January 17, 2002
Newsmakers
MAPPING EVOLUTION: As better genomic information becomes available with the resolution of the Human Genome Project, a UW scientist thinks a clearer picture of human evolution, might result. Humans are “a novel offshoot of a fairly conservative lineage,” Maynard Olson, a UW professor of medicine and genetics, recently told The New York Times. People may stick out from the ape and monkey family, he said, because of a spurt of evolution, which often happens when a species occupies a new and uncontested habitat—the boundary between savanna and rain forest in Africa, for example, where humans are thought to have first developed. To adapt to a new habitat, humans may have had to make many genetic compromises, he said. “The point medically is that it may well be we need to understand what these compromises were, and to focus on the downside of being early members of a novel evolutionary lineage responding to a constantly changing environment.”
TOO MUCH MEDIA: Don Shifrin, a UW clinical professor of pediatrics, recently told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that kids are spending too much time with television, computer games, the Internet and a host of other media messages. “The amount of time children spend ingesting media is the second greatest amount of time they spend doing anything during childhood, besides sleep.”
Newsmakers is a periodic column reporting on coverage of the University of Washington by national press services.
