October 23, 2003
News Makers
TICK, TICK, TICK: That’s the sound of the biological clock of American women who put education and career ahead of starting a family. A recent story in the Columbus Dispatch considered the issue of women’s fertility and how it relates to career and family. The UW’s Michael Soules, a professor and division director of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, told the Dispatch that women are too often led to believe that getting pregnant past the age of 35 is an easy thing to do. “It isn’t until women try to get pregnant and it’s not working that they realize they are up against a biological clock.” And it doesn’t help when media reports highlight stories of middle-aged celebrities giving birth. “I don’t believe, in all instances, they were using their own eggs. There is no reason celebrities should be more fertile than the general public. They are giving a bad public health message.”
FALL FOIBLES? While millions of Americans flock to wooded areas intent on viewing the brilliant foliage that happens this time of year, something very serious could be happening. Those forests awash in color could be fighting for their lives. A recent story in the Baltimore Sun suggests that when leaves turn from green to yellow and especially red, it could be a sign of stress, a sign that the trees are fighting off injury from insects, pollution or drought. Or, as the UW’s Linda Chalker-Scott, an associate professor of horticulture, told the Sun, the changing colors could be an example of the leaves trying to protect themselves from freezing temperatures. It would make sense, she theorizes, because “the colors get more intense as you get into higher altitudes.”
EUROPE’S BRAIN DRAIN IS U.S. BRAIN GAIN: A recent story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looked into the European problem of brain drain, specifically the trend of the top scientific minds leaving Europe for the United States. It’s not that all of the European scientists are coming to the U.S., but many of the best are. And that — wrote the UW’s Bill Zumeta, a professor in the Evans School of Public Affairs, and Joyce Raveling, a research associate, in a report last year for the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology — is the real problem. The Post-Gazette quoted from the report: “Real innovation in science depends less on the many ‘worker bees’ in the enterprise than on the presence of a decent sprinkling of the very best minds.”
Newsmakers is a periodic column reporting on coverage of the University of Washington by national press services.
