E-Mail
In the United States, one in 10 babies are born too soon, resulting in complications that can affect their locomotor development and influence such simple tasks as balance, walking and standing later in life. A new peer-reviewed study by Children s National Hospital, published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (
PNAS), explores exactly what neural circuitry of the cerebellum is affected due to complications that occur around the time of birth causing these learning deficits, and finds a specific type of neurons Purkinje cells to play a central role.
Up until now, there has been a sparsity of techniques available to measure neuronal activity during locomotor learning tasks that engage the cerebellum. To surmount this challenge, Children s National used a multidisciplinary approach, bringing together a team of neuroscientists with neonatologists who leveraged their joint expertise to devise a novel and unique way
E-Mail
As much as a year s worth of past academic progress made by disadvantaged children in the Global South may have been wiped out by school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have calculated.
The research, by academics from the University of Cambridge and RTI International, attempts to quantify the scale of learning loss that children from poor and marginalised communities in the Global South may have experienced, and the extent to which home support and access to learning resources could ameliorate it. While it is known that the education of these children has suffered disproportionately during the pandemic, it is much harder to measure exactly how much their academic progress has been impeded while schools have been closed.
E-Mail
How could this have happened?
What went wrong?
What do we do to make sure it never happens again?
When a family becomes erroneously or unnecessarily enmeshed in the child welfare system, that burden is largely invisible - a burden borne mostly by the family itself.
In both situations, the fault for the systemic failure is often placed on the caseworker - overburdened, under-resourced, and forced to make quick and critical judgments about the risk of harm or neglect to children.
But, according to new study coauthored by a researcher in the UConn School of Social Work, a major tool used in child welfare decision-making - and the way agencies try to implement it - may be part of the problem.
E-Mail
IMAGE: Amy Marcarelli, associate professor of biology at Michigan Tech, sees diversity, equity, and inclusion through her lens as an ecosystem ecologist. She is one of 13 co-authors on a paper. view more
Credit: Sarah Atkinson/Michigan Tech
Over the summer and fall, paper after paper revealed that mothers are one of the demographics hardest hit by the pandemic. From layoffs and leaving careers to do caretaking, to submission rate decreases and additional service projects, the data were clear, but the follow up less so. Many of the problems are not new and will remain after the pandemic. But a new paper, published this week in
E-Mail
IMAGE: István Tóth-Király: We think that problematic internet use and depressive symptoms are likely to be co-occurring instead of one determining the other. view more
Credit: Concordia University
Most teenagers don t remember life before the internet. They have grown up in a connected world, and being online has become one of their main sources of learning, entertaining and socializing.
As many previous studies have pointed out, and as many parents worry, this reality does not come risk-free. Whereas time on the internet can be informative, instructive and even pleasant, there is already significant literature on the potential harm caused by young children s problematic internet use (PIU).