News (1,500 posts)

Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” While the quote’s original context is complicated, its message is timeless.

President Joe Biden on Friday appointed Janie Hipp (Chickasaw) to be a member of the Community Development Advisory Board within the U.S. Department of Treasury…. Hipp holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in social work from the University of Oklahoma, a J.D. from Oklahoma City University’s School of Law and a LLM in agricultural law from the University of Arkansas School of Law.

In the last-half century, productivity has outpaced the growth of real compensation for the median worker by more than 40 percent. This means that if workers’ pay had kept pace with productivity, as it did in the three decades after World War II, it would be roughly 40 percent higher than it is today.

Both organizations have signed a collaboration agreement to make it easier for these patients to access health services and to train professionals at the HM Niños Hospital so they can provide them with adapted and inclusive care.

Circadian rhythms often seem ‘out of time’ in bipolar disorder. Scientists are exploring what goes wrong and how to help

One of the key reasons for Jensen’s appointment is her ability to represent the rural communities of Northern California, which have historically been underrepresented on the Commission. Jensen currently serves as the board president for the Area One Agency on Aging, an entity that the Commission oversees. Her understanding of the unique challenges faced by older adults in rural areas, such as limited access to services and transportation barriers, will be invaluable in her new role.

Tess Abrahamson-Richards is a citizen of the Spokane Tribe and lives in Seattle. A mother of two, Abrahamson-Richards is pursuing a doctorate in social welfare at the University of Washington, where her research focuses on Indigenous reproductive justice, holistic family well-being, and access to parental leave.

Following high-profile cuts that rpk advised on at West Virginia University, the firm has emerged as a particularly prominent player in the field. It has been hired by dozens of colleges, and its name has come to stir anxiety in the hearts of faculty members. Professors critical of this process see consultants as convenient shields for administrators, who use these firms to bolster their arguments for making unpopular cuts. Others view them as hatchet men, selling a flawed process that twists data to fit preconceived suggestions on which programs — typically in the humanities and, in particular, languages — need to be chopped.

The proposal to restructure the USDA builds on a previous Trump-era proposal to consolidate federal safety net programs. This included moving SNAP and WIC–which it rebranded as welfare programs, a term often used pejoratively–from the USDA to HSS. It’s a move that experts pointed out would likely make these programs easier to cut, including by designating them as welfare benefits, often deemed unnecessary by conservatives.

Principle No. 4: Stories Are Our ‘Most Natural Form of Thought’

Professor Ray Jones reflects on Labour’s 13-year reign and the impact of its focus on performance and targets on outcomes for children and on the morale of the sector

The Joint Universities Social Work Association (JUSWA) issued the statement in response to a BBC investigation that found that 37% of courses in England did not deliver specific training for students on coercive and controlling behaviour, in the context of domestic abuse…. The BBC’s findings were described as “baffling” by sector watchdog the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, who called for such training to be made mandatory on pre-qualifying courses.

What is it like to be you? Dive into the philosophical puzzle of consciousness and see yourself and the world in new ways

Social worker Jackie Chen appears at a court in Wan Chai to stand trial on rioting charges.

UConn School of Social Work Professor Dr. S. Megan Berthold

For those who hear voices, the ‘broken brain’ explanation is harmful. Psychiatry must embrace new meaning-making frameworks.

A £5.77 million cross-governmental funded project has shown that expanding access to Green Social Prescribing can promote wellbeing and improve mental health.

In recent years, a number of people have been barred from entering Hong Kong, including journalists who covered the 2019 protests and unrest. In June 2023, Japanese freelance journalist Yoshiaki Ogawa was denied entry after arriving in the city, while earlier this year, Aleksandra Bielakowska, a representative of international NGO Reporters Without Borders, was deported to Taiwan after being barred from entering the city.

Cutting-edge research in the field of neuroarchitecture is revealing the public health implications of building design Above: Nest by Max Hu and August Miller… reimagines the interior of the San Francisco public library.

It is illegal for taxi, ride-share and public transport services to reject a passenger because they have a guide dog or guide puppy. But Simons says it is so routine she needs to add a buffer of at least half an hour on to every taxi trip.

I only remember waking up on a gurney in an emergency room that looked like every other one I’d ever found myself in. There had been a lot of them.

The HEAL Trailblazer Award recognizes HEAL-funded researchers in the early or middle stages of their careers who are expanding research into addressing the pain and opioid crises in new directions. The 2024 awardees… demonstrate the ability to develop or apply novel techniques, models, or methodologies to HEAL research.

From cladding firms to government, inquiry report on 2017 London fire outlines roles of those involved in ill-fated refit

Jane Seskin is a psychotherapist and author. For 20 years she provided individual and group counseling to survivors of violent crimes at the Crime Victims Treatment Center. Her most recent book (#13) is the poetry collection, Older Wiser Shorter: The Truth and Humor of Life After 65. She’s been published in more than 40 publications and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

The French rescue workers packed up their gear with well-practised efficiency. The medical tents. The stretchers. The security cordons. Shortly after the last bodies had been driven away from the quayside in Boulogne, the remaining ambulances and red emergency vehicles drove off too, leaving only a handful of officials standing in the fading light beside a few frayed fishing nets near the harbour wall.

Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Ms Kenny said: “People are coming forward for the first time, disclosing their abuse, many of whom are “overwhelmed with emotion and a sense of grief and loss for their childhood”. The inquiry found that there were almost 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse at 308 schools and recommended that a commission of investigation be established.

Despite what we’ve been led to believe, the timing of evening screen use, rather than the activity itself, negatively impacts youth sleep, a University of Otago study has found.
Current sleep guidelines recommend no screen use in the hour or two before bed. However, the researchers found screen time in the two hours before bed had little impact on youth sleep, it was screen time once in bed that caused problems.

