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Despite recently sustaining $2.5 billion in federal public health spending cuts and facing billions more in cuts under sequestration, public health departments across the nation are racing to detect cases of meningitis associated with the ongoing widespread outbreak and ensure at-risk patients are contacted, properly counseled, and offered proper treatment, as well as monitoring the removal of any tainted vials of the steroid believed to be behind the outbreak. The Tennessee Department of Health was the first organization to identify the outbreak and its source. As of October 25, the outbreak has resulted in 328 cases of fungal meningitis and 24 deaths spanning 18 states, with up to 14,000 individuals at risk in the 23 states where the contaminated steroids were distributed.

“Getting a handle on this outbreak is a top priority for state and local health departments right now, but it’s challenging given the tens of thousands of public health jobs lost to budget cuts over the past few years,” says Paul Jarris, MD, executive director of the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). “It’s a massive undertaking, with potentially thousands of lives at stake, but there’s very little funding for it and there will be even less if sequestration occurs.”

A sequester is scheduled to take effect on January 2, 2013—resulting in automatic across-the-board budget cuts to federal government programs—unless Congress reaches an agreement to pass legislation to postpone it or finds other ways to reduce the federal deficit. If sequestration takes place, Tennessee, which is also the state hit hardest by the meningitis outbreak, will lose more than $18 million in core public health funding in 2013 alone.

Under sequestration, all 18 states affected by the outbreak would lose a total of more than $568 million in public health funding for FY 2013. The Coalition for Health Funding, a nonprofit working to preserve and strengthen public health investments, estimates that sequestration would also result in state and local health departments losing 2,500 specialized disease detectives—workers who have been on the front lines fighting the meningitis outbreak.

“The net effect of additional budget cuts to state and local public health agencies equates to the devastation of vital public health programs,” says Jarris. “Sequestration’s cuts will put the public at greater risk for infectious disease outbreaks, foodborne illnesses, and life-threatening infections from routine hospital stays. As we continue to deal with this terrible outbreak, we need to remember that health departments must be kept whole to ensure that all Americans are safe.”

State and local public health agencies engage in the following activities, all of which are part of the response needed in outbreaks such as this:

*Active surveillance to identify infected individuals
*Laboratory testing to help confirm infection
*Providing guidance to physicians to make the most appropriate decision for the care and treatment of patients
*Conveying timely and accurate information to the concerned public through call centers and hotlines
*Working with key federal and state regulatory agencies to ensure that contaminated and potentially harmful medications are removed from use and properly disposed of

Since 2008, both state and federal funding for public health has declined. Forty-eight state and territorial health agencies report budget cuts since 2008, and more than 45,000 state and local public health jobs have been lost. At the federal level, public health funding has declined from $31.4 billion in 2010 to $28.9 billion in 2012. After sequestration, funding would plummet to $26.5 billion. These cuts could have severe implications for how effectively public health agencies can respond to future emergencies.

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A new research group finds that at least 200 wrongful convictions have been thrown out since 1989 in California, costing those convicted more than 1,300 years of freedom and taxpayers $129 million. The California Wrongful Convictions Project, launched by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Berkeley Law) and Hollway Advisory Services, a criminal justice research firm, announced these findings in preliminary data released today.

The project’s long-term objective is to identify wrongful convictions in California and to quantify their economic impact. The project has defined wrongful convictions to include those where all counts are dismissed by the court or by the prosecutor after conviction, as well as those where the conviction was reversed and the individual was completely acquitted on retrial.

In addition to the costs to individuals and their families of life lost behind bars, the direct costs of incarceration and compensation calculated so far total $129 million ($144 million when prison costs are adjusted for inflation). This figure does not yet include the costs of legal representation and court proceedings necessary to overturn the convictions, an amount expected to be substantial given the multiple trials and years of appeals routinely undertaken by wrongfully convicted individuals.

A detailed report to be released in 2013 will include the full costs of legal representation, court proceedings, and appeals, as well as costs related to confirmed misconduct by prosecutors, government investigators or police. It will also track the reasons why convictions are overturned.

“The project’s final analysis will include the time, money and resources wasted on all cases that were overturned and dismissed due to misconduct and legal errors, including those where innocent people are wrongfully charged,” said Rebecca Silbert, a project director and senior associate at Berkeley Law’s Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy. “We know that there are errors in the system; what has been missing until now is a precise analysis of the financial impact on California.”

Preliminary findings reveal that:

• California leads the nation in exonerations as defined by the National Registry of Exonerations with 120, surpassing Illinois (110), Texas (100), and New York (100). The National Registry requires a post-conviction showing of new evidence for inclusion;

• Since 1989, courts have exonerated or dismissed convictions against 214 Californians. Reasons include official misconduct, insufficient evidence, findings of innocence, ineffective defense, and legal error;

• The vast majority of these wrongfully convicted individuals served time in state or federal prison before their convictions were thrown out, collectively losing 1,313 years of their freedom;

• 40% of individuals in the dataset were initially sentenced to 20 years or more in prison, including many who received life, life without parole, or death sentences before their convictions were overturned;

• Individuals framed in the Los Angeles Rampart police scandal of the late 1990s account for 25% of the wrongful convictions in the dataset (53 people thus far; news reports estimate the total number of exonerated individuals at greater than 100), but only 10% of the 1,313 wasted years in prison were served by those individuals;

• Excluding the Rampart cases, all of which were due to official misconduct, major factors contributing to these wrongful convictions include:_o perjury or false accusation (42% of the cases);_o official misconduct by police or prosecutors (39% of cases);_o mistaken eyewitness ID (26% of cases);_o inadequate or ineffective defense counsel (19% of cases); and_o DNA evidence (fewer than 6% of the cases).

“This data shows that both inadvertent mistakes and deliberate misconduct are more common in our criminal justice system than most people think,” said John Hollway, the founder of Hollway Advisory Services. “We are seeing prosecutors and defense attorneys work hand in hand to reduce these errors. A systemic review of the mistakes will allow us to measure the frequency and costs of justice system flaws, especially in this era of prison overcrowding and cost overruns. We want to prioritize reforms to reduce wrongful convictions and their significant cost to taxpayers.”

As researchers actively review court records and reach out to attorneys across the state, they expect the number of cases in the study to increase substantially.

“We owe it to everyone involved, including the victims, to identify problems and work towards a more fair and accountable justice system,” said Andrea Russi, a former federal prosecutor and managing director of Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute.

For more details about the research methodology and findings, visit Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute website: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/cawrongfulconviction.htm.

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On July 20, a gunman in Aurora, Colorado, used an assault rifle to murder 12 people and wound 58 others. Although this was one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, all mass shootings account for a small percentage of gun violence that occurs in the U.S. every day. In the past 100 days since the Aurora shooting, an estimated 3,035 Americans have died as a result of gun violence.

A new report by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examines policies and initiatives for reducing gun violence in the U.S. by reforming current gun policies. The report, a synthesis of prior research and analysis conducted by researchers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, includes the following key findings:

*Easy access to firearms with large-capacity magazines facilitates higher casualties in mass shootings.
*”Right-to-carry” gun laws do not reduce violent crime.
*Prohibiting high-risk groups from having guns – criminals, perpetrators of domestic violence, youths under age 21, substance abusers, and those with severe mental illnesses–and closing loopholes that enable them to have guns are integral and politically feasible steps to reduce gun violence.

“Mass shootings bring public attention to the exceptionally high rate of gun violence in the U.S., but policy discussions rarely focus on preventing the daily gun violence that results in an average of 30 lives lost every day,” said Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and lead author of the report. “Addressing weaknesses in existing gun laws by expanding prohibitions for criminals, perpetrators of domestic violence, youth, and drug abusers, and closing the loopholes that allow prohibited persons to obtain guns can be effective strategies to reduce gun violence. It is important to note that making these changes to our gun laws would not disarm law-abiding adults.”

According to the report, guns were used to kill more than 31,000 people in 2010, including more than 11,000 homicides. The homicide rate in the U.S. is seven times higher than the average of all other high-income countries because the U.S. firearm homicide rates are 22 times higher. A 2012 study examined the direct and indirect costs of violent crime in eight geographically diverse U.S. cities, and found that the annual cost of violent crime averages more than $1,300 for every adult and child.

The authors point to numerous weaknesses in current gun laws in the U.S., which make it harder to keep guns from high-risk individuals. For example, compared to other age groups, 18- to 20- year-olds are the most likely to commit homicides, yet only five out of 50 states prohibit this age group from possessing handguns. Additionally, the report identifies several federal laws that have been enacted to protect licensed gun sellers from oversight and reduce sanctions for law violations, and a key loophole that exempts gun purchasers from background checks if they buy guns from private sellers.

The report cites studies which found that fixing lax gun laws reduces gun violence and associated costs. When states expand firearm prohibitions to high-risk groups and adopt comprehensive measures to prevent diversion of guns to prohibited persons, fewer guns are diverted to criminals and there is less violence.

While some polls indicate declining public support for stricter gun laws, Webster cautions against inferring that the majority of the U.S. public doesn’t want lawmakers to fix weaknesses in current laws.

“Many people don’t realize that, in most states, individuals convicted of violent misdemeanors with court-issued restraining orders for domestic violence or who have a serious history of mental illness or substance abuse, can legally possess firearms,” said Webster. “Federal gun laws allow private gun sellers to sell their guns with no questions asked of purchasers or proof that the purchaser has passed a criminal background check. Survey research shows that 82 percent of gun owners want that loophole fixed.”

The report also addresses the Constitutional legality of the reforms posed in the paper, and finds the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would not prohibit the kinds of gun policy reforms in the report.

“The Supreme Court struck down laws in Washington, D.C. and Chicago that banned handgun possession in homes. However, since these rulings, lower courts have overwhelmingly upheld the constitutionality of a wide range of gun control laws other than the handgun ban,” said report author Jon Vernick, JD, MPH, co-director of Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

Despite the majority support among the general public and gun owners to remedy several current weaknesses in U.S. gun laws relevant to keeping firearms from dangerous people, the majority of gun-related state and federal laws passed in recent years have made it easier for high-risk people to purchase guns.

“There are real political hurdles to enacting new gun control laws, but politicians need to realize three things, there is broad support for policies keeping guns out of the hands of high-risk individuals, the reforms are constitutional, and the policies would save the lives of innocent Americans,” said Webster.

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High schools with athletic trainers have more diagnosed concussions, fewer overall injuries

Education Research Report

High schools with athletic trainers have lower overall injury rates, according to a new study, “A Comparative Analysis of Injury Rates and Patterns Among Girls’ Soccer and Basketball Players,” presented Oct. 22 at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans. In addition, athletes at schools with athletic trainers are more likely to be diagnosed with a concussion. Researchers reviewed national sports injury data on girls’ high school soccer and basketball programs with athletic trainers, between the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2009, … more »

New guidelines to prevent cheerleading injuries

Education Research Report

Over the past few decades, cheerleading has evolved from leading the crowd in cheers at football games to a competitive, year-round sport featuring complex acrobatic stunts performed by a growing number of athletes – and as a result the number and severity of injuries from cheerleading has also surged. In a new policy statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) urges coaches, parents and school officials to follow injury-prevention guidelines, develop emergency plans and ensure cheerleading programs have access to the same level of qualified coaches, medical care and injury… more »

The Effect of Schooling on Cognitive Skills

Education Research Report

How schooling affects cognitive skills is a fundamental question for studies of human capital and labor markets. While scores on cognitive ability tests are positively associated with schooling, it has proven difficult to ascertain whether this relationship is causal. Moreover, the effect of schooling is difficult to separate from the confounding factors of age at test date, relative age within a classroom, season of birth, and cohort effects. In this paper, the authors exploit conditionally random variation in the assigned test date for a battery of cognitive tests which almost … more »

VENTURE CAPITAL FUNDS RAISED $5.0 BILLION DURING Q3’12

Venture Capital Report

* Number of Funds Increased 23 Percent Compared to Second Quarter * Fifty-three U.S. venture capital funds raised $5.0 billion in the third quarter of 2012, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). This level marks a 17 percent decrease by dollar commitments and a 23 percent increase by number of funds compared to the second quarter of 2012, which saw 43 funds raise $6.0 billion during the period. The top five venture capital funds accounted for 55 percent of total fundraising this quarter, compared to 80 percent during the second quarter of … more »

