News (1,607 posts)

Paul Kershaw, a public policy professor at UBC and founder of think tank Generation Squeeze, argues that politicians have failed to address the elephant in the room: the wealth older homeowners have generated off the housing crisis. Above: Vancouver has been labelled one of the most “impossibly unaffordable” cities in the world for housing

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) has enrolled tens of thousands of participants in clinical trials of hormones and other medications and tracked the health of many thousands more over more than 3 decades. Its findings have had a major influence on health care. WHI leaders announced yesterday that contracts supporting its regional centers are being terminated in September and that the study’s clinical coordinating center, based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, “will continue operations until January 2026, after which time its funding remains uncertain.”

When Dr. Calhoun joined Chico State’s School of Social Work in 2020, she brought more than a decade of experience and a lofty academic record. After just a few years, her impact on our campus is being recognized with a 2025 Professional Achievement Honor—an acknowledgment of her outstanding contributions as a teacher, scholar, and student advocate.

In the face of accelerating attacks on academic freedom, shared governance, and higher education as a public good, the defense of knowledge, wisdom, and justice is of vital importance. We join with faculty colleagues throughout higher education in a call for unity to preserve the central role higher education plays in civic society. Together we stand; divided we fall.

State regulations for the age of starting school vary across Australia, and between public, Catholic and independent schools. Typically, however, children born in the first part of the year can be sent to school in either the year they turn five or the year they turn six. This can lead to big age caps in a school year level.

‘Organisations across the country deserve better from politicians, as do the vulnerable people whose needs they were set up to meet.’

Research projects that are deemed to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion or that aim to combat mis- and disinformation will no longer receive funding from the National Science Foundation.

American universities spent $60 billion in federal money on research and development in fiscal year 2023 alone. That’s more than 30 times as much as what they spent in the early 1950s, adjusted for inflation, when the research university system was just beginning to grow into the vast industry it is today. There is no other system like it in the world, in part because of the sprawling, decentralized nature of American higher education.

But it is vital to be cognizant of what kinds of harm—by whom, against whom, in which moments, and to what end—are treated as “news.” The news about public safety is a social and political creation that contains judgment calls at every turn, one that creates winners and losers and that could look different if we wanted it to.

Anne LaFrinier-Ritchie… is a social worker helping victims of human trafficking and raising awareness of the issue in western Minnesota. She says some of the highest rates of sexual exploitation are in rural areas.

ERIC stands for Education Resources Information Center and it is a curated online public library of 2.1 million educational documents that is funded and managed by the U.S. Education Department. The collection dates back to the 1960s and used to be circulated to libraries through microfiche. Today it’s an open access website where anyone can search, read online or download material. Neither a library card nor login credentials are needed. It is used by an estimated 14 million people a year. (I am one of them.) If you’re familiar with MedLine or PubMed for health care studies, this is the equivalent for the field of education.

Living Like a Candidate: Connecticut Latina Campaign School takes place Saturday, April 26 at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Ephedra—known as oman in some areas of the country and bandak in others—has grown wild and abundantly across Afghanistan’s mountainous central highlands for centuries. Today, the plant is behind the dramatic growth in the methamphetamine industry in Afghanistan. Above: A pharmacist in Jalālābād, in eastern Afghanistan, holds the dried branches of the ephedra plant.

Homes on the street behind Cardinal Health’s east El Paso warehouse overlook the facility’s loading dock. A Grist data analysis found that residents in parts of the neighborhood are likely being exposed to dangerously high levels of ethylene oxide.

Yvette Shelton-Edmonds (above) is one of the outreach social workers in the library’s program, which she said has been revolutionizing how communities access support since 2017.

The American homestead has never been apolitical. The original Homestead Act was built on colonization, offering stolen Indigenous land to white settlers as a reward for their allegiance. The frontier was not a blank canvas. It was, and still very much remains, a site of erasure, a site of performance, and a site of power.

One widely reported study, published in 2022 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that the inability to hold this position for at least 10 seconds was associated with a two-fold increased risk of death in people aged 50 and over. After assessing 1,702 individuals aged 51-75, the study’s authors found that those who failed the test had a significantly higher mortality rate over the 7-year follow-up period.

The CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) statement was designed to improve the quality of reporting and provides a minimum set of items to be included in a report of a randomized trial. CONSORT was first published in 1996, then updated in 2001 and 2010. Herein, we present the updated CONSORT 2025 statement, which aims to account for recent methodological advancements and feedback from end users.

Social worker Latvia Williams at her St. Louis County offices

The earthquakes – which hit central Myanmar on 28 March – killed at least 3,700 people, injured 4,800 more and left 129 still missing. However, humanitarians warn the true toll is likely much higher due to underreporting and continued challenges in data collection and verification. More than 140 aftershocks – some as high as magnitude 5.9 – have rocked the region since the initial tremors, exacerbating the psychological toll, particularly on children and displaced families, according to a bulletin issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Friday.

What’s needed now is not just understanding and outrage, but organized defiance. Education must be reclaimed as a vehicle of liberation, capable of producing critical, informed, and courageous citizens. This is not the time for silence or spectatorship. It is a time to act in defense of freedom, justice, equality, and the fragile dream of a democracy not yet fully realized.

Associate Professor of the Practice Rachel Forbes, who is director of the university’s Western Colorado Master of Social Work (MSW) program, believes that social workers have always been on the front lines of environmental issues, but there is much more work to be done.

Haiti does not make firearms nor ammunition. How are they getting into the country? They come in primarily from the United States, some directly on small ships that leave overwhelmingly from Florida. There i an increased number from the Dominican Republic, still originating in the US, that come over the border, which is very porous.Above: A protest is viewed from a police vehicle in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Residents of the mostly Black communities sandwiched between chemical plants along the lower Mississippi River have long said they get most of the pollution but few of the jobs produced by the region’s vast petrochemical industry. A new study led by Tulane University backs up that view, revealing stark racial disparities across the U.S.’s petrochemical workforce.

Different services and community focal points have evolved beside units for older people at St Brendan’s Village, in Mulranny, Co Mayo

There’s a sensation that you experience — near a plane taking off or a speaker bank at a concert — from a sound so total that you feel it in your very being. When this happens, not only do your brain and ears perceive it, but your cells may also.

The California DMV routinely allows dangerous drivers with horrifying histories to continue to operate on our roadways. Too often they go on to kill. Many keep driving even after they kill. Some go on to kill again.

A recent report by Willoughby, Carroll, Dover and Hakala from The Wheatley Institute explored the use of AI for romance and sex in 2969 young adults (ages 18-30) and older adults (over 30). Their survey found some surprising results, and significant connections to feelings of depression and loneliness.

HBO’s new hit series that follows the staff of a hospital emergency room over one 15-hour shift has made waves for being one of TV’s most accurate medical dramas.

Music can evoke intense pleasure, sometimes experienced physically as pleasant “chills.” While the effect of music on pleasure is clear, the brain mechanisms behind musical enjoyment are not yet fully understood. The brain’s opioid system is known to be involved in pleasurable experiences related to survival-critical behaviors, such as eating and sex. This new study from the Turku PET Centre in Finland demonstrates for the first time that listening to favorite music also activates the brain’s opioid receptors.

The foundations of democracy are being eroded by right-wing populists and the far right, with factors such as technology-driven disinformation and escalating social inequalities contributing to widespread alienation and discontent. Decades of neoliberal policies have dismantled societal structures, exacerbating these challenges.

The Mental Welfare Commission today published ten new reports following visits to mental health and community services in Scotland. Every year the Commission visits around 150 wards and units for people with mental ill health, learning disability, dementia or related conditions in Scotland.

The majority of the plaintiffs allege that they were abused in the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s in county-run juvenile detention facilities or MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter for foster children, according to a statement released by Los Angeles County.

Taken together, these findings suggest that expressing concern for anti-Christian bias can be interpreted as signaling allegiance to white people – without the social cost of being accused of racism. Instead, allegations of anti-Christian bias can be presented in a positive way as issues of “religious freedom,” a core American value. Whether intentionally or not, it seems that rallying around anti-Christian bias can serve as a “dog whistle” signaling support for people concerned about changes in America’s racial makeup, as well. Above: Marchers protest school integration in Little Rock, Ark., in 1959.

