The College of Pharmacy’s Department of Medicinal Chemistry head Gunda Georg is working with a team of scientists to develop Gamendazole, a drug that may give males an alternative to condoms and vasectomies.

The drug has shown effectiveness in tests on rats, rabbits and nonhuman primates, Georg said.

The research team will soon begin requesting approval from the Food and Drug Administration to test the drug in a clinical setting.

Georg said the drug will be a “reversible” alternative to permanent vasectomies because men will be able to take the pill to temporarily minimize fertility and can regain it if they stop taking it.

The drug would give people another option to plan pregnancy, she said.

Gamendazole faces a long road to the pharmaceutical market because it’s designed for healthy individuals, Georg said. Because of that, the pill is required to be completely free of side effects, like potential sperm damage, before being released onto the market.

“Usually when you develop a drug, it is for a disease, and certainly fertility is not a disease,” she said. “This drug has to be absolutely clean, and that’s a very high hurdle to take.”

Developing new male contraceptives has been historically slow because it’s much more difficult to block sperm than eggs, Georg said.

Every milliliter of semen produced has 15 to 200 million sperm, she said.

“That gives you an idea [of] how difficult that might be to control as opposed to controlling one egg.”

While there’s a perception that men will not want to use a contraceptive pill, Georg said, many men have responded to studies saying they would want to take it.

“I think that men are actually more willing to do this than a lot of people think,” she said.

Some UM students said releasing a male birth control pill into the market could have a positive effect.

Mechanical engineering freshman Dan Sherman said men would probably take the contraceptive as another option to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

“It would make everything safer and better,” he said.

Another UM student, Katie Hanson, said it would be more practical if both genders could take a pill.

“I think it makes sense for guys to take birth control,” she said.

Other students showed concern about how people would respond to a new male contraceptive after years of having only the female birth control pill available.

UM student Tegan Martin said though she thinks male birth control pills are a good idea, she’s not sure if people will change their contraceptive habits.

“I don’t know how easily it will catch on,” she said.

Shane DeGroy, a student in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, said having another option to minimize accidental pregnancy would be helpful, but it would work best if both genders took responsibility for birth control.

“If a guy still thinks it’s the woman’s job to do it,” DeGroy said, “I’m not sure [men will use it].”

Condoms for now

While researchers continue developing the male birth control pill, University students turn to condoms as their main source of contraception.

Among sexually active University students, almost half reported using a condom the last time they had vaginal intercourse, according to Boynton Health Service’s 2010 College Student Health Survey report.

Condoms are the most common method used by University students to prevent pregnancy, followed by the birth control pill, according to the report.

“Sexual health is an important part of health care,” Student Health Advisory Committee member Lauren Beach said. “It’s important that we raise awareness over ways that people can protect themselves.”

Health and wellness junior Amy Whitburn said it’s important to educate students on sexual health care products because not every student comes to college aware of them.

“A lot of people come from high schools or places that they don’t have comprehensive sex [education], and in college people are starting new experiences,” Whitburn said. “If they haven’t had a condom demo or they haven’t have some sort of experience with sexual health … that can lead to a lot of issues.”

Whitburn works as a coordinator for Sexual Health Awareness and Disease Education, a Boynton-sponsored group that works to inform students on sexual health.

During 2011-12, SHADE handed out more than 100,000 condoms to students on campus.

“The fact that it’s that popular of a program demonstrates that it’s an incredibly important part of public health outreach and services on campus,” Beach said.

But they don’t realize that the drug can be highly addictive, and that side effects can include serious psychological risks.

Saturday, The New York Times published the story of Richard Fee, the athletic and personable college class president and aspiring medical student from North Carolina who committed suicide (in 2009) after his Adderall prescription ran out. Fee had become addicted to the drug, unable to operate without it.

His untimely death highlights what the Times deemed the widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D. It has become too easy for individuals “lacking concentration” to obtain a prescription for focus-enhancing drugs when, in actuality, they do not require them. The Times reported that doctors “tend to skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.” As a result, nearly 14 million monthly prescriptions for the condition were written for Americans ages 20 to 39 in 2011, which, according to the Times, is two and a half times the 5.6 million just four years before.

The numbers should be a signal that the drug has become too easy to obtain.

But it should be noted, also, that if people seeking Adderall have no desire to visit the doctor and take the all-too-easy exam, they can purchase the pills from their friends. It’s estimated that between eight and 35 percent of college students take stimulant pills to enhance school performance, according to the Times. On college campuses where the demand to focus is ever-rampant, pill-swapping is nonchalant, prevalent, and consequently hard to control.

It’s true that Adderall greatly helps in increasing levels of productivity. And it does what it’s intended to do: it can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder it’s designed to treat. But for those without real A.D.H.D. — for those who suffer what everyone suffers: difficulty sitting in one place for too long, with one long paper, and one cup of coffee, for example — it is possible, as we see with the case of Fee, for an attachment to the drug to have catastrophic results.

True, Fee is a tragic and hopefully singular case. Most students who experiment with Adderall are unlikely to over-abuse it, and will hopefully shake the habit by the time their demanding studies are over. But the fact that doctors are loosely prescribing a drug that can have dangerous side effects is worrisome. Fee claimed that his doctor “wouldn’t prescribe [him] something that isn’t safe,” according to the Times. Doctors must realize that patients who “lack concentration” do not necessarily need medication — they might just have to turn off their iPhones and log off of BuzzFeed.

It’s important that people become aware of the dangers of taking stimulant drugs so that they can learn to be careful when using them. Hopefully, they will avoid the dangers by steering clear of the drug entirely. We all have difficulty concentrating; to be naturally high-functioning has always required effort. Making drugs do our work for us is an unhealthy habit.

What researchers found

Fourth-year medical student, Geoffrey Martin, and his father, Doctor Vincent Martin, a professor of Internal Medicine, conducted a study at U. Cincinnati that revealed that chronic migraine sufferers have a 31 percent higher risk of headache and a 28 percent higher risk of migraine on days lightning has struck within 25 miles of their home.

“So basically, on days with lightning, compared to days without lightning, there was actually 31 percent more people that had a headache on those days with lightning compared to not having lightning,” Geoffrey said.

The father-son duo said they analyzed several issues when evaluating the results, such as how lightning directly affects headaches and migraines.

However, the Martins also considered other weather factors often associated with lightning, such as barometric pressure, temperature, precipitation, humidity and wind.

This, Geoffrey said, allowed them to validate that lightning was truly causing the increase in headache frequency.

The study, published in the journal Cephalalgia on Jan. 24, showed that even when other weather factors were accounted for in mathematical models, there was still a 19 percent increased risk of headache on lightning-striking days.

“It was still statistically significant in our population,” Geoffrey said. “Lightning still had an effect on headaches beyond the meteorological factors that are often associated with lightning, such as high winds during a storm or rain, or high temperatures or high humidity.”

The researchers were also concerned about the long lifespans of headaches and migraines. Geoffrey said the life span of migraines often last more than one day.

The research also considered participants who may have suffered a headache prior to lightning, suggesting their headaches were not a direct result of the weather.

To account for this discrepancy, Geoffrey said he added a control variable to the model — he and his father accounted for the presence of headaches lasting up to two days prior to lightning storms. This variable reduced participants’ increased risk of headache from 31 to 24 percent and migraine from 28 percent to 23 percent.

“It’s like a weird Snapple fact,” said Boston U. sophomore Hannah Landers.

Like Landers, Jinzhu Wu, a BU freshman, said the new information was surprising.

“Usually the storm will scare people, but the lightning will only give us some tension that there will be some pretty terrifying noise,” she said.

Wu said this study might further people’s fear of lightning.

How they did it

For their study, the Martins researched detailed headache journals from 100 chronic migraine sufferers from previous studies at U. Cincinnati and U. St. Louis, Geoffrey said. These journals recorded activity during three-to-six-month periods.

“They were recruited in our study from other studies, actually, in which they recorded in a diary or journal their headache activity; whether they had a headache that day or not, their pain scale on that day, and whether they had nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light or noise,” Geoffrey said.

Participants in the study exhibiting such symptoms were labeled as chronic sufferers, or someone who suffers from at least one migraine a month. Geoffrey said a doctor diagnosed this condition using the International Headache Society Criteria.

Participants from Cincinnati recorded their journals between 1998 and 2001 while participants from St. Louis recorded theirs from 2008 to 2010, Geoffrey said.

Geoffrey said he and his father compared this information to weather data recorded during the same time periods. This helped them determine whether or not patients had increased headache activity on specific weather days.

The participants used were 91 percent female with an average age of 44. Geoffrey said that migraine patients are predominantly female, with women making up between 70 and 80 percent of sufferers.

He also said that migraines are generally worse before women reach menopause, resulting in a generally younger population of sufferers.

“We did throw in both age and gender into our models as covariates,” Geoffrey said. “Those did not affect our results in any way.”

Why it happens

In a recent press release, Vincent said there were two possible causes for this strange occurrence.

“Electromagnetic waves emitted from lightning could trigger headaches,” Vincent said in the release Jan. 24. “In addition, lightning produces increases in air pollutants like ozone and can cause release of fungal spores that might lead to migraine.”

“I know that in laboratory studies that various electromagnetic fields can induce EEG [Electroencephalograms] changes,” Geoffrey added to his father’s statement.

What it means

The answer, according to Geoffrey, is not a whole lot yet.

The weather cannot be controlled, so migraine sufferers will have to deal with Mother Nature’s wrath for now.

To prevent migraines, Geoffrey said people should move to areas that are less prone to lightning. Unfortunately this is not a quick fix. However, Geoffrey suggested other headache prevention methods.

“You can’t really control the weather on a day-to-day basis, but you can do individual measures, such as things that are important in preventing offensive migraines,” he said.

He recommended getting adequate rest and staying hydrated, as well as keeping pain relievers on hand.

He also suggested that chronic sufferers with more serious conditions seek professional help and prescription medications.

“The problem is no one really knows when they’re going to have an attack so obviously if someone’s [attacks are] frequent enough, they’re just on the medication every day,” Geoffrey said. “But otherwise it’s very hard to determine when they should be taking these kinds of preventative migraine medications.”

Heeding the Martins’ study, sufferers might check weather forecasts and take medications in preparation for upcoming storms.

Even people without prescription medications can prepare by taking pain relievers at the first sign of a headache, rather than ignoring a slight discomfort and allowing it to develop into a full-blown migraine.

Student Responses

Simone Rauch, a BU sophomore, said she did not have many ideas when asked what the findings could be used for.

“I mean, nothing really,” Rauch said. “You can’t just tell the lightning not to be near headache sufferers, right?”

However Melissa Yee, a BU junior, said she has hope for the new study.

“I get migraines constantly,” Yee said. “I don’t know if lightning would necessarily correlate with that, but I hope it does. Then maybe I could prevent some of my major headaches.”

Geoffrey said he will continue to study the weather-headache paradigm in an attempt to develop better methods of migraine control.

“We’re going to start looking at more complex weather patterns,” he said, “such that we’re going to be looking at intricate relationships between some of the individual weather variables.”

The proposal suggested a separate, individual private insurance policy that could provide contraceptive coverage at no cost for the employees of faith-based organizations.

“These proposed rules aim to provide women with contraceptive coverage without cost sharing and to protect eligible organizations from having to contract, arrange, pay or refer for contraceptive coverage to which they object on religious grounds,” the proposal stated.

The proposal is an amendment to rules regarding minimum insurance packages set forth by the Department of Health and Human Services as part of its regulatory authority under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

If the proposal takes effect, objecting organizations could provide employees with a plan that does not offer contraceptive coverage. The health insurer providing the plan would then enroll those employees in a separate, stand-alone policy that only covers contraceptives at no extra cost.

The University, however, is self-insured. The policy proposed by the White House on Friday presented several possible approaches for self-insured organizations. In all approaches, self-insured plans could work with the company that administers their health benefits to avoid coverage contraceptives.

A third-party administrator would “automatically arrange separate individual health insurance policies for contraceptive coverage from an issuer providing such policies,” the proposal stated.

A previous proposal had suggested a similar solution for self-insured plans, but under that proposal, the third-party administrator would have had no way to pay for the contraceptive coverage other than the revenue it receives from self-insured plans. That proposal was criticized by many as nothing more than an accounting gimmick.

The current proposal would lower fees in other parts of the ACA to provide third-party administrators with savings they could use to pay for the contraceptive coverage.

The third-party administrator would receive a credit «in an amount that would offset a reasonable charge by the third party administrator for performing this service.

University Spokesman Dennis Brown declined comment on the proposal until Notre Dame administrators have fully analyzed its contents.

Last May, the University filed one of more than 40 religious liberty lawsuits from faith-based organizations to contest the constitutionality of the contraception mandate. The lawsuit states the mandate would go against Church teachings and therefore violates the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other federal laws.

A federal judge dismissed Notre Dame’s lawsuit last month, when U.S. District Court Judge Robert Miller Jr. ruled Jan. 2 that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the University’s claim is not yet “ripe,” meaning it is not ready to be litigated — in this case, because the rule regarding contraceptive coverage had not been finalized.

Like many teenagers, Emily fell victim to the pressures of adolescence and made a bad decision to consume drugs. But instead of suffering from a headache or increased appetite, Bauer suffered blood clots in her brain that led to severe brain damage.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and law enforcement are fighting a losing battle against marijuana that some states have already bowed out of. The introduction of synthetic cannabinoids, such as Spice and K2, only helps the argument that marijuana should be legalized by noting that the illicit drug has not proved to cause health risks.

Since the legal substances became popular over the last eight years, the federal government and the DEA have fought another losing battle to catch up with the drugs’ manufacturers in order to ban the specific compounds that make up the dangerous products.

The problem is that every time a sanction is put in place to make a specific strand of the synthetic cannabinoids illegal, the drug makers are able to produce a different strand that complies with current law that has even more unpredictable side effects.

When the government tried to make any product that can be used as synthetic drugs illegal, the manufacturers in turn just marketed the products as potpourri or incense and marked the packages to say that the product is not for human consumption.

Emily’s story is one of many stories of how synthetic narcotics have affected those who use it beyond the designed inebriation. It has come to a point where the illicit drugs are a healthier alternative to the synthetic drugs that were designed to emulate the same high as marijuana.

The only difference is the controversial legality of marijuana and society’s perception of it.

If marijuana were legalized then synthetic cannabinoids would be useless.

Despite marijuana’s illegal status, people will continue to consume drugs or alcohol to become intoxicated. Instead of fighting a legal battle with chemical distributors of synthetic weed, decriminalizing the organic substance that is less potent would serve well.

These soft drinks — the more than 650 products made by Coca-Cola — have become a part of the fabric of America. They are the drinks of our childhood, birthday parties, school lunches and sports games. However, these drinks and those who sell them are also slowly killing us.

American U. is a “Coke university.” Any beverage you purchase at AU is produced by, owned by and is a subsidiary of Coca-Cola. From the Eagle’s Nest to the vending machines to the Terrace Dining Room, AU supports the company behind the largest health crisis in the U.S.

Yet Coca-Cola is now urging Americans to come together to fight obesity. In a latest ad campaign entitled “Coming Together,” a soft female voice extols the efforts of Coca-Cola to be a part of the obesity solution over a slowly building piano sonata and images of school children, families, scientists and flashy graphics.

Don’t buy the deceptive concoction.

It is easy to get lulled by Coke’s coercive advertising. The commercial begins by talking about more than 125 years of Coca-Cola bringing people together and their voluntary efforts to offer low-calorie choices, smaller sizes and healthier options in schools. The narrator proudly states that “All calories count, no matter where they come from, including Coca-Cola and everything else with calories. And if you eat and drink more calories than you burn off, you’ll gain weight.”

Thank you, Coca-Cola, for that pearl of wisdom.

Behind the smoke and mirrors, there is a company that has created a global brand that is directly linked to higher obesity, diabetes, tooth decay and malnutrition. All calories are not created equal, and the mixture of high-fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors and caffeine that make up many of Coca-Cola’s products are a toxic combination.

I decided to call Coca-Cola to learn more about their campaign against obesity and was reassured that Coca-Cola is 80 to 90 percent water and is part of your daily fluid intake (but not a replacement for water). They forgot to mention the 39 grams of sugar in a 12-ounce Coke, which far exceeds the daily requirements.

Coca-Cola’s duplicity goes beyond a marketing campaign designed to confuse and disorient Americans. Coca-Cola, along with other members of “Big Soda,” have virulently fought efforts to limit the size of soft drinks.

Christine Quinn, a New York City mayoral candidate, has received $10,000 from Coca-Cola, as have many other New York legislators and candidates (Coca-Cola spends millions each year on lobbying as well). Coca-Cola has also brought in the NAACP to fight New York City’s soda ban, despite the fact that obesity disproportionately affects minority communities.

Big Soda was also intimately involved in defeating the proposed D.C. soda tax in 2010, spending over $300,000 for grassroots campaigns, testimony before the city council and likely much more on anti-tax advertisements (that do not need to be reported).

Soft drinks are in many respects the contemporary Big Tobacco. Their coffers are deep, and they are supported by misinformation, denial and millions of dollars in lobbying.

The impact is just as severe. America’s addiction to soft drinks is a public health and food crisis, and blame can be placed squarely on the largest drug-dealer, Coca-Cola.

While Coca-Cola may proclaim that a can of Coke is “140 happy calories,” those 140 calories (all from sugar) are very different from the 140 calories in a banana. The deliberate distortions of Coca-Cola are deplorable but not all that surprising. Coca-Cola’s rebranding effort is a pathetic attempt to extend an addiction of its own creation, an addiction that must end.

While the numbers for HIV/AIDS are still high, they have dropped dramatically since the 1980s and ’90s. Due to an uprising of powerful activists groups and community advocacy, HIV/AIDS was brought to the forefront of political and social issues. Meanwhile, Hepatitis C is on the opposite side of the spectrum. It has lacked a community of concerned individuals and has consequently had very little attention since 1989, when it was first discovered. Advocacy for Hepatitis C is practically dismal, especially compared to HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B. Funding for Hepatitis C research and resources is virtually negligible. This is due to the fact that Hepatitis C is not only an unspoken topic, but it is also an incredibly complex topic.

Hepatitis C is a slow-progressing, sometimes deadly blood-borne virus that attacks the liver. Of all people with the Hepatitis C virus, up to 85 percent will develop chronic hepatitis. Of this 85 percent, 70 percent will develop chronic liver disease, nearly 20 percent will develop cirrhosis, an incurable disease that results in scarring of the liver, and up to five percent will die of cirrhosis or liver cancer.

What many people are not aware of is that there is now a cure for Hepatitis C. A person with Hepatitis C can be free of the virus within 24 weeks if he or she follows a prescribed treatment plan. However, the virus is asymptomatic, which means that people who are infected are not aware of their status unless they are tested—and Hepatitis C testing is not a commonplace or encouraged procedure among medical institutions. The virus is also most commonly transmitted through injection drugs, contributing to the fact that Hepatitis C is most prevalent among poor, urban, and marginalized populations (especially drug users), many of whom are incapable of or not receptive to seeking out treatment.

This is for reasons such as a lack of motivation, a lack of peer, social, and community support, failure to recognize the long-lasting impact of not seeking treatment, lack of education about the illness, the attached stigmatization of infection, and an under-recognition of the condition (especially due to the fact that one could live 20 years without experiencing any symptoms). In addition, retention rates for those who actually seek treatment are incredibly low because the side effects are highly physically, financially, and emotionally debilitating.

Research has found that Hepatitis C is also most prevalent among the baby-boomer generation, the generation that lived through the “Summer of Love,” when experimentation with Schedule I drugs was especially high. Today, individuals who lived during that era have an HCV prevalence rate of more than double the national average. Targeting this generation is our best bet at drastically dampening the epidemic.

However, the “hippie” generation should not be our only focus. New statistics have shown that Hepatitis C is on the rise among American youth. In Massachusetts alone, HCV prevalence has risen from 65 cases per 100,000 between the ages of 15 and 24 in 2002 to 113 cases per 100,000 in 2009. This has been caused by to an increase in injection drug usage among America’s youth.

What the fight against Hepatitis C needs is both attention and money, and a lot of it. Specifically, it needs funding for programs such as the Division for Viral Hepatitis of the Centers for Disease Control, needle exchange sites, surveillance programs that value both casework and harm-reduction approaches, Hepatitis C education in communities and secondary schools, research funding for the development of a Hepatitis C vaccination, and more. But these needs cannot be met, let alone be requested, until our communities are educated and aware of the gravity and urgency of this issue. The time to act is now.

Meghan Burke, a 22-year-old U. Florida marketing senior, was shocked to learn that the Gatorade she was enjoying contained an ingredient banned in other countries for health reasons.

“Wow,” she said. “It makes me wary. If they’re taking it out of their drinks in other countries, they should take it out of American drinks.”

They listened.

In a statement last Friday, Gatorade spokeswoman Molly Carter said that the company has decided to remove the controversial ingredient from its sports drinks after “hearing rumblings” from its customers. UF, which developed Gatorade in 1965, receives 20 percent of the royalties from sales of the drink.

Brominated vegetable oil is an ingredient in Gatorade Orange that allows the citrus flavor to be distributed evenly. Mountain Dew, Fanta Orange, Fresca and Powerade also contain the ingredient.

When consumed in excessive quantities, research has found that brominated vegetable oil can build up in the body and in breast milk. The chemical has also been linked to neurological impairment, reduced fertility and changes in thyroid function, according to the New York Times.

It is illegal as a food additive in the European Union, India, Brazil, Japan and Canada.

It remains legal in the U.S. on an “interim basis pending additional study,” according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Its interim status has lasted 36 years.

Renée Goodrich-Schneider, an associate professor in UF’s department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, said she is comfortable consuming the oil because it doesn’t harm people at the levels at which it is typically consumed.

“We all have access to the same data, but we all don’t make the same decisions based on that data,” she said.

Keith Schneider, an associate professor in the same department, said the incidents of illness from the oil are extremely rare and caused by excessive consumption.

“It is generally regarded as safe,” he said. “They were drinking four to eight liters a day of this stuff. If you drink that much of anything, you’ll be in the emergency room.”

The decision made in Roe v. Wade attempted to rectify the complication of two key interests with regard to pregnancy termination: women’s health and prenatal life. It was established that women should have full access to abortion services until viability. Since we have become accustomed to the issue of choice, the terminology of the decision lacks so much specificity that attempts at defining “life” have become prevalent.

For instance, viability is relative to each pregnancy and cannot be applied in a universal manner and is complicated by conceptions of personhood, as shown in attempts at limiting Mississippi’s Initiative 26. Such are the issues that arise in motions to regulate and enforce the inherent nuances of pregnancy. We have seen efforts aimed at clarifying these problems through the legal system in successive cases brought before the Supreme Court, including Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Gonzales v. Carhart.

As we attempt to coalesce action regarding an issue with two main interest camps maintaining their own distinct perspectives on the issue, we will continue to encounter issues of clarity and complications of enforcement. The values with which the groups approach abortion, when applied rigidly, are exclusive of each other.

The valuation of prenatal life over the health of the woman, for one, excludes considerations for the woman’s particular circumstance. The arrival at the decision to abort is deeply personal and regulation of access to abortion services, if any, should respect this agency. This respect for individual authority is an issue that needs to be further articulated and discussed in the public sphere as a uniting valuation we can apply to the many, multifaceted issues that manifest in our modern society.

Many are concerned with the possible actions and subsequent consequences in response to the cases previously mentioned. This inability to come to a compromise on the situation is causing a new, wider rift in our country and people’s political allegiances.

The problem is never going to disappear, and the women who are affected by the possible outcomes and interpretations of new laws face a daunting prospect. Women across the country who have aborted will gain new stigma in the event that pro-life supporters have their way, and those who revile women for discarding the budding life within them will be seen as criminals to the people who reserve the right to govern what happens within their own bodies.

Unfortunately, it seems inevitable that either way, someone is going to be left offended and nursing their ideologically driven anger.

What impacts this will have in 10, perhaps 20 years in the future are as of yet unknown until one standard is implemented. But hopefully, the next few generations will not be as offended at our indiscretions as we were to hear about how doctors once “treated” the mentally ill or how unyielding many previous generations were in accepting the reality of evolution.

To conduct their study, researchers including Damaris Rohsenow, a research professor of behavioral and social sciences, analyzed daily reports from students at an unidentified Midwestern university about how many drinks they consumed, how much they smoked and how they felt the next day.

The researchers focused on drinking episodes when students had an estimated blood alcohol level above .11, slightly over the legal limit of .08. On those nights, students who smoked were more than twice as likely to have a hangover than students who did not. Additionally, students who smoked more cigarettes reported having more intense hangovers the next day.

Hangovers are “not one of the common negatives” reported by students during alcohol counseling, said Frances Mantak, director of health education, so it is difficult to tell whether Brown students have similar experiences. There is a large gap between perceived and actual smoking on campus, with less than 5 percent of students falling into the heavy smoker category, she noted.

The researchers found a correlation between smoking and hangovers but could not explain the relationship. Due to poor understanding of hangover mechanisms in general, explaining that link is difficult, Rohsenow said.

One possible explanation could be that alcohol affects nicotine receptors, Rohsenow said. Smoking has also been linked to poorer sleep quality, which is known to worsen hangovers, she said. Because the students keeping the diaries did not record how much and how well they slept and because the study did not include biological measures, the authors were unable to test these explanations.

Roland Moore, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, wrote in an email to The Herald that he finds the study “persuasive.” Moore drew a parallel between the chemicals in dark liquors like bourbon and rum to those in tobacco smoke. Past research has found that dark liquors lead to worse hangovers, he wrote. “I can speculate that the numerous toxic byproducts of tobacco smoke … could similarly contribute to the experience of hangover,” he added.

Previous research has shown detrimental changes in the brain structures of alcoholics, which are even more pronounced in those who smoke, Rohsenow said.

She said she hopes college students will see her study as yet another reason to quit smoking, as the research demonstrates that even minor use of tobacco with alcohol can have negative effects.

A new study led by U. Oregon graduate student David Howell and his advisors Dr. Li-Shan Chou and Dr. Louis “Lou” Osternig indicates that certain individuals may take longer to recover from concussions than previously thought.

The study differentiated symptoms (e.g. headache, memory loss) from their ability to react and multitask, finding that while subjects usually recovered from symptoms between two weeks to a month, the latter left them milliseconds slower, even at the two-month mark.

“Even though somebody feels better and they may say, ‘Okay, I’m ready to play, I feel 100 percent,’ there may be some effects to their response time based on filtering out extraneous information,” Howell said.

Even so, what good is a millisecond? According to Osternig and Chou, the difference a millisecond can make extends beyond protecting yourself on the playing field and into situations like whether you’re able to focus in class, remember information or even hit the brakes in time while driving.

Conducted in the Motion Analysis Laboratory — located in the depths of Gerlinger Annex — the study followed around 20 high school athletes from various sports like soccer and football over the course of two months. Volunteers were required to contact the lab within three days of experiencing a concussion and were not allowed to participate if they had received another concussion within the previous year.

According to Howell, a control group of students who had never been concussed was also assembled. This group consisted of students who matched the age, height, sport and sometimes even the position played by their concussed counterparts.

Osternig and Chou — who have been researching both sports and non-sports related concussions since the early 2000s — have seen a recent increase in volunteers and attribute it to the increased media attention other studies have been receiving. All three are happy with the increased coverage but are concerned with how their research will translate from the observational to the practical.

Chou grabs a clear, half-full water bottle to explain.

“From the outside or even if you did a very detailed scan, there may be no change in the structure of the brain,” Chou said. “But … if you look at our brain, the brain tissue is more like the water being contained in this bottle.”

Chou shoves the bottle across the table to simulate a concussion. The water sloshes violently.

“So, the outside of the bottle is still intact, but the water inside the bottle has been moved around big time,” Chou said. “Those kinds of sheer force, I mean, relative movement between the skull and brain tissue create a lot of stress and strain to the brain tissues and may affect their networking with each other, and that’s why it’s so difficult for us to diagnose, as well as know what really goes wrong.”

Dr. Greg Skaggs, Director of Athletic Medicine, shares similar sentiments.

“It would make my job really easy if there was a scan, but it’s not,” Skaggs said.

As of now, the best treatment for a concussion is complete rest (no class, no driving, no practice). Skaggs says that all of the varsity athletes he cares for are educated about concussions before playing and are highly discouraged from hiding injuries.

“Let’s say you’re a 20-year-old and you’ve worked hard for a bowl game — you’re not going to want to be left out and miss that,” said Skaggs. “It’s our job to protect them from themselves.”

Ultimately, the group’s goal is to provide people with the ability to make educated decisions about high contact sports rather than casting them in a negative light.

“I think we’ll just become more educated about how exactly we engage in these types of sports,” Chou said. “I don’t think it’s going to affect individuals’ willingness to participate in this types of sports, but better prepare them to participate.”

Hockey player Matthew Hanlon echoes this. He’s never been officially diagnosed with a concussion but has seen the effects they’ve had on his teammates.

“I guess you know that that’s a part of the sport, and the positives — the joy of the sport, outweigh the negatives,” Hanlon said.

In my first “PR Presidency” class, we addressed this talk with a talk of our own. First, we talked about the many names rumored to be 2016 contenders, and then about just one of those names: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

My professor gingerly brought up the subject of Christie’s girth and then, as politely as possible, asked us, “Is Chris Christie too…fat…to be president?”

But, forgive me, this is my maiden editorial column in The Eagle, and I have neglected to introduce myself. My name is Ryan Migeed, I am a sophomore and I do not believe that Christie is too fat to be president.

The problem with the “Christie is too fat” arguments is that they are all preconceived. He and his team of savvy politicos can anticipate any claim and prepare for it. “Heart disease” is countered with “no history in the family.” “High blood pressure” is refuted with “What presidential candidate doesn’t have high blood pressure in such a fast-paced campaign?” And the surest answer to any query is a clean bill of health from his doctor, which is entirely possible. (Granted, that bill of health would include a scribbled note from the doctor saying, “Lose weight,” but let’s ignore that for a moment.)

The kicker, of course, would be an exercise regimen, and many argue that if Christie starts to lose weight, he is definitely running in 2016.

But I argue that Christie can be a contender – and quite possibly win – without ever dropping a pound from now until Election Day 2016. His weight will be an issue, but only a subconscious one. His opponents won’t bring it up out of courtesy, and only reporters and town hall-goers will dare to broach the subject.

To be sure, Christie will be asked about his weight. But if he has a ready-made answer that displays enough humor (without getting angry at the premise of the question or the questioner’s right to ask it), he can effectively turn his weight into a non-issue.

Remember Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984 one-liner? When asked a question about his age—he would become the oldest president elected—Reagan coolly responded, “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” If Christie can have a similar “Reagan moment” (and he can), he will beat the “Christie is too fat” argument.

Not to mention, Christie’s weight simply plays into his devil-may-care attitude. It is as much a part of his character as his aggressive press conferences. And characters do well on national television.

What is most interesting about this whole “Is Christie too large?” debate is that it seems to be divided on generational lines. In my class, many, if not most, students dismissed Christie’s weight as an unimportant factor. Meanwhile, our professor (who is about our parents’ age), could not accept the idea that the American people would ignore such an obvious trait.

Perhaps the youngest voting generation is more willing to overlook physical differences in light of policy differences. After all, we were the ones who helped propel the first African-American into the presidency. Perhaps we’ll do it again with the first modern president who happens to be…big-boned.

It’s back — in hallways, bathrooms, classrooms, gyms, cafeterias and just about every other place in America. And, it’s probably going to kill you.

Just kidding, it probably won’t, unless you are really young or old, or you have a weak immune system. But the flu will make you sick, like it could every other year. Yet every “flu season”, health organizations and many media organizations hoot and holler about “the flu epidemic” and put fear in the hearts of every Joe and Jill Schmo in America.

With that said, health organizations and media organizations should disseminate important flu-related information to the public. In fact, the Daily is running a flu story today in order to inform the public of important campus-related information regarding the flu. However, it often seems as if some media organizations spread flu-related information in a sensationalized way.

For instance, a Daily Beast headline on Google read “A Bad Flu Season, and Worse to Come.” However, the article explicitly stated, “This year influenza looks serious, but it’s still nothing like what a really lethal influenza season can be.” Of course, a headline stating, “Flu Season Not History’s Worst” is not nearly as eye-catching as the former headline.

Additionally, quite a few media outlets have related this year’s flu epidemic to the worst flu pandemics in history. The problem is that an epidemic and a pandemic differ drastically in severity.

According to WebMD, an example of an epidemic is the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic that occurred in 2002 and 2003, which killed about 800 people. An example of a pandemic is HIV/AIDS, which kills almost 2 million people on average each year.

Some media organizations compare the effects of epidemics to those of pandemics, which is like comparing the bite of a domestic cat to that of a lion. Although they are similar, one is much worse than the other and the lesser one must become much larger in scale for a proper comparison.

Furthermore, many media organizations focus on flu-related mortalities. For instance, a NBCNews article reported six deaths have occurred from flu-related causes in San Diego. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated 3,140,069 people lived in San Diego in 2011, meaning if the population is similar now, .000019 percent of San Diego’s population has died from the flu this year. The news article did not mention that small percentage.

The CDC does not track flu-related deaths, but it does estimate the number of people who die from flu-related causes each year. From the 1976-1977 season to the 2006-2007 season, the CDC’s estimated flu-related deaths ranged from 3,000 to 49,000.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than 315 million people living in the United States. Using the CDC’s estimates, anywhere from .000095 percent to .0016 percent of people in the United States died from flu-related causes from the 1976-1977 season to the 2006-2007 season.

What all these numbers and percentages say is that the flu does kill Americans, but it does not kill nearly as many as some media organizations may cause the public to worry. People should know about the flu and how to prevent it. However, it is equally important for them to know they aren’t destined to die from it this season.

When it comes to the flu and other infectious diseases, common sense goes a long way. Wash your hands, cover your cough, avoid high populated areas and remember this flu season will be over soon. Do all that and before you know it, the next flu season will be here, wreaking havoc and making us think we’re one step closer to the zombie apocalypse.

“The statistics worry me, and particularly worry me because drinking has such a negative impact on not just health, but often on performance and on family life and on communities, so there’s a rippling affect of this kind of behavior,” said Patricia Rieker, a medical sociologist at Boston U. and consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On average, adults in Boston consume 15.6 drinks a month, according to Experian Marketing Services.

The Center for Disease Control reported that 20.1 percent of the population of Boston classified as binge drinkers and 7.4 percent of the population classified as heavy drinkers.

Rieker said the effects of heavy drinking not only burden the individual, but also the general public.

“Excessive drinking has lots of negative complications and consequences for not only individual health, but for the well-being of communities,” she said.

Archie Brodsky, co-founder of the program in psychiatry and the law at Harvard U., said student binge drinking is a major concern that the U.S. does not deal with.

“We don’t have ways of teaching young people about drinking that promote responsible behavior, responsible drinking,” he said. “And instead, what you have is a peer group culture has developed its own norms of binge drinking.”

William DeJong, a professor of community health sciences at the BU School of Public Health, said the large population of college students in Boston contributes to the high drinking rates.

“Boston has an awful lot of people in college and a lot of people in their twenties,” he said. “And, these are going to be groups that, compared to the rest of the population nationally, do drink more heavily.”

DeJong said many social problems are made worse by alcohol consumption.

“Almost every sexual assault involves either a perpetrator and/or a victim who’s been drinking,” he said.  “[Drinking can also influence] vandalism, property destruction, people getting into fights, and also different kinds of harassment against minority groups and harassment based on peoples’ sexual orientation.”

Brodsky said Boston’s large percentage of Irish Americans has an influence on the drinking rates.

“High rates … of alcohol abuse has been traditionally true in Irish culture and, of course, that has an influence on what goes on in Boston, because you have a lot of Irish Americans in Boston,” he said.

Brodsky also said Boston has a large mix of European cultures that have different ways of treating alcohol.

“In Boston, you have a lot of Irish Americans and Italian Americans and Greek Americans as well as Anglo Saxon Protestants,” Brodsky said. “But they’re all in contact with one another to varying degrees, so the cultures mix and they’re exposed to different models, so people in Boston get a mixed message.”

Rieker said she does not necessarily see alcohol rates going down in the future.

“I think it’s possible for the alcohol problem to escalate more,” she said. “I don’t see the rates going down. They seem to be increasing.”

Researchers discovered that sickle cells, unlike normal red blood cells, can obstruct up to 88 percent of tumor blood vessels. When combined with chemotherapeutic agents, the sickle cells may be an effective method of attacking cancer tumors that are resistant to existing treatments. The study was published in the Jan. 9 edition of PLOS ONE and was a joint study among researchers at Duke Medicine and Jenomic Research Institute, a biotech company based in Carmel, California.

Sickle cells are more commonly known for its role in sickle cell anemia, a genetic disease that causes normal red blood cells to take on an abnormal crescent shape. In the study, researchers injected sickle red blood cells into mice with cancerous tumors. The sickle cells were found to clump in the blood vessel vessels of the tumor and its surrounding cells. In contrast, normal red blood cells moved freely through tumor vessels without sticking to one another.

“The tumor blood vessels and the sickle cells are uniquely joined at the hip,” said David Terman, head of Molecular Genetics at Jenomic. “It’s like two pieces of Velcro that are reciprocally sticky.”

The use of sickle cells is especially effective in treating hypoxic tumors, which are tumor cells that have been deprived of oxygen. These tumor cells are particularly resistant to conventional radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and this study may be the beginning of a new treatment method, said Mark Dewhirst, professor of radiation oncology at the Duke Cancer Institute.

Dewhirst added that another reason for hypoxic tumors’ resistance is because hypoxic cells do not divide. Conventional cancer treatment methods work best on cells that are dividing. Additionally, hypoxic cells are located far from major blood vessels, so drugs do not reach the tumor sites as readily.

Terman, who developed the research concept for the study in 1998, said that he brought his ideas to Duke in 2006 seeking collaboration. He currently holds the patents on the findings of the study.

“We managed to bring this project along, albeit slowly,” Terman said. “We were able to punch through the major impediments and proceed through to the endpoints.”

In order to continue research on the project, Terman noted that the next part of the research was to optimize the sickle cells so they can be more effective in attacking tumors, such as by loading the sickle cells with chemotherapeutic or tumor-killing toxins. He hopes that the study will move forward into human clinical studies within the next five to 10 years.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Matthias Mehl, an associate professor of psychology, published the study, “Does Posting Facebook Status Updates Increase or Decrease Loneliness?: An Online Social Networking Experiment” on Dec. 20, 2012 and examined 102 undergraduate students at UA. The experiment monitored the participants’ Facebook profiles for one week. Half of the students were asked to post more status updates than they normally would, the other half were used as a control group and were not instructed to change anything.

“We had seen that the topic of Facebook, whether it was good for you or bad for you, has been a really long debated question. But no one had ever done an experiment, a true experiment, and that’s the only way to answer the question,” Mehl said.

The experiment was carried out entirely online, where the subjects were directed to temporarily friend a “Research Profile”. This “Research Profile” allowed Mehl and his associate Fenne Deters, of the University of Berlin, to continuously monitor the participants’ Facebook profiles and confirm that they followed all instructions.

For the researchers to learn if posting status updates caused someone to become more or less lonely, they made every participant complete questionnaires including the University of California, Los Angeles Loneliness scale. This scale measures subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation using a scale ranging from one to four, as stated in the study’s procedure.

The results of the study showed that the subjects instructed to post more status updates than they normally would reported a decrease in loneliness, which led to the conclusion that status updating can reduce loneliness, and that this decrease in loneliness was due to “the participants feeling more connected to their friends on a daily basis” when updating their status, as specified in the publication.

“I thought it would be the opposite because you have, like, virtual friends instead of actual friends,” said Lisa Foessel, a pre-computer science freshman.

Surprisingly, the researchers also found that the number of responses to status updates had no effect on the subjects’ feelings of loneliness. When asked why this may be Mehl gave two hypotheses: that people “simply assumed that their status updates will be read,” or that people use status updates to ultimately connect with friends in the real world by using them to “skip the small talk at the beginning of a conversation and jump right to more substantive subjects.”

Even with this evidence of the benefits of social networking some UA students are still skeptical.

“It’s kind of weird that you think you’re more popular just by putting yourself out there on a social network,” said Casey White, an ecology and evolutionary biology freshman. “I don’t really see how that makes sense. I think it’s almost the opposite of being popular, truly.”

The scholars said that their research is just the beginning of the science behind social networking, but are confident in its results and the possibilities it has to inspire further studies.

“For me, this is first optimistic evidence that Facebook does not drive us all into loneliness, Facebook can be used in meaningful ways for creating a sense of social integration and connection,” Mehl said.

The study found that alcohol marketers actively promote adolescents’ identification with and allegiance to particular brands of alcohol.

Lead author Auden McClure and co-author James Sargent collected and analyzed data from 1,734 subjects between 15 and 20 years old. The authors quantified the time each participant was exposed to alcohol marketing from television, internet, branded merchandise and movies, and then authors compared the amount of exposure to the participant’s binge drinking activity.

“Alcohol companies say that they don’t target underage drinkers, but it’s impossible to market to 21-year-olds without spillover to those who are younger,” Sargent said. “We wanted to show that marketers aim to target underage drinkers.”

The research for the published study was cross-sectional, meaning that all the data was gathered at a specific point of time.

Therefore, although the researchers saw a correlation between marketing exposure and the extent of binge drinking, the causal relationship between these factors cannot yet be proven, Sargent said.

The research results also indicate that if a participant self-identifies as a certain type of drinker or associates him or herself with a particular brand, he or she is more likely to engage in binge drinking.

Sargent said he hypothesizes that alcohol brand allegiance leads to binge drinking, but he cannot yet rule out the possibility that binge drinking instead leads to greater brand allegiance. He said that a longitudinal study which is conducted at different periods of time with the same participants must be done in order to substantiate his theory scientifically.

“We’re going to follow up with these particular kids to see which variable came first — which causes the other,” he said.

Sargent said that although he believes alcohol marketing encourages adolescents to seek to drink more alcohol when they arrive on college campuses, he does not believe that Dartmouth’s administration will take any steps to reduce alcohol marketing on campus.

Sargent said his research is significant because it has helped determine the “multiple forces” that produce binge drinking behavior.

Julie Campbell, who identified and analyzed alcohol advertisements for the study, said that she believes limiting alcohol marketing in the media will reduce underage binge drinking.

“The fewer that alcohol companies are clearly present in movies, the fewer adolescents will be able to pinpoint a brand as their favorite,” said Campbell.

Although the trends Campbell observed in her research were unofficial, she said it seemed clear that certain themes, like product quality and taste, targeted adults while others, like partying, were intended to entice younger viewers.

Psychology professor Todd Heatherton said that he hopes the implications of the findings will encourage the College to avoid alcohol-sponsored events and the distribution of alcohol-branded merchandise.

“By late adolescence, we can predict which participants binge drink,” Heatherton said. “This indicates to us some of the factors that might be involved in promoting binge drinking by adolescents.”

The paper was co-authored by U. Oregon research associate Mike Stoolmiller, Geisel pediatrics professor Susanne Tanski and Radboud U. professor Rutger Engels.

The study was published in the journal “Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.”

The study, titled “Music and movement share a dynamic structure that supports universal expressions of emotion,” was published in the Jan. 2 edition of “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

To gather data, researchers asked participants to design either a melody or animation for specific emotions using a computer program that Sievers designed.

Participants used five slider bars in both portions of the experiment to change musical tones or an animation of a bouncing egg.

After collecting data from 50 Dartmouth students — 25 for each portion of the study — Sievers and Wheatley travelled to the L’Ak village of Cambodia to test 80 more participants.

Because the villagers of L’Ak could not read or use computers, Sievers and Wheatley adjusted parts of their computer program by adding pictorial representations of melodic rates and changing other parameters.

Both Dartmouth students and L’Ak villagers created similar responses in both mediums to the same emotional triggers, suggesting that musical and movement-based responses to these emotions are innate.

The melodies and animations shared several movements, illustrating a close association between music and movement in the human brain, Wheatley said.

The study results suggest that dynamic profiles for music and motion are universaluncovered a “signature for emotion that is expressed both in music and movement,” Wheatley said.

Both Sievers and Wheatley said they were surprised by the strength of the results. Sievers said he expected differences in heritage to affect the created melodies or movements, but the study shows “very little intercession of culture,” he said.

Although Sievers said that the study built upon existing research on emotional responses to music and studies of motion, he emphasized the uniqueness of the “cross-modal” approach to the study.

“I don’t know of any study that has done something quite like this with the music and movement,” he said.

The relationship between music and movement may stem from neuronal recycling, a process in which the brain’s innate capacities are “recycled” for new functions, Sievers said.

“Basic evolutionary systems like needing to track movement in the environment have been re-purposed for different tasks,” he said. “Music is one of those.”

Sievers and Wheatley came up with the idea for the experiment in 2008, after Wheatley gave a guest lecture to Sievers’ graduate seminar on evolution and music.

Music professor Larry Polansky, who taught the class, advised them on the theory behind their research.

Daniel Leopold, who collected data for the study while he was a senior at the College, said Wheatley’s enthusiasm for the topic inspired him to pursue clinical psychology.

“[Wheatley] was really excited about the work and the research, not afraid to tackle things like morality, or expression of emotions or intimacy perception,” Leopold said.

The researchers’ trip to Cambodia in December 2010 was sponsored by grants received from the Rockefeller Center and the Dickey Center for International Understanding.

This week, contributors to the Global Burden of Disease project published new findings in the medical journal The Lancet that they say reveal key changes in the way people worldwide are living with and treating major health problems.

Joshua Salomon, a professor of global health at HSPH who contributed to the study, said that he and other project researchers found that short lifespans are more frequently a product of chronic diseases than of infectious diseases or nutritional deficiencies.

“People are dying from adult diseases more than they are from diseases that kill children,” Salomon said.

According to Salomon, the study is the most comprehensive survey that has been conducted on current trends in global health. As part of the project, researchers distributed a survey that asked questions about the severity of 291 different diseases and injuries. The survey, developed with input from researchers from over 50 countries and distributed mainly online, received responses from over 160 countries and over 30,000 people worldwide.

After collecting their data, project researchers sought to develop tools to measure the impact of certain diseases on quality of life and life expectancy. Mohsen Naghavi, an associate professor of global health at the University of Washington, has worked on improving the quality, distribution, and presentation of the data that has been collected. Naghavi emphasized the importance of taking new approaches to studying diseases over time.

He said that much has changed about the field since 1990, when the first Global Burden of Disease results were released, to the next updated release of statistics in 2004, and again this year with data gathered in 2010.

Although life expectancy in most regions has increased by an average of about ten years since 1990, Salomon said he thinks that countries will have to consider the economic strain created by their rapidly aging populations. According to Salomon, the health issues most threatening today are not nutrition deficiency or infectious diseases, but non-communicable diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer.

While Salomon said it is important to raise awareness of these issues, he warned against taking coordinated political action in response to the global trends identified in the report. He said that policymakers in every country will have to consider the areas of disease that are most serious to develop viable and affordable regional solutions.

“The results are not a direct prescription for policy,” Salomon said.

The United States is 4 percent of the world’s population but produces 88 percent of the world’s legal amphetamine. Adderall, also known as the “study drug,” is in high demand across the nation and has increasingly become highly abused by college students who claim Adderall is the key to academic success.

According to the Mayo Clinic, Adderall is a combination of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine and is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD, and narcolepsy.

The combination of the two drugs increases attention and decreases restlessness in patients who are overactive, cannot concentrate for very long, or are easily distracted and have unstable emotions.

“There has been a huge increase in demand for evaluations for ADHD over the last several years,” said Dr. Carver Nebbe, a medical doctor with a specialty in family medicine and psychology at Thielen Student Health Center.

Nebbe also said there has been a significant increase in accommodations requests at the Student Disability Resources office on campus.

In 2010, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 11.4 percent of young people ages 12 to 25 used prescription drugs nonmedically within the past year. The study also found that full-time college students, between the ages of 18 and 22, were twice as likely to abuse Adderall than those of the same age and not in college.

“Statistics say that 30 to 40 percent of those who have it misuse it or divert the medication at some time,” Nebbe said.

When abused, Adderall can be extremely addictive. The Drug Enforcement Administration  classifies all amphetamines as having a high potential for abuse and limited medical uses.In addition to having the potential of becoming addictive, common side effects of the drug include lack of appetite, increased blood pressure, headache, dry mouth, inability to fall asleep and weight loss.

For many people, they may not experience significant adverse side effects every time they use it.

“Most people that take the drug and a normal dose just to stay up all night, it probably won’t hurt them all that much, but if someone has an underlying heart condition, whether they know about it or not, taking these drugs could potentially exacerbate that problem,” said Edward Bell, professor of clinical sciences at Drake University College of Pharmacy.

Why students would put themselves at a potential health risk and illegally abuse a prescription drug is baffling to some, but for students, they just want good grades.

The strive for perfectionism in society often leaves students feeling an immense amount of pressure to succeed; with increased competitiveness in the job market, college students feel the pressure to get perfect grades.

In June 2012, The New York Times published an article entitled, “In Their Own Words: ‘Study Drugs.’” The article was compiled of personal stories of high school and college students who abused prescription drugs for academic advantage. In the article, students from across the nation vividly describe their experiences with the so-called “academic steroid.”

Frequent abusers of Adderall described feeling inundated with schoolwork and the intense pressure put on by themselves, family members and educators.

“Something inside of me that sparked the drive to be independently successful died, and I swallowed the pills,” said a female student from Minneapolis to the New York Times.

Adderall is considered by some to be the academic miracle drug to college students today, whether they have ADHD and need it everyday or are just using it to study.

“Almost everyone who takes it will benefit from it,” said Nebbe.

With demanding schedules and rigorous courses, college students take Adderall so they can stay up and be productive for a longer period of time.

An apparel, creative and technical design major at Iowa State who wished to remain anonymous, said she and others in her major use Adderall depending on how much work they have to do.

“A lot of times we have to do all-nighters in order to get our projects done. Each project, on average, can take anywhere between 20 to 70 hours to complete,” the student said.

Most of her projects include sewing, computer design, illustrations or construction. She said it is common for students on campus to use Adderall, even if they are not prescribed.

“I feel like at least half the people I know are prescribed, even if they don’t need it, so they sell it,” the student said.

Nebbe said it is hard to determine if students expressing symptoms of ADHD actually have ADHD.

“ADHD is a clinical diagnosis; there is no set test that determines if a person has or does not have ADHD,” Nebbe said.

There is no fine line that determines the criteria for a diagnosis of ADHD, which leads many to argue that Adderall is overprescribed and too easy for students to get, although Nebbe disagrees.

“Researchers on ADHD will tell us that ADHD is dramatically underdiagnosed and undertreated,” Nebbe said. “The outcomes of those treated are sensationally better than those who are not treated.”

Children who are treated at a young age for ADHD are at a lower risk for drug and alcohol abuse, tobacco use and participation in crime. They also have a higher rate of entrance to college.

Interestingly enough, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2010 found that full-time college students abusing Adderall were three times more likely to have used marijuana in the past year than those of the same age not in college.

The same group was also five times more likely to have used painkillers non-medically and 90 percent were reported binge drinkers while more than 50 percent were reported to be heavy drinkers.

Whether students need it or not, the Adderall craze is fueled by perfectionism, fear of failure and competitiveness that has college students across America obsessed with a tiny, orange capsule.

“I do wonder about it, and I think that there is a fair question whether or not a lot of people are getting the medication who don’t need it,” Nebbe said.

The report has led the FDA to announce last Tuesday an investigation into whether energy products pose a particular threat to teenagers or people with previously existing medical conditions.

“FDA takes every adverse event report seriously and investigates and evaluates other possible causes before deciding whether the product actually caused the medical problem,” the FDA’s report said.

The report lists the incidences of “adverse health” gathered by the Food and Drug Administration that occurred since January 2004 in connection with 5-Hour Energy, Monster, Rockstar and RedBull products. Of the 18 deaths, 13 were associated with 5-Hour Energy products, five with Monster and none with Rockstar or Redbull.

A majority of the incidents involved increased heart rate, headaches, changes in blood pressure, nausea and dizziness, which are all common side-effects of caffeine. Of the 166 incidents reported, 95 were considered serious, life-threatening or required emergency hospitalization.

U.S. Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have been trying to convince the FDA since April to put energy products up to further scrutiny.

“There is very clearly a lack of understanding about the health effects of energy drinks and their ingredients especially on children and adolescents,” said Durbin in a letter to the FDA. “I am glad to see that the FDA is undertaking a review but more needs to be done and quickly. For instance, FDA can and should take action now to regulate energy drinks that are marketed as beverages, like Red Bull which has more than the standard of 71 mg of caffeine per 12oz which beverages like Coke and Pepsi are held.”

Energy products can contain anywhere form 50mg to 500mg of caffeine per serving, up to seven times the amount of caffeine in a can of soda.

The products are relatively new to the market, and many are sold as “dietary supplements” rather than conventional foods, which are subject to a much more lenient set of regulations under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

According to the FDA’s website, dietary ingredients require no FDA pre-approval before being put on the market, and the regulatory legislation puts the burden on the FDA to prove it is harmful before it can be taken off the market.

“The FDA is aware that new products and patterns of use require us to remain vigilant, and we are working to strengthen our understanding of the nature of ‘energy drinks’ and any causal risks to health,” the FDA announced in a letter.

5-Hour Energy, the company whose products were associated with the highest number of adverse incidents, said its products are safe if used responsibly.

“We recommend on product labels and our website that individuals consume no more than two bottles of 5-Hour energy shots per day, spaced several hours apart,” said Elaine Lutz, of Living Essential, a distributor of 5-Hour energy products. “We also recommend individuals new to 5-Hour energy try half a bottle to start, wait 10 minutes and consume the rest later.”

Breaking news here folks! A recent study discovered that sex/making love is the most pleasurable, meaningful, engaging and happy thing for people.

But seriously, a study at U. Canterbury joined the small but meaningful ranks of researchers attempting to track and measure the happiness and well-being of relationships in day-to-day life.

The areas of distinction paint an interesting picture of what a “full life” could be described as. Granted, the means of gathering results — achieved through text-messaging — might not seem like the most reliable of methods, but hey, this is the new millennium, and our robot phones are almost an extension of our bodies.

Drinking alcohol/partying came in second in the “pleasure” category, but only 10th in “meaning,” while still hitting fifth in “engagement” and second in “happiness.” Again, not a big surprise given that drinking alcohol/partying tends to lead to sex/making love.

There are oodles of fun activities, or not so fun activities, to peruse at leisure, but when the fun of that has dwindled, take a moment to look at what all of this might mean.

Could this be a fair representation of the times? There are, of course, outliers to the generalizations of folks finding sex to be the pinnacle of happiness, but despite the comical obviousness, the sex result along with the other rankings could really tell us a lot about how to operate in life.

Think about the results of the study in terms of marketing. Such information makes the crafting of commercials or other gimmicks to get a person to buy something a far cry easier if it is agreed upon that making a person happy will sell more things.

And political campaigning or policy formation gets a nice leg up as well. With information measuring and tracking how to achieve a “full life,” issues can be tailored or addressed with specifications that otherwise might have been cast aside in favor of those wacky “traditional” notions a lot of older generations subscribed to.

Not that traditional views of “full life” are not worthwhile, but that the current 35-and-under crowd, the “younger” generations, might really be serious when they say to their parents — as spoken by “da Dawson” himself, James Van Der Beek, in “Varsity Blues” — “But I don’t want your life.”

The applications could do some good with assessing psychological hurdles challenging some, or cause restructuring of jobs to account for what makes people happier, and hence more productive. Who knows how far you can stretch the information for application?

Research that examines what people really want also opens the door to potentially kicking in certain taboos in talking points. There are still some folks uncomfortable with certain topics — sex for example — and as such avoid learning about aspects for what could very likely be the most fulfilling thing in their lives.

There will be people arguing that the results don’t represent them, or that will deny the “validity” of some of the rankings, but that’s opinions for ya. Everybody has to be special, or have some distinction. Meh.

The reality remains: The results do seem to be a reasonable assessment of folks. Well, of the younger generations at least, as we tend to have this whole “new” outlook on life due to our global village upbringings; that and our adoration of sharing every detail of our lives, compared to the less “out there for all” outlook of many previous generations.

Before you scoff, or maybe have a chuckle at the sex “revelation,” and move on with your day, think about what you learned. In fact, you were probably already pondering what things you find in your life to be fulfilling, what make your life have a cherry on top, and ranking them.

And that is the beauty of studies like the one under discussion; those studies let you look inward and think. And if a study — no matter how dubious the methods might seem or how potentially skewed you might consider the results — makes you think and let you learn a little more about yourself, well, doesn’t that make it worth looking into a bit more?

The lowering of drug prices for those with Medicare is a plus, but where are the other benefits? With a decrease of $716 billion for Medicare, President Barack Obama is using a double-edged sword on senior citizens, as hospitals have to downsize staffs to afford budget and salary cuts. This does allow senior citizens in hospitals and nursing homes to have the same benefits with lower costs and deductibles. However, there will not be enough staff to attend to the sick and ill, which in the end will fuel the two main causes of incidents in nursing homes right now — the transferring of patients to different facilitations, as well as abuse and neglect.

One of the most recent problems for sick and disabled senior citizens is their treatment in nursing homes. Florida has come under fire during the past few years due to many investigative reports revealing the true nature of these facilities and lack of care being provided.

Brian Lee, the former long-term care ombudsman for Florida and current head of Families for Better Care, a nursing reform advocacy group, explained the need for reform to untangle the massive nursing corporation conglomerate that subcontracts the task of running these facilities and to provide transparency. Facilities need to stop sacrificing quality, trained staff members for profits.

“I’ve seen more neglect in my lifetime than anyone ever should: Elderly people beaten, slapped around, dehydration, bedsores,” Lee said to Take Part. “There’s no end in sight unless nursing homes are accountable with their money. And the way to do that is through transparency.”

What will become of these rampantly neglected nursing homes providing subpar care when budget and staffing is cut even more?
Gov. Rick Scott has failed to acknowledge the effect it will have on the Florida nursing facility system, and major counties have reported various adverse incidents, incidents in which facility staff or personnel could have exercised control, but occurred as a result of the resident’s condition.

According to the Agency for Health Care Administration, there was a total of 2,090 adverse incidents from 2007-2008, with 37 percent of these cases resulting from neglect and abuse. Counties with the most incidents are concentrated in South Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties), Orange County and Pinellas County, where 44 percent of the population is more than 55 years old.

The Miami Herald featured a three-part series investigative report about nursing homes in Florida. The series investigated the causes of deaths, leading to the exposure of many horrible truths about conditions in nursing homes.

The articles discuss various patients who died due to preventable circumstances had there been a better and more attentive staff. According to the Miami Herald, the Agency for Health Care Administration has failed to properly oversee Florida’s 2,850 nursing homes and operators, investigate dangerous practices or act on notifications submitted by its own inspectors about possible instances of neglect and abuse.

One incident included a 71-year-old patient who died from burn injuries. The mentally ill patient was left in a bathtub with scalding water in a Hialeah nursing home. In 2011 alone, police made roughly 13,250 calls to assisted living facilities in Broward County. This averages out to about one call every four hours. The signs of possible nursing home neglect and abuse also include dehydration, frequent infections and also overmedication/sedation.

In 1980, Miami Congressman Claude Pepper passed the Residents Bill of Rights to protect and uphold the quality of conditions and lifestyle present in these facilities, but it seems as though Florida has digressed in recent years.

Will the new cuts to Medicaid and Medicare under Obamacare aid our senior citizens, especially those in nursing homes? With the requirement of health insurance, yet less funding to provide the benefits and funding to the programs, there is a correlation between the continued poor care of these patients, especially in the conglomerate that the nursing facilitation industry has become.

But in a generation where quality is sacrificed for quantity, we must ask ourselves does the state government really care at all about these senior citizens, the nursing homes and the growing issue of the sublevel quality of life in these institutions? The answer is clear.

Despite challenges combating a disease that continuously changes and adapts within the host cells of patients, recent research indicates that it may be possible to control the transmission of HIV. The HPTN 052 study, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, used a randomized clinical trial to understand whether antiretroviral treatment, a combination of drugs already used to treat HIV, could prevent sexual transmission of HIV among couples in which one member was HIV-positive. Remarkably, the study demonstrated that ATRVs as a form of treatment is actually a form of prevention: The uninfected partner does not contract the virus. By providing patients with treatment, transmission of the virus can be stopped.

As a result of Congress’ failed attempt to come up with a fiscal solution to last year’s debt-ceiling crisis, the Budget Control Act of 2011 was enacted to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion in the next decade (starting this January). Different sectors will be impacted differently by the cuts, but all will be hurt, and small programs will get hit the hardest. For example, sequestration will be disastrous to health research, an area that already struggles with receiving adequate funding. A 7.8 percent sequester is to be enacted for agencies such as the National Institute of Health, which will lose $2.4 billion, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ($444 million), and the National Science Foundation ($538 million). On the whole, discretionary funding is projected to decline by $39 billion. In addition, global health funding will be slashed by 8.4 percent across the board. This reduction is estimated to result in an increase of global AIDS-related deaths by more than 60,000. Nearly 275,000 people will be left without AIDS treatment and services. Although the Budget Control Act was presented last year, there is still the possibility for Congress to enact another solution by January—a solution that would not put lives at risk.

The fight against HIV/AIDS is perhaps the single bipartisan issue of our time. Lauded by Bill Clinton as a legacy of the Bush administration, U.S. efforts to combat AIDS both at home and abroad must continue, even in the most pressing of economic times. Congress should take decisive steps to ensure that the U.S. remains an undisputed leader in the fight against AIDS. The fiscal challenge cannot be used as an excuse to slash domestic and global programs that are keeping patients alive. In the U.S. alone, the onslaught of devastating sequestration would bring life-saving research to a halt and leave thousands of people without the medicine they depend on for survival.

The time to fight the AIDS epidemic is now. In recent years, tremendous progress has resuted from research, prevention, and treatment initiatives funded by the federal budget. These allowances comprise a tiny portion of the federal budget relative to defense spending and tax breaks. As of September 30, the U.S. directly supported nearly 5.1 million people on antiretroviral treatment through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. This is a three-fold increase in four years, up from 1.7 million in 2008. We cannot afford to undercut this progress by defunding domestic and global programs.

This Saturday at 11:30 a.m., members of the Harvard Global Health and AIDS Coalition and ACT UP Boston, an AIDS advocacy organization, will meet outside of Senator John Kerry’s home to demand that funding for HIV/AIDS treatment programs be protected. As a member of the congressional debt super committee, he can significantly influence the outcome of the federal budget. GHAC will also be hosting a screening of “How to Survive a Plague,” a powerful documentary about the history of the AIDS movement and where it stands today. The screening will be followed with remarks from guest speaker Gregg Gonsalves, an activist featured in the film. This is the time. We invite you to stand with us on December 1 as we call on Congress to save lives.

Charles Gerba, microbiologist at U. Arizona, conducted a study on 25 mobile phones and found bacteria growing on nearly half.

“You put it in a warm place, you put it in your hand, you put it in your pocket like I do, it’s nice and warm,” Gerba said in a 2006 ABC article. “Bacteria like that. It can grow in these types of places.”

Students often do similar experiments in classrooms. Olivia Eliasson, a Kansas State U. sophomore, said she participated on one such experiment in high school.

“We tested the inside and outside of a toilet seat and the bottom of our backpacks,” Eliasson said. “The bottom of our backpacks were the most contaminated. Now I am more aware of where I put my backpack, like on my bed.”

Although bathrooms are thought to be one of the most contaminated places by many people, K-State custodial staff are on hand to keep those environments clean.

As the flu season approaches it is important to keep your belongings clean and take care of your body. Here are a few things you can do to prevent a dreaded illness.

For starters, get vaccinated for the flu.

“The flu shot is another precaution to take,” said Julie Gibbs, assistant director at K-State’s health center. ”It’s just like washing hands. It is just one more step you can take to reduce your risk of getting the flu.”

As for your purse, backpack or cell phone — wash them. If you have a canvas-style purse or backpack, you can put it in the washing machine and set it out to dry. As for your cellphone, it can be safely cleaned with a Clorox disinfecting wipe.

Little things can help you to prevent an illness. Next time you go to the bathroom, consciously think about where you are putting your belongings and maybe you can avoid sickness this season.

“Student debt levels have become so high that a growing number of students will struggle on a primary care salary alone to repay educational loans and still have enough left over to cover other routine household expenses,” the release stated.

The study, released Tuesday, found 86 percent of medical students had loan debt at graduation in 2011. The average debt was $161,290, which is the highest reported amount to date.

“Most medical school graduates have education debt and the average amount of education debt is increasing,” the report stated. “Among these indebted graduates, 23 percent of those at private medical schools graduated with loans of $250,000 or more.”

Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at BU School of Medicine John Wiecha said medical school loan debt is not attributable to a lack of experience.

“Loan amounts are too high for some students to easily pay back given the salaries of doctors in residency training,” Wiecha said in an email. “There are many jobs available.”

The study examined strategies of paying back student loans in a timely manner based on hypothetical scenarios. Students with about $160,000 in debt were able to pay back their loans within ten years, but those with over $200,000 in debt had to consider an extended repayment plan.

“The study’s economic modeling of a physician’s household income and expenses across a range of medical school borrowing levels in high — and moderate — cost living areas shows that physicians in all specialties, including primary care, can repay the current median level of education debt,” the report stated.

Arun Rai, a first-year School of Medicine student, said it is expected that primary care physicians have the most trouble paying back loan debt because residency programs tend to be shorter and primary care residents are paid less than specialty doctors.

“Graduates of many primary care residency programs are not compensated at an appropriate level where they can pay back the interest and the principal back of a student loan in a timely manner,” Rai said.

Rai said specialty physicians, such as neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons, are paid more during longer residency programs because these programs are highly specialized and have greater liability.

“Primary care doctors should be compensated with a federal grant program to provide money to help these physicians with loan forgiveness,” Rai said. “They are doing a selfless deed.”

During the cold and flu season, students are regularly told the usual precautions: Cough and sneeze into your elbow; wash your hands; and think about how dirty that door knob and other common surfaces might be. But could cellphones be a new carrier of sickness too?

“Common illnesses we can see spreading from hands, phones and common surfaces are: pinkeye, colds, influenza, … [with symptoms of] nausea, vomiting and diarrhea that commonly go around,” said Laura Knowles, supervisor for nursing and patient services at the Iowa State U. Student Health Center. ”These are the unintended consequences of new technology, so we don’t know all of the risks yet.”

Nancy Boury, ISU senior lecturer in microbiology, said microbes do not change throughout the day, but if students have a virus or bacteria someone else does not have, that is where cellphones could play a role.

“It is theoretically possible, but how often do people trade their cell hones back and forth?” Boury said. “Organisms that usually live on your skin will be roughly the same when you pick up [your] phone [for] the first time of the day as the last time you pick up your phone for the day. … If you have a cold or the flu, don’t go lending your phone out.”

If people cough or sneeze into their hands then open a door, their germs will be on the handle, waiting for another person to come along later and pick up the germs upon grabbing the door knob. Once the student touches his or her eyes, mouth or nose, those germs have the potential to make the student sick.

“Most people don’t realize it, but the average person touches their face, mouth or nose up to 20 times per day without thinking much about it,” Knowles said. “We should be sure we have washed our hands after using the rest room, before and after eating, and periodically throughout the day after touching common surfaces. [Nurses at the Student Health Center] would suggest that each student have a small bottle of hand sanitizer in their backpacks to use periodically through the day.”

Boury explained what viruses and bacteria need to live on a surface such as a cellphone.

“[The] cold virus, if it has enough mucus with it, it could survive for a while,” Boury said. “Influenza would probably be in that group, too. … It would have to have enough of a food source, and in the case of viruses, they live inside cells so you have to give them something to live in, otherwise they will not fare well.”

“Bacteria wise, strep and staph … a lot of that staph lives in your nose or around your face; so if you’re talking on the phone, staph would be a real common one you would see,” Boury said.

One difficulty with cellphones and trying to cut down on viruses and bacteria potentially growing on them, is electronic equipment is hard to clean with most of the harsh cleaners on the shelf.

“Cleaning phones and iPads and electronic equipment is tricky and problematic because a lot of manufacturers don’t tell you what coating is on the phone and what is best for cleaning it,” Knowles said. “It’s hard to tell if an alcohol wipe will strip an oil-repellant coating and/or damage the screen.”

Knowles said S.C. Johnson, the company that makes Windex, states that its glass cleaner is not recommended for electronics; however, the company does offer a line of cleaners specifically for electronic devices.

There are a few common practices that can help reduce the spread of sickness.

“Hand-washing is the No. 1 thing people can do to prevent the spread of illness,” Knowles said. “Using tissues to cough and sneeze into and throwing those in the trash, wiping down common surfaces [with proper cleaners] such as door handles, faucet handles, desk pens, keyboards, iPads, phones etc. … regularly.”

Boury also mentioned a few of the same practices.

“Don’t touch your face, and wash your hands frequently,” Boury said. That’s the micro 101 lesson for staying healthy.”

This is the time of year for family to come together and feast in celebration of the day the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that moderation is key when surrounded by overwhelming amounts of food.

What people shouldn’t do is starve themselves before the dinner because then they overeat, food science and nutrition professor Susan Swadener said.

“Research shows if you skip meals, then, if you normally eat 2,000 calories a day, you’ll end up eating around 4,000 because you’re so hungry,” Swadner said.

The portion size for meat is about three ounces, or the size of the palm of your hand, Swadener said. A serving of potatoes is about half a cup, and a serving of vegetables is a cup.

What tends to add up is generally how things are prepared, food science and nutrition professor Laura Hall said.

“Gravy, mashed potatoes with a lot of butter and cream in them or sweet potatoes with a lot of sugar in them all end up having more calories and are generally less healthy because they’re high in fat,” Hall said.

If you can cook a healthier meal in the first place by trimming off the fat on the turkey, using low-fat milk in the mashed potatoes and making healthier choices, then you can cut the fat in your diet, Hall said.

Little things such as deciding not to put whipped cream on your pie or choosing low-fat ice cream instead can make a difference, Hall said.

Swadener and Hall both offered tips to keep in mind when making a conscious decision about what to eat on this sacred holiday.

Studies have shown that if you eat on a bigger plate, or put more on your plate, then you’re going to eat it, Hall said. If you use a smaller plate, or put less food on it, you won’t eat as much.

Enjoy the company of the people you’re with, take your time and drink water to not overeat, Hall said.

It’s a good idea to have some of the foods from Thanksgiving such as turkey or cranberry sauce throughout the year, Swadener said. If you eat them more often, then you’re less likely to binge on them.

Kelsey Hollenbeck, STRIDE public relations and media coordinator, said you should avoid snacking throughout the whole day.

“I know that when we cook in my house, I’ll just be eating little pieces of everything as we make it, and then I’m full by the time dinner comes around,” Hollenbeck said.

Everyone overeats at Thanksgiving — it’s part of the culture of it, Hollenbeck said.

Students also generally go home after being used to having little food on hand or eating ramen, whereas Thanksgiving offers an opportunity to gorge on food other people make, Hollenbeck said.

This time of the year involves more socializing, and there are foods you wouldn’t typically eat, such as pies, so it’s easy to overindulge, Hall said.

You always hear that people gain weight around this time because they’re eating differently and they may not be exercising like they normally do, Hall said.

It’s important to let yourself feel full and to not overeat, Hall said. You can always have leftovers and don’t forget to be physically active.

A good way to not gain a lot of weight during the holidays is to make it a family tradition to take a walk before or after dinner so you don’t sit around and eat all night, Swadener said.

This is the time to be with each other, and sometimes if you do more physical activity, such as a walk, then you spend more quality time with one another than just sitting around and watching the television, Swadener said.

Good food in moderation and even better company is the trick to finding the balance to a perfect Thanksgiving.

Last Thanksgiving, however, I passed up most of these goodies because of a lifestyle choice I had made in May of 2011. I had decided to become a vegetarian, partially for the health benefits of giving up meat and focusing on fruits and vegetables and partially because I love animals.

However, most of what compelled me stemmed from a need to simply prove that I could do it. I hardly ate red meat, and I felt that I could give up chicken and tuna without much of a fuss.

I chose not to forgo dairy and eggs since animals aren’t harmed in the making of them (disregarding the idea that an egg is alive; I’m not here to argue about rights) and to simply live as a lacto-ovo vegetarian.

This proved more difficult than I had planned. At the time, I lived in Hays, which made it difficult to find vegetarian protein supplements. Because I had cut meat out of my diet, I tried to eat more peanut butter, eggs and protein shakes, but my diet still needed more sustenance. One store carried vegetarian imitation chicken breasts, so that made up the bulk of my protein. I dubbed this magical substance “fake chicken.”

My family didn’t agree with my lifestyle change. They constantly asked me when I was going to “get past this phase” and “start eating with the family again.” I grew up in a meat-and-potatoes household, so my mother had no idea how to feed me when I came home and simply substituted all the meat in our meals with cheese.

Needless to say, I either ate a lot of salad or consumed the entirety of my calorie content via Velveeta.

Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner proved to be the biggest challenges. My grandma forgot that I didn’t eat meat and made beef stew for lunch. I ended up scouring the fridge and throwing together a salad.

At Thanksgiving dinner, I loaded my plate with the vegetables and fruits at the table, finishing my meal with a piece of chocolate pie. Just as I was taking my last bite, my brother asked how I could eat something with pudding.

This was when I learned about the sneaky foods that don’t follow vegetarian diet guidelines. Foods like pudding, gelatin, marshmallows and ramen noodles seasoning are made of animal byproducts such as hooves and bone marrow. Even certain kinds of processed cheeses are cultured with animal byproducts.

He explained this to me as I guiltily pushed my empty plate away, vowing never again to ingest pudding.

I had aimed to continue this lifestyle for a full year, but because of a rigorous exercise schedule, I began to lose too much weight and my hair started to thin. I ended my vegetarianism last March to allay my family’s concerns over my health, but I learned a lot in the process.

For those of you considering giving up meat for an extended period of time, I offer a few suggestions. Taking a vitamin supplement can give you anything your body may be lacking during this period. You can also eat other foods rich in protein such as quinoa, beans, nuts, tofu or supplements.

Watch for unexpected hair loss or weight loss and, most of all, take care of yourself. By cutting meat out of my diet, I became more energized and less lethargic, but if done the wrong way a vegetarian diet can have the opposite effects.

For those of you making the brave attempt during the heartiest of holidays, allrecipes.com features a vegetarian Thanksgiving page that shows various ways for vegetarians to enjoy sweet potatoes, salads, cranberry sauces and other delightful dishes. Turkey and gravy will just make your family sleepy.

Barack Obama was elected to a second term. Same-sex marriage was legalized in more states. But the vote that seems to maintain the highest amount of “hoorahs” and high fives was the legalization for recreational use of marijuana in Washington and Colorado.

Before any tokers out there pack your bags to move to the new havens of haze, keep in mind that marijuana legalization is not yet actually a reality.

But, this “trifling” detail is unlikely to prevent hundreds of thousands of those that enjoy that baked sensation from traveling to one of the American Amsterdams.

With the exodus of folks, and the likely immense bump in vacationing for a few days, there comes a great many challenges besides the already daunting decision of whether to smoke Canna Sutra, Nigerian, Purple Kush or any of the many other connoisseur marijuana strains.

Though increased tourism can be an excellent way to generate more funds for communities, weekend warriors from just across state lines, or anyone flying in to kiss the sky for a few days, can cause unanticipated troubles for maintaining the peace.

Denser traffic from deliveries or responsible stoners hailing cabs, to increased lines for purchases, to people with kine bud mindsets just chilling in the park or playing some tunes in public, crowding can become a safety issue.

Although there is little to no evidence to support the asinine claims concerning marijuana’s influence on individuals to make them violent or cause death, scores of stumbley folks searching for munchies or strolling along taking in the pleasant vibes of life in the city does not mean the criminals out there are giving a pass to those chiefin’ the reefer. There are oodles of individuals spoiling for fights or happy to rob tourists or others in a less than perfectly attentive state of mind of their possessions.

Operating vehicles, or merely meandering down the street under the influence presents a problem. Driving while high is like driving while drunk, you do not pass “GO” and collect $200. But that won’t stop people from trying anyway.

Marijuana traces can stay in your system weeks after smoking, even if you haven’t taken a bong rip for a few days. There is, as of now, no simple way for police to establish whether you are blazed, so when they suspect it, you likely head down to the station in cuffs.

Coming up next is drug testing for jobs. Public employees, and even a fair number of private, also have the wall of “random” urine tests to worry about. For residents of Colorado and Washington, despite the “legality” of your action, your job can still suspend or fire you for using an illegal substance.

The granddaddy of all woes for the 4/20 movement comes with the war on drugs. States can legalize weed all the live-long day, and it amounts to diddly-squat because Tetrahydrocannabinol remains a Schedule I hallucinogenic or psychedelic drug under the Controlled Substances Act, Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. And since federal law trumps state law, all this kine bud hype could go up in smoke.

But on the optimistic side, state-support for marijuana could lead to change for the idiotic regulation and spending wasted on combating cannabis consumption and incarceration of pleasant people wanting only to smoke a joint after a hard day of work and eat a Twinkie or two.

The legalization for therapeutic use — easing attention-deficit issues, regulating sleep difficulties, assuaging anxiety, dealing with mild to moderate depression, muscle relaxation or even relieving the suffering to some extent of the terminally ill — has been embraced more and more at the state level, with the overall goal in mind of ending the more-harm-than-good prohibition of pot.

The potential for trafficking from Washington and Colorado into other states could result in some serious legal attention by those unscrupulous entrepreneurs wanting to turn a profit illegally. The federal government’s war on drugs might see this as reason to sue to repeal the state’s legalization.

Myriad political and legal aspects surrounding recreational legalization play out positively and negatively, sometimes both at once, to the future of marijuana in the United States. The Obama administration has shown little sign of support so far for decriminalization, however given the fund potential from legalization for assisting economic recovery — due to taxing and decreased spending for enforcement — these might be the pebbles that start an avalanche.

If you want change, go to Petitions.WhiteHouse.gov and sign the various movements each month to get marijuana decriminalization brought often to the eye of the White House. Contact your state representatives with your support for change, to push for legalization in your own state. Tell your friends and family about the changes coming. Who knows, maybe this country is finally moving beyond the antiquated notions somehow still steering our country.

The study, published in the journal “Nature” and led by Harvard Medical School professor David E. Fisher, originally aimed to explore how moles develop into melanoma in the presence of UV radiation. The researchers examined this phenomenon in mice, breeding one group to express a pigment-producing gene that causes red hair and fair skin while the other group expressed a dark-colored pigment. The next step in their plans was to expose the mice to UV radiation in order to examine how the rate of melanoma development differed between the two groups.

However, the researchers noticed that the “redheaded” mice developed melanoma even before they were exposed to UV radiation.

“The real surprise in this is that we were anticipating to provide UV radiation because UV is so associated with melanoma risk…but what we observed is that the redheaded mice developed melanoma…at a high rate even before we could get to the point of delivering the UV,” said Fisher, who is also the Head of the MGH Department of Dermatology. “One of our initial responses was to get a meter and go into the animal room to make sure that the bulbs were not actually emitting UV radiation by mistake.

The authors concluded that the actual pigment responsible for red hair and fair skin is the root of the carcinogenic effects. “We know that UV is not the only important factor in redheads now and redheads may need to be more thorough in checking themselves and more cautious because it’s not just a question of sun exposure,” said Dunster House resident Annie M. Morgan ’13, a co-author of the paper. “We know it’s not just UV so then the question is: what is the whole spectrum of factors that add up to predispose people to melanoma?”

The researchers cautioned that this does not mean that people can expose themselves to UV radiation without concern.

According to Devarati Mitra, a lead researcher in this study and a Harvard MD/PhD student and Cabot House Resident Tutor, the role of UV radiation in melanoma development is still significant.

“You definitely still need to wear sunscreen and cover up and all of that is unchanged by our results,” Mitra said. “But our results suggest that in addition to that UV effect there is an intrinsic risk of melanoma in individuals who primarily have this red color…so our data does not contradict what was known before but it adds a new dimension.”

According to Fisher, the next stage in advancing this research involves identifying specific traits of molecules that could block the damage caused by this red pigment.

“The class of molecules that we expect might have this activity are actually antioxidants—and though antioxidants are quite popular, we emphasize that not all antioxidants are the same and some may even increase the oxidative damage,” he said. “So we do not under any circumstances recommend that people try their own antioxidant remedies and pour pomegranate juice on their skin, because not only may it not work but it may actually worsen the process.”

Recently, Monster energy drinks have been linked to five fatalities and one non-fatal heart attack in teenagers, according to reports the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently investigating.

The FDA began investigating these incidences after discovering a 14-year old girl’s death, supposedly due to the highly caffeinated beverages.

Anais Fournier, from Riverside, Calif., died from cardiac arrhythmia because of the caffeine toxicity apparently caused by drinking two 24-oz. Monster’s.

The other cases reach back to 2004, and the FDA states these reports do not absolutely determine Monster’s guilt in the aforementioned deaths or injuries.

Shelly Burgress, a spokesperson for the FDA, said the organization takes any report of death or injury seriously.

Penn State U. Research Technologist Dr. Jacqueline Vernarelli, in the Food Sciences department, said the energy drinks have a lot of caffeine and the same health effects as regular sodas.

“If you are drinking [Monster], rapid heart rate may occur and cause constrictions in the blood vessels,” Vernarelli said. “Because of these blood vessels constricting, it makes it more difficult for the blood to travel through [the] smaller space and thereby causing the higher blood pressure.”

Vernarelli said the effects of Monster are comparable to something like coffee. She said regular coffee ranges from roughly 90 to 130 milligrams of caffeine and drip coffee around 120 to 175 milligrams.

One 24-oz. can of Monster contains 80 milligrams of caffeine per 8-oz. serving and 240 milligrams for the entire can, Vernarelli said.

“Anyone that is sensitive to caffeine needs to be responsible,” she said. “We just need to be more conscious of what we are eating and drinking, and too much of anything is not a good thing.”

