Thursday, October 28, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
"Textracted " Driving
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Antwone Fisher
So you have just watched the film Antwone Fisher. What was believable about the psychological aspect of the film and what was "made for Hollywood"? 15 lines.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Babies and Babble
Read this article and then add a 15 line discussion as to the importance of baby's babble as it relates to development.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Human development
Read and comment on the following article:
How the First Nine Months Shape the Rest of Your Life
By Annie Murphy Paul Wednesday, Sep. 22, 2010
What makes us the way we are? Why are some people predisposed to be anxious, overweight or asthmatic? How is it that some of us are prone to heart attacks, diabetes or high blood pressure?
There's a list of conventional answers to these questions. We are the way we are because it's in our genes. We turn out the way we do because of our childhood experiences. Or our health and well-being stem from the lifestyle choices we make as adults.
But there's another powerful source of influence you may not have considered: your life as a fetus. The nutrition you received in the womb; the pollutants, drugs and infections you were exposed to during gestation; your mother's health and state of mind while she was pregnant with you — all these factors shaped you as a baby and continue to affect you to this day.
This is the provocative contention of a field known as fetal origins, whose pioneers assert that the nine months of gestation constitute the most consequential period of our lives, permanently influencing the wiring of the brain and the functioning of organs such as the heart, liver and pancreas. In the literature on the subject, which has exploded over the past 10 years, you can find references to the fetal origins of cancer, cardiovascular disease, allergies, asthma, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, mental illness. At the farthest edge of fetal-origins research, scientists are exploring the possibility that intrauterine conditions influence not only our physical health but also our intelligence, temperament, even our sanity.
As a journalist who covers science, I was intrigued when I first heard about fetal origins. But two years ago, when I began to delve more deeply into the field, I had a more personal motivation: I was newly pregnant. If it was true that my actions over the next nine months would affect my offspring for the rest of his life, I needed to know more.
Of course, no woman who is pregnant today can escape hearing the message that what she does affects her fetus. She hears it at doctor's appointments, sees it in the pregnancy guidebooks: Do eat this, don't drink that, be vigilant but never stressed. Expectant mothers could be forgiven for feeling that pregnancy is just a nine-month slog, full of guilt and devoid of pleasure, and this research threatened to add to the burden.
But the scientists I met weren't full of dire warnings but of the excitement of discovery — and the hope that their discoveries would make a positive difference. Research on fetal origins is prompting a revolutionary shift in thinking about where human qualities come from and when they begin to develop. It's turning pregnancy into a scientific frontier: the National Institutes of Health embarked last year on a multidecade study that will examine its subjects before they're born. And it makes the womb a promising target for prevention, raising hopes of conquering public-health scourges like obesity and heart disease through interventions before birth.
How the First Nine Months Shape the Rest of Your Life
By Annie Murphy Paul Wednesday, Sep. 22, 2010
What makes us the way we are? Why are some people predisposed to be anxious, overweight or asthmatic? How is it that some of us are prone to heart attacks, diabetes or high blood pressure?
There's a list of conventional answers to these questions. We are the way we are because it's in our genes. We turn out the way we do because of our childhood experiences. Or our health and well-being stem from the lifestyle choices we make as adults.
But there's another powerful source of influence you may not have considered: your life as a fetus. The nutrition you received in the womb; the pollutants, drugs and infections you were exposed to during gestation; your mother's health and state of mind while she was pregnant with you — all these factors shaped you as a baby and continue to affect you to this day.
This is the provocative contention of a field known as fetal origins, whose pioneers assert that the nine months of gestation constitute the most consequential period of our lives, permanently influencing the wiring of the brain and the functioning of organs such as the heart, liver and pancreas. In the literature on the subject, which has exploded over the past 10 years, you can find references to the fetal origins of cancer, cardiovascular disease, allergies, asthma, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, mental illness. At the farthest edge of fetal-origins research, scientists are exploring the possibility that intrauterine conditions influence not only our physical health but also our intelligence, temperament, even our sanity.
As a journalist who covers science, I was intrigued when I first heard about fetal origins. But two years ago, when I began to delve more deeply into the field, I had a more personal motivation: I was newly pregnant. If it was true that my actions over the next nine months would affect my offspring for the rest of his life, I needed to know more.
Of course, no woman who is pregnant today can escape hearing the message that what she does affects her fetus. She hears it at doctor's appointments, sees it in the pregnancy guidebooks: Do eat this, don't drink that, be vigilant but never stressed. Expectant mothers could be forgiven for feeling that pregnancy is just a nine-month slog, full of guilt and devoid of pleasure, and this research threatened to add to the burden.
But the scientists I met weren't full of dire warnings but of the excitement of discovery — and the hope that their discoveries would make a positive difference. Research on fetal origins is prompting a revolutionary shift in thinking about where human qualities come from and when they begin to develop. It's turning pregnancy into a scientific frontier: the National Institutes of Health embarked last year on a multidecade study that will examine its subjects before they're born. And it makes the womb a promising target for prevention, raising hopes of conquering public-health scourges like obesity and heart disease through interventions before birth.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Research report
Read the following article then use Google to find information about the study they reference. See if there are any other correlations you can draw or infer that were not brought up in the study.
African-American and Latino Students Overrepresented in School Suspensions
By nsenga.burton
Created 09/29/2010 - 08:52
It looks like zero tolerance only applies to some of us.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has released findings of a study of out-of-school suspension rates for 18 of the nation's largest school systems. Black and Latino students were overrepresented in the out-of-school suspensions doled out to students. Since the 1970s, out-of-school suspension rates have escalated due to zero tolerance policies implemented by school systems. Since the 1970s, K-12 suspension rates have at least doubled for all non-whites. The study focused on middle-schools and found that the racial gap in suspension has grown considerably since 1973, especially for African-American students. The Black/White gap has grown from 3 percentage points in the ’70s to over 10 percentage points in the 2000s. Blacks are now over three times more likely than Whites to be suspended. While the average suspension rate was 11.2% in 2006 in the middle schools surveyed, disaggregating the data by race and gender reveals great disparities in the use of out-of-school suspension. For example, for middle school Blacks, 28.3% of males and 18% of females were suspended. In Palm Beach County and Milwaukee, the district-wide middle school suspension rate for Black males exceeded 50%. The suspension rate for Black females exceeded 50% in Milwaukee and was over 33% in Palm Beach County, Indianapolis, and Des Moines. We could go on but we'll stop. We're sure that the racial make-up of the schools has something to do with the numbers and we'd be interested in knowing if they were able to disaggregate the numbers based on offense committed, but still. This sounds like prison prep to us. Why do these numbers correlate with disparities in prison sentencing for blacks and Latinos? To add insult to injury, research shows that removing people from the classroom does not result in better productivity and learning outcomes for students in the classroom. Guess who is getting suspended more often? Black females. Shouldn't there be a zero tolerance policy against targeting black and brown middle-school children for out-of-school suspension? We're just saying.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Kids and Medication
Read this news story about a young child and prescription psychiatric medication. What are your reactions to the story? Based on the short discussion yesterday about trauma and changes in the brain, what inferences can be made about this type of scenario?
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