The Gender Gap in Mathematics: Evidence from Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Education Research Report

The authors of this study establish the presence of a gender gap in mathematics across many low- and middle-income countries using detailed, comparable test score data. Examining micro level data on school performance linked to household demographics the authors note that first, the gender gap appears to increase with age. Indeed, the gap nearly doubles when comparing 4th grade and 8th grade test scores. Second, the authors test whether commonly proposed explanations such as parental background and investments, unobserved ability, and classroom environment (including teacher gende… more »

The Benefits of School Vaccinations

Education Research Report

New data shows the fatal risk that influenza poses even for children without underlying health conditions and the effectiveness of school-based vaccination programs in protecting student populations. Together, these findings support the crucial public health message that families should take the flu virus seriously every year. One study viewed influenza from an epidemiological perspective, analyzing U.S. pediatric influenza-associated deaths over an eight-year period and finding that 43 percent of the deaths occurred in children with no health cond… more »

Cyberbullying Only Rarely the Sole Factor Identified in Teen Suicides

Education Research Report

Cyberbullying — the use of the Internet, phones or other technologies to repeatedly harass or mistreat peers — is often linked with teen suicide in media reports. However, new research presented on Oct. 20, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans, shows that the reality is more complex. Most teen suicide victims are bullied both online and in school, and many suicide victims also suffer from depression. For the abstract, “Cyberbullying and Suicide: A Retrospective Analysis of 41 Cases,” researchers searched the Internet for re… more »

Lack of Sleep Tied to Teen Sports Injuries

Education Research Report

Adolescent athletes who slept eight or more hours each night were 68 percent less likely to be injured than athletes who regularly slept less, according to an abstract presented Oct. 21, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans. For the abstract, “Lack of Sleep is Associated with Increased Risk of Injury in Adolescent Athletes,” researchers asked middle and high school athletes (grades 7 to 12) enrolled at the Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, Calif., to answer questions about the number of sports they played and the time t… more »

VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENTS DECLINE IN DOLLARS AND DEAL VOLUME IN Q3 2012

Venture Capital Report

* Technology Investing Remains Solid as Life Sciences and Clean Tech Continue to Adjust to Market Conditions* Venture capitalists invested $6.5 billion in 890 deals in the third quarter of 2012, according to the MoneyTree™ Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. Quarterly venture capital (VC) investment activity declined 11 percent in terms of dollars and five percent in the number of deals compared to the second quarter of 2012 when $7.3 billion was invested in 935 deals. Investme… more »

The exact spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed located

Archaeology News Report

Archaeologists believe they have found the exact spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed and killed by a group of rival Roman senators more than 2,000 years ago. Caesar, who was the head of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a group of senators, including his friend Brutus, during the Ides of March, March 15, 44 BC. Archaeologists recently announced in a new Spanish National Research Council report that they have unearthed a large concrete structure almost 10 feet wide by 6.5 feet tall, which they believe was erected by Augustus, Julius Caesar’s successor, to condemn the as… more »

New discoveries at Bethsaida

Archaeology News Report

Dr. Nicolae Roddy… and his excavation colleagues were assigned to carefully uncover and explore an area that contained finds of the Roman period of ancient Bethsaida, the fishing town that was, according to the Biblical account, the home of the New Testament Christian apostles Peter, Andrew and Phillip, and likely James and John as well. “We uncovered a paved street from the time of Jesus’s disciples, which runs westward through the residential area from the corner of the Fisherman’s House [an excavated structural feature so-named because of the fishing imp… more »

Evidence of 2nd Viking Outpost Found in Canada

Archaeology News Report

Archaeologist Patricia Sutherland has announced new evidence that points strongly to the discovery of the second Viking outpost ever discovered in the Americas. …Archaeologists have long known that Viking seafarers set sail for the New World around A.D. 1000. A popular Icelandic saga tells of the exploits of Leif Eriksson, a Viking chieftain from Greenland who sailed westward to seek his fortune. According to the saga, Eriksson stopped long enough on Baffin Island to walk the coast—named Helluland, an Old Norse word meaning “stone-slab l… more »

