Respecting Working Mothers with Infant Children: The Need for Increased Federal Intervention to Develop, Protect, and Support a Breastfeeding Culture in the United States

The author argues that the benefits of breastfeeding are overwhelming and that more needs to be done to ensure that all women have a viable option to continue breastfeeding upon returning to work, particularly the working poor and minorities. Those least likely to breastfeed are more likely to be part of an at risk population in terms of health. Most significantly, the lack of a cohesive policy in the workplace has had a disparate impact on the most vulnerable populations of breastfeeding mothers and their children. The lack of federal protection and a patchwork of protection in the states have contributed to our failure to achieve breastfeeding goals set in the 1990\u27s. Federal laws and decisions are reviewed. The author has undertaken a comprehensive review of the state statutes to demonstrate the disparities in protection. The review also serves as a guide for potential federal legislation. Federal legislation must provide a floor beneath which no mother may fall. The author proposes what components are crucial in enacting such legislation and examines a bill recently introduced in the House of Representatives

Just Because you can Doesn\u27t Mean you Should: Reconciling Attorney Conduct in the Context of Defamation with the New Professionalism

The Florida Bar has recently proposed enforceable professionalism standards. While many states have professionalism codes they remain aspirational and unenforceable. Florida’s move toward enforceable professionalism standards is laudable, but raises concerns about how moving a “step above” the floor of the rules of professional conduct will affect advocacy and practice. This paper examines how a shift to enforceable professionalism standards may impact absolute immunity. The paper suggests that as other states consider similar standards or simply how to better policy professionalism, perhaps it is time to also consider how discipline is imposed with respect to defamatory statements that are otherwise protected by absolute immunity and whether some qualification of the immunity is appropriate in disciplinary proceedings when considered in the context of an attorney’s conduct

The metamorphosis of the statistical segmentation output: lexicalization during artificial language learning

This study combined artificial language learning (ALL) with conventional experimental techniques to test whether statistical speech segmentation outputs are integrated into adult listeners' mental lexicon. Lexicalization was assessed through inhibitory effects of novel neighbors (created by the parsing process) on auditory lexical decisions to real words. Both immediately after familiarization and post-one week, ALL outputs were lexicalized only when the cues available during familiarization (transitional probabilities and wordlikeness) suggested the same parsing (Experiments 1 and 3). No lexicalization effect occurred with incongruent cues (Experiments 2 and 4). Yet, ALL differed from chance, suggesting a dissociation between item knowledge and lexicalization. Similarly contrasted results were found when frequency of occurrence of the stimuli was equated during familiarization (Experiments 3 and 4). Our findings thus indicate that ALL outputs may be lexicalized as far as the segmentation cues are congruent, and that this process cannot be accounted for by raw frequency.Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tSCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

When does literacy start to impact on visual processing? Evidence from preschool children and illiterate adults.

An emergent bulk of research indicates that, independently of maturation, learning to read strongly impacts on visual processing, including for non-linguistic materials. Panelists in this symposium will present their latest findings on the neural and cognitive processes modulated by literacy, from low-level visual processes to mirror-image discrimination and letter processing

Editorial: The impact of learning to read on visual processing

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The impact of early and late literacy on the functional connectivity of vision and

Introduction: Learning to read leads to functional and structural changes in the cortical regions related to vision and language. The visual word-form area (VWFA) is though to play a key role in the interaction between these two systems (Dehaene et al. 2015). For instance, the VWFA is activated not only from bottom-up during reading but also in a top-down manner during speech listening without visual stimulation (Dehaene et al. 2010). The objective of this study was twofolded: how literacy acquisition affects four intrinsic functional connectivity networks related to vision and language (a dorsal language [DLN], a bilateral auditory [AN], a low-level [LLVN] and a high-level visual [HLVN] networks); and to explore the role of the VWFA as an interface between high-level vision and language functions. Methods: Independent component analysis (ICA) was applied to functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 40 adult participants with variable levels of literacy (illiterate, late literate and early literate). The four functional connectivity networks were compared across groups using dual-regression (Filippini et al. 2009). In addition, we directly explored the functional connectivity between the VWFA and each of the studied networks. Finally, the strengh of connectivity between the VWFA and each network was compared across groups and correlated with individual reading fluency scores. Results: ICA produced 40 networks, and spatial crosscorrelation was used to identify the four networks of interest. Literacy was positively correlated with increased connectivity within the four networks. A major difference separating early literate from illiterate and late literate subjects was found. The connectivity between the VWFA and the DLN increased with literacy. Conversely, the strength of connectivity between the VWFA and the HLVN correlated negatively with literacy. Finally, , the HLVN-VWFA connectivity was negatively correlated with reading scores while the connectivity between the DLN-VWFA was positively correlated with reading scores. Discussion:Literacy has a strong influence on the visual and language functional networks. Literacy modifies the VWFA connectivity, by making it functionally closer to the language system, and more distinct from other associative visual areas that do not contribute to the reading process. The current results suggest that early acquisition of literacy plays a critical role for the tuning of the functional brain architecture. References: -Dehaene S et al. Nat Rev Neurosci.(2015)16:234 244 -Dehaene S et al. Science.(2010)330:1359–1364 -Filippini N et al. PNAS.(2009)106, 7209–7214Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Are structural biases at protein termini a signature of vectorial folding?

Experimental investigations of the biosynthesis of a number of proteins have pointed out that part of the native structure can be acquired already during translation. We carried out a comprehensive statistical analysis of some average structural properties of proteins that have been put forward as possible signatures of this progressive buildup process. Contrary to a widespread belief, it is found that there is no major propensity of the amino acids to form contacts with residues that are closer to the N terminus. Moreover, it is found that the C terminus is significantly more compact and locally-organized than the N one. Also this bias, though, is unlikely to be related to vectorial effects, since it correlates with subtle differences in the primary sequence. These findings indicate that even if proteins aquire their structure vectorially no signature of this seems to be detectable in their average structural properties.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl