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Disney Entertainment Co-Chair Dana Walden And ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro On Spectrum Carriage Deal: “This Is The Future Of Our Business” – Deadline
- Disney Entertainment Co-Chair Dana Walden And ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro On Spectrum Carriage Deal: “This Is The Future Of Our Business” Deadline
- Disney, Charter End Dispute, Restoring ESPN, ABC to 15 Million Households The Wall Street Journal
- Disney and Charter reach deal to end cable blackout in time for ‘Monday Night Football’ CNBC
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Spectrum Customers Lose ESPN as U.S. Open, College Football Heat Up – The Wall Street Journal
- Spectrum Customers Lose ESPN as U.S. Open, College Football Heat Up The Wall Street Journal
- Disney pulls ABC, ESPN, FX and other channels from Charter Spectrum service Yahoo Entertainment
- Spectrum owner Charter calls pay-TV model broken as it battles Disney over blackout CNBC
- DWTS fans furious after bombshell news season 32 shows will ‘go dark’ and be ‘unwatchable’ for many America… The US Sun
- Spectrum Says Cable TV is Broken & Wants Disney to Agree to Bundle Streaming Services At Discounted Prices Cord Cutters News
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Racial, economic disparities skew New Jersey data on autism, intellectual disability | Spectrum
Community watch: A larger proportion of Black autistic children in New Jersey are identified as having intellectual disability, compared with their white autistic peers.
xavierarnau / iStock
Black children are significantly more likely than white children to be identified as having autism with intellectual disability, according to data from New Jersey published today in Pediatrics. Autism with intellectual disability is also more commonly identified among children from poorer areas of the state than among those from wealthier areas, the study shows.
Racial and ethnic disparities in autism diagnoses have declined across the United States over the past 20 years. And prevalence gaps among white, Black and Hispanic children in New Jersey have historically been fairly small, according to data from 2014 and 2018. But the new analysis, which looked at data collected there from 2000 to 2016, reveals that significant racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities persist in the identification of intellectual disability among autistic children.
“We didn’t expect the level of disparities that we saw,” says study investigator Josephine Shenouda, program manager and epidemiologist at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark.
Universal autism screening could go a long way toward bridging these gulfs, which likely reflect inequalities in access to a diagnosis rather than true differences in prevalence, Shenouda and others say.
The work does not clarify what drives the demographic disparities, says Andres Roman-Urrestarazu, director of studies in psychology and behavioral science at the University of Cambridge in England, who was not involved in the study. The data come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, which relies on children’s educational and clinical records but lacks information on their insurance status, and thus give only part of the picture, Roman-Urrestarazu says. “Knowing how the U.S. health-care system works, it’s kind of an important thing, as much as ethnicity is a crucial factor to consider. That’s my main criticism.”
The new study dug specifically into the prevalence of autism with and without intellectual disability among 8-year-old children in four New Jersey counties, which account for about a quarter of the state’s 8-year-olds. Together, these counties have consistently shown a higher autism prevalence than most of the other 10 ADDM sites around the country, and the region is highly diverse. Examining county-level data offers valuable insights into who is being identified and when, says David Mandell, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the study.
Of the 29,470 children included in the analysis, researchers identified 1,505 who have autism with, and 2,764 who have autism without, intellectual disability.
Autism without intellectual disability was 30 percent less likely to be identified in non-Hispanic Black children compared with non-Hispanic white children, Shenouda’s team found. And it was about 60 percent as likely among children who live in less affluent areas compared with those in wealthier areas.
Because public-school funding is tied to property taxes, children from poorer areas attend poorly funded schools, where their developmental concerns are less likely to be correctly identified, Mandell says. Systemic racism may influence how health-care and educational professionals view minority children, too, he says. “We’ve got a lot of data and a long history showing that for Black kids who have developmental disabilities, those developmental disabilities are often missed or misdiagnosed.” Autistic Black children tend to need to be more severely affected to receive the same attention as autistic white children, he says.
