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CAIRO -- Firing tear gas and rubber bullets, Egyptian riot police on Sunday clashed for a second day in downtown Cairo with thousands of rock-throwing protesters demanding that the ruling military quickly announce a date to hand over power to an elected government.
The police battled an estimated 5,000 protesters in and around the capital's Tahrir Square, birthplace of the 18-day uprising that toppled authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in February. Tear gas filled the air as protesters, many chanting "freedom, freedom," pelted the police with rocks.
Sunday's clashes, which come a day after two people were killed and hundreds wounded in similar unrest in the capital and other major cities, are stoking tensions eight days before the start of the country's first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections. The violence reflects the rising public anger over the slow pace of reforms and apparent attempts by Egypt's ruling generals to retain power over a future civilian government.
"We have a single demand: The marshal must step down and be replaced by a civilian council," said protester Ahmed Hani, referring Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Egypt's military ruler and Mubarak's longtime defense minister.
"The violence yesterday showed us that Mubarak is still in power," said Hani, who was wounded in the forehead by a rubber bullet. He spoke over chants of "freedom, freedom" by hundreds of protesters around him.
Rocks, shattered glass and trash covered the pavement in Tahrir and the side streets leading off the square, while a cloud of white smoke from tear gas hung in the air. Several hundred protesters were camping out on the lawn of the square's traffic island, and protesters manning barricades into the square checked the IDs of anyone trying to enter.
The windows of the main campus of the American University in Cairo, which overlooks the square, were shattered and stores were shuttered. "The marshal is Mubarak's dog," read one of a fresh crop of graffiti in the square.
An Interior Ministry official said 55 protesters have been arrested since the violence began on Saturday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Yahya el-Sawi, a 21-year-old university student, said he was enraged by the sight of riot police beating up protesters already hurt in an earlier attack by the security forces. "I did not support the sit-in at the beginning, but when I saw this brutality I had to come back to be with my brothers," he said.
Many of the protesters had red eyes and coughed incessantly. Some wore surgical masks to help combat the tear gas. A few fainted, overwhelmed by the gas.
Hundreds of protesters gathered near the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of police, to offer the Muslim noon prayers, but came under police attack using tear gas and rubber bullets. Ali Saber, a protester who attended the prayer, said the man who led the prayer was hit in the shoulder by a gas canister.
Doctors staffing two field hospitals in the square said they have treated around 700 protesters so far on Sunday. Alaa Mohammed, a doctor, said most of those treated suffered breathing problems or wounds caused by rubber bullets.
"The police are targeting the head, not the legs as they normally do," said Mohammed.
Protesters were using social networking sites on the Internet to call on Egyptians to join them, and there were reports of several demonstrations headed to the square, including one from Cairo University.
The military, which took over from Mubarak, has repeatedly pledged to hand over power to an elected government but has yet to set a specific date. According to one timetable floated by the army, the handover will happen after presidential elections are held late next year or early in 2013. The protesters say this is too late and accuse the military of dragging its feet. They want a handover to take place immediately after the end of parliamentary elections in March.
Sunday's clashes mark a continuation of the violence a day earlier, when police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and beat protesters with batons, clearing the square at one point and pushing the fighting into surrounding side streets of downtown Cairo.
At least one protester was killed in Cairo, and another in Alexandria, officials said, and 676 injured.
The government has urged protesters to clear the square.
A member of the military council, Maj. Gen. Mohsen el-Fangari, said protesters' calls for change ahead of the election were a threat to the state.
"What is the point of being in Tahrir?" he asked, speaking by phone to a private TV channel. "What is the point of this strike, of the million marches? Aren't there legal channels to pursue demands in a way that won't impact Egypt ... internationally?"
"The aim of what is going on is to shake the backbone of the state, which is the armed forces."
In a warning, he said, "If security is not applied, we will implement the rule of law. Anyone who does wrong will pay for it."
Saturday's confrontation was one of the few since the uprising to involve the police, which have largely stayed in the background while the military took charge of security. There was no military presence in and around the square on Saturday or Sunday. The black-clad police were a hated symbol of Mubarak's regime.
Some of the wounded had blood streaming down their faces and many had to be carried out of the square by fellow protesters to waiting ambulances. Human rights activists accused police of using excessive force.
