Children who are exposed to poverty at a young age often have trouble academically later in life. But according to new research out of the Washington University School of Medicine, poverty also appears to be associated with smaller brain volumes in areas involved in emotion processing and memory.

A team of researchers at the St. Louis-based university, led by Joan Luby, analyzed brain scans of 145 children between the ages of 6 and 12 who had been tracked since preschool, in a study released Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. Aside from the influence environmental factors of poverty may have on a student’s behavior and school performance, the researchers found that poverty also appears to alter the physical makeup of a child’s brain; those children exposed to poverty at an early age had smaller volumes of white and cortical gray matter, as well as hippocampal and amygdala volumes.

White and gray matter, nerve tissues found in the brain, are associated with sending communications in the brain, as well as sensory perception, memory, emotions and speech, respectively. Meanwhile, the hippocampus is a region of the brain involved in the conversion of short-term memory to long-term memory, and spatial navigation, and the amygdala plays […]

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The fast-food giant McDonald’s is urging employees to break up food into smaller pieces to feel full or sell their Christmas presents for extra money.

The restaurant chain made the recommendations on its ‘McResource

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The Church of England is on course to give its final approval to female bishops next year after its General Synod voted in favour of new proposals to bring women into the episcopate, raising hopes of an end to the damaging and frequently bitter 20-year standoff between modernisers and traditionalists.

On the third and final day of its meeting in London, the synod voted in favour of the new plans by an overwhelming majority of 378 to eight, with 25 abstentions.

Proposing the new draft legislation, the bishop of Rochester, James Langstaff, recognised that the synod had been given a ‘second bite of the cherry’ but said that it had come a long way since last November, when the last moves to introduce female bishops fell.

He urged the synod to vote ‘as positively as it is able’ for the proposals, adding: ‘People may have quibbles about various words and phrases within this statement of guiding principles, but I would ask you to remember that these are guiding principles, not holy writ nor a creedal statement.

Although the first speech from the floor noted that ‘history makes us naturally cautious about optimists who wave documents that offer peace in our time’ – and a […]

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[Mr./Madame] President, I rise today to talk about the retirement crisis in this country – a crisis that has received far too little attention, and far too little response, from Washington.

I spent most of my career studying the economic pressures on middle class families – families who worked hard, who played by the rules, but who still found themselves hanging on by their fingernails. Starting in the 1970s, even as workers became more productive, their wages flattened out, while core expenses, things like housing and health care and sending a kid to college, just kept going up.

Working families didn’t ask for a bailout. They rolled up their sleeves and sent both parents into the workforce. But that meant higher childcare costs, a second car, and higher taxes. So they tightened their belts more, cutting spending wherever they could. Adjusted for inflation, families today spend less than they did a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases. When that still wasn’t enough to cover rising costs, they took on debt – credit card debt, college debt, debt just to pay for the necessities. As families became increasingly desperate, unscrupulous financial institutions were all too happy to chain […]

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Detailed personal information of 4,904 Americans, whose only transgression was buying a book, has been shared by ‘nearly 30 federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Food and Drug Administration,’ McClatchy reports. The information about these individuals shared includes Social Security numbers, addresses and professions.

Federal officials gathered the information from the customer records of two men who were under criminal investigation for purportedly teaching people how to pass lie detector tests. […]

Although the polygraph-beating techniques are unproven, authorities hoped to find government employees or applicants who might have tried to use them to lie during the tests required for security clearances. Officials with multiple agencies confirmed that they’d checked the names in their databases and planned to retain the list in case any of those named take polygraphs for federal jobs or criminal investigations.

It turned out, however, that many people on the list worked outside the federal government and lived across the country. Among the people whose personal details were collected were nurses, firefighters, police officers and private attorneys, McClatchy learned. Also included: a psychologist, a cancer researcher and employees […]

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