PSU sophomore Segun Muse said the girl’s passing is “terrible,” and there should be an investigation on the drink.

He said Monster does not do enough to make its consumers better aware of the health risks that come with their products. However, he said it is up to the consumers to research what they put into their bodies.

PSU senior Shae Madaus said ultimate responsibility lies with parents. He said it is the parent’s responsibility to monitor their young child.

“People should become more aware of the short term and long term effects of drinking energy drinks,” he said. “The company needs to make better disclaimers and, if anything, they should just put an 8 percent sin tax on these drinks like they do cigarettes.”

As the world watches and waits for the results of the 2012 presidential election, Proposition 37 in California, which would mandate the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), has been largely ignored.

A quick rundown of statistics is startling: 88 percent of U.S. corn, 90 percent of canola, 90 percent of cotton and 94 percent of soy are genetically modified. This results in a supermarket where over 70 percent of the products contain GMOs.

That statistic is worth repeating: more than 70 percent of foods in the United States are genetically modified. The future has arrived, and it is all around us.

The science fiction began at Calgene, a biotech firm now owned by Monsanto, whose scientists opened the door to a new food and agricultural revolution. The Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s increased crop yields and expanded the industrialized the food system, fundamentally changing food at the molecular level.

Calgene created the Flavr Savr tomato, the first commercial GMO. This tomato unleashed a wave of genetic modification that has resulted in a food system dominated by GMOs.

GMOs have been designed to resist pesticides sprayed on fields, ironically allowing more to be sprayed, have longer shelf lives, be more tolerant to stress and even contain pesticides within the plant itself.

The benefits have been unparalleled food production in the U.S. The costs are an uncertain future of food and unintended consequences for both humans and the environment.

While there must be a separate argument about the effects of GMOs in relation to intellectual property, seed prices, health and the potential to form superweeds (which has already occurred), the discussion facing voters is far simpler.

If we understand food as a fundamental right to all people, the right to know what is in our food must also be accepted.

Fifty countries around the world, including Japan, India and China, already require the labeling of GMOs, and many of these countries restrict their use. The development of GMOs has the potential to be one of the greatest technological advances in food and agriculture in the 21st century.

However, the greatest problem regarding GMOs has been transparency. Monsanto and other large companies conduct their own studies on GMOs, limit the distribution of their data and results (because it is “proprietary”) and are ultimately left to regulate themselves. Large companies such as Monsanto, DuPont, Dow AgroSciences, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kellogg and General Mills have combined to raise $47 million to fight Proposition 37.

The adage “you are what you eat” has taken on an entirely new meaning in the age of GMOs, and it is essential that products be labeled so that consumers know what exactly is in them. It is their right.

The non-medical use of Adderall among full-time students rose from 6.3 percent in 2006 to 8.3 percent in 2011, SAMHSA’s Chief of the Population Surveys branch Joe Gfroerer said.

He said the organization conducts a survey every year with 22,000 subjects in the 18- to 22-year-old age range, focusing on the use of substances from tobacco and alcohol to non-medical use of prescription drugs.

The data only goes back to 2006 because he said Adderall was only added to the list of non-medical drugs they asked about at that time. However, this data shows some significant trends, he said.

Gfroerer said the rates of non-medical Adderall use from 2006 to 2011 for 18 to 22 year olds have been consistently higher among college students than those who are not in college — and the rates for both groups have been rising.

The rate for other persons — not full-time students — in the age range rose from 3 percent to 4.2 percent, he said.

Penn State U.’s Counseling and Psychological Services staff psychologist Andrea Falzone said she doesn’t see a lot of students coming in with Adderall abuse as their primary issue.

“We do have students who report that they use [Adderall] who don’t have it prescribed,” she said. “I don’t hear about it being reported more than marijuana. I don’t see it as epidemic.”

Falzone said the first time that a student comes in for an appointment at CAPS, he or she is asked to fill out a form where he or she is asked to answer questions about his or her use of various substances. One of the questions is whether the student uses drugs for which he or she does not have prescriptions, she said.

“We see a number of students who are taking Adderall as prescribed for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to manage a real disorder,” Falzone said.

But the screenings from the first appointment also shows that there are students who report that they use it without a prescription, she said.

Additionally, CAPS psychiatrist Victoria Stout said though she is not aware of any studies or records of Adderall abuse, she asks patients to whom she prescribes Adderall to sign an agreement that they will not distribute it.

“If someone shares their Adderall with someone else, that is distributing controlled substances, and that is a felony,” she said. “I do think students should take this seriously.”

Because ADHD is a long-standing problem with symptoms showing when someone is 7 years old, Stout said she is usually able to catch people who are trying to receive prescriptions of Adderall for non-medical use.

However, Stout said she couldn’t say whether she’s positive that none of her patients have abused their prescriptions.

Stout advised students who need help to go to the CAPS website (http://studentaffairs.psu.edu/counseling/pdf/EvaluationandTreatmentforADHDHandout.pdf) to find out if they may have ADHD and how to seek help.

Your best bet is not getting a tattoo you’re going to regret in the first place.

I’m not arguing against tattoos; that would be astoundingly hypocritical of me. I’m not covered, but I have a few, one of which is a sleeve — incidentally, one covering the aforementioned regretted tattoo. If you want a tattoo, go for it.

Before you do, though, don’t just choose a design because it’s pretty or trendy. This ink is going to be with you for the rest of your life. Let me repeat that so it sinks in: the rest of your life — there’s a lot of dude-bros out there regretting their tribal armbands 10 years later. If you’re going into this planning to have the tattoo removed at a later date, you should save some money and go get a temporary transfer from the quarter machines or just draw on yourself with a Sharpie.

Also, keep in mind that you’re in college, presumably to earn a degree to qualify for a specific career.  In other words, if you want to teach fifth graders, don’t get a neck tattoo.

Your design should do more than look totally awesome — though it should obviously do that as well. It needs to mean something. It doesn’t need to mark an epiphany, but it should mean more to you than just your first tattoo. And for goodness’ sake, don’t get your significant other’s name tattooed on your body. Just, no. In all my years as a tattoo junkie I have never met anyone with their special someone’s name on them who was still with that special someone. A rule of thumb for names is: they should only be your children’s or a dead person’s.

To get your perfect design, you need to collaborate with your artist. Tell them what you want and bring them reference pictures, and they’ll sketch up something for you. Tell them what you do and don’t like about that sketch, and they’ll draw you up another one. Repeat the process until there’s nothing you don’t like about the design. Don’t settle on this. Remember: the rest of your life.

The process of working with the artist in designing your ink is also a good way to make sure you don’t annoy the crap out of each other. You’re going to be trapped under their needle for what might be hours; being able to tolerate each other will be a good thing.

Please don’t just pick the nearest tattoo parlor and the artist who’s free when you wander in off the street. Shop around. The artists will have portfolios of their work on display in their shop. Leaf through their books until you find someone whose style speaks to you, amazes you and makes you want to look at it every day for the rest of your life. This is a big decision. My artist is three hours away, because what she does with color is amazing. For me, that’s worth the drive.

Tattoos hurt. Anyone who told you otherwise was either lying or drunk. A reputable artist will never tattoo anyone they know to be under the influence, and not only because they’ll lose their license. If it’s not worth the pain, don’t get a tattoo; it’s as simple as that. If you absolutely have to look like a d-bag, try the transfers and Sharpie route, or I hear they have fabric “tattoo sleeves” at Spencer’s. Keep in mind that anywhere the skin is thin, or the bones are close to the surface, is gonna hurt like a mother. I don’t recommend one of those areas for your first, but I’m not the boss of you, so do what you want.

If you have any questions, ask your artist! They’re your number one resource — utilize them.

If after reading this you still get an ironic — or stupid — tattoo, your pain when it’s getting lasered off or covered up will be my sweet, sweet revenge.

A little over a year into his presidency, though, Barack Obama signed just such a mandate into law. That mandate became the center of his signature health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act.

The mandate was upheld by the Supreme Court, but Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that, while the Court found the mandate constitutional, it did not and cannot decide whether the mandate is good public policy.

As American citizens, it is our job to consider the consequences that come from the choices we make in elections. One consequence of the choice we make this presidential election year will be the impending enforcement of the ACA, which takes effect in 2014.

The ACA aims to increase health insurance coverage in the United States primarily by shifting health care costs from older Americans to younger Americans and from willing insurance purchasers to taxpayers. It does this by requiring all Americans to purchase a government-approved health plan, regardless of their age or health status, and by raising taxes on everything from medical devices to tanning beds.

To the extent that the health law reduces costs for some, it increases them for others, while rerouting a substantial amount of money through government programs. The law will increase government spending by more than a trillion dollars over the next 10 years.

That cost will be covered by the government, already sinking under the weight of existing entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

President Obama should have stuck to his original position on the health insurance mandate and pursued reforms to make health care more affordable. As the president went on to say in that same 2008 interview, “The reason they don’t have a house is they don’t have the money. And so our focus has been on reducing costs.”

Mitt Romney has a health care plan that really would focus on reducing costs. He has promised to start by repealing the ACA and then working on smarter reforms to spur choice and competition in the health care market. Those reforms include equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance benefits, creating a national market for health insurance by allowing plans to be sold across state lines, and finally reigning in frivolous lawsuits that are raising costs for every patient.

Romney’s goal is to give power back to states and individuals so they can decide on their needs instead of creating comprehensive universal health care without individual considerations. This will allow both state governments and consumers to have more flexibility with their plans.

This election gives voters a distinct choice between the government-driven approach President Obama has taken toward health care reform, embodied by the costly and intrusive ACA, and the patient-centered choice Gov. Romney has proposed.

The results of Romney’s health care reform plan will be a system with more choice, more competition and lower cost.

High doses rather than standard doses of multivitamin supplements could result in increased levels of an enzyme affecting liver function, commonly an indication of liver damage. After examining the study’s findings, Sheila Isanaka, a research fellow at the School of Public Health involved in the test, recommended that patients taking highly active antiretroviral therapy—called HAART for short—consume only standard levels of vitamins.

While previous studies have concluded that nutritional supplements slow HIV disease progression and improve immune function among patients before they start taking HAART, data from this trial in Tanzania indicate that while on HAART, patients do not benefit from an increased multivitamin regimen.

“The general assumption that nutritional intervention is always beneficial needs to be looked at,” said Wafaie W. Fawzi, the School of Public Health professor who served as the director of the study based in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

The five-year study emerged from a long relationship between HSPH and research institutions in Tanzania. More than 20 trials have been conducted that examine nutritional effects on pregnant women, pre-natal health, and infectious diseases such as HIV. The most recent study included 3,418 HIV-positive patients who had already started antiretroviral therapy.

“We randomly assigned half of the patients to receive high doses of supplements including vitamin B complex, vitamin C, and vitamin E and the other half to receive standard doses at the recommended dietary allowance level,” Isanaka wrote in an email from France. “High-dose supplementation had no effect on several key measures that reveal HIV disease progression—CD4 count, plasma viral load, body mandex, or hemoglobin level concentration.”

The only measurable difference between the two groups was the increased risk of liver damage in those patients on the high-dose nutrition supplement. “Many times we think that nutritional supplements are good,” Fawzi said. “And it’s only through rigorous studies…that one is able to identify whether that is indeed the case.”

Isanaka says further research would need to include a placebo group in patients already taking HAART to ascertain if indeed nutritional supplements slow the progression of HIV at all and to learn which combinations of micronutrients are most beneficial to patients.

Researchers will make the findings of their study available to physicians in both Tanzania and the United States. Fawzi said that the possible adverse effects of high-dose multivitamins in patients taking HAART may influence the dosage decisions of doctors and patients. “[It is] a point to note and be cautious about in the future,” he said.

The “switch”—a channel-shaped protein that sits in the outer membrane of human fat cells—can help prevent insulin resistance and obesity when it is blocked.

Senior author Bruce Spiegelman, a professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School, said the implications of this research are far-extending.

“The fact that there is a pathway [...]that is potentially druggable that controls these aspects of biology opens up a pretty clear possibility to develop therapeutics,” he said.

According to co-author Jun Wu, an instructor at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, one-third of the world’s population suffers from obesity, but there are still no effective drugs in the United States capable of helping reduce metabolic rates.

In any animal, a high calorie diet can lead to obesity or insulin resistance–and commonly both. The diseases, especially when coupled, lead to greatly increased risk of coronary heart disease, type II diabetes and stroke.

The fat switch protein these scientists studied is predominately found in “brown fat cells”—a type of fat cell that is especially good at using chemical energy to generate and dissipate heat. This heat dissipation functions to prevent insulin resistance, distinguishing it as a “good” fat cell, according to Wu.

Through five years of experimentation, Spiegelman, Wu and their colleagues found that mice who had blocked fat switch proteins in their brown cells had an increase in their energy expenditure and decrease in insulin resistance compared to mice that did not have this block, even without putting the mice on a low-calorie diet.

Spiegelman said that the fat switch protein is from the same family of proteins as capsaicin, a protein that can be blocked by drugs to prevent the taste of spice—evidence that the fat switch could be manipulated to produce an effect in humans in a similar way.

The “druggable” potential for the fat switch, Spiegelman added, was one of the most exciting finds of his work.

Sex is a tough subject to be open about, and as a result, it is usually hushed, its meaning lost in between the lines. But no matter how hard it is to be serious about sex, it’s even harder to hold an open dialogue about sexual health — and specifically, the human papilloma virus, otherwise known as HPV.

Last week, Gardasil, one of two vaccines protecting against many forms of HPV, was given the OK in a study conducted by the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center. The study followed about 200,000 subjects after having been administered the HPV vaccine and determined it is safe for use. At most, the vaccination could result in a skin infection or same-day fainting — a preferred alternative to cervical cancer.

This is a fantastic step forward for cancer prevention, and hopefully, it will drive down the death rate due to cervical cancer, which is one of the most fatal cancers observed in women. However, the study won’t dispel the controversial nature of the vaccine. In the six years since the Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine, Gardasil has undergone so much scrutiny for a vast number of reasons — but all of them come back to society’s discomfort with acknowledging the nature of sex.

I was with my roommates and their friends when we started talking about the vaccination. It seemed that several people we knew had received the first vaccination (out of three). But a few years after Gardasil was approved by the FDA, many began to worry that the newness of the drug meant there was still a possibility of a side effect that was yet to be discovered. It doesn’t make much sense because it’s a pre-emptive sort of worry. Nonetheless, it effectively stopped girls from receiving the rest of the vaccinations.

While I was in high school, I remember the administrators encouraging the student body to get vaccinated. But the girls I knew made fun of each other if they did end up receiving the vaccination because that must mean “she’s a whore.” Some parents even looked down on their friends for getting their girls vaccinated because she must have been somehow “tainted.”

And, even in the political arena, negative attention surrounded the HPV vaccine when, in 2007, former GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry issued an executive order to vaccinate every schoolgirl. He received a huge backlash from the Republican party and other candidates for having government meddle in an issue so personal as vaccinating one’s children.

I doubt those who took part in the backlash, both on the community and political levels, understood that cervical cancer is directly caused by HPV, and that the vaccine would prevent transmission of the virus. I also doubt they understood that the vaccination is most effective if administered prior to being sexually active.

It’s this lack of understanding about the vaccine that puts people off from promoting it. There may be a general understanding that Gardasil can lower your chances of developing cervical cancer, but people have still stigmatized the vaccine: Those who receive it must be sexually promiscuous — why else would they need to be vaccinated?

The medicine behind prevention has made great strides in progress within the past decade. We have the power to make cervical cancer virtually non-existent.

But we need to catch up psychologically. We need to put aside our fears for being considered socially tainted because risking a cancer diagnosis isn’t worth fitting into social standards.

In “Designed to Move,” a report backed by Nike, the average lifespan of the younger generation is expected to be five years shorter than their parents.

“Physical activity in the United States has declined 32 percent and is on track for a 46 percent drop by 2030,” according to the report.

According to newly released statistics by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three Americans are obese and nearly 26 million have diabetes. These medical conditions and many more can be directly linked to inactivity.

“I think the reason people are so inactive is a mix between technology and work,” Trey Johnson, a U. Alabama junior, said. “You’re sitting at your job all day, then you’re sitting on the couch watching TV when you get home.”

A new study by the U. South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health estimated that only 20 percent of jobs today require moderate physical activity compared to the 1960s when more than half did. This means most Americans are sedentary for almost all of their nine-hour workdays.

According to a recent Forbes magazine article, people can stay active by standing at their desks or replacing their office chairs with stability balls.

The increasing number of sedentary Americans has caused not only physical, but also economic problems.

According to the “Designed to Move” report, the upcoming generation will affect economies worldwide due to its increasing inactivity causing a less productive education, which leads to lower income and higher health care costs. The U.S. Department of Labor reported that over 30 percent of employers’ wages go toward health care. They also reported that the cost of health care has risen 78 percent from 2001 to 2008.

“I try to exercise regularly every day. When I don’t have time, I try to take the stairs whenever possible, and I always walk to class or ride my bike,” Jackie Nolan, a UA sophomore, said.

According to the Nike report, the more we move, the longer we live. But with busy lifestyles, most students are finding it hard to make time for exercise. According to the British Medical Journal Open, reducing sitting to less than three hours a day can add an additional two years to life expectancy.

“To be more active, people could walk to class as much as possible and just find a gym that’s open late or 24 hours,” Johnson said. “Most apartments have that – even mine does – so I guess I don’t have much of an excuse not to work out.”

John Jackson, assistant director of research and fitness at U. Alabama’s recreation center, said they are working on a new program called METRECs that will hopefully be available for students in the spring. This program will measure the intensity of each group exercise program for students and rank them on a number scale.

“The program is based on an old health and training method called METs, or metabolic equivalency,” he said. “One MET is your basic resting metabolism, and the intensity of activities goes up from there. The higher the number, the higher the intensity.”

This will allow students to know just how much physical activity they are receiving from each class.

“The American College of Sports Medicine says that everyone should get at least 150 minutes per week of ‘moderate intensity activity,’” Jackson said. “But what’s ‘moderate intensity’ really mean? That’s something in the five to seven MET range, so now that’s a little bit easier for you to keep track of.”

Nolan said it is easier to workout in today’s world.

“There’s a gym on every corner, a sidewalk on every street and so much available knowledge, but no one uses it,” Nolan said. “We’re the most capable, but we’re still the laziest.”

The study, published in “Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science,” revealed that adults who drink three or more cups of caffeinated coffee a day are 34 percent more likely to develop primary open-angle glaucoma.

The chronic disease affects one percent of the population and occurs when the eye swells, which deteriorates optic nerve cells. As more optic nerve cells die, blind spots begin to form. Often those with the condition don’t even realize they’re losing their eye sight since there are no symptoms tied to it.

The study also found that other caffeinated drinks like soda and tea had no link to POAG. The good news for coffee addicts is that only participants with a family history of glaucoma and over the age of 40 later experienced the vision loss from drinking multiple cups of joe daily.

The author of the study, Jae Hee Kang, ScD, of Channing Division Network of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., spoke with “Science Daily” about the impact the study may have on future dietary studies.

“Because this is the first study to evaluate the association between caffeinated coffee and exfoliation glaucoma in a U.S. population, confirmation of these results in other populations would be needed to lend more credence to the possibility that caffeinated coffee might be a modifiable risk factor for glaucoma,” Kang told Science Daily. “It may also lead to research into other dietary or lifestyle factors as risk factors.”

Although the Harvard study makes drinking coffee seem like an everlasting veil of darkness for the eyes, there are many perks the energizing drink has to offer. Research has found coffee drinkers have a 50 percent less chance of developing liver cancer and a lower possibility of colon, breast and rectal cancer than those who don’t. Avid coffee drinkers are also less likely to get diabetes.

Not everyone who consumes large quantities of coffee daily will develop POAG. Those at risk of acquiring the chronic disease are people 40 and older; those with relatives who have the condition; people with high intraocular pressure; and those with diabetes. The disease is also more prominent in some ethnicities such as Africans, Asians and Latinos.

The Glaucoma Foundation recommends everyone under 40 years of age should have an eye exam every three to four years. Those over 40 should be tested at least every one and half years, while people 40 and older with one of the risk factors should get tested annually.

Remember: Moderation is key in everything, whether genetically jinxed with a family history of glaucoma or not. So fellow coffee lovers, don’t feel like you have to put down that cup of joe just yet.

The study, conducted at Colgate U., found that binge drinking was strongly connected to social satisfaction. The study is currently unpublished, but Carolyn Hsu, co-author of the study and associate professor of sociology at Colgate U., said she is revising the study and hopes to submit it for journal publication.   Hsu surveyed nearly 1,600 undergraduates at Colgate to measure their level of social satisfaction and their level of binge drinking. The surveys defined binge drinking as at least four drinks for women and five drinks for men in one drinking session at least once every 14 days.

The research found that binge drinking was more common among “higher status students,” students who are white, male, heterosexual and Greek affiliated. Additionally, it found that higher status students tend to be happier with their social lives.

“Lower Status” students (female, non-white, less wealthy, non-Greek affiliated and members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) community) who engage in binge drinking are happier with their college experience than their non-binge drinking peers. Whether they were classified as higher or lower, students who reported that they engaged in binge drinking also reported a higher level of social satisfaction than their peers who did not, according to Hsu.

Hsu said her data does not specifically answer whether it is the drinking that causes happier students or the social atmosphere. “With our data, we cannot directly answer the question about actual drinking versus social aspect,” Hsu said via e-mail.

“Our results seem to indicate that the social aspect plays a large role, but you have to do another, different kind of study to really nail down a conclusion on the issue.”

Rose Marie Ward, associate professor of Kinesiology and Health, has done extensive research on the campus drinking culture at Miami U.

“I think the study seems legitimate, but without seeing the original data, I do not know if there are confounding variables that could also explain this relationship,” Ward said. “High status students might be happier and able to buy more drinks because they are from more affluent backgrounds.”

Miami junior psychology major Luke Custer agreed binge drinking is not necessarily a predictor of a better college experience. “I think that drinking and happiness are correlated, but drinking does not necessarily cause happiness,” Custer said. “As a result of being a social person in college, you are more likely to be drinking. Being a social person is also what leads to happiness.”

Ward has done a related study on the personality types of people who drink.

“People who reported being more social or out to have a good time tend to drink more than people who said they were more introverted,” Ward said. According to Hsu’s paper presented at the ASA annual meeting, people binge drink to fit in. Miami senior Emma Barnaclo agreed. “Socially it is what you are supposed to do in college,” Barnaclo said.“People drink to lose their inhibitions and talk to people.”

The study did not find that unhappy students were drinking to self-medicate for stress and anxiety. On the contrary, the students who reported less stress and anxiety drank more.

Ward has conducted her own research on drinking and coping, and found that men are more likely than women to drink to cope with stress. The study also included an open-ended section, in which many research participants responded that they did not want to binge drink, but found it was the only socially acceptable thing to do for fun.

Custer and Barnaclo had mixed reactions.

“Drinking is such a common occurrence on weekend nights, that most activities that you are invited to involve alcohol,” Custer said. “But doing something outdoors or going to a sporting event are two activities that don’t necessarily have to involve alcohol but are still socially acceptable.”

Barnaclo could not immediately think of socially acceptable non-drinking activities, but said that movie nights can be a fun, socially acceptable alternative.

A particularly insidious form of cancer, pancreatic cancer often remains symptomless until the tumor has spread, at which point patients typically have less than six months to live. Even with aggressive treatment, the disease has claimed the lives of notable figures including “The Last Lecture” author Randy Pausch and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Michaud’s research shines light on a potential cause of pancreatic cancer — namely, oral health.

The study follows previous research that showed a correlation between gum disease and pancreatic cancer. Michaud and colleagues analyzed blood samples of approximately 800 volunteers from 23 centers across Europe in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort.

The first part of the study examined antibodies — factors made by the immune system to respond to specific threats — for five oral pathogens and found that subjects with high antibody levels for the gum disease-causing bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis were twice as likely to have pancreatic cancer compared to matched controls.

Because the blood samples were obtained years before diagnosis, this relationship hints at a causal relationship between the bacteria and cancer in which the bacteria may actually promote cancer. Michaud has developed a “working hypothesis,” theorizing that oral bacteria migrates to the pancreas via the blood or gut and causes “local damage” that can eventually become cancer.

The second part of the study looked at antibodies for naturally occurring oral bacteria. The researchers identified two subgroups, one of which had significantly higher antibody levels for the natural bacteria. This group had approximately half the risk of developing pancreatic cancer compared to their peers.

Michaud said the antibody levels for these natural bacteria may be indicative of immune strength. This may also explain why smoking is a risk factor, as it lowers antibody levels, she said.

Brown professor of Community Health Karl Kelsey, who was not involved in the study, described the study as having taken an “understudied and novel approach” in characterizing how the body’s natural micro-organisms can contribute to cancer.

Michaud is taking a different approach in a follow-up study to understand the mechanisms by which bacteria can promote cancer. Using a technique called pyrosequencing, the study will examine pancreatic tumors for bacterial DNA. By comparing the results with oral bacterial data, it could demonstrate which bacteria can migrate from the mouth and promote cancer.

Michaud emphasized the importance of detecting the disease early. Though Michaud voiced concern about disparities in access to dental care, for her, the takeaway is simple. “People need to take care of their teeth,” she said.

Scientists suggest that these drugs—which are marketed under brand names Advil, Motrin, and Tylenol among others—may reduce blood flow to the cochlea, our primary hearing organ, and impair its function. They also posit that these drugs could disrupt the body’s mechanisms to protect the cochlea from damage.

“We previously found that men who used these medications regularly had an increased risk for developing hearing loss,” said Sharon E. Curhan, head researcher of the study and instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “However, this relation had not yet been examined in women, who use these medications even more frequently than men.”

Curhan and other researchers discovered this association between analgesics and hearing loss in women through a 14-year study conducted at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital from 1995 to 2009.

In the study, 62,261 women aged 31 to 48 years old were observed for their use of ibuprofen, acetaminophen, or aspirin. By the end of 14 years, 10,012 women had self-reported experiencing hearing loss.

Findings revealed that while ibuprofen and acetaminophen were associated with hearing loss, aspirin did not have an effect.

Upon further analysis, researchers found that those who used the medicines two or three times per week had more than a 10 percent higher risk for hearing loss than those who used them less than once a week.

For women taking the medicines up to four or five days a week, the risk of developing hearing loss jumped to 21 percent.

Hearing loss is an extremely common, and often disabling, chronic condition, Curhan said. It may have a negative impact on an individual’s communication, social life, and productivity.

According to previous research, in the U.S. alone up to one-third of women in their fifties and two-thirds of women in their sixties have experienced some degree of hearing loss.

“A great take-home message is that even though these analgesics are widely available in drugstores and supermarkets without a prescription, they are still medications and they have potential side effects,” Curhan said.

“It is important to take them mindfully.”

Gluten-free products have received so much recognition from the media and celebrities that their annual sales are anticipated to reach $2.6 billion this year. Manufacturers are beginning to produce more gluten-free products so that in 2015, marketing research firm Packaged Facts reports the hot commodity will sell a whopping $5 billion.

Gluten is a type of protein found in wheat and most grains, such as barley and rye. Doctors typically only recommend a gluten-free diet for those with celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity — individuals without the disease that suffer from bowel pain or discomfort caused by the protein.

Yet, many people without the allergy are adopting a gluten-free lifestyle, chiefly for the weight loss results. Those with an actual allergy, however, do so for a completely different reason. Lee Stowers, a senior at U. Alabama studying exercise science and pre-physical therapy, was diagnosed five years ago with a gluten allergy.

“Everyone always asks me, ‘how do you not eat bread? I would die.’ My answer always is when something makes you that sick you don’t miss it,” Stowers said. “It has affected my lifestyle in a lot more positive ways than negative.”

Singer and actress Miley Cyrus has become the unofficial spokeswoman for the gluten-free diet. Aside from her recent interviews discussing her new lifestyle, Liam Hemsworth’s bride-to-be is tweeting non-stop pictures showing off her new, slender physique.

“For everyone calling me anorexic I have a gluten and lactose allergy,” Cyrus tweeted on April 9 in defense of her drastic weight loss she credits to a gluten-free lifestyle.

The starlet is simply one of many who have made the change, claiming to physically feel better.

Kristy Sillay, a graduate student at UA working for her master’s degree in health science, had to have three shots a week for her allergies and sinus problems. After reading that a gluten-free diet could help alleviate her symptoms, Sillay decided to give it a try.

“I have noticed a significant difference when cutting gluten out of my diet. I feel better and not so fatigued,” Sillay, now gluten-free for three months, said. “My allergy and sinus symptoms are almost nonexistent.”

Although Cyrus and several other celebrities can attest to the slenderizing effects of a gluten-free diet, little experimental evidence proves that cutting out all gluten can shrink a waistline. A study in 2010 examining the benefits of a gluten-free diet found 22 of the 81 obese participants diagnosed with Celiac disease gained weight over the course of 2.8 years. Rather than going gluten-free to drop a few pounds, give it a try for the long-term benefits.

UW psychology professor and lead author of the study Paula Niendenthal said inspiration for the study came from the question about whether pacifiers blocked social interactions to the extent that they would have a harmful effect on development.

“This idea led to a study of how prolonged pacifier use affected whether people mimic and develop emotional consequences,” Niendenthal said.

Niendenthal said the general idea behind the importance of mimicking is the fact that the action is a functional and active learning idea, allowing the body to recreate information it received through facial nerves that cause expressions and facial nerves that take messages to the brain.

Niendenthal said the department conducted three studies to further explore the idea.

In the first study, Niendenthal said researchers studied children of ages 6 and 7 and whether they could mimic faces when they looked at them. Results found boys who used pacifiers longer were less able to mimic faces, she said.

In the second study, Niendenthal said researchers asked college-age students to report on their pacifier use in childhood and relate the pacifier use to their scales of visible emotions. The longer boys used pacifiers, the lower their scores were regarding empathy, she said.

In the third study, Niendenthal said questionnaires were administered regarding the relationship between the length of pacifier use and levels of emotional intelligence. She said from this study, researchers found the longer boys used pacifiers, the lower they scored in ability to understand other peoples emotions.

Niendenthal said further research is needed for these findings.

She said society trains girls to expect to understand people’s emotions and be expressive emotionally, and because parents discuss and encourage emotions around girls much more than boys, the general result is boys are more vulnerable to social and developmental implications.

A UW statement said researchers found heavy pacifier use in childhood is tied to levels of emotional maturity found.

This is the first study to tie pacifiers with psychological development, the statement said.

In Harlem, obesity has long been a widespread problem. A 2008 study by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that four in 10 adults in East and Central Harlem drink four or more sugary drinks daily, compared with one in 10 on the Upper West Side. In addition, Harlem parents introduce sugary drinks to their children at around 3.5 years of age, earlier than parents on the Upper West Side.

Jeanine Genkinger, a professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, called the board’s vote “a good first step in reducing the obesity epidemic in the United States.”

“Large amounts of individuals are consuming large amounts of sugary drinks,” she said. “This is one step along the road in reducing calories.”

But Genkinger said that the question of whether the ban will reduce obesity in Harlem will depend on environmental factors independent of the policy.

“Some of those are cultural factors, safety factors, and education factors,” Genkinger said. “For individuals who come from more disadvantaged backgrounds, providing healthy foods is normally more expensive. People find it difficult to put healthy food on the table.”

This is an especially influential factor in Harlem, where income disparity is the highest in the city, said Carly Hutchinson, director of communications and community relations at the Harlem Health Promotion Center. There is also a substantial difference in the number of supermarkets in Harlem compared to neighborhoods in the rest of the city, she noted.

“Unhealthy food is more affordable and ubiquitous,” Hutchinson said. “In very poor areas, there is no access to healthy food, and it’s not safe to go out, so you can’t exercise as much.”

Bloomberg’s proposal was the subject of much debate by politicians, the soda industry, small-business owners, and the general public. One of the main issues was whether improving nutrition education is a better solution.

Indeed, there is a long way to go in terms of nutrition education in northern Manhattan, Hutchinson said. “People don’t understand the differences between sugar-sweetened beverages and other beverages.”

Deb Lewison-Grant is the co-founder of FoodFight, an education nonprofit based in Manhattan Valley that emphasizes food literacy curriculum in public schools. Lewison-Grant believes that the attention the ban has brought to the issue will “get people to think twice about buying the beverage.”

“As far as single-handedly reversing the epidemic, it won’t do that because the problem is too pervasive,” Lewison-Grant said. “But it helps to give a person pause at the point of purchase.”

At least two local politicians have come out against the ban. City Council member Melissa Mark-Viverito, who represents parts of East Harlem and the Upper West Side, wrote in the Huffington Post in July that the health department should instead focus its efforts on better education.

Council member Robert Jackson, whose district includes West Harlem and Hamilton Heights, said in a statement that the ban “is not the answer in combating obesity.” He characterized the measure’s reach as “inequitable,” pointing out that establishments that receive grades from the health department—restaurants and movie theaters, for instance—must adhere to the restriction, but bodegas next door will not.

“We can strike a balance between creating a healthy and consumer savvy New York without hurting our small businesses,” he said.

Many New Yorkers have opposed the policy on principle, calling it an overreach of an invasive administration.

“I’m against the mayor legislating people’s right to what they want to drink,” Dennis Francis, a Harlem resident, said. “I’m against soda, though, I don’t believe it’s healthy.”

“He’s trying to get into our personal life,” Linda Woods, a Harlem resident, said. “We can’t smoke cigarettes nowhere, now we can’t drink a big soda. What’s next, we can’t have eggs?”

Domingo Santiago, who mans a booth advertising healthy choices on 125th Street, said that he could appreciate people’s concerns, but favored the ban nevertheless.

“A lot of times, kids drink whatever’s there because it’s just another option, without knowing the consequences,” Santiago said. “I see it as a benefit for kids.”

Another concern is whether or not the ban will hurt businesses that rely heavily on soft-drink sales.

Anthony Marino, a shift manager at a McDonald’s on 125th Street and Broadway, said that the law could significantly hurt the chain.

“Probably half of our sales are based on the drinks we sell,” he said. “When extra-large drinks were banned about two years ago, customers complained. We still have people come in and ask for them.”

Guruji Rai, the owner of Lincoln Fried Chicken on 125th Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard, said he wasn’t worried about his profits.

“I’m not thinking about my store, I’m thinking about health,” Rai said. “After a couple of weeks, people will get used to it.”

The regulation—the first such ban in the country—will go into effect March 12, unless it is struck down by a judge.

Jillian Kumagai contributed reporting.

Stanford U. doesn’t think so.

Stanford recently published a systematic review, which is a review of research in a specific area, detailing what has been found about the benefits and risks of organic foods.

The study has undergone controversy since the publication about the validity of the methods used for the review.

The study, which was published in the Sept. 4 Issue of annals of internal medicine, found there is not strong evidence that organic foods are more nutritious than conventional foods.

Dr. Suzy Weems, professor and chair in the Baylor U. department of family and consumer sciences, said the findings from Stanford were consistent with previous findings regarding organic food.

“The findings at Stanford were not at all, in my mind, surprising because we have known for quite awhile that the nutrient content in foods that were properly produced, organically and using the more conventional methods, if those foods were harvested and taken care of carefully, the nutrient content was not significantly different,” Weems said.

Weems said the difference between organic and conventionally-produced food lies in the techniques used when growing the foods.

“Organically produced means they have been grown with little to no synthetic fertilizers and they don’t have insecticides,” Weems said. “They really have to be certified as organic producers.”

The use of pesticides and insecticides was mentioned in the Stanford study. In a sept. 3 Press release by Stanford University, studies involving groups of children on organic versus conventional diets showed slightly lower levels of pesticides appearing in children with organic diets versus conventional diets, but it was unclear what the exact cause was.

“I think the statement they made really needs to be highlighted and that was that perhaps the largest amount of pesticides that children are exposed to is not through the food, but in the environment,” weems said.

The overall agreement among the authors of the study was that people should aim for overall healthier diets.

Weems agreed, saying she never advises people for or against organic food, which is generally more expensive than regular food, but leaves the decision up to them.

“I really stress the idea that it’s important to eat fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nutrient-dense foods like lean meats and things,” Weems said. “It’s much more important to have those in the diet every day than to not be able to afford something.”

Some students, like Corpus Christi junior Karla Medina, said they occasionally buy organic food.

“Sometimes I buy organic, but when i’m short on money, I’ll get regular because it has about the same nutritional content,” medina said.

Local organizations, like world hunger relief incorporated, also stress other qualities of food besides whether or not it’s organically produced.

“For us, there is a lot about our growing system that are more important than organic foods,” said the associate director of World Hunger relief Incorporated Matt Hess. “We consider things like grass-pasture-fed, locally produced more important than organic.”

Hess said world hunger relief incorporated use methods similar to organic methods. They say they have also sold some organic products like pecans, but that locally, educating people about other techniques like grass-fed and pasture-fed produce is more necessary.

Weems said there will always be people who prefer organic produce, but that she expects the strong current emphasis on organic products to level out.

“In my opinion, a lot do this because it’s kind of an ‘in thing’ to do not because they’ve done the research to say maybe this is the better thing to do,” weems said.

The press release recommends that people do their own research on the benefits and risks of organic versus conventional and come to their own decision about what they want to consume and what they want to feed their families.

Although studies have previously concluded that television before going to bed has the same detrimental effects, smartphones, tablets and laptops have all but replaced television sets, especially in college. Everyone knows how difficult it is to juggle classes, work and study time. The only thing many students want to do after a long day like that is surf the Internet or watch a movie, and, come finals week, pulling all-nighters seems to be the only option for success. Yet sleep is imperative for achievement as well, and lots of behavior that is prevalent during a college career can have long-lasting health effects. For example, after even one drink, the body’s ability to fall into Rapid Eye Movement sleep is impaired. Sleep disturbances throughout the night are also associated with intoxication levels prior to falling asleep.

Poor sleep habits and lack of sleep are linked with several health problems in general. Obesity, diabetes, depression, concentration, memory and overall cognitive function and ability have a strong correlation to the amount and quality of sleep a person gets each night.

These two habits, using electronic devices and drinking prior to falling asleep, when combined can have substantial effects on cognitive abilities, yet both are prevalent in college life. This type of behavior, especially if sustained throughout a typical four-year college career or longer, can have substantial effects throughout one’s life. Considering the fact that a typical college student might stay in during weeknights and study, then go out with friends and drink on the weekends, often until late, many students barely give themselves a chance to actually get a restful night’s sleep. Researchers suggest avoiding computers and phones before bed, or at least dimming the screen and limiting alcohol intake. Alcohol can disrupt sleep if consumed even up to six hours before bedtime. These precautions may inhibit social and study schedules, but one can never underestimate the power of a good night’s rest.

The study, published in the American Cancer Society’s journal, cautioned that therapeutic use of marijuana by young men could possibly result in a higher risk of getting testicular germ cells. The study came about because of a steady increase in the frequency of testicular germ cell tumors during the past few decades.

Victoria Cortessis, an assistant professor of preventive medicine, compared the self-reported recreational drug use of 163 young men with testicular cancer with that of 292 healthy men. Those with a history of using marijuana were twice as likely to have subtypes of cancer that tend to occur in young men and have a worse prognosis.

“We do not know what marijuana triggers in the testis that may lead to carcinogenesis,” Cortessis said in a press release. “Although, we speculate that it may be acting through the endocannabinoid system—the cellular network that responds to the active ingredient in marijuana—since this system has been shown to be important in the formation of sperm.”

If you’ve never had personal experiences with suicide, it may be difficult to understand how anyone could take their own life. But the numbers are clear: On average, a person commits suicide in the U.S. every 15 minutes, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the nation — homicide is number 15 — it is the third most common cause of death among people ages 15-24. And the suicides peak around ages 20-24.

The CDC also reports that among that age group, more young people die from suicide than from all diseases combined. At the time of their suicides, 90 percent of those young people are suffering from a diagnosable and treatable mental illness.

Students at OU are particularly at risk. Oklahoma ranks 12th in the nation for suicides. And while the college age group is particularly at risk, those who actually attend college are even more so, with 9 percent of college students seriously considering suicide, according to data from the American College Health Association.

With such a high risk for OU students and their peers, all Sooners should make it a priority to learn the warning signs and know about the local resources that can help.

Recognize the signs

The American Association of Suicidology has developed a mnemonic to help you remember the warning signs of suicidal behavior: IS PATH WARM.

Ideation — talking about or threatening to hurt or kill oneself, or gathering the tools to do so

Substance Abuse — an increased reliance on drugs or alcohol

Purposelessness — lacking purpose or direction

Anxiety — anxious or agitated behavior; the inability to sleep or a need to sleep all the time

Trapped — feeling like there’s no way out of a situation

Hopelessness — feeling like a situation never can improve or never will end

Withdrawal — isolation from friends and family, or anti-social behavior

Anger — uncontrolled feelings of rage or revenge-seeking behavior

Recklessness — acting recklessly or engaging in unusually dangerous behavior

Mood Changes — Swift, dramatic shifts in mood, seemingly without provocation

If you recognize any of those signs in yourself or your loved ones, consider seeking help.

How to help

Get involved with your loved one and make your time available. Show interest and support.

