According to a study conducted by Mariela Paez, a professor from the Lynch School of Education, and her colleagues, preschoolers who speak Spanish as their first language at home are losing their native tongue as they also attempt to speak English. After comparing 4-year-old children in the United States to those in Puerto Rico, Paez and her team said they were "shocked" that their Spanish was so poor and at such a young age. "The most surprising finding was that the levels of Spanish oral language ability was as low as they were for the sample in the mainland of the United States," said Paez. Paez and her team conducted their study with 319 bilingual preschool children from Massachusetts and Maryland.
ON CAMPUS Boston College sought for new antiterrorism research The Pentagon is searching for a team of Boston-area social scientists and mathematicians to study whether following the chain of relationships among terrorist organizations, arms scientists, and potential suppliers can help stop groups seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to government officials. Boston College was tapped by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to see if this "network analysis" can help trace the pipeline of money, material, and technical knowledge that would lead to issues like terrorists obtaining nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. The Woburn-based company Aptima, Inc., was also selected to help with charting these connections, according to a report in The Boston Globe.
UNIVERSITIES Researchers discover genetic marker for schizophrenia According to a paper published Tuesday in the medical journal Molecular Psychology, a team including researchers from Harvard Medical School has found a genetic marker for schizophrenia. The data-collecting method that made this discovery possible is known as Whole Genome Association (WGA). WGA is a new technology that enabled the researchers to study all the possible variations of each gene, rather than one or two at a time. "WGA permits us to examine 500,000 SNPs [genetic variations] across the entire genome in a single test," said Todd Lencz, the first author of the study.
UNDER REPORT Chocolate Jesus exhibit shut down due to public outcry On Friday, a planned Holy Week display of a nude, anatomically correct, chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled after Cardinal Edward Egan and other Catholics complained. The exhibition, titled "My Sweet Lord," was shut down by the hotel that houses the Lab Gallery in midtown Manhattan. The president of the Roger Smith Hotel, James Knowles, said his decision was because of public outcry. "[The reaction] is crystal clear and has brought to our attention the unintended reaction of you and other conscientious friends of ours to the exhibition," Knowles wrote in the two-paragraph cancellation notice.
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