Overall, about 1 in 42 white children has autism without intellectual disability, the study suggests. That number is 1 in 82 for Black children. If the figure for white children can be considered close to the actual prevalence, then officials are likely missing about half of Black children with autism, Mandell says.
Over the 16-year study period, autism prevalence in New Jersey went from about 1 in 104 children in 2000 to about 1 in 31 as of 2016. The prevalence of autism without intellectual disability increased by a factor of five, whereas that for autism plus intellectual disability only doubled. These disparate growth rates could be due to better recognition of autistic children who have average or above-average intellectual abilities, Shenouda says.
The differences are not due to the 2013 change in diagnostic criteria for autism, because the team used the same case definition throughout the entire study period, Shenouda says, and many of the children identified had not been formally diagnosed.
Outside the U.S, a similar pattern has emerged, with a higher proportion of new diagnoses being on the less severely affected end of the spectrum, according to a 2017 study of children in Australia. Based on the four New Jersey counties’ racial and economic diversity, Shenouda and her colleagues suspect the region’s numbers are more representative of the U.S. picture overall than other ADDM study sites are, suggesting that the New Jersey site may predict future national trends.
Across all demographic categories, children do not seem to receive the early screenings recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics at 18 and 24 months, Shenouda says. But even when children are screened, most do not receive the recommended follow-ups, past research has shown.
One obstacle, Shenouda says, is that many underserved families obtain their routine health care through Federally Qualified Health Centers, which adhere to a different set of screening guidelines: These publicly funded clinics provide care regardless of a person’s ability to pay, but they follow the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s recommendation against universal screening.
“If I were to think of something that could help children be identified and have the greatest impact for underserved communities, it would be to follow that recommendation and use effective screeners at 18 and 24 months,” she says.
Cite this article: https://doi.org/10.53053/HKAG7622
Autism Spectrum Disorder Study Looks at Monkeys as Possible Models
Summary: Study builds on mounting evidence that suggests rhesus monkeys may be a good model to study social deficits associated with autism spectrum disorder.
Source: Florida Institute of Technology
New research builds upon growing evidence demonstrating the importance of rhesus macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta) as a model for the core social impairments observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
ASD is an early onset neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent social communication and interaction impairments. Despite its prevalence and societal cost, its basic disease mechanisms remain poorly understood in part due to the overreliance on rodent models, which lack the complex social and cognitive skills critical to modeling behavioral symptoms relevant to human ASD.
Like humans, rhesus monkeys have complex cognitive abilities and display stable and pronounced individual differences in social functioning, making them a promising model to better understand the biological and behavioral mechanisms underlying social impairments.
“Rhesus monkey sociality is stable across time and linked to variation in the initiation but not receipt of prosocial behavior,” a study by assistant professor Catherine F. Talbot, Ph.D., in the School of Psychology at Florida Tech and researchers from Stanford University and University of California, Davis’s California National Primate Research Center, found that several aspects of social functioning differed between monkeys that were classified as low-social compared to monkeys classified as high-social.
Analyzing three years of data from 95 male rhesus monkeys housed at the California National Primate Research Center in large, outdoor social groups in semi-naturalistic habitats, the team first classified monkeys based on their natural social behavior.
For instance, they looked at whether the monkeys were participating in activities such as grooming, which is a behavior that facilitates social bonding in non-human primates, or if they were in proximity to or in contact with other individuals, or if they were just hanging out by themselves with no one else around.
Monkeys that spent the most time alone were classified as low-social, whereas monkeys that spent the least time alone were classified as high-social. Next, the researchers evaluated differences between the social communication profiles of these two groups of monkeys.
The team found that high-social monkeys initiate more pro-social behavior, which encompasses behaviors like sitting in contact with others and grooming, compared to low-social monkeys. However, there was no difference between how often low-social monkeys and high-social monkeys received pro-social behavior.
“This suggests that there’s this underlying social motivation factor, that we’re seeing a higher social motivation as high-social monkeys, which doesn’t sound like rocket science, but it does support the social motivation hypothesis of ASD and lend insight into how this might be impacted by underlying biology,” Talbot said.
“There are multiple theories or ideas about what drives social impairments observed in autism and one of them is that individuals with ASD have lower social motivation.”
This hypothesis suggests that people with ASD tend to have deficits in social reward processing, which causes diminished social initiation and difficulty in fostering and maintaining social bonds. In other words, social interactions are not inherently rewarding.
The team also found that there was no difference in threat behavior between low-social and high-social monkeys, either in the initiation or receipt of threats. That was contrary to their hypothesis, where they figured that if low-social monkeys are not communicating effectively with their peers they would be more likely to get bullied and receive traumatic injuries, something they have found in previous research.
The findings of the current study better characterize this naturally occurring, low-social phenotype and can help researchers gain mechanistic insight into social motivation deficits observed in people with ASD.
“There really hasn’t been much work looking at rhesus macaques as an ASD model,” Talbot said.
“What we’re modeling are naturally occurring social deficits. So, in humans, autism spectrum disorder is just that—a spectrum—and you see these traits that are distributed throughout the entire human population, not just the clinical population. People who may not be classified as being on the spectrum will also exhibit some these traits.”
Individuals with ASD may also experience deficits in other socio-cognitive skills like theory of mind, which is understanding that one’s own personal beliefs and knowledge are different from others.
Following eye gaze and understanding what another person is looking at is another component one component of theory of mind. An impaired ability to follow eye gaze is often one of the first behavioral signs to emerge in children with ASD.
The team is also working on research looking at the underlying biology of low-social and high-social monkeys and how this might relate to their performance on other social cognitive tasks, including how well the monkeys follow the eye gaze of their peers, how well they interact with their peers, how well they identify faces and how that compares to their performance in the non-social domain, like how well they identify objects.
About this autism research news
Author: Press Office
Source: Florida Institute of Technology
Contact: Press Office – Florida Institute of Technology
Image: The image is credited to Kathy West
Original Research: Closed access.
“Rhesus monkey sociality is stable across time and linked to variation in the initiation but not receipt of prosocial behavior” by Catherine F. Talbot et al. American Journal of Primatology
Abstract
See also
Rhesus monkey sociality is stable across time and linked to variation in the initiation but not receipt of prosocial behavior
Rhesus monkeys and humans are highly social primates, yet both species exhibit pronounced variation in social functioning, spanning a spectrum of sociality.
Naturally occurring low sociality in rhesus monkeys may be a promising construct by which to model social impairments relevant to human autism spectrum disorder (ASD), particularly if low sociality is found to be stable across time and associated with diminished social motivation.
Thus, to better characterize variation in sociality and social communication profiles, we performed quantitative social behavior assessments on N = 95 male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) housed in large, outdoor groups.
In Study 1, we determined the social classification of our subjects by rank-ordering their total frequency of nonsocial behavior. Monkeys with the greatest frequency of nonsocial behavior were classified as low-social (n = 20) and monkeys with the lowest frequency of nonsocial behavior were classified as high-social (n = 21).
To assess group differences in social communication profiles, in Study 2, we quantified the rates of transient social communication signals, and whether these social signals were initiated by or directed towards the focal subject.
Finally, in Study 3, we assessed the within-individual stability of sociality in a subset of monkeys (n = 11 low-social, n = 11 high-social) two years following our initial observations.
Nonsocial behavior frequency significantly correlated across the two timepoints (Studies 1 and 3). Likewise, low-social versus high-social classification accurately predicted classification two years later.
Low-social monkeys initiated less prosocial behavior than high-social monkeys, but groups did not differ in receipt of prosocial behavior, nor did they differ in threat behavior.
These findings indicate that sociality is a stable, trait-like characteristic and that low sociality is linked to diminished initiation of prosocial behavior in rhesus macaques.
This evidence also suggests that low sociality may be a useful construct for gaining mechanistic insight into the social motivational deficits often observed in people with ASD.
A Link Between Hearing Loss and Autism Spectrum Disorder
Summary: MEF2C, a gene critical for brain development and regulating circuit formation in the brain also plays a significant role in inner ear development. Mutations of MEF2C have previously been linked to ASD. Researchers found mice with only one copy of the MEF2C gene had reduced activity in the auditory nerve.
Source: Medical University of South Carolina
A cross-disciplinary team of researchers in the College of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) has discovered hearing impairment in a preclinical model of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
More specifically, the researchers report in the Journal of Neuroscience that they observed mild hearing loss and defects in auditory nerve function.
Closer examination of the nerve tissue revealed abnormal supportive cells called glia, aging-like degeneration and inflammation. The findings from this study highlight the importance of considering sensory organs and their interactions with the brain in understanding ASD.
Many patients with ASD show increased sensitivity to sound. While many scientists in the past have looked to the brain for an underlying cause, the MUSC team took a different approach by studying the peripheral hearing system.
“Hearing impairment may have an impact on the higher-level auditory system and, eventually, cognitive function,” said Hainan Lang, M.D., Ph.D., professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at MUSC and one of two senior authors of the study. Jeffrey Rumschlag, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the MUSC Hearing Research Program, is a co-first author of the manuscript.
Previous studies of aging-related hearing loss showed that the brain can increase its response to make up for reduced auditory signals from the inner ear. Lang wanted to find out if this increase, called central gain, could contribute to abnormal brain response to sound in ASD. However, a significant obstacle lay in her path.
“We didn’t have a clinically relevant model to directly test this important fundamental question,” she said.
The preclinical model that would allow Lang to test her hypothesis was developed in the lab of Christopher Cowan, Ph.D., chair of Neuroscience at MUSC. Mice in this model have only one working copy of a gene called MEF2C. Cowan’s group had studied MEF2C in the past for its role in brain development and found that it was important for regulating circuit formation in the brain.
They became especially interested in creating a preclinical model when a group of patients with ASD-like symptoms were identified with MEF2C mutations. Cowan’s models also show ASD-like behaviors, including increased activity, repetitive behavior and communication deficits.
Lang and Cowan’s collaboration began as they presented posters side by side at an orientation for the College of Graduate Studies at MUSC. Lang’s lab had identified molecular regulators, including MEF2C, crucial for inner ear development, and she saw Cowan’s model as something she could use to test her hypothesis about hearing loss in neurodevelopmental diseases. Cowan enthusiastically agreed, and the research team began to assess the ability of the MEF2C-deficient mice to hear.
They first measured the response of the brain to auditory signals, using a modified version of a test that is commonly used to screen newborn infants for hearing loss. Mild hearing loss was observed in the mice with only one working copy of MEF2C while hearing remained normal in those with two working copies.
To investigate this loss further, the researchers measured the activity of the auditory nerve, which carries signals from the inner ear to the brain. They found reduced activity in this nerve in mice with only one copy of MEF2C.
With their sights set on the auditory nerve, the researchers used advanced microscopes and staining techniques to determine what was going wrong. Although the overall hearing sensitivity loss was mild, the researchers were excited to see a big difference in auditory nerve response.
Nerves from mice with a single copy of MEF2C showed cellular degeneration much like that seen in age-related hearing loss. The researchers also saw signs of increased inflammation, with disrupted blood vessels and activated immune cells called glia and macrophages. This finding was especially surprising to the researchers.
“Glial cells were not my first thought; I thought it was a neuronal change,” said Lang. “Now we understand that auditory nerve activity can also involve the immune system, and that’s the beautiful new direction we want to continue to study.”
Cowan also believes that the finding opens the way for a new area of neuroscience research.
“We have more appreciation now that there is an important interaction between the immune system in your body and the immune system in your brain,” he said. “The two systems play critical roles in shaping how nervous system cells communicate with each other, in part, by pruning excess or inappropriate connections that have formed, and this is an essential aspect of healthy brain development and function.”
The findings from this study could be important not only for patients who are MEF2C deficient but also for people with ASD or hearing loss as a whole.
“Understanding how this gene may be participating in ear development and how the inner ear development is affecting brain development has tremendous applicability,” said Cowan.
In future studies, the researchers aim to discover how exactly MEF2C causes the changes that were identified in this study. The research team also hopes to explore these findings in patients with MEF2C deficiency using noninvasive hearing tests.
Lang and Cowan both emphasize the importance of collaboration across disciplines for allowing studies like this to take place.
“The power of collaboration is tremendous for a place like MUSC,” said Cowan. “This collaboration, for us, was ideal because Dr. Lang is an expert in hearing function and development, whereas I am more the genetics and molecular development person. These kinds of collaborations are ideal, and it’s precisely what MUSC is encouraging a lot of us to think about doing more and more.”
“In other words, we each play different instruments so, together, we can make a better harmony,” said Lang.
About this ASD and auditory neuroscience research news
Author: Kimberly McGhee
Source: Medical University of South Carolina
Contact: Kimberly McGhee – Medical University of South Carolina
Image: The image is credited to Dr. Hainan Lang, Medical University of South Carolina
Original Research: Closed access.
“Peripheral auditory nerve impairment in a mouse model of syndromic autism” by Christopher Cowan et al. Journal of Neuroscience
Abstract
See also
Peripheral auditory nerve impairment in a mouse model of syndromic autism
Dysfunction of the peripheral auditory nerve (AN) contributes to dynamic changes throughout the central auditory system, resulting in abnormal auditory processing, including hypersensitivity.
Altered sound sensitivity is frequently observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), suggesting that AN deficits and changes in auditory information processing may contribute to ASD-associated symptoms, including social communication deficits and hyperacusis.
The MEF2C transcription factor is associated with risk for several neurodevelopmental disorders, and mutations or deletions of MEF2C produce a haploinsufficiency syndrome characterized by ASD, language, and cognitive deficits.
A mouse model of this syndromic ASD (Mef2c-Het) recapitulates many of the MEF2C haploinsufficiency syndrome-linked behaviors, including communication deficits. We show here that Mef2c-Het mice of both sexes exhibit functional impairment of the peripheral AN and a modest reduction in hearing sensitivity.
We find that MEF2C is expressed during development in multiple AN and cochlear cell types; and in Mef2c-Het mice, we observe multiple cellular and molecular alterations associated with the AN, including abnormal myelination, neuronal degeneration, neuronal mitochondria dysfunction, and increased macrophage activation and cochlear inflammation.
These results reveal the importance of MEF2C function in inner ear development and function and the engagement of immune cells and other non-neuronal cells, which suggests that microglia/macrophages and other non-neuronal cells might contribute, directly or indirectly, to AN dysfunction and ASD-related phenotypes.
Finally, our study establishes a comprehensive approach for characterizing AN function at the physiological, cellular, and molecular levels in mice, which can be applied to animal models with a wide range of human auditory processing impairments.
SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT
This is the first report of peripheral auditory nerve (AN) impairment in a mouse model of human MEF2C haploinsufficiency syndrome that has well-characterized ASD-related behaviors, including communication deficits, hyperactivity, repetitive behavior, and social deficits.
We identify multiple underlying cellular, subcellular, and molecular abnormalities that may contribute to peripheral AN impairment.
Our findings also highlight the important roles of immune cells (e.g., cochlear macrophages) and other non-neuronal elements (e.g., glial cells and cells in the stria vascularis) in auditory impairment in ASD.
The methodological significance of the study is the establishment of a comprehensive approach for evaluating peripheral AN function and impact of peripheral AN deficits with minimal hearing loss.
Beaumont Spectrum confirms 400 layoffs amid rising cost pressures
The Beaumont Spectrum Health System confirmed Friday that it is laying off 400 employees, blaming the move mostly on inflation and the expiration of COVID-19 federal aid.
