Keep doing this if you want a heart attack

Anger and Arteries

By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION 

Brief anger can temporarily impair blood vessel function, potentially heightening heart disease and stroke risks, finds new study in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

• When adults became angry after remembering past experiences, the function of cells lining the blood vessels was negatively impaired, which may restrict blood flow. Previous research has found that this may increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
• In this study, episodes of anxiety and sadness did not trigger the same change in functioning of the blood vessel lining.

A brief episode of anger triggered by remembering past experiences may negatively impact the blood vessels’ ability to relax, which is essential for proper blood flow, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.

Previous research has found that impairment of blood vessels’ ability to relax may increase the risk of developing atherosclerosis, which may, in turn, increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

R.I. House approves reforms to Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights

‘A long time coming’ 

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Good cops should have no cause for concern

After nearly two hours of debate and strong opposition from progressive lawmakers, the Rhode Island House of Representatives Thursday approved bills to reform the state law governing the process for investigating and disciplining police officers accused of misconduct.

The House voted 58-14 to pass a bill by Deputy Speaker Raymond Hull and 59-13 in favor of identical legislation sponsored by Senate President Dominick Ruggeiro that updates the controversial Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (LEOBOR).

Adopted in 1976, LEOBOR protects police officers from being fired immediately or put on leave without pay when misconduct charges against them arise. The law has been greatly criticized by social justice advocates, who say it’s unfair for police to review internal misconduct.

Attempts to reform the law stalled in previous years due to disagreements over who would sit on an expanded five-member panel that rules on any disciplinary action. General Assembly leaders finally reached a compromise earlier this week. 

“Reform to LEOBOR has been a long time coming and this legislation will not only deliver transparency and accountability to the public, but it will also help police departments across the state root out misconduct in a fair and just way,” Hull said in a statement Thursday.

Under the existing law, officers accused of misconduct appear before a panel made up of three active or retired police officers — with one picked by the chief, one by the officer under investigation, and a third chosen by both or a presiding Superior Court judge.

The hearing panel under Hull and Ruggerio’s legislation would still contain three officers, but they would instead be randomly chosen by the Police Officers Commission on Standards and Training. The panel would also include a retired judge and an attorney “selected in consultation with the Supreme Court’s committee on racial and ethnic fairness.”

The amended legislation also removes the prohibition preventing police chiefs from making public statements about cases that have not yet had a LEOBOR hearing or releasing video evidence.

Both bills allow police chiefs to suspend officers for a longer amount of time: five days for those accused of minor infractions and 14 days for those facing more serious complaints, such as excessive force or felonies. Suspension without pay is now two days before the right to a LEOBOR hearing kicks in. 

House Judiciary Chairman Robert Craven, a North Kingstown Democrat, called the changes “a major improvement” to what’s on the books now.

“This legislation is born of collective, productive, researched compromise,” Craven said. “That’s the mission of this body — this House. I believe in my heart this is the answer to police misconduct.”

Progressive lawmakers lauded General Assembly leadership for the work it took to craft the legislation, but said they felt it did not go far enough.

US is way stingier with maternity leave and child care than the rest of the world

US conservatives push policies that life begins at conception but ends at birth

Joya Misra, UMass Amherst

Preschool today, success tomorrow. 
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson

In most American families led by couples, both parents are in the workforce. Almost three-quarters of American mothers with children under 18 work.

At the same time, nearly 1 in 4 U.S. children are being raised by single moms.

Yet child care is generally unaffordable, and paid leave is not available to most U.S. parents.

Around the world, however, most employed women automatically get paid maternity leave. And in most wealthy countries, they also have access to affordable child care.

These holes in the U.S. safety net are a problem for many reasons, including one I’ve been researching with my colleagues for years: Paid parental leave and child care help women stay in the workforce and earn higher wages over time. This lack of parental leave and child care may explain why the U.S. is no longer a leader in women’s workforce participation.

Hazardous waste

By Nick Anderson

Trump has been a Russian tool for decades

Environmental Justice, RIPTA Funding Top Goals of Rhode Island Council

Targeted legislative agenda

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

The state’s environmental groups rolled out their legislative priorities April 30 at the Statehouse, announcing their focus on environmental justice zones, reducing building emissions, and securing funding for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority.

The priorities, spearheaded by the Environment Council of Rhode Island, a coalition of more than 60 environmental groups and organizations, were announced during ECRI’s annual Lobby Day at the Statehouse. The event featured speeches from lawmakers, state officials, and Speaker of the House Joseph Shekarchi, D-Warwick.

ECRI’s priorities are centered around seven different individual bills.

The Building Decarbonization Act (S2952/H7617), legislation that would require large buildings statewide to begin tracking the amount of fuel, water and greenhouse gas emissions they consume and produce over a three-year period, with the intention to create a building performance standard to be executed by the Office of Energy Resources (OER).

An additional section of the bills would require all new building construction to be all-electric, using no fossil fuels for heating, cooking, or other processes.

Scientists Develop One-for-All Virus Vaccine

No More Endless Boosters?

By UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE 

Researchers at UC Riverside have developed a new vaccine approach using RNA that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.

Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly.

The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating in the U.S.

This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus. The vaccine, how it works, and a demonstration of its efficacy in mice is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Private Equity is Bad Medicine for Hospitals

And really bad for workers and patients

By Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project in the Dirt Diggers Digest

One day after 60 Minutes aired a laudatory story about the efforts of an executive at KKR to promote partial employee ownership at firms he takes over, the more common consequences of private equity were on display in the announcement that Steward Health Care was filing for Chapter 11. The company then put its 31 U.S. hospitals up for sale.

Bankruptcy was the unsurprising destination for a company that has been on a downward trajectory since 2010, when Cerberus Capital Management took over what had been a Catholic non-profit hospital chain known as Caritas Christi Health Care and turned it into a for-profit operation. As is common in private equity deals, the new business assumed the cost of the acquisition.

It appeared that Cerberus was less interested in turning a profit and more focused on looting the company. It accomplished this by selling the firm’s facilities for over $1 billion to a real estate investment trust, which then started collecting hefty rents from Steward while Cerberus and its investors reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in gains. While Steward went deeper into debt and struggled to pay its bills, Cerberus exited the company in 2020.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The latest on Steward-owned hospitals in Massachusetts is that they failed to make payroll on May 9. - Will Collette

Old, ineffective and racist - the policy Trump loves

1950s strategy didn’t work then and is less likely to do so now

Katrina Burgess, Tufts University

While campaigning in Iowa last September, former President Donald Trump made a promise to voters if he were elected again: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he said. Trump, who made a similar pledge during his first presidential campaign, has recently repeated this promise at rallies across the country.

Trump was referring to Operation Wetback, a military-style campaign launched by the Eisenhower administration in the summer of 1954 to end undocumented immigration by deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. 

“Wetback” was a widely used ethnic slur for Mexicans who illegally crossed the Rio Grande, the river dividing Mexico and the U.S.

A U.S. Border Patrol officer shows how he found
an undocumented Mexican immigrant under the hood
of a car along the U.S.-Mexican border in March 1954.
 Associated Press

Trump says that he can replicate Operation Wetback on a much grander scale by setting up temporary immigration detention centers and relying on local, state and federal authorities, including National Guard troops, to remove the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S.

As a migration scholar, I find Trump’s proposal to be both disturbing and misleading. Besides playing to unfounded and dehumanizing fears of an immigrant invasion, it misrepresents the context and impact of Eisenhower’s policy while ignoring the vastly changed landscape of U.S. immigration today.

Brain worms

Message for Hopkinton, Richmond voters

 

DEM Announces $2.6 Million in Green Bond Awards to Help Communities Protect Open Space

More than half the money - $1,372,500 - go to programs in So. Kingstown, Westerly and Hopkinton. 

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) announced today the award of $2.6 million in grants to help communities and local conservation organizations protect valuable green space throughout the state.  Eleven projects will receive matching grants through DEM’s competitive Local Open Space Grant Program to protect 383 acres across Rhode Island. The funding is made possible by the 2022 Green Bond, which was passed by almost 70 percent Rhode Island voters, and invests in preserving open space, improving recreational facilities, and cleaning up lands and waters.

“There is much important land conservation work being done at the local level throughout Rhode Island” said DEM Director Terry Gray. “DEM is pleased to support communities and conservation groups who work to make Rhode Island a greener place by improving access to the outdoors, protecting water quality, and helping make our state more resilient.”

Municipalities, land trusts, and nonprofit land conservation organizations pursuing land protection projects were eligible to apply to the fiscal year 2024 Local Open Space Grant Program in October 2023. Applications were reviewed and ranked by the Governor’s Natural Heritage Preservation Advisory Committee, with final awards made by the State Natural Heritage Preservation Commission earlier this month. 