Ask directly if he or she is thinking about suicide. Talk openly about it.

Listen. Accept any emotions your loved one expresses. Don’t tell him or her the feelings are wrong. Don’t debate and don’t lecture.

Don’t ask why or act shocked. That will only create distance and breed defensiveness.

Be empathetic, not sympathetic. Don’t offer glib reassurance or pity. Assure your loved one you understand what it is like to feel helpless, anxious, etc.

No matter what your loved one makes you promise, don’t keep this a secret.

Take action. Seek out help from local resources, encourage your loved one to seek help themselves and try to remove any easy means your loved one may have to harm him- or herself.

How to get help

For emergencies, you can contact a counselor confidentially from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. on the campus Number Nyne Crisis Hotline, 405-325-NYNE, or 24/7 on the national hotline, 1-800-273-TALK.

If the situation is less dire, you can sign up for a counseling session with Goddard Health Center counseling services. Sooners can call 405-325-2911 to schedule an appointment.

All services through Goddard Health Center are confidential and affordable. The center even has a discrete side entrance for counseling services.

If there is an immediate medical emergency or a serious threat, never hesitate to call 911.

If you are unsure if your or your loved one’s symptoms warrant counseling, ULifeline (an online resource library of mental health information for college students) has created a self-evaluation tool. This simple online quiz indicates whether your symptoms indicate a potential mental health problem. You can access the test on OUDaily.com.

In the end, knowing the facts is only half the battle. It may be difficult to tell a friend he or she needs help or to admit you need help yourself, but breaking the silence and stigma surrounding suicide and mental health issues is the only way to ensure you or a loved one don’t become part of these dire statistics.

The Institute of Medicine, an independent nonprofit National Academy which provides objective advice to the government, released a report Thursday saying about 30 percent, or $750 billion, of health spending in 2009 was wasted on excessive administrative costs, unnecessary services, fraud and other problems.

“Our health care system lags in its ability to adapt, affordably meet patients’ needs and consistently achieve better outcomes,” Mark D. Smith, president and CEO of California HealthCare Foundation, said in a statement. “But we have the know-how and technology to make substantial improvement on costs and quality.”

According to the statement, an estimated 75,000 deaths could have been prevented in 2005 if every state had delivered health care at the quality of the best state.

The report recommends that the nation’s health care system be turned into a “learning system” incorporating lessons from every care experience and new research discovery. The report also recommends improving and enhancing data sharing and collection, increasing transparency about health care costs and increasing communication between patients and doctors.

Christine Stencel, an Institute of Medicine spokesperson, said the report is laying out a vision of major changes for not only government agencies but for major health care organizations and the public. She said health care providers need to engage patients and change the working relationship between health care providers and their patients.

“We need to move from health care providers saying ‘what we are going to do’ to providing options and making sure families know all the information,” Stencel said. “As patients, we need to be actively engaging and we need to ask questions so we can really consider what is best for each of us.”

Stencel said the report was written to be mindful of the current health care situation including the Affordable Care Act. She said provisions in the act can support the report’s recommendations, but that the report is neutral and its recommendations can go forward regardless of whether the act stands or not.

Pamela Herd, U. Wisconsin public affairs and sociology professor and an expert in Medicare and social welfare policies, said the recommendations will not address all the problems the system faces.

Herd said changes are needed in the administrative overhead of health care providers’ companies. Although she said it was a simplification, Herd said by not having a primary-insurer health care system as Canada has, insurance companies and health care providers are replicating the same type of administration again and again.

Herd also said that a key part of regulating unnecessary spending would be to regulate new innovations. Herd said often new kinds of surgeries and technologies are not always going to improve patient care and often times are introduced without clearly improving outcomes.

Herd said portions of the Affordable Care Act do require demonstration policies to ensure that surgeries and new technologies improve outcomes.

According to the Michigan Department of Community Health, there were 105 reported cases of West Nile in Michigan as of Wednesday. Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has now reported 1,993 cases and 87 deaths as of Sept. 4, making it the worst year the country has experienced since 2003.

U. Michigan Public Health Prof. Mark Wilson said though the virus has now been found in almost every county in the United States since it arrived in 1999, it is fairly new to the country. West Nile likely first entered the United States by boat from Israel and spread from bird populations to mosquitoes, before humans began contracting the disease.

Wilson said that while most mosquitoes usually die off during dry conditions, the Culex mosquito, a prominent carrier of the virus, is able to survive with limited rainfall.

“Different species of mosquitoes end up preferring breeding sites and concentrated water that is more often found during the dry season,” Wilson said. “So your backyard might be a suitable breeding place for some species of infected mosquitoes, but a hundred meters down the road where there are houses without much vegetation it might not be.”

Wilson and other experts said they aren’t able to offer a conclusive answer for why there have been so many West Nile cases this year.

JoLynn Montgomery, an assistant research scientist of epidemiology at the UM School of Public Health, said the mosquitoes carrying the virus may have benefitted from irregular seasonal conditions earlier this year.

“It’s likely that we had a pretty mild winter here in Michigan and more of the mosquitoes that were carrying the virus were able to survive over winter,” Montgomery said.

There is no vaccine or substantive treatment for those infected with the virus, Montgomery said. However, she said alternative care methods aimed at restoring hydration can help relieve many symptoms.

Wilson said only a small percentage of infected people — about 20 percent of reported cases — have severe reactions to the virus, and the remaining people that are diagnosed experience “mild flu-like symptoms.”

Sandro Cinti, an associate professor at the UM Medical School, said the extent of how dangerous West Nile is may be exaggerated, noting that those who have serious reactions are often already coping with weakened immune systems.

“You see people in the hospital and they are really sick, but they are the susceptible ones,” Wilson said.

He added that the mortality rate for those who suffer from neurological symptoms is 10 to 15 percent, but this number is still small compared to the number of cases in which patients have mild symptoms or the virus goes undetected.

“If you compare influenza deaths (nationally), they are about 35,000 to 40,000 on an average year,” Cinti said. “West Nile at its best … is 200 to 300.”

Cinti said the best way to protect against the disease is to stay inside in the evenings and early mornings and to wear long-sleeved shirts and pants whenever possible.

While there have been two reported cases and one death in Washtenaw County, Montgomery says the virus is not something students need to necessarily worry about.

“(Most students) are in the age range where they are incredibly strong and healthy and they would tend to get a very mild form of the disease if they got anything,” Montgomery said. “Students should be far more worried if they got influenza and sexually transmitted diseases, that sort of thing that is more common on college campuses.”

UM sophomore Hannah Poulson said she is not concerned about contracting the virus.

“I just came back from Africa and I was worried about malaria there, so this just seems like a silly thing,” Poulson said.

UM junior Costa Roumanis agreed, adding that he is not afraid of the infected mosquitoes.

“It is a pretty small number (of people infected with the virus), pretty rare. I don’t really feel like it will impact me,” Roumanis said.

The study followed more than 1,000 people from the time they were born and found that individuals who used marijuana regularly in early adolescence suffered on average an eight point IQ decline by the time they reached age 38. Not only is this drop in IQ irreversible, but it is enough to knock a person of average intelligence from the 50th percentile to the 29th percentile.

“Those who started to use cannabis a lot between 16 and 18 were the kids who experienced a lot of the IQ decline,” Avshalom Caspi, an Edward M. Arnett professor of psychology and neuroscience and co-author of the study, said. “Even among people who had quit…if they started very early and used cannabis for many years, their neurological test scores didn’t seem to rebound.”

An IQ drop of eight points has a variety of long-term ramifications for individuals. Not only does IQ influence college admission and job placement, but it can even have an effect on mortality, said Madeline Meier, a post-doctoral researcher and lead author of the study.

The findings only pertain to individuals who were early onset and dependent users. Those who started using marijuana before turning 18 were categorized as early-onset users, and those who continued using even when there were significant health or social consequences were labeled dependent users.

As a result, the findings only pertain to a small segment of the population. Only five percent of the individuals studied were considered early-onset and dependent users and suffered from a significant drop in IQ.

“Some people may look at these findings and say, ‘Well, we knew that all along, we knew stoners and what they were like in high school,’” Caspi said. “But the findings are more nuanced than that because they suggest we must really pay attention to sensitive periods in development where substance use may have more harmful effects than it does in other points in development.”

Although people generally accept that cigarettes are not good for you, many will maintain that marijuana is not harmful—an idea that has been propelled by the medical marijuana movement. The findings reverse any perception that marijuana is completely harmless, Meier said.

But the research could also be used to support marijuana use, Caspi said.

“A lot of people have believed for a long time that cannabis really isn’t harmful and is a wonderful recreation drug,” he said. “There is evidence for that [argument] as well, since many people in our research have smoked cannabis on and off in their lives without any adverse effects on their function.”

Regardless of how the study is ultimately interpreted, the findings highlight that a heavy reliance on drugs during adolescence can haunt an individual far into the future.

“Certain maturational changes occur in the brain from age 13 to up until the early twenties and adolescents who use cannabis are interrupting these critical brain changes,” she said. “To anybody who is an adolescent whose brain is still developing, which can be up to the early twenties, marijuana is not harmless.”

Thomas Szigethy, associate dean and director of the Duke Student Wellness Center, wrote in an email Wednesday that marijuana is the second most heavily used substance on campus, after alcohol. Although some students think pot is less dangerous than alcohol, it can still adversely affect their academic and social lives.

“Many more people smoking pot lose motivation,” Szigethy said. “Ultimately, people need to assess why they are using a substance—what are they avoiding [and] why can they not accomplish the same positive feeling about life without using [this] substance?”

Todd Akin, a GOP representative from Missouri and U.S. Senate hopeful, caused a firestorm recently for his remarks in an interview in which he clarified his stance on abortion in cases of rape.

“If it’s a legitimate rape,” Akin said, “the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

In light of these remarks, which Mitt Romney called “inexcusable” and President Obama condemned as “offensive,” Akin has since recanted his comments.  Yet despite calls from those in his own party to withdraw from the race, Akin announced Friday afternoon his determination to continue his campaign for U.S. Senate.

In a video apology, Akin begs for the American public’s forgiveness and said that he had “used the wrong words,” later vowing that despite it all, “I am not a quitter” and “by the grace of God, we’re going to win this race.”

In fact, it seems that everywhere you tune into this scandal you can find Rep. Akin willing to give a sound bite, video clip, or interview, obstinate in his determination to press forward at all costs.

Akin’s comments and his refusal to shut up about them show a complete lack of empathy and understanding toward women.  His general attitude also underscores why, as President Obama has said, “we shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women.”

Moreover, Akin exposes a nasty trend in our country’s discussions on women’s health: the parameters, content, and participants in these discussions are largely determined by men.

Men just need to shut up about women’s issues.  This doesn’t mean that men are not allowed to have opinions on things like abortion and healthcare.  Neither does it mean that men should just avoid talking about women’s issues at all costs. By “shut up,” I mean men should employ a critical silence.  This doesn’t mean closing your eyes but rather opening your ears—listening.  By effectively stepping out of the way, listening can open up a space where women can speak for themselves.

By doing more listening than talking, perhaps men could learn a few things themselves in this discussion, or at the very least give women a platform from which to speak on their own terms.  Rhetoric and Composition scholar Krista Ratcliffe has called this “Rhetorical Listening,” or rather, a productive silence that engages public debate more by letting others speak.

As a teacher of writing, we are often told to “cultivate our own silence” in classroom discussions, allowing our students to generate ideas without too much directive prodding.  Similarly, the national dialogue in this country could benefit from a cultivation of silence on behalf of a huge chunk of the noisiest students: men.

Men in general and Rep. Akin in particular, need to find more rhetorically productive ways to engage the conversation on women’s health. In a world where almost 90 percent of violent crime and 99 percent of rape is committed by men, perhaps we need to cultivate a more critical silence on issues that pertain to women.

In other words, men just need to shut up.

During the interview, Akin argued it is highly unlikely for a woman to get pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.”

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (conception from rape) is really rare,” Akin said on the program. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

MU Feminist Student Union President Nicole Silvestri said she was shocked and outraged by Akin’s comments.

“His comment shows the blatant ignorance and misinformation running rampant in our society,” Silvestri said. “This lack of fundamental knowledge is terrifying when those who run this country’s policies do not possess it.”

The highly controversial remarks sparked national outrage from both Democrats and Republicans. In a Monday phone interview with the National Review Online, GOP presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said Akin’s remarks were inexcusable.

“Congressman Akin’s comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable and, frankly, wrong,” Romney said. “Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive.”

The Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape, according to a statement released by the Romney-Ryan campaign. Both Romney and Obama spoke out against Akin’s controversial comments.

“Rape is rape,” Obama said at Monday’s White House press conference. “I think these comments do underscore why we shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women.’”

During an interview with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on his radio show, Akin apologized for his remarks.

“I don’t know that I’m the only person in public office who suffered from foot-in-mouth disease,” Akin said. “(The statements were) a very, very serious error. People do get pregnant. It does happen. … I just want to apologize to those I have hurt. I’ve spoken in error.”

The senatorial hopeful also said he intended to remain in the election.

“I’m not a quitter,” Akin said. “By the grace of God, we’re going to win this race. … Just because somebody makes a mistake doesn’t make them useless.”

Akin has until Tuesday night to decide whether to drop out of the race. Otherwise his name will be on the November ballot, according to Missouri state law.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, released a statement to the press saying Akin should bow out from the Senate race.

“Congressmen Akin should carefully consider what is best for him, his family and the Republican party,” Cornyn said in the press release.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has also formed a petition demanding Akin’s removal from the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, where the Congressman has served since 2009.

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare. … If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

So, let’s break this down piece by piece.

Akin, backed up by some unnamed, unaffiliated “doctors,” thinks when a woman is raped, it’s almost impossible for her to become pregnant.

In reality, about 5 percent of pregnancies are caused by rape, according to real, named doctors at the Medical University of South Carolina-Charleston. There’s no data backing up the idea that a woman’s chance of becoming pregnant depends on whether she consents to sex.

Akin also makes the distinction between rape and “legitimate rape.” Not only is there no data to back up the claim unwanted sex causes more pregnancies than consensual sex, but anyone who’s ever visited MU’s Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Center can tell you there’s no such thing as “legitimate rape.” Rape is rape, no question about it.

The fact that rape is rape, no exceptions, needs to be clarified to an 11-year Missouri politician is not only embarrassing, it’s unsettling. One in six American women is the victim of attempted or completed rape, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. That’s 17.7 million women, and with the majority of rapes going unreported, that number is likely an understatement.

By describing some rapes as more legitimate than others, Akin has delegitimized the experiences of thousands of Americans. The people Akin targets in his statement are women who have gone through the pain of rape and have been impregnated by their rapists. Now they’re being told by someone meant to represent them in Congress that if it had been “legitimate” rape, they wouldn’t have become pregnant. And no matter how much Akin says he was speaking “off the cuff” or how much he apologizes, it was said. A Missouri representative had this thought. No Missourian should stand for that, regardless of where he or she falls on the political spectrum.

Thankfully, political leaders have almost overwhelmingly come out against Akin’s statements. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney called the remark “insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong,” and President Barack Obama said, “The views expressed were offensive. Rape is rape. And the idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we are talking about doesn’t make sense to the American people and certainly doesn’t make sense to me.”

If anything good can come out of Akin’s ignorant remarks, it’s this. Through all the bashing, liberals and conservatives were at least able to agree on an issue. Politicians who are outspoken and ill-informed on sensitive social issues, like rape, just don’t belong in office. It’s up to officials and voters to make sure people like Akin never come into power.

Several politicians from both parties are calling on Akin to drop out of the Missouri Senate race, and we can’t say we would complain. Fifty-four percent of Missourians wish he would drop out, but Akin is promising to see his bid through to November. Unless he acts Tuesday, he’ll be on the ballot by Missouri law.

Voters need to keep Akin’s views on social issues in mind. Regardless of your take on abortion, comments like his just aren’t acceptable, especially for a Missouri representative. As far as his bid for the senate seat, it will be voters’ jobs to “shut that whole thing down.”

The recent spate of random gun violence has predictably reignited the “right to bear arms” debate, with politicians from both sides of the aisle using these recent incidents as evidence either for stricter or for looser gun laws. Arguments from both sides are flawed — the world created by the right’s desire to loosen gun control legislation would probably resemble a shoot-em-up scene from a mid-century Western flick, while the left’s version with stricter controls ensures the upper hand for criminals who disregard the law and acquire guns anyway. It is unclear whether arming or disarming everyone would have changed the outcome in any of the recent cases of gun violence, but there is certainly a common thread among them: the unstable mind that pulled the trigger.

James Holmes, who gunned down 12 and injured 58 people at a Colorado movie theater, had been seeing a psychiatrist who warned police of a potential threat weeks before Holmes opened fire. Emotional disturbances and alcoholism plagued Wade Page before he opened fire in a Wisconsin Sikh temple, injuring four and killing six others, including himself. Texas shooter Thomas Caffall had been similarly suffering from mental issues. Even though a security guard’s heroics may have prevented a massacre in Washington this week, it is likely that evidence will indicate that Floyd Corkins II, the gunman in that case, had been suffering from some psychological turmoil.

Generally such disturbed individuals display many clear warning signals before perpetrating violence. Alarming behavior, emotional distress, previous incidents — the offender was all but destined to act. Media reports on each incident are so similar that they appear to come from a common template.

Perhaps the clarity of hindsight and our need to find reason during tragedy exaggerates this phenomenon, but I think there is something else at work. If we can so easily uncover psychological triggers after a shooting has already occurred, we should be able to do the same before anyone gets hurt. But we don’t, and it’s because we’re afraid to so.

Despite major advancements in science and theory alike, mental illness remains massively stigmatized in our society. To acknowledge mental illness in ourselves or in others, especially those close to us, is to acknowledge a reality wholly incompatible with our highly technical, precision-based and constantly-moving world. The invisibility of mental illness allows us to deny its existence until it manifests in our physical reality — as violence, as suicide or as any danger to ourselves and others.

Failing to address mental illness allows the illness to grow until its effects are undeniable and, sometimes, indiscriminating between the self and others. Had Page received adequate help for his emotional distress and drinking habits, the Wisconsin Sikh temple may have had a peaceful morning of prayer. If officers had not shrugged off warnings about Holmes, a crowd of Colorado moviegoers may have simply enjoyed the latest Batman movie. And had he been compliant with his medication regimen, Jared Loughner — who shot and killed six and injured 14, including former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, in Arizona last year — may have found peace from the voices in his head.

The horrible irony of mental illness is that sufferers are often left without the capacity to help themselves — they may not be able to recognize their illness or might feel intrinsically averse to receiving help. Thus, we must recognize and acknowledge mental illness when it is present and make sure that adequate treatment is given.

According to the National Institutes of Health, one in four adults experience a mental health disorder in a given year, and of those adults, fewer than one-third of adults with a diagnosable mental disorder receive mental health services. It is time to end the stigma. We need to accept mental illness as a natural part of human existence.

The study was authored by Balz Frei, the director of Oregon State U.’s Linus Pauling Institute in association with researchers in France and Denmark. Frei is also a professor of biochemistry and biophysics.

RDAs are the nutritional statistics on food labels, decided by the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board.  In the case of vitamins, they are commonly expressed on the label as a “percent daily value per serving.”

“The discussion is as follows: Is vitamin C’s only function to prevent the deficiency disease scurvy, or does it have other functions as well?” Frei said.

Current RDAs are engineered only to prevent scurvy, which is characterized by the body having trouble synthesizing working connective tissue, which occurs at critically low vitamin C levels.

Linus Pauling himself was a strong advocate for the other health effects of vitamin C, and got his body used to eating large amounts of it throughout his life by slowly building up his intake.  In his later years, he ate 18 grams of the vitamin per day — 200 times more than the current RDA.  Most animals are able to produce vitamin C, but humans are among those who cannot and need to acquire it through their diet.

Vitamin C is also a known antioxidant, a compound that could guard against oxidative stress in the body.  Oxidative stress has been implicated in contributing to the above chronic diseases, though this alone does not prove the vitamin’s efficacy.  The researchers cited a wide range of studies that produced evidence supporting the idea that vitamin C intake can lessen the severity of risk factors for those diseases, and proposed several alternative mechanisms unrelated to vitamin C’s antioxidant activity by which the vitamin may affect chronic disease risk factors.

Official trials have not found vitamin C to decrease chronic disease risks; however, the authors argue that the current method for determining the RDA for a vitamin is flawed, primarily because it is the same trial used for testing newly developed drugs, which are handled differently by the body than vitamins.

“Medicines are foreign compounds that are very quickly metabolized and excreted,” Frei said.  “It’s completely different for essential [micro]nutrients.  The body retains these compounds because they are essential for normal biological functions.”

“The medical community has essentially concluded that vitamins have no role in chronic disease prevention.”

According to Frei, even very high levels of vitamin C are rarely, if ever, dangerously toxic because the body’s regulatory mechanisms ensure cells don’t overdose on this particular vitamin.

Frei first got involved with vitamin C research as a postdoctoral research associate in 1986.  In 1999, he was first invited to give a presentation at the Food and Nutrition Board’s discussions on vitamin C RDAs.

“It’s an ongoing process.  The RDA used to be only 60 milligram per day for both men and women.”

Assuming that all of the guidelines were met, the vaccine would begin ascension into the market of commerce. The market is where the end of the line is drawn, and the final product becomes candy for the eyes of affluent window shoppers, the key word being affluent.

Because despite the fact that HIV has been responsible for the decimation of several less prosperous Western civilizations and the deaths of an unquantifiable number of remembered and forgotten lives, the vaccine will remain inaccessible to most of the population. At least the working class.

The first step to scrapping an issue is acknowledging the problem itself. On paper, the notion looks enough like common sense to take for granted, but actually putting the method to practice proves otherwise. It’s inconvenient, to say the least. And more so than just about anything else, it’s this reluctance toward acknowledgement that has made this month’s HIV developments nearly obsolete for the general public — namely, a public that refuses to beg the question.

The short answer is that they won’t be able to afford it. Although the incentive for the vaccine may have been the preservation of human lives, maintaining an uninterrupted production will force exorbitant prices coming out the gate. Six figures, at best, an entirely different tax bracket, at worst. And it’s an ugly practice, because it has to be.

The price of creating the vaccine includes the costs associated with lab maintenance, worker pay, volunteer compensation and, if necessary, debt control. Like student loans, each of these debts has to be paid, regardless of the consequences otherwise. The moral agenda is an important one, but even more important for the individual scientists is their ability to put dinner on the table. So, they’ll split the difference the only way they know how: from the buyer.

Problem is, the groups that most need the drug won’t be able to afford it. No matter how effective it proves, until the price point is addressed, the vaccine won’t really exist at all. And although the common-sense solution might be clear, the acknowledgement of this inconvenience could be a harder pill to swallow than the cure itself.

Alison Preston, assistant professor of psychology and neurology, led the study on human memories appearing in the July issue of Neuron, a scientific journal. To conduct the study, Preston and a group of UT researchers showed people a series of images with a group of objects and then showed them the same objects, but paired them off in different ways.

The team then analyzed the subjects’ brain activity using an MRI to evaluate how the brain reacted to the changing visuals. Preston said her research demonstrates that linking knowledge across different experiences enhances people’s ability to make novel inferences about the relationships among different events.

“Let’s say you just moved. One day, you see a woman leaving the apartment next door, the day after, you see a man leaving the apartment next door. You may infer they are a couple, even if you never saw them together,” said Dagmar Zeithamova, co-author of the study and researcher at UT’s Center for Learning and Memory. “Previously, we knew you can make such inferences by using logical reasoning, putting the two pieces of information together. However, in this study, we show that your memory is set up to make such inferences for you.”

Additionally, Zeithamova explains that the process of memory making is the bridging of new and old experiences. “When you have a new experience that somehow overlaps with what you already know, your prior knowledge is brought back to your mind and you form a new memory that is already connected to your prior memories,” Zeithamova said.

Another takeaway of their research was a new perspective on memories. “Our memories do not necessarily reflect the exact events that happen to us,” Preston said. “These techniques provide evidence that learning may be an individualized process that depends on the unique experiences of the person,”

Preston said she hopes their work could be used to develop educational strategies to enhance learning in practical settings, such as the classroom and the medical field.

Pressure.

“Pressure” is one word that single-handedly unites college students from all walks of university life. All students have felt it, whether from their parents and peers or within their major. There is pressure to keep up, to slow down, to stay focused, to stay current and, most of all, to succeed.

This push for excellence has brought many to their breaking point. Everything students once achieved in high school all of a sudden just isn’t good enough anymore, and the pressure to do something about it can be overwhelming. Finding themselves in this situation, many students believe they’ve found a way to push their excellence to its limit using one, or sometimes two, pea-sized pills that send their mind into a utopia of concentration. Out of all this pressure a new “study drug” is born, and its name is Adderall.

Adderall is a combination of two drugs, dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, and is used to treat attention deficit hyperactive disorder, more commonly known as ADHD. Those who struggle with ADHD have trouble focusing and holding attention on a day-to-day basis. Adderall helps to focus those who are prescribed to take it by releasing different chemicals into the brain.

Simply put, it’s a whole lot of focus all bundled up in one small, convenient pill. This focus, however, is meant for those who are rightfully diagnosed with ADHD. Studies suggest students with ADHD are at an increased risk for academic problems, lower GPA and compromised academic coping skills. College students with ADHD tend to report more academic problems than students without the disorder.

Adderall allows those students who are given a disadvantage by this disease to keep up and be on the same level academically as those who do not have ADHD. Therefore, those students who do not in fact have ADHD, but still take Adderall to get that extra push of focus to help them academically, should be considered cheating when they pop that pill.

Like steroids are illegal for athletes to help increase their performance levels, Adderall should be considered a method of cheating when it comes to performance in the classroom, especially at the college level.

Many ISU students have this nasty cheating habit. Some use it daily and some only when large tests or finals week arrive, but most have the same reasons for wrongly boosting their brain power. One student said: “It motivates me to study longer and be more focused, and [it] makes other activities feel uninteresting, like Facebook and Twitter. I feel like it makes me zone in on whatever I’m doing.” Another argued that it allows them to retain the information they study better: “I’m able to read through an entire textbook in one sitting and remember every word I read.”

Although taking Adderall as a study drug has its benefits when it comes to test time, it administers some scary, health endangering side effects while being used. Studies show that symptoms of Adderall include a suppressed appetite, dehydration, sleeplessness and rapid mood swings. Students who have taken the drug can attest to these defects while on the pill.

“I have spent a 14-hour day in the library before with nothing but a water bottle and a sleeve of saltine crackers. Some people forget to eat because they are so focused.” Even too much focus can make one lose focus. Another using student explains, “One morning I was waiting for the Adderall to kick in, and I realized I had been brushing my teeth for 10 minutes. It’s powerful stuff.”

If it’s not the unnatural side effects that make students more cautious about using Adderall, it should be their conscience. Taking this pill to academically advance your performance is the same as copying someone else’s work during a test to get ahead. Under university guidelines, any kind of academic misconduct is punishable by receiving a failing grade in a class, performing community service, and even being expelled from the university.

If classes are proving themselves challenging, take more time to study using your nondrug-induced brain. If you’re feeling like there’s not enough time in your day to get everything done, then close out of Facebook and learn better time-management skills. It’s not worth ingesting chemicals through your body just to turn into a mood-swinging, cheating zombie. Get up, get motivated and study with what you have, because cheating is never the right way to excel academically, especially when you have to abuse drugs to do it.

Sexually active individuals need to be aware of growing concerns in the medical field. The World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued an alert warning the public of increasing strains of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.

According to the WHO website, an estimated 62 million people around the world are infected with gonorrhea every year. A vast majority of those infected individuals do not show symptoms, causing the infection to spread easily among the worldwide population.

Health officials are concerned that gonorrhea could be added to the list of “incurable” infections to join diseases such as herpes and HIV/AIDS. Between 2006 and 2011, the CDC saw a 17-fold increase in the gonorrhea samples resistant to cephalosporins, which are currently the last line of defense against the sexually transmitted infection.

Dr. Kenneth Fife, an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at Indiana U. Medical School, told ABC News there is an urgent need to research and develop new treatments for gonorrhea.

“A major component of the threat is that there really is no backup plan if — most likely when — these more resistant organisms become more prevalent,” Fife said.

Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea cases have been reported in Japan, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Sweden and Norway, according to the Associated Press; however, it is likely that there are undetected cases in other countries. While the United States has not reported cases of drug-resistant gonorrhea, the CDC has set up a surveillance system.

Just because there are not any reported cases in the United States so far, Dr. Rebecca Fritzsche of Thielen Student Health Center said that is no reason to trivialize the severity of the situation. She says that low or no reported statistics of gonorrhea should not lure people into a false sense of security.

“If [antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea] happens to you, it’s 100 percent,” Fritzsche said. “We don’t want to go backwards and have more and more untreatable STI’s.”

Fritzshe went on to say that the purpose of spreading awareness is not to cause pandemonium but to inform the public so people can make informed decisions.

Symptoms of gonorrhea include burning or painful urination, frequent urination, redness or swelling of the genitals, discharge and sore throat. Mothers can transmit the disease to their children, causing eye infections or even blindness in newborns. If infection spreads to the bloodstream, fever, rash or arthritis-like symptoms may occur or it can even be fatal.

Prevention measures for drug-resistant gonorrhea include abstinence or using protection every time during intercourse, limiting the number of sexual partners and fully completing antibiotic treatments if diagnosed with gonorrhea. It is important to seek re-evaluation if symptoms persist after completing the antibiotic regimen. Communicating with sexual partners after being diagnosed with gonorrhea is absolutely critical so they can be tested and treated and prevent further contagion.

The CDC first issued warnings about drug-resistant gonorrhea in 2010. But with an increased number of cases and the WHO issuing the same warning two years later, Fritzsche said now is the time to act.

“We need to wake up and protect ourselves,” Fritzshe said.

Gov. Rick Perry announced Monday morning that Texas will not accept federal funding to uphold key provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a controversial law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June. Perry sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius stating his opposition to both the Medicaid expansion and the creation of a state health insurance exchange program. Perry said he stands with a “growing chorus” of governors who reject these changes, including those in Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Wisconsin.

According to the law, if a state does not accept either of these policies, the federal government has the ability to enact its own one-size-fits-all health care approach to the states.

In his letter to the Secretary of State, Perry said he believes the Obama Administration’s heath care policy will make states too dependent on the federal government rather than provide better health care.

“Neither a ’state’ exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under the Orwellian-named PPACA would result in better ‘patient protection’ or in more ‘affordable care,’” Perry wrote in the letter. “What they would do is make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care.”

In an interview on Fox News this morning, Perry said a decision to continue to the expand Medicaid would only further drive the country into debt.

“The bottom line here is that Medicaid is a failed program,” Perry said on Fox News. “To expand this program is not unlike adding a thousand people to the Titanic. You don’t expand a program that is not working already.”

U. Texas government professor Bruce Buchanan said he doesn’t see the states holding out for long without making reforms to their Medicaid laws but that very few people are paying attention to the long-term details.

“We have a certain-sized Medicaid population right now,” Buchanan said. “The new law was to extend that to other people right now who are under a certain level of income, which is the new law Perry and the others are rejecting. If those people are not allowed into the new Medicaid law, they are denied access to any part of it. You’re fixing to dispossess millions of citizens, and that’s not going to be easy to sustain.”

Danny Zeng, government and finance senior and communications director for UT’s College Republicans chapter, said Gov. Perry’s decision to stand up for states’ rights to handle their own health care is ultimately a positive one.

“It’s more of a statement saying that in regards to this controversial act, where a lot of states and governors are uncertain about their state budgets, they really don’t want to pollute the state budget even more,” Zeng said. “I fully support Gov. Perry’s decision.”

Zeng said he doesn’t foresee opposing states accepting federal intervention without doing everything they can to halt the bill entirely.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I do believe there will be more lawsuits coming on,” Zeng said. “I think before the federal government comes in, Texas as well as other states will put up a fight.”

Huey Fischer, government junior and president of UT’s University Democrats chapter, said Perry’s decision not to accept Medicaid funds is not surprising given his past decisions to reject federal programs.

“It just sounds like he’s playing politics in order to pit the states against the federal government,” Fischer said. “Gov. Perry did this with Race to the Top Fund, and he’s done this with other things as well, and it just ends up hurting people.”

Fischer said Perry is ignoring the true issue of health care reform in favor of making a political statement for Texas.

“It seems like the Republican leadership in this state tends to put politics over real issues more often than not,” Fischer said. “With [Attorney General] Greg Abbott’s lawsuits, he’s spending so much money to go after this bill, and it’s really all just political posturing.”

The Supreme Court ruled June 28 that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including a mandate that individuals purchase health insurance or pay a fine, was constitutional. The decision will affect millions of Americans who may be compelled to purchase health insurance, as well as those who will benefit from protections against insurance discrimination and the extension of coverage for youth on their parents’ health care plans.

“It has metastasized into one of the culture wars, like abortion,” said Neil Siegel, Duke U. professor of law and political science. “I hope the court avoids being partisan and fractured like American politics.”

The reach of the Supreme Court’s ruling, however, may not significantly affect voters’ attitudes toward the presidential candidates, because voters will be more concerned about the economy than about constitutional arguments when they head to the polls, said Michael Munger, professor of political science and economics.

The Supreme Court examined the ACA and specifically the mandate provision, which would require all Americans to obtain health insurance or be penalized $95. It determined in a 5-4 decision that the mandate was constitutional under congressional authority to levy a tax. Among its many provisions, the Act will expand Medicaid to 16 million more Americans, raising the number of insured Americans by 32 million by 2020, said Frank Sloan, J. Alexander McMahon professor of health policy and management and professor of economics.

The health care reform will also prohibit insurance companies from charging women higher rates for coverage than men and refusing coverage to those with preexisting conditions, said Walton Robinson, communications director for the North Carolina Democratic Party.

Neither President Barack Obama nor Republican nominee Mitt Romney, however, are planning to emphasize the health care issue during the presidential campaign, Munger said.

“Voters don’t care about the decision,” Munger said. “It’s a constitutional issue, not a partisan issue. This election is about the economy—if unemployment doesn’t improve, Obama will lose anyway.”

Obama will likely focus on Congress in his campaign, attributing the lack of accomplishments during his first term to the partisan divide, Munger said. Romney cannot criticize the health care reform because he implemented a similar program in Massachusetts.

“Obamacare is just the national version of Romneycare,” Munger said.

But young adults who stand to benefit from the legislation may respond politically. Sophomore David Winegar, co-president of Duke Democrats, said the provision allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26 will drive the youth vote to support Obama.

This provision has already benefitted 95,000 young adults in the state, Robinson said.

The candidates may also avoid the health care issue because both parties have expanded the power of the federal government under the Commerce Clause—the provision of the constitution that allows Congress to regulate interstate commerce—Munger noted.

Despite widespread anticipation that the court would base its ruling on the commerce clause, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the commerce clause was not applicable because Congress cannot regulate inactivity.

Legal ramifications

Although the political consequences of the ruling are uncertain, the legal ramifications are monumental, Siegel said.

Since the Great Depression, the Supreme Court has maintained a deferential position to Congress in cases where federal laws are accused of being unconstitutional, Siegel said. The health care reform act, which determines the federal government’s power to enforce multi-state regulations, presents one of the most significant Supreme Court rulings since the 1930s in terms of defining Congress’s enumerated powers.

Despite the significant political involvement in the case, the Court will remain objective and impervious to external pressures in making its decision, Munger said.

“They do not perceive political pressure, they perceive disapproval,” Munger said. “The paradox of the Supreme Court is that the less power they use, the more power they have.”

Yet the Court’s decision could still be perceived as partisan, especially given the political tendencies of the nine justices, Siegel said. Four of the sitting justices are liberal and five are conservative.

Any decrease in the Court’s legitimacy, if the decision is perceived to be partisan, will be neutralized by the widespread public desire to overturn the legislation and the ambiguity of the law, Siegel added.

“No matter what the court does it will always have support and critics,” Siegel said. “The law and the provisions of the law are sufficiently controversial—the court’s legitimacy is not at stake.”

For the past two years, legal commentators from both parties have maintained a broad consensus that the health care reform act is constitutionally sound, Siegel said. Not all the justices seem to share this opinion, however.

“The Libertarian objection to the mandate seems to have captured the conservative imagination, including that of Justice Kennedy,” Siegel said. “But the overwhelming majority of legal commentators, including conservatives, still think the law is constitutional in every regard.”

The act, signed into law in 2010 and commonly known as Obamacare, makes health insurance mandatory for all Americans and requires that children be included on their parents’ medical insurance until they are 26 years old, among other provisions.

Since it was enacted, the legislation has received heavy backlash from Republicans who claim the federal government has overstepped its boundaries by mandating the purchase of health care.

But their opposition was suppressed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in favor of the act. The court stated that it is constitutional for the federal government to require all citizens to obtain health insurance. Those who do not obtain the proper insurance will pay a fine of $695 per person or $2,085 per family.

Young people, including students and college graduates, are specifically affected by the act because they are typically uninsured, said Dr. Dylan Roby, a professor of health services at the UCLA School of Public Health.

Many students would previously be dropped from their parents’ health insurance plan when they lost their student status, usually at the age of 21 or 22, said Shana Alex Lavarreda, the director of health insurance studies at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. With the act, individuals can stay on their parents’ employer health care plans up until the age of 26, regardless of their enrollment status.

The new conditions of the act allow up to 2.5 million young adults, including 196,000 Californians, to remain covered longer than insurers typically provide for, according to the Obama administration

The University of California is currently reviewing the Supreme Court’s recent decision, according to a statement from the UC Office of the President.

The University of California Student Health Insurance Plan, or SHIP, is exempt from the Affordable Care Act, said UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein. But the UC system plans on implementing the law anyway – a process that began when the law was first signed two years ago, she said.

Several of the more minor provisions in the act are already in practice at the UCLA Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center, said John Bollard, chief of administrative services at the center. For instance, preventative care like immunizations have no out-of-pocket expenses and there is no annual cap on pharmacy costs.

The Ashe Center has not yet eliminated the lifetime insurance maximum that puts a limit on how much an insurance company can pay for a customer in his or her lifetime, which the act requires, but is taking steps to get rid of the current $600,000 maximum, he said.

Victoria Wilken, a second-year psychobiology student, is on the UC SHIP plan. Wilken said she does not support the health care act because it forces her and her parents to buy health insurance, something her family has not done in the past.

“People should be able to choose whether or not they want insurance,” she said. “If I wanted health insurance I’ll just figure it out.”

Thursday’s ruling was not a complete win for the Obama administration, however.

The Supreme Court struck down a portion of the act that would expand Medicaid, a government-subsidized health insurance plan for people who need financial assistance, and ruled that the provision violates states’ rights.

With the ruling against the Medicaid expansion, the federal government no longer has the ability to revoke federal funding from states if they fail to expand their Medicaid programs, Roby said.

Now that the country’s highest court has ruled on the issue, Obama said the government will continue to implement and improve portions of the health care act, which will go in effect in 2014.

House majority leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) stated in a press conference Thursday that Republican lawmakers will continue to fight against the health care act. He tweeted that the House will vote to fully repeal the act on July 11.

By choosing to uphold the individual mandate, the Court subscribed to the government’s secondary line of reasoning — that the penalty imposed for not adhering to the mandate is the sort of tax that Congress can legally implement. This decision carries great significance for our generation of Americans.

In the legal battle preceding the decision, the argument against the law’s legitimacy focused on the act as commercial regulation. It is this view of the mandate as a tax that makes the decision so noteworthy.

In his majority opinion, Roberts stated that the individual mandate receives no legal protection from the commerce clause because the mandate does not regulate existing commercial activity, but rather forces individuals to become active in commerce. Roberts’ choice to justify the law’s constitutionality in the context of a tax seems to have affirmed the government’s ability to control behavior through taxation, but has also curtailed the breadth of the commerce clause. Indeed, Ruth Bader Ginsburg penned a dissent on behalf of the Court’s liberal faction decrying the perceived harm done to the commerce clause and the Court’s apparent loss of jurisprudence over commerce and spending.

Ginsberg’s protest speaks to a broader point: From a legal and social perspective, the nuances of this decision will be hugely important in contextualizing future battles over government intervention. Roberts’ majority opinion is somewhat paradoxical in that it simultaneously supports a historically unprecedented expansion of government power yet leaves the Commerce Clause, a mighty and traditionally flexible portion of the Constitution, rather toothless. As with any landmark case, the real question lies in the precedent that has been set by the majority opinion. The health care debate is only the tip of the iceberg in discussions of the government’s proper role in society.

With the mandate intact, we should be especially proud of our country’s achievement, given the immediate and tangible benefits to our society from the gradual implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Among its most notable accomplishments is curtailing insurance companies’ ability to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions and expanding the security of coverage afforded to young adults, like the vast majority of Dartmouth students, until they reach age 26. For now, it seems that the Court has adequately balanced the proper use of government power with the understanding that health care will remain one of the nation’s leading public policy concerns as we move forward. For that, the justices must be commended.

