News roundups

January 12, 2011

Newsmakers

‘THANK YOU, JAKE: “They say Jake Locker was carved to athletic perfection between the Cascade Range and the Salish Sea. Big, strong and strikingly fast, he was a statewide myth by the time he was a teenager …” The New York Times profiled Husky quarterback Jake Locker on Dec. 29. Read the story online.

TO HOLD A BOOK: Wall Street Journal writer Dan Newman penned an entertaining early December article on why he didnt want a Kindle for Christmas — and of course he was needled mercilessly in the comments field with horse-and-buggy analogies and warnings to get modern or be “left in the dust.” Newman wrote that he often remembers passages in books by their location, that “physical memory runs deep.” Sandra Kroupa, book arts and rare book curator for UW Libraries Special Collections division, agrees. Newman wrote, “(Kroupa) demonstrates as much with a party trick she’s developed. I’ve seen her set down a dozen stiff-backed Little Golden Books before a group of adults. They chatted with delight as they held old copies of Dumbo, Little Toot the Tugboat and other childhood favorites. “The physical book holds meaning,” she told him. “If I were to bring a modern edition of Dumbo, it wouldn’t elicit nearly the same response.” Read the story online.

CARRYING THAT WEIGHT: A recent article in CNNs Health.com column discussed a new study of obesity that involved nearly 1.5 million people and concluded that obesity alone will in fact take years off ones life. Some previous studies had suggested that being overweight has no effect on mortality. The story quoted Ali Mokdad, UW professor of global health, who studies obsesity and mortality but was not involved with the research. “Hopefully we can put this to rest and focus on what we need to do in order to help people get healthy and live longer,” Mokdad said. Read the story online.

CONSIDER THE IMPACTS: Dan Goldhaber, director of the UWs new Center for Education Data and Research asked, “How can we be doing what’s in the best interest of kids if we don’t even consider a teacher’s impact on kids when making key decisions?” His question came in an early December Los Angeles Times article about seniority-based teacher layoffs under the headline, “When layoffs come to L.A. schools, performance doesnt count.” The story told of John H. Liechty Middle School, which opened in 2007 with a new, energetic staff and a mission to “reinvent education” in the nations largest school district. Test scores went up, but plummeted again after deep cuts and layoffs. Read the story online.

STILL, WE SNIFFLE: Store shelves groan with cold remedies, but people still sniffle and sneeze. Modern medicine, an article in the Los Angeles Times Healthy Skeptic column reminds us, has not conquered the common cold. James A. Taylor, UW professor of pediatrics, said that children are especially hard to treat. “Colds are a huge reason why parents bring their kids to a physician, and we have very little to offer.” The FDA has recalled many childrens cold medicines over safety concerns. Some families opt for homeopathic remedies, whose active ingredients, the article states, may be too diluted to be effective. Taylor is planning to enroll 400 children in a placebo-controlled study of a childrens cold remedy called Cold ‘n Cough 4 Kids. “If homeopathy works, it would have to work on a different pathway than anything we know about,” said Taylor. “But I’m open-minded about it.” Read the article online.

AWARENESS AND PREVENTION: Parents need to be aware that accidents can happen in prep sports and its prudent to have emergency equipment at practice sites. Thats the opinion of experts after the tragic death of a 16-year-old New Jersey baseball catcher who collapsed after a pitch struck him in the chest in early December. A CNN article about the injury quoted Dr. Jon Drezner, a UW associate professor of family medicine and team physician for the Seattle Seahawks, who said blunt trauma to a child’s chest can send the heart into an abnormal rhythm. “The other side of prevention is awareness,” Drezner said. “Parents of children who are at risk — baseball, softball, hockey and lacrosse — they should be aware [of such trauma] so in the unlikely circumstance someone collapses, they begin immediate CPR with chest compressions.” He added, “Begin a response as if this is worst case scenario. Do we have defibrillators? At the college level, this is standard.” Read the story online.

PAVLOVIAN PIXELS: Kathy Gill, a senior lecturer in communication who teaches about the intersection of digital technology and social institutions, was featured in a recent NPR story about new software designed to help social media addicts recover. Its called Anti-Social. Gill said the Web helps us in our jobs, but also distracts us — wait, was that a video of puppies? — and wastes our time. “We get a seratonin hit from this,” Gill told NPR. “So those of us who are susceptible to that high keep getting these little Pavlovian dog responses. It’s new, it’s shiny…wheee! So, if that’s part of your personality or genetic makeup, then these technologies can be something that you need to consciously think about managing.” Read and hear the story online.