Grants of up to $400,000 – which may be used to cover up to half of the applicants’ project cost – are awarded to projects which preserve lands offering significant natural, ecological or agricultural value and those projects that connect or expand existing protected lands.  

The eleven open space grants being awarded today to protect 383 acres of open space include:

How to protect your teeth

Healthy teeth are wondrous and priceless 

Dentin and pulp are the body and heart of the tooth.
 Anna Koroleva/iStock via Getty Images

Samer Zaky, University of Pittsburgh

At an auction in England in 2011, one of John Lennon’s teeth sold for just over US$31,000.

How much are your teeth worth?

Teeth are amazing little miracles. They light up our smiles, we use them to speak and we chew with them more than 600 times at every meal.

Yet, in a society where 1 out of 5 Americans ages 75 and up live without their teeth, many people may not realize that teeth are designed to stay with us for a lifetime.

I’m a dentist and an assistant professor spanning clinical dentistry and craniofacial regeneration research. Researchers like me are still deepening our understanding of tooth development, with the ultimate goal of serving patients with on-demand regrown ones.

In the process, I have developed reverence for natural teeth and for the complex beauty of these biological and mechanical masterpieces.

Rhode Island Senate passes Healthcare Provider Shield Act

Sen. Elaine Morgan doesn't seem to mind Texas enforcing its anti-abortion laws in Rhode Island

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

Morgan voted NO, once again putting her
MAGA interests ahead of the people
of RI. Remember in November

The Rhode Island Senate passed a bill Thursday that would defend doctors’ ability to provide reproductive health services and gender-affirming care, which includes therapies, surgeries and other medical services for transgender and nonbinary people.  

The 29-7 vote passed largely along partisan lines, with every Republican senator — Jessica de la Cruz, Anthony DeLuca II, Elaine Morgan, Thomas Paolino and Gordon Rogers — voting against the bill. Sens. Roger Picard and Leonidas Raptakis were the only two Democrats to vote against it, and Sen. Victoria Gu was not present.

The Healthcare Provider Shield Act, sponsored by Sen. Dawn Euer and nine fellow Democrats, broadly states that it would stop “any individual” from interfering with access to reproductive or gender-affirming health care services in Rhode Island. 

More specifically, that means protecting doctors and other health care providers from legal action originating outside state lines — from places where abortion and other reproductive or gender-related health care services have been limited because of the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade.

“Any public act of a foreign jurisdiction that prohibits, criminalizes, sanctions, or authorizes a person to bring a civil action against or otherwise interferes with a person, provider, payer, or other entity in this state that engages in legally protected healthcare activity…shall be an interference with the exercise and enjoyment of the rights secured by this chapter,” the bill reads.

In Euer’s own words on the Senate floor: “What this bill does is it makes sure that Rhode Island gets to regulate our doctors,” she said. “We get to regulate and determine the standards of care here in Rhode Island for our Rhode Island professionals.”

Revenue for Rhode Islanders coalition announces 2024 Millionaires Tax campaign to ensure those making over $1,000,000 annually contribute their fair share

Tax the rich

The Revenue for Rhode Islanders coalition kicked off their 2024 campaign today to raise revenue for the state by creating a separate surtax – at a marginal rate of 8.99% (in place of the current top rate of 5.99%) on income above $1,000,000, ensuring those making more than $1,000,000 per year are contributing their fair share. 

The legislation, Senate bill 2355, sponsored by Senator Melissa Murray (Democrat, District 24, Woonsocket, North Smithfield), and House bill 7338, sponsored by Representative Karen Alzate (Democrat, District 60, Pawtucket, Central Falls), is estimated to raise $126 million in new tax revenue, and would only apply to taxable income above $1,000,000. It is estimated to impact only 2,134 Rhode Island tax filers. 

“The gap between the rich and poor continues to widen due to decades of policies that have helped the rich get richer,” stated Senate bill sponsor Senator Melissa Murray. 

“We can’t keep balancing budgets by cutting vital social service programs that our most vulnerable citizens depend on. This legislation will allow us to properly fund critical programs and services now that the federal relief money from the pandemic has dried up. This helps put our state on more solid financial footing going forward, and ensures a more fair and equitable tax structure.”