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UGA Grad Program Expands To Prepare Teachers To Work With Secondary Students With Autism
An innovative University of Georgia graduate program in special education that has prepared scores of Georgia teachers to work with elementary-age students with autism over the last several years has received a new 4-year, $793,000 federal grant to train teachers to work with similarly challenged secondary-age students.

Majority Of U.S. Residents Support Confirming Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor, Poll Finds
Sixty-two percent of U.S. residents want Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to be confirmed, and 55% say she is "about right" on a liberal-to-conservative scale, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, the Post reports. For the survey, pollsters randomly surveyed a national sample of 1,001 adults by telephone between June 18 and June 21. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.The poll found that about three-fourths of abortion-rights supporters want Sotomayor to be confirmed, compared with less than half of abortion-rights opponents. According to the poll, six in 10 U.S. residents would want the new Supreme Court justice to vote to uphold Roe v. Wade. Most Republican men would want the next Supreme Court justice to vote to overturn Roe, while Republican women were split about evenly on the issue, the poll found. The poll also found that support for Sotomayor"s confirmation was equal between men and women. In addition, nearly eight in 10 Democrats and about two-thirds of independents said they supported Sotomayor"s confirmation, compared with 36% of Republicans. The poll found that most Republicans deemed Sotomayor a "more liberal" nominee than they would prefer. Among Republicans, those self-identifying as conservative Republicans were largely opposed to Sotomayor"s confirmation, with more than seven in 10 conservative Republicans saying she is too liberal. Sotomayor received support from Republicans self-identifying as moderate or liberal, with fewer than four in 10 saying she is too liberal. However, about one in five who opposed Sotomayor"s confirmation said that she is not liberal enough. The poll also found that among the 33% of U.S. residents who said that Sotomayor"s gender plays a role, more than twice as many said that is a positive attribute as opposed to a negative attribute (Cohen/Barnes, Washington Post, 6/28).Sessions Requests More InformationSenate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Jeff Sessions (Ala.) on Friday sent a letter to the White House requesting additional information on Sotomayor, the New York Times" "The Caucus" reports. According to Sessions, the Obama administration has yet to provide members of the committee with information about a number of cases that Sotomayor brought to trial while working as a district attorney in New York. In addition, Sessions requested information regarding a case that Sotomayor argued on appeal. He also requested information about her work with Latino Justice PRLDEF, formerly known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Sotomayor"s confirmation hearing is scheduled to begin July 13. Republicans have criticized the schedule, saying it gives them insufficient time to review Sotomayor"s record. Democrats have said that Republicans are seeking to create unnecessary delays and noted that the timeline is similar to that of past nominees (Herszenhorn, "The Caucus," New York Times, 6/26).
News of the day
MicroRNAs Grease The Cell's Circadian Clockwork
Most of our cells possess an internal clock, a group of genes displaying a cyclic expression pattern that reaches a peak once a day. A large number of circadian genes are expressed by organs such as the liver, whose activity needs to be precisely regulated over the course of the day. A team of researchers of the National Centre of Competence in Research Frontiers in Genetics, based at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, reveals that an important regulator of this molecular oscillator is a specific microRNA. The latter belongs to a class of small RNA molecules that regulate the production of proteins in our cells. Thus far, little was known about their function within the circadian clockwork. The study by Ueli Schibler"s team, published in the 1st June edition of Genes & Development, fills in this important gap.
Endocrinology

N.Y. Kendra's Law A Success For Treating Mental Illness, New Study Shows

New York"s Kendra"s Law to provide assisted outpatient treatment for people with severe mental illness is effective in a wide-range of measures, and provides long-lasting benefits the longer someone with a mental illness is in the program, a comprehensive independent evaluation conducted for the state by Duke University Medical School finds. "The clear fact is that Kendra"s Law is an effective mechanism to engage people with the most severe forms of mental illness in outpatient treatment," said Rosanna Esposito, Interim Acting Executive Director of the Treatment Advocacy Center. "Kendra"s Law reduces hospitalizations, arrests, substance abuse and other negative consequences of mental illness, while it greatly increases treatment. The law is working just as intended; to increase treatment and to keep people safer." Kendra"s Law was enacted in 1999 after Kendra Webdale was tragically pushed to her death in front of an oncoming New York City subway train by a man with an untreated mental illness. The incident galvanized the mental health community and state lawmakers to develop a better way to provide outpatient treatment to people with severe mental illnesses who have had multiple hospitalizations or violence due to noncompliance with medication. Key findings of the report include: - Hospitalizations were reduced by more than one-half among people receiving 12 months or more of assisted outpatient treatment. - The likelihood of arrest in any given month was reduced from 3.7 to 1.9 percent for AOT participants as compared to before they were in the program. - Suicide or other attempts of people on assisted outpatient treatment to harm themselves decreased by more than half; - Nonadherence to medications among participants decreased from 47% to 33% after six months of AOT. The 107-page study also indicates the positive outcome of assisted outpatient treatment extends after the person is taken off the order, with the largest long-term improvement coming from people in AOT for 12 months or longer. "This independent evaluation proves that Kendra"s Law works and should be made permanent in New York. It is a model to be replicated in other states," Esposito said. Last month, New Jersey passed a similar bill and it is awaiting signature by Gov. Jon Corzine. The Treatment Advocacy Center


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