Legion of Angels News Archive

Parents of children with attention deficit problems are always looking for new strategies to help their children cope. An interesting new study suggests that spending time in nature may help.

A small study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at how the environment influenced a child’s concentration skills. The researchers evaluated 17 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, who all took part in three 20-minute walks in a park, a residential neighborhood and a downtown area.

After each walk, the children were given a standard test called Digit Span Backwards, in which a series of numbers are said aloud and the child recites them backwards. The test is a useful measure of attention and concentration because practice doesn’t improve the score. The order of the walks varied for all the children, and the tester wasn’t aware of which walk the child had just taken.

The study, published online in the August The Journal of Attention Disorders, found that children were able to focus better after the “green” walks compared to walks in other settings.

Although the study is small, the data support several earlier studies suggesting that natural settings influence psychological health. In 2004, a survey of parents of 450 children found that “green” outdoor activities reduced A.D.H.D. symptoms more than activities in other settings.

“What this particular study tells us is that the physical environment matters,” said Frances E. Kuo, director of the university’s Landscape and Human Health Laboratory. “We don’t know what it is about the park, exactly — the greenness or lack of buildings — that seems to improve attention.”

Dr. Kuo noted that the study used tight controls to make sure that the walks were identical except for the environment. Who the child was with, noise levels, the length of time, the time of day and whether the child was on medication stayed constant.

“If we kept everything else the same, and we just changed the environment, we still saw a measurable difference in children’s symptoms,” Dr. Kuo said. “And that’s completely new. No one has done a study looking at a child in different environments, in a controlled comparison where everything else is the same.”

Dr. Kuo said more children were initially involved in the study, but logistical problems like weather changes, late arrivals or changes in medication made it difficult to maintain tight control, leaving the study with just 17 children from which to draw conclusions.

Despite the small size, the study is important because it involves an objective test of attention and doesn’t rely on children’s or parents’ impressions. During the walks, all of the children were unmedicated — participants who normally took medications to control their A.D.H.D. symptoms stayed off the drugs on the days of the walks.

The researchers found that a “dose of nature” worked as well or better than a dose of medication on the child’s ability to concentrate. What’s not clear is how long the nature effect can last.

Dr. Kuo said that while there are “hints” exposure to green outdoor settings offers a benefit, the science isn’t advanced enough to give parents a strict formula.

“We can’t say for sure, ‘two hours of outdoor play will get you this many days of good behavior,’ but we can say it’s worth trying,” she said. “We can say that as little as 20 minutes of outdoor exposure could potentially buy you an afternoon or a couple of hours to get homework done.”

Dr. Kuo said it’s notable that parents themselves consistently report benefits for their children from green settings.

“One reason we believe this is that if the effect were short-lived, we don’t think that parents would have so consistently observed it,” she said. “But they do. They report it over and over.”

Source — The New York Times

BEIJING, China (CNN) – On the last weekend before the Olympic Games begin in Beijing, Olympic officials were still wrestling with pollution problems, Internet access, and at least one doping case — albeit an old one.

International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Giselle Davies told a news conference that plans are in place to be able to move events in time if air quality becomes a problem. She said Beijing Olympic organizers and Chinese environment authorities are providing the IOC with daily updates about pollution and weather, which can both have an effect on air quality.

“The two are pretty intrinsically linked,” Davies told a news conference. “We’ve seen in past days that some of the bad skies were actually as much due to an amount of humidity in the air as anything else.”

Chinese officials last month implemented a drastic plan to combat Beijing’s persistent pollution problems, taking half of the city’s more than 3 million vehicles off the road, temporarily closing factories and chemical plants, and suspending all construction work.

Chinese authorities have said they’re confident they can reduce pollution levels but athletes will still have to compete in less-than-healthy air, which can hurt performance.

The capital and surrounding areas of northeastern China have the world’s worst nitrogen dioxide levels, according to satellite images taken by the European Space Agency in 2005.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the chemical can cause eye, nose, and throat irritation. It may also cause impaired lung function and increased respiratory infections.

Most days, Beijing is a city shrouded in gray.

Another issue of concern is press freedom after journalists this week discovered some Web sites were unavailable. A spokesman for the Beijing Olympics has said if some sites won’t load it’s because they have spread content banned by Chinese laws, not because officials are restricting the activities of the media.

The spokesman, Sun Weide, pointed out that new Chinese laws and regulations have eased restrictions on journalists. They include filming access in Tiananmen Square, simplified customs requirements for newsgathering equipment, and a “zero-refusal policy” for interview requests with Beijing Olympics officials, he said.

Weide said China would allow “sufficient convenience” on the Internet to allow journalists to do their jobs.

Davies said theIOC has had numerous meetings with Chinese Olympic officials and authorities about the issue, and the Chinese have promised the fullest Internet access possible for journalists.

“We can only welcome the openness and transparency moves made this week and encourage that that can continue,” Davies said.

The IOC said this week it has made no deal about Internet censorship with Chinese authorities.

Davies also said the IOC Executive Board, which met Saturday for its last meeting before the Games, stripped the U.S. men’s 100-meter relay team of the gold medals it won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics after an admission by team member Antonio Pettigrew that he had used performance-enhancing drugs.

The IOC ruled Pettigrew, who returned his medal in June, is now ineligible to compete in Beijing and it did not rule out further sanctions against him.

Board members will decide later how to reallocate the Sydney medals and diplomas, the IOC said.

“Doping is a serious threat to the integrity of sport,” an IOC statement said. “Mr. Pettigrew’s case illustrates that, by choosing to dope, an athlete also jeopardizes his own and his teammates’ achievements.”

Source — CNN

Editor’s Warning: This report is about the rapper Nas and his controversial album. It contains language you may find offensive, including the n-word, which was originally the title of the album. Since this story is about his use of the word in his songs but not on his album, should you continue reading, we must warn you that we have included the word in the story.

(CNN) – When Nas said he didn’t name his album “Nigger” because there might be problems getting it into stores, it was no surprise. But when he said pressure from black leaders played a role, it seemed out of character.

The Queens-reared rapper has never been one to kowtow. Just last month, he referred to the Rev. Jesse Jackson as “the biggest player hater” and declared Jackson’s time as a voice for black America over.

But in a recent CNN interview, Nasir Jones explained he didn’t change the album’s name to please the Rev. Al Sharpton and other black leaders. Rather, they were stealing his thunder.

“I don’t think I liked the attention I was getting from some of the elders in my community,” he said. “I saw it kind of leaning toward being about them … only about them. I kind of wanted to just shake that off of me.”

His remedy? To drop the title altogether — literally. The album, out Wednesday, has no name. But don’t think Nas is cowering from controversy — the cover features the rapper shirtless with his iconic, gothic “N” digitally whipped into his back.

With a host of racial issues — the Jena Six, Don Imus, nooses — fresh on America’s mind, naming an album “Nigger” seems ill-advised. Nas, however, said his goal wasn’t to upset; it was to upend a society that focuses more on pejoratives than the racial plights that spawn them.

“There’s still so much wrong in the whole world with people — poor people, people of color — I just felt like a nice watch couldn’t take that away, make me forget about that. A nice day on a yacht with rich friends couldn’t make me forget about reality, what’s going on,” he said. “That’s why I named the album that — not just that the word is horrible, but the history behind the word, and how it relates to me, how it’s affected me, offended me.”

Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy delves into the frustrating duality of the slur in his 2003 bestseller, “Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.” Since colonist John Rolfe first coined “negar,” referring in 1619 to a shipment of Africans to Virginia, the epithet has lived a largely opprobrious life, with one exception, Kennedy writes.

“Currently, some people insist upon distinguishing nigger — which they see as exclusively an insult — from nigga, which they view as a term capable of signaling friendly salutation,” Kennedy writes.

Kennedy, who is black, concludes his book expressing satisfaction that the word’s use causes anxiety. Politicians should avoid uttering it at all costs, he writes, and uses by nonblacks is most often a no-no.

But never underestimate the word’s complexities, says Kennedy: “For bad and for good, nigger is thus destined to remain with us for many years to come — a reminder of the ironies and the dilemmas, the tragedies and glories, of the American experience.”

Kennedy declined to comment for this story, and Sharpton’s press office did not respond to an e-mail and voice message requesting an interview.

Because Nas rescinded the title doesn’t mean the multiplatinum rapper isn’t prepared to engage in debate on the word’s merit in today’s lexicon.

“It’s all about the intent and what you mean and how it’s coming off and the reason why you’re saying it. You know, if it’s ill intent, if you’re angry, being ignorant, being meanspirited, saying that word — it means the worst,” he explained. “If you’re just a couple of black guys on the street corner, doesn’t mean it’s a great thing, but it’s not that they’re trying to harm each other when they say it.”

As for a wholesale ban on the word — something Jackson and Sharpton have suggested — Nas scoffed.

“For some people, you should never be able to use it,” he said. “For others, it’s way too late. It’s too late to try to stop using it. It’s something that’s just part of the language now.”

That “elders” had anything to do with changing the album’s name might be a sign the 34-year-old is continuing the personal growth so easily charted since he released his 1994 debut, “Illmatic,” an album that would help earn him the No. 5 spot on MTV’s list of the top MCs of all time.

Back then, Nas was a 20-year-old, street-hustling rhymesmith from the rough-and-tumble Queensbridge projects, on the brink of earning the admiration of some of hip-hop’s biggest names.

He’s been called “the king” (Producer Dallas Austin), “a genius” (Island Def Jam Chairman L.A. Reid) and “the greatest rapper of all time” (rapper Kanye West).

After “Illmatic,” fans watched Nas — and his ego — grow through the years as he proclaimed himself “Nastradamus,” “God’s Son” and the “Street’s Disciple.”

His legions watched him become jaded with age when, in 2006, he declared, “Hip Hop is Dead,” and lashed out at the rappers and DJs he felt had rendered the genre hackneyed.

Though Nas dabbled in advocacy before Wednesday, his lyrics dwelled more on his rhyming skills, hot sneakers, women and blunts. Violence was regularly invoked, especially in regard to any would-be dissers.

On the untitled album, there’s still an air of militancy, with the threats of violence directed toward those who aim to oppress African-Americans.

He boasts likenesses to Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton and threatens to throw Molotov cocktails in the name of civil rights murder victim Emmett Till.

On “Testify,” Nas warns that he’s loading a magazine to “send these redneck bigots some death in a bag/choke him out with his Confederate flag/I know these devils are mad.”

“I really like ‘Testify’ because it’s like a man who’s just frustrated and doesn’t know how to fight. It’s when you feel like there’s no one to call. Who do you call when you’re of the ethnic group that the police have been wiping out for years and the government doesn’t do anything?” Nas asked.

Nas explains his growth on “Project Roach,” crediting a Guyanese anthropologist and literary critic with helping him mature: “I used to worship a certain Queens police murderer/Till I read the words of Ivan Van Sertima/He inserted something in me than made me feel worthier/Now I spit revolution, I’m his hood interpreter.”

Other messages on the album seem designed to inspire the black community, or to decry a separate-but-equal culture that purports to incubate fairness but rarely produces results.

On “America,” he opines, “Too many rappers, athletes and actors/But not enough niggas in NASA/Who gives you the latest dances, trends and fashion?/But when it comes to residuals they look past us.”

Nas acknowledged he’s a different person today than when he dropped “Illmatic,” and his music has grown along with him. Fans should recognize and enjoy the evolution rather than make comparisons, he said.

He tentatively agreed that his untitled album addresses the plight of black America with a more positive voice, but he almost bristled when asked if he was a “conscious rapper,” guys like Common, Mos Def and Talib Kweli who largely refrain from talk of violence and misogyny.

Nas, he said, will remain an individual, an artist, a lyricist, whose style and message can’t be placed in a tidy case like one of his albums.

“I just look at myself as a man who’s trying to figure shit out in the world, and God is amazing because He’s never going to let us figure it all out,” Nas said. “So I don’t really have a category. I’m just a man that’s in search, that’s always in search, that’s always going to question things, you know?”

Source — CNN