Fourth grade students in Washington, Ohio being taught how to respond to gun violence in their school.
Credit: AP Photo/Craig Ruttle.
As the nation marks the one-year anniversary of the Parkland mass shooting, hundreds of psychologists and other experts in child development have signed an open letter calling for major policy action on gun violence. The group, which includes child psychologist and bestselling author Alison Gopnik, said it was sounding the alarm about the negative effects that the “constant threat of violence is having on the children of our nation.” They cited connections between gun violence exposure and long-term stress and issues like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Celeste Kidd, one of the University of California-Berkeley psychology professors who wrote the letter, notes that the wider impact of gun violence on children is lesser known outside the psychology community.
“I hope this is the first step in a larger discussion about ways in which we might be able to help advocate for better protections for our kids,” Kidd says.
A recent Washington Post report estimated that more than 221,000 […]
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
The world is literally a greener place than it was 20 years ago, and the data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage: China and India.
This surprising new study shows that the two emerging countries with the world’s biggest populations are leading the improvement in greening on land. The effect stems mainly from ambitious tree planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries. In 2017 alone, India broke its own world record for the most trees planted after volunteers gathered to plant 66 million saplings in just 12 hours.
The greening phenomenon was first detected by researchers using satellite data in the mid-1990s, but they did not know whether human activity was one of its chief, direct causes.
This new insight was made possible by a nearly 20-year-long data record from a NASA instrument orbiting the Earth on two satellites. It’s called the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, and its high-resolution data provides very accurate information, helping researchers work out details of what’s happening […]
ATLANTA, GEORGIA — The quick and easy noshes you love are chipping away at your mortality one nibble at a time, according to new research from France: We face a 14 percent higher risk of early death with each 10 percent increase in the amount of ultraprocessed foods we eat.
“Ultraprocessed foods are manufactured industrially from multiple ingredients that usually include additives used for technological and/or cosmetic purposes,” wrote the authors of the study, published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. “Ultraprocessed foods are mostly consumed in the form of snacks, desserts, or ready-to-eat or -heat meals,” and their consumption “has largely increased during the past several decades.”
This trend may drive an increase of early deaths due to chronic illnesses, including cancer and cardiovascular disease, they say.
Ultraprocessed foods are gaining ground in our diets
In the United States, 61 percent of an adult’s total diet comes from ultraprocessed foods, in Canada, it is 62 percent, and in the UK, that proportion is 63 percent, a recent study found. Yet research also indicates that eating ultraprocessed foods can lead to obesity, […]