In a new study, researchers from the Brown University School of Public Health developed and tested an intervention called Counter-Attitudinal Advocacy (CAA). CAA involves advocating for a position that contradicts a personally held attitude or behavior. In this context, CAA targets positive perceptions of heavy drinking and the belief that alcohol is an essential part of college life.

In Canada, there is a significant public backlash against companies that hire temporary foreign workers (TFWs), partly because the mistreatment of TFWs across the country is well documented, and partly because of persistent anti-immigrant sentiment…. There have been many reports of workers who are forced to perform additional tasks without compensation or who do not receive appropriate holiday or overtime pay. These workers also frequently report unsafe working or living conditions, with threats of termination or deportation.

The British Journal of Social Work (BJSW) has appointed two new co-editors: Professor Carlene Firmin and Dr Sui Ting Kong, both of Durham University (UK), after a global search and rigorous selection process.

or startups, the highest priority is rapid iteration, technology-driven disruption, and financial returns for investors. Their success often hinges on solving a narrowly defined problem with a single product, or within a single organization. Governments, by contrast, must tackle complex, interconnected issues like poverty, public health, and national security. Each challenge calls for collaboration across multiple sectors, and careful long-term planning. The idea of securing short-term gains in any of these areas doesn’t even make sense.

Insomnia and hazardous drinking can cause upheaval in one’s life: Both are associated with missed work and lower productivity on the job. Chronic insomnia can increase the risk for cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s and other chronic illnesses. A defining characteristic of alcohol use disorder (AUD) is continuing to drink even when encountering interpersonal problems, getting sick or hurt, or driving while intoxicated.

Jessica Slice explores the challenges—and disastrous consequences—of parenting in an ableist system

In 2024, a 14-year-old boy’s suicide in Florida has spotlighted AI’s dangerous potential. His mother sued Character.AI, alleging its chatbot—disguised as Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targaryen—normalized suicidal thoughts, engaged in hypersexualized exchanges, and mimicked a licensed therapist. The AI reportedly responded to the teen’s final message (“I’ll come home to you”) with affectionate encouragement, blurring lines between virtual and real-world harm.

This year, the legislature is considering a bill that would establish a social work and law enforcement institute at Southern Connecticut State University, where Logan now teaches. The bill sets aside $2.2 million in both 2026 and 2027 to support the program.

People Before Profit Cllr Shaun Harkin has said Health Minister Mike Nesbitt should increase financial support for social work students.

Between 50 and 60 people working in youth social services have so far been scrapped from the official register because their papers were not in order and they may have been involved in fraud and crime, RTL has reported. The SKJ, which oversees the registration of youth care professionals, suspects that some may have forced vulnerable youngsters into crime, and says the current figure could be the tip of the iceberg. The irregularities were uncovered during spot checks of 274 certificates, with one in five people whose EVC certificate was examined removed from the register…. Most of the SKJ’s 62,000 registered social workers have a degree rather than a certificate.

Researchers have developed a new, neuroplasticity-promoting drug closely related to LSD that harnesses the psychedelic’s therapeutic power with reduced hallucinogenic potential.

OpenAI and many other developers refuse to provide precise details about the training data for their models. Research efforts to reverse engineer some of these datasets have also been stymied by copyright takedowns. When errors are found, there is no easy fix. Simple keyword filtering could deal with specific terms such as vegetative electron microscopy. However, it would also eliminate legitimate references (such as this article). More fundamentally, the case raises an unsettling question. How many other nonsensical terms exist in AI systems, waiting to be discovered?

Recently, the National Institutes of Health abruptly terminated my funding. Their explanation:
“Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness. Worse, so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics, which harms the health of Americans.”

Letters like this are landing in the inboxes of researchers nationwide. Here’s why this rhetoric is not just misguided, but factually wrong

The never ending annual military grift is closing in on $1,000,000,000,000