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Language skills are essential to a child’s ability to communicate and develop. These skills enable children to engage with other people and learn from their surroundings and in the classroom.

First Edition: January 13, 2012

"The much celebrated, and much maligned, public option may have died in Congress, but it's alive and well in California. Unique in the nation for having public health insurance plans that are run by counties, California has plans that stretch from San Francisco to the Mexican border and cover 2.5 million residents"

13 Jan 2012

Scientists identify chemical signals that promote aggregation in roundworms

Scientists have long seen evidence of social behavior among many species of animals, both on the earth and in the sea. Dolphins frolic together, lions live in packs, and hornets construct nests that can house a large number of the insects. And, right under our feet, it appears that nematodes-also known as roundworms-are having their own little gatherings in the soil. Until recently, it was unknown how the worms communicate to one another when it's time to come together.

13 Jan 2012

PLoS ONE journal publishes UVM team's study, Positivity of the English Language

"If it bleeds, it leads," goes the cynical saying with television and newspaper editors. In other words, most news is bad news and the worst news gets the big story on the front page. So one might expect the New York Times to contain, on average, more negative and unhappy types of words - like "war," " funeral," "cancer," "murder" - than positive, happy ones - like "love," "peace" and "hero."

13 Jan 2012

Sign language helps deaf people to pick up on body language

Deaf people who use sign language are quicker at recognizing and interpreting body language than hearing non-signers, according to new research from investigators at UC Davis and UC Irvine.

12 Jan 2012

Health Fidelity, Columbia University enter license agreement to commercialize MedLEE NLP

Columbia University and Health Fidelity, Inc. announced today that they have entered into a license agreement for commercialization of Columbia's MedLEE Natural Language Processing technology.

12 Jan 2012

Care for Asian-American heart attack patients gets better

Care for Asian-American heart attack patients improved between 2003 and 2008, according to a study published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal.

11 Jan 2012

Scientists help explain how brain locates images that look like faces

Objects that resemble faces are everywhere. Whether it's New Hampshire's erstwhile granite "Old Man of the Mountain," or Jesus' face on a tortilla, our brains are adept at locating images that look like faces. However, the normal human brain is almost never fooled into thinking such objects actually are human faces.

10 Jan 2012

AB receives TÜV approval for Neptune waterproof sound processor in Europe

Advanced Bionics (AB), the global leader in cochlear implant technology, announced today that it received approval in Europe for Neptune, the world's first and only swimmable, waterproof sound processor.

7 Jan 2012

Fifi Delish, 50,000feet introduce ViviLeDish for young children

50,000feet, Inc. and Fifi Delish Holding, LLC announced the launch of ViviLeDish.com, an interactive platform designed to help young children develop healthy attitudes and habits about food, eating and exercise that will last a lifetime.

7 Jan 2012

FDG-PET safe and accurate in detecting dementia, Alzheimer's

In a new review of imaging studies spanning more than ten years, scientists find that a method of positron emission tomography (PET) safely and accurately detects dementia, including the most common and devastating form among the elderly, Alzheimer's disease.

7 Jan 2012

Postpartum Support International unveils new Spanish language educational DVD

Postpartum Support International Unveils New Spanish Language Educational DVD "MADRE SALUDABLE, FAMILIA FELIZ" Offered to Hospitals & Healthcare Agencies Nationwide As Part of Clinical Training & Education Program Helping Alleviate the #1 Complication of Child Birth: Untreated Depression

5 Jan 2012

BMI method can determine expected body weight for adolescents with eating disorders

An exact determination of expected body weight for adolescents based on age, height and gender is critical for diagnosis and management of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. However, there are no clear guidelines regarding the appropriate method for calculating this weight in children with such disorders.

5 Jan 2012

JHTR, COMBI introduce 'Tools for Clinical Use'

Starting this month, The Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation (JHTR)—in partnership with The Center For Outcome Measurement in Brain Injury (COMBI)—introduces a new feature designed to support effective and informed use of standardized assessments for evaluation of brain injury.

5 Jan 2012

Emerging forms of torture cause serious mental health problems

Use of torture around the world has not diminished but the techniques used have grown more complex and sophisticated, according to new research from Queen Mary, University of London.

4 Jan 2012

Research reveals how bats parse duties at single neuron level

Imagine listening to music while carrying on a conversation with friends. This type of multi-tasking is fairly easy to do, right? That's because our brains efficiently and effectively separate the auditory signals - music to the right side; conversation to the left. But what researchers have not been able to do in humans or animals is to see a parsing of duties at the single neuron level - until now.

4 Jan 2012

Children exposed to maternal GDM and low SES more likely to develop ADHD

Children exposed to maternal gestational diabetes mellitus and low socioeconomic status, particularly in combination, appear to be at an increased risk of developing childhood ADHD, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

3 Jan 2012

Chimps, like humans, inform ignorant group members of danger

It's a basic rule of effective communication: Consider your audience. According to a new report published online on December 29 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that rule of thumb is not lost on wild chimpanzees. Chimps are more likely to make an alarm call about the presence of a snake when others in the group are unaware of the apparent danger they face, the new evidence shows.

30 Dec 2011

Silent strokes linked to memory loss in the elderly

New research links 'silent strokes,' or small spots of dead brain cells, found in about one out of four older adults to memory loss in the elderly. The study is published in the January 3, 2012, print issue of Neurology-, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

29 Dec 2011

Toddlers don't respond to their own voice

When grown-ups and kids speak, they listen to the sound of their voice and make corrections based on that auditory feedback. But new evidence shows that toddlers don't respond to their own voice in quite the same way, according to a report published online on December 22 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

23 Dec 2011

Deal may be near for House agreement on Senate bill

House Republicans will hold a conference call at 5 p.m. Thursday amid indications of a possible deal to extend the payroll tax cut before it expires on January 1, a top Republican source has told CNN. The development comes hours after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, called for a short-term extension of the tax holiday as part of a compromise, increasing pressure on House GOP leaders to end their resistance to such a step.

23 Dec 2011