Culture and Arts

A bill to improve obstetric care in rural areas; a bill to establish a National Commission on Fibrotic Diseases; A bill to ensure the safe use of cosmetics, and for other purposes; A bill to amend the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 relating to determinations with respect to efforts of foreign countries to reduce demand for commercial sex acts under the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; A bill to require federal law enforcement agencies to report on cases of missing or murdered Indians, and for other purposes; A resolution expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the relationships between firearm violence, misogyny, and violence against women and reaffirming the importance of preventing individuals with a history of violence against women from accessing a firearm. more »

In Sweden the push toward simple, economical living attracted young artisans eager to revolutionize the home furnishings industry. In the early 1930s one such émigré was architect and designer Josef Frank, who left Austria as the persecution of Jews mounted. Typical of industrial designers of that era, Frank worked in several sectors of the furnishings industry, designing furniture and textiles for multiple companies. His influential work included brightly colored, naturalistic patterns based on botanical prints by 18th-century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. Moved by the beauty and detail of these prints, Frank used them to decoupage the outside of cabinets and as inspiration for his own textile patterns. more »

The authors analyzed data from the Los Angeles County Health Survey with a focus on two specific health behaviors — eating at fast-food restaurants more than once a week and eating five or more servings of fruit and vegetables daily. For the purposes of the survey, an apple is used as a reference point for a serving of fruit, and a handful of broccoli or a cup of cut carrots are used as references for a serving of vegetables. The researchers analyzed 4,244 responses from both immigrants and native-born Americans regarding fast-food consumption. They analyzed 9,166 responses to the fruit-and-vegetable-intake question.   more »

Fed Governor Michelle W. Bowman asks: "For many years, inflation has run modestly below our 2 percent objective. Given that, it would be helpful to hear from you whether you think the Federal Open Market Committee should consider strategies that aim to have inflation exceed our target for a time, to make up for the earlier period of time when it fell short. Or would that threaten the decades of success the Fed has had keeping the public's expectations for inflation low and stable?" ... more »