Word: beginnings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Consumers have lost access to credit. The fact that mortgage rates have dropped does not even begin to offset that. Qualifying for a mortgage is harder than ever. Banks have reason to be cautious. One of the large credit bureaus just released a report that says 4.7% of payments for bank-issued credit cards were late sixty days or more in March, an increase of 38% over the same month last year. According to Reuters, "In March, lenders closed 20 million card accounts, sending the total down by 58 million since the peak in July 2008 to 380 million." Banks...
...recession has gone on so long and has been so crippling that the eyes of the wishful begin to play tricks. A small piece of economic information, like one month of very modestly improved housing numbers or one week of a slight decrease in jobless claims, sets off a chain reaction. If one set of numbers is OK, the next set will be better. Real estate prices will stop falling everywhere, if they stop falling in hard hit Nevada. (See pictures of Las Vegas...
...American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that doctors begin screening babies for autism at 18 months, but researchers have yet to refine the tools for making a reliable diagnosis at that age. One issue, says Catherine Lord, director of the University of Michigan Autism & Communication Disorders Center, is that there is so much individual variability in how babies develop. Another challenge is that many of the signature signs of autism - delayed speech, repetitive movements or fixations on particular toys or objects - involve language and motor skills that babies have not yet acquired. That's why identifying the signs of autism before...
Several studies from across the country are looking at how to draw at-risk infants into the social world so that they will develop more normally. One National Institutes of Health-funded study, at the University of Washington, begins intervention for at-risk babies at 8 months, says Dawson, who adds, "What we are doing is teaching the parents how to structure interactions to promote eye contact and babbling." Parents learn, for example, to engage their babies in settings where there are few distractions so that facial expressions and language are more salient. They also learn strategies to calm infants...
Ethics and Extinction I applaud the tireless efforts to save endangered species and vanishing habitats, which you address in your cover story, but we need to begin to deal with the root problem: the exploding population of human beings [April 13]. How about a sterilization credit, like a carbon credit, to encourage people not to reproduce? We need to export and help finance information about all forms of birth control in all parts of the world, including the U.S. We have no trouble making decisions to limit the numbers of other species we deem overabundant...