February 16, 2011
Newsmakers
‘TIME ON TFA: On the occasion of Teach for Americas 20th birthday, Time magazine ran a story headlined “Teach for America: 5 Myths that Persist 20 Years On.” The story began by remembering when Wendy Kopp first proposed the idea in her senior thesis at Princeton and was told she was “quite evidently deranged.” The article later quoted Dan Goldhaber, education professor and director of the UW Center for Education Data and Research, who said, “The weight of the evidence suggests that TFA teachers as whole are at least as effective as other teachers in the schools they end up in.” Read the article online.
NET REVOLUTION?: Was Egypt the first Internet revolution? MSNBC asked that question in its “Technolog” column on Feb. 14 in a story headlined “How the Internet brought down a dictator.” The story quoted Philip Howard, UW associate professor of communication and director of the Project on Information Technology and Political Islam. Howard said Egypts strategy of turning off the Internet wasnt used to block opposition from organizing, but out of fear of grassroots outrage. “The real threat to the regime is people will take pictures of the police beating their brothers and sisters, and the regime can’t respond well to Facebook images of the police shooting rubber bullets into a crowd,” Howard said.”There is no regime response for those images that go out over trusted networks.” Read the story online.
‘LEGAL TWILIGHT: The Dream Act showed promise of being able to put thousands of immigrant students on the path to legal residence in the United States — but then it failed to pass the U.S. Senate. The New York Times reported Feb. 8 on students left in a “legal twilight” by the failure of the bill, and quoted Roberto G. Gonzales, UW assistant professor, along the way. “Many have become extremely frustrated, sad, confused and without a lot of answers as to how to move forward,” said Gonzales, who had surveyed young illegal immigrants.”They had a lot of hope that their activities were going to change the minds of the country. Having the door slammed in their face hit many of them really hard.” Read the story online.
IMPORTANT INFO: Most of the world is getting fatter, but globally, blood pressure and cholesterol are going down, according to recent studies that were the subject of an early-February article in The Washington Post. These days, the United States and Australia have some of the lowest average blood pressures in the world and many countries are successfully battling cholesterol, though its rising in developing nations, the article stated. Its hoped the information will be used to better understand what types of public health interventions have worked in the past. “This effort is amazing, and the findings are very, very interesting,” said Christopher Murray, physician, biostatistician and director of the UWs Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. “Once you have something like this, you can shift the conversation to an entirely new level. You can start having a discussion of why countries have been more or less successful changing these risks, and thats a hugely important conversation.” Read the story online.
THREE SIGNS: Ten days after the tragic Jan. 8 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords and 18 others in Tucson, The New York Times ran an article asking, what should be done with someone like Jared L. Loughner, who showed certain warning signs but was never diagnosed with a mental illness? The story later quoted Dr. Jack McClellan, professor of psychiatry, who said he advises people worried about someone struggling with a mental disorder to watch for three things: a sudden change in personality, in thought processes, or in daily living. “This is not about whether someone is acting bizarrely; many people, especially young people, experiment with all sorts of strange beliefs and counterculture ideas,” McClellan said. “Were talking about a real change. Is this the same person you knew three months ago?” Read the article online.
DEADLY FLARES: Even as astronomers find more planets that might be able to host life, news comes that solar flares on dwarf stars could be deadly to any life forms that might be inhabiting nearby planets. The BBC quoted Adam Kowalski, UW astronomy graduate student presenting results at the American Astronomical Society, who said, “A (large flare) can have drastic and long-lasting effects on a surrounding planets atmosphere. You want to understand how often these large flares happen: once a month, a year, a millenium?” Toward that end, the story said, Kowalski “pored through data from the Hubble Space Telescope, studying a small region of sky [containing about 200,000 stars] 250 times over the course of seven nights. … During that time, the team saw over 100 high-energy flares, some of enormous intensity.” Read the story online.
