Tag: nearly

R. Kelly Has Been Convicted Of Sex Crimes Against Black Women. Why Did It Take Nearly 30 Years?
Journalism

R. Kelly Has Been Convicted Of Sex Crimes Against Black Women. Why Did It Take Nearly 30 Years?

A federal jury found R. Kelly guilty of nine criminal charges related to racketeering and sex trafficking in the first high-profile court case focusing on sexual abuse against Black women and girls since the #MeToo movement began. Candice Norwood Originally published by The 19th It took nearly 30 years, dozens of alleged victims, multiple video recordings, an explosive news investigation, a social media campaign, a documentary and two criminal trials before the singer R. Kelly was convicted of sex crimes. A federal jury this week found Kelly guilty of nine criminal charges related to racketeering and sex trafficking that involved recruiting and grooming young women and girls for sex. The six-week trial marked a significant moment: It’s the first high-profile court case focusing on sexu...
New Study Finds In One Urban School District Nearly 10% Of Youth Identify As Gender-Diverse
LIFESTYLE

New Study Finds In One Urban School District Nearly 10% Of Youth Identify As Gender-Diverse

It seems that more and more teens are identifying as transgender, gender-fluid or nonbinary. But because linguistic and cultural norms are always evolving, it’s been challenging to pin down an exact number.   CC BY-NC-ND The 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that 1.8% of high school students identified as transgender. But my team – made up of pediatricians, adolescent medicine specialists and public health researchers – suspected that this study underrepresented the prevalence of gender-diverse youth. That’s because not all people who are gender-diverse – an umbrella term for those whose gender identity does not fully align with the sex they were assigned at birth – identify as “transgender.” So we put tog...
Cost For Child Care And Preschool – US Parents Pay Nearly Double The ‘Affordable’ Cost
SOCIAL JUSTICE

Cost For Child Care And Preschool – US Parents Pay Nearly Double The ‘Affordable’ Cost

President Joe Biden wants to make child care more affordable across the U.S. Under his American Families Plan, proposed in April 2021, the federal government would subsidize the costs of child care to the tune of US$225 billion annually. Lower-income families could access child care free of charge, while middle-class families would pay no more than 7% of their income.   CC BY-ND Additionally, the plan seeks to make free, high-quality preschool available for all 3- and 4-year-olds. Almost 60% of parents say preschool and day care expenses are a financial strain. Currently, child care eats up 14% of the incomes of middle-class working families – for example, those with a household income of $50,000-$100,000 for a family of four – according to the Center for American Progress, a prog...
Research Suggests – Here’s Why It’s A Public Health Problem That Nearly 60 Million Americans Don’t Drink Their Tap Water
ENVIRONMENT, VIDEO REELS

Research Suggests – Here’s Why It’s A Public Health Problem That Nearly 60 Million Americans Don’t Drink Their Tap Water

Imagine seeing a news report about lead contamination in drinking water in a community that looks like yours. It might make you think twice about whether to drink your tap water or serve it to your kids – especially if you also have experienced tap water problems in the past. In a new study, my colleagues Anisha Patel, Francesca Weaks and I estimate that approximately 61.4 million people in the U.S. did not drink their tap water as of 2017-2018. Our research, which was released in preprint format on April 8, 2021, and has not yet been peer reviewed, found that this number has grown sharply in the past several years. Other research has shown that about 2 million Americans don’t have access to clean water. Taking that into account, our findings suggest that about 59 million people have tap...
A New Approach Breaks A Barrier That’s Stood For Nearly Half A Century – Planning The Best Route With Multiple Destinations Is Hard Even For Supercomputers
TECHNOLOGY

A New Approach Breaks A Barrier That’s Stood For Nearly Half A Century – Planning The Best Route With Multiple Destinations Is Hard Even For Supercomputers

Computers are good at answering questions. What’s the shortest route from my house to Area 51? Is 8,675,309 a prime number? How many teaspoons in a tablespoon? For questions like these, they’ve got you covered. There are certain innocent-sounding questions, though, that computer scientists believe computers will never be able to answer – at least not within our lifetimes. These problems are the subject of the P versus NP question, which asks whether problems whose solutions can be checked quickly can also be solved quickly. P versus NP is such a fundamental question that either designing a fast algorithm for one of these hard problems or proving you can’t would net you a cool million dollars in prize money. My favorite hard problem is the traveling salesperson problem. Given a collection...