It was a “difficult decision” to cut 400 workers out of a workforce of 64,000, according to a BHSH statement issued Friday. The layoffs are aimed at management positions and workers who don’t care for patients, the 22-hospital company said.
“The eliminations are not confined to any one area of our organization,” spokeswoman Ellen Bristol said in a Friday email.
The layoffs come seven months after the Southfield-based Beaumont and west Michigan-based Spectrum merged. Business mergers often result in workforce reductions.
“Our health system, like others around the nation, is facing significant financial pressures from historic inflation, rising pharmaceutical and labor costs, COVID 19, expiration of CARES Act funding and reimbursement not proportional with expenses,” the health system said in a statement.
“We are grateful for the contributions and years of dedicated service provided by our impacted team members and are working to help them find employment within our health system and elsewhere,” according to a BHSH statement. “We remain deeply committed to caring for our team members and our community.
The move came after Beaumont Spectrum reported in August that the nonprofit health system’s operating margin through the first six months of the year was 1.8%, which was lower than expected. Officials said in the consolidated financial statement that “leaders are focused on cost containment initiatives” as well as “acceleration of integration savings.”
“The organization has seen deterioration in its operating results through the first six months of the year,” Chief Financial Officer Matthew Cox said in the health system’s consolidated financial statement. “This is the result of lower volumes and higher agency and critical staffing costs in our care delivery divisions.”
Health systems around the country have had mixed financial results this year, said Allan Baumgarten, a health industry analyst in Minneapolis who follows the Michigan hospital industry. InterMountain Healthcare in Utah merged with SCL Health and reported higher profits, he said, while other systems are reporting losses resulting from higher labor costs, investment losses and other reasons.
“It’s not surprising that two large systems merge and soon discover that they had a lot of duplication in certain jobs,” Baumgarten said about Beaumont and Spectrum. “Four hundred jobs in an organization that size is not a big cut, but it’s likely that more cuts will follow.”
In the company’s Friday statement, officials attempted to soften the blow of the layoffs by noting the joint health system had “recruited around 10,000 people, predominately into open roles directly serving our patients and health plan members,” since the start of the year.
Experts had predicted that the merged hospital system would likely avoid consolidations in service lines while creating purchasing clout to reduce costs because of the distinct footprints with Spectrum on the state’s west side and Beaumont in southeast Michigan. The merger included Grand Rapids-based Spectrum’s Michigan-based health insurance plan, Priority Health, which enrolls 1.2 million customers.
Spectrum Originals Shutting Down: Shows Renewed Cancelled, Joe Pickett
The TV landscape is losing another source of original content: Spectrum Originals, which produced series like L.A.’s Finest and the Mad About You revival for Spectrum cable subscribers, is shutting down, according to our sister site Deadline, with parent company Charter Communications scrapping all of its original programming plans.
The move leaves several current Spectrum series in limbo, including neo-Western Joe Pickett, which is billed as Spectrum’s top-rated series ever and was renewed for Season 2 in February, and sci-fi thriller Beacon 23, starring Game of Thrones alum Lena Headey, which has already been renewed ahead of its series premiere. (Beacon 23 is a co-production with AMC.) It’s unclear yet if these series will still air on Spectrum, be moved to another network or be scrapped altogether.
Spectrum Originals launched in 2019 with the premiere of L.A.’s Finest, an offshoot of the Bad Boys movies franchise originally developed at NBC and starring Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba. It ran for two seasons before being cancelled in 2020. Spectrum also hosted a six-episode revival of the ’90s NBC sitcom Mad About You, with Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt reprising their roles as married New Yorkers Paul and Jamie Buchman. Their other original series included The Bite, a COVID satire from The Good Fight‘s Robert and Michelle King, and Season 2 of true crime anthology Manhunt, which came over from Discovery and focused on the 1996 Atlanta bombing and falsely accused suspect Richard Jewell.
Several more upcoming series still remain in development at Spectrum Originals: the miniseries George and Tammy, starring Oscar winner Jessica Chastain as country music legend Tammy Wynette; the Cold War thriller A Spy Among Friends, starring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce (a co-production with BritBox); and the Florida-set dramedy Panhandle, starring The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel‘s Luke Kirby (a co-production with the Roku Channel).
Charter Spectrum hit with $7 billion in punitive damages over 2019 murder
A jury in Texas found Charter Communications liable for $7 billion in punitive damages this week as the result of a lawsuit from the family of Betty Jo McClain Thomas, an 83-year-old woman who was stabbed to death by one of its employees in December 2019. The $7 billion is in addition to $375 million in compensatory damages the jury assigned in June.
The explanation behind the staggering figure of the verdict goes well beyond the horrific crime committed. It also includes the company’s policies and responses to previous incidents of theft and an attempt to forge a document showing Thomas agreed to forced arbitration that would have limited potential damages to the amount of her last bill.
While assigning the $7 billion in exemplary damages for gross negligence, jurors decided that Charter tried to compel the case into arbitration using forged documents from Spectrum, its internet service provider. Charter tried to compel arbitration using a terms of service document they claimed Thomas had agreed to while signing up for service, which was supposedly pulled from its database.
During the trial, lawyers for the family pointed out a number of inconsistencies with the document. Those include dates on it that didn’t match with the times when it was supposedly pulled from Charter’s system and a blank spot where Thomas’ name should have been. In other cases, the company’s lawyers presented a different set of terms without the arbitration clause.
While the documents were supposed to represent evidence taken from Charter’s live database, they showed an address indicating that the file was actually stored on someone’s personal computer. At the very bottom, it shows the file address, which reads “localhost:62220/VewContracts.aspx.”
Localhost is a loopback address, representing 127.0.0.1, and means the request isn’t leaving the computer it started from or accessing any other network or database at all.
A USA Today report from earlier this month outlines the murder, committed by a Spectrum cable repairman who returned to Thomas’ home the day after being sent for a service call to fix her fax machine. Lawyers representing Thomas’ family argued in court that the technician, Roy James Holden, learned the woman had reported ongoing issues with her service, then used his company key card to drive one of its vans to her house, where she caught him attempting to steal her credit cards, and he murdered her.
On January 3rd, 2020, Charter sent Thomas an overdue bill that included a one-time charge of $58.94 for the service call.
The jury found Charter a proximate cause in Thomas’ death, meaning the company committed an act or omission “that a person using ordinary care would have foreseen the injury, or some similar injury, could be anticipated,” and assigned it 90 percent of the responsibility. The plaintiff’s lawyers pointed to Charter’s failure to perform a background check that would’ve shown Holden lied about his work history, and submitted evidence he’d repeatedly sought help from supervisors and management due to personal problems, and told them he at one point thought he was a Dallas Cowboys player.
Holden admitted committing the murder, and was sentenced to life in prison in April 2021.
In addition, the lawyers for Thomas’ family presented evidence that Charter Spectrum techs had been responsible for more than 2,500 thefts against customers over several years before the murder, and said the company refused to investigate or report them to the police. The court included a spoliation order with the jury instructions, based on Charter’s destruction of evidence that should’ve been preserved, including video surveillance and tracking information for Holden, and found Charter guilty of contempt for failing to produce other documents.
In a statement released after the verdict, Charter spokesperson Cameron Blanchard said:
Our hearts go out to Mrs. Thomas’ family in the wake of this senseless and tragic crime. The responsibility for this horrible act rests solely with Mr. Holden, who was not on duty, and we are grateful he is in prison for life. While we respect the jury and the justice system, we strongly disagree with the verdict and will appeal.
The law in Texas and the facts presented at trial clearly show this crime was not foreseeable — and the plaintiffs’ claims of wrongdoing by Charter are categorically false. We are committed to the safety of all our customers and took the necessary steps, including a thorough pre-employment criminal background check — which showed no arrests, convictions or other criminal behavior. Nor did anything in Mr. Holden’s performance after he was hired suggest he was capable of the crime he committed, including more than 1,000 completed service calls with zero customer complaints about his behavior.
On Friday morning, Charter released its earnings results for the second quarter of 2022, reporting $13.6 billion in revenue, “driven primarily by growth in residential, mobile and commercial revenues.” Its press release did not mention the case or verdict, and a transcript of its earnings call posted to Seeking Alpha shows analysts did not ask executives about it. A 10-Q document filed with the SEC did mention it under the Contingencies section.
The Company has considered various factors, including the legal and factual circumstances of the case, the trial record, the jury verdicts, the status of the proceedings, applicable law, the views of legal counsel, the court’s rulings in advance of and during the trial, along with upcoming post-trial motions of the parties in determining the various grounds for appeal that the Company expects to vigorously pursue and the likelihood of a successful appeal. Based on these factors, the Company has concluded that a loss from this case is not probable and reasonably estimable. Therefore, the Company has not accrued a liability for the adverse verdict in its financial statements as of June 30, 2022.
This Stunning Image Shows a Star Like You Have Never Seen One Before
It looks a bit like neon artwork from the ’80s. But what the image above really shows is much, much cooler.
It’s a star, and the first light image captured by the newest instrument on the Gemini South telescope, the Gemini High-resolution Optical SpecTrograph, or GHOST. What it shows is the entire optical spectrum of light emitted by a star named HD 222925, in amazing resolution.
“This is an exciting milestone for astronomers around the globe who rely on Gemini South to study the Universe from this exceptional vantage point in Chile,” said Jennifer Lotz, director of Gemini Observatory.
“Once this next-generation instrument is commissioned, GHOST will be an essential component of the astronomer’s toolbox.”
The light we can actually see being emitted by stars is chock full of hidden details describing the distant sun’s features. It can show us whether a star is moving by how light shifts from one end of the spectrum to the other, while variations in brightness can reveal internal oscillations, which can be analyzed by asteroseismologists.
The entire spectrum of the star also reveals what it’s made of, which in turn can be used to learn all sorts of things about it, such as how old the star is, and where it formed.
That’s because different elements absorb and re-emit light differently. When astronomers look at a star’s spectrum, they can look for brighter and dimmer wavelengths, and use that information to determine which elements are present in the star’s atmosphere.
You can see what the dimmer features, known as absorption lines, look like in the image below.
The labeled spectrum of HD 222925. (International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/GHOST Consortium)
This technique was recently used on Hubble observations HD 222925, a really oddball star located around 1,460 light-years away. Spectral analysis revealed the most elements ever seen in a star’s atmosphere, a whopping 65 – most of which were heavy elements that can only form in extremely energetic events, such as a neutron star collision or supernova.
That means that HD 222925, which is in a very late stage at the end of its life, probably formed from a cloud that was rich in these elements in the first place, seeded by the deaths of stars that had come before it.
The new images from GHOST have not revealed anything new about the star – yet. The star was the target of the instrument’s ‘first light’, the first image taken by a new telescope to check the telescope is working, and how well. This allows scientists to make any necessary first adjustments to the instrument.
The commissioning phase comes next, in which scientists and technicians will put GHOST through its paces to make sure the instrument is performing as intended.
Once that stage is complete, and any further adjustments made, GHOST will be ready for scientific observation, probably around the first half of next year.
That will be something to look forward to. GHOST, which took 10 years to construct, is 10 times more powerful than Gemini’s other major optical spectrograph, GMOS. It is, scientists say, the most powerful and sensitive spectrograph of its kind currently in operation on comparable telescopes.
It’s expected that GHOST will be able to provide fascinating insights on stars identified as interesting targets by other telescopes and surveys, and deliver us many more stars, split into their constituent wavelengths – beautiful ‘star-bows’ that will hopefully unlock many hidden secrets of the Milky Way.
The images were published by NOIRLab’s International Gemini Observatory here.