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    Poverty may hinder kids’ brain development, study says

    Reduced gray matter, lower test scores reported for poor children

July 20, 2015

    Poverty appears to affect the brain development of children, hampering the growth of gray matter and impairing their academic performance, researchers report. Poor children tend to have as much as 10 percent less gray matter in several areas of the brain associated with academic skills, according to a study published July 20 in JAMA Pediatrics. “We used to think of poverty as a ‘social’ issue, but what we are learning now is that it is a biomedical issue that is affecting brain growth,” said senior study author Seth Pollak, a professor of psychology, pediatrics, anthropology and neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

   The results could have profound implications for the United States, where low-income students now represent the majority of kids in public schools, the study authors said in background information. Fifty-one percent of public school students came from low-income families in 2013.

    Previous studies have shown that children living in poverty tend to perform poorly in school, the authors say. They have markedly lower test scores, and do not go as far in school as their well-off peers.

    To see whether this is due to some physical effect that poverty might have on a child’s brain, Pollak and his colleagues analyzed MRI scans of 389 typically developing kids aged 4 to 22, assessing the amount of gray matter in the whole brain as well as the frontal lobe, temporal lobe and hippocampus. “Gray matter contains most of the brain’s neuronal cells,” Pollak said. “In other words, other parts of the brain – like white matter – carry information from one section of the brain to another. But the gray matter is where seeing and hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision making and self-control occur.”

    Children living below 150 percent of the federal poverty level – US$ 36,375 for a family of four – had 3 percent to 4 percent less gray matter in important regions of their brain, compared to the norm, the authors found. Those in families living below the federal poverty level fared even worse, with 8 percent to 10 percent less gray matter in those same brain regions. The federal poverty level in 2015 is US$ 24,250 for a family of four. These same kids scored an average of four to seven points lower on standardized tests, the researchers said.

    The team estimated that as much as 20 percent of the gap in test scores could be explained by reduced brain development. A host of poverty-related issues likely contribute to developmental lags in children’s brains, Pollak said. Low-income kids are less likely to get the type of stimulation from their parents and environment that helps the brain grow, he said. For example, they hear fewer new words, and have fewer opportunities to read or play games. Their brain development also can be affected by factors related to impoverishment, such as high stress levels, poor sleep, crowding and poor nutrition, Pollak said.

    This study serves as a call to action, given what’s already known about the effects of poverty on child development, said Dr. Joan Luby, a professor of child psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “The thing that’s really important about this study in the context of the broader literature is that there really is enough scientific evidence to take public health action at this point,” said Luby, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. “Poverty negatively affects brain development, and we also know that early interventions are powerfully effective,” Luby said. “They are more effective than interventions later in life, and they also are cost-effective.”

(www.nlm.nih.gov. Adaptado.)

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Nobel winner Malala opens school for Syrian refugees

Sylvia Westall

July 13, 2015

Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

  Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, celebrated her 18th birthday in Lebanon on Sunday by opening a school for Syrian refugee girls and called on world leaders to invest in “books not bullets”. Malala became a symbol of defiance after she was shot on a school bus in Pakistan in 2012 by the Taliban for advocating girls’ rights to education. She continued campaigning and won the Nobel in 2014.

   “I decided to be in Lebanon because I believe that the voices of the Syrian refugees need to be heard and they have been ignored for so long,” Malala told Reuters in a schoolroom decorated with drawings of butterflies. The Malala Fund, a non-profit organization that supports local education projects, provided most of the funding for the school, set up by Lebanon’s Kayany Foundation in the Bekaa Valley, close to the Syrian border. The Kayany Foundation, established by Syrian Nora Joumblatt in response to Syria’s refugee crisis, has already completed three other new schools to give free education to Syrian children in Lebanon. The Malala school can welcome up to 200 girls aged 14 to 18.

   “Today on my first day as an adult, on behalf of the world’s children, I demand of leaders we must invest in books instead of bullets,” Malala said in a speech. Lebanon is home to at least 1.2 million of the 4 million refugees that have fled Syria’s war to neighboring countries. There are about 500,000 Syrian school-age children in Lebanon, but only a fifth are in formal education. “We are in danger of losing generations of young Syrian girls due to the lack of education,” Joumblatt said in a speech at the opening of the school. “Desperate and displaced Syrians are increasingly seeing early marriage as a way to secure the social and financial future of their daughters. We need to provide an alternative: Keep young girls in school instead of being pressured into wedlock.”

