Dress Up And Protect Your MacBook With The Nebula Keyboard Decal.

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(Image caption: Because babies born prematurely are still developing, they typically have smaller brains than full-term infants. Shown are depictions of the cortical-surface area of the brain at different points in gestation. Illustration by Eric Young)

Breast milk linked to significant early brain growth in preemies

Feeding premature babies mostly breast milk during the first month of life appears to spur more robust brain growth, compared with babies given little or no breast milk.

Studying preterm infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, the researchers found that preemies whose daily diets were at least 50 percent breast milk had more brain tissue and cortical-surface area by their due dates than premature babies who consumed significantly less breast milk.

The researchers, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, presented their findings May 3 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies, in Baltimore.

“The brains of babies born before their due dates usually are not fully developed,” said senior investigator Cynthia Rogers, MD, an assistant professor of child psychiatry who treats patients at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “But breast milk has been shown to be helpful in other areas of development, so we looked to see what effect it might have on the brain. With MRI scans, we found that babies fed more breast milk had larger brain volumes. This is important because several other studies have shown a correlation between brain volume and cognitive development.”

The study included 77 preterm infants. The researchers retrospectively looked to see how much breast milk those babies had received while being cared for in the NICU. Then, the researchers conducted brain scans on those infants at about the time each would have been born had the babies not arrived early. All of the babies were born at least 10 weeks early, with an average gestation of 26 weeks, or about 14 weeks premature. Because they are still developing, preemies typically have smaller brains than full-term infants.

First author Erin Reynolds, a research technician in Rogers’ laboratory, said in gauging the effects of breast milk on the babies’ brains, the researchers didn’t distinguish between milk that came from the babies’ own mothers and breast milk donated by other women. Rather, they focused on the influence of breast milk in general.

“As the amount of breast milk increased, so did a baby’s chances of having a larger cortical surface area,” Reynolds said. “The cortex is the part of the brain associated with cognition, so we assume that more cortex will help improve cognition as the babies grow and develop.”

Preterm birth is a leading cause of neurologic problems in children and has been linked to psychiatric disorders later in childhood. Rogers and her team plan to follow the babies in the study through their first several years of life to see how they grow, focusing on their motor, cognitive and social development. As the babies get older, the researchers believe they will be able to determine the effects of early exposure to breast milk on later developmental outcomes.

“We want to see whether this difference in brain size has an effect on any of those developmental milestones,” Rogers said. “Neonatologists already believe breast milk is the best nutrition for preterm infants. We wanted to see whether it was possible to detect the impact of breast milk on the brain this early in life and whether the benefits appeared quickly or developed over time.”

Rogers said further investigation is needed to determine specifically how breast milk affects the brain and what is present in the milk that seems to promote brain development. She explained that because all of the babies in the study were born early it isn’t clear whether breast milk would provide similar benefits for babies born at full term.

Chicago task force releases landmark report, calls on Police Chief to acknowledge racism in police force

Yesterday, Chicago’s Police Accountability Task Force released its final report. Historically, the report called on the newly appointed Chicago Police Superintendent to acknowledge the force’s “history of racial disparity and discrimination.” Many believe the report, which many believe forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel to publicly acknowledge the Chicago Police Department’s continued issues with racism and to consider dismantling the city’s widely criticized Internal Police Review Board.

The task force was established in response to the public outcry in the wake of the death of Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times while running away from a Chicago Police Officer. The task force “dug deeper into the complaints of so many about the callous and disrespectful way in which they had been treated by some officers” within the CPD, and recommended sweeping changes to what it described as “systemic problems in CPD.”

The source of the current state of mistrust and animosity between the public and the CPD, it found, was the result of 

racism

a mentality in CPD that the ends justify the means 

a failure to make accountability a core value and imperative within CPD

a significant underinvestment in human capital

Below are the recommendations of the task force:

How We Propose to Empower People.

Create a Community Safety Oversight Board, allowing the community to have a powerful platform and role in the police oversight system.

Implement a citywide Reconciliation Process beginning with the Superintendent publicly acknowledging CPD’s history of racial disparity and discrimination, and making a public commitment to cultural change.

Replace CAPS with localized Community Empowerment and Engagement Districts (CEED) for each of the city’s 22 police districts, and support them accordingly. Under CEED, district Commanders and other leadership would work with local stakeholders to develop tailored community policing strategies and partnerships.

Renew commitment to beat-based policing and expand community patrols so that officers learn about and get to know the communities they serve, and community members take an active role in partnering with the police.

Reinvigorate community policing as a core philosophy and approach that informs actions throughout the department.

Evaluate and improve the training officers receive with respect to youth so that they are prepared to engage in ways that are age-appropriate, trauma-informed and based in a restorative justice model.

Require CPD and the police oversight system to be more transparent and release to the public incident-level information on arrests, traffic and investigatory stops, officer weapon use and disciplinary cases.

Host citywide summits jointly sponsored by the Mayor and the President of the Cook County Board to develop and implement comprehensive criminal justice reform.

Encourage the Mayor and President of the Cook County Board to work together to develop and implement programs that address socioeconomic justice and equality, housing segregation, systemic racism, poverty, education, health and safety.

Adoption of a citywide protocol allowing arrestees to make phone calls to an attorney and/or family member(s) within one hour of arrest.

Implementation of citywide “Know Your Rights” training for youth.

How We Propose to Address the Inadequate Emphasis on Accountability

Create a dedicated Inspector General for Public Safety, which would independently audit and monitor CPD and the police oversight system, including for patterns of racial bias.

Replace the Independent Police Review Authority with a new and fully transparent and accountable Civilian Police Investigative Agency, which will enhance structural protections, powers and resources for investigating serious cases of police misconduct, even in the absence of sworn complaints. The new CPIA should ensure an accessible, professional and supportive complaint process.

Implement a data-driven, best-in-class Early Intervention System for CPD to identify officers with problems before they become problems for the community.

Fundamentally change provisions in the collective bargaining agreements that are impediments to accountability, such as allowing for anonymous complaints, eliminating the ability to change statements after reviewing video and removing the requirement to destroy complaint records.

Fully implement the first-in-the-nation written video release policy for officer-involved shootings.

Expand CPD’s body cam pilot program.

Require that all disciplinary information be provided online so that citizens can track complaints and discipline histories.

How We Propose to Address Other Systemic and Longstanding Problems

Establish for the first time in Chicago a Deputy Chief of Diversity and Inclusion in CPD.

Implement policies to dismantle the institutionalization of the police “code of silence,” including substantial changes to the collective bargaining agreements between the police and the City, ending command channel review, reforming the role of CPD supervisors and pattern and practice analysis.

Establish a smart 911 system for OEMC, allowing residents to pre-enter information on mental health or other issues that would be instantly available to OEMC operators.

Create a multi-layer co-responder system where mental health providers work with OEMC and CPD to link individuals to treatment.

Expand significantly the Crisis Intervention System for CPD and other first responders.

Create a “Mental Health Critical Response Unit” within CPD that is responsible for mental health crisis response functions, training, support, community outreach and engagement, cross-agency coordination and data collection.

Create a hotline for CPD members, whether civilian or sworn, to lodge complaints, and develop a third-party system for the processing and follow-up of all comments and complaints reported to the hotline.

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This diagram shows our cosmic address at a glance. We see our planetary system around the Sun, our stellar neighborhood in our galaxy, our galaxy in the local group of galaxies, and our group in the entire universe.

Learn much more in the Cullman Hall of the Universe. 

We just got our first complete look at an exploding white dwarf star

For the first time ever, scientists have captured the full process of a nova explosion — the moments before, during and after the blast.

Nova explosions are different from supernovas because the star isn’t completely destroyed. Novas happen in two-star systems, when a white dwarf star has been sucking in mostly hydrogen gas from a close neighboring star. The extra hydrogen explodes, but the explosion only happens on the star’s surface. Apparently, white dwarfs have something in common with bears.

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“You should socialize.” “Aren’t you lonely?” “So, you’re socially awkward?" These are a few of the things introverts hear quite often. Thankfully we have Tumblr, which has time and again nailed the emotions, perks and struggles of having an introverted personality. Like this perfect GIF for dealing with small talk.

Curving and bending a ball using the magnus effect is common in every sport. The effect can be reversed though - kick the ball the same way, and it will bend in the opposite direction!  

Thanks to Nicole from @fuckyeahfluiddynamics for explaining the reverse magnus effect in this video! 

How Churchill engineered the holocaust of 3 million Indians

As the resistance swelled, Churchill announced: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” This hatred killed. To give just one, major, example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He raged that it was their own fault for “breeding like rabbits”. At other times, he said the plague was “merrily” culling the population.  Skeletal, half-dead people were streaming into the cities and dying on the streets, but Churchill – to the astonishment of his staff – had only jeers for them. “If food is so scarce, why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”

Source: The Independent, Time, IBT

Watch: Poet paints a vivid picture of growing up as a Chinese American — and it hits deep.