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THURSDAY, July 8, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- California plans to approve reparations of up to $25,000 to some of the thousands of people who were sterilized decades ago by the state's government.California will be the third state -- after Virginia and North Carolina -- to compensate victims of the so-called eugenics movement that peaked in the 1930s, the Associated Press reported. Supporters of the movement believed it was beneficial to prevent people with mental illnesses and physical disabilities from having children. While California sterilized more than 20,000 people before its law was repealed in 1979, only a few hundred are still alive, the AP reported. The state has set aside $7.5 million for the reparations program.The state's proposal would also pay women the state coerced to...

THURSDAY, July 8, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Children tend to sleep less as they approach early adolescence, perhaps because of the pressures of homework and the presence of social media.Now, new research suggests that loss of precious slumber is not inevitable. The researchers found that a school-based program in mindfulness training — which involves being present in the moment, deep breathing and yoga movements — helped at-risk children not only curb that loss in sleep, but to gain more rest than they had before."There is a lot of evidence showing physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness practice and mind-body integration practices such as yoga and breath work," said Christina Chick, a postdoctoral scholar in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University...

THURSDAY, July 8, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- A longer prison sentence has been handed to the founder of a now-closed Massachusetts pharmaceutical facility responsible for the 2012 meningitis outbreak that killed 100 people and sickened hundreds of others.Barry Cadden, who was president and co-owner of the New England Compounding Center (NECC), received a 14-and-a-half year sentence from a federal judge Wednesday. Cadden was initially given a nine-year sentence, but that was tossed out last year by an appeals court, the Associated Press reported.Cadden, who was convicted of fraud and other crimes, showed little emotion when he heard the new sentence.The meningitis outbreak was caused by mold-tainted steroid injections produced by Cadden's company in Framingham, about 20 miles west of...

THURSDAY, July 8, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have identified specific brain circuitry that is related to people's sense of spirituality — and it's centered in a brain region linked to pain inhibition, altruism and unconditional love.The findings add to research seeking to understand the biological basis for human spirituality."It is something of a treacherous subject to navigate," said lead researcher Michael Ferguson, a principal investigator at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston.Spirituality and religiosity, as well as the human brain, are obviously complex, he noted. But given the central role of religion and spirituality in human experience, Ferguson said, "why wouldn't we want to better understand it?"Over 80% of the...