April 1, 2010
Newsmakers
TWEETING POLS: Twitter is becoming popular among the nation’s governors, according to a winter story in USA Today that quoted Kathy Gill, UW senior lecturer in communication. The article stated that 32 governors use the microblogging site “for everything from alerting followers to story and travel news to telling them what they just had for breakfast.” Gill, who has studied Twitter since 2007, said a governor can use the service to “shed some light behind the curtain” of public office. Tweeting can help politicians seem more authentic, Gill said. But there’s also “sort of a new mind-set at being careful about what you say. Which of course is the opposite of being transparent and authentic and appearing real.” Read the story here.
SPEEDO OF DEATH: Clothes make the man, and they also make crucial first impressions that could dictate whether that man will be dating any time soon, according to a new book by Ellen Rakieten and Anne Coyle titled Undateable: 311 Things Guys Do That Guarentee They Won’t Be Dating or Having Sex. A winter story in The Los Angeles Times discussing the book quoted UW sociologist and relationships expert Pepper Schwartz, who said that women begin judging how a man looks “within the first 15 to 20 seconds. After that, the door starts to close.” Schwartz added, “”People are nervous, they’re trying to figure out how to avoid pain and not waste their time, so they’re looking for cracks in the onstage performance.” Some of the deal-breaking fashion faux pas? A soul patch, high-waisted jeans, novelty belt buckles, “mandannas” and the real “kiss of death,” a Speedo swim suit. Read the story here.
‘BLUNT INSTRUMENT’: Dan Goldhaber, research professor at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, was quoted in a Christian Science Monitor article about the federal government’s push to have school districts identify their bottom 5 percent of schools and take action to improve them. “This is clearly a blunt instrument,” Goldhaber told the newspaper. He added that “the research is so overwhelming that teacher effectiveness matters and there’s a very wide degree of variation in effectiveness in the workforce.” Read the story here.
ONE IN 100: Mary Anne Rossing, a research assistant professor in epidemiology, and Barbara Goff, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, were quoted in a MSNBC/Reuters Health story discussing how only one in about 100 women with symptoms of ovarian cancer actually have the disease. “We’d all like to find ways to diagnose this cancer earlier,” said Rossing, who conducted the investigation. She said the study “argues for a cautious approach to the use of symptom patterns to trigger extensive medical evaluation for ovarian cancer.” Goff, who was not involved in the research, said, “The bottom line is that if you have symptoms, you need to be evaluated, whether or not it will lead to an earlier diagnosis.” Read the story here.
PLATELET COUNT: Clinical practices may change now that it’s been learned that a lower dose of platelets than commonly used is safe for people who need transfusions of the clot-forming blood cells. That’s good news for people facing bone marrow transplants or chemotherapy, according to a February article in U.S. News and World Report’s Health Day column. The article quoted Sherrill J. Slichter, UW professor of medicine and director of platelet transfusion research at the Puget Sound Blood Center. Slichter said reducing platelet usage would have several benefits,. “It’s an expensive product, and if you can use fewer, that is a cost savings for patients, insurers, hospitals and blood centers,” she said. Read the story here.
2010 LAYOFFS?: In February The Wall Street Journal wrote about challenges to the “last in, first out” style of layoffs used by most of the county’s school districts, which teacher unions say is the only way to conduct layoffs objectively. Along the way, the article quoted Marguerite Roza, professor of education and a senior scholar at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, who said she sees more teacher layoffs coming this year. With declining state revenues resulting from the economic dowturn, Roza said, “We would expect that education jobs will be hit harder in 2010. Given last year’s layoff trends, we should expect even more layoffs this year.” Read the story here.
BIPOLAR OR BEHAVIORAL?: Coming revisions in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, expected in 2013, will be the first revisions in a decade, according to a recent article in the New York Times. One major change would be adding a childhood disorder called temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria, “a recommendation that grew out of recent findings that many wildly aggressive, irritable children who have been given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder do not have it,” the story reported — a misdiagnosis that led many children to be given strong antipsychotic drugs which have serious side effects. The article then quoted Jack McClellan, a UW psychiatrist who is not working on the manual. “The treatment of bipolar disorder is meds first, meds second and meds third,” McClellan said. “Whereas if these kids have a behavior disorder, then behavioral treatment should be considered the primary treatment.” Read the story here.
