Saturday, November 1, 2014


News Clips For The Day


HOUSING SHIFTS – TWO ARTICLES


Younger adults choosing to rent, not to own
By JIM AXELROD CBS NEWS
October 31, 2014, 7:10 PM

NEW YORK CITY -- Owning a home has long been the American dream. But a report this week from the Census Bureau says home ownership has fallen to a near 20-year low of just over 64 percent. For many Americans, owning a home has become a dream deferred.

Forty-five-year-old Matt Purdue has a 10-year-old daughter and a good job in public relations. What he doesn't have is a house, which is just how he likes it.

"I never have to deal with maintenance, broken pipes, cleaning the gutters, mowing the lawn," said Purdue.

But this isn't just a question of convenience, Purdue had his eyes open the last half dozen years.

"I have so many friends who own homes that are still underwater since the financial crisis," said Purdue. They "can't sell their home, can't move, don't want to rent it out, and they're just miserable."

Purdue isn't alone. Home ownership is down across the board, but it's fallen most among Gen X-ers -- those between 35 and 44 -- dropping from nearly 67 percent before the recession to 59 percent today.

Ownership among millennials -- those under 35 -- fell as well, from 41 to 36 percent.

"It's hard for them to believe that owning a home is the best way to build wealth anymore," said Realtytrac's Daren Blomquist. "They've seen in some markets, home prices went down 30, 40, 50 percent during the housing bubble and the burst.

Blomquist expects those rates to rise if a sustained economic recovery generates more security for millennials and X-ers. If not, they'll join Matt Purdue as members of home ownership's lost generation.

"To me, the American Dream is freedom and having flexibility to go when your lease is up," said Purdue. "Maybe upgrade to a better place, and not be stuck in debt to a bank."
Blomquist said there's been a flip when it comes to lending. It's the government, he said, that's now pushing for a loosening of lending rules hoping to jump start home ownership. And it's the banks asking for tighter requirements, not wanting a repeat of a burst housing bubble.



Why housing rents have skyrocketed – CBS
By KIM PETERSON MONEYWATCH
October 31, 2014, 5:30 AM

The economy has been volatile and bumpy since the recession ended in 2009, but one market has seen remarkably consistent growth: housing rents.

The average rent is 15.9 percent higher than at the end of 2009. And rents have risen for 23 quarters straight, according to data from real estate research firm Reis (REIS).

By the fourth quarter of 2009, a few months after the recession officially ended, tenants were paying an average of $964 a month. Since then, rents have risen -- sometimes by as much as 3.2 percent a quarter -- to $1,117 at the end of the third quarter.

Other aspects of the economy haven't seen anywhere near that kind of improvement. Wage and job gains have been unstable, the housing market has been erratic and consumer prices have fluctuated.

Inflation has been nearly nonexistent and appears to be cooling further as gasoline and energy prices continue to drop. The Labor Department's consumer-price index rose by just 0.1 percent in September from August. Prices for food commodities have been falling as well.

Economists now expect a modest uptick in inflation over the next year, led by one category: Rents. "Shelter and rent played a big role this month in supporting prices," economists at Bank of America (BAC) wrote in a September report. Without those increases, the economists said, growth for the month would have been flat.

Why have rents surged so much even amid shaky overall growth? The reasons mostly revolve around the fact that demand has only strengthened while supply has remained tight. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, more than 5 million foreclosures have been completed, according to data from CoreLogic.

That's a lot of former homeowners who don't qualify for mortgages and are forced to rent.

Another boost for the apartment market is that many younger people coming out of college haven't found jobs -- or, at least, not the kind that make them feel confident about buying a home, said Brad Doremus, senior analyst for Reis. After the recession, banks set strict standards for qualifying for a home loan and were asking applicants for higher down payments. It forced people to rent for longer than they normally would, Doremus told CBS MoneyWatch.

Finally, the job market rebound has often been strongest in urban pockets of the country -- areas that generally have the highest concentration of apartments. That also served to push people into apartment living.

You'd think the supply of apartments would quickly respond to rising demand from renters. But that wasn't the case. The years leading up to the recession didn't see a huge buildup of apartments in metropolitan areas, Doremus said. In fact, the trend was to convert existing apartments into condos.

After the recession, builders took their time shifting into apartment mode. It really wasn't until the past year, that a strong flow of new apartments began to kick in. Developers are now bringing so much new supply onto the market that the vacancy rate increased in the third quarter for the first time since 2009.

"I think we've kind of reached the low point in the cycle in terms of vacancy," Doremus said. At the end of 2009, the average apartment vacancy rate was 8 percent. That fell to a 4.1 percent earlier this year before rising to 4.2 percent in the third quarter.

Banks are now so jazzed about apartment living that they're throwing loads of cash into the market. Lenders handed builders nearly $173 billion in new mortgages last year for apartment complexes with five or more units, according to a new report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. That's an 18 percent increase from 2012.

At some point, rental increases have to slow down. More apartments are coming online now, and wage growth isn't rising fast enough to support further large rent spikes.

"There are only so many rent increases that landlords can inflict on tenants that keep within their budget," said Doremus. But that doesn't mean tenants can expect any rent relief soon. Rents will probably still go up, but the rate should pare back a bit.

Meanwhile, large cities are struggling with how to provide affordable housing to growing populations. In San Francisco, the average monthly rent has jumped 25 percent since 2010 to $2,444. The city has seen intense protests from renters who say they're getting evicted by landlords hoping to attract high-earning employees of Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB) and other technology companies.

In New York's Harlem neighborhood, 50,000 people applied for an affordable-housing building that offered studios for as little as $349 a month. In Boston, officials say 53,000 more housing units are needed by 2030 to keep up with the city's strong population growth. "There is movement by a lot of people into great 24-hour cities, and Boston is certainly one of those," Michael Roberts, senior vice president for AvalonBay Communities Inc., told The Boston Globe.




“But this isn't just a question of convenience, Purdue had his eyes open the last half dozen years. 'I have so many friends who own homes that are still underwater since the financial crisis," said Purdue. They 'can't sell their home, can't move, don't want to rent it out, and they're just miserable.' Purdue isn't alone. Home ownership is down across the board, but it's fallen most among Gen X-ers -- those between 35 and 44 -- dropping from nearly 67 percent before the recession to 59 percent today.... Ownership among millennials -- those under 35 -- fell as well, from 41 to 36 percent. 'It's hard for them to believe that owning a home is the best way to build wealth anymore,' said Realtytrac's Daren Blomquist. 'They've seen in some markets, home prices went down 30, 40, 50 percent during the housing bubble and the burst.... 'To me, the American Dream is freedom and having flexibility to go when your lease is up,' said Purdue. 'Maybe upgrade to a better place, and not be stuck in debt to a bank.' Blomquist said there's been a flip when it comes to lending. It's the government, he said, that's now pushing for a loosening of lending rules hoping to jump start home ownership. And it's the banks asking for tighter requirements, not wanting a repeat of a burst housing bubble.”

If I remember correctly, it was a government effort to make home ownership easier that put so many people who really didn't have enough money to pay for their mortgages in danger of homelessness in the Great Recession. I have been a renter all my life, and I don't think it's really a disadvantage. At this point in my retirement I have to stick within my Social Security payments and budget accordingly, but I don't owe any money to anybody. If I get some high medical bills that may change, but I feel safe in my HUD housing situation from an inability to eat three meals a day. Luckily I am not one who wants a huge television set, a new smart phone every year, a new car and precious jewels. I don't even crave more personal space. It is possible to live fairly comfortably on my income.

If young people are choosing to rent rather than buy, more power to them. Every family has to set up financing in the best way they can, and not owning a home should not have a stigma attached to it. If they don't have enough money to rent, or if rental has become totally unaffordable, there is HUD housing, which is not miserable and filled with drug addicts as people tend to claim, at least not in my building. I live in housing for seniors and the disabled. Of course states like Florida, which has no income tax at all, has to derive all of its financing from the same home owners who keep having to pay more every year, and most of them are middle class, not wealthy. Many of them have lost their homes when one or both of them becomes unemployed. For the government of Florida, it would be better if every citizen bought their dwelling rather than renting, but house prices are too high for people with only two part time jobs, so they have to rent.





Military sex survey too "invasive" for some
CBS/AP October 31, 2014, 4:12 PM

WASHINGTON -- Shocked and offended by explicit questions, some U.S. servicemen and women are complaining about a new sexual-assault survey that hundreds of thousands have been asked to complete.

The survey is conducted every two years. But this year's version, developed by the Rand Corp., is unusually detailed, including graphically personal questions on sexual acts.

Some military members told The Associated Press that they were surprised and upset by the questions, and some even said they felt re-victimized by the blunt language. None of them would speak publicly by name, but Pentagon officials confirmed they had received complaints that the questions were "intrusive" and "invasive."

The Defense Department said it made the survey much more explicit and detailed this year in order to get more accurate results as the military struggles to reduce its sexual assaults while also encouraging victims to come forward to get help.

The survey questions, which were obtained by The Associated Press, ask about any unwanted sexual experiences or contact, and include very specific wording about men's and women's body parts or other objects, and kinds of contact or penetration.

Here is a sample question, one of a series of 11 graphic questions out of 34. Some are even more detailed:
"Before 9/18/2013, had anyone made you insert an object or body part into someone's mouth, vagina or anus when you did not want to and did not consent?"

"We've had a number of complaints," said Jill Loftus, director of the Navy's sexual assault prevention program. "I've heard second- and third-hand that there are a number of women, officers and enlisted, who have gotten to the point where they've read the questions and they've stopped taking the survey. They found them to be either offensive or too intrusive - 'intrusive, invasive' - those are the words they used."

About 560,000 active duty, National Guard and Reserve members were invited to fill out the questionnaire - about five times the number the survey was sent to two years ago. Officials will not say how many responses they have received so far.

Early last year, a report on the 2012 anonymous survey results set off a furor when it estimated that 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted or subjected to unwanted sexual contact. Exasperated members of Congress complained that the Defense Department wasn't doing enough to combat sexual assault and tried, largely unsuccessfully, to force changes in the Pentagon's legal and command procedures.

In May, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told CBS News' Charlie Rose that he has tried to reassure parents worried that their children might face possible sexual harassment in the military.

"Yes, we've had problems, we haven't fixed sexual assault harassment in the military but we are fixing it," Hagel said. "We are getting to where we need to be - that is, no sexual assault, no sexual harassment."

In addition to the Rand questions, Loftus said the Navy sends its own survey to sailors and Marines that doesn't get as specific. She added, "We think we've done a very good job of trying to make people aware of what sexual assault is."

But Rand analysts say the more detailed questions are necessary. So does Nate Galbreath, the senior executive adviser for the Pentagon's sexual-assault prevention office.

"This is a crime of a very graphic nature," Galbreath said. "For us to improve our understanding, it sometimes requires asking tough questions."

He said the Defense Department hired Rand to develop and conduct the survey this year, based on new direction from Congress that the effort be fully independent of the Pentagon. He was aware of the complaints but said that the more succinct the questions are, the more accurate the results will be.

"Research has told us, if I ask someone, 'Have you ever been raped?' they will say, 'No,'" Galbreath said. "If I ask that same person, 'Have you ever been forced to engage in sexual activity against your will?' they might say 'Yes.' It's because of the loaded terms like rape and sexual assault, that it's not very clear to a lot of people what we may be asking about."

The survey begins with questions about sexual harassment, asking about jokes, "sexual gestures or sexual body movements," requests to take or share sexually suggestive pictures or videos or efforts to establish "an unwanted romantic or sexual relationship."

Kristie Gore, one of the project leaders at Rand, said participants were told they could skip questions they found upsetting, or simply not take the survey. In the end, she said, Rand received a "relatively small" number of complaints.

She said research suggests that "the discomfort from being asked about prior trauma in a confidential survey is temporary and that such questions cause no additional long-term harm to previously traumatized persons."

Andrew Morral, the other project leader, said the questions were based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

"If you don't use precise language to describe different types of sexual assault and harassment, people define those terms for themselves in different ways, which leads to ambiguous results," he said.

The report on the 2012 survey, which was released early last year, showed sexual assault incidents rose from about 19,000 in the 2010 survey to 26,000.

Those totals far outdistance the number of sexual assaults that are actually reported by members of the military.

According to the latest report, the number of sexual assaults jumped by 50 percent last year as the military worked to get more victims to come forward.

Over the past two years, the military services have tried to increase awareness. Phone numbers and contact information for sexual assault prevention officers are plastered across military bases, including inside the doors of bathroom stalls. And top military officers have traveled to bases around the world speaking on the issue.

In the 2012 anonymous survey, about 6.8 percent of women who answered said they were assaulted and 1.2 percent of men. There are vastly more men in the military; so by the raw numbers, a bit more than 12,000 women said they were assaulted, compared with nearly 14,000 men.



RAND Corporation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RAND Corporation (Research ANd Development[2]) is a nonprofit global policy think tank formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. It is financed by the U.S. government and private endowment,[3]corporations[4] including the health care industry, universities[5] and private individuals.[6] The organization has expanded to work with other governments, private foundations, international organizations, and commercial organizations on a host of non-defense issues. RAND aims for interdisciplinary and quantitative problem solving via translating theoretical concepts from formal economics and the physical sciences into novel applications in other areas, that is, via applied science and operations research. Michael D. Rich is presidentand chief executive officer of the RAND Corporation.

RAND has approximately 1,700 employees. Its American locations include: Santa Monica, California (headquarters); Arlington, Virginia;Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Boston, Massachusetts.[7] The RAND Gulf States Policy Institute has offices in New Orleans, Louisiana, andJackson, Mississippi.[8] RAND Europe is located in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and Brussels, Belgium.[9] RAND Australia is located inCanberra, Australia.[10]

RAND is home to the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, one of the eight original graduate programs in public policy and the first to offer a Ph.D. The program aims to have practical value in that students work with RAND analysts on real-world problems. The campus is at RAND's Santa Monica research facility. The Pardee RAND School is the world's largest Ph.D.-granting program in policy analysis.[11] Unlike many other universities, all Pardee RAND Graduate School students receive fellowships to cover their education costs. This allows them to dedicate their time to engage in research projects and provides them on-the-job training.[11] RAND also offers a number of internship and fellowship programs allowing students and outsiders to assist in conducting research for RAND projects. Most of these projects are short-term and are worked on independently with the mentoring of a RAND staff member.[12]

RAND publishes the RAND Journal of Economics, a peer-reviewed journal of economics.

Thirty-two recipients of the Nobel Prize, primarily in the fields of economics and physics, have been involved or associated with RAND at some point in their career.[2][13][14]


http://www.rand.org/about/history.html

Our Commitment to Dissemination and Education

RAND disseminates its research findings as widely as possible to benefit the public good. More than 20,000 RAND publications and commentary are available for free at www.rand.org.

RAND also operates the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the largest public policy analysis Ph.D. program in the United States and the only program based at an independent public policy research organization.

Our History

On May 14, 1948, Project RAND—an organization formed immediately after World War II to connect military planning with research and development decisions—separated from the Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California, and became an independent, nonprofit organization. Adopting its name from a contraction of the term research and development, the newly formed entity was dedicated to furthering and promoting scientific, educational, and charitable purposes for the public welfare and security of the United States.




“Shocked and offended by explicit questions, some U.S. servicemen and women are complaining about a new sexual-assault survey that hundreds of thousands have been asked to complete. The survey is conducted every two years. But this year's version, developed by the Rand Corp., is unusually detailed, including graphically personal questions on sexual acts. Some military members told The Associated Press that they were surprised and upset by the questions, and some even said they felt re-victimized by the blunt language. None of them would speak publicly by name, but Pentagon officials confirmed they had received complaints that the questions were 'intrusive' and 'invasive.'... The Defense Department said it made the survey much more explicit and detailed this year in order to get more accurate results as the military struggles to reduce its sexual assaults while also encouraging victims to come forward to get help. ... 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted or subjected to unwanted sexual contact. Exasperated members of Congress complained that the Defense Department wasn't doing enough to combat sexual assault and tried, largely unsuccessfully, to force changes in the Pentagon's legal and command procedures. … He said the Defense Department hired Rand to develop and conduct the survey this year, based on new direction from Congress that the effort be fully independent of the Pentagon. He was aware of the complaints but said that the more succinct the questions are, the more accurate the results will be.”

“Kristie Gore, one of the project leaders at Rand, said participants were told they could skip questions they found upsetting, or simply not take the survey. In the end, she said, Rand received a 'relatively small' number of complaints. She said research suggests that 'the discomfort from being asked about prior trauma in a confidential survey is temporary and that such questions cause no additional long-term harm to previously traumatized persons.'” There were several news articles a couple of years ago about both women and men being sexually assaulted, sometimes by superior officers, with threats of retaliation if the victim reported the crime. Also, it was necessary to report the crime to a superior officer, and sometimes the victims were discouraged from complaining – much as they were when they had developed mental health disorders resulting from war. Men especially were intimidated and ridiculed by superior officers for their depression or panic disorder. The problem, I think, was that the military at that time trying to run a cover up on the nature and the extent of the problems. That is probably why the matter was taken out of the hands of the Pentagon.

The rates of about 6.8 percent of women who answered said they were assaulted and 1.2 percent of men doesn't sound very high to me. It is a problem, though, that in the military an individual can't just leave the base to avoid the abuser and can't fight back without possibly getting into trouble, and if a superior officer is the attacker, the military system may tend to believe his word over the victim's. Hopefully this study will help the Pentagon improve the sexual environment in the military, and officers who retaliate against those who have complained will be drummed out of the service or demoted. That might tend to limit the abuse of power that I think is involved in some of these cases, and perhaps sensitivity training might decrease the number of attacks. A type of group therapy for men who had abused children was on the news five or six years ago, and they were being taught to develop compassion for their victims rather than seeing them as sexual objects.






How you react to this photo reveals your political beliefs
By ELIENE AUGENBRAUN CBS NEWS October 31, 2014, 11:32 AM

When researchers showed disgusting images of snakes, roaches, garbage, vomit, mutilated bodies and open wounds to participants in a Virginia Tech study, they found significant differences between the way liberals and conservatives reacted, on a neural level.

Though the volunteers didn't report feeling any more or less grossed out by the images, brain scans told a different story. The more strongly a person's brain reacted to seeing disgusting images, the more likely they were to hold conservative views.

The same discrepancy did not exist in their responses to positive images.

The authors point out in the paper, published in the journal Current Biology, that this is the first brain study to find multiple points of differentiation in activity when comparing the emotional processing of images in liberals versus conservatives. Several parts of the brain lit up in conservatives, while others were activated in liberals.

P. Read Montague and his coauthors wrote in the study that their results "invite the provocative claim that neural responses to nonpolitical stimuli (like contaminated food or physical threats) should be highly predictive of abstract political opinions (like attitudes toward gun control and abortion)."

Indeed, watching the brain's reaction to a single disgusting image was sufficient to guess each subject's political orientation. Montague said in the press release, "I haven't seen such clean predictive results in any other functional imaging experiments in our lab or others."

The researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to track how the brains of 83 volunteers reacted to viewing emotionally charged but politically neutral images. The volunteers were then asked to rate how disgusting, threatening, or pleasant they thought each image was, and then answer a standard questionnaire about political ideology.

The study did not determine exactly how or why liberal brains differ from conservative ones, only that the two types of brains lit up in two different patterns when viewing the same images.

But the researchers theorize that conservatives, compared to liberals, have greater "negativity bias," a psychological sensitivity to unpleasant or disturbing things. This supports the findings of an eye-tracking study published earlier this year in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which found that conservatives reacted more intensely to disgusting images.

"Across research methods, samples and countries, conservatives have been found to be quicker to focus on the negative, to spend longer looking at the negative, and to be more distracted by the negative," the authors of that study wrote.

"The results do not provide a simple bromide, but ... if we can begin to see that some 'knee-jerk' reactions to political issues may be simply that -- reactions -- then we might take the temperature down a bit in the current boiler of political discourse," Montague said.




“Though the volunteers didn't report feeling any more or less grossed out by the images, brain scans told a different story. The more strongly a person's brain reacted to seeing disgusting images, the more likely they were to hold conservative views. The same discrepancy did not exist in their responses to positive images. The authors point out in the paper, published in the journal Current Biology, that this is the first brain study to find multiple points of differentiation in activity when comparing the emotional processing of images in liberals versus conservatives. Several parts of the brain lit up in conservatives, while others were activated in liberals.... The researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to track how the brains of 83 volunteers reacted to viewing emotionally charged but politically neutral images. The volunteers were then asked to rate how disgusting, threatening, or pleasant they thought each image was, and then answer a standard questionnaire about political ideology.... But the researchers theorize that conservatives, compared to liberals, have greater 'negativity bias,' a psychological sensitivity to unpleasant or disturbing things.”

“This supports the findings of an eye-tracking study published earlier this year in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which found that conservatives reacted more intensely to disgusting images. 'Across research methods, samples and countries, conservatives have been found to be quicker to focus on the negative, to spend longer looking at the negative, and to be more distracted by the negative,' the authors of that study wrote.” Montague is quoted as saying this finding may help “take the temperature down” on the raging political battlefield that our country has become. It could explain why some political conservatives want to avoid black people entirely, in that they react negatively to differences. Many people are actually afraid of black people, rather than merely hating them, and many of the far right group of militia members and neo-Nazis advocate for an all-white society. The uber-wealthy, likewise, may want their environment to be “uncontaminated” by the poor or the sick, viewing the needy as being highly objectionable. They don't have the desire to help them, as a liberal would tend to. That's why the Nazis of Germany wanted the Jews, mentally disabled and non-white racial groups to be exterminated. Hopefully we won't go through anything like that in this country, though the current increase in right wing groups here and also in Europe is very disturbing.




Police use new tool to ID domestic violence victims most at risk
By ANNA WERNER CBS NEWS October 30, 2014, 8:16 PM

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. -- Oklahoma City police officer Brandi May answers domestic violence calls nearly every day.

"I'm gonna ask you some questions so you can answer 'Yes,' 'No' or you can choose not to answer at all," May tells a victim.

But now May has a new tool, one police here say is simple but effective: a checklist of 16 questions (PDF) designed to help officers identify victims who are likely to be killed.

"Do you think that Shane might try to kill you?" May asks the victim.

"After tonight, probably," the woman responds.

The more times a victim answers "Yes," the more likely domestic violence may lead to her death.

"He said he was going to kill me, he says it every time but I just thought it was an empty threat, and tonight it made me believe that he would," the victim says.

Captain Kim Flowers heads the domestic violence unit, which has been using the checklist for 3 years.

"A lot of them cry and say, 'Oh my god, I can't ... I can't believe I am letting this happen,'" Flowers says.

The questions were developed by researchers from Johns Hopkins University. For example, number 5: "Has he/she ever tried to choke you?"

Research found men who choked their partners were 10 times more likely to eventually kill them.

"He wants you to know that he's in control, and he can snap your neck in half whenever he feels like it," Flowers explains.

Officer May found this woman was in serious danger.

"Do you just want to speak with them or do you want to seek shelter?" May asked.

So she took the next step in the new protocol by putting the woman on the phone with the domestic violence hotline, right there at the scene.

"It offers them support, it makes them feel stronger, it gives them the opportunity to take back ahold of their life," May says.

This victim told us, it made a difference for her.

"I didn't know, I just thought it was normal," the woman says through tears. "And it's not -- It's not normal and it's not okay."

Starting Saturday, the checklist will be used across the state of Oklahoma. Authorities in Maryland say fatalities have dropped 30 percent since they started using it.




“But now May has a new tool, one police here say is simple but effective: a checklist of 16 questions (PDF) designed to help officers identify victims who are likely to be killed. 'Do you think that Shane might try to kill you?' May asks the victim. 'After tonight, probably,' the woman responds.... The questions were developed by researchers from Johns Hopkins University. For example, number 5: 'Has he/she ever tried to choke you?' Research found men who choked their partners were 10 times more likely to eventually kill them.... So she took the next step in the new protocol by putting the woman on the phone with the domestic violence hotline, right there at the scene. 'It offers them support, it makes them feel stronger, it gives them the opportunity to take back ahold of their life,' May says. This victim told us, it made a difference for her.... Starting Saturday, the checklist will be used across the state of Oklahoma. Authorities in Maryland say fatalities have dropped 30 percent since they started using it.”

'I didn't know, I just thought it was normal,' the woman says through tears. 'And it's not -- It's not normal and it's not okay.' Many women are brought up in a family or a community in which violence against women is commonplace. In some cases they are even taught to blame themselves – they were slugged because they spoke their opinion, for instance. Some people talk about divorce as though it were a horrible thing, but in many cases it is exactly what should happen, and the woman should get protection from further contact by the man. I am talking, of course, as though women are never the aggressors, which shockingly is not the case, but just as a matter of numbers, they are far more likely to be a victim than an aggressor. One of my housemates from the 1980s said that her husband beat her until she took a martial arts course. The next time he came in and tried to hit her she threw him up against the brick wall of the garage where they were standing. He never hit her again. The same happened to a young girl I know who verbally defended a friend of hers from a bully, and the bully slapped her. She “went blank” and the next thing she knew she had driven him up against the wall in the cafeteria using both fists. Likewise he never so much as spoke to her again.

The list of questions being used by police is available at this website – http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/lethality_assessment_oklahoma_city.pdf. The questions ask about weapons, choking, jealousy, stalking, suicidal tendencies, children, substance abuse, and interference with an attempted 911 call. When I was a young woman, police officers often wouldn't intervene in a domestic abuse situation, and in conservative rural places often the neighbors or family wouldn't help either. It was considered to be “their business,” and men were expected to “handle” or discipline their women. Now police forces have become much more sophisticated about such matters. A man barricaded in a house with his wife or family, whether or not he has a gun, will find a SWAT team negotiator trying to intervene , and if that doesn't work, breaking down the door. This is definitely a change for the better. Now if the abusers would simply be punished with a prison term of ten years or so, rather than a small fine and a few days in jail, I would feel better yet,





Virus Sleuths Chip Away At Ebola Mysteries – NPR
By Nell Greenfieldboyce
October 31, 2014

Vincent Racaniello, who studies viruses at Columbia University, says Ebola has recently become his obsession.

"I find myself reading incessantly about Ebola when I should be doing other things," says Racaniello, host of the online showThis Week in Virology, which has devoted several recent programs to Ebola.

The unprecedented Ebola outbreak probably has more virologists thinking about Ebola than ever before. And while scientists have learned a lot about this virus since it was discovered almost four decades ago, there's still a lot left to wonder about.

Racaniello and his virologist buddies wish they knew some really basic things — like, how does the virus actually slip into cells? What part of the cell's surface does it latch onto to get access? Knowing that might let scientists figure out ways to block it.

And how do outbreaks of Ebola actually start? "This is a really important question," says Racaniello,"because if we could figure out where the virus comes from we might be able to take measures to stop that."

Scientists believe the virus circulates in fruit bats, which seem to carry Ebola without getting sick. But no one knows the details of how bats pass it to humans or other species.

"We know for sure that gorillas and chimpanzees and some antelope have been infected with Ebola in the past," says veterinarian and epidemiologist Jonathan Epstein of EcoHealth Alliance, an organization devoted to understanding and predicting the emergence of diseases. "But the mechanism for spillover isn't totally clear, and so that's an area where more study needs to be done."

Here's another issue that needs more study: Once the virus finds its way into people, why is it that some people get very sick, others seem to get less sick, and others may not get sick at all?

Angela Rasmussen, a microbiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, says we don't yet know of any genes that might influence someone's response to this virus.

"Prior to this outbreak in West Africa, there really haven't been that many human patients with Ebola, so these studies haven't really been conducted in people," Rasmussen says.

She and some colleagues have started to study this aspect of Ebola infection in mice. In a secure lab, they infected dozens of genetically diverse mice with the same Ebola virus. And in this week's issue of the journal Science, they report that they saw a wide range of disease outcomes, all the way from mild to severe illness — suggesting that the genetic makeup of individual mice played a huge role in how sick they got.

Rasmussen says there were key differences in genes that affect blood vessels. "We think that those genes may be implicated in Ebola pathogenesis," she says, "but we're still in the process of conducting studies on enough mice to be able to say that definitively."

Besides genes, scientists wonder what else might affect who lives and who dies. Robert Garry, a microbiologist at Tulane University, is part of a team that published an analysis Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine that looks at people who got Ebola in Sierra Leone. He says it turns out that a person's age really mattered — with people under 21 having a much better chance of survival than people over 45. The researchers are not sure why — it may have something to do with differences in their immune systems.

And even though Ebola is known as a hemorrhagic fever, bleeding appears to be rare in this outbreak — the team only saw it in one patient in this study. That means it looks like this West African variant of the virus is different from the ones that have been seen in Central Africa in the past. "It's something that we need to examine further to try to see what these differences are in terms of the viral biology," says Garry.

Another big question is how the virus might mutate as it moves through large numbers of people, as it is now doing in West Africa. Could it become more or less deadly? Racaniello says there are examples of other viruses that changed over time to cause milder illness.

"But for the most part, most of the major viruses we know — AIDS/HIV-1, influenza, polio, measles — they all keep their virulence at pretty much the same level," Racaniello says. "Although you could argue we've only been studying them a short time."




“Vincent Racaniello, who studies viruses at Columbia University, says Ebola has recently become his obsession. 'I find myself reading incessantly about Ebola when I should be doing other things,' says Racaniello, host of the online showThis Week in Virology, which has devoted several recent programs to Ebola.... Racaniello and his virologist buddies wish they knew some really basic things — like, how does the virus actually slip into cells? What part of the cell's surface does it latch onto to get access? Knowing that might let scientists figure out ways to block it. And how do outbreaks of Ebola actually start? 'This is a really important question,' says Racaniello,'because if we could figure out where the virus comes from we might be able to take measures to stop that.'... In a secure lab, they infected dozens of genetically diverse mice with the same Ebola virus. And in this week's issue of the journal Science, they report that they saw a wide range of disease outcomes, all the way from mild to severe illness — suggesting that the genetic makeup of individual mice played a huge role in how sick they got. Rasmussen says there were key differences in genes that affect blood vessels. 'We think that those genes may be implicated in Ebola pathogenesis,' she says, 'but we're still in the process of conducting studies on enough mice to be able to say that definitively.'... And even though Ebola is known as a hemorrhagic fever, bleeding appears to be rare in this outbreak — the team only saw it in one patient in this study. That means it looks like this West African variant of the virus is different from the ones that have been seen in Central Africa in the past.”

Could a mosquito bite start the first case? Why is this epidemic showing a virus that causes very little bleeding, as opposed to those in Central Africa. How does the patient's age act to make his illness more or less dangerous? If fruit bats are the vector, is it eating them that causes human infection, or eating a fruit that the bat sampled beforehand and contaminated with his saliva. The reason scientists are looking at fruit bats is that the virus has been found in their blood, but the bats don't get sick. Another set of animals that catch Ebola is the great apes, specifically gorillas and chimpanzees. Their connection with fruit bats would probably be eating the fruit itself. Finally, some Africans eat chimpanzees, and if they were sick at the time, their blood and bodily fluids would contaminate the human's hands and clothing. It seems to me that eating “bush meat” is probably the main cause of outbreaks. This article said that some antelopes – very good human food – contract Ebola. First we need a foolproof vaccine that can be given to a healthy person and would protect them against infection,Whole populations of people could then be vaccinated against it. Then, stop killing “bush meat” for food.