An Egyptian protester shows the V-sign for victory during clashes with riot police at Cairo's landmark Tahrir Square on November 20, 2011. Several hundred Egyptians occupied Cairo's Tahrir Square with sporadic clashes between protesters and the police following a night of deadly violence, an AFP correspondent said. (KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)
An Egyptian protester shows the V-sign for victory during clashes with riot police at Cairo's landmark Tahrir Square on November 20, 2011. Several hundred Egyptians occupied Cairo's Tahrir Square with sporadic clashes between protesters and the police following a night of deadly violence, an AFP correspondent said. (KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)
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An Egyptian protester shows the V-sign for victory during clashes with riot police at Cairo's landmark Tahrir Square on November 20, 2011. Several hundred Egyptians occupied Cairo's Tahrir Square with sporadic clashes between protesters and the police following a night of deadly violence, an AFP correspondent said. (KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)
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VIENNA (Reuters) ? Major powers closed ranks on Thursday to increase pressure on Iran to address fears about its atomic ambitions, and the U.N. nuclear chief said it was his duty to "alert the world" about suspected Iranian efforts to develop atom bombs.
The six powers involved in diplomacy on Iran -- the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany -- overcame divisions exposed by a hard-hitting U.N. nuclear report on Iran last week and presented a united front toward Tehran.
They hammered out a joint resolution in intense negotiations and submitted it to the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based U.N. body, which is expected to debate and vote on it on Friday.
But it will not satisfy those in the West and in Israel, Iran's arch-enemy, who had hoped IAEA head Yukiya Amano's document would trigger concrete international action to rein in Tehran, such as an IAEA referral of its case to the U.N. Security Council.
Last week's IAEA report, which assessed that Iran has been conducting research and experiments geared to developing a nuclear weapons capability, has stoked tensions in the Middle East and raised a clamor in Western capitals for harsher sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
In November 2009, IAEA governors including Russia and China rebuked Iran for building a uranium enrichment plant in secret. Iran rejected that vote as "intimidation."
There has been concern that if the powers cannot settle their differences over how to nudge Iran into serious nuclear negotiations, then Israel, which feels endangered by Iranian nuclear aspirations, will attack it.
Israel is widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal to deter numerically superior enemies, but has never confirmed or denied it.
On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned on the eve of talks with his Israeli counterpart that a strike on Iran could harm the world economy, saying the U.S. focus was on diplomatic pressure and sanctions.
"There are going to be economic consequences to that (an Iran strike), that could impact not just on our economy but the world economy," Panetta told reporters traveling with him on Thursday to Canada, where he will attend a security forum and hold bilateral talks with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Amano stressed the need for Iran to engage in serious talks to clarify issues in his report and said he wanted to send a high-level mission to the country to tackle increasing concerns about the nature of its nuclear activities.
"It is clear that Iran has a case to answer," Amano told a news conference on the sidelines of the board meeting.
"We have to alert the world before nuclear proliferation actually takes place."
Iran says it is enriching uranium only for nuclear power plants, not weapons, dismissing the intelligence information in the IAEA report obtained mainly from Western states as fabricated, and accusing the IAEA of pro-Western bias.
Amano said agency experts had examined the information carefully and put together a "clear, coherent and consistent picture" about Iran's activities.
He said he had written to the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, this month to suggest the visit, which would air issues raised by the IAEA report.
Amano said he hoped a "suitable date" could be agreed soon for his team's visit to Iran, which permits IAEA inspections of declared nuclear sites but since 2008 has stonewalled an agency investigation into "alleged studies" applicable to atom bombs.
BLUNTEST STATEMENT YET
"Throughout the past three years, we have obtained additional information which gives us a fuller picture of Iran's nuclear program and increases our concerns about possible military dimensions," Amano told the board.
"The information indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device," he said, in his bluntest public statement so far on Iran's contested nuclear program. Diplomats described the powers' draft as a compromise text between Western states, which would have preferred tougher language, and Russia and China, which resisted.
It expressed "deep and increasing concern" about Iran's nuclear program and called on it to open up fully to U.N. inspectors, according to a draft seen by Reuters.
The text urged Iran "to engage seriously and without preconditions in talks" to address nuclear concerns and asked Amano to report back to the board's next meeting in March.
It stopped short of actions with teeth such as reporting Iran once again to the Security Council, which has imposed four rounds of sanctions on the major oil producer since 2006. Russia and China oppose any more extensive measures.
But the fact that the six big powers ironed out an IAEA resolution will be welcomed in the West after Amano's report prompted Russia to complain that it was politicized and dimmed chances of a negotiated solution to the Iran nuclear dispute.
In contrast, Western states seized on the document to try to step up pressure on Tehran in the form of farther-reaching economic sanctions, which Russia and China oppose.
"It does the job," one senior Western diplomat said about the resolution. "It is always a compromise, but we want it to have the backing of as many of the board members as possible. That is the aim."
Russia has significant trade ties with Iran and also built its first nuclear power plant, launched at Bushehr earlier this year. China is a major importer of Iranian oil.
(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Halifax, Editing by Richard Balmforth and Eric Walsh)
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PRESCOTT, Ariz. ? The self-help author who led an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony that ended with three deaths was sentenced Friday to two years behind bars ? not enough for the victims' family members, who earlier in the day yelled at James Arthur Ray and said he was "not worthy to spit shine" the victims' shoes.
A judge handed down three, two-year prison terms to be served concurrently and ordered Ray to pay more than $57,000 in restitution.
"I find that the aggravating circumstance of emotional harm is so strong and such that probation is simply unwarranted in this case," Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Warren Darrow said.
Authorities immediately took custody of Ray, who will serve his time with the state Department of Corrections.
Ray was convicted on a trio of negligent homicide charges earlier this year in the deaths of Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y.; James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee; and Liz Neuman, 49, of Prior Lake, Minn.
Family members of the three lashed out at Ray earlier Friday while asking the judge to hand down the maximum sentence of nine years in prison. They said they were appalled that Ray continued to deliver self-help messages through the Internet while he faced criminal charges.
"There was nothing you could teach Liz, James or Kirby about honor, integrity and impeccability," said Neuman's cousin, Lily Clark, drawing from Ray's principle teachings. "But they could have taught you a lot. They were born spiritual warriors, and you are not worthy to spit shine their combat boots."
Neuman's daughter, Andrea Puckett, later said she doesn't believe Ray grasps his role in the deaths, and called the sentence a joke.
"It's very frightening the control he has over people and his mentality," she said. "That's not going to change."
The victims' families also have blasted Ray for offering no solace for their loss until recently.
In asking for leniency, Ray told the judge he would have stopped the ceremony had he known people were dying or in distress. But he offered no excuses for his lack of action as chaos unfolded outside the structure at a retreat near Sedona.
"At the end of the day, I lost three friends, and I lost them on my watch," Ray said, standing before the victims' families. "Whatever errors in judgment or mistakes I have made, I'm going to have to live with those for the rest of my life. I truly understand your disappointment in my actions after, I do. I'm disappointed in myself."
Ray will have to serve 85 percent of his sentence. That comes out to almost 600 days, taking into account the credit he received for 24 days served. That's roughly the amount of time he's been out of jail on bond since his arrest early last year.
The courtroom was silent as the sentence was handed down. The victims' families held hands and braced for a decision, as did Ray's parents and brother.
Ray's family offered their condolences to the victims' families in a statement following the sentencing hearing and asked if they'd find forgiveness in their hearts.
"We were fortunate enough to meet with James after the sentencing," said his brother, Jon Ray. "He was in good spirits and said this would give him the opportunity to help people in prison that need it."
Defense attorneys said they would appeal, likely on the grounds that errors by the prosecution tainted the case.
County Attorney Sheila Polk hoped Ray would get the maximum and believed she had made a strong case for accountability, justice and deterrence. But, she said, "certainly some prison time over probation is better than no prison at all."
Ray originally was charged with manslaughter, but jurors rejected that he was reckless in his handling of the ceremony that highlighted Ray's five-day "Spiritual Warrior" event. Ray's attorneys suggested that toxins or poisons contributed to the deaths, but jurors said that theory was not credible.
Ray's motivational mantra drew dozens of people to the retreat with a promise that the sweat lodge typically used by American Indians to cleanse the body would lead to powerful breakthroughs. When the victims' families discovered something went wrong, they said Ray made no attempt to identify people in the hospital.
Participants began showing signs of distress about halfway through the two-hour sweat lodge ceremony. By the time it was over, some were vomiting, struggling to breathe and lying lifeless on the ground. Brown and Shore were pronounced dead. Neuman slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness. She died more than a week later at a Flagstaff hospital.
"He did some good, but this is about what he didn't do," said Shore's mother, Jane Shore-Gripp. "He had the opportunity to save three people, and he didn't."
The trial was a mix of lengthy witness testimony and legal wrangling that lasted four months. Witnesses painted conflicting pictures of Ray, with some describing him as a coach who encouraged participants to do their best to endure the heat but never forced them to remain in the sweat lodge.
Others said they learned through breathing exercises, a 36-hour fast, and a game in which Ray portrayed God that they dare not question him, and they lost the physical and mental ability to care for themselves or others.
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FILE - In this Nov. 5, 2011 file photo, former Penn State football defensive coordinator Gerald "Jerry" Sandusky sits in a car as he leaves the office of Centre County Magisterial District Judge Leslie A. Dutchcot in State College, Pa. Sandusky, who is charged with sexually abusing eight boys in a scandal that has rocked the university, said in an telephone interview with Bob Costas Monday night on NBC News' "Rock Center" that there was no abuse and that any activities in a campus shower with a boy were just horseplay, not molestation. (AP Photo/The Patriot-News, Andy Colwell, File)
FILE - In this Nov. 5, 2011 file photo, former Penn State football defensive coordinator Gerald "Jerry" Sandusky sits in a car as he leaves the office of Centre County Magisterial District Judge Leslie A. Dutchcot in State College, Pa. Sandusky, who is charged with sexually abusing eight boys in a scandal that has rocked the university, said in an telephone interview with Bob Costas Monday night on NBC News' "Rock Center" that there was no abuse and that any activities in a campus shower with a boy were just horseplay, not molestation. (AP Photo/The Patriot-News, Andy Colwell, File)
In this photo provided by NBC, NBC News anchor Brian Williams, left, talks with Bob Costas about Costas' interview with Jerry Sandusky during NBC News' "Rock Center With Brian Williams" Monday, Nov. 14, 2011. Sandusky, a former Penn State football assistant coach charged with sexually abusing eight boys in a scandal that has rocked the university, said that there was no abuse and that any activities in a campus shower with a boy were just horseplay, not molestation. (AP Photo/NBC, Peter Kramer)
In this screen grab provided by CBS, former Penn State graduate assistant Mike McQueary, left, speaks to CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011 at an unknown location. McQueary is cited by a grand jury report as witnessing Jerry Sandusky allegedly sodomizing a 10-year-old boy in a Penn State locker room. (AP Photo/CBS) MANDATORY CREDIT
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) ? Penn State campus police and their counterparts in State College said Wednesday that they had no record of Mike McQueary reporting an alleged sexual assault by Jerry Sandusky on a 10-year-old boy in a campus shower.
The details ran counter to McQueary's claims in an email to former teammates and made available to The Associated Press this week.
McQueary, then a graduate assistant, wrote in the email that he had discussions with police about what he saw. In the email, McQueary did not specify which police department he spoke to.
State College borough police chief Tom King said McQueary didn't make a report to his department.
Campus police referred questions on the Sandusky case to the university's public information office.
"At this point we have no record of any police report being filed in 2002" by McQueary in connection with the Sandusky case, university spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said, adding police searched their records Wednesday.
The football building is on university property, so campus police would have been the most likely to respond for a police call.
Mountz also noted the 23-page grand jury report was the state attorney general's summary of testimony, so it's unclear what McQueary's full testimony was.
The news came after a new judge was assigned to handle the child sex abuse charges against Sandusky, whose televised defense earlier this week drew a rebuke from a lawyer for one of his accusers.
The change removed a State College judge with ties to a charity founded by Sandusky for at-risk children, The Second Mile.
Harrisburg attorney Ben Andreozzi said he represents a client who will testify against Sandusky, who is accused of abusing eight boys, some on campus, over 15 years.
"I am appalled by the fact that Mr. Sandusky has elected to re-victimize these young men at a time when they should be healing," Andreozzi said in a statement released by his office. "He fully intends to testify that he was severely sexually assaulted by Mr. Sandusky."
Sandusky's lawyer, Joe Amendola, appeared with him on NBC's "Rock Center" on Monday night and cast doubt on the evidence in the case.
"We anticipate we're going to have at least several of those kids come forward and say, 'This never happened. This is me. This is the allegation. It never occurred,'" Amendola said.
Andreozzi said he has his "finger on the pulse" of the case and knows of no accusers changing their stories or refusing to testify.
"To the contrary, others are actually coming forward, and I will have more information for you later this week," Andreozzi said.
Sandusky, 67, appeared on the show by phone and said he had showered with boys but never molested them.
Sandusky is due in court on Dec. 7, and the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts announced that a Westmoreland County senior district judge would preside over his preliminary hearing. Robert E. Scott is taking over the hearing from Centre County District Judge Leslie Dutchcot.
Dutchcot has donated money to The Second Mile, where authorities say Sandusky met his victims.
The office said Scott has no known ties to Penn State or The Second Mile.
Amendola defended the decision to have his client go on television, telling the Centre Daily Times on Wednesday the move was designed to demonstrate he had a defense.
"The more people who hear him explain that he didn't commit the acts of which he's been charged, the better off he's going to be down the road," Amendola told the newspaper.
It remains unclear how many accusers have surfaced more than a week after state police and the attorney general's office said at a news conference they were seeking additional potential victims and witnesses.
State police spokeswoman Maria Finn said investigators have told her that published accounts reporting how many people have come forward are inaccurate and they are not disclosing their internal figures.
Some plaintiffs' lawyers are starting to advertise on their websites for potential Sandusky victims, vowing to get justice. Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul, Minn., attorney, has long represented clergy abuse victims and told The Associated Press that he has been retained by several people he described as Sandusky victims.
"There's a great deal of fury and confusion," particularly because Sandusky is free on bail, Anderson said. "Getting (them) help and cooperating with law enforcement is our first priority."
The "time for reckoning," in the form of civil lawsuits, will come later, Anderson said.
Anderson declined to say whether his clients are among the eight boys who were labeled as victims in the grand jury report.
Berks County lawyer Jay Abramowitch, who has represented about 150 child sex victims, many of them in clergy abuse cases, said he is following the Penn State case closely. He declined to say if he was representing anyone accusing Sandusky of abuse.
"The real significance of what happened in the Sandusky situation is that people are beginning to understand the cover-up that goes on in any structural organization that employs a pedophile," he said. "And that's why these pedophiles are running wild."
"What's the answer? One of the answers is to allow these victims the right to go to court and file suit against not only the pedophile but the group that employed them ... and didn't do anything," Abramowitch said.
Abramowitch long fought to get around the legal time limit for victims to sue the Roman Catholic Church for decades-old abuse. In 2005, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected his argument that the suits should go through on grounds the church had concealed the abuse.
In State College, Penn State announced a physician and member of its board of trustees who played football and wrestled for the school would serve as acting athletic director. The school named Dr. David M. Joyner, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine and a business consultant, as the interim replacement for Tim Curley.
Curley is on leave as athletic director as he defends himself against criminal charges that he failed to properly alert authorities when told of an allegation of a sexual assault by Sandusky against a child and that he lied to a grand jury. He maintains his innocence.
Joyner's position on the board, where he has been a trustee since 2000, is being suspended as he takes on the new duties.
Gov. Tom Corbett again defended the pace of the investigation, which he helped launch and oversaw while serving as attorney general until January.
"Could anybody guarantee he wasn't out there touching children? There are no such guarantees, unless he was sitting in jail," Corbett, a Republican, said in Philadelphia. "But we did what we thought was in the best interests of the investigation in getting a good case put together."
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., introduced a bill that would require all adults to report child abuse and neglect to police or local child protective agencies.
And new details were emerging about how the case ended up in the hands of the state attorney general's office.
Former Centre County District Attorney Michael Madeira said that his wife's brother was Sandusky's adopted son.