However, as the weight of this case reverberates through American society, we must wonder how the nation will react. Will future politicians be more inclined to justify policy change in the context of socially conscious taxation? How might organized interest try to leverage the government’s ability to impose taxes for noncompliance? Particularly with respect to the Commerce Clause, we can envision a later instance in which the government’s ability to regulate commerce, perhaps regarding a macro-level issue like climate change, will be hindered by the Roberts Court’s specific interpretation of this statute. Only time will tell, but what we know today is that it would be difficult to understate the impact of this ruling on the country.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would uphold the Health Care Reform Act early Thursday morning, June 28, 2012.

The court found that the individual mandate, which would require every American to purchase health insurance or pay a fine, is constitutional as a tax.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, gave the deciding vote that upheld the health care law.

“I think it’s surprising and somewhat of a shock,” said Steffen Schmidt, Iowa State political science professor. “It shakes up the political scene pretty fundamentally.”

Health care reform has been a key piece of legislation for President Barack Obama and the court’s decision will be a major victory for his administration in this election year.

“It knocks a lot of arguments out from under the Republicans,” Schmidt said, who feels that this could be a boost for Obama and his campaign.

During oral arguments in March, the government argued that they had the authority to pass the individual mandate with the power to regulate interstate commerce. The court did not agree with this argument, but kept the mandate because the fine amounts to a tax that is within Congress’ constitutional taxing powers.

The reform will change the way Americans go about their health care in the future and will have several policy changes for students, including one that allows them to remain as dependents on their parents’ insurance plans until the age of 26.

“I think the decision is not going to remove this issue from political discussion,” Schmidt explained.

Schmidt said that this decision could be “risky” for Republicans depending on how they react to the health care law from here.

The PPACA, informally called “Obamacare,” would serve as one the largest overhauls of the healthcare system in America. In debating whether the bill would pass or not, professors especially contested how the justices would vote.

“My prediction is that it will be five-four against the constitutionality of the mandate,” said Harvard Law School professor Richard D. Parker.

Parker predicted that Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts would vote against the act. But other scholars, however, were less certain.

“Kennedy is kind of a loose cannon,” said Yale Law School professor Robert A. Burt. “Sometimes he’s quite formalistic and sometimes there’s something about a case that grabs him about human suffering.”

Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe said that he expected both Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts to join the more liberal judges in upholding the constitutionality of the act.

“I expect the Supreme Court to uphold the Obama health care law in its entirety by a vote of 6-3 with Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority, with a concurring opinion by Justice Kennedy, and with several very angry dissents by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito,” Tribe wrote in an email to the Crimson. “Nobody has a crystal ball, of course, but that’s my best bet.”

Burt agreed that Roberts might vote for the act, if only to write the majority and construe the court’s decision in an extremely narrow sense. He added that though he expected Scalia to vote against the act, it was possible that he would draw upon his own opinion from “Gonzales v. Raich,” where he as part of the majority ruled that the federal government has the right to ban medicinal marijuana even when overriding a state’s decision to legalize it, acknowledging the power of the federal government when regulating commerce.

Many, such as Law School professor Einer R. Elhauge, have argued that a very similar argument can be made to support the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. But both Elhauge and Burt said that this outcome was somewhat unlikely.

“Scalia, in particular, made lots of statements that I would say are contrary to his opinion in the medical marijuana case,” Elhauge said.

Other points of debate included whether the entire act or just portions of it would be struck down.

“I think they will uphold the Medicaid limitations,” said Yale Law School professor William N. Eskridge, Jr. “I think there is a good chance—a likely chance—that they will strike down the individual mandate.”

Law School professor Richard Fallon agreed that the individual mandate would be struck down, noting that the fate of the Medicaid limitations depends on the act’s severability—the ability of portions of a law to be enforced if other parts are found illegal or unconstitutional.

Most professors, however, said that they personally believed the act to be constitutional. Even professors who disagreed with portions of the act, such as Yale Law School professor Peter H. Schuck, held this view.

“The Constitution permits government to coerce people in a variety of ways: taxes, the draft, obtaining a passport to travel,” Schuck wrote in an email. In the case of a well-debated and important law, “the Court should only strike it down if the violation is very clear, not where as here invalidation would be a stretch.”

Other scholars, like Parker, were less dismissive of the arguments against Obamacare. Parker said many scholars and pundits had failed to apply legal realism and forgotten that precedents can be changed. According to him, many of the justices see this case as a quickly receding opportunity.

“If they let this go, I don’t believe that they will see any foreseeable prospect of stopping federal expansion,” Parker said.

Though Burt more emphatically defended the constitutionality of the act, he similarly acknowledged that the final decision will be made not by scholars, but by the justices.

“The Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is,” Burt said. “We’ll learn on Thursday if [the act] is constitutional.”

The two conferences announced last week an unprecedented research partnership that aims to better understand concussions when they occur in sports, particularly in football.

“While athletics is our focus as a conference and as part of the NCAA, this extends beyond the boundaries of the playing surface and goes into the research labs and the world of academics,” said Kerry Kenny, assistant director of compliance at the Big Ten.

It’s rare for two athletics conferences to combine their academic capabilities in a joint research venture, but lately, concussions have become a major issue in the world of sports.

Little is known about how to diagnose them, and even less is known about their long-term effects. National awareness is on the rise, and courts have found themselves having to settle who’s to blame for not knowing.

More than 2,000 former National Football League players brought a joint lawsuit earlier this month against the league, alleging the NFL knew of the damaging effects of head injuries but hid evidence.

Minnesota Gophers head athletics trainer Moira Novak said concussions have been just as much of an issue at Minnesota as they are nationally.

“Most concussions will recover in a seven- to 10-day period,” Novak said. “That’s a very well established, documented fact.We had a number of student-athletes during the previous academic year who exhibited symptoms lasting beyond one year.”

However, Novak said the rise in concussions at Minnesota should be chalked up to an increased awareness, adding that student-athletes are reporting head trauma now more than ever.

“We’ve always had concussions. That hasn’t changed,” Novak said. “What has changed is the public awareness — it has dramatically increased.”

Novak said the impact of head injuries on student-athletes can be more complex because of their age and inexperience to know when they should report a “mild headache.” She said Minnesota has made a conscious effort of educating the coaches and trainers.

Novak said trainers and coaches are in the “driver’s seat,” making it even more crucial that they can identify head injuries early. However, Novak said the increase of concussions has also occurred because the student-athletes report actual injuries more often.

“I think they are owning [head injuries] a bit more,” she said. “So at least that means the education is working.”

The Gophers didn’t allow access to student-athletes for this story.

A collaboration of prior history

The partnership between the Big Ten and Ivy League conferences wasn’t a mix-and-match. The conferences have a brief history of studying concussions caused by sports.

The Big Ten started a “concussion management plan” in 2010 that initiated some of the awareness across athletics conferences. The Ivy League followed in 2011 with several methods aimed to slow football-related concussions, one of which limited the hits student-athletes take during practice.

The Purdue Neurotrauma Group, a research collaborative at Purdue U., is one of the Big Ten groups that pioneered the effort.

The PNG first gained recognition two years ago for its work in studying the brains of high school athletes. Its research found that athletes often play through injuries because their concussions were difficult to diagnose.

Eric Nauman, an associate professor at Purdue and an investigator with the PNG, said the group has also been studying its collegiate athletes, giving 70 to 80 football student-athletes an MRI before the season starts and tracking the hits they take in practice and games through sensors in each helmet.

“It reaffirms what we’ve found: There are a lot of kids without any symptoms during their first season, but they still show real pronounced neurophysiological changes,” Nauman said.

In other words, Nauman said, the MRI says the student-athlete has a concussion but shows no symptoms.

This type of research spurned talks across the schools about sharing information across the Big Ten. However, Nauman said it was the Ivy League that started talks of collaborating across conferences.

Dennis Molfese, the director of the Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior at U. Nebraska, said the Ivy League approached the Big Ten’s committee on intercollegiate collaboration about crossing conferences.

“But there are a lot of details to be worked out at this point,” he said.

Molfese said there are many areas of concussions that simply haven’t been studied — multiple perspectives like behavioral sciences; a concerted effort for sports players to provide feedback before, during and after a season; as well as data on the implications of multiple concussions.

“Putting all those things together doesn’t exist anywhere,” Molfese said.

“If we can pull it off within one or two years, we’ll have learned more about concussions in terms of human behavior and brain processes than we’ve known over the last 140 years.”

Where to start?

Since the research collaboration is still in its early stages, many trainers and researchers haven’t been told where to start.

“The decision to start the research happened at the conference level,” Nauman said.

Novak, the Gophers’ athletics trainer, said the athletics training staff at Minnesota also knew very little about the partnership and that the announcement came as a “surprise.”

“Frankly, they haven’t involved the athletics side of things much in their decision about doing the research,” she said. “While I support what they’re doing, a little heads-up would have been nice.”

Novak said U. Minnesota is always at the forefront of national and international research regarding brain injuries.

“That’s why we’re even more surprised by the announcement,” Novak said.

Minnesota’s top-tier research capabilities haven’t gone unnoticed, however. Researchers across the Big Ten have pointed to how successful it could be to collaborate with Minnesota — let alone with the whole conference.

“The University of Minnesota has the best research MRI facility in the country, if not the world,” Nauman, the researcher at Purdue, said. “Just a partnership with Minnesota would be outstanding.”

Kenny, associate director of compliance at the Big Ten, said the partnership was about seizing an opportunity to help the safety of student-athletes while utilizing “world-class” research institutions. He said the timing of the announcement only marks the beginning of collaboration, not researching.

“We still need to figure out exactly what we’re already doing and what we can join forces on, compared to what we need to start working on as a partnership,” Kenny said.

Kenny said within the next six to 12 months, researchers and trainers from the conferences’ schools will start to hear some direction on what to do.

President Barack Obama has been under fire since the 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, informally known as “Obamacare.”

Proponents of the bill say it widens the scope of coverage for many Americans and supplies health insurance to millions of people who otherwise would not be able to afford it.

Those against the historic legislation claim it allows the federal government to gain too much power, and the federal government should not be able to determine what goods or services Americans must pay for.

While most agree the United States needs health care reform, the method to achieve it stirs much controversy.

In truth, it isn’t right for the government to be able to mandate coverage for anyone, but that is not what really bothers Republicans and those in the health industry.

The health industry simply doesn’t want competition.

Americans overpay for health services – this fact is accepted by most. If you go to the doctor for some minor pains, most likely he or she will give your some over-the-counter pain relievers which at the drug store may cost a few dollars, but at the doctor’s office will cost quadruple that amount.

It’s highway robbery.

Most critics of Obamacare are quick to attack the president because of the mandate. While it was his administration that drafted the bill, the mandate was not his purpose.

According to a PBS Frontline report, Obama campaigned against the mandate, but it was the health industry’s heavy influence on Washington that destined the mandate for the president’s desk.

Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Finance Max Baucus should be at the forefront of the blame for the ragged deal. He dealt with the lobbyists behind closed doors and bowed to their demands.

Baucus even received $2,551,930 in campaign contributions from special interest groups in the health industry prior to his dealing with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

I can’t agree with the outcome of the bill, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

If the mandate is ruled unconstitutional, the rest of the bill should be reworked and not thrown in the trash like every other effort to improve the health industry.

During the ’90s, former President Bill Clinton attempted to push a universal health care bill that was championed by his wife, Hilary Clinton. The bill, which exceeded 1,000 pages, was turned down without any consideration from the other side. The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a U.S. senator from New York and former chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, was reported saying “I’m not even going to read it” when Clinton’s bill arrived at his desk.

Many believe Clinton’s failings were a result of him not playing the political game correctly – a game every politician must play to pass any legislation.

Obama’s strategy was to get support from all sides of the debate, which has turned out to be a double-edged sword for his agenda.

On one hand, he did get the legislation to pass and in turn has promised many great things to the American public including coverage for preexisting conditions and no limit on coverage from insurance companies, to name a few.

On the other hand, his negotiations with special interest groups allowed the legislation to be damaged and feature aspects that are designed to keep the health industry’s wallet fat and do little for the American people, such as the mandate.

Early in Obama’s presidency Karen Ignagni, the president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, promised to work with his administration and design a plan that would work.

In due time, Obama realized she was playing hard ball and would not allow the plan to be drafted without a mandate requiring all Americans to buy health insurance. Ignagni also refused to accept a government option, which would give Americans more choices when purchasing a health plan.

I can’t blame Obama for going along with the bill, even though it was not what he wanted, nor was it exactly what the people wanted.

If he had refused to negotiate, his plan would have had the same fate of Clinton’s health plan, which was doomed from the start.

The problems plaguing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act exist because the health industry doesn’t want the bill to succeed. If it does, they will be forced to reduce prices to compete with the government competition.

The mandate will probably (and should) be found constitutional. If it is not, mandates on car insurance should be repealed, as well. While driving a car is a “privilege,” the government’s mandate for every driver to be insured has the same logic. If you drive (or live) you will eventually be in an accident and must go to the shop (or hospital).

Some argue “if you go to the doctor, with or without insurance coverage, you are a part of the health care system and should have to pay insurance premiums. If everyone pays, then everyone should have a cheaper premium.”

If the mandate is unconstitutional, urge your representative to continue the fight for health care reform. There is no reason for a nation as wealthy as ours (although we are in rough economic times, we are still a wealthy nation) not to provide affordable health care for its citizens.

What about the obsessive streak of determination that strikes immediately after purchasing the newest video game? You resolve to finish the game, oftentimes forgoing a much-needed food or bathroom break.

What about the infatuation you experience right after having met someone new? You check your phone constantly for calls and text messages. You stalk them on Facebook and Twitter for any insight into their lives, thinking of little else.

Some suggest that all of these situations are caused by one disease: addiction.

Because of shows such as TLC’s My Strange Addiction, people can make light of addictions, causing them to seem trivial.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine in Aug. 2011 redefined addiction as “a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry.”

The definition, at its root, was meant to reduce some of the stigma associated with addiction. Nonetheless, redefining the term will not change its effects on society, and addicts must be held accountable for their choices.

According to a study by addiction specialist Dr. Stanton Peele this month, there are no correlations between addictive behavior and genetics. There is no evidence suggesting that addiction or addictive behaviors are inherited, especially since one gene cannot contain the innumerable facets associated with addiction.

Moreover, he asks, if addiction was genetic, why are those with the “addictive inheritance” likely to be found in the same groups of people or social settings?
Nonetheless, it would be incor¬rect to say that addiction has no physical consequences on the brain. According to a 2011 article titled “The Science of Addiction” by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, there are clear differences between the MRI brain scans of someone with an addiction compared with some¬one without. However, there is no evidence that can pinpoint a predisposition for addiction.

As Psychologist Jeff Schaler, author of “Addiction Is a Choice,” said, “what’s next, are we going to blame fast food restaurants for the foods that they sell based on the marketing, because the person got addicted to hamburgers and french fries?”

With addiction now classified as a disease, compulsive gamblers can redirect the blame away from themselves. Canadian Jean Brochu sued the govern¬ment for causing his gambling “sickness” while getting away with the embezzlement of $50,000. He was placed on probation and told to see a psychologist but served no jail time because he was “helplessly addicted.” He and his lawyers want to sue for $700 million for the sake of all other gamblers whom the state made “sick.”

Classifying addiction as a disease is harmful both to the psyche of the addict and to society in general. Addicts are no longer taking responsibility for the actions that have led to their addictions. The solution to addic¬tion is not the redefinition of the problem.

Though all three types of lenses — disposable, daily and extended wear lenses — are FDA approved, USF clinical professor and optometrist Bruce Anderson said using extended wear lenses could lead to potential medical issues.

These issues, he said, could be avoided if users are aware of the potential complications.

Disposable lenses are the safest to use because they are tossed after one use, and this eliminates the risk of developing a corneal infection from sleeping with the lenses in.

“I discourage extended wear lenses,” he said. “Disposable one-day lenses have the lowest risk on the market.”

Disposable and daily wear contacts are removed at night, but extended wear contacts can be left in for up to 30 days at a time. If left in for too long, contact lenses restrict the amount of oxygen reaching the eyes, possibly leading to corneal infection.

Dr. Charles Slonim, a USF clinical professor and ophthalmologist, said college students are more likely to make these types of errors due to their tight budgets and unwillingness to throw out items that “still work.” He compared the expiration date of a contact lens to that of a disposable razor.

“People often use razors to the point where they can’t be used anymore — you often throw it out once it cuts you,” he said. “Then you know it’s no longer good. You don’t have that option with contacts. Once you get to the point where it hurts, it could be too late.”

And complications do occur, if only to a small fraction of contact lens users.

Slonim said one patient treated at the Carol and Frank Morsani Center for Advanced Healthcare, woke up one morning with tremendous pain in her left eye after sleeping while wearing her extended wear contact lenses the night before.

The contacts prevented oxygen from reaching her eyes, Slonim said. The patient developed blood vessels which grew in from the white of her eye into the center. She now needs a corneal transplant.

“Although her vision could be improved with the transplant, it will always be impaired,” he said.

Extended wear lenses are more oxygen permeable than daily-wear lenses, which make them safer for sleeping with. However, even with oxygen-permeable lenses, the oxygen level reaching the eyes is relatively low.

“There’s no question that they’re safe,” Slonim said. “But every night you sleep with them in, the higher the risk of corneal infection.”

Anderson and Slonim said sleeping with extended wear contacts isn’t the only misuse to be careful of. Mismanagement of disposable and daily-wear contacts can be just as devastating. Because these lenses aren’t made for sleeping, and there is much less oxygen permeability, the risk of complication is substantially higher.

Other methods of mismanagement, such as cleaning lenses inadequately or using contacts past the expiration date can also be harmful.

“Make sure you follow the manufacturer’s recommendations,” Anderson said. “Make sure if you’re supposed to throw it out by a certain date, you throw it out. Make sure if you re-use a lens, that it is cleaned properly.”

About 32 million Americans, or 12 percent of the national population, wear contact lenses.

Eye-care professionals emphasized the fact that contact lenses are perfectly safe and a great substitution for surgery or conventional glasses, as long as they are used with caution and cared for properly.

Over the past 20 years, America has had a significant increase in obesity rates. It is not uncommon to see people walk to work eating a McDonalds McGriddle and carrying a Starbucks coffee, which translates into higher calories and a subsequently declined health.

This is affecting the workforce and college students alike. Most students are constantly in a rush, and universities make it easy to grab a meal by scattering places such as Starbucks and Burger King around their campuses. These chains have greatly contributed to what is commonly known as the “Freshman 15.” USA Today reported that 59 percent of students noticed a major decline in their diet quality since they started attending college.

Between the “bargain deal” advertisements and the conve¬nience of ready-made meals, fast food can seem like a brilliant idea to anyone on a time or money crunch.

Yet, is your health really worth sacrificing? Is fast food really cheaper and faster?
The answer is no.

A Daily Yonder study found that the lowest average amount of money spent yearly on fast food is about $320-$400 per capita. The highest comes to an astonishing $707.75. In 2006, McDonald’s Corp. revenue alone was found to be $21.6 billion, with Starbucks following behind at $7.8 billion.

Americans are turning more toward fast food than grocery stores and natural sources of food. Now is a better time than ever to discover easy methods to dine at home and become the person with a “brown-bag lunch.”

In terms of time and convenience, consider preparing and packing meals in advance. Remember the classic PB&J and the ever-popular turkey sandwich? These grade-school lunchbox staple foods can offer health benefits without spending money at chain restaurants. Ten dollars at Publix can provide four sandwiches, while $5 plus tax can purchase one foot long at Subway, which means Subway sandwiches would cost $20 plus tax over four days. That is twice the amount of money a person would spend on four days’ worth of homemade lunches. Likewise, a $10 pound of coffee can provide up to 30 servings, making each serving roughly 33 cents, compared to spending $1.50 on one tall coffee at the USF Starbucks.

The habit of running back and forth between fast-food restaurants has become far too common, and it is not something that will disappear overnight. So-called “deals” make it difficult to fit a wallet in one’s back pocket. Fast food should have never become the venue to turn toward for the sake of convenience. It is important Americans rethink their priorities and choose their health over future medical bills and pants with an elastic waistband.

Even if the act isn’t the right legislation for improving our healthcare system, the president still has the right idea.

Providing universal healthcare should be one of our government’s fundamental functions. It would cover the nearly 50 million Americans who went without healthcare in 2010, simplify our bloated system and make it easier to gain access. On top of that, it should be free. Yes, free: we’re behind the times.

The U.S. is the only developed nation that does not guarantee healthcare for its citizens. Even countries that the United Nations doesn’t consider developed, like China, are taking steps toward universal care. The U.S. ranks with Turkey and Mexico as being the sole countries without universal health coverage according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Despite our disconformities, we spend far more money on healthcare — 17.4 percent of our gross domestic product — than our counterparts, who spend an average of just 10.6 percent, according to a 2012 study done by The Commonwealth Fund. And although we spend top dollar for health care, the actual health of Americans is subpar.

Opponents to universal healthcare argue that it would be detrimental to the quality of our medical services, but researchers have found that our current healthcare system isn’t superior to that of other developed nations who provide universal health care. According to the same study, the U.S. is second to last in number of practicing physicians. Also, the U.S. has less than the average number of hospital beds and below average length of stay for acute care. The cost of U.S. healthcare per person is $8,000, more than Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands and Luxembourg. These countries spend less and also live longer than the average American. The average life expectancy of an American is 78.2 years, the 27th highest compared to the developed country average of 79.5 years. The U.S. also lags in other measures such as infant mortality and potential years of life lost according to a report from the World Health Organization.

Critics also argue that free universal care would lead to extreme wait times and a lack of drug innovation from pharmaceutical companies. However, these claims are unfounded.

Evidence shows that wait times may have little to do with universal healthcare. According to a 2005 survey provided by The Commonwealth Fund, only 30 percent of Americans were able to visit with their doctor on the same day they were sick, a lower figure than any other country but Canada at 23 percent. More importantly, 51 percent of U.S. patients reported having medical needs unmet due to costs, a number that almost doubles Canada’s. This is an example of a problem that could be solved by free healthcare.

Those who argue that drug companies would cut back drug research and development due to losses in profit are also misinformed. A loss of profit wouldn’t hurt innovation, said sociologist Donald Light of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and economist Rebecca Warburton of the University of Victoria, due to drug companies spending little on drug research to begin with. In reality, federally funded universities do most of the basic research, while drug companies delegate most of their spending towards marketing.

Establishing free universal healthcare takes time, but doing so we will modernize, simplify and improve our system. Even if Obama’s law doesn’t pass the Supreme Court’s test of constitutionality, we should still make efforts toward joining the rest of the developed world by providing everyone free healthcare.

Nine out of 10 Californians under the age of 65 will receive health coverage by 2019 with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, informally known as Obamacare, according to a study by the U. California Berkeley Labor Center and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Researchers from the centers developed a California Simulation of Insurance Markets computerized model to predict changes in health coverage in California under the act, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010. The study was funded by the California Health Benefit Exchange, an insurance marketplace for consumers scheduled to open in 2014 following the act.

Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center and co-author of the study said that the research will help the exchange establish priorities in a strategic direction for insurance policies and help the public understand the impact of the act.

“We have lots of demographic data like how does this break down by race, ethnicity, and language for outreach strategies,” Jacobs said. “… It is also important for the general public to understand the implications of the Affordable Care Act.”

According to the report, the CalSIM model uses two scenarios, one based on typical responses by consumers to expanded coverage offerings.

The more comprehensive scenario projects that between 89 and 92 percent of Californians under the age of 65 will have health coverage by 2019, compared to the 84 percent who will have health coverage without the act.

Richard Figueroa, director of Health & Human Services for California Endowment, a statewide private health foundation that supported CalSIM, said the study was important to his foundation because it wanted to make sure people had appropriate access to insurance under the act.

“Cal Endowment has a strong interest within the body of work in making sure policymakers in California have the right tools to figure out who would be covered and who would be left out in order to implement the appropriate response,” Figueroa said. “CalSIM is the direct outgrowth in our strong interest in policy and making sure the people are educated in the implications of (the act).”

Shawn Lewis, a UC Berkeley senior and executive director of Berkeley College Republicans, expressed opposition to the act after seeing the results of the study. Lewis said the number of people covered will not be much use if the healthcare costs are unsustainable.

“Healthcare reform needs to be fundamentally about cost control, not just about the number of people covered,” Lewis said in an email. “Under Obamacare, healthcare costs skyrocket, especially for college students.”

Lewis said the act makes it illegal for any insurance plan to cap benefits some colleges offer their students, making the costs for many student insurance plans increase significantly.

Despite the large proportion of people the act will impact, Jacobs said the results also projected that three to nearly four million will remain uninsured, including one million immigrants.

Jacobs said these numbers outline the purpose of the study, which is to show that outreach and cultural competency around the act is vital to the number of people who would benefit from the act.

“The key point in the model is that what is done around implementation matters a lot … All has to be done to make sure that (policies) are simple, easy, and culturally competent,” Jacobs said.

A recent study conducted by the Center for Adolescent Research and Education at Susquehanna U. and Students Against Destructive Decisions sought to examine the safety of student hosts and visitors during overnight college visits.

Although Duke U. employs strict policies to prevent such inappropriate conduct during visits, conduct violations result in students getting their admissions rescinded once every two or three years, said Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions.

The study, based on the responses of 270 college visitors aged 16 to 19, found that, aside from the 16 percent who drank alcohol, 17 percent engaged in sexual activities and 5 percent used drugs other than alcohol.

“Teens need to understand the choices they might be faced with and their consequences,” said CARE Director Stephen Wallace. “What is their response going to be, and how are they going to make the decision they want to make?”

More than half of the surveyed students who either consumed alcohol or had sex were doing so for the first time in their lives.

The survey was a follow-up to a study also conducted by CARE in 2003, which found that 26 percent of visitors were drinking alcohol, 28 percent were engaging in sexual behavior and 22 percent were using drugs.

The earlier study encompassed all visits, including those to see siblings and friends, but the recent survey focused specifically on students visiting for the admissions process, which in part explains the lower numbers, Wallace noted.

Flawed perceptions

First time behavior is a particular cause for concern, because it can establish risky behavior as a social norm for college students, Wallace said.

“It creates a perception that that’s what college life is all about,” he said. “Sixteen-year-olds absorb the culture and establish behavioral patterns that will last throughout their four years in college.”

He noted that visiting students may feel pressured by older college students to engage in activities they might otherwise reject. Parents therefore play a key role in establishing expectations for their children and engaging them in dialogue about decision-making.

Academic institutions can also establish measures to prevent risky behavior by visiting students and to protect visitors and their hosts, he said. Visits can be shortened and moved from the weekend to weekdays, when fewer parties are held. Universities can also train hosts and require them to sign contracts, Wallace said.

At Duke, hosts and admitted students participating in Blue Devil Days—a series of two-day admitted student programs when visitors can stay overnight with freshmen hosts—are required to adhere to the Duke Community Standard by signing a consent form, undergraduate admissions officer Morgan Kirkland, Trinity ’11, wrote in an email Monday. The consent form explicitly prohibits the possession and consumption of illegal drugs and alcohol for underage individuals. Visiting students are also required to communicate with their hosts about their whereabouts and planned activities.

Few reports at Duke

The undergraduate admissions office usually handles one or two pre-enrollment conduct violations each year, Guttentag said. In cases of serious conduct violations, the responsible student meets with Guttentag and Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek over the summer, whereupon the students may be asked to reapply or be required to take a gap year depending on the degree of violation.

Students are rarely prohibited from reapplying, he added.

Although Kirkland said there were no official reports of violations this year, parties, alcohol consumption and visits to Shooters II are certainly part of Blue Devil Days.

Tiffany Dong, a sophomore, said she was one of the few prospective freshmen who stayed in the dormitories instead of attending a party and was surprised to hear that so many visitors were going out.

Josh Izzard, also a sophomore, said he briefly attended a party during his overnight stay and that it was the most uncomfortable he felt during the whole visit.

“It was the weirdest part of the whole experience,” Izzard said. “It would be difficult to ban, but cutting down on [parties] would definitely be an improvement.”

He noted that hosts should emphasize alternative night-time activities, such as Devils After Dark events, to reduce the amount of partying during Blue Devil Days.

On a broader level, the overnight college visiting environment is improving, Wallace said, citing the 2003 survey.

“Directionally, there has been a heightened awareness and many colleges and universities are taking steps,” Wallace said. “At the same time, it remains a serious problem that we need to continue to combat.”

In a fact sheet by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hookah smoke is not only as toxic as cigarette smoke in equivalent amounts, but the smoker also gets 100 to 200 times the amount of smoke compared to that of smoking a cigarette.

One out of three college students have smoked hookah, according to a recent study lead by Dr. Brian Primack in the June publication of the journal “Nicotine and Tobacco Research.” Out of those students who smoked, 50 percent of them did not smoke cigarettes.

The study took a sample of more than 100,000 participants of various backgrounds from 152 different universities. Out of these participants, most respondents were female (65 percent) and white (71 percent).

“Although current waterpipe use was reported across all individual and institutional characteristics,” the authors wrote. “Fully adjusted multivariable models showed that it was most strongly associated with younger age, male gender, White race, fraternity/sorority membership and nonreligious institutions in large cities in the western United States.”

Primack states in the study that hookahs “should be included with other forms of tobacco in efforts related to tobacco surveillance and intervention.” The study said hookah is just as addicting as cigarettes because of the nicotine inhaled into the lungs. Smoking hookah can also lead to diseases such as stomach, mouth, lung and throat cancer and a decrease in fertility.

Al Narah Hookah Lounge is one of two hookah lounges in Eugene, Ore. CEO Lara Yasin said she markets the lounge mainly to college students — advertising on campus and at movie theaters but mostly on Facebook.

Many hookah lounges are marketed on their social aspect, which is why U. Oregon junior Nathan Paulsen enjoys smoking hookah every now and then with a group of people.

“It brings people together,” Paulsen said. “You smoke it with friends and it sparks a conversation.”

Duke U. researchers have isolated an antibody that could aid in the creation of an HIV vaccine.

A research team led by Dr. Sallie Permar, assistant professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases, isolated antibodies that can neutralize HIV in the breast milk of infected mothers in Malawi. The discovery, published in the journal PLoS One last month, could be used to make a vaccine that produces antibodies with extensive virus-resistant capabilities.

“The broadly neutralizing antibodies are those that are capable of blocking infection from a lot of different [HIV] strains,” said co-author Dr. M. Anthony Moody, assistant professor in the department of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases. “Those antibodies are a lot rarer to find, but we are interested in producing a vaccine that will allow for these types of antibodies to enter the body.”

HIV is able to mutate very quickly, making it difficult for the body to naturally produce antibodies that can successfully fight every variant of the virus, Permar said.

Of the two types of antibodies found in the study, one has broad neutralizing capabilities, making it an ideal candidate for the vaccine, Moody noted.

“We have some hope that an antibody with this capability, made by immune cells in breast milk, has enough reach to be able to neutralize many different variants,” Permar said.

James Friedman, a third-year medical student and author on the study, noted that if the antibodies found are able to neutralize HIV before it is transmitted to an infant, they could be promising for creating a vaccine.

“Are antibodies able to inhibit HIV in the infant as well as the mother? That’s sort of the million dollar question,” he said. “That would mean a normal human body is able to produce protective antibodies, and the ultimate goal is to identify them so that they can be used in a vaccine.”

The researchers conducted the study through the Duke Human Vaccine Institute as part of its ongoing efforts to produce an HIV vaccine, Permar said.

Dr. Barton Haynes, director of DHVI, could not be reached for comment.

Friedman noted that the study was not easy to conduct because the breast milk had to be shipped overseas, endangering some of the B-cells, which produce antibodies.

“It’s not a perfect process—a lot of the B-cells didn’t survive the trip,” he said. “I’m sure with better technology and shipping we can identify more antibodies.”

Moody added that there would have been benefits to conducting the research on-site, but this was not possible because site in Malawi does not have sufficient infrastructure, such as reliable sources of power or water. The problems posed from the location would have prevented the technology used from working properly.

Although mother-child transmission of HIV is possible, only 10 percent of breast-feeding infants will become infected, Permar said. This is a “remarkable” fact considering infants are exposed to HIV through breast-feeding multiple times a day for up to two years.

“When you have an HIV-infected mother in a resource poor area, it’s not ethical to recommend that she not breast-feed her infant,” Permar said. “That’s why it’s important to try and determine a way that HIV-infected mothers can breast-feed their children and protect them from HIV as well.”

She noted that there are currently many ways to reduce the risk of mother-child transmission. It is possible to reduce the risk of mother-child transmission by giving mothers anti-retroviral drugs during breast-feeding, Permar said. This reduces the risk of transmission from 10 percent to between 1 and 2 percent.

“The challenge, then, is that if there is still that 1 to 2 percent then there are still a couple of infants infected,” she said. “Our goal is to make breast-feeding completely safe, and vaccines not only accomplish this, but are easier to implement.”

Although this discovery expands the arsenal available to HIV researchers, it forms just a small piece in the large puzzle that is the HIV vaccine, Friedman noted.

“Isolating these antibodies, along with all the others that have been isolated individually, isn’t very important—but the hope is that as we identify even more, we can put together a bigger picture and find the best ways to target HIV with a vaccine,” Friedman said.

Exercise may actually worsen the health of some individuals, according to a recent Duke U. study.

The study, titled “Adverse Metabolic Response to Regular Exercise: Is It a Rare or Common Occurrence?,” shows that between 8 to 10 percent of individuals have adverse responses, or a worsening in an aspect of their health, to exercise, contradicting advice given by physicians and other health professionals. The authors evaluated data from six exercise studies involving 1,687 people. They measured four markers of cardio-metabolic health: blood pressure, triglycerides, fasting insulin—a marker of glucose control and tendency toward diabetes—and HDL cholesterol—an essential fat sometimes referred to as “good” cholesterol.

“[The authors of the study] are pretty careful [with their research] and they’re all exercise fanatics, so it’s probably hard for them even to think that there are people who are harmed by exercise,” said Dr. Robert Califf, vice chancellor for clinical and translational research and director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute.

Exercise levels ranged from moderate levels, such as brisk walking, to vigorous jogging, Dr. William Kraus, co-author of the study and professor of medicine at Duke, wrote in an email Sunday. Ten percent of people got worse on one of the four markers, all of which are related to heart disease, in the study. Although many individuals responded poorly in one of the parameters, they did not necessarily react the same in another. Only 7 percent of subjects got worse in multiple categories.

“There was no relation between [the markers],” Kraus noted. “This means that exercise was likely to help one of the risk factors for everyone, and likely to be less helpful or lead to an adverse outcome in another.”

Califf noted that even if someone had an adverse response in one of the parameters, they could take medicine to correct it and continue exercising. For example, if somebody exercises to bring his or her cholesterol level down but it increases blood pressure, then he or she would take blood pressure medicine and maintain their exercise.

Although several patients displayed negative responses to exercise, an equal number of those studied were “super responders,” meaning they had a more favorable response than expected, Kraus said, adding that the statistical distribution was not due to seasonal variances or changes in medication use.

“Most [patients] had some cardio-metabolic risk factors such as cholesterol or lipid abnormalities, mildly elevated blood pressure, [among others],” Kraus said. “Few, if any, were on medications.”

The next step, Kraus said, is to understand how to predict if one will be an adverse or super responder for any given category or health benefit. He added that doing so will allow physicians to individualize exercise “prescriptions” for patients.

Califf agreed that the results need more studying, noting that there is likely a biological rationale for the negative effects of exercise in some people.

“The only effect this study should have is to emphasize the need to measure these key parameters and then respond to them,” Califf said. “I don’t think it will change the fundamental advice which is to eat less and exercise.”

Physical activity is still important in keeping most people healthy, Neva Avery, exercise physiologist and internship coordinator at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, wrote in an email Tuesday.

“It’s important to understand that the benefits of regular physical activity are still abundant for the greatest majority of the population and those benefits far outweigh any risks,” she said. “There is far greater health risk of being sedentary [versus] being active for most individuals.”

Individuals can opt not to buy insurance, but they will have to pay a fine. To keep the premium cost down, the government would equate the size of the subsidy to the second least expensive plan in the market, which is considered competitive bidding to encourage people to go with cheaper plans. That sounds like a pretty good idea to me, and a conservative one as well. After all, it is the same plan Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney implemented as governor of Massachusetts.

I understand it is one thing to implement a health care reform plan like this in one state, and it’s a completely different story to implement something like this nationwide. Even though Romney has pandered so far to the right during the Republican primary in order to court the conservative wing of the Republican party, I can understand the argument that he had to implement a healthcare plan like his to fix the failed healthcare system in the liberal state of Massachusetts.

But is there a difference if the same plan is applied federally but only to Americans ages 65 and up? Well, Republican Congressman and Chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan seems to think so, considering his plan to “fix” Medicare is very similar, if not the exact same as the individual mandate, with the exception of the fact that it doesn’t actually grant coverage like the ACA would. Just ask Boehner, who said of Ryan’s Medicare plan last year, “It transforms Medicare into a plan that’s very similar to the president’s own health care bill.”

There are some parts of the ACA that Republicans are actually OK with, like young adults being able to stay on their parents’ healthcare plan until the age of 26 and not allowing insurance companies to deny coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions, but is affording all of that possible without the individual mandate? If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate for forcing Americans to purchase health insurance in a private market, they won’t look too favorably on Republican demands that Americans do the same for Medicare. If that’s not ironic enough, I have a better one. The Supreme Court has already ruled that the social security mandate is constitutional, a single-payer system for healthcare that is similar to the way Medicare works now, which was actually what most liberals would prefer as compared to the individual mandate, and this would definitely be constitutional.

The conservative dream of privatizing Social Security and Medicare would not be constitutional, so conservatives should think twice before calling for things like “repealing Obamacare in its entirety.”

America does have a growing obesity epidemic (nearly 36 percent according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and fostering a healthier environment should be top on the priority list in improving health care.

However, outright bans are far too intrusive to promote that particular ideal. Urging the public to choose healthier options can be done in a much stricter manner — voluntary public hearings and presentations, or marketing campaigns, for example.

New York’s proposal should be immediately rejected, before any other cities or states choose to implement such policies as well.

To merely prohibit drinks over a 16-ounce limit that contain more than 25 calories per eight ounces leaves too much room for unfair and undeserving regulation. The size and calorie amount is a rather arbitrary figure.

It doesn’t allow for specific evaluation of each individual product — are these empty sugar and fat calories, or is there some protein content?

For instance, something like chocolate milk — a common post-workout drink for runners — will have fat, sugar and protein, things necessary for the body, at least in moderation. Then, given this case, it would make sense that this ban does not include diet sodas or any other drinks with at least 70 percent juice, or half milk or milk substitute.

But this exemption makes a distinction between sugar in soda and sugar in juice. In reality, a 16-ounce orange juice’s sugar content can be just as “unhealthy” to the body — particularly to a child who drinks juice in the morning, soda in the afternoon and milk at night — as a soda or a flavored coffee drink. And such drinks, like Starbucks ‘Frappuccinos, would be exempt from this ban, as they have a large dairy content. Clearly, this is a flaw in the policy.

Moreover, limiting the legal size to everything under 16 ounces may just lead the consumer to purchase two 16-ounce drinks for their (initially) 24 ounce desire.

New York’s proposal ignores the fundamental reasoning behind limits on sugary drinks: to encourage a healthier choice. The public will never support a mandate to reduce consumption; they will only allow efforts to reduce consumption.

Americans, no matter how the definition of political ideologies may divide them, won’t allow one individual — an administration in this case — to tell them how to live their lives. And businesses won’t support the concept either.

Beyond the mere flaws in implementation of the policy, this ban undeservingly restricts free enterprise within the food industry. What a fast food company wishes to sell should be of no concern to the city. Consumers can decide for themselves whether they want a Big Gulp or a V-8.

Though, in this case, there is no difference between the two. And that’s really the issue here — inconsistent and superficial regulations.

Designed by Philippe Starck, instant delirium (or should I say “poison”) has been neatly packaged in a sleek aluminum tube. I can see this new product taking off with the 18-25 demographic like no other. In fact, it’s a common stereotype that most college students spend four years’ worth of weekends in a drunken stupor. Congratulations to Edwards for inventing a product which takes away any and all effort required by individuals to make complete fools of themselves.

With headlines such as “Finally, A Spray Which Gets You Instantly Drunk In A Few Seconds” or “This Spray Will Get You Instantly Drunk – But Only For A Few Seconds”, the WA|HH Quantum Sensations spray is asking for various cases of irresponsible overdose. Although the product is first releasing in Europe, Jacob Kleinman at the International Business Times puts it best, “If the product ever makes it to America’s shores, it will surely mean an epidemic of spray overdoses at colleges across the country.” This is something scientists and medical analysts should have taken into consideration well before proceeding with the product’s development.

While the tube is priced at $26, each dose comprises of .075 milliliters of alcohol. It would take approximately 1,000 sprays to reach the equivalency of the effects caused by a single drink. However, each tube is good for only about 21 hits. A consumer would need about 48 tubes to equate to one drink. This means consumers would be spending about $1,248 on their new addiction. According to some reports, the alcohol’s effects are intensified in an aerosol form, leading to the temporary drunkenness. Still, the product seems inefficient to me.

