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Some good news for all the tired parents out there: Having and raising kids may unexpectedly boost your brain and protect your mind from aging over the long run, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research from Rutgers Health and Yale University found parents developed higher brain-wide functional connectivity as they aged, especially in networks associated with movement and sensation, if they had more children. Those same networks typically show lower functional connectivity associated with greater age, meaning parenthood may protect against “functional brain aging.” The study findings apply to both moms and dads, which suggests the benefits come from parenthood caregiving, rather than pregnancy alone. This study looked at data from 37,000 adults including 19,964 females and 17,607 males from the UK Biobank, using the largest population-based neuroimaging data set to date to investigate the link between the number of children a parent had and age of brain function. It sheds new light on how adult human brains develop over the course of a lifespan, and is encouraging news for women who temporarily suffer from “Mommy brain,” or greater forgetfulness and difficulty concentrating during and after pregnancy. Overall, these results suggest that parenthood may be neuroprotective in later life, and are consistent with preliminary findings of previous studies that show younger-looking brain structures in animal parents. Check out the full study here.
Category:
E-Commerce
As Tesla shares continue to decline amid CEO Elon Musk’s controversial behavior and involvement in politics, one of the nations largest labor unions is worried about just how low the stock could go. On Thursday, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten sent a letter to the CEOs of six major asset management firms, outlining the union’s concerns over Teslas recent stock struggles and urging asset managers to reassess investments in the EV maker. Weingarten pointed to Teslas stock price dropping to as low as $290.80 from a high of $489, as well as the companys market capitalization falling below $1 trillion. She argued that Teslas latest financial disclosures should raise red flags, citing missed profit margin expectations and rising cost pressures. These are not isolated incidents but rather a troubling pattern that suggests Teslas pricing power is eroding, leaving it vulnerable to market fluctuations and increased competition, Weingarten wrote. The letter was sent to Larry Fink of BlackRock, Abigail Johnson of Fidelity, Ronald OHanley of State Street, Thasunda Duckett of TIAA, Robert Sharps of T. Rowe Price, and Salim Ramji of Vanguard. Musk and Teslas board were copied on the letter as well, reported the the New York Times. Fast Company reached out to Tesla for comment. Weingarten also detailed Teslas struggles in Europe, noting a 60% decline in sales in GermanyEuropes largest auto market. Additionally, she pointed to growing competition in the EV charging sector, particularly with the launch of IONNA, a rival charging network backed by Mercedes, BMW, General Motors, Stellantis, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, and, most recently, Toyota. Musk’s Divided Attention Teslas financial troubles come after the company received shareholder approval for Musks $56 billion pay package, Weingarten noted. When gathering shareholder approval for the proposal, Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm wrote, Fairness and respect require that we honor the collective commitment we made to Elona commitment that was, and fundamentally still is, about retaining Elons attention and motivating him to focus on achieving astonishing growth for our company. Following the pay package vote, Musk has since established himself as a close adviser to President Trump and is now moving to slash the size of the federal workforce via his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Trump administration has also announced a halt to federal funding for the expansion of highway EV charging infrastructure, according to Weingartens letter. She also pointed to a decline in Teslas brand perception, citing data from the American EV Jobs Alliance. According to the organization, EV swing consumersthose open to purchasing an EV once costs drophold negative views of Musk, further complicating Teslas ability to expand its customer base. Weingarten ended her letter by calling for asset managers to take action. Given these mounting concerns and the potential material impact on pension fund portfolios, I would appreciate a response detailing your firms assessment of Teslas current valuation and the steps you are taking to protect AFT members who are your clients and beneficiaries, she wrote. The AFT represents 1.8 million education, healthcare, and public sector workers. According to a union press release, AFT members deferred wages are invested in pension funds totaling an estimated $4 trillion, with a significant portion tied to Tesla shares. Additionally, teachers and nurses have billions of dollars in their own savings invested in direct contribution pension plans managed by the asset firms addressed in the letter. Shares in Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) are down about 23% year to date.