"I reviewed it, and I made the decision it needed to be investigated further," Madeira said. "But the apparent conflict of interest created an impediment for me to make those kinds of decisions."
The scandal's fallout extended to former Pittsburgh Steelers great Franco Harris, whose relationship with a southwestern Pennsylvania racetrack and casino was put on hiatus after he chastised Penn State's trustees for showing "no courage" for firing coach Joe Paterno, who has not been charged with a crime and is not considered a target of prosecutors.
Harris, who played for Paterno from 1968 to 1971, had recently signed as a spokesman for The Meadows Racetrack and Casino in Washington, Pa.
___
Scolforo reported from Harrisburg. Dale and AP writer Kathy Matheson reported from Philadelphia.
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When it comes to brain development, the missing ingredient in bottle-feeding is a bond with the mother, not the chemicals in the milk
?| November 16, 2011
Children breast-fed longer than six months scored a 3.8-point IQ margin over those who were bottle-fed, according to a seven-year study by researchers at Jagiellonian University Medical College in Poland.
Medical epidemiologist Wieslaw Jedrychowski and colleagues followed 468 babies born to nonsmoking mothers. The children were tested five times at regular intervals from infancy through preschool age. The data showed that cognitive abilities of preschoolers who were breast-fed scored significantly higher than bottle-fed infants, and IQ score was directly proportional to how long the infants had been breast-fed: IQs were 2.1 points higher in children who were breast-fed for three months; 2.6 points higher when babies were breast-fed for four to six months; 3.8 points higher in children breast-fed longer than six months. The results were published in the May 2011 issue of the European Journal of Pediatrics.
This research confirms observations reported 70 years ago by Carolyn Hoefer and Mattie Hardy in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as many subsequent studies. This body of research provides the scientific basis for the World Health Organization's recommendation that all infants should be exclusively breast-fed for the first six months of life. But what is the missing ingredient that undermines the cognitive development of bottle-fed babies?
Chemists searching for a specific compound in mother's milk have been overlooking the obvious difference between breast-feeding and bottle-feeding?something that could easily account for the difference in cognitive development, wrote Tonse Raju, a pediatrician and neonatalogist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the current issue of Breastfeeding Medicine, October 2011. (Raju was not involved in the Jedrychowski study.)
"Sometimes even the most obvious facts need to be reiterated," he wrote. "An infant suckling at his or her mother's breast is not simply receiving a meal, but is intensely engaged in a dynamic, bidirectional, biological dialogue." It is the physical and psychological bonding and interaction between infant and mother during breast-feeding that nurtures development of an infant's cognitive abilities.
Jedrychowski strongly agrees with Raju's statement, and adds: "I believe the IQ effect may in part be explained by this dynamic interaction between mother and child in the breast-feeding process."
Brain bulk and white matter in early life
During the first year of life, a baby's brain weight nearly doubles. Much of that increase comes from growth of white matter, the electrical insulation on nerve fibers that speeds transmission of electrical impulses at least 50 times faster than uninsulated fibers. New research provides insight into why formation of this insulation (myelination) takes place after birth?during childhood and adolescence. Early childhood experiences influence myelination and helps the developing brain adapt to its environment, rather than form along strict genetically determined lines.
Martin Teicher, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and chief of the Laboratory of Developmental Psychopharmacology at McLean Hospital, says that his current research suggests that parental verbal affection is the most important factor affecting IQ early in life. And his previous research has showed that exposure to parental and peer verbal aggression is associated with alterations in white matter tracts. So it is not just brain bulk that increases in the first year of a baby's life; major developmental changes in visual, motor and voice-processing regions of the brain take place. These are the foundations for language acquisition, and all of them are influenced to a considerable extent by what a baby experiences.
Donna Ferriero, professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at University of California, San Francisco's Benioff Children's Hospital, agrees that experiences early in life can have a profound influence on children's cognitive development. "Certainly there is substantial preclinical and clinical literature arguing that early life stress negatively impacts brain development and future social and cognitive interactions," she says. "Conversely, there are data showing that environmental enrichment can reverse adverse effects of early brain injury."
Simply put, a bottle is a poor substitute for a breast when it comes to enriching a baby's brain. At such a critical time in an infant's development, the experience of suckling and engaging in a positive sensory exchange with the mother facilitates optimal nurturing of the growing brain.
Breast-feeding biochemistry
It is difficult to separate the nutritional and behavioral benefits of breast-feeding from epidemiologic data alone, Jedrychowski notes. There is a need for further experimental studies on mother?newborn interaction during breast-feeding.
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Some of the links between that biochemistry and behavior are already worked out. "How a baby is fed versus what it is fed is an important factor that has been overlooked in many studies," Raju says. "Suckling at the breast results in changes in the mother's brain?increased blood flow and oxytocin release [a hormone promoting bonding between mother and infant], and probably in the baby's brain."
A study led by Terry Pivik at the Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center examining brain waves in infants and published last year in the journal Early Human Development supports Raju's conclusion. Electroencephalogram, or EEG, (brain-wave) activity was measured in infants who were either bottle-fed milk-based or soy-based formula or breast-fed to track neurodevelopment at three, six, nine and 12 months of age. The EEG changes reflect significant milestones in brain development, including increased myelination and synapse formation as well as development of connections between the left and right cerebral cortices. The research was motivated by contents in the formula and mother's milk, not the feeding method. The nutritionists were concerned that estrogenlike compounds in soy-based formula might have adverse effects on infant neuro-development, or that omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are present in breast milk and absent from milk-based baby formula until recently, could explain why breast-feeding boosts a baby's cognitive development. The results were unexpected: Bottle-feeding, regardless of the formula used, accounted for the differences. Brain-wave development was similar in bottle-fed babies, regardless of whether milk-based or soy-based formula was used, but different in breast-fed infants "Mothers who must bottle-feed for work should use breast milk collected using a breast pump, but they should breast-feed at home at night," Raju advises.
Mothers who cannot breast-feed should not be alarmed; in fact if Raju's analysis is correct, they should be relieved. The missing ingredient may not be in the infant formula itself, but rather in the experience of an infant in a mother's arms feeding at her breast. This natural mode of feeding promotes the closest and most beneficial physical and emotional dialogue between mother and child, but recognizing the importance of this interaction, mothers and fathers of formula-fed infants can take care not to "overlook the obvious," and work to provide the ingredient that is missing in a baby bottle.
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NEW YORK?? R&B diva Patti LaBelle hurled curses ? and half a bottle of water ? at a woman and her 18-month-old daughter after a dust-up over parenting in an apartment building lobby, according to a lawsuit filed Monday and the family's lawyer.
LaBelle's publicists and lawyer didn't immediately respond to Kevin and Roseanna Monk's lawsuit.
The couple live in a Manhattan building where the Grammy Award-winning singer stayed for a time while appearing in the Broadway musical "Fela!" last fall, said the Monks' lawyer, Samuel L. Davis.
Story: Patti LaBelle files countersuit over beating caseHe said LaBelle chastised Roseanna Monk for letting the toddler take some steps away from the mother as she grappled with some luggage and a car seat in the building's lobby on the afternoon of Nov. 11, 2010. After Monk scooped up the child and told LaBelle it was none of her business, the singer threw water on them from a bottle she was carrying and then launched into an obscenity-filled tirade, he said.
When the child started wailing, Roseanna Monk made a remark to LaBelle, and the singer charged at her and tried to hit her, Davis said.
Just because the season is almost over doesn?t mean there isn?t time for one more ballroom battle on "Dancing With the Sta...
The Monks filed a complaint with police; no arrests were made.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, comes five months after a West Point cadet sued LaBelle over a Houston airport scuffle with her bodyguards. He said they attacked him for no reason in March 2010. She countersued the cadet, saying he tried to get into her limousine and was drunk and using racial slurs, which he denied.
Story: Patti LaBelle sued over alleged airport beatingDavis said Roseanna Monk had asked LaBelle for an apology and a donation to a children's cancer charity but was rebuffed. The Monks feel "someone's got to teach her even a diva can't attack and frighten and assault regular people in the building," their lawyer said.
LaBelle's singing career has spanned more than four decades, two Grammys and several hits, including the 1974 disco smash "Lady Marmalade."
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Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45301668/ns/today-entertainment/
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