Just like humans, artificial intelligence (AI) is capable of saying it isn’t racist, but then acting as if it were. Large language models (LLMs) such as GPT4 output racist stereotypes about speakers of African American English (AAE), even when they have been trained not to connect overtly negative stereotypes with Black people, new research has found. According to the study—published today in Nature—LLMs also associate speakers of AAE with less prestigious jobs, and in imagined courtroom scenarios are more likely to convict these speakers of crimes or sentence them to death.

That could put a new spotlight on the presidential candidates’ positions on marijuana. Vice President Kamala Harris has backed decriminalizing the drug and said it’s “absurd” to have it in the DEA’s Schedule I category alongside heroin and LSD. The Democratic nominee’s position has shifted over the years; she once oversaw the enforcement of cannabis laws and opposed legalized recreational use for adults in California while running for attorney general in 2010.

A new study suggests that ketamine prescribers aren’t paying enough attention to this risk and should do more to make sure that patients receiving ketamine aren’t pregnant and are aware of the need to use contraception while undergoing a course of treatment over multiple months.

The wealthy have all sorts of tools at their disposal to protect and grow their wealth at the expense of the rest of us, including the tax system. A few months ago, Canada’s Liberal government announced a modest change that would try to rebalance the scales a bit, raising the country’s capital gains inclusion rate from 50 percent to 67 percent. Predictably, the rich went nuts and warned it would tear the country apart.

In her new book, Disabled Ecologies, Sunaura Taylor finds both overlap and tension between disability studies and environmental justice. She grew up with the understanding that her own disability came from contaminated groundwater on the south side of Tucson, where her family had moved when her mother was pregnant with her. Military contractors—particularly Hughes Aircraft, which later merged with Raytheon, now called RTX—had dumped toxic waste into unlined lagoons; the area was eventually designated as a Superfund site. Above: Tucson International Airport Area Superfund Site, 1985

An organ donation sign is displayed at a blood donation center in London, England. One high-profile case study of a public health nudge gone awry is an “opt-out” policy that makes organ donor enrollment the default choice, which the U.K. adopted for adults in 2020. Families must consent for those under 18.

There are a number of reasons why this summer’s COVID wave has been surprisingly strong. One is the emergence of successive hyperinfectious coronavirus subvariants. In the spring, some of the subvariants collectively nicknamed FLiRT, including KP.2, began a midyear wave. That was followed by ever-more-contagious successor subvariants — KP.3 (nicknamed FLuQE, pronounced “fluke”) — and the latest, KP.3.1.1 (nicknamed deFLuQE).

Why is neither party happy with higher education?

There are already bad actors in science, including “paper mills” churning out fake papers. This problem will only get worse when a scientific paper can be produced with US$15 and a vague initial prompt. The need to check for errors in a mountain of automatically generated research could rapidly overwhelm the capacity of actual scientists. The peer review system is arguably already broken, and dumping more research of questionable quality into the system won’t fix it. Science is fundamentally based on trust. Scientists emphasise the integrity of the scientific process so we can be confident our understanding of the world (and now, the world’s machines) is valid and improving. A scientific ecosystem where AI systems are key players raises fundamental questions about the meaning and value of this process, and what level of trust we should have in AI scientists. Is this the kind of scientific ecosystem we want?

The small amount of pocket money a social worker gave him before he left Ceuta’s migrant minors’ centre paid for the ferry to the Spanish mainland port of Algeciras. There, he was approached by local social workers who recommended he travel 98km (61 miles) up to the city of Jerez where a place in a facility for young migrants was vacant, they said.

The Irish Association of Social Workers (IASW) warmly welcomes the appointment of Ms. Amanda Casey as the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) Chief Social Worker and looks forward to working in partnership with the Chief Social Worker and her team to progress the wide range of goals, duties and responsibilities attached to the post.

The lobbying push by Better Medicare Alliance. The advocacy group, which calls itself “the leading voice for Medicare Advantage,” has ramped up spending on lobbying in recent years.

With the news of Adams’s indictment, the prospect of New York City turning the page on the mayor’s cartoonish corruption and brutal austerity is on the table. But only if the Left and progressive movement of the city take advantage of the moment.

Pain may be the most prevalent and severe symptom reported by individuals with long Covid, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers…. Pain, including headache, joint pain and stomach pain, was the most common symptom, reported by 26.5% of participants.

Despite what new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer says, there’s nothing inevitable about another round of austerity — it is a deliberate decision to avoid confronting the powerful and presenting a real alternative for working-class people.

On Wednesday (28 August), German broadcaster RTL screened coverage obtained through investigative documentation into one of Europe’s growing and popular rightwing extremist movements, the Identitarian movement.

Six teenagers have now died while playing school football in less than three weeks. This astonishing rash of football-related school deaths should be understood as nothing less than a public health emergency. It is also a clarion call to question why we are exposing our young people to such a dangerous activity at all, much less in institutions designed to care for and nurture them.

Duh.

Past-year use of cannabis and hallucinogens stayed at historically high levels in 2023 among adults aged 19 to 30 and 35 to 50, according to the latest findings from the Monitoring the Future survey. In contrast, past-year use of cigarettes remained at historically low levels in both adult groups.

Ministers have been urged to treat suicide as a public health crisis after the rate at which people killed themselves in England and Wales reached the highest level in more than two decades. The official figures, described by the suicide prevention charity Samaritans as “worse than expected”, showed 6,069 suicides were registered in the two nations in 2023, up from 5,642 in 2022 and the highest rate since 1999.

“This is a building of the people,” the squatter Dominique, who had worked construction, told me, referring to its history as a public health agency and its suitability for heavy use.