�Թϲ�����

When Toni and Jim Hoy adopted their son Daniel through the foster care system, he was an affectionate toddler. They did not plan to give him back to the state of Illinois, ever. "Danny was this cute, lovable little blond-haired, blue-eyed baby," Jim says. Toni recalls times Daniel would reach over, put his hands on her face and squish her cheeks. "And he would go, 'You pretty, Mom,' " Toni says. "Oh my gosh, he just melted my heart when he would say these very loving, endearing things to me." (Herman, 1/2)

Maria Hussein, who escaped the war in Syria, was many hours into labor in a Swedish hospital when the midwife realized her fetus was in distress, and called in an obstetrician to help. The doctor began giving Ms. Hussein instructions and reassurance in Swedish. Oksana Kornienko, who works as a doula culture interpreter for a nonprofit organization serving pregnant immigrant women, listened attentively, leaning over Ms. Hussein’s shoulder and translating the doctor’s words into Arabic. (Anderson, 1/2)

Do you have a clutter problem? If you have to move things around in order to accomplish a task in your home or at your office or you feel overwhelmed by all your “things,” it’s a strong signal that clutter has prevailed. And it might be stressing you out more than you realize. (Lucchesi, 1/3)

Kaiser Health News: Too High To Drive: States Grapple With Setting Limits On Weed Use Behind Wheel 

It used to be the stuff of stoner comedies and “Just Say No” campaigns. Today, marijuana is becoming mainstream as voters across the country approve ballot questions for legalization or medical use. In response, state governments are testing ways to ensure that the integration of this once-illicit substance into everyday life doesn’t create new public health risks. These efforts are sparking a difficult question: At what point is someone too high to get behind the wheel? (Luthra, 1/3)

A promising new vaccine and new therapies have the potential to stem the latest outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo — second only to an outbreak that claimed 11,000 lives in Western Africa from 2014 to 2016. But the country’s raging civil war is complicating efforts to deliver medicines and track cases, said Dr. Inger Damon, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of high-consequence pathogens and pathology. (Rayasam, 1/2)

The situation highlighted a long, soul-sapping mental decline that physicians diagnosed a year later as early onset Alzheimer’s, a disease the family attributes to the years Stensrud played high school and college football. On the eve of Monday night’s national championship at Levi’s Stadium, the Stensruds are one of four families suing the NCAA in wrongful death complaints that underscore the potentially high costs of the game. (Almond, 1/2)

A recent study out of Oregon suggests emergency medical responders — EMTs and paramedics — may be treating minority patients differently from the way they treat white patients. Specifically, the scientists found that black patients in their study were 40 percent less likely to get pain medication than their white peers. (Foden-Vencil, 1/3)

In 2004, Penn became one of five federally sponsored centers to run a Phase 3 clinical trial of pancreatic islet transplantation – instead of whole pancreas transplants -- for people with complicated diabetes who couldn’t sense their own hypoglycemia. ...During an islet transplantation, specific cells from a deceased donor’s pancreas are separated from other digestive enzyme portions of the organ, and the highly purified human islets containing new beta and alpha cells are infused into the recipient’s liver. (Raymond Rush, 1/2)

[James] Watson’s many odious comments over the decades might be blamed on age (he is 90), or irascibility, or a privileged white man’s raging at a world that no longer winks at remarks like “some anti-Semitism is justified.” But in interviews with STAT, longtime friends offered another explanation for how Watson can believe something refuted by rigorous research, and how someone who cares deeply about history’s verdict can hold so tenaciously and publicly to unrepentant racism and sexism. (Begley, 1/3)