Across red-state America, especially in the Deep South, the latest statistics show that the cycle of poverty, in its many manifestations, is unchanged and holding firm. Why is this?

It’s easy to say this is how Republicans like to run states-cutting budgets, not raising the minimum wage, opposing labor unions. They let the poor and working class stew in their hardscrabble juices. Meanwhile, they distract voters by accusing liberals of waging war on the few sources of personal power in Southerners’ difficult lives: their religious beliefs and owning guns. But go back several decades when segregationist Democrats ruled; for the most part, they weren’t very different from today’s Republicans.

So what is it that perpetuates decades of poverty in the Deep South? What follows are eight bundles of statistics tracking this latest cycle of poverty. Could it be that people who historically have been treated badly, who have little money in their pockets but look to the sky and pray, expect less from others-including the public and private sector? Does that explain why red-staters cling to God, gun ownership and a ‘leave-me-alone” ferocity? They expect politicians to defend their values and their pride and little more? […]

No Comments

Changes to the microbial composition of the gut can drastically alter the development of certain bowel tumors, according to a study published today (March 3) in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. Researchers from New York City’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai worked with a mouse model that develops tumors called serrated polyps in the cecum, the part of the large intestine proximal to the colon. The polyps arise in part because the mice are genetically engineered, via a pair of transgenes, to overexpress the growth factor HB-EGF. But genetics, the researchers found, are not the whole story. Their work revealed that bacteria are also required for tumor development-the ceca of transgenic mice raised on an antibiotic cocktail did not form polyps.

‘We were able to show that tumor formation was dependent on the microbiota present in that particular area of the intestine,” said Sergio Lira, who led the study. ‘In the presence of antibiotics, or of a slightly different cecum microbiota, the tumors did not develop.”

‘This study adds to our knowledge of links between the gut microbiome and colon cancer, where causation is now established in several animal models and correlations are intriguing in humans (although causation in humans […]

No Comments

SALEM, OREGON — Very low levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster likely will reach ocean waters along the U.S. West Coast next month, scientists are reporting.

Current models predict that the radiation will be at extremely low levels that won’t harm humans or the environment, said Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who presented research on the issue last week.

But Buesseler and other scientists are calling for more monitoring. No federal agency currently samples Pacific Coast seawater for radiation, he said.

“I’m not trying to be alarmist,” Buesseler said. “We can make predictions, we can do models. But unless you have results, how will we know it’s safe?”

The news comes three years after the devastating Japan tsunami and resulting nuclear accident.

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Japan, triggering a tsunami with waves as high as 133 feet. More than 15,000 people died and about 6,000 were injured.

The earthquake and tsunami knocked out power to cooling pumps at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant complex, causing meltdowns at three reactors.

Last July, Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the plant, acknowledged for the first time that the reactor was leaking […]

No Comments

New research has found that women are on average no more likely to have multiple sexual partners in a single month after they are provided no-cost access to birth control methods than they were before. And while women reported a slight uptick in their reported monthly sexual encounters a year after getting free contraceptives, the new study says the resulting frequency of sexual activity fell within expected boundaries for women of childbearing age.

In a prospective cohort study called the Contraceptive Choice Project, 9,256 women and teenage girls in and around St. Louis were provided reversible birth control methods free of charge for a year. The subjects, ages 14 to 45, were asked to complete a survey upon recruitment, before they were prescribed and dispensed the birth control method of their choice, and at six and 12 months after their first visit.

The survey primarily aimed to measure two factors most closely tied to unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases: having multiple sexual partners and frequency of sex. Among the 7,751 participants who completed the surveys, researchers from Washington University in fact observed a statistically significant decrease in the number of sexual partners participants reported having had in the 30 days preceding. […]

No Comments

Louisiana officials are pushing more of the state’s high school students toward vocational education. This is a good thing – if only because state officials are standing around idle as Louisiana’s higher-education system goes to ruin. What’s the point of preparing our children for college if we’re not going to preserve our colleges for our children? So, yay, vo-tech!

I’ll admit. I’m typically fearful of an emphasis on vocational education, not because I doubt that such education is valuable, but because it often feels like proponents of such tracks are lapsing into stereotypes about which children are fit for college and which aren’t. It might yet be true, that Louisiana doesn’t think highly enough of its students to prepare them all for college. But there’s no gainsaying the fact that Louisiana doesn’t think highly enough of its colleges. If higher education were held in high esteem, our colleges wouldn’t be suffering so.

At the end of last month the president of the University of New Orleans announced that the university would be laying off 28 staffers, a workforce reduction predicted to address $2 million of a reported $6 million budget deficit. Faculty members and instructors were spared in this round of cuts, […]

No Comments