HuckleB
HuckleB's JournalChina to greatly expand GM crops
http://m.dw.com/en/china-to-greatly-expand-gm-crops/a-19185532Well, then...
By Land or by Sea: How Did Early Humans Access Key Brain-Building Nutrients?
Experts debate the origins of fatty acids in our ancestors’ dietshttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/by-land-or-by-sea-how-did-early-humans-access-key-brain-building-nutrients/
"Omega fatty acids, including docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, are key to brain health and most likely helped to drive the evolution of the modern human brain. But how did early humans access these vital nutrients? The answer is a matter of some debate.
For nearly two decades archaeologist Curtis W. Marean, associate director of Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins, has overseen excavations at a site called Pinnacle Point on South Africa’s southern coast, near where a newly discovered early human species, Homo naledi, was recently unearthed. His work there suggests that sometime around 160,000 years ago, during a glacial period known as Marine Isotope Stage 6 (MIS6), humans made a significant shift in their eating habits, moving from foraging for terrestrial plants, animals and the occasional inland fish to relying on the rich, predictable shellfish beds in the area.
Marean believes this change occurred when early humans learned to exploit the bimonthly spring tides. And to do so, he says, our brains were already fairly well evolved. “Accessing the marine food chain could have had huge impacts on fertility, survival and overall health, including brain health,” Marean explains, in part because of the high return on omega-3 fatty acids. But before MIS6, he speculates, hominins would have had access to plenty of brain-healthy terrestrial nutrition, including by feeding on animals that consumed omega-3-rich plants and grains.
Others disagree, at least in part. “I’m afraid the idea that ample DHA was available from the fats of animals on the savanna is just not true,” says psychiatrist Michael A. Crawford of Imperial College London. “The animal brain evolved 600 million years ago in the ocean and was dependent on DHA and compounds essential to the brain such as iodine, which is also in short supply on land. To build a brain, you would need building blocks that were rich at sea and on rocky shores.”
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Growing inequality among children in high income countries, UNICEF reports
Source: UN News Centre
A new United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report presents evidence on the ways inequality is affecting children in high income countries, in areas such areas as education and life satisfaction – with Denmark at the top and Israel and Turkey ranking the lowest overall.
Innocenti Report Card 13, Fairness for Children: A league table of inequality in child well-being in rich countries, ranks 41 countries that are part of the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) according to how far children at the bottom of the distribution fall below their peers in the middle. The report looks at bottom end inequality of income, educational achievement, self-reported health and life satisfaction.
“The Report Card provides a clear reminder that the well-being of children in any country is not an inevitable outcome of individual circumstances or of the level of economic development but is shaped by policy choices,” said Dr. Sarah Cook, Director of the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, in a press release.
“As our understanding of the long term impact of inequality grows, it becomes increasingly clear that governments must place priority on enhancing the well-being of all children today, and give them the opportunity to achieve their potential,” she added.
Read more: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53679#.Vw-8-fkrIdU
Could Banning Drive-Thrus Make A City More Pedestrian Friendly?
Portland wants to restrict future drive-thrus, but opposition to plan is growinghttp://katu.com/news/local/portland-wants-to-restrict-future-drive-thrus-but-opposition-to-plan-is-growing
"City planners in Portland are looking to restrict drive-thrus in an effort to make the city more pedestrian friendly in the coming years.
Camille Trummer, the city's policy adviser for land use and planning, said restricting future commercial drive-thrus is part of a plan to make the city more pedestrian-friendly over the next 20 years.
"We just want to make sure there are no new drive-thrus near those commercial areas where people are walking, biking and using transit and there could be conflict with automobiles," Trummer said.
Some of the areas that would be affected include downtown Portland, Northeast Portland, and the commercial stretches of Mississippi Avenue and Alberta Street.
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Hmm.
Weird 'cloud' of crabs off Panama baffles scientists (+video)
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0412/Weird-cloud-of-crabs-off-Panama-baffles-scientists-video"A shadowy, shifting swarm of crabs swimming near the ocean floor astonished scientists and served as a reminder of how many discoveries are yet to be made in the ocean's depths.
Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Mass., discovered the crab migration in April 2015, while conducting a series of 26 deep-sea dives to seamounts off the coast of Panama. They were investigating why the underwater volcanoes attract such a diversity of marine life. While diving via submarine, they saw stingrays, octopuses, and sea turtles, and on their last dive, they found crabs – thousands of them.
"When we dove down in the submarine, we noticed the water became murkier as we got closer to the bottom," said Jesús Pineda, a biologist at Woods Hole, in a press release. "There was this turbid layer, and you couldn't see a thing beyond it. We just saw this cloud but had no idea what was causing it."