    Lebanon, which allows informal settlements on land rented by refugees, says it can no longer cope with the influx from Syria’s four-year conflict. More than one in four people living in Lebanon is a refugee. The United Nations says the number of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries is expected to reach 4.27 million by the end of the year. “In Lebanon as well as in Jordan, an increasing number of refugees are being turned back at the border,” Malala said. “This is inhuman and this is shameful.”

    Her father Ziauddin said he was proud she was carrying on her activism into adulthood. “This is the mission we have taken for the last 8-9 years. A small moment for the education of girls in Swat Valley: it is spreading now all over the world,” he said.

(www.reuters.com. Adaptado.)

Leia o excerto da crônica “Mineirinho” de Clarice Lispector (1925-1977), publicada na revista Senhor em 1962, para responder à questão.

   É, suponho que é em mim, como um dos representantes de nós, que devo procurar por que está doendo a morte de um facínora1. E por que é que mais me adianta contar os treze tiros que mataram Mineirinho2 do que os seus crimes. Perguntei a minha cozinheira o que pensava sobre o assunto. Vi no seu rosto a pequena convulsão de um conflito, o mal-estar de não entender o que se sente, o de precisar trair sensações contraditórias por não saber como harmonizá-las. Fatos irredutíveis, mas revolta irredutível também, a violenta compaixão da revolta. Sentir-se dividido na própria perplexidade diante de não poder esquecer que Mineirinho era perigoso e já matara demais; e no entanto nós o queríamos vivo. A cozinheira se fechou um pouco, vendo-me talvez como a justiça que se vinga. Com alguma raiva de mim, que estava mexendo na sua alma, respondeu fria: “O que eu sinto não serve para se dizer. Quem não sabe que Mineirinho era criminoso? Mas tenho certeza de que ele se salvou e já entrou no céu”. Respondi-lhe que “mais do que muita gente que não matou”.

  Por quê? No entanto a primeira lei, a que protege corpo e vida insubstituíveis, é a de que não matarás. Ela é a minha maior garantia: assim não me matam, porque eu não quero morrer, e assim não me deixam matar, porque ter matado será a escuridão para mim.

   Esta é a lei. Mas há alguma coisa que, se me faz ouvir o primeiro e o segundo tiro com um alívio de segurança, no terceiro me deixa alerta, no quarto desassossegada, o quinto e o sexto me cobrem de vergonha, o sétimo e o oitavo eu ouço com o coração batendo de horror, no nono e no décimo minha boca está trêmula, no décimo primeiro digo em espanto o nome de Deus, no décimo segundo chamo meu irmão. O décimo terceiro tiro me assassina — porque eu sou o outro. Porque eu quero ser o outro.

    Essa justiça que vela meu sono, eu a repudio, humilhada por precisar dela. Enquanto isso durmo e falsamente me salvo. Nós, os sonsos essenciais. Para que minha casa funcione, exijo de mim como primeiro dever que eu seja sonsa, que eu não exerça a minha revolta e o meu amor, guardados. Se eu não for sonsa, minha casa estremece. Eu devo ter esquecido que embaixo da casa está o terreno, o chão onde nova casa poderia ser erguida. Enquanto isso dormimos e falsamente nos salvamos. Até que treze tiros nos acordam, e com horror digo tarde demais – vinte e oito anos depois que Mineirinho nasceu – que ao homem acuado, que a esse não nos matem. Porque sei que ele é o meu erro. E de uma vida inteira, por Deus, o que se salva às vezes é apenas o erro, e eu sei que não nos salvaremos enquanto nosso erro não nos for precioso. Meu erro é o meu espelho, onde vejo o que em silêncio eu fiz de um homem. Meu erro é o modo como vi a vida se abrir na sua carne e me espantei, e vi a matéria de vida, placenta e sangue, a lama viva. Em Mineirinho se rebentou o meu modo de viver.

(Clarice Lispector. Para não esquecer, 1999.)

1facínora: diz-se de ou indivíduo que executa um crime com crueldade ou perversidade acentuada.

2Mineirinho: apelido pelo qual era conhecido o criminoso carioca José Miranda Rosa. Acuado pela polícia, acabou crivado de balas e seu corpo foi encontrado à margem da Estrada Grajaú-Jacarepaguá, no Rio de Janeiro.