How to Prove a Sexual Addiction

American Mating Habits

The idea that an individual might suffer from a sexual addiction is great fodder for radio talk shows, comedians and late night TV. But a sex addiction is no laughing matter. Relationships are destroyed, jobs are lost, lives ruined. Yet psychiatrists have been reluctant to accept the idea of out-of-control sexual behavior as a mental health disorder because of the lack of scientific evidence. Now a UCLA-led team of experts has tested a proposed set of criteria to define “hypersexual disorder,” also known as sexual addiction, as a new mental health condition. Rory Reid, a research ps… more »

Berkery Noyes: Health Care Industry – 3rd Qtr Trends Report

Venture Capital Report

The largest transaction through Q3 2012 was Roper Industries, Inc.’s acquisition of Sunquest Information Systems, Inc., a portfolio of Vista Equity Partners, for $1.4 billion. – The most active acquirer year-to-date was IMS Health Incorporated with five transactions, two of which occurred during Q3 2012: TTC LLC and PharmaDeals Ltd. Q3 2012 KEY TRENDS – Total transaction volume in Q3 2012 decreased by seven percent over Q2 2012, from 96 to 89. – Total transaction value in Q3 2012 fell by seven percent over Q2 … more »

For Collegians with Disabilities, Success Linked to Mentoring, Self-advocacy and Perseverance

Education Research Report

A Rutgers study of recent New Jersey college and university graduates with disabilities has found that students attributed their academic success to a combination of possessing such strong personality traits as self-advocacy and perseverance, and their relationship with a faculty or staff mentor. Accessing campus accommodations was not a major issue but learning about such help “was not always the smoothest process,” the report noted. The research also determined that students mainly used campus resources for assistance rather than a combination of college and community services. … more »

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New research from psychological scientist R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues suggest that parenting practices and childhood temperament may play an influential role. Their study is published online in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Existing research suggests that individuals whose parents espoused authoritarian attitudes toward parenting (e.g., valuing obedience to authority) are more likely to endorse conservative values as adults. And theory from political psychology on motivated social cognition suggests that children who have fearful temperaments may be more likely to hold conservative ideologies as adults. Unfortunately, almost all of the existing research looking at these two factors suffers from significant methodological shortcomings. Specifically, the majority of this research has been retrospective—relying on adult’s recollections of their early temperaments and their early caregiving experiences.

To better understand the developmental antecedents of political ideology, Fraley and his colleagues examined data from 708 children who originally participated in the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development’s (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD).

When the children in the study were one month old, their parents answered questions from the Parental Modernity Inventory. Fraley and colleagues used their responses to determine the degree to which the parents demonstrated authoritarian (e.g., “Children should always obey their parents”) and egalitarian parenting attitudes (e.g., “Children should be allowed to disagree with their parents”).

The dataset also included mothers’ assessments of their children’s temperaments when they were 4.5 years old, using questions from the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire. From these assessments, the researchers identified five temperament factors: restlessness-activity, shyness, attentional focusing, passivity, and fear.

Consistent with theory from political psychology, Fraley and colleagues found that children with authoritarian parents were more likely to have conservative attitudes at age 18, even after accounting for their gender, ethnic background, cognitive functioning, and socioeconomic status. Children who had parents with egalitarian parenting attitudes, on the other hand, were more likely to hold liberal attitudes as young adults.

In terms of temperament, children with higher levels of fearfulness at 54 months were more likely to be conservative at age 18, while children with higher levels of activity or restlessness and higher levels of attentional focusing were more likely to espouse liberal values at that age.

The researchers argue that their work has wide-ranging implications for understanding the variation in political orientation. According to Fraley, “One of the significant challenges in psychological science is understanding the multiple pathways underlying personality development. Our research suggests that variation in how people feel about diverse topics, ranging from abortion, military spending, and the death penalty, can be traced to both temperamental differences that are observable as early as 54 months of age, as well as variation in the attitudes people’s parents have about child rearing and discipline.” They believe that an important direction for future research will be to delve deeper into exploring the underlying mechanisms – including shared genetic variation and parent-child conflict – that might link parenting attitudes and temperament to later political ideology.

“We hope that this work will help enrich theory at the interface of political and personality science but also underscore the value of studying these issues from a developmental perspective,” the authors write.