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Taking on the challenge of matching its successful predecessor, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” keeps the formula tight, a setup that feels more clearly like an Agatha Christie homage before a series of very clever twists kick in. Writer-director Rian Johnson has once again assembled a solid cast behind Daniel Craig, but it’s his use of language, where a word is wasted, that ultimately gives the sequel its edge. Netflix took opportunistic steps to acquire the “Knives Out” franchise, and unlike its usual “stroking the filmmakers’ pride” approach to theatrical distribution, it’s actually giving the film a one-week release before hitting the streaming service in late December. Most people will probably still wait to binge it in the comfort of their homes, but for those who indulge, it certainly plays well with an appreciative audience. After the family dynamic in “Knives Out,” which gave everyone a motive to kill the patriarch, Johnson tries his luck in a different scenario, w...

Researcher Dena Birch describes “social disadvantage” as a spectrum of how well a family’s financial needs are met. Birch is the Associate Dean for Research and professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts and Sciences and the Gregory B. Couch Professor in the School of Medicine. Researchers at St. Louis University wanted to see how "prenatal social disadvantage," the newborn brain, and parenting factors in cognitive and language skills. Prenatal social disadvantage refers to not having the resources to meet a family's basic needs. To do this, they recruited St. Louis clinics to find pregnant women from different backgrounds. They followed approximately 200 new mothers and their newborns at ages 1 and 2 to conduct parenting observations, as well as assess language and cognition. What they learned is that prenatal social disadvantages are linked to lower cognition and language scores, and helpful parenting behaviors can improve these indicators, but only to ...