The crab swarm surprised the researchers both in location and activity. Red crabs usually swim further north, closer to California than to Panama. A more typical red crab sighting came last summer, when thousands of red crabs washed ashore near San Diego, as the Los Angeles Times reported.
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De Niro Says 'Find the Truth' on Vaccines, On NBC's Today Show: But Experts Already Did
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/de-niro-says-find-truth-vaccines-experts-already-did-n555416"Actor Robert De Niro is the latest celebrity to say he thinks vaccines might cause autism. But decades of study have shown no link at all, and scientists are becoming increasingly impatient with the refusal to accept their findings.
De Niro said Wednesday he now regrets pulling a controversial film called "Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Conspiracy" from the Tribeca film Festival.
"If you are scientists, let's see, let's hear," De Niro told TODAY. De Niro says his 18-year-old son has autism and while the actor did not directly say he fears vaccination caused his son's condition, he said he wonders about it.
But scientists have debunked, often multiple times, every assertion that De Niro makes. They've been made and knocked down many times in the past 20 years as a small but highly vocal group of vaccine critics raise them.
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So another actor shows ignorance of science to a degree that is just astounding. What is it with this profession?
Yes, I winked. It's a joke question. Sort of. I guess.
and...
When Air Quality Improves, So Do Kids' Asthma Symptoms
Source: Med Page Today
Declining levels of air pollution in Southern California were linked to reduced rates of asthma and other respiratory conditions in children, a small longitudinal study showed.
Reductions in ambient air pollution over the course of 20 years were associated with significant reductions in bronchitic symptoms among all children. A 47% decrease in levels of particulate matter was linked to a 32% reduction in the likelihood of bronchitic symptoms in 10-year-old children with asthma (OR 0.68, P=0.002) and a 21% (OR 0.79, P<0.001) reduction among 10-year-olds without asthma, reported Kiros Berhane, PhD, of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and colleagues.
Similar results were observed for nitrogen dioxide, as a 49% decrease in the air pollutant was associated with asthmatic children being 21% less likely (OR 0.79, P=0.007) and non-asthmatic children 16% less likely (OR 0.84, P<0.001) to develop bronchitic symptoms.
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This was another finding linking reduced air pollution to improved child respiratory health from the Children's Health Study -- a study examining three cohorts (1993-2001, 1996-2004, and 2003-2012) in eight Southern California communities. A year ago, the study found that improvements in air quality were linked to increased lung capacity in children.
Read more: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/Asthma/57334
Lost In Translation: Study Finds Interpretation Of Emojis Can Vary Widely
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/12/473965971/lost-in-translation-study-finds-interpretation-of-emojis-can-vary-widely"Emojis were supposed to be the great equalizer: a language all its own capable of transcending borders and cultural differences.
Not so fast, say a group of researchers who found that different people had vastly different interpretations of some popular emojis. The researchers published their findings for GroupLens, a research lab based out of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
"I think some people thought that they could use [emojis] with little risk and what we found is that it actually is at high risk of miscommunication," Hannah Miller, a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota and one of the authors of the study, said in a phone interview.
For example, the researchers found that when people receive the "face with tears of joy" emoji — which Oxford Dictionaries declared its word of the year — some interpret it positively, while others will interpret it negatively.
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Interpret away!
The Rare District That Recognizes Gifted Latino Students
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/03/31/472528190/the-rare-district-that-recognizes-gifted-latino-students"Imagine you're back in school, bored to death, with limited academic options. Because you're learning English, everybody assumes you're not ready for more challenging work. What they don't realize is that you're gifted.
Researchers say this happens to lots of gifted children who arrive at school speaking little or no English. These students go unnoticed, until someone taps into their remarkable talent and potential. Vanessa Minero Leon was lucky. She was one of those students who got noticed.
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So how does Brulles go about finding gifted kids who start school speaking little or no English? Well, she says, you start by training classroom teachers and showing them how to look for exceptionally bright students among the English language learners, or ELL, population. Then you test them. And last, but not least, you reach out to parents.
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That's where testing for giftedness comes in. In Paradise Valley, students can test up to three times a year with a combination of nonverbal and verbal exams. Once they're identified as gifted, they're placed in classes with other gifted students in accelerated courses. The material they cover is at least two years above grade level.
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NPR appears to be doing a series. Here is yesterday's piece on this topic:
Gifted, But Still Learning English, Many Bright Students Get Overlooked
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/11/467653193/gifted-but-still-learning-english-overlooked-underserved
Good for Paradise Valley. I hope this news helps spread such programs across the country.
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