内容摘要：Police determined the man died by suicide after his parents found a note with details about how and where he planned to kill himself. Police also obtained his driver’s license and determined he was a white male in his late 20s.

Police determined the man died by suicide after his parents found a note with details about how and where he planned to kill himself. Police also obtained his driver’s license and determined he was a white male in his late 20s.

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation’s infant mortality rate dropped last year after two years of hovering at a late-pandemic plateau.Some experts think one reason for the drop could be a vaccination campaign against

, or respiratory syncytial virus, which is a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can be dangerous for infants.The infant mortality national rate dropped to about 5.5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2024, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s down from about 5.6 per 1,000 live births, where it had been the previous two years.

CDC officials believe the findings will not change much when the final numbers come out later this year.Infant mortality is the measure of how many babies die before they reach their first birthday. Because the number of babies born in the U.S. varies from year to year, researchers instead calculate rates to better compare infant mortality over time.

U.S. infant deaths fell to about 19,900 last year, according to CDC data, compared with about 20,150 in 2023.

The U.S. infant mortality rate has been worse than other high-income countries, which experts have attributed to poverty, inadequate prenatal care and other things. Even so, the U.S. rate generally has improved over the decades because of medical advances and public health efforts.Symptoms vary widely. For some people, profound autism means being nonverbal and having significant intellectual disabilities. Others have far milder effects, such as difficulty with social and emotional skills.

Autism rates are rising — not among profound cases but milder ones, said autism expert Helen Tager-Flusberg of Boston University.That’s because doctors gradually learned that milder symptoms were part of autism’s spectrum, leading to changes in the late 1990s and early 2000s in diagnosis guidelines and qualifications for educational services, she said.

The link between genes and autism dates back to studies of twins decades ago. Some are rare genetic variants passed from parent to child, even if the parent shows no signs of autism.But that’s not the only kind. As the brain develops, rapidly dividing cells make mistakes that can lead to mutations in only one type of cell or one part of the brain, Amaral explained.