The Oregon Zoo welcomes a new baby elephant
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) —
The Oregon Zoo in Portland has welcomed its newest addition, a baby elephant.
Thirty-year-old Asian elephant Rose-Tu gave birth on Saturday after 20 months of pregnancy, the zoo said in a news release. The calf appeared to be a 200-pound (90-kilogram) female, but zoo staff are giving the pair time to bond before conducting a first checkup to confirm weight and sex.
'We couldn't be happier with how everything is going so far,' Steve Lefave, who oversees the zoo's elephant program, said in the release. 'This was one of the smoothest births I've ever seen. Rose knew just what to do. She helped her baby up right away. The kid was standing on her own within 15 minutes and took her first steps soon after that.'
Rose-Tu and her baby, who is nursing regularly, are doing well, Kelsey Wallace from the zoo's communications team said Tuesday.
The calf is Rose-Tu's third baby. Her firstborn, 16-year-old Samudra, also lives at the zoo. Her second calf, Lily, passed away from a virus in 2018, just before she turned 6 years old.
It might be a while before the new baby and Rose-Tu are ready for visitors. Staff want to make sure the calf continues to do well, and that Rose-Tu is calm and comfortable with people around, Lefave said.
'Rose is a fantastic mom,' he said. 'She's so gentle and protective, and the calf is already nursing well. These are signs that they will have a strong bond, which is exactly what we want to see. We're ready to help if needed, but so far mom and baby are doing just fine on their own.'
The zoo supports a broad range of efforts to help wild elephants, and its elephant care program has spanned over 60 years, according to its statement.
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San Francisco Chronicle
20 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
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The Hill
22 minutes ago
- The Hill
Kennedy appoints some vaccine critics to ACIP panel
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
U.S.-born Asian Americans no longer the healthiest group among older adults
For the first time in two decades, older Asian Americans are no longer the healthiest U.S.-born aging racial group with the lowest rates of disability, according to a study published last month in the Journals of Gerontology. The report focused on adults aged 50 and older, and used disability prevalence as an indicator for overall health. The paper shows that while disability rates have decreased among aging adults in every racial group, it's remained unchanged among U.S.-born Asian Americans. The findings suggest that one contributor to the stagnating disability rate is income inequality, which has impacted Asian Americans more than any other group in recent years. Previous research had shown that both foreign-born and U.S.-born Asian older adults had lower mortality and disability rates than their counterparts in other racial groups. According to the new report, non-Hispanic white Americans have overtaken Asians Americans as the healthiest U.S.-born population, with the lowest disability prevalence. 'This study shows that the 'model minority' stereotype is wrong about the overall experience of U.S.-born older Asians in terms of health,' said lead author Leafia Ye, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Toronto. The report is the first to focus solely on the health of U.S.-born Asians, a group that experts say has been understudied due to its limited population size. The study drew on data from the American Community Survey, which has a sample size of more than 18 million U.S.-born adults aged 50 and older. The sample size for U.S.-born Asians is roughly 116,000, Ye said. The study authors defined disability as any chronic physical or mental health condition that limits an older adult's self-care or independent living capacity, which includes carrying out tasks like eating, bathing and grocery-shopping without assistance. Two decades ago, just 5.5% of U.S.-born Asian elders had trouble living independently — compared with 7% of white and 14% of Black elders. From 2005 to 2022, the report found, disability rates fell by at least 2% among U.S.-born non-Hispanic white, Black, Hispanic and Indigenous populations, as well as all foreign-born groups. (Black older adults experienced the largest drop from 14% to 10%.) Among native-born older Asian Americans, however, the rate has stayed at 5.5%. Ye said the trends preceded the Covid-19 pandemic, so it's unlikely that rising anti-Asian racism was a key risk factor. 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In the past, older Asian Americans have had better health outcomes than other groups because the large majority were foreign-born, Ye said. People with poorer health and lower socioeconomic status were less likely to resettle in another country, she said, so Asian immigrants became a 'very positively selected' group that's 'healthier and more successful economically compared with both the source and the destination populations.' By contrast, Ye said, U.S.-born Asians were immediately exposed to the country's cultural and political realities. Socioeconomic status has a particularly strong influence on health outcomes, as college-educated older Asian Americans saw a slight decline in disability, while those without a degree saw an increase. While the data didn't contain mental health measures, like loneliness and anxiety, Ye said it's possible that these conditions could have also contributed to stagnating health outcomes. 'In a way,' Ye said, 'U.S.-born Asians are both less selected and more exposed throughout their lifetime.' Mirza said a point of further study could be desegregated research on the impact of migration history on health outcomes. First-generation Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees, for example, survived war, famine and genocide. Research has shown that exposure to these adverse conditions could contribute to 'altered diets and physiological capacity' in their U.S.-born children, who are now advancing in age, Mirza said. Mirza also emphasized a need to study the impact of social isolation on Asian seniors, which she said is gradually emerging as a social determinant of health as much as smoking and alcohol use. 'We need to see what social isolation looks like for foreign-born Asians Americans and U.S.-born Asians Americans,' she said, 'and the extent to which social ties are preserved within these groups.' This article was originally published on