Not only is this product inefficient from a functional perspective, but also from an economic angle. My other problem with this product is that the concept of an oral spray is far from novel. Why waste time creating a technology which is nowhere close to being a new idea? Many breath-freshening sprays have already been introduced into the market. Edwards himself previously created additional flavored sprays which consumers can use to stimulate their taste buds.

When I first read about the WA|HH Quantum Sensations spray, I was surprised that someone would have spent enough time and effort to manufacture a product which would be detrimental at all levels. Shouldn’t scientists be working toward societal advances, not hindrances? To me, it seems as if scientists would be making better use of their time by focusing their attention on real problems such as reducing the use of pesticides in agriculture or working with more innovative medication. Working to create new addictions is an abuse of a chemistry degree.

Some might call this creation sheer brilliance, I call it sheer stupidity.

When Lauren Wysocki reaches into the fridge for a midnight snack, she goes straight for the Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.

A new study conducted by Massive Health shows that Wysocki isn’t alone in her late-night junk food consumption. The whole world does it.

The study used data from the iPhone application Eatery. It found that healthiness in food consumption decreases by 1.7 percent every hour.

Wysocki, a 19-year-old U. Florida sophomore, said the study makes sense.

“At night, people don’t get cravings for salads,” she said. “They get cravings for ice cream.”

Andrew J. Rosenthal, Massive Health’s chief strategy officer, said the trend is obvious on college campuses.

“If you go out on a college campus on a Thursday night late, you’ll see people stopping and getting pizza after going to a bar,” he said.

Eatery, the application used in the study, lets users snap photos of food, then record where and when they ate it. Other users rate the food on its perceived healthiness.

Rosenthal also said the data found weekends to be unhealthier.

That’s when the application’s users drank 1.6 times as much beer as on weekdays.

Results of the study, titled “Differential Effects of Acute and Regular Physical Exercise on Cognition and Affect,” demonstrated that exercise improved cognitive function in those who exercised regularly, but especially in those who also exercised on the day of testing, according to researcher Michelle Van Tieghem. Some individuals also possess genetic dispositions that influence their response to exercise, the research found. “It’s a really interesting result because it shows that some people might be more inclined to exercise to improve their cognitive abilities, and for others it doesn’t affect them as much,” Van Tieghem said. In collaboration with psychology professor Paul Whalen, Bucci asked sedentary Dartmouth students to exercise regularly for four weeks and then fill out a series of cognitive and anxiety surveys. For mood and anxiety issues, research indicates the regularity, rather than the intensity, of exercise is the key factor in improving mood and anxiety, and that it may take some time for the benefits to manifest themselves, according to student researcher and co-author Michael Hopkins. The research, published in the journal Neuroscience, found that guidelines to improve cardiovascular health may be much more demanding than those required to improve mental function, according to Hopkins.

Walking for a total of only 30 minutes every other day for four months was sufficient to produce a measurable improvement in cognition and mood, he said. “I thought that was really good news for people because I think a lot of times, the idea of going to the gym and becoming a regular exerciser is very daunting,” Hopkins said. Results showed that only exercising on the day of testing, however, was not sufficient, according to Bucci. “Probably some aerobic physical activity each day is the way to go,” he said. Whalen said he was surprised to find that exercising the day of testing was also vital for enhanced performance. “You would think if you’ve exercised for four weeks whether you exercise that day or not shouldn’t determine whether you see a benefit, so that’s the stuff we’ll follow up on,” Whalen said. Thus far, research is not extensive enough to establish a systematic or structured exercise program based on the results, Bucci said. It remains unclear how much, for how long and at what time exercise is best carried out. The study is one of the first to use exercise as a manipulated variable instead of as a constant factor taken into consideration at the end of research, Bucci said. “Ours is one of the first to look at exercise in a prospective fashion, not just retrospective, and to head-to-head compare the effects of regular exercise to just an acute single bout,” he said. Hopkins said he hopes more specific exercise parameters will be determined in the future, which will allow the findings to have a tangible impact, particularly for students. “Everybody knows exercise is healthy, but it turns out that what we’re learning is that exercising can actually help you do better on tests, so that’s something to think about when you’re weighing your decisions over the course of the day and week,” Hopkins said. “You cannot only do yourself a favor physically by going to the gym, but you can also be helping your GPA.” Because many Dartmouth students live an active lifestyle, the research reaffirms that students’ activities are aiding their schoolwork, Van Tieghem said. Bucci said he undertook the study following his recent work on the link between exercise and memory in subjects with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. After considering the effects of regular exercise in rats, Bucci said that researchers decided to apply this study to Dartmouth undergraduate students. Hannah Iaccarino, a researcher in Bucci’s lab, described the professor as a model scientist and mentor. “He’s hands on and will come down to the lab and help us when we need it, but he lets us take on our own projects and really take on ownership of the science we’re doing,” Iaccarino said.

The University filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. Court documents list the defendants as HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Labor Secretary Hilda Solid, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and their respective departments.

University President Fr. John Jenkins defended the University’s position in a statement today, saying the University filed the lawsuit “with sober determination” to defend religious freedom.

“Let me say very clearly what this lawsuit is not about: it is not about preventing women from having access to contraception, nor even about preventing the government from providing such services,” Jenkins said. “As we assert the right to follow our conscience, we respect their right to follow theirs … This filing is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives.”

Under the original plan announced Jan. 20, religious employers were exempt from providing contraceptives as part of the free preventive services in their minimum insurance package. However, the plan defined “religious employers” narrowly — while places of worship were exempt, religiously affiliated institutions, including universities like Notre Dame, were not. HHS granted these institutions one year to comply with the legislation’s specifications.

Obama announced a compromise in February that would shift responsibility for funding contraception from religiously affiliated institutions to insurance companies. The government will be responsible for defining which institutions are included in this compromise, which was unclear regarding self-insured companies. The University is self-insured.

The lawsuit states that the federal mandate is irreconcilable with the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other laws protecting religious freedom.

“For if we conceded that the government can decide which religious organizations are sufficiently religious to be awarded the freedom to follow the principles that define their mission, then we have begun to walk down a path that ultimately leads to the undermining of those institutions,” Jenkins said.

University Spokesman Dennis Brown said the government has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit. Attempts to contact HHS representatives have not yet been successful.

Notre Dame’s lawsuit was one of 12 filed today against the federal government by 43 plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of the regulation, a University press release stated.

“The other lawsuits were filed by dioceses and archdioceses in conjunction with Catholic schools and universities, Catholic health systems and Catholic charitable organizations,” Brown said.

The Associated Press reported the Archdioceses of Washington, New York and Michigan were among the plaintiffs, as well as the Catholic University of America.

Jenkins said the University would continue its discussions with Sebelius and other government officials to resolve the issue.

“We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others,” Jenkins said. “We simply ask that the government not impose its values on the University when those values conflict with our religious teachings.”

Many of the now widely accepted risk factors for cardiovascular disease such as smoking and obesity were first identified in the Framingham Heart Study.

A similar long-term study focusing on sports-related concussions is a project envisioned by Dr. Christopher Giza, an assistant professor of pediatric neurology and neuroscience.

The study, which would follow athletes in various sports through high school, college and eventually professional leagues, could provide valuable answers about the long-term consequences of repeated concussions and multiple impacts.

The NCAA showed its support for the ambitious project in early April, awarding a $400,000 grant to the National Sport Concussion Outcomes Study Consortium, which consists of researchers from UCLA’s Brain Injury Research Center, U. North Carolina at Chapel Hill, U. Michigan and the Medical College of Wisconsin. All the universities involved in the consortium are large public institutions with elite athletic programs. The study will start in the summer.

The grant will provide funding to monitor consenting UCLA athletes throughout their collegiate careers. Researchers from Chapel Hill and Wisconsin will monitor players from local high schools.

Giza, the study’s lead investigator at UCLA, plans to apply for additional grants from the NFL and the National Institutes of Health to continue monitoring select athletes throughout their respective professional careers.

“What are the lasting effects of concussions? … What if you don’t have a concussion or symptoms, and you are still out there getting hit? Does that add up in some way?” Giza said, listing questions that he hopes a long-term study may answer.

The NCAA grant gives the consortium an opportunity to monitor a large sample size of athletes from different sports over four years and to compile the results into a database.

Baseline data will first be collected for all UCLA athletes enrolled in the study, using protocols such as cognitive testing, neurological and balance exams and taking medical histories. These evaluations are similar to the preseason tests the UCLA sports medicine department performs on every athlete in the fall.

Since previous research has found a strong link between concussions and impaired cognitive function, computerized tests will evaluate a player’s cognitive ability after sustaining a concussion.

“They test attention, attention span, which is also working memory, and visual and verbal skills,” said Talin Babikian, the neuropsychologist who will monitor the protocols that measure cognitive testing for the NCAA grant study.

In addition to the tests, the NCAA grant provides funding for mouthguard accelerometers, cutting-edge devices that record how many times a player feels an impact, the direction and force with which they are hit and the time of the collision.

The sophisticated mouthguards would allow athletes in many different sports to participate in the study, and are slated for a summer release by Seattle-based developer X2Impact.

Previously, concussion data could only be measured with accelerometers placed in helmets, limiting brain injury studies to helmeted, high-contact sports such as football, lacrosse and hockey.

Giza is especially excited about the opportunity to compare concussion data between sports such as basketball and soccer in which men and women tend to have similar amounts of exposure to impact.

“The only way you can actually study the difference between men and women is to use non-helmet-based accelerometers,” he said of comparing concussion rates between men and women.

Preliminary studies suggest that although concussions are more common in male athletes, female athletes may have a higher concussion rate.

Continually monitoring players will allow researchers to evaluate whether intermediate cognitive impairment can occur without concussions and simply through participation in contact sports.

“There has to be an amount of force that the head has to be exposed to before the brain begins to show a concussion. As the force increases, all of a sudden you have an absolute response, and then you get a concussion,” said David Hovda, director of the Brain Injury Research Center.

“One of the things this study is going to help us do is to determine whether that happens a lot and if there is such a thing as a sub-concussive blow that we don’t know about.”

As evidence demonstrating that repeated concussions and sub-concussions lead to long-term repercussions such as impaired cognitive ability, behavioral changes and possibly degenerative neurological disease increases, some scientists believe contact sports should be banned for children younger than 14 or 15.

Hovda, who played football and basketball in high school and a year of collegiate golf at the University of New Mexico, believes that advocating in favor of eliminating contact sports is unreasonable and premature.

“Before we start getting hysterical about everything and claim that we need to ban sports, we need to first figure out what type of problem we have, because organized sports play a huge role in our society,” said Hovda, a sports fan who said he wished he had been talented enough to have played collegiate football or basketball.

Before choosing to make any widespread claims on banning or limiting contact sports, Giza cautions about the importance of putting the issue into perspective.

The number of people at risk for obesity easily outweighs the likelihood of developing a degenerative disease such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Contact sports play an important role in motivating children to exercise.

“You don’t have to play contact sports, but you have to do some type of sport, and most have some type of risk. There are a lot of physical benefits from participating in those activities,” Giza said.

A recent study published in the journal “Current Biology“ suggests the difference in a person’s internal clock and social clock, known as “social jet lag” can lead to weight gain. In the study, people who had the most differing sleep schedule from the week to the weekend were more likely to be overweight. One hour worth of social jet lag leads to a 33 percent increase in a person’s risk of becoming overweight.

A person’s internal clock — called the circadian clock — is set by day and night time. Our bodies want to be awake when it’s sunny and be asleep when it’s dark. This provides people with the optimal time for getting an adequate amount of sleep. But due to people’s busy schedules, people often ignore their internal clock.

“Our body clocks run differently because we don’t see the sun anymore because we work inside, and that makes our body clocks go later and later,” said the study’s leading author Till Roenneberg, in a video. When a person stays up while they should be sleeping, the body’s metabolism process doesn’t function normally, creating a lower resting metabolism rate and a higher body mass index.

“Because the difference in sleep timing between work and free days resembles the situation of traveling across several time zones to the west on Friday evenings and ‘flying’ back on Monday mornings, the phenomenon of regular, weekly changes in sleep timing was coined social jet lag,” Roenneberg said in the study.

For students, getting up for that 8 a.m. class, working a night shift, pulling a late night to finish that paper or just staying out late with friends all contributes to social jet lag. When people pull that all-nighter, they tend to load up on caffeine and eat unhealthy food.

U. Oregon freshman Katy Kachmarik knows several people who have gotten less than four hours of sleep and gained weight this year.

“I’d probably try to get more sleep because I know physically what it’s like to have jet lag,” Kachmarik said. “And I don’t like it.”

One-third of the 65,000 study participants suffered from two or more hours of social jet lag, while 69 percent of the people suffered from one hour. If a person times their day and sleep schedule to mesh more with their internal clock rather than their social clock, the study said, the amount of social jet lag a person suffers from will decrease. 

“Our data suggest that improving the correspondence between biological and social clocks will contribute to the management of obesity,” Roenneberg said.

Bridget, Steve and Cody are now sober, and these once college dropouts are degree-seeking students at U. Minnesota — a university that, like most in the nation, lacks adequate resources for students recovering from addictions.

They’re part of a drastic increase in the number of young adults struggling with addiction.

For a long time, the typical addict in recovery was thought to be older, “but today we know the truth, that addiction strikes early,” said William Moyers, a spokesman for Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center.

A 2010 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that young adults ages 18 to 25 have the highest rates of substance abuse disorders of any group in the country.

Staying sober for recovering addicts is a daily battle on the nation’s fourth largest college campus. Left to fend for themselves, Bridget, Steve, Cody and other former addicts returning to campus must ultimately confront the culture that pushed their addictions to the edge in the first place.

In response, recovering students often bind together to create sober communities of their own — crucial for staying clean after treatment.

Some universities have started to respond to the growing problem of addiction in young people — the fastest-growing demographic seeking treatment for substance abuse — but most provide almost nothing. The University funds a small, student-run group for recovering addicts but little else beyond that.

Students and professionals at the University and around the nation say young adults in recovery need more.

“I think we as a society, including higher education, have come to recognize that college students can become addicted, but that they can also recover,” Moyers said. “Sadly, the awareness of the need is far greater than the resources to support that need.”

Vice Provost for Student Affairs Jerry Rinehart said the University, “at best, provides semi-adequate” resources. Recovering students would likely be better off attending other schools, he said.

“If my son had a major addiction problem, I’d want to find an environment where there are those resources,” Rinehart said, “and it probably wouldn’t be the University of Minnesota.”

Bridget

Bridget McGuinness’ mind was blurry. She’d been drunk every day for the past month. Sobriety felt foreign.

For the third time in the past week, she woke up in a strange, sterile room in Chicago after passing out on the sidewalk. Fearing she might attack another officer or bite another nurse, police handcuffed her to a hospital bed.

Outside the fully windowed room, disappointed nurses who recognized McGuinness from her past visits huddled, whispering. She couldn’t hear them, but she knew what they were saying:

“This poor girl’s going to die.”

Today, McGuinness is a 24-year-old University junior studying psychology, four years sober, who heads Students Off Booze Enjoying Recovery (SOBER).

As co-president of the group, McGuinness organizes sober events where recovering students can hang out without the pressure of drugs and alcohol.

But the group struggles to bring in students.

SOBER was founded by students in 2005. When McGuinness discovered the group at the start of the semester, it wasn’t doing enough.

Dave Golden, director of public health and marketing at Boynton Health Service, said SOBER, which the University funds, is essentially the only resource the school provides for recovering students.

“SOBER is the closest thing we have to that student focus, and it’s hit or miss,” Golden said.

The University has been slow to fully support the group, McGuinness said.

“I think [University officials] were kind of like, ‘We’re not used to doing all this stuff at once for you guys; let’s take it a little bit at a time,’” McGuinness said, “which is frustrating because I know that there is a bigger community of people out there that either don’t know we exist or don’t feel comfortable reaching out yet.”

Still, the University is not behind the times when it comes to recovery. Most colleges and universities offer few resources for students in recovery, researchers say, and most help comes in the form of unaffiliated 12-step programs.

But there’s a recent trend among universities to mimic schools like Texas Tech University, Rutgers and Augsburg College in Minneapolis — three schools nationally recognized for their recovery resources.

These schools create strong support communities by providing sober residence halls geared toward students in recovery, academic support and easy access to addiction counselors.

Last summer, more than 15 colleges across the nation formed the Association for Recovery in Higher Education to promote collegiate recovery programs.

In addition, two Big Ten schools, the University of Michigan and Penn State University, have recently launched recovery programs that they expect will eventually serve hundreds of students. These programs will offer counseling, recovery courses, housing and substance-free activities to help students avoid relapse. Officials from both schools said the programs are small, but they expect steady growth over the years.

St. Cloud State University is establishing its own recovery program for students based on Augsburg’s StepUP program — a nationally recognized collegiate recovery program.

But for now, most recovering students can’t find resources on campuses. For many, the opportunities and pressures to join the college party culture cause them to drop out.

McGuinness’ story reflects that.

She dropped out of two schools three times total before she successfully entered treatment.

She started drinking and smoking pot at 14. But what started out as occasional fun quickly grew into a depressing circle.

“It was like a switch flipped, and all of a sudden, I was blacking out all the time. I couldn’t drink and not crave more. I wanted to be high all the time,” McGuinness said.

For McGuinness and many like her, the college culture perpetuated problems that had been contained while in high school. Without consequences from her parents, college allowed her to completely break free.

“As soon as I was totally on my own and left to my own way of doing things, my addiction took over tenfold,” McGuinness said. “Because I’m an alcoholic, it was just going to catch up with me anyways, but I know for a fact that I sunk faster going off to college.”

McGuinness’ college career, which started at Indiana University, didn’t last long. She dropped out before the semester’s end and moved back home with her parents in the spring to attend community college. She re-enrolled at Indiana in the fall.

Excessive, and usually violent, drinking cut that attempt short, and she dropped out again — this time before Halloween.

Fed up, McGuinness’ parents cut her off. She moved to downtown Chicago to work, but instead of the independence she expected, her life unraveled. She lost her job and was soon homeless as her newfound freedom culminated in a violent and dangerous 30-day drinking binge.

“I looked like a homeless person; I was dirty, bruises all over me, my skin was like yellow from like so much alcohol,” she said. “I still to this day only remember bits and pieces.”

That final night in the hospital, her blood-alcohol content tested at .37. Experts say .40 is the average fatal BAC.

About a week later, McGuinness checked into Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center — considered the nation’s, if not the world’s, best place to get clean.

In 2010, 628 young adults ages 18 to 25 received residential treatment at the Hazelden Center for Youth and Families.

Her initial days of sobriety foreshadowed the long road ahead.

“I couldn’t read. My mind was so messed up from drinking that I couldn’t read when I was getting sober. I would shake and be puking all the time,” McGuiness said.

McGuinness is now four years sober and confident she’ll stay that way. She said the only time she spends on campus is for class and group meetings because she’s older than most students, and she doesn’t want to be around students talking about drinking and drugs.

“It would be hard for me now if I lived on campus, and that’s why we want [SOBER] to be a social network of kids in recovery,” McGuinness said. “We want to help kids who are not sure. It is possible to have fun and be sober. I didn’t know that.”

University officials said SOBER is made of a unique group of students who have built the recovery community themselves.

“It’s a grassroots network here at the University for recovering students,” said Gary Christenson, the director of Boynton’s mental health clinic who has treated students facing addiction.

McGuinness said she and other members will continue to push for more University resources.

“I think the ultimate goal [of SOBER] would be like sober dorms” for recovering addicts, she said, or “a place for students in recovery to hang out.”

At a massive University with few resources, students and professionals say organizations like SOBER, in addition to 12-step programs, are integral pieces to their ongoing recovery.

“To foster recovery in a young person means to foster a culture that surrounds them,” said Hazelden’s Moyers.

Steve

Steve Porter liked to party.

Partying, coupled with long-standing depression, nearly killed him.

After a difficult break-up with a girlfriend at the end of his sophomore year, Porter lost control. He smoked pot and snorted almost five times a regular dose of Adderall every day. He blacked out nearly every night.

Pushed to the edge one day in the summer of 2010, Porter tied a rope to the foothold of a telephone pole and wrapped the other end around his neck. Standing on a stool, he kicked it away.

“I blacked out and wet my pants … somehow came to, and I was still hanging there,” Porter said. “I reached up and grabbed onto the foothold and pulled myself up, untied the rope and hopped down and called my mom.”

His mom called 911, and Porter was taken to the psychiatric clinic at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview.

There’s a strong correlation between mental illness and addiction.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 31.9 percent of adults aged 18 to 25 with mental illness had substance dependence as well — the highest rate of any age category.

Porter’s parents gave him an ultimatum: an extended stay at a mental institution or 28 days of treatment. He reluctantly went to Hazelden.

“It wasn’t until probably two weeks in, in my small group — they made me read my suicide note to the group and I was bawling, and that was kind of when things turned around,” said Porter, now 22.

He ended up staying at Hazelden for four months before halfway and sober houses led him to the University House, a sober house in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood.

Three recovering addicts founded the house in 2005. Richard Mark, a 1975 University alumnus, was one of them.

“I remembered how hard it was going through the University, feeling alone and uncertain. So I just wanted to provide a place for people for students with that struggle,” said Mark, who still owns the house.

The house has no formal affiliation with the University, but Mark said many of its residents have been University students that used the sober house to continue their recovery while attending classes.

Even so, Mark said the University has provided almost no support, and the house hasn’t received a single referral from the University since it started in 2005.

“You can’t tell me that there aren’t eight guys at the University who are recovering from addiction,” Mark said.

Capable of housing up to 12 students, the house currently is home to four — the lowest since it opened.

Porter drank in high school and experimented with pot, but football and a summer job kept his partying in check.

Before his four-month stay, Porter had been to Hazelden once already. But he lied to counselors.

“They just said I was a heavy abuser, just like a normal college student, which I might have been at the time,” Porter said.

According to a 2007 study from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 22.9 percent of college students meet the medical definition for alcohol or drug abuse.

“You know, a lot of young people experiment with legal and illegal substances, some of them develop consequences,” Moyers said. “But only a small percentage of those are what we would define as becoming dependent or addicted.”

Steven Hermann, a Boynton psychiatrist who specializes in prescription management, said the typical Adderall prescription is 30 mg daily. The drug, commonly used to treat ADHD, is rarely prescribed higher than 60 mg per day.

“After that, there are a lot of cardiovascular risks,” Hermann said.

Before his suicide attempt, Porter was snorting about 140 mg daily.

Now two years sober, Porter said the sober house has been essential to his recovery, especially on big partying days like St. Patrick’s Day and April 20.

The toughest thing about campus is “driving through Dinkytown on a Saturday night and seeing all that,” Porter said.

“Just having guys that are my age to hang out with was huge. On a night when I needed to hang out with sober friends, the University House was there.”

Even though the University House played a large role in his recovery, he questions if there is much the University can offer to assist recovering students.

He said with such a large student population, he doesn’t know if it’s realistic to have a sober community.

Porter is set to graduate next spring and hopes to become a high school history teacher. With admitted challenges ahead, he looks forward to finishing his college career.

“It’s the best thing I’ve done in my life, getting sober. Things are just so much easier.”

Cody

Cody Lake spends most days looking for jobs and working out. But it was only 90 days ago that he last shot up heroin — his second relapse since treatment.

As one of the four residents of the University House, Lake has managed to stay sober, but his history with substance abuse is a close memory as he prepares to start classes at the University this summer.

“I’m excited about it, but I’m also a little bit apprehensive,” said Lake, 23.

He said being away from academics for so long — he went to two schools in New Mexico in the past — makes him especially nervous to return.

The University will be the third Lake has attended since high school, where his addiction began.

He drank and smoked pot, but once he started his freshman year at New Mexico State University, there was nothing holding him back.

“I didn’t start taking any hard things until college,” Lake said. “Having the freedom, I didn’t have to hide things from parents anymore, and I had money, and I had the source for drugs.”

Lake’s drug use progressed. By his third year he was injecting heroin.

“There wasn’t any balancing after that. It was all the addiction.”

Lake dropped out after his grades plummeted. He went to outpatient treatment and attended a small community college but then quickly found his way back to heroin.

After an overdose, Lake moved to Minnesota and got treatment at Hazelden. He lived at a couple sober houses after he left but relapsed twice.

Lake eventually found the University House, where he’s managed to stay sober with the support of fellow recovering addicts.

“We all have this understanding; we’ve all been through all the shit of using, so we all kind of know what’s going on,” he said.

“They’re probably one of the only things that keeps me and a lot of people sober.”

Lake attends three 12-step programs a week and the sober house meetings.

Still, he’s nervous to return to the college environment.

“If I were living on campus I would be way worried about relapse,” he said, “but just having this place to come to after school, to study and to hang out will be [helpful].”

He said he isn’t aware of other University resources but feels confident the University House will be enough to support him.

“I’m going to rely on this house a lot.”

Jessica, who asked that her named be changed for this article, takes an Adderall extended-release pill when she feels pressure to meet a deadline.

“I think of it as an escape route,” says the freshman. “If I get really desperate I have something that can save me.”

Jessica, who has not been diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder—the condition that Adderall is officially prescribed to treat—only uses the pills when she has a paper due the next day or a big exam to study for. Since she does not have a prescription, Jessica buys Adderall XR—usually at a cost of $5 per 20-milligram pill—from her peers.

Adderall XR came onto the market in 2001 and quickly passed Ritalin to become the most popular “study drug,” according to a 2006 study by Northeastern University professor Christian Teter.

As an amphetamine, the drug is classified alongside cocaine and opium as a Schedule II controlled substance by the Drug Enforcement Agency. But for harried students seeking improved concentration, alertness, and even a sense of euphoria, the threat of the law serves as little deterrent to taking the little orange pill.

A DARKER SHADE OF ORANGE

Bianca, another freshman whose name has been changed, reflects on her first experience taking Adderall soon after she started high school.

“It just felt so, so good,” she says. “Even though I couldn’t sleep, it felt awesome. After that I started taking it a lot. During the next two months, I took it every day.”

Bianca started using the drug to help her with her schoolwork, then came to rely on it more when she realized it doubled as a weight loss method. But she soon learned first-hand why Schedule II drugs including Adderall are considered to have a high potential for abuse.

She found herself hospitalized in ninth grade. Two months of daily use had taken their toll: her weight had plummeted from 130 to 94 pounds, and she had not had a full night of sleep in weeks.

“By the time I was actually hospitalized, I was kind of fucked up,” she admits with a slight laugh. “I wanted more weight loss—that was one reason for taking it—but I also had become psychologically dependent on it. I really loved it.”

Though she obtained her Adderall legally—she was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder after her parents divorced when she was ten—Bianca had saved her first bottle of pills, only turning to the drug in high school on the eve of a big paper deadline.

Before Bianca’s hospitalization, her concerned mother scheduled regular meetings for her daughter at an eating disorder clinic, but Bianca found ways to trick her doctors.

“I would stop taking the medicine two days before a meeting so that I would not have the amphetamine in my blood,” she recalls.

Bianca was able to quit Adderall after her stay in the hospital, but when college applications hit during her senior year she felt it was “really urgent” to finish everything in time. She returned to her doctor for a refill and was surprised by how easy it was to get the pills, given her history of abuse.

“He didn’t verify anything,” she says. “He gave me a ton of Adderall—over 90 capsules at a time. It was a really ridiculous amount, and I saved them all up.”

Soon Bianca found herself in a dangerous cycle: a pill in the morning would prevent her from sleeping at night, and she found the only way to avoid being tired the day after was to take more Adderall. When she came to Harvard, she brought a stash of more than 100 pills with her.

She stopped taking them after her boyfriend threatened to end their relationship if she continued.

“There are days when taking Adderall would be a smart choice for that day, when it really would make me so much more productive, but I think for me it has been a really good decision not to take it,” she says now.

Bianca sold her remaining pills for $250 to a fellow freshman—Jessica.

“It’s not something I use all the time, but it’s there for me to fall back on,” Jessica says.

SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE

“There is a prevailing notion that since doctors prescribe medications such as Adderall, that they must be safe,” University Health Services spokesperson Nanci Martin writes in an e-mailed statement. But despite this perception, Martin writes that stimulants like Adderall can cause cardiac problems.

Harvard Drug and Alcohol Peer Advisors outline further risks of stimulants like Adderall on their website—including addiction, stroke, psychosis, and schizophrenia.

But labels and doctor warnings fail to prevent some students from popping pills. Though statistics on Adderall misuse vary widely, studies show that prescription drug abuse occurs on campuses across the country.

The 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 6.4 percent of full-time college students age 18 to 22 misused Adderall that year. The number did not include students diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder, even though experts claim that some students fake symptoms in order to get study pills.

Closer to home, a 2011 survey by the Boston Globe found that among an “informal sampling” of students at four Boston-area colleges, 15 percent admitted to taking prescription drugs, most frequently Adderall, for stress relief, increased focus, and other unintended purposes.

Peter, a junior whose name has been changed, worries that doctors might discover long-term effects in the future, even though his occasional use of Adderall has not produced any immediate side effects.

“There is no way you can take a drug to make your brain work at twice the speed and intensity as normal without having some consequences,” he says.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON ADDERALL

Despite concerns about Adderall abuse, Stanford law professor Henry Greely argues that using prescription drugs to boost studying should be as commonly accepted as drinking caffeine.

Greely and his six co-authors said in a 2008 article in Nature that study pills like Adderall have “much to offer individuals and society.”

The article counters critics of study pills who charge that they are “unnatural” by pointing out that nearly every aspect of modern life—food, shelter, clothing, medical care—bears “little relation to our species’ ‘natural’ state.”

These drugs “should be viewed in the same general category as education, good health habits, and information technology—ways that our uniquely innovative species tries to improve itself,” says the article.

Peter disagrees. Even though he uses study pills to increase concentration, he admits that their use on college campuses gives students unfair advantages.

“Adderall is absolutely cheating,” he says. “Coffee and other natural stimulants keep you awake, but Adderall keeps you focused. I read an entire course’s assigned reading in a five-hour period. That is not natural. That was cheating.”

Jessica has a different take. “I don’t think it’s cheating to take study drugs,” she says. “But I do admit that I sometimes get annoyed with people who fake a prescription. They get extra time on tests, and I think a lot of people get prescribed Adderall knowing full well they do not have ADD.”

As Jessica knows from first-hand experience, Adderall’s power to increase focus comes at a mental as well as physical cost. The drug is known to impair creativity and alter thought patterns.

“The papers I write on Adderall are nowhere near the same quality as the ones I write not on Adderall,” she says. “They are wordy and convoluted. It’s like I can’t step back and see the big picture, but at the time it feels like I’m writing smart stuff.”

Yet time-crunched students juggling competitive classes, leadership positions, job and graduate school applications, and social lives turn to study pills for an extra edge anyway.

As Jessica puts it, “desperate times call for desperate measures.”

The leading cause of unintentional deaths in Arizona and around the nation is the result of poisoning and drug overdose, according to Keith Boesen, director of the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center. Boesen said more people die from these each year than they do from car accidents.

One of the biggest contributors to this rise is narcotic pain relievers such as hydrocodone and oxycodone, Boesen said. Having so many of these drugs available is concerning, he said, because it allows easy access for many people, which can lead to an increase in deaths.

“We have seen an increase over the past several years in calls about exposures to or questions about narcotic pain relievers,” Boesen said. “Those drugs are becoming a bigger percentage of the drugs involved in exposures.”

In Arizona last year, more than 2.2 million people were given hydrocodone prescriptions and almost 2 million people were prescribed oxycodone, said Dean Wright, the prescription monitoring program director for the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy. These are the two most prescribed drugs in the state, he added.

The Controlled Substances Prescription Monitoring Program “requires the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy (ASBP) to establish a controlled substances prescription monitoring program and requires pharmacies and medical practitioners who dispense controlled substances listed in Schedule II, III, and IV to a patient, to report prescription information to the Board of Pharmacy on a weekly basis,” according to the ASBP website.

Although practitioners and pharmacists are required to register, it is not required for them to use the database, Wright said. At the end of the year, the number of practitioners who had access to the system was a little more than 14 percent and the number of pharmacists who had access was about 11 or 12 percent, he said. The number of those requesting access continues to increase, Wright added, and there is an attempt to further increase that number.

“It could have some impact on sales if we could stop the sale to those who are misusing abusing, or diverting drugs,” Wright said. “Reducing that and having practitioners looking and evaluating their patients through access to our system helps them to make better decisions as far as how they’re going to prescribe.”

Another concern with increased sales of pain medication is that patients who no longer need certain medications will leave them in a place where they are easily accessible to others.

“We should really protect anyone who might have access to medications by locking them up and then, when you’re done with the drugs, we need to destroy them,” Boesen said. “Don’t save them for a rainy day, we need to destroy them.”

In Tucson, the Drug Enforcement Administration has sponsored “medication take back events,” such as one on Saturday at the University of Arizona Police Department. This was the third “take back” event hosted on campus. The first two took place last year.

These events are beneficial to the environment, because they prevent people from flushing dangerous or narcotic drugs where the chemicals can get into the ground, said Joe Bermudez, a crime prevention officer with UAPD. Another benefit is general safety and prevention, he said.

“We’re giving the community an opportunity to dispose of these medications that are either expired, unwanted or unused,” Bermudez said. “It prevents these types of medications and drugs from getting in the wrong hands.”

According to a paper published in the journal Seizure, these patients are instead suffering from what senior investigator Jason Brandt calls psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, or PNES, resulting from emotional trauma because of the inability to handle stress in an appropriate manner.

True epileptic seizures result from abnormal electrical discharges occurring in the brain, leading to a variety of symptoms characterized as seizures, which can range from long staring spells to violent and uncontrollable muscle spasms. Regardless of the symptom though, the root in all epileptic seizures comes from a disorder in the brain.

However, PNES is caused by an overload of emotional stress which causes an individual to transform mental dysfunction into physical symptoms.

Defunct brain signals from epilepsy can be visualized by an instrument called an electroencephalogram (EEC) which monitors the electrical activity in the brain and can give doctors an inside look at what is happening inside an individual’s head.

This instrument was one of several pieces that led Brandt to believe some diagnoses of epilepsy were faulty. According to a 2005 study on 46 patients, 54 percent of EEC’s were misread as showing epileptic brain signals. Another key indicator that patients with PNES did not have epilepsy was the fact that anti-seizure medications often failed to alleviate symptoms.

In the Hopkins study, the researchers surveyed 40 patients with PNES, 20 patients with epilepsy, and 40 healthy patients about stressful events in the past five years and the amount of stress these events induced. From their data, researchers concluded that all three groups of subjects reported a similar amount of stressful events in the time frame specified. However, the PNES group reported higher levels of stress compared with their epileptic and healthy counterparts.

In further interviews, researchers found the PNES group often failed to cope with their stressful events, leading to increased levels of trauma and subsequent onset of PNES.

Being misdiagnosed caries a high cost for individuals, both financially and emotionally. Costs in medication and hospital stays are high, while social costs can be mentally draining as patients work to fight a seemingly unbeatable disease.
Furthermore, in a particularly interesting twist to PNES, the use of service dogs trained to anticipate epileptic seizures often induced PNES related seizures due to the high suggestibility of PNES patients.

With a higher awareness for the possibility of misdiagnoses, Brandt’s work could open doors for differentiating between epileptic seizures and PNES. Furthermore, proper diagnosis could aid physicians in better psychological treatment for PNES patients, giving them the help they need.

Healthcare spending follows what is called a pareto distribution – 20 percent of people make up 80 percent of the costs and 5 percent of people make up 50 percent of the costs. Young people disproportionately make up the low-cost or no-cost individuals in that distribution. In fact, out of the 5 percent of people who make up 50 percent of costs, only 13 percent of them are under 35, despite 50 percent of the population fitting into that age group. The natural age distribution of non-Medicare medical costs, according to Oliver Wyman, is five to one. That is, the oldest non-Medicare age group normally consumes about five times more healthcare services than the youngest age group.

However, in 2014, the Affordable Care Act is set to massively alter the underwriting process to eliminate or regulate many factors from consideration in the determination of premium pricing. One such regulation is that the age-rating ratio will be mandated to become 1:3. This means that the oldest non-Medicare age group can only be charged three times as much as the youngest age group despite them consuming five times as much in health services. In effect, this is a subsidy for older people at the expense of younger people, and will necessarily increase the premiums of young people. Oliver Wyman projects that the effect on premiums for ages 18-24 will be a 45 percent increase.

As many have probably heard, the Affordable Care Act also allows what it calls “adult-children” (young adults up to age 26) to remain on their parent’s plan if they aren’t employed and are uninsured. For these people, parents will see the increased premiums instead, but young people with jobs or young people over the age of 26, are facing increased premiums. The individual mandate requirement, if ruled as constitutional, forces young people to pay the increased premiums. Without the mandate, the increased premiums would potentially be unsustainable because of adverse selection. That is, healthier young people who aren’t seeing the benefit of insurance to justify the cost will be more prone to drop out of the market, further increasing costs to the remaining young people, creating a cycle.

According to Milliman, even if the individual mandate is upheld, requiring young people to pay increased premiums, there will still be another form of adverse selection in which young move into “catastophic” plans that offer less benefits at a lower cost, allowing the individual to self-insure for more routine care.

Furthermore, the upcoming 2014 regulations on underwriting not only perverse the age-pricing of insurance but also eliminate the ability to price insurance based on medical status or gender. This will result in even more perverse pricing for men, who are the disproportionately younger sex, as well as distribute the costs of select higher health risk participants to the entire pool, further increase costs for most. These too lead to adverse selection of the disaffected individuals, just as with age-pricing limits.

Any provision that increases the cost of premiums even if not specifically targeting young people also increases the price of insurance, which disproportionate burdens young people who are, on average in lower paying jobs. One such provision was the elimination of maximum lifetime benefits in 2010, increasing the cost of those insurance plans, which are held by 59 percent of workers and 89 percent of individually insured, according to Kaiser. Higher insurances prices have a decrease in wages which are forced with an individual mandate and result in higher dropout rates without one. These effects of the individual mandate should be reconsidered regardless of the constitutional challenge result.

According to an article published by The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, six teenagers were rushed to emergency rooms in San Fernando Valley after they contracted alcohol poisoning. Some of the teenagers allegedly used salt to separate the alcohol from the sanitizer, creating an incredibly strong alcoholic shot. These cases, while somewhat rare for now, are a troubling indicator of underage drinking spiralling out of control. The article explains that liquid hand sanitizer is comprised of 62 percent ethyl alcohol, and consequent effects of ingesting this can be slurred speech and a burning sensation in one’s stomach.

There is no denying that individuals who fall below the drinking age are going to indulge in alcohol. However, in search of a quick high, these teenagers are reverting to substances that are often abused by alcoholics or people with heavy dependence on alcohol. This level of desperation is unhealthy; you veer away from harmless experimentation to potentially harmful addictions. The fact that young adults are starting their drinking habits in this way is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed.

The reality is parents should not have to monitor liquid hand sanitizer the way they monitor liquor or medicinal drugs in the house. In the United States, you are considered an adult and free to do as you please when you are 21 years old. However, a fix to the alcohol abuse might be  to not treat teenagers like protected children, because doing so will only prompt them to act like children for a much longer period of time.

To examine Obama’s claim, one must recall the state of health care in the United States just two years ago. Reviewing the changes already made and those still to come from Obamacare, the law’s opponents have a difficult case to make.

Before the signing of the ACA, those with a pre-existing condition such as heart disease or other chronic illnesses were often out of luck when seeking health insurance. Insurance companies commonly denied these individuals coverage or canceled it once the illness developed and the patients needed coverage most. Even if the patient maintained coverage, insurance companies often cut off payments after the patient reached an annual or lifetime coverage limit. Furthermore, the stresses on the U.S. health care system go deeper than simple insurance industry abuses. With the cost of insurance so high, young adults frequently opted to go without insurance, leaving themselves vulnerable to unexpected bills they were unable to pay. After all, who really anticipates a car crash and several weeks in an intensive care unit? Those unpaid costs end up on everyone else’s tab. The Affordable Care Act ends discriminatory industry practices and solves the latter problem by allowing dependents to stay on the health insurance plan of their parents until they are 26.

Since the signing of the health reform law, the industry abuses noted above have ended. No longer can insurance companies discriminate against individuals for pre-existing conditions or for getting sick — choices over which the patients had no control. Insurance companies cannot impose annual or lifetime limits on the amount of coverage you receive. And, perhaps most significantly, insurers must now spend 80-85 percent of premiums on medical care rather than on fattening company profits. The law also requires new insurance plans to cover basic health screenings and vaccines to prevent illnesses or treat them early rather than allow common infections to lead to costly visits to the emergency room. None of this was true prior to Obama signing the ACA into law.

In addition to the sweeping regulations above, a whopping 2.5 million young Americans have been added to the insurance rolls according to the Department of Health and Human Services since the ACA allows young people to remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26. The benefits of this change are felt close to home at the University where health insurance is a requirement for enrollment. How many first-year students were not hit with an additional costly expense for an Aetna student health plan because they were able to stay on their parents’ insurance?

Not only does that provision give 2.5 million young people access to health care, it reduces the likelihood one of them cannot pay an unexpected medical bill and has to pass the cost on to the rest of us. Further, the law offers health security at a time when young people often switch jobs and careers and do not maintain consistent coverage through their employers. Opponents of the law cannot ignore these substantial changes in U.S. health care.

One must not only consider the above facts when debating the changes made by the Affordable Care Act but also must appreciate the historical struggle to pass national reform. Progressives spent nearly a century trying to pass universal health care legislation. Until now, the insurance industry won. The pharmaceutical industry won. Special interests, other than the patient, always won out over substantive reform of health care. With the Affordable Care Act, all of that changed. Patients won. Sweeping rules were put in place to hold insurers accountable, to expand coverage, to increase access to care and revamp the health care system in the United States. That sounds like the change I believed in.

Returning to the hospital 30 days after discharge is costly and an indication of poor quality of care, according to the Thursday press release. The study, which was posted online at BMJ Open on Wednesday, may lead to interventions connecting men to primary care resources.

“Identifying and addressing risk factors associated with early post discharge hospital utilization is useful so that resources can be efficiently tailored to each individual patient’s risk profile,” said senior author Brian Jack, BUSM professor of family medicine and principal investigator of Boston Medical Center’s project called Re-Engineered Discharge.

RED is devoted to developing tests and strategies to improve the hospital discharge process so patients remain safe and are not likely to be re-hospitalized.

“Some risk factors like gender, however, may seem inherently immutable,” Jack said. “Yet, as we demonstrated in this study, male gender is associated with other parameters that could potentially be effectively targeted.”

Using RED clinical data, researchers assessed the association between gender and post-discharge re-hospitalization at BMC.

In the study, 47 out of 100 men and 29 out of 100 women were readmitted. Men were less likely to complete a follow-up appointment with a primary care physician after discharge.

This difference can be attributed to males visiting the emergency department more frequently than females and not understanding their follow-up appointments after leaving the hospital. Forty-nine percent of men make it to their follow-up appointments, compared to 57 percent of women.

Medicare recipients paid about $17.4 billion for hospital readmissions in 2004, according to the release.

Being retired, unmarried and depressed were contributing factors to men’s re-hospitalization, as was not being reached for a follow-up call.

Sigmund is currently the number-one paid Lifestyle App in the United States and has a four-plus rating, according to iTunes.

Daniel Nadler, the Canadian native and Harvard U. graduate who developed the new app, said Harvard students who did not get much sleep inspired him.

“I would wake up to go running at six in the morning and many of them would be walking around the hallways, seemingly in a half-daze, still trying to finish papers,” Nadler said in an email interview.

From there he began do some research about sleep deprivation, where he learned from a NASA study that even a half-hour long nap can increase alertness and concentration by more than a third, while brief naps can improve concentration on memory for longer periods, he said.

From that information, Nadler said he wanted to assimilate all of these studies and put them in one place, so he applied to the Harvard’s Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative for funding to create a research-directed reading group.

As he was conducting research, Nadler noticed there was significant evidence of information processing in the sleeping brain, which includes assimilation of external sensory information such as scents and hearing during sleep.

“We all know this anecdotally – hearing a nearby conversation while we are dozing off, for example on a train, and having some of the subjects in the conversation enter our dreams,” Nadler said.

Nadler said he also came across a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry, in which researchers played recorded, spoken personal names to the sleeping subject during the rapid eye movement stage of their sleep cycle.

The study suggested the spoken names presented during REM sleep entered the dream sequences because subjects correctly matched names with the correct dreams upon awakening.

Nadler said he noticed the study was hard to recreate outside of a lab because people generally did not have the time to record all the words they wanted to hear, space them apart correctly and start the recording while the person was asleep.

That is how he came up with the idea for the iPhone app, he said.

Nadler said he was introduced to Doug Feigelson, a computer science and engineering major from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who recently won Facebook’s Brown-Harvard-MIT intercollegiate hackathon, to help him create the app.

“I asked all my friends in computer science about doing this on a smartphone and they said it was extremely technically difficult,” Nadler said. “They said that to reproduce these kinds of sleep and dream studies on a smartphone, you would have to work with a library of thousands of distinct recorded words and allow users to select from very precise combinations of words.“

Nadler said Feigelson spent more than one year building the app, which allows users to choose from more than a thousand prerecorded words, such as “beach,” “tropical” and “tiger,” which the app softly plays during REM sleep.

“You can imagine the technical sophistication that goes into this – it was not like loading a few abstract ocean or bird sounds onto an iPhone,” Nadler said.

Despite Sigmund’s high ratings on iTunes, Boston U. students said the idea of having an app program dreams is odd.

“[The app] really freaks me out,” said BU sophomore Christina Gratton. “I don’t like that idea because I think that dreams are uncontrollable.”

BU junior Jayme Mask said she would not use it even if she did have an iPhone.

“The coolest thing about dreams is that you wake up and think ‘is that real?’” Mask said. “I want them to be a part of my imagination – not a part of my real life.”

Following an irregular sleep and meal schedule over a prolonged period can lead to an increased risk of obesity and diabetes, according to a new study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Researchers restricted the meal times and sleep schedules of 21 healthy adults, both young and old, over the course of five weeks. For three of those weeks, the participants were exposed to “circadian misalignment,” meaning that the participants were put on a 28-hour day schedule during which they were allowed to sleep for 5.6 hours out of every 24.

Participants lived in the lab for the duration of the study and were monitored closely.

Results showed that participants experienced a decrease in resting metabolic rate and an increase in glucose secretion, and three out of the 21 participants were pre-diabetic by the end of the study. Once participants were allowed to resume normal sleeping and eating habits, they all recovered.

“Your internal 24 clock can’t synchronize to a 28 hour schedule. Most of the time in the week when those participants are sleeping or active, eating or fasting, are times when their bodies are not optimally primed to respond,” said Harvard Medical School professor Orfeu M. Buxton, a lead author on the study titled “Adverse Metabolic Consequences in Humans of Prolonged Sleep Restriction Combined with Circadian Disruption.”

Professor Steven A. Shea, an HMS professor and the paper’s senior author, explained that the study was partially inspired by epidemiological research showing increased rates of diabetes and obesity among shift workers who sleep during the day.

Although the recent findings do not  prove conclusively that shift workers are likelier to become diabetic or obese specifically because of their unusual sleep schedules, they do support the data of the epidemiological studies.

“Standing alone based on a month-long experiment in very healthy people, it’s very difficult to extrapolate the results to diabetes, but in the face of all the epidemiological studies showing the adverse metabolic changes associated with shift work, it’s tempting to think about this extrapolation,” said Shea.

“If these findings [...] persist over many months or years, this could well be the reason by which shift workers gain weight and some of them become more prone to diabetes,” he continued.

Buxton explained that college students, like shift workers, often experience circadian disruption, partially due “social jet lag,” which occurs when people stay up late and sleep in on weekends to socialize and then catch up on lost rest.

Computer and cell phone use can also cause sleep disruption, since technological devices emit blue “daytime” light that further confuses circadian rhythms and makes sleeping more difficult.

“Sleep researchers are up against a $100 billion dollar industry that is dependent on college students using cell phones and computers getting this night time blue light that disrupts circadian rhythms,” said Buxton. “I feel like a we’re a little pebble against a tsunami.”

The study, led by Scott Kitchen, a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute and assistant professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine, draws upon previous UCLA research findings. It was published last week in the epidemiology journal PLoS Pathogens and funded in part by the UCLA Center for AIDS Research.

Researchers examined the effectiveness of genetically engineered “killer” T cells, which are capable of fighting off disease, at combating the HIV virus in a mouse. The team used a “humanized” mouse engineered to have a human immune system. In the “humanized” mouse, the disease progressed similarly to its progression in humans, making it a reliable tool for the study and providing powerful predictive value for the therapy in humans, Kitchen said. “It’s a major advance and a step closer in demonstrating the potential use of this in people,” he said.

A few months ago, the team introduced a population of the engineered T cells into a mouse so they could develop and grow into a human immune system, Kitchen said. The researchers then conducted blood and organ tests at the second and sixth weeks, finding a decrease in the HIV levels and an increase in the cells HIV typically kills, according to the journal article.

The findings could theoretically be used to support a clinical trial in humans, said Jerome Zack, associate director at the UCLA AIDS Institute and co-author of the study.

A benefit genetic engineering is that it opens the field to therapeutic HIV treatments, and that it can be extended to potentially treat other diseases such as cancer, said co-author Arumugam Balamurugan.

In 2009, the lead scientists from the most recent study showed that human blood stem cells in mice could be genetically engineered to grow large quantities of “killer” T cells, As a result of their genetic engineering, these T cells grew to a large population and targeted HIV-infected cells in the mice.

“We had the idea that we could take the elements of immune response (the T cells) that are successful in suppressing HIV in infected people to see if it was possible to identify a receptor specific to HIV,” Kitchen said, referring to the team’s research in 2009.

Though advances have been made in the fight against HIV, an estimated 50,000 new cases are diagnosed in the United States each year, and there are more than 33 million people living with the disease worldwide, according to the National Institutes of Health. Factors that make the disease difficult to fight include its rapid rate of spread and lack of preventative measures. The findings could lead to more comprehensive methods of fighting the disease and eventually to a clinical trial in humans, Kitchen said.

A study conducted by Dr. Christopher Carpenter, assistant professor of communication at Western Illinois U., tested 294 participants whose ages ranged between 18 and 65. The volunteers participated in an online survey that asked them questions about Facebook use, according to the study.

The study was conducted to see if anti-social Facebook use could be attributed to narcissism. Anti-social Facebook use can range from a user retaliating against a negative comment to becoming angry if someone doesn’t comment on the user’s status.

But, Carpenter said Facebook does not cause users to become narcissists.

Narcissism is a trait people genetically inherit, and Facebook gives those who share this trait a platform to interact, he said.

According to the study, traits of narcissism include a sense of self-importance or uniqueness, an inability to tolerate criticism, an expectation of special favors without reciprocation and greater leadership ability.

But Carpenter said the narcissistic tendency of leadership could be positive.

Facebook users who have the narcissistic trait of “grand exhibitionism” are predicted to have a high friend count. They want the ability to gain attention from a large audience, according to the study.

According to the study, these people are also more likely to accept friend requests from strangers.

Narcissists on Facebook may leave negative comments that can harm interpersonal relationships, according to the study. Carpenter said narcissists who participate in this behavior often do not know the implications of their actions.

“The purpose of the study was not to find the overall amount of narcissists; it was to find the correlation and the patterns of narcissism on Facebook,” S. Shyam Sundar said.

Sundar is the founder of the Penn State Media Effects Research Laboratory. His research investigates the psychological effects unique to web-based mass communication, he said.

Facebook and Twitter allow users to be the masters of their own domain, Sundar said. If they feel like the “rock star” of their personal page, it can give them a sense of self-importance, he said.

But he said this feeling of importance does not constitute narcissism in everyone. Facebook may give someone who is an introvert the ability to express himself or herself online, he said.

Vanessa Foster said people who constantly change their profile picture may be trying to draw attention to themselves. They may be trying to draw positive comments to boost self-confidence, she said.

Foster said a psychologist might be able to use Facebook to diagnose traits of narcissism, but it is only one way to help with the diagnosis.

“You would have to learn about the person, their behavior, and the environment they interact in,” Foster said.

Sebelius said she has had similar conversations with women throughout the country in Baltimore and Minneapolis because she said women are not only the majority of the country, but also the main consumers of healthcare. She added the majority of the beneficiaries from Medicare are women.

However, she said women are typically at the worst end of the current insurance market and are likely to have jobs where they are uninsured or underinsured. She said women often pay more for equal coverage in medical insurance.

Sebelius said women pay 15 to 40 percent more for the same insurance policies men have, and often those policies did not include the services women needed. She added they would have to pay more out-of-pocket for maternity coverage.

“Being a woman, right now, is a pre-existing condition in the health insurance market, and that would come to an end,” Sebelius said. “Certainly when issues like anything from C-sections to domestic violence are used as pre-existing condition limitations and insurance companies can charge for that or lock women out.”

Sebelius said the act would also extend coverage to those under the age of 26, and said because of that age extension more than 2.5 million young people are now covered by their parents’ insurance. She added 28,000 of those adults are in Wisconsin.

Meghan Ford, a U. Wisconsin student majoring in sociology and political science, also spoke at the discussion. She said before the Affordable Care Act passed, graduating in four years frightened her because she was uncertain whether she would be able to get insurance coverage or not.

However, she said having a plan she can rely on and stay on until age 26 will help her. Ford said she is graduating with almost $25,000 in student loans, and individual plans cost about $200 for an individual. She said combining that cost with rent and student loans repayment would have been a huge problem.

“Having more of those worries was just making me sicker and sicker, and being able to have that security … eased [my] whole hoard of anxieties and worries,” Ford said.

Also speaking in the discussion was Andrea Bonaparte, a UW student studying social work, who said the Affordable Care Act lifted a burden off her shoulders. She said she will not have to worry about health insurance and can focus on finding a job and career.

Sebelius also spoke about the act in Milwaukee. Republican Party spokesperson Ben Sparks said in a statement about the Milwaukee event that Wisconsin families have made it clear they do not support the act.

“We’re not surprised that the campaigner-in-chief is deploying his staff to swing states in order to defend his signature ‘accomplishment,’ Obamacare, which will only increase health costs for Wisconsin families, saddle our nation with more debt and increase the burden on Wisconsin job creators,” Sparks said.

Presidential campaigns are not unlike the arena competitions of Suzanne Collins’ novel “The Hunger Games,” in which children must fight each other to the death and survive by any means necessary.

It is a world in which the one who survives the longest is crowned the winner. Sometimes it means going on the offense, but defending yourself against the other contestants is more important. While in “The Hunger Games,” contestants face the threat of arrows and poisonous berries, presidential candidates face the threat of damning personal history and broken teleprompters.

Traditionally, Supreme Court justices have been mostly sheltered from this brutal political world, but if they decide to strike down the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — then those justices better prepare to face some arrows.

Based on the known ideologies of those on the court and their oral arguments on the subject, it is very possible and maybe even likely that the individual mandate portion of Obamacare will be struck down. This individual mandate holds most of Obamacare together. Without the added revenue supplied by previously uninsured healthy people mandated to buy coverage, insurers would be forced to raise costs to make up for the other portions of the law. For example, the act would eliminate the ability of insurers to deny coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions. If you noticed, the Affordable Care Act includes the word “affordable” in it, so if insurers raise costs because of the law, Obamacare becomes pointless.

Now consider the fact that Obamacare is one of the crowning achievements of President Barack Obama’s first term. If the court strikes the mandate down — a decision is expected in June — then I highly doubt Obama will come out with a statement that the court was correct, Obamacare is done, and we can call get on to debating other issues.

When you are in a presidential campaign, any and every statement you make can be used against you. So wihtout a doubt, Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican machine will be all over the Supreme Court’s rejection of one of the few legislative achievements of Obama’s presidency.

For a campaign, rejection of Obamacare could be construed as an attack on the campaign, and every attack must be responded to. However, attacking the Supreme court is not very common, due to the long-held viewpoint by the public that the Supreme Court is impartial and never gets into politics. The Supreme Court has historically been the most trusted branch of government, so not many campaigns have gone there.

Obama did make a few comments not long ago that may preview his strategy. On April 2, Obama said, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Even if Obama was not once a lecturer on constitutional law, this seems to be a pretty naïve statement.

But historical accuracy aside, statement gives us a possible premonition of a campaign strategy taking the form of a populist argument, in which the Supreme Court is attacked for ignoring the will of the majority and for being undemocratic.

This is a strategy that may work on the many progressive small “d” democrats who are already on Obama’s side, but Romney’s campaign will likely respond by supporting the Supreme Court as an institution that defends the constitution against the abuse of power by the other branches. In this scenario, Romney would have most of history and the facts on his side.

What Obama should do instead is look toward the future. If the Supreme Court knocks out Obamacare, the debate on healthcare reform begins once again, and Republicans will not be able to come up with a realistic plan. Obama should come out and make healthcare a campaign issue once again, and ask Republicans to come up with a better plan than Obamacare.

I suspect they will not be able to, because truth be told, Obamacare was the most Republican-friendly healthcare reform plan that has been up for debate in recent memory. All other possible plans increase the size and power of government much more than Obamacare does. Obamacare was a compromise with Republicans, and if it is no longer an option then the only alternatives lie even more to the left.

Healthcare is a major problem in this country. If Obamacare is rejected, we will soon hear a lot more about it. Fortunately for Obama, the Republicans will have no way to solve the problem. If Obama can get this message across then he will be able to avoid the risky strategy of politicizing the Supreme Court. But more importantly, he will reinvigorate his base and catch the Republicans with their mouths wide open and an arrow in the head.

According to Vilsack, the world population could reach as high as 10 billion people in the lifetimes of the students currently attending K-State.

“We will have to increase food production by 70 percent to meet that demand,” Vilsack said.

Due to a rising population and a rising need for food, Vilsack said that increasing the number of people who are professionals in agriculture is a necessity in order to maintain peace.

“If the world is fighting over oil right now, imagine what will happen if we are all fighting over food,” he said.

Vilsack hailed the U.S. as a “food secure” nation, meaning the country is able to feed its citizens adequately. According to Vilsack’s lecture, 85 percent of all food consumed in the country is home-grown.

“If the ports shut down or if we as a country are hunkered down in some configuration, we will be able to feed ourselves,” he said.

Vilsack also touched on how American agricultural programs have a worldwide effect.

Specifically, he talked about the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which is sponsored by the USDA. Vilsack said that programs like the McGovern-Dole program not only help feed the world, but also help build positive foreign relations.

“We all are in this together if we want to meet this challenge of feeding the world,” Vilsack said. “It’s a challenge of a lifetime for the students here. And agriculture is at the center of all of this.”

In the lecture, Vilsack focused heavily on the economic success of the agricultural community. According to Vilsack, agriculture is responsible for 10 percent of all the country’s exports.

“For 50 years, we have had a trade surplus in agriculture,” Vilsack said. “Last year was a record at $37 billion.”

Vilsack also said that with the rise of precision technology in the field of agriculture, more jobs have been created, and that has helped sustain the agricultural economy, which he hopes the rest of the country can model.

“We’ve got some tough decisions to make with reference to the federal budget,” Vilsack said to the media following his lecture. “We want to make them strategic. I think [President Barack Obama] is right when he says that we need to get back in the business of making things. Agriculture is a proof point of that.”

The points he made seemed to hit home with many in the audience; Vilsack received a very warm reaction at the conclusion of his lecture.

One of the students in attendance was Nate Spriggs, student body president and senior in agricultural economics.

“I thought the lecture was great,” Spriggs said. “I think he gave a very important message as to the challenges that we face and the role of agriculture.”

Provost April Mason was also impressed with the lecture and how Vilsack emphasized food security.

“I have a passion for food security, so what Secretary Vilsack said about the need for agriculture to help us continue to be a food secure country was essential,” Mason said.

Vilsack, who is the 30th Secretary of Agriculture and the former governor of Iowa, also spoke about the developments of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, originally planned to be built on Kimball Avenue in Manhattan, just east of Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

Despite recent concerns over funding and a risk of disease outbreak, Vilsack said that the facility remains an important priority.

“I understand the importance and significance of that facility and getting it done,” Vilsack said. “[The Department of] Homeland Security is doing an assessment on the site in the last year or two to quantify the risk of exposure. We are going to continue to work with members of Congress to figure out how and when, with tight budgets, we can fund this. I think it’s a national priority.”

Like a new business owner on crack, drug dealers face risks people can’t possibly understand without personal experience. If the dealer conducts himself well and quits while he’s ahead, he might avoid the law or getting stabbed in the gut. Other dealers stick with it too long, and eventually screw up, usually falling into debt or onto the hood of a police car. But there are many kinds of drug dealers, all of whom have varying levels of success. Here are the stories of three drug dealers I got to know during the past three months.

Hit it and quit it

Some drug dealers get caught and serve time. Other drug dealers leave the business before they get in trouble. A happy member of the latter group is Jake, an infantry Marine.

Jake, who declined to be identified by full name, was a drug dealer in high school, from the time he was 15 to 19 years old. He sold cocaine, medical-grade marijuana, prescription painkillers and other pills. After four years of making as much as $2,500 each month, Jake saved up several thousand dollars.

Jake said it all started with his first time buying weed: “I bought a nug of marijuana and flipped it double to someone else for what I paid for it,” he said. “I figured, ‘Hey, I can use this shit to make money.’”

Jake also tried the drugs he sold in order to make sure he wasn’t selling anything bad.

“I wouldn’t sell (a drug) without knowing what it did,” he said.

Drug dealers aren’t very averse to risk. In addition to the dangers of using some drugs, dealing comes with personal risks. Past the legal ramifications, the trade is by nature a lawless one, where one dealer might screw over or kill the competition — or even his own customers — so the idea can seem daunting.

Just consider the risk of transporting an illegal product. On a drive up to Phoenix with a kilo of cocaine, Jake had a somewhat close call with the Border Patrol. He was pulled over, but the dogs weren’t called to his truck, so he didn’t get caught. Good luck is a precious commodity in dealing.

Most of Jake’s customers never knew his name.

“You had to watch your back and watch your buddy’s back,” Jake said. “Someone could be watching you.”

In order to avoid suspicion, Jake never used his drug dealing money to make huge purchases — a small trip, food, a couple of college classes and some small investments. He also had another thing going for him.

“Coming from a wealthy family, I was kind of expected to have a decent amount of cash on me at all times,” he said. “I always put it on that. I never said it was from a secondary income.”

His family never found out. And he never let his friends get involved, for his sake and theirs, Jake said.

Eventually, Jake got tired of drug dealing and started looking to the future.

“I realized that the lifestyle would soon catch up with me. All good things come to an end, right?” he said. “When you’re in that kind of work, it’s always going to come to a bad end, unless you come out while you’re ahead. So I made the choice to get out while I was ahead and not get caught up in it.”

Jake is shipping out to Afghanistan this year. Once he returns, he’ll be greeted by family, friends and several thousand dollars in savings and investments.

Dorm dealing

College kids like to experiment, but unless a student meets a friend of a friend, it’s usually difficult to find a consistent drug dealer. This is where the dorm dealers come in.

Grant Hull, an anthropology senior at U. Arizona, sold small amounts of marijuana from his dorm room during his freshman year.

Unlike Jake, Grant was already smoking marijuana on a daily basis before he began to sell it. However, it was just as easy for him to get started as a drug dealer.

“I started with a few of my friends,” Grant said. “One day we decided — we knew this kid who could get us ounces — so we just went over and got one.”

While Grant liked the quick cash, his friends weren’t the dealing type.

“We sold the first ounce together, but they weren’t really into it so much,” Grant said. “I just knew people who bought weed and smoked weed, so I told them that if they needed any to just come to my room.”

According to Grant, the dorm dealing scene was pretty relaxed. For the most part, he said, Grant kept his business between friends and fellow dorm-dwellers. All he had to do to stay safe was keep the door locked.

“That way, if I was in class or something, people would know (to go down the hall) and be like, ‘Hey, can I get a gram?’” Grant said.

For the most part, his plan worked. Unlike more reckless dealers, Grant never ended up in the Daily Wildcat’s Police Beat section. Instead, he ended up with approximately $100 to $200 a week and a well-funded spring break.

“That’s why I don’t really have (the money) anymore,” Grant said. “Just buying stupid shit like clothes, more weed. I was pretty irresponsible with it.”

Grant wasn’t running a $10,000 operation. He said the only worry he had was being ratted out by someone, which is something that every dealer I talked to admitted was a concern. Still, even though he was a small-time dorm dealer, Grant ran into a problem that ultimately ended his business when he ran out of weed and found that the frat guy who normally sold to him had also run out. A friend of his offered to front him some, which this new dealer had no right to do in the first place.

“It wasn’t his (the dealer’s), it was his friend’s, who was also a dealer,” Grant said. “So (his friend) got pissed at me and there was this misunderstanding.”

Grant ended up owing money and decided to quit because it was near the end of the school year. “I was like, ‘Fuck it,’” he said. “It would have been a pain in the ass to get another ounce and start the process again.”

But that was his freshman year. During his sophomore year, Grant started selling from an apartment. However, he quit for the “final” time when he gave up smoking marijuana. Of course, like anyone who truly loves weed, he started smoking again. But his dealing life was over.

At the same time, other dorm dealers picked up the slack. “I’d say for any dorm, there’s probably at least one or two kids (selling weed),” Grant said. “When I did, there were at least three or four other guys I knew in the dorms — at my dorm, at least — who were doing it at any given time.”

No matter what, there will always be a place for students of all backgrounds to get their weed. Not all explorers of the mind — psychonauts — are students, though. According to the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, at least 22 million people in the United States use illegal drugs. So where do the non-students get their drugs?

Wheeler dealer: Sticking with it

Ordering pizza is pretty awesome: Suddenly, pizza magically arrives at the door to cure cravings for a small price. Some drug dealers do the same thing, except with a pharmacopeia of drugs. This deliveryman is Tom Ado. Yes, he requested a name inspired by “Pokémon.”

He’s certainly not your typical shady street dealer, who sits on the corner selling bags of oregano. He’s not one of those rave people who sells pills. He’s not a kingpin. He’s something in between it all, and he loves his job.

“Even cash-broke, I’ve found that (drug dealing) is what makes me happy,” Tom said. “It’s based on passion. It keeps me moving forward.”

Tom doesn’t even consider dealing to be a job.

“I would call it a means to a means,” Tom said. “I’m fundraising … for legal enterprises I’ll have in the future, such as opening a local head shop, or becoming a wholesale distributor of glassware.”

If you haven’t guessed by now, Tom really loves weed.

In fact, sharing his love of weed is what got him into the business. Before a Thanksgiving feast last year, Tom smoked in California with his cousin, who is connected to Los Angeles’ medical marijuana scene through friends and a medical card. Just three months later, Tom started transporting high-grade marijuana from California to feed the hungry smokers in Tucson.

“I was with my cousin and we were discussing our passions,” Tom said. “He explained to me that there is a way, if you’re willing to be self-motivated and work for yourself — which isn’t just all freedom, it’s a lot of responsibility — you’re able to make a lot of money and you’re able to be in control of all the aspects of your occupation.”

The autonomy, Tom said, was one of the reasons the job appealed to him so much.

Despite his passion, Tom isn’t making much profit. He ended up owing his cousin quite a bit of dough: $3,500. On average, he only makes $70 a week, though business seems to be picking up.

Tom’s been expanding his sales to other drugs. He extracts lysergic acid-amide, or LSA, from morning glory seeds. Tom also sells LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA and even the most powerful psychedelic in the world: dimethyltryptamine, a drug naturally found in a vast number of organisms, including human beings.

Like Jake, Tom also tries the drugs he sells. While he mostly trips for his own enjoyment, trying every drug allows him to test the purity of the product and gives him a better idea of how to market the drugs’ effects to potential buyers.

“This is an industry that doesn’t have regulations for what you can do to your customers or to your product,” Tom said. “It’s very important that people in this business follow sound business practice, as well as a few other precautionary rules. Otherwise, it could turn into something more dangerous or hazardous, which you’ll see with crappy drug dealers.”

But Tom’s no used car salesman.He believes that a drug deal is only as shady as the seller and buyer make it and that a typical sale is just like “meeting someone for coffee or tea.” He drives up to the house, or the buyer comes to him, and the two have a good conversation over a smoldering bowl of weed. But Tom still keeps it professional. “I’m not going to keep you up all night chit-chatting,” he said.

No violence, no paranoia, no problems.

Unlike Jake and Grant, Tom plans to continue dealing for a while. He said that eventually, he’ll open up a smoke shop and have other people deal for him while he just skims off the top.

And as long as Arizona’s medical marijuana program stays in place, he shouldn’t have a problem finding people to buy from. With a medical card, he will trade different kinds of marijuana at pot clubs, where patients and caregivers meet to share their various kinds of medicine.

“My hope is that we can all become licensed to carry all of these heavily regulated narcotics,” Tom said, “so that this isn’t a legal issue anymore.”

What it all means

If anything really seems taboo here, it’s probably that the products in question are illegal. Just imagine if the dealers were selling roses or caviar. Would anybody question it?

Selling a product people want is an attractive job. Like a business owner, the dealer manages his own finances, can choose his customers and partners and has full control over his operation. This comes with a certain set of skills and character traits that are similar to those of entrepreneurs.

In fact, according to a study by U. California, Santa Cruz, drug dealers are 11 to 21 percent more likely to choose self-employment than non-drug dealers. Some of the traits described in the study are the ones Tom expressed: a yearning for autonomy, low aversion to risk and a dislike for working under people.

The study also found that basic job skills and an education had either little or a negative effect on the likelihood of an individual becoming self-employed. So perhaps drug dealing is good training for future business endeavors. Maybe not the safest training, but training all the same.

A National Business Incubation Association study found that 80 percent of businesses fail during the first five years. And the UC study mentioned that drug dealers may lack the knowledge of business opportunities and financial capital needed to be successful — or even get started — in business.

So maybe business students make the best dealers.

I’m not advising drug dealing as a profession. It’s a truly dangerous job, and every drug dealer I met has had some pretty bad experiences, both financially and personally. However, some dealers find that the danger is worth the money, autonomy and enjoyment they get from the job.

There’s the obvious sleep talking, sleepwalking, mumbling, and snoring. However, one thing that doctors report as being on the rise is the phenomenon of sleep texting.

Sleep texting is exactly what it sounds like, and those who do it do not remember doing so until they see sent messages in their outboxes the next morning. Doctors report that the action is most likely caused by the fact that teenagers and college students are always interacting with technology.

This interaction with technology is making it increasingly difficult for the human body to distinguish between waking and sleeping times, and according to The Melbourne Sleep Disorder Centre in Australia, sleep texting has been identified as a real medical occurrence.

Indeed, Americans are so “plugged in” that occurrences of sending emails or pictures while asleep have also been reported.

U. New Hampshire students are no exception to this current trend, though many people do not know that sleep texting is as widespread as it is.

“I had a friend who did it. But I didn’t think it was an actual thing. I still don’t see how it could be; I just saw it as a lame excuse for not remembering conversations,” sophomore Max Auger said.

“I do it all of the time. I’ve gone on Facebook and stuff, too, since I have an iPhone. It’s weird because you don’t remember any of it,” student Kassandra Sampson said.

Kathleen Grace-Bishop, UNH Health Services director of education and promotion, said that, although the specific problem of sleep texting has not yet been reported to Health Services, many other sleep issues have, and they continue to be reported.

“Students have been seeking assistance for sleep-related issues for many years. This seems to mirror what has been happening in the United States, where sleep is becoming more of a concern as research continues to indicate that we are sleep-deprived as a nation,” Grace-Bishop said.

According to Grace-Bishop, 20.6 percent of UNH students surveyed by the American College Health Association noted sleep difficulties as impacting their academic performance in the last 12 months. Having sleep issues is the number two reported problem, following stress at 27.8 percent.

Health Services professionals, along with doctors across the nation, agree that mixing technology and sleep is a dangerous idea. They advise patients to turn electronics off at least one hour before bed, and to plug the devices in elsewhere in the room, not right next to the pillow.

UNH student Jade Chandronnait learned this the hard way.

“It’s kind of embarrassing, but I do it [sleep text] a lot. I can’t sleep with my phone near my bed, or I wake up with an outbox full of things that don’t make sense and quite a few confused friends,” Chandronnait said.

Reaction to the article was loud on both sides of the spectrum and few were entertained. Many commenters were outraged and disgusted at the “audacity” and “vileness” of these acts; others, especially more liberal readers, saw these men as “setting back decades of effort” for gay rights. For all the uproar it created, too many people missed the actual message of the article: Habib intended to start a conversation.

The majority of us can establish a common ground that this practice is undesirable and that we should do something about it. Before we can address the problem, we need to understand it. Habib explains that rest stop cruising is “for the man who is unsure of his sexuality, or unsure of how to tell others about it, for the man who has a family but feels new desires (or old, hidden ones) unfolding inside of him.” What’s clear, although undeniably puzzling to the average reader, is that these men are not identifying as gay or bisexual. In fact there is “no sexual orientation at all.” These are men who “are of a certain age,” who, growing up, were denied the ability to name, understand or express their sexual desires for other men in a healthy way. They were conversely conditioned to not only deny their impulses, but to be hostile to them, fight them and have disdain for anything with the label “gay.” Now these men are at a crux in their life: denying their feelings didn’t make them go away, neither did starting hetero-normative families nor being celibate. So they default to anonymous and dangerous sex beneath the public’s moral gaze. They are victims of a society of denial, fear and hate.

So how do we fix the problem? Part of me fears that it’s too late for men like this, and that the most effective way to deal with their impulses is on an individual basis of counseling and therapeutic help, bringing them to terms with their sexual desires. We can do more in the meantime for younger generations. Recognition of gay men and women has improved leaps and bounds in the last few decades, but much of society is still tolerating and not accepting. Habib’s memories of college still sound eerily current. “The straight students were going to parties and hooking up, making out on the green, having sex in dorms. The gay guys had to do what they could, wherever they could find it.”

This double-standard still exists, even at liberal UConn. If I, as a gay man, were to meet another man at a Carriage House party and make out with him, I am confident we would get the daylights beat out of us. I can be gay, but if I try to express sexual desires in a setting where hetero is the norm, I am branded a “faggot” and antagonized as such. There are specific places on campus and many groups of friends where I don’t hesitate to express my sexuality, but I fear for the countless men who have been conditioned by fear of rejection to keep quiet.

To fix these problems, we need to not be terrified to talk about them, not be impulsively disgusted by the seedier happenings of repressed sexuality. Habib describes being questioned by a cop about whether he was at the rest stop to search for “fun and games”: “They couldn’t say it. They couldn’t say anything … It’s not ‘fun and games,’ it’s men yielding to something they might be trying to deny, but can’t.”

There is hypocrisy in labeling somebody as a victim of their culture and then persecuting them for it. Instead of moralizing, do something about it. Make sure the message you’re sending to your kids, your friends and your family about sexuality is positive. This problem has arisen not because these men are depraved, but because we, as their peers, weren’t willing to name it and talk about it.

The Affordable Health Care Act requires contraception to be included in all student health care plans starting August 2012. Religiously based universities, however, can avoid providing contraception for another year, if requested.

Dan Bruey, director of the Student Health Center, said AU has always been dedicated to serving the contraception needs of students.

“Contraception is a vital part of our service and women’s health, so we’ve tried to stay out of all the political debate going on and just take it back to what our service to students should be,” he said, “and then find out what we need to do to comply with the health care legislation.”

During the 2010-2011 fiscal year, the AU Student Health Center hosted 12,000 student visits, and at 1,900 contraception was dispensed or discussed.

Students spent $19,600 on contraception at the Health Center or about $15 per month for a prescription, Bruey said.

AU United Methodist Chaplain Rev. Mark Schaefer said student contraception use has never been an issue on campus. The Methodist community views it as part of responsible development in the world, he said.

“We support it as part of responsible family planning and as a health issue, too,” Schaefer said. “I don’t know if any United Methodists are opposed to birth control to the point where they would take action.”

Fluke encourages student advocacy
Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University law student who testified before Congress on the importance of free contraception, said she hopes universities will not delay contraception coverage to students for religious reasons.

Fluke said it makes no sense to delay what she sees as an inevitable policy. She believes the option will prolong the struggles some students have in paying for contraception.

“It’s interesting because this was part of a much wider improvement of student insurance, by increasing the benefits and making sure that students who have a chronic illness like cancer don’t hit coverage maximums,” she said in an interview with The Eagle. “Everything has to take effect in August 2012 – except contraception.”

Although AU is tolerant of contraception use on campus, Fluke said this should not stop students from taking part in the political debate against what the media has sometimes referred to as the “War on Women.”

“I’m hoping that those students will care about this issue and find their local university that is religiously affiliated and doesn’t have coverage, and partner with those students and provide support,” she said. “Because as we all know, it’s hard to do this work and this kind of organizing when you’re in school, too. There are lots of religiously affiliated student groups that could certainly use the help.”

Fluke is providing as much help as she can, using her overnight fame to get her message across through the media.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh insulted Fluke 53 times on his show over the course of three days after she testified on Feb. 23, calling her a “slut” and accusing her of needing contraception to have more sex.

Fluke says Limbaugh was trying to silence women with his misogynistic attacks, but she is now using the resulting media spotlight in a positive way.

“I’m trying to make something good of a bad situation,” she said. “I’m trying to use the fact that I was thrust into the media spotlight as a way to get out the messages about how important these policies are to women’s health and to student health and to draw attention to things that are really critical.”

The scientists said they have already identified several genes that lead to an increased likelihood of autism. But there is a possibility that several hundred genes are involved in autism, said Mark J. Daly, an associate professor of medicine the senior writer of the Harvard paper.

“We’re moving away from the single gene Mendelian idea of disorders or the idea that only a few genes cause the effect,” Daly said. “There are many genes in the biological pathways.”

This discovery will allow a better treatment for autism to be developed that targets the mutated genes, according to Daly.

“It’s not good for a predictive model but can help us develop a hard biological model of autism and eventually develop a therapeutic treatment,” Daly said.

The scientists expect to find 25 or more genes by the end of year, said Stephan J. Sanders, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale and lead author of the Yale paper. Although the genes do not allow for diagnosis, it may eventually be possible once they have achieved a comprehensive knowledge of the genes that cause autism, he added. Even more powerful, their findings might lead to a treatment.

“The study of genes helps us understand what autism is at a fundamental level,” Sanders said. “This understanding will help us develop a treatment. Right now we don’t know what autism is, except that it is genetic.”

The scientists at Harvard, Yale, and University of Washington worked independently, only coordinating at the end of their studies when the papers were being submitted for publication, according to Sanders.

The three teams each had papers published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.

Sanders and the team at Yale studied 238 families, who each had only one child diagnosed with autism. This process was essential so mutations in specific genes could be found, which would indicate the gene’s link to autism. Sanders said that by the end of the year, the Yale research team plans to have studied 2600 families.

“We see genes as part of a jigsaw puzzle; find enough of them and you can see what the disease is,” Sanders said.

The study, which Marshall led as a post-doctoral student at Columbia U., is part of a larger study investigating mental health within the Ohio Army National Guard.

Terry Keane, the director of the Behavioral Science Division of the National Center for PTSD, said Marshall’s study is important because it was one of the first group of studies to examine alcohol abuse in the National Guard. The findings will help to highlight areas of focus for the promotion of  “healthy lifestyles post-deployment,” he said.

Marshall’s team looked at a group of around 1,000 National Guard soldiers, more than 100 of whom screened positive for alcohol abuse after returning from deployment. Only 7 percent of soldiers without depression or PTSD abused alcohol, whereas nearly half of those who suffered from both disorders abused alcohol.

These results were surprising, Marshall said, because he originally hypothesized that people with depression or PTSD prior to deployment would have the highest risk of developing alcohol problems.

But the study revealed that those individuals had no elevated risk. Instead, the most vulnerable group included individuals who developed depression or PTSD after returning from deployment.

Marshall warned that more research must be done before any conclusions can be reached. He said it is possible that people with mental health problems may not have been deployed in the first place, so they may have been excluded from the sample. It is also possible that those individuals received more support and treatment that could have “buffered their risk” of developing alcohol problems.

Keane called this finding “anomalous” and said it will require replication in other samples. But in general, the study’s findings did not surprise him, he said. “Alcohol use is very high, and it’s probably exacerbated by experiences in war zones.”

Another finding of Marshall’s study is that married men developed alcohol abuse at a significantly lower rate — 8 percent — compared to those who were never married or had been divorced, 16 percent of whom developed alcohol problems. He attributed this trend to the additional emotional support marriage offers.

“Having people to reach out to is an important piece of the puzzle,” Marshall said.

Marshall said his study points to the importance of improving access to mental health services for National Guard soldiers. Given that alcohol abuse and mental health problems occur together at such high rates, “integrated treatment interventions” could be effective, Marshall said.

In conducting the study, “what struck me was just the level of alcohol abuse,” Marshall said. “Some people were clearly struggling” and turned to alcohol “even if they had never had alcohol problems in their past,” he said.

The case’s outcome holds serious consequences. Though neither attorneys nor judges mentioned President Barack Obama’s name during the oral arguments, it is tacitly acknowledged that the outcome of November’s presidential election rests in part on the court’s ruling. Obama has built much of his political clout on the Affordable Care Act, and the degree to which his ideas are implemented is sure to color his legacy as president.

The court’s decision will also affect college students, who, under the Affordable Care Act, would be allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance plan until age 26. This would allow them to defer worries about health insurance until a few years after college and would free them from the pressure to accept their first job offer out of a need for medical coverage. In addition, the government-sponsored insurance plans would cover preventive care such as cancer screenings and checkups and would not discriminate against those with preexisting conditions.

Still, the provision of quality health care for all Americans should not come at the expense of our Constitution. The court’s task — and the task that all politically responsible Americans should attempt — is to separate ideology from legality.

First, and almost comically, the court must decide whether to honor the Anti-Injunction Act of 1876, a rather obscure rule that blocks lawsuits against a tax before that tax has been paid. If the court upholds the act, the lawsuit will be thrown out altogether since the tax in question — the penalty for Americans who do not purchase health insurance — will not be levied until 2014. However, it appears that in this case the justices will ignore or skirt around the Anti-Injunction Act.

The court must also address the Affordable Care Act’s most contentious tenet, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. The act’s defenders claim that the mandate falls within the scope of federal power under the commerce clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate trade. Since health insurance interactions frequently cross state boundaries, it seems reasonable to cite health care as an instance of interstate commerce governable under the Constitution. Critics, on the other hand, find the mandate an unconstitutional extension of federal power. Judging by the amount of time the court devoted to arguments over the mandate, there is a real chance that several of the justices — particularly the court’s five conservatives — will deem it unconstitutional.

Finally, the states that filed the suit claim that the act’s threat that states must accept a Medicaid expansion program or lose all of their Medicaid funding amounts to coercion.

However, those states have conveniently ignored the fact that “the federal government … expanded Medicaid several times in the past 30 years under the same exact terms with no constitutional objections from the states,” an argument the liberal justices made many times, according to Forbes.

This recent conservative anxiety over the alleged aggression of the federal government may help explain the vehement opposition to the individual mandate as well.

Considering this precedent, it is unlikely that the court will rule against the Medicaid expansion. However, if it finds the individual mandate unconstitutional, the justices must then decide if the act can stand without the mandate. This question of “severability” has met with various responses among the justices, but it is clear that an act aiming to provide universal health care would be crippled without the provision that mandates the universal purchase of that care.

The justices are sure to reach differing decisions that will be complex and contradictory, but the ultimate fate of the Affordable Care Act has financial and medical implications for all Americans. Now that the health care debate has reached the nation’s highest court, it is time for us all to temporarily shelve ideological arguments in favor of a rational discussion of the act’s constitutionality.

Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who influenced the health care initiatives of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Obama, said the bill would cover at most half the uninsured individuals it would otherwise – should the Supreme Court declare the mandate unconstitutional.

“If you get rid of the mandate you have a bill that is much less effective, much less efficient and much more uncertain,” Gruber said.

Gruber said when he conducted research on healthcare during the Romney administration, he determined a law lacking a mandate would fail to achieve its primary goals of controlling costs and universal coverage.

“If you give someone a subsidy it’s not enough to make them buy the good,” he said.

He said even individuals who buy health care tend to be sickest, which raises prices.

Professor Kathleen Carey from Boston U.’s School of Public Health said without a universal health care system paid for entirely by the government, mandatory participation in the private market is essential.

“It is not in the personal interest of many people to purchase insurance unless they need health care,” Carey said.

Gruber said those individuals bring up the cost of care when they have to go to the emergency room and receive treatment without insurance coverage.

“[They] should have to pay for the costs imposed on the rest of society,” he said.

Gruber said critics should take note of the religious exemption in the law and that those who choose not to buy insurance will only have to pay a small fine.

“It’s not like you get thrown in jail – you just pay a penalty,” he said.

Gruber said while those mostly young and healthy individuals may not like the mandate now, in the long run the policy helps everyone.

“We’re all beneficiaries because this bill will help slow cost control, which is really the major threat to our democracy,” he said.

Randall Ellis, an economics professor at Boston University who serves as president of the American Society of Health Economists, said the only way to make healthcare affordable is to force the healthy to buy insurance.

“Without enrolling the healthy to hold down the premiums, not everyone will be able to afford health insurance,” Ellis said.

Calling Obama’s health care bill a “pretty conservative solution,” Gruber said the mandate was the only realistic method toward achieving these benefits.

“There are no real alternatives that are nearly as effective and politically feasible,” he said.

Gruber said the mandate is also necessitated by the fact that four million people have lost their employer insurance over the last three years alone.

“Employer-sponsored insurance is disappearing,” Gruber said.

Gruber said the success of Massachusetts in implementing the mandate should ward off those who seek to remove it.

“[Massachusetts] covered about two-thirds of our uninsured residents with that solution,” Gruber said.

Despite the benefits and lack of alternatives, Gruber said he is not as confident as he once was that the Supreme Court would choose to uphold the mandate.

“I still think they’re more likely to uphold it than not,” Gruber said, “but it’s a nail-biter.”

A recent study may give germophobic students yet another reason to dread going to lecture. A joint study of indoor microbial composition by U. California-Berkeley and Yale U. researchers found that human presence causes a significant increase in levels of bacteria and fungi indoors. The average human emission, the study states, is about 37 million bacteria per person per hour.

The study — entitled “Size-resolved emission rates of airborne bacteria and fungi in an occupied classroom” — was conducted by collecting and comparing air samples from empty classrooms, occupied classrooms and the outdoors. In samples from occupied classrooms, researchers found elevated levels of microbes shed from human skin and cavities and kicked up in floor dust.

“Whenever you’re in a densely populated space, you’re breathing bacteria coming from other people,” said William Nazaroff, co-author of the study and campus professor of civil and environmental engineering.

The study was originally published online Feb. 13 in Indoor Air, but it has recently garnered attention because of an article written about it March 29 in Discovery News.

According to Nazaroff, the study involved state-of-the-art experimental techniques, including DNA analysis of microbes and particulates. The result was one of the most complete analyses of indoor microbial air composition to date. Previous studies of microbial presence in the air involved culturing — growing captured particulates — and identifying what was able to grow. The problem, Nazaroff said, was that not all microbes could be grown, and thus could not be identified.

With modern techniques, the study for the first time was able to quantify exactly how many bacteria humans were responsible for emitting.

Despite the somewhat unsettling nature of the study’s findings, the impact on human health is still uncertain, Nazaroff said.

“Historically, people have worried about bacteria in buildings because of airborne disease transmission,” he said. “But there may be a benefit to certain kinds of these bacteria.”

Gary Andersen, head of the Ecology Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, emphasized the importance of this new procedure of microbial DNA analysis to studying an indoor environment.

“I think it’ll help for public health and for building design to take into consideration how microbes can impact human health,” he said.

Next, the researchers plan to carry out similar testing in university housing and elementary schools around the world.

But it’s not going to stop at hairy — it’s also going to get slimy, pulverized, poisoned and infested. The worst part is, whether you decide to read this column, you’re not going to be able to avoid it.

You might choose to ignore the bugs, chemicals and animal bits in your lunch — I know I have — but with all of the recent coverage of “pink slime,” exposés on factory farming and articles divulging exactly what goes in to all of that red food dye, I for one have found myself unable to forget exactly what lines (and beaver glands) the commercial food industry is trying to feed me.

My eating habits have been in flux since I saw the documentary “Food Inc.” at 16; I stopped eating red meat, then white meat, started eating seafood and finally just settled on a vegetarian lifestyle. I started frequenting farmer’s markets in the summer and co-ops in the winter, eating organic and local. I also recently planted my first vegetable garden using seeds that have not been genetically modified. My parents think I’m crazy, and you might think so too. I would say I’m just hyper-aware of what I put in my body.

But this column really isn’t a vegan manifesto or even an indictment of all foods conventional. It’s simply a reminder of what you’re actually eating on a day-to-day basis. It’s also my way of pressuring the FDA for stricter food labeling practices.

Here’s where my most recent adventure in food industry criticism began: I was sent a link, via one social networking site or another, to an online petition urging Starbucks to stop using cochineal extract as a red pigment in their strawberry flavored drinks. Curious about why it mattered, I followed the link. And then I nearly vomited. As it turns out, cochineal extract is made of crushed cochineal beetles. The dye can also be found in certain red and pink yogurts, jams and tomato products, to name a few.

I was disgusted, but my curiosity wasn’t quite satiated so I Googled “cochineal extract” and found a recent article that cited the same petition and added a few facts that I almost regret reading. It’s estimated that with the amount of red dye that the average person consumes in their lifetime, they will have eaten at least 70,000 beetles in food pigment alone. And you know that friend in middle school that was allergic to red food dye? It’s not actually a chemical she was allergic to — it’s the bugs.

Despite feeling a little overwhelmed with this knowledge, I read a little further. Most people who are allergic to chocolate? This is also due to bug parts. The FDA contends that up to 60 insect parts per 100 grams of chocolate is safe. Certain ice cream flavors are enhanced with castoreum, a mixture of beaver anal secretions. More often than not there are maggots in your canned mushrooms. Isinglass, used to make some beers golden in color, is made from dried fish bladders. The same chemicals put in toilet bowl cleaner are also used to extend the shelf life of foods like potato chips.

And let’s not forget some of the gross food facts that are common knowledge: Cheese is injected with bacteria that naturally thrive in the stomach lining of milk producing animals, and gelatin, the gooey stuff in our marshmallows and gummy candies, is made of mammalian connective tissue.

What’s worse is that most of these ingredients go unlabeled or undisclosed, so you can’t always avoid them. Bugs bugging you too? Tell it to the FDA.

“Melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, develops in the cells that produce melanin — the pigment that gives your skin its color,” according to the Mayo Clinic website. The risk for melanoma increases with exposure to UV light from tanning beds and direct sunlight, as well as close family history of melanoma and exposure to certain chemicals or radiation.

From 1970 to 2009, patients between the ages of 18 and 39 were checked for “first-time diagnoses of melanoma.” The study found a fourfold increase in young men and an eightfold increase in young women.

Researchers believed the rise in melanoma cases could be a result of the increased use of indoor tanning beds.

The important thing for young adults — especially college students — to remember about decreasing their risk for melanoma is that coverage is key, whether that involves clothing, a wide-brimmed hat or sunscreen.

PubMed Health, a website managed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, said initial symptoms of melanoma can be a simple mole or sore on the skin, and can be diagnosed and removed quickly by a dermatologist if spotted early.

The website also provides the useful acronym ABCDE for self-diagnosis for people who are unsure about a recently-emerged skin abnormality.

A stands for asymmetry; simple enough to remember and even easier to check for: merely look at the mole or lesion and judge whether one side is significantly different from the other.

B stands for borders; if the growth has abnormal edges.

C stands for color; if the color changes within the growth or grows darker over time.

D stands for diameter; the growth is suspect if it is about 6 mm or larger.

E stands for evolution; if the mole continues to change appearance over a relatively short period of time.

Although the study showed an increase in cases of melanoma, it also showed a decrease in deaths caused by skin cancer, which is likely because of early detection methods.

More sunscreen companies are producing lotions which protect against both UVA and UVB sunlight as well, significantly decreasing the skin’s exposure to the harmful rays.

Although catching a case of melanoma early reduces chances of fatality, the only real way to prevent skin cancer is by taking measures to protect yourself from the harmful rays.

So before you head off to Foxfield in your spaghetti-strap sundress, ask your roommate to get your back and slap on some SPF-50. When you’re the only one who doesn’t look like a lobster the next day, you’ll thank me.

Jessica Payne, a Notre Dame psychologist who specializes in sleep studies, studied 207 subjects who regularly slept at least six hours per night. The study was focused on how much information a subject remembers after learning it directly before sleeping.

Participants studied either related or unrelated word pairs in the morning or evening, at 9 a.m. or 9 p.m., and would be tested on their ability to remember the word pairings 30 minutes, 12 hours or 24 hours later. Some of the word pairs were semantically related and some pairs were completely unrelated.

This studied declarative memory, which is a person’s ability to remember facts and specific knowledge.

“Following a 12-hour retention interval containing a night of sleep or a day of wakefulness, overall recall was superior in subjects who slept,” the study stated.

These findings were similar at the 24-hour retest. At this point all of the subjects had received a full night’s rest, but researchers found that subjects who went to sleep shortly after learning the words remembered better than subjects who did not.

“Our study confirms that sleeping directly after learning something new is beneficial for memory,” Payne told Science Daily. “What’s novel about this study is that we tried to shine light on sleep’s influence on both types of declarative memory by studying semantically unrelated and related word pairs.”

Jude Kehoe, a nurse at U. Oregon’s Health Center, stressed the importance of sleep for students. She discouraged irregular sleep patterns for studying because the body does not learn as efficiently with irregular sleep. The body can also only make up two hours of sleep, she said.

“Our brain does all of this filing when you are asleep and the REM sleep helps students learn better,” Kehoe said. “If students would study during the day and then sleep eight hours, they would remember the information much better. When you don’t have sleep, it causes a stress reaction to go off in your body, with negative cascading effects.”

Payne encouraged studying directly before sleeping for the greatest recall in the morning.

“Since we found that sleeping soon after learning benefited both types of memory, this means that it would be a good thing to rehearse any information you need to remember just prior to going to bed,” Payne told Science Daily. “In some sense, you may be ‘telling’ the sleeping brain what to consolidate.”

Eric LeGrand took the stage Wednesday in front of an audience of 70 people at Rutgers U. to present his outlook for the future, reflecting the event’s theme of “Don’t Stop Believing.”

Dr. Wise Young,  his physical therapist and mentor, held the microphone for LeGrand as he recalled his injury during the Oct. 16, 2010 Scarlet Knights football game against Army’s Black Knights in the Meadowlands Stadium.

“When I first got hurt, I was laying on that field, and I felt like I knocked the wind out of myself,” LeGrand said. “Coach [Greg] Schiano came running up to me and said ‘you just got to keep praying, you just got to fight.’”

LeGrand said he saw his mother before he was taken off the field and assured her that he would be “all right.”

After seeing his mother, LeGrand said he “blacked out” and was unable to remember anything that happened until the following Wednesday, four days after his injury.

“The first year, you face things you’ve never faced in your whole life,” LeGrand said.

Young, director of the Unversity’s W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience said he first met LeGrand about six weeks after his injury.

Young said he told LeGrand that he was working on therapies for chronic spinal cord injuries and that he wanted LeGrand to feel that he was not alone.

“I want to make sure that Eric understands that we are here working for him,” Young said. “He’s my hero. He always was poised. He always had this confidence that he was able to do this.”

LeGrand said he began therapy with a lot of stretching and soon progressed to therapies, such as what he called “the standing frame” where LeGrand would be able to stand with assistance from a mechanical frame.

“I would get dizzy a lot and start feeling like I was going to pass out,” LeGrand said about his early attempts to stand.

LeGrand said he was able to fight through the pain, using his supporters as inspiration for his continued therapy.

“How can you give up?” LeGrand said. “I take it as a responsibility every day to get through therapy.”

LeGrand said his efforts paid off when he released a picture of himself standing on July 13, 2011 along with a tweet that read: “Standing tall, we can’t fall. Standing upright again #bELieve52 #TeamUSA.”

“The therapists can’t tell you what it is. I can’t tell you what it is. It’s just a blessing to me,” LeGrand said.

As for the future, LeGrand said he plans to be a broadcaster for ESPN.

“After I get my degree, I want to go into broadcasting,” LeGrand said. “I’m hoping to work with ESPN in the next two years.”

Dr. Young said he applauds LeGrand’s efforts both physically and in the classroom.

“Eric was taking classes again in January through Skype and doing his physical therapy at the same time,” Young said.

The event, sponsored by Student Society for Stem Cell Research, also featured musical performances by the student a cappella group Deep Treble, the University yo-yo club, and rapper ProfessirX, a victim of a spinal cord injury himself.

ProfessirX, also known as Richard Thomas, became paralyzed after he was shot in the neck and now devotes his time to rapping about the need for a cure.

The title of the first song he performed, “I Believe,” promoted the idea of not only using stem cell research for spinal cord injuries, but also other conditions that could benefit from stem cells.

“Everybody has got to believe there’s a chance for me to get out of this chair,” Thomas said in the song. “And if it ain’t me, it’s the kids of the future.”

LeGrand said with the help of some of his teammates, classes via Skype were just like being in attendance physically.

“My teammates would put the laptop right up front so once I put my headphones on, it was just like being there,” LeGrand said.

Since Young first arrived at the University 15 years ago, he has seen a rise in spinal cord injury research.

LeGrand said he is confident in Young and his staff, claiming that a cure is on its way.

“I know that this man right here will find a cure for all of us,” he said. “And then we’re going to party.”

All proceeds from the event’s admission went to the Central Jersey Spinal Cord Injury Association Inc., which is affiliated with LeGrand.

The study showed that while doing low-load tasks that do not take up a person’s full attention, people who daydream or think about other things while doing the task had a higher working memory capacity – memory that holds temporary information – than those whose minds did not drift off to other things.

Jonathan Smallwood from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, one of the study’s researchers, said in a University of Wisconsin-Madison News article that while the brain is in idle, it tends to think about pressing matters.

“What this study seems to suggest is that when circumstances for the task aren’t very difficult, people who have additional working memory resources deploy them to think about things other than what they’re doing,” Smallwood said. “Their brains are trying to allocate resources to the most pressing problems.”

To conduct the experiment, researches asked volunteers to perform one of two simple tasks. They pressed a button in response to the appearance of a certain letter on a screen or tapped a button in time with their breathing.

While doing these tasks, the researchers periodically asked the volunteers if they were fully focused on what they were doing or if their minds were wandering to other things.

To measure the participants’ working memory capacity, the researchers asked the volunteers to recall letters that they were asked to memorize before the tests and complete a series of easy math problems.

“We intentionally use tasks that will never use all of their attention,” Smallwood said, “and then we ask, ‘How do people use their idle resources?’”

Researchers found that individuals with higher working memory resources reported more task-unrelated thoughts. When they gave the volunteers a task but filled them with sensory distractors, their mind’s ability to wander completely turned off.

“Giving your full attention to your perceptual experience actually equalized people, as though it cut off mind wandering at the pass,” said Daniel Levinson, one of the study’s researchers, in the article.

Dr. Michael Hasselmo, a Boston U. psychology professor, said the study seemed valid but not strong because of how difficult it is collect that type of data.

“Just looking at their data it seems that they had effects that were significant but not really strong because there was a broad level of data intuitive level,” Hasselmo said. “We hear stories about people like Einstein daydreaming in class, and maybe high IQ is related to this. But this is just anecdotal; no one has really looked into this specific case.”

The American Heart Association announced its findings during a presentation in San Diego, which showed that those who got about a third less than their average amount of sleep consumed more than 500 additional calories a day on average.

“Sleep loss can lead to hormonal changes that can set the stage for increasing appetite and preference for high-starch foods, which can set the stage for obesity,” said Dr. Sairam Parthasarathy, an associate professor of medicine at U. Arizona. “Sleep deprivation or interruption can lead to hormonal changes that lead to such eating behavior.”

In the study, 17 people aged 18 to 40 were asked to record their eating and sleeping patterns. Subjects were monitored at home as well as in a lab for varied amounts of time on different nights. Subjects in the study were allowed to eat as much as they wanted. In a comparison of a test group that slept 5.2 hours a night and a test group that slept 6.5 hours a night, the researchers found that the first test group ate an average of 143 more calories per day than the subjects who slept more.

“Sleep deficiency alters hormones in the body that control appetite, leading to an increase in hunger,” said Dr. Stuart Quan, professor emeritus from the College of Medicine and retired associate director of Respiratory Sciences. “Especially foods that have a high carb content.”

Some students said they saw the study’s results reflected in their own lives.

“I notice that the less sleep I get, the more I eat the next day,” said Dylan Trujillo, a freshman studying public management and policy. “It’s like I need the extra food to give me the energy to get me through the day.”

The National Sleep Foundation recommends that individuals get seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Healthy adults sleep on average between 8 and 8.5 hours a night, according to the National Institutes of Health.

A recent study by Harvard psychologists found that a smart phone application could reduce anxiety for people suffering from social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety.

The study was conducted by Psychology Professor Richard J. McNally and his graduate student, Philip M. Enock, in collaboration with Stefan G. Hofmann, director of the Social Anxiety Program at Boston U.

The smart phone application uses a method known as “attentional bias modification” to train people to ignore negative stimuli that were causing them unneeded stress in social situations. Subjects were simultaneously presented with two faces, one neutral and one hostile. Participants were instructed to press a letter that appeared on the screen after the faces were displayed.

For participants in the test group, this letter always appeared in the position where the neutral face had been. By redirecting the subject’s attention from the hostile face to the neutral face with the letter, the researchers hoped to train subjects to look away from social cues that would cause anxiety for a person with social anxiety disorder or generalized anxiety.

Participants used this application three times a day, and each session lasted about two minutes. Periodically, they filled out a survey asking them about the level of anxiety they felt in everyday life.

A placebo group used a smart phone application in which the letter was equally likely to appear in place of the neutral face or the hostile face, and a no-treatment group filled out periodic surveys about their level of stress but did not use an application.

The results showed significant alleviation of daily anxiety for those in the test group as well as in the placebo treatment group, and no change for those in the no-treatment group. While encouraged by the participants’ progress, researchers were also confused by the equal outcomes from the active and placebo groups.

Enock said the placebo group may have improved because their choice to use the anxiety-treatment application in itself was empowering. Participants in both groups may also simply have been “expecting some improvement to come along.”

McNally also said that improvements could be because of the “positive aura” surrounding high-tech treatment or because using the application was a method to maintain attention to tasks beyond the game.

The findings are promising but should be viewed with “guarded optimism,” said McNally.

“Right now we really want to make sure we can replicate these effects [and] make them more potent,” he added.

Likewise, Hofmann said that modified studies with larger sample sizes are needed to “examine if attention bias modification has a reliable effect on people’s subjective experience.”

After refinement, said McNally, this type of therapy could provide an alternative to traditional cognitive behavioral therapy for people who do not have access to a trained therapist or who cannot afford professional counseling.

Enock added that the smart phone format is especially well adapted to delivering treatment to a large population—not only for those who are on medication or in therapy, but also those who are currently doing nothing to manage their anxiety.

“It was beyond our expectation with so many debates being incurred, but we think it’s a good thing,” said An Pan, lead author of the study and research associate at HSPH. “We want more people to realize the potential health risks of eating too much meat.”

The data showed that one daily serving of unprocessed or processed red meat led to a 13 or 20 percent increase in mortality risk, respectively.

“We saw in this paper that [eating red meat] has implications, although the association is modest,” Pan said. “A 13 percent increase is not that high.”

The overall message was for people to try to reduce red meat consumption to two to three servings per week and to replace red meat with healthier choices, according to Pan.

Mortality risks of red meat consumption have been explored repeatedly, though not on the same scale as the 2012 study.

In 2009, for instance, researchers studied half a million people for three years and concluded that high intakes of processed and red meat may increase mortality risk.

Compared to previous research, the 2012 study surveyed a smaller cohort group for a longer period of time, nearly 25 years, and also distinguished between processed and unprocessed meats.

While earlier research focused on meat consumption’s effect on specific maladies, Pan’s study examined the broader impact on mortality.

The study took advantage of data from two long-term and well-known studies.

The Nurses’ Health Study, which began in 1976 to study breast cancer, was expanded to include a diverse population and to look at other health risks. It is widely regarded as one of the most prominent studies in diet and health, according to T. Colin Campbell, an emeritus professor at Cornell who studies nutrition.

“We realize this would be a good population to learn the long term effect on diet and health,” said Walter Willett, chair of the department of nutrition at HSPH who has overseen the study since its expansion in 1986.

The Health Professionals Follow-Up Study follows men ages 40 to 75.

The researchers designed standardized questions about health and have been updating their results every four years.

The study has been critiqued extensively by the expert community. One critique is that people who eat red meat tend to ignore common wisdoms of healthy behavior, creating correlating factors in their risks of mortality.

“This particular group doesn’t adequately acknowledge that,” said David E. Cummmings, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “They try to account for this but never fully.”

Willett acknowledged that the researchers cannot be sure to have taken into account all correlating factors.

The American Meat Institute issued a statement the day of publication responding to the study and criticizing its “unreliable self-reporting.”

“We were concerned that the study was quite definitive in its answer,” said Janet M. Riley, senior vice president of the American Meat Institute.

Republican presidential candidates have repeatedly called for the law’s repeal throughout their campaigns, and Republican congressmen are using the law’s upcoming anniversary to drum up support for their cause. As Obamacare heads to the Supreme Court next week, many of its provisions will come under review.

Although many of President Barack Obama’s supporters would trip over themselves to defend the bill, Republican critics have a point about the bill’s failings.

The No. 1 criticism of Obamacare is its implementation of an individual mandate for health insurance. Under the law, citizens are told they must buy basic health insurance or pay a fine to the IRS.

Forcing citizens to pay for a service they may not want is a power that the federal government seems to have pulled out of its hat. This lack of choice goes against the very fabric on which this nation was founded: freedom. By allowing the government to use its coercive power to affect our purchasing habits, we are setting a precedent for submitting our individual liberty in the hope that the government knows best.

Public opinion seems to agree as well. An ABC/Washington Post poll found that 67 percent of Americans are opposed to the individual mandate and would like to see it scrapped from the law.

However, it’s interesting how many liberals are willing to support this mandate considering that its biggest fans are the health insurance companies — companies that are not darlings of the left. The insurance companies argue that forcing all Americans to buy coverage will help them pay for more sickly patients while keeping costs down.

Of course, it isn’t surprising that the insurance companies would argue for the mandate. It essentially guarantees that the government will force uninsured Americans to become new customers for the insurance companies. Subsidies for those who would have trouble buying insurance also means that insurance companies would benefit from taxpayer money.

It is arguably socialism for the health insurance industry.

This wasn’t always the case, however.

When Obama was first campaigning for his health reform bill, he alluded to the inclusion of a public option several times. This was a government-run program that would compete in a market alongside private insurance companies.

In fact, a large number of polls around the time the health care bill was being debated showed that most Americans favored the inclusion of a public option, with the greatest majority favoring it as a separate choice among other private options.

However, the provision was nowhere to be found in the final bill. This is because Obama had brokered a deal with for-profit hospital lobbyists to ensure that a public option would not be included in the final bill in exchange for their political support. The deal was, in fact, already negotiated while Obama was campaigning on the possibility of including a public option in the final bill.

This fact demonstrates how Obamacare was an appeal to special interests more than it was a bill drafted in order to truly address the problems with health care in this country.

Yes, there are many provisions in the law that are beneficial to the American people. These include providing coverage to Americans with “pre-existing conditions,” allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plans until they are 26, and requiring insurance companies to publicly justify premium increases.

However, the law is a testament to the problems facing American governance today.

It continues the expansion of the federal government’s powers by mandating individuals to purchase health insurance, and it subsidizes big business by funneling taxpayer money and taxpayers themselves into the welcoming arms of the health insurance industry.

“I will repeal Obamacare.”

Few words carry as many negative connotations as the president’s health care plan, but in the face of vocal and often delusional critics, it’s no surprise Obamacare has turned into a dirty word.

The president’s health care plan has been criticized as everything from a socialist plot to destroy private enterprise to a conspiracy to cut costs through death panels and forced contraception.

In reality, Obamacare is a relatively benign piece of legislation that seeks to provide consumer’s protection from health insurance companies. The law helps the uninsured afford health insurance, prevents claim denials by insurers and fights discrimination based on preexisting conditions.

In fact, Obamacare is so benign that many universal health care proponents, including myself, feel while the law may be a step in the right direction, it ultimately falls far short of the universal health care system Americans need and deserve.

American citizens have a right to basic health care to better protect their inalienable right to life.

Obviously, there is no section in the Constitution or Bill of Rights that directly establishes this right, but the Founders recognized their own fallibility in the Ninth Amendment, essentially saying the rights of the people are not limited to those in our founding documents.

Citizens should enjoy a right to health care to protect their right to life in the same way they enjoy legal representation to protect their right to liberty.

If a citizen is accused of a crime and cannot afford representation, a lawyer is provided at taxpayer expense. The accused are granted representation because it provides them with the best possible chance to defend their rights to life and liberty in the face of false accusations.

Falsely imprisoning citizens unable to defend themselves for crimes they did not commit would constitute a failure of the state to protect their right to liberty because the citizens did nothing to deserve a suspension of their rights.

Similarly, citizens who require medical treatment to protect their lives from unforeseeable illness or injury deserve assistance from the state because they did nothing to put their lives in jeopardy.

A universal health care system is morally defensible under these rights, but it still faces some practical concerns.

Critics argue universal health care would hamper patient-doctor interactions and take away patients’ right to choose their doctors. In reality, a single-payer system would have minimal effects on patient-doctor interactions since a significant number of doctors are already paid through a single-payer system — Medicare.

Arguments over doctor choice also rest on the fanciful premise that patients currently enjoy the freedom to choose any doctor they want. Health insurers routinely determine the hospitals and doctors their customers can visit.

Many citizens are concerned a universal health care system would be economically unsustainable and point to the struggling Medicare system as proof. While Medicare is a single-payer system, it exclusively pays for the care of the elderly who generally have much higher health care costs than the rest of the population.

If the costs of their care were spread out over the rest of the population, costs would become much more manageable as younger citizens provide less drain on health care funds while contributing more.

“Death panels” was the Republican buzzword of the Obamacare debate, but anyone afraid of a shadowy council of accountants deciding who lives and who dies should look no further than the health insurance industry.

In 2007, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan died of complications to leukemia after Cigna, her health insurance provider, refused to cover the cost of a liver transplant her doctors estimated would give her a 65 percent chance of survival.

Obamacare and universal health care will not create death panels. They might in fact help shut down a few.

According to the HIV Surveillance Report released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 33.7 of every 100,000 people in Baton Rouge have an AIDS diagnosis.

The New Orleans area has the fifth-most number of AIDS cases, the report found.

A.J. Johnson, CEO and founder of the Baton Rouge AIDS Society, said there are several factors behind the city’s climb in AIDS rate.

Johnson said the problem is twofold — the community has a lack of awareness and a fear of talking about the issue.

He recommends that everyone supports AIDS awareness, get tested for HIV/AIDS and use condoms.

“If you’ve been sexually active and haven’t been tested, you’re part of the problem,” he said.

But Johnson said late testing is a major issue in the community. Often, Baton Rouge residents aren’t tested until they’ve become symptomatic, which is what accounts for the number of AIDS cases, according to Johnson.

Timothy Young, executive director for HIV/AIDS Alliance for Region Two (HAART), also said his organization has encountered the issue of late testing.

He said many people who are already HIV-positive go to the clinic for testing, but when they do, their disease has already progressed from HIV to AIDS.

Seirra Fowler, health promotion coordinator for the Student Health Center, said another problem is testing too early.

Fowler said a test won’t show if someone is HIV-positive until three to six months after having unprotected sex.

She said one-fifth of people with HIV/AIDS aren’t aware they’re infected.

Fowler said she hopes Baton Rouge’s No. 1 ranking will serve as a wake-up call for the community.
“I hope it scares people into getting tested,” she said.

HIV is becoming an epidemic across the South, and especially among the African-American community, Young said. Lower-income areas lacking access to adequate health care are also heavily affected, he said.

Young said he’s unsure why the black community is affected so strongly, but the CDC reports that 1 in 16 black men will be diagnosed with HIV at some point in their lives.

“The most important thing that can be done is for everyone to have an HIV test and know their status,” Young said.

Johnson said he believes other metropolitan areas have lower incidences of AIDS because of increased testing and community support.

“If you go to New York and go to the AIDS walk, you could have thousands of people outside,” he said. “But if you go to the AIDS walk in Baton Rouge, you’re gonna have enough that you can see at one time — you’re gonna have less than 50 people at that walk. So what does that say about the community?”

Though the movement often strives for simplicity in food practices, its debates hardly have narrow scope.  In one subset of food politics, health and lifestyle concerns drive efforts to change America’s “food culture” and render its defining practices more sustainable.  This has given rise to campaigns promoting gardening, composting, healthy cooking, and food literacy.  Likewise, as Americans continue to struggle against diet-related illnesses, government health experts are tasked with balancing the country’s needs for greater access to quality food (online article) and limiting unhealthy food in programs such as school lunches.  This debate is central to efforts to reform the food stamp program, where ensuring positive health outcomes is more important than ever, given that one out of every seven Americans currently uses the program.  In these instances, the food movement has stressed the importance of fostering positive relationships with healthy food.

Elsewhere, there is concern about how governments impact agricultural practices.  From subsidies in the U.S. Farm Bill to preferential trade policies for European agricultural producers in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, debate as to which crops should be supported and what effects those preferential policies have on developing foreign markets. Genetically modified crops, and their potentially controversial environmental effects, are also included in this discussion. Furthermore, political moves to support agriculture at the expense of natural resources have recently come under fire, as with the Florida Everglades.

Ultimately, moves towards sustainable, grass-grazed, cage-free, and organic foods, as well as improved food access and culture, form the backbone of the modern food movement. Still, as China’s example shows, oversight is still necessary, particularly when concerning the deceptive food-marketing tactics of corporations in the developing world.  If there is one overarching goal that everyone in the food movement agrees on, it is avoiding exporting past mistakes of the United States’ unsustainable and unhealthy food practices abroad.

Though the first American fast food restaurant only opened its doors in China in 1987, an ACNeilson survey reports that 97 percent of the Chinese population has already eaten at a fast food restaurant. With this rise in consumption of Americanized “High in Fat, Salt, and Sugar” foods in China, the childhood obesity rate has climbed approximately eight percent per year. Currently, 16 to 20 percent of Chinese urban children are considered clinically obese. This figure foreshadows a major public health crisis in the most populous nation on earth.

Childhood obesity in China is a result of the predatory tactics used by American food corporations to capitalize on the Chinese market. These corporations have driven consumption in China by advertising heavily to children and dismissing scientific criticism. According to Christine Chester of Corporate Accountability International, such strategies indicate that “Big Food is following the example set [decades ago] by Big Tobacco.” It is imperative that governments learn from the past and set policies to curb the health disaster created by the rise of fast food consumption in the developing world.

Exporting Illness: China as a “Profit Center”

In its latest financial statement, Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi remarked that, despite “challenging conditions in the North American beverage market,” Pepsico’s income has increased 18 percent over last year because they “continue to enjoy robust top-line growth in key emerging markets.” Likewise, Yum! Corporation, the owner of KFC and Pizza Hut, now makes far more profit in China than it does in the US. In the third quarter of 2010, Yum’s China sales hit $1.2 billion, up 20 percent, while US sales sunk 8 percent.

In their search for new markets, American food corporations have shifted a burden of disease from the American public onto the Chinese people as the tobacco industry did decades ago. Harvard professor Frank Hu notes that since the Chinese market opened up to American corporations, the health consequences have been staggering. In only two decades, the number of type II diabetics has grown ten fold to 95 million. Harvard professor Arthur Kleinman explains that while American corporations have increasingly “looked to China as a profit center,” in recent years, the social cost of this profit has been quite high.

Joe Camel: Advertising to Children

Using tactics similar to the tobacco industry, whose Joe Camel icon was found in a 1991 study to be recognizable by a majority of schoolchildren, American food corporations have been heavily promoting their icons in China.  Spending nearly 750 million renminbi ($119 million) to push its Colonel Sanders’ iconic image, KFC was the number two television and print ad buyer in all of China in 2008.  McDonald’s created a reality television show in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics with the help of the Chinese government that implied that the healthy children on screen were fans of McDonald’s.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has called for such ads to be banned from American television sets based on evidence that strongly links the ads to childhood obesity. In China, however, there is no such group fighting these ads and the public is largely unaccustomed to battling obesity. According to Hu, many parents still hold the traditional belief that a chubby appearance is healthy. Food corporations have seized on China’s one-child policy and the idea of China’s “little emperors.” They have urged parents to lavish their single child with food rewards.

The Marlboro Man: Encouraging Individual Freedom of Choice and Risk

But the ad blitz does not stop at children. American food corporations have also targeted the teen population by subtly promoting the old drum-line of the tobacco industry that “freedom and choice are inextricably linked.” According to Harvard professor Alan Brandt, the tobacco industry made this argument by employing the Marlboro Man, “at a time when men were wearing suits, the icon for the cigarette would become the cowboy, out on the range, by himself… which harkened to a notion of autonomy. People will tell you bad things about cigarettes, but you make your choice.” The subtlety of this message also resonates with the findings of a 2002 McDonald’s brand imaging study in China that found customers preferred McDonald’s because “you can have your own choice” and “choose freely” from the menu.

This type of advertising coincides with what Kleinman defines as the new Chinese generation’s neo-liberalist construction of the self as being “a consuming self, desiring for material goods—one of which is food.” Indeed, this young generation believes that freedom and choice in consumption are linked. A recent survey by the China Mainland Information Group of Chinese teens found that over 50 percent believe determining what they buy themselves is the most important thing about shopping. Ironically, the extent to which these teens truly make independent decisions is questionable, as 50 percent also agreed with the statement that they were generally influenced by advertising.

“Safe-Cigarettes”: Corporate Responses to Criticism

Not only have American food corporations advertised shrewdly in China, but they have also advertised in ways that are purposely deceptive, similar to how the tobacco industry misconstrued scientific revelations in the 1950s. In response to new evidence that their product caused cancer, the tobacco industry disseminated misinformation by releasing ads with doctors’ testimonials and ads claiming that “more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” Strikingly, McDonalds is now following this same pattern, generating misinformation in China about the healthiness of eating beef to encourage the Chinese to consume a meat which has never been part of their traditional diet.

According to a 2006 Modern Weekly interview with Gary Rosen, McDonald’s Marketing President in China, the company has commenced a long-term “beef education” campaign targeted at children under the slogan “Do you have enough beef?” McDonald’s invites children to join the “Beef Club” online. More disturbingly, McDonald’s has hired nutritionists to endorse the nutritious qualities of beef.  Rosen even boasts that “nutritionists in China, particularly the Ministry of Health, all publicize the need for Chinese to insert more protein in their diet.” McDonald’s has fabricated the idea that beef should be an essential dietary item. According to scientific consensus, increased red meat consumption is linked to cardiovascular disease and increased risk of mortality.

As the science became overwhelming, the tobacco industry famously circulated its “Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers” in 1954 where they, “accepted an interest in people’s health as a basic responsibility” and announced the formation of the tobacco industry Research Council. This is strikingly similar to what KFC has announced on in China as its “New Fast Food” strategy. In this flier, KFC acknowledges the “emergence of a worldwide overweight and obesity phenomenon” and announces its establishment of a “food health inquiry committee.” While KFC has added a few vegetable items to its menu, the most popular meals still include up to 1600 calories. Washington University professor Peter Benson writes that this strategy of  “acknowledgment that a problem exists” and “symbolic gestures of recompense or amelioration” are common tactics that are not intended to make a substantial difference.

Surgeon General Warning: Solving the Epidemic

Should American food corporations take responsibility themselves or are they simply giving the Chinese consumers what they want: more modern choice? As Brandt explains, the question of freedom and risk versus regulation in the marketplace is still “one of the essential debates in American political culture.” Despite this, both Republicans and Democrats have largely united against tobacco industry tactics by acknowledging the value of accurate, and non-deceptive, information to inform consumer decisions and achieve the best market outcome. The tobacco industry’s actions in the past and the food industry’s actions today deprive consumers of knowledge to make informed choices. While the food industry can continue on the path followed by the tobacco industry and create a deadly legacy in the process, the food industry can work to create real consumer freedom by removing deception and embracing scientific information. The American food corporations have urged freedom of choice. Now it is time for them to make one.

However, this is not the case for many families in low-income regions around the world. In an effort to identify methods of lowering neonatal mortality, researchers from the Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, led by Dr. Abdullah Baqui, set out to test the effect umbilical cord cleansing could have on mortality rates.

When a child is first born, umbilical cord infection can account for up to 50 percent of neonatal deaths in areas researchers call “resource-poor settings.” The umbilical cord blood vessels are exposed to the environment for several days following birth, making it a prime location for pathogens to find their way into an infant host. This is especially true in rural areas where good hygiene is difficult to maintain.

To that end, the World Health Organization recommends the best method for reducing infection in high risk locations is to keep the umbilical area clean without the application of any topical cleanser, a method called “dry cord care.” However, understanding the fact that cleanliness is not always possible, the WHO also recommends that washing with a solution of chlorohexidine can offer protection from infection for newborns.

Although the name sounds like some rare and complex molecule from your Organic Chemistry course, chlorohexidine is actually a relatively cheap and easy-to-use disinfectant found in many household products, such as mouthwash and skin cleansers. As a neonatal care product, it provides a way for lower-income regions to prevent infection and protect newborn babies. As a result, the cleaner was the focal point of study for Baqui and his team.

The work had its genesis in an early study done in Nepal where researchers found that infants who received anywhere from one to seven cord cleansings with chlorohexidine in the first 10 days of birth reduced infection of the umbilical cord area by 32 percent. Furthermore, cleansing within the first 24 hours of birth led to a 24 percent lower mortality rate.

From this, experts then raised the question “would a simpler cleaning regimen (cord cleansing only once after birth) be equally beneficial?” To answer that question, the Hopkins team went to the three sub-districts of Beanibazar, Zakiganj and Kanaighat in Bangledesh.

In total, the team broke down these rural regions into 133 random clusters which were assigned to one of three possible cleansing regimens: single cleansing with chlorohexidine immediately after birth, daily cleansing for seven days after birth and the typical dry cord care which implemented no form of antiseptic as a means of comparison.

From June 2007 to September 2009, and with the help of local community helpers, the researchers enrolled 29,760 babies in the study with 10,329 having multiple cleanings, 9,324 undergoing a single cleaning and 10,008 utilizing dry cord care. From these trials, the researchers carefully monitored child health over the course of a month, looking for any signs of umbilical cord infection.

After compiling the data and breaking down the numbers, the researchers found an interesting twist in the data. As expected, even a single cleaning with antiseptic significantly prevented mortality compared with dry cord care.

However, when comparing dry cord care with multiple cleanings, contrary to expectation, there was no significant difference in mortality rