ESL not working well in California

Nearly 60% of English-language learners in California's high schools have failed to become proficient in English despite more than six years of a U.S. education, according to a study released Thursday.
In a survey of 40 school districts, the study found that the majority of long-term English-language learners are U.S. natives who prefer English and are orally bilingual. But they develop major deficits in reading and writing, fail to achieve the academic English needed for educational success and disproportionately drop out of high school.

So it's not immigrants. It's native-born children of immigrants, who come from Spanish-speaking homes and themselves speak English just fine but can't read or write it well.

My guess is it is because we teach them to read in English, when it is their second language, even if they speak it well enough. There is research I don't have at hand right how showing that little kids with non-English home languages learn to read English better if they learn to read first in their native language and then transfer that skill to their second language rather than trying to develop the skill in the second language, where they have to translate as they learn to read.

I wonder how well these kids read and write in Spanish.

A theory of psychopathy

One previous explanation for psychopathic tendencies has been a reduced capacity to make inferences about the mental states of other people, an ability known as Theory of Mind (ToM). On the other hand, psychopaths are also known to be extremely good manipulators and deceivers, which would imply that they have good skills in inferring the knowledge, needs, intentions, and beliefs of other people. Therefore, it has been suggested recently that ToM is made up of different aspects: a cognitive part, which requires inferences about knowledge and beliefs, and another part which requires the understanding of emotions.

 The study compared the ability to understand emotional aspects of other's minds in known psychopaths, people with damage to the frontal lobes, people with other kinds of brain damage, and normals. Psychopaths and people with damaged frontal lobes showed the same pattern of impairments.

I've known a few psychopaths over the years. They're scary. And it could be that it's just an organic dysfunction of the frontal lobes. Of course, I've long presumed that it was some organic thing in the brain.

So if it's a brain condition they are born with, we can no more hold it against them personally than we can hold it against someone that they are gay, or left-handed, or short, or conservative, or militaristic. But we don't have to let them hurt us. Psychopaths being evil is no more just a set of behaviors than being gay is. It's deep in their selves.

This leads to an idea I find repugnant. Suppose we find a brain signature that identifies psychopaths with 100% accuracy at birth. What do we do with these cute little babies who will grow up to rape and pillage society? Do we drown them at birth? Do we send them to live on an island with other psychopaths? Do we make them wear a scarlet P? Or maybe a GPS ankle bracelet? Do you track them in school and give them extra counseling? Some sort of psychotherapy?

Or worse, suppose the test identifies them with 2% false positives and 2% false negatives. If you do any of the above,  you're ruining 2 out of a hundred kids.

Or as a child care provider, you find out the biter in the toddler room was identified in the test, what do you do? How do you treat a kid that you know has a 98% chance of being evil? Or even a 50% chance?

Our only hope is for science to find the specific deficits and a way to ameliorate them. I wonder what inhaled oxytocin would do to psychopaths. Or inject empathy stem cells into their frontal lobes.

Friday follies

Boys will be boys, even if they're cats. I can't show embarrassing photos of the fruit of my loins, because, well, it would be embarrassing and therefore rude, but middle cat won't mind. He almost blends into the rug, like the black cat on the witch's black rug in the children's book.

Food supplements so preggers can drink safely

Some researchers have found that a dietary supplement called CDP-Choline, which  is sold commercially as a brain booster and studied academically for stroke and traumatic brain injury, may prevent the fetal skull and brain damage that occurs when mom drinks early in her pregnancy, at least in mice. The really bad time to drink is "four weeks after conception when neural crest cells emerge for a few days before morphing into other cell types that help form numerous organs," when she may not know she's pregnant.

As I read this, it might be a good idea for a woman who might become pregnant and who likes a couple of glasses of wine once in a while to take this supplement, in case the one night since college she has four glasses of wine and a margarita is during the window of neural crest cell emergence of a fetus she doesn't know she's carrying. It might be nice insurance.

Another bad thing about bisphenol-A: cancer

I've written before about SB 797, which would prohibit bisphenol-A from being used in many food containers for kids. It is an endocrine disruptor that causes a host of problems in little kids and breast cancer in adults, and now it is associated with other cancers and does a bunch of bad things to fetuses.

Developing embryos 'read' environmental cues as a forecast of the outside world. These cues can affect the way certain genes are expressed and in this way alter the structure and function of organs. Studies in rodents show that EDCs can cause harm at much lower levels if exposure happens during organ formation as opposed to exposures during adulthood.

Why is this so hard? As I said before,

All the medical groups were for (SB 797), and all the industry groups were against it. Guess who won. ... We have decided as a state that the fact that this chemical causes behavioral changes and changes to sexual organs in children and cancer in adults is not important enough to inconvenience manufacturers of food containers or to make them use more expensive ingredients. Our democracy in action.

Who gets bit by sharks

So I'm reading this report of a study on who gets bit by sharks and how and when, not intending to blog about it. It turns out it's mostly:

• in about 6 feet of water
• surfers, because they spend the most time in water that deepjavascript:void(0)
• leg bites, because that's what dangles in the water
• during the summer
• on Sunday, because even a lot of surfers work during the week
• early morning and late afternoons, when surfers spend more time in the water
• Whites, presumably because so are fish bellies
• wearing black and white bathing suits

So far, so good, and mildly interesting. But then:

"The greatest number of attacks occurred during new moons, followed by full moons, the edges of the lunar extreme when the moon has its biggest pull on the tidal phase, Burgess said. Probably the moon's phases influence the movements and reproductive patterns of fish, the shark's food source, just as they affect human behavior, he said." (bold mine)

No, no, no, no, no. Full moons do not affect human behavior. This has been shown time after time to be a myth.

Another gene for autism

They found another gene variant in autists and mentally impaired patients. In some, it was also found  in a parent, and in others, it was a new mutation. It has to do with how synapses operate. Another step in understanding and then, one day, ameliorating the problems.

Since the allele is associated with retardation and autism (but not necessarily at the same time, since some autists with it are normal intelligence), it brings to mind what I wrote about yesterday, that sometimes it makes sense to categorize mental health problems by their biological symptoms rather than their psychological ones. The subjects in this study could be categorized as autistic and/or retarded, or they could be categorized as having a synapse problem (or something like that). It could also be that the symptoms are related to the part of the brain the allele is expressed in.

Is being fat really bad for your health?

Some researchers looked at the BMI, body mass index, of 18,000 people. We all know obesity is bad for your health. The researchers had access to the subjects' medical records, so they knew  just what drugs each was taking. They ignored meds typically not used for physical illness. They assumed if they were on pills usually used for high blood pressure, that the person had high blood pressure. It's a reasonable assumption, though it introduces a little error when doctors use a drug for an off-label condition.

After applying a number of statistical tests to the data, the researchers found that among all age groups, with few exceptions, there was no significant difference in the severity of illness between those with normal weight and overweight BMIs. There was a slight increase in the percentage of medication use among men age 40 to 70 with overweight BMIs when compared to men of normal weight.

But in men and women under 40, there was no relation at all.

God it's hard to know what to think about this. Every damned thing you read in the popular press tells you being fat is bad for you, for your heart, your blood pressure, your kidneys, your arthritis, and then every once in a while there's a study like this, where there seems to be no relationship, much less a causal relationship, between being fat and being sick. And then there are all the studies saying your body knows just how fat it wants to be, and by god, it's going to be that fat, no more, no less. In ten years, there will be a pill that takes you down to fighting weight and then levels you off there. Then we'll find out if health improves just by being thinner.

And then I run across this study, which says infants with genes associated with obesity in adults gain weight faster than infants who don't. The authors suggest genes are associated with failure to thrive. Every damned thing you read says human behavior is god-awful complicated and subject to conflicting biological influences, some genetic, some not.

A new way to think about mental disorders

A commentary in JAMA, discussed in Science Daily, suggests a different way of thinking about mental illness. Since we know that

• the symptoms of schizophrenia, bipolar, autism, and, for all I know, everything up to a fondness for romance novels are the behavioral manifestations of biological things going on in brains, and
• much of that is controlled by genes, which alleles are present and which are expressed, and
• the genes and neuroscience do not map straight across to symptoms,

therefore, it makes sense to describe mental illnesses in terms of the biological substrate rather than the behavior.

This all makes sense to me. When you deal with a person with a mental disorder face to face, you see the symptoms, but if you're in the lab trying to figure out how to fix or ameliorate the problem, you're better off thinking in terms of problems with myelination, expression of certain genes, or uptake rate of some neurotransmitter. The rest of us can still think in terms of schizophrenia, bipolar, etc, but we may need to get used to a different set of scientific categories.

"the natural consequences of an immoral act"

Via Digby, you don't often hear right-wingers so explicit in their religious nastiness. In talking about a Utah Democrat, Digby mentions

"a failed Utah initiative to deal with STDs among teenagers and the fact that many of them will end up sterile, among other things, because they aren't educated about it and don't get treated. (The Democrat) relays the response from some social conservative harpy which was,'I don't think we should do anything to interfere with the natural consequences of an immoral act.'"

In other words:

• God's laws should be the basis of public policy (and she knows what God's laws are).
• Teenage sluts deserve what they get for violating God's law (unless they are related to part-term governors of Alaska, in which case they are paid $30,000 a crack* for speaking out against sluttiness).

*The pun didn't occur to me until after I wrote it, but if the slut** fits, wear her.

**You know I'm being sarcastic about a girl being a slut just because she got pregnant, don't you?

UPDATE: I just wrote the post above about thinking of mental disorders in terms of their biological processes, and I  think a little better of this lady. She's not evil; she can't help having her repulsive ideas, because that's how her brain works.

Andrew Wakefield banned from practicing medicine

The British doctor whose flawed and ultimately withdrawn paper started the autism-vaccine controversy has been banned from practicing medicine in Britain. He calls it "a bump in the road."

My new favorite blog: The Scientific Fundamentalist

I just discovered the Scientific Fundamentalist blog at Psychology Today. It's  written by an evolutionary psychologist with a sensibility I find very amiable. Lately it has been dealing with aspects of IQ. I'd start here, where he states a hypothesis he follows up on in later posts.

(T)hat more intelligent individuals are more likely than less intelligent individuals to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel preferences and values that did not exist in the ancestral environment and thus our ancestors did not have, but general intelligence has no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar preferences and values that existed in the ancestral environment.

It turns out I had blogged about this idea in February, and this is the guy that had the idea. In a series of posts following the one quoted, he explicates other aspects of it, such as "If Liberals Are More Intelligent than Conservatives, Why Are Liberals So Stupid?"

This is going to be a regular read for me.

Flash: cutting child care means people can't get to work

To people in the field, this was obvious, but now, at least, it has reached the consciousness of the Ruling Class. An article in the New York Times discusses low-income workers whose subsidized child care has been cut, so they lost their jobs, so they had to go on welfare. And it's not like people who qualify for APP or Title 5 are likely to be in jobs where they are irreplaceable. I've seen grumblings in the paper from California Democrats that they get that fact and that cutting CDD programs loses the federal match.

So when do we go off the cliff this year? September? I've heard people from CDE say October, but they think most of us will survive, and only a few of those will be really seriously injured.

I just realized that nobody who doesn't follow the California subsidized child care budget has much idea what I said above. So be it.

And in the middle of our budget cuts, I see a story (thank you, Google News) on 3 new centers being built at the  naval station on Coronado, near San Diego. Two are normal hours, and one is 24-hour. As with all military-based child care, the centers will be accredited and inspected I think it's monthly. I know someone involved in military programs in our area, and they seem to be really well done. The article says the reason they are building the new centers is that the existing centers are inconvenient for sailors to drive to.

Having a CDC on base is going to be great,” said Operations Specialist 3rd Class Nakia Levenberry, assigned to NAB Coronado. “I won’t have to worry about being late to pick my son up due to traffic issues, and in case of an emergency I won’t have to travel far to get to him. I also have the comfort of knowing he’s close enough for me to check on during the day.”

I don't think I'm jealous, because I don't want the military not to have this kind of child care, but I am certainly envious when I think of the May Revise and read about military child care.

Dolphins are just gay sharks

At Joe. My. God., I learned this morning that "dolphins are just gay sharks."

More bad stuff about bisphenol-A

Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a weak estrogen that is used in making plastics for many food containers. It leaches out into the food and "interfere(s) with hormone biosynthesis, metabolism or action resulting in adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological and immune effects in both humans and wildlife." They cause all sorts of sexual problems in frogs. I've talked before about it increasing aggression in toddler girls. Now a study has shown it may cause breast cancer when they grow up.

SB 797 is a bill that would ban BPA in most food containers intended for children's use. It passed the Senate. It failed on a floor vote in the Assembly but was granted reconsideration. It was placed on the inactive file at the request of Assembly Member Torrico. All the medical groups were for it, and all the industry groups were against it. Guess who won. Unless a miracle happens, control of BPA in food containers in California is dead.

We have decided as a state that the fact that this chemical causes behavioral changes and changes to sexual organs in children and cancer in adults is not important enough to inconvenience manufacturers of food containers or to make them use more expensive ingredients. Our democracy in action.

As H.L. Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." I can't find the exact quote, but he also said something like, Democracy is the system under which the American people, having millions of adult White males to choose from, including many who are handsome and some who are wise, choose a Calvin Coolidge to be their president. It is as though a man were were faced with a sumptuous banquet and turn his back on it to snatch flies out of the air and put them in his mouth. Or something like that.

Friday follies

Young cat wandering the garden. The patch on his right thigh is where we think the crow beak-stabbed him up in the tree. The hair is growing back in a color pattern that looks like the flat side of  a cut geode.

Toward drug treatment for autism

I've talked before about hopeful signs of a treatment for autism. Now some researchers have found a drug that improves communication between nerve cells in mice with a disorder called Phelan-McDermid Syndrome, the symptoms of which they say "fall under the autism spectrum disorder category."

It's not a cure for autism, but it's another hopeful sign.

Books are good

We know that education of the parents predicts the education level of the kids. But now, from a 20-year study involving 70,000 cases in 27 countries, we know that "Whether rich or poor, residents of the United States or China, illiterate or college graduates, parents who have books in the home increase the level of education their children will attain."

The difference was striking. The difference in later education between having zero books in the home and 500 is the same magnitude as between having parents with a third-grade education and parents with a bachelor's degree. Either having parents with degrees or 500 books pushes a kid further in their education by  2.4 years in the US or 6.6 years in China. All countries combined, it's 3.4 years.

And it scales. Having 20 books makes a difference. A smaller difference than 500, but the more the better, up to 500, where they stopped looking.

This is much cooler than budget meetings. And it's gratifying to know I did something right with my own issue.

UPDATE: I wonder how additive it is. Does having both a BA and 500 books add 4.8 years of education? And how far up does it scale? Does having an MA or PhD or 2000 books have an effect? How much?

Post-May revise depression

Going to planning meetings this week has been like being in a car hurtling toward a cliff, and we're inside talking about what to do if we survive. How injured do we expect to be? What direction should we try to crawl? Should we put the least valuable of us on the bottom as a cushion for the more valuable? What if we end up so injured that we face a life of constant pain?

And what if we all die? Nobody talks about what if the budget is really passed as proposed. What if we do lose all those programs, 140,000 slots, and I forget how many billions of dollars in revenue? I guess a lot of us find new jobs.

It's depressing as hell, and the personal questions are worse. Is there a non-child-care position open at your agency, or what would you like your next career to be at your age?

Buck up, kiddo. The Dems won't let that happen, although the Reps seem pretty united. In the past the Dems have been able to peel off a Rep or two by offering them something (such as Prop 14, or something for their district), but this time the Republican leadership is telling them that they will be dead to the leadership if they vote for a budget with a single tax increase.

I'll say it again. Voting Republican is a character fault. Voting Republican enthusiastically is a personality disorder.

More musing on music

I mused the other day about the differences in the my partner and I react to music. MP feels salsa deep in the core, and I get it from 12-bar blues. Some new research published oddly enough in the New Journal of Physics says the most important thing about music is the rhythm. They were looking at ways of improving algorithms that say, "If you like this music, you'll like ..."

We also learned recently that babies like to keep time and that the sounds of music are related to sounds of speech. "Happy talk uses happy-music intervals, and sad talk uses sad-music intervals. We also create music that fits our vowels, which are the sounds air makes as it flows through our oral cavity."

So maybe the fact that I spent my first three years in Texas, and MP spent her first three years in California caused us to be raised around different speech patterns, or accents. Nah, that's silly. Otherwise everybody in MP's social stratum in Southern California would like salsa, and every dirt farmer's kid in Texas would like the blues.