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E-Commerce
When it comes to stock markets around the world, this year has clearly not been America First. The U.S. stock market has risen in 2025 and isn’t far from its all-time high set last week. But it’s climbed less than stock indexes in Mexico City, Paris and Hong Kong. The difference in performance has been so stark that an index of stocks from 22 of 23 developed economies around the world, excluding the United States, has trounced the S&P 500: a 7.5% rise through Monday versus 1.7% for Wall Street’s benchmark. The split in performance has many causes, and if it continues, it would mark a sharp reversal following years of U.S. exceptionalism. The U.S. stock market has been the clear winner for so long among global markets in large part because the U.S. economy’s growth has been so much stronger and more stable than nearly anywhere else. But the steep divide means many other stock markets now don’t look as pricey as Wall Street, where critics say prices for many stocks rose too quickly relative to their companies’ admittedly booming profits. And the Big Tech stocks that have accounted for more and more of the U.S. stock market as they kept soaring look particularly expensive to some. Morgan Stanley strategist Michael Wilson said many of his clients in recent weeks have been asking if they should be focusing more outside the United States. That includes tech stocks from China, where an upstart called DeepSeek rocked the artificial-intelligence industry by saying it had developed a large language model that could compete with big U.S. rivals but at a much lower cost. Central banks in other countries also seem much more willing to cut interest rates, a move that often tends to boost stock prices there. The European Central Bank eased rates in January, for example. A day later, the Federal Reserve in Washington said it would hold rates steady, and minutes from that meeting indicate U.S. policy makers may not move rates for a while given worries about how President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other policies could keep upward pressure on inflation. The rise in the U.S. dollar’s value against other currencies has also helped big exporters from other countries. Some big U.S. companies, meanwhile, have already begun cutting their forecasts for upcoming profits in part because of the bite that a stronger dollar will take from their results. At Amazon, shifting currency values erased about $900 million of its revenue during the latest quarter, which totaled $187.8 billion, for example. The tech giant said the pain will likely continue, and it forecasted an unusually large, unfavorable impact of approximately $2.1 billion for its revenue in the current quarter from currency shifts. Professional investors have noticed. It’s still popular among global fund managers to bet on Apple, Nvidia, and the other five Big Tech U.S. stocks that make up the group known as the Magnificent Seven. But the recent outperformance for stocks outside the United States may show a peak in investor conviction of U.S. exceptionalism,” Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett wrote in a recent BofA Global Research report. Stan Choe, Associated Press business writer
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E-Commerce
The nightmare scenario of Atlantic Ocean currents collapsing, with weather running amok and putting Europe in a deep freeze, looks unlikely this century, a new study concludes. In recent years, studies have raised the alarm about the slowing and potential abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic end of the ocean conveyor belt system. It transports rising warm water north and sinking cool water south and is a key factor in global weather systems. A possible climate change -triggered shutdown of what’s called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC could play havoc with global rain patterns, dramatically cool Europe while warming the rest of the world and goose sea levels on America’s East Coast, scientists predict. It’s the scenario behind the 2004 fictionalized disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow, which portrays a world where climate change sparks massive storms, flooding and an ice age. Scientists at the United Kingdom’s Met Office and the University of Exeter used simulations from 34 different computer models of extreme climate change scenarios to see if the AMOC would collapse this century, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature. No simulation showed a total shutdown before 2100, said lead author Jonathan Baker, an oceanographer at the Met Office. It could happen later, though, he said. The currents have collapsed in the distant past. Still, the computer simulations should be reassuring” to people, Baker said. But this is no greenlight for complacency, Baker warned. The AMOC is very likely to weaken this century and that brings its own major climate impacts. The Atlantic current flows because warm water cools as it reaches the Arctic, forming sea ice. That leaves salt behind, causing the remaining water to become more dense, sinking and pulled southward. But as climate change warms the world and more fresh water flows into the Arctic from the melting Greenland ice sheet, the Arctic engine behind the ocean conveyor belt slows down. Previous studies predict it stopping altogether with one of them saying it could happen within a few decades. But Baker said the computer models and basic physics predict that a second motor kicks in along the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica. The winds there pull the water back up to the surface, called upwelling, where it warms, Baker said. It’s not as strong, but it will likely keep the current system alive, but weakened, through the year 2100, he said. Baker’s focus on the pulling up of water from the deep instead of just concentrating on the sinking is new and makes sense, providing a counterpoint to the studies saying collapse is imminent, said Oregon State University climate scientist Andreas Schmittner, who wasn’t part of the research. Those Southern Ocean winds pulling the deep water up act like a powerful pump keeps the AMOC running even in the extreme climate change scenarios, Baker said. As the AMOC weakens, a weak Pacific version of it will likely develop to compensate a bit, the computer models predicted. If the AMOC weakens but not fully collapses, many of the same impacts including crop losses and changes in fish stock likely will still happen, but not the big headline one of Europe going into a deep freeze, Baker said. Scientists measure the AMOC strength in a unit called Sverdrups. The AMOC is now around 17 Sverdrups, down two from about 2004 with a trend of about 0.8 decline per decade, scientists said. One of the debates in the scientific world is the definition of an AMOC shutdown. Baker uses zero, but other scientists who have been warning about the shutdown implications, use about 5 Sverdrups. Three of Baker’s 34 computer models went below 5 Sverdrups, but not to zero. That’s why Levke Caesar and Stefan Rahmstorf, physicists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research and authors of an alarming 2018 study about potential shutdown, said this new work doesn’t contradict theirs. It’s more a matter of definitions. An AMOC collapse does not have to mean 0 (Sverdrups) overturning and even if you would want to follow that definition one has to say that such a strong AMOC weakening comes with a lot (of) impacts, Caesar wrote in an email. The models show a severe AMOC weakening that would come with severe consequences. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Seth Borenstein, AP science writer
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E-Commerce
Kerry Doyle sat in an immigration courtroom observing a fellow judge finish a hearing in an asylum case late on a recent Friday afternoon when she received an email with an attachment titled terminated. Doyle had been a judge for only about two months and was in training to begin hearing cases soon at a recently opened Massachusetts court. Her colleagues helped her pack up her office before the afternoon was over, she said. This doesnt make sense for an administration that is prioritizing removals, Doyle said, using the legal word for deportation. You need the judges to hear the cases to order the person removed so that you can then carry out the removal order. Its a vital part of the system. So far, the administration of President Donald Trump has fired 22 immigration judges, including a group that worked as managers of their respective courts, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the union that represents immigration judges. The administration has also fired five senior managers of the immigration court system, the union said. As part of its efforts to reduce the size of the government workforce, the Trump administration has been firing federal employees on probationary status, meaning that they had recently been hired for their positions. Immigration judges are on probationary status for their first two years, according to the union, except for military veterans who have probationary status for only a year. When the administration sent federal employees its Fork in the Road email calling for voluntary resignations, it was supposed to exclude people who worked in immigration enforcement and national defense and for the Postal Service, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. But the letters went to immigration judges anyway. Look up the definition of hypocrisy, its when someone says one thing but does another. The firing of immigration judges when we need more judges to enforce our immigration laws by this administration is a perfect example of hypocrisy, said Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, in an emailed statement to Beyond the Border. This outrageous move to fire immigration judges will only make the backlog of cases worse. This is the opposite of the administrations stated goals, Biggs said. The Trump administration and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which operates the courts, did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. Biggs estimated that the fired judges would have held 10,000 hearings this year. The courts currently have a backlog of more than 3.7 million cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which monitors government data on immigration through public records requests. Days after the firings, immigration Judge Samuel B. Cole, who has been hearing cases in Chicago since 2016 and has served as executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said that he would be stepping down. He declined to say more on the subject at this time. The firings affected courts across the United States, with California and Texas losing the most, according to the union. Five of the judges were based in Texas with three in Houston, one in Laredo, and one in El Paso. Four of the judges were based in California with one in San Diego and three in Concord. Rhana Ishimoto, the assistant chief immigration judge who managed the downtown San Diego court, disappeared from the immigration court website at the end of last week and was replaced with Anne Kristina Perry, who already served as assistant chief at the Imperial and Otay Mesa courts in Southern California. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Ishimoto was appointed to her position in May 2023 and previously worked as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney representing the government in immigration court cases. Ishimoto did not respond to a message on social media. On Wednesday morning, the downtown San Diego court, which operates on the fourth floor of the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building, seemed largely business as usual. People with stacks of documents and plastic folders lined up in the courts lobby to file paperwork and check in for court hearings. In one courtroom, Judge Rico Bartolomei, who once served as assistant chief immigration judge in San Diego before stepping down from the managerial role to hear cases full time again, worked his way through a full docket of people from Venezuela, El Salvador, Haiti, Russia and Brazil. Almost all had recently crossed the border, mostly through the now defunct CBP One phone application that allowed people to schedule appointments to request asylum. Bartolomei greeted each person brightly, almost cooing, Hi Kaleb! at a toddler who approached the judge a few strides in front of his parents and older brother. He carefully explained their rights in court and offered them time to find attorneys. In the case of Kalebs parents, whom the government alleged were from Venezuela, he learned that they had moved to Arkansas. He asked how they had arrived in court that day. By bus, the family responded. How long did that take? he asked empathetically. About 36 hours, the family said. He moved their case to a court closer to them. He transferred three of the cases that he heard that morning to the court in Concord, California, which is now short three judges. Kate Morrissey, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
Category:
E-Commerce
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