About one in 150 American children has autism, U.S. health officials said Thursday, calling the troubling disorder an urgent public health concern that is more common than they had thought. The new numbers are based on the largest, most convincing study done so far in the United States, and trump previous estimates that placed the prevalence at 1 in 166. The difference means roughly 50,000 more children and young adults may have autism and related disorders than was previously thought – a total nationwide of more than half a million people. Advocates said the study provides a sad new understanding of autism’s burden on society, and should fuel efforts to get the government to spend hundreds of millions of additional dollars for autism research and services. ‘This data today show we’re going to need more early intervention services and more therapists, and we’re going to need federal and state legislators to stand up for these families,’ said Alison Singer, spokeswoman for Autism Speaks, the nation’s largest organization advocating services for autistic children. The study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was based on 2002 data from 14 states. It calculated an average […]
BOSTON — Harvard University announced on Wednesday its biggest curriculum overhaul in three decades, putting new emphasis on sensitive religious and cultural issues, the sciences and overcoming U.S. ‘parochialism.’ The curriculum at the oldest U.S. university has been criticized as focusing too narrowly on academic topics instead of real-life issues, or for being antagonistic to organized religion. Efforts to revise it have been in the works for three years. One of the eight new required subject areas — ‘societies of the world’ — aims to help students overcome U.S. ‘parochialism’ by ‘acquainting them with the values, customs and institutions that differ from their own,’ said a 34-page Harvard report on the changes. An earlier proposal would have made Harvard unique among its elite Ivy League peers by requiring undergraduates to study religion as a distinct subject, but that was dropped in December. The changes to the general-education requirements, imposed on students outside their major, still address religious beliefs and practices. Study of those issues, however, would be folded into a broader subject of ‘culture and belief.’ The ‘culture and belief’ requirement will ‘introduce students to ideas, art and religion in the context of the social, […]
LONDON & BRUSSELS — For eurosceptics, the European Court of Justice ruling in September 2005 was like giving a child a loaded gun. It opened the way for the European Union to designate a new class of pan-European crimes, and how they should be punished. In Britain there was an outcry. In future decisions taken in Brussels could be applied to the British courts, denying parliament the right to determine what constituted a crime and levels of sentencing. Concerns grew when the European Commission interpreted the ruling as being far wider than the case at issue: environmental crime. It produced a list of offences it believed should also be covered by the new rules, including counterfeiting, money laundering and computer hacking. The Commission’s decision this week to create common criminal rules for environmental crimes is seen by some as a sign that Brussels will take full advantage of the court ruling to stealthily advance EU powers. Franco Frattini, the EU’s justice commissioner, is said by aides to be fully aware that the court has handed him a powerful legal weapon, but it is one that he will use with restraint. ‘Member states are concerned about […]
National Journal has released a new ‘Congressional Insiders Poll,’ which surveyed 113 members of Congress – 10 Senate Democrats, 48 House Democrats, 10 Senate Republicans, and 45 House Republicans – about their positions on global warming. The results were startling. Only 13 percent of congressional Republicans say they believe that human activity is causing global warming, compared to 95 percent of congressional Democrats. Moreover, the number of Republicans who believe in human-induced global warming has actually dropped since April 2006, when the number was 23 percent. Question: Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems? The last Congressional Insiders Poll on global warming was in April 2006. Subsequently: – In June 2006, the National Academy of Sciences, an independent organization created by Congress to provide scientific guidance, unequivocally concluded that natural causes cannot explain the unprecedented warmth over the last 400 years. Rather, ‘human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming,’ the report states. – In February 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ‘concluded for the first time that global warming is ‘unequivocal’ […]
CHICAGO – In some cities in Europe and the United States, a person can be videotaped by surveillance cameras hundreds of times a day, and it’s safe to say that most of the time no one is actually watching. But the advent of ‘intelligent video’ — software that raises the alarm if something on camera appears amiss — means Big Brother will soon be able to keep a more constant watch, a prospect that is sure to heighten privacy concerns. Combining motion detection technology with the learning capabilities of video game software, these new systems can detect people loitering, walking in circles or leaving a package. New microphone technology can isolate the sound of a gunshot and direct the attached camera to swivel and zoom in on the source. Sensitivity may reach the point where microphones could pick out the word ‘explosives’ spoken in a crowd. ‘There’s just not enough personnel to watch every single camera,’ said Chicago emergency operations chief Andrew Velasquez. ‘We are piloting analytic software right now … where you can set that particular camera to watch for erratic behavior, or someone leaving a suitcase on the sidewalk.’ Since the attacks on […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
