Young children grow much more slowly than other mammals because their developing brains require so much energy to prepare for the challenges of later life, a new study contends. Researchers analyzed data from PET and MRI brain scans and found that...
Children who have been traumatized can face a lifetime of behavioral, mental and physical health problems, and there are efforts in Ohio to better help these children recover. Traumatic experiences include physical abuse, exposure to addiction and...
As the country struggles to combat the growing abuse of heroin and opioid painkillers, a new battlefield is emerging: the courts. The City of Chicago and two California counties are challenging the drug industry’s way of doing business,...
Read the letters to the editor about the NY Times' article To Know Suicide here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/treating-depression-to-prevent-suicide.html ]
As students return to the classroom this fall, one large group of children will be more likely than their peers to suffer learning disabilities, ADD/ADHD, behavioral problems, chronic school absence, and a host of other health concerns. These are the...
Healing democracy, one living room at a time. Joan Blades and Parker Palmer introduce us to a grassroots movement that brings small groups of people together across bitter political divisions, to help them find [To listen to this story go to http://www.ttbook.org/book/our...g-room-conversations ]
In a commentary published earlier this month in Nature, Harvard professor Sarah S. Richardson and six co-authors caution scientists, journalists and the public against drawing hasty conclusions from findings concerning epigenetic effects on human...
Lorraine Spencer has been watching the news from Ferguson, Mo., where an unarmed black 18-year-old was shot and killed by police, and worrying about her own son's safety. Jermaine is 16 years old and bi-racial, with a dark complexion. He also has...
He was an ebullient boy, quick to laugh and easy to love. And then, at 17, the shadow fell. A devastating diagnosis of mental illness. Trouble, hospital, home, into the depths again. Now, sustained by his mother’s unimaginably patient love, he...
This is the story of a 24-year-old woman in San Francisco who asked to remain anonymous. I am feeling depressed. It started more than a year and a half ago. I noticed that on my hour commute home that I felt something close to nothing. Not...
The shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the anger poured out in response by Ferguson’s mostly black population, has snapped the issue of race into national focus. The incident has...
Students may forget to bring their homework or a pencil to class, but the one thing a teacher can almost always count on a student to have is a cellphone. With this in mind, Lubbock Independent School District is using the pocket technology to connect...
When it comes to understanding ourselves, we tend to be splitters: mind and body, nature and nurture, or genes and environment. We take such a split for granted when we ask how the social becomes biological, but sometimes it’s not so useful to...
The massive protests in Ferguson, Missouri are On Our Minds this week. We explore the racial conflict and police violence with sociologist Alice Goffman. Steve Paulson talks with her about her book, "On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City."...
Eager teachers quickly learn that many of today’s students contend with unprecedented hardships. They arrive at school hungry, homeless or exhausted after caring for others, conditions that interfere with or even prohibit learning but clearly...