the matter, with the the opposition Labour Party, human rights organization the Refugee Council, as well as local authorities demanding urgent action.

    The Home Office has called those reports untrue and in a statement to CNN a Home Office spokesperson said: “The wellbeing of children in our care is an absolute priority.”

    The spokesperson added that they had “robust safeguarding procedures” in place and ” when a child goes missing, local authorities work closely with agencies, including the police, to urgently establish their whereabouts.”

    While the British government is without the power to detain unaccompanied minors, who are free to leave the hotels, Jenrick defended the UK Home Office’s safeguarding practices saying that records are kept and monitored of children leaving and returning to the hotels and that support workers are on hand to accompany children off site on activities and social excursions.

    “Many of those who have gone missing are subsequently traced and located,” Jenrick told parliament.

    Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, from the opposition Labour Party, blamed human traffickers in her response to parliament saying “children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They are being taken from the street by traffickers.”

    Cooper said “urgent and serious action” is needed to crack down on gangs to keep children and young people safe.

    “We know from Greater Manchester Police, they’ve warned asylum hotels and children’s homes are being targeted by organised criminals. And in this case, there is a pattern here that gangs know where to come to get the children, often likely because they trafficked them here in the first place,” she added. “There is a criminal network involved. The government is completely failing to stop them.”

    On Monday, UK charity Refugee Action said that it is “scandalous that children who have come to this country to ask for safety are being put in harm’s way. Ultimate responsibility lies with the Home Secretary, and her decision to run an asylum system based not on compassion, but hostility,” they added.

    UK charity the Refugee Council tweeted that they are “deeply concerned by the practice of placing separated children in Home Office accommodation, outside of legal provisions, putting them at risk of harm with over 200 of them having gone missing.”

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  • Video Game Addiction: Noticing Warning Signs, Getting Help

    Video Game Addiction: Noticing Warning Signs, Getting Help

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    Jan. 23, 2023 – Tomer Shaked, an 18-year-old high school senior in Florida, started gaming around age 9. “I began spending more and more time playing video games in what I now know was a gaming addiction,” he says in an interview.

    “At first, I didn’t play all that much, and still put school and homework first. And when I turned 10, I was still playing only during the weekends,” he reports. “But the screen time increased. My parents set some limits, but I eventually learned to get around my parents’ rules to get my ‘fix’ of gaming.”

    By the age of 12, gaming consumed every free moment and was the only thing he thought about. He began lying to his parents about how much time he was gaming, which damaged his relationship with them. “All I wanted to do was game, game, game.”

    Soon, “gaming wasn’t just one activity I enjoyed. It had become the only activity I enjoyed.”

    Most youngsters who play video games do so “as a form of entertainment, which is what it’s supposed to be, but approximately 5% to 6% of video game users do so to the point where it interferes with their lives and use it as an addiction,” says David Greenfield, PhD, founder and clinical director of the Connecticut-based Center for Internet and Technology Addiction. 

    Considering that there are about 2.7 billion gamers worldwide, with 75% of U.S. households having at least one gamer, even 5% to 6% is a staggering number of people.

    Shaked has written a memoir, Game Over, which he hopes will “highlight important topics associated with gaming addiction that can speak to both teens and their parents who are experiencing this conflict in their own lives.”

    He hopes other teens “can realize they can also live a full and productive life away from a video screen.”

    A Problem of Staggering Dimensions

    Video gaming has been around since the mid- to late 1970s, but not at the level it is now.

    “When video gaming met the internet, it was like mixing peanut butter and chocolate together. As the internet’s popularity blossomed in the late 1980s and 1990s, that’s when it got out of hand,” Greenfield says. His clinic treats people who have addiction to internet content, and “by far the most common area we see is video gaming.”

     

    What Makes Video Gaming So Addictive?

    Greenfield says brain mechanisms involved in video game addiction are similar to the brain mechanisms involved in other addictions.

    “The brain doesn’t know the difference between a drug and a video game because gaming activates the same receptors responsible for all other addictions, including substances and gambling.”

    The key brain chemical involved is dopamine – a neurotransmitter involved in pleasure and reward, Greenfield says. From an evolutionary point of view, dopamine is what made mating and eating – the two most important survival activities – pleasurable and “increased the likelihood that we would continue to engage in them.”

    In addiction, “you’re piggy-backing onto these ancient neural pathways and hijacking the reward mechanism that dopamine is responsible for,” he says. “On some weird level, your brain acts as if the activity is survival-enhancing when in fact it’s the opposite.”

    Soon, people with this type of addiction feel there is no other source of pleasure in their lives because they’ve allowed other parts of their lives to fall by the wayside in their almost exclusive focus on gaming.

    That’s what happened to Shaked.

    “I think the appeal of gaming is the constant reward system in place,” he says. “These are virtual worlds that allow you to win battles that can’t be fought in the ‘real world’ in real time, allowing you to win soccer and basketball games and making you very popular in the ‘virtual’ world.”

    You get to the point “where you know the games and how to play them, you get attention and admiration online, which have no value in the real world but are very addictive in the virtual world.”

    And time goes by seamlessly. “Anyone who has ever played a video game – even someone without an addiction – can attest to the fact that time simply gets lost,” says Shaked.

    Red Flags for Parents

    What might start out as a break for parents – the kids are busy playing their video games and the parents have a few minutes to themselves – expands into something much bigger. But the progression doesn’t happen overnight, and parents might miss the clues.

    Things like: 

    • Not wanting to leave the house unless required 
    • Not wanting to go on vacation without gaming equipment 
    • Refusing to go outside 
    • Rushing through normal activities, like meals, to get back to the games 

    Greenfield says parents should look for changes in patterns of daily living – fewer social interactions, changes in patterns of hygiene, less physical activity, eating less, and worse academic performance. 

    “The majority of people who come to treatment in our center are brought in by parents or other family members. Many have stopped showering and taking care of themselves, they’ve become more isolative, their friendships are related only to gaming or through apps they can use to communicate while gaming,” says Greenfield, who is the author of the book Overcoming Internet Addiction for Dummies.

    Addictive video gaming can take a toll on the body, even leading (in extreme cases) to blood clots from sitting for so long, electrolyte imbalances from going without food for days, and other problems (like obesity) associated with sedentary living. Being in front of a computer can contribute to neck and back problems, headaches, and visual problems, among others.

    Kicking the Gaming Habit

    Shaked’s journey was unusual: at the age of 17, he had an epiphany while driving home from school. “I looked at myself and asked how I had been spending my childhood. I had been in front of the computer screen more than in front of my parents. You never want to say you’ve been in front of a computer screen more than in front of people, because that’s pretty sad.”

    He realized that he had “lost” himself. “I had been so lost in a fake video game world that I had lost my identity and had become a video game character, not a real person.” He decided to completely stop playing video games.

    But most people don’t have these types of epiphanies and need family intervention or even professional help to give up gaming, Shaked notes. He doesn’t advise others to “go cold turkey,” although that’s what he did. Doing so creates a tremendous void because the person does not yet have an activity to fill that time.

    Greenfield, who’s also author of the book Virtual Addiction, agrees. His center helps parents gradually reduce screen time by helping them install software that limits how much time the teen can spend on the screen. “Kids have to get used to real-time living because the brain gets used to the level of dopamine that comes from gaming. They need to relearn how to experience normal pleasure in other areas of life.”

    Some parents and kids might simply need education about gaming addiction, although others also need therapy. Some might even need residential treatment. “The needs of gaming addicts run the entire gamut.” 

    It’s important to find a therapist familiar with video gaming addiction, Greenfield warns. Because videos are so pervasive, less knowledgeable therapists might dismiss a gaming addiction as harmless fun. But gaming addiction should be taken as seriously as any other addiction.

    Today, Shaked leads a full and meaningful life. He’s involved in rowing and has received a varsity award. He completed a law fellowship for high school juniors, joined a beach cleanup crew, and received first prize in a state Spanish competition. He also has volunteered at the Jack and Jill Foundation of America and plans to donate the proceeds of sales of his book to the foundation, which helps children from underprivileged communities get access to educational programs.

    “The organization really touched my heart, and that’s why I dedicated this book to them,” he says. 

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