April 11, 2002
News Makers
LIFE’S A BEACH: And often a contaminated one. Water-quality testing in the state of California has been given increased emphasis recently. The current testing methods take too long and as a result some beaches are left open for a period of time while the water is contaminated. Other beaches are closed when they are clean. Researchers there are trying to come up with a way to measure for viruses and other pathogens in real time. That, Mansour Samadpour told the San Diego Union-Tribune, would be an important development because of the threat that humans pose to an otherwise clean environment. “One human with an infection can contaminate an entire beach. It doesn’t take much if the bather has a highly contagious illness,” Samadpour, an assistant professor of environmental health, said. “Babies at the beach are like bacteria tea bags.”
I’LL DRINK TO THAT: But perhaps not out of a child’s “sippy cup.” The drinking vessels with a protruding bill that keep adults’ homes and cars from suffering the indignity of youthful spillage came under fire in a recent story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Among other claims, parents, dentists and some speech therapists suggested that the cups interfere with a child’s speech development. The UW’s Christopher A. Moore, however, isn’t about to slam the sippy. “I can’t imagine how they could be a problem,” the professor of speech and hearing sciences told the Post-Gazette. “It’s an anecdotal observation that’s not supported by research.” Detractors suggest that the cups cause children to develop a lazy tongue that produces sloppy “th” and “st” sounds, at least temporarily.
RU IMING?: That is, are you instant messaging? And the answer is, probably not, if you’re an adult. A recent story in the Columbus Dispatch looked at the world of instant messaging — real-time Web communication — and according to the UW’s David Silver, an assistant professor of communications, it’s a world that belongs to teens. “This is a technology that came about during their coming of age,” he told the Dispatch. As for the slang that is so much a part of the way teens use the technology, perhaps it’s just another form of teen rebellion. “It’s a playful kind of informal, immature communication that allows for a lot of flexibility in language. We’re seeing kids with very few rules on a medium they conceive as their own.”
Newsmakers is a periodic column reporting on coverage of the University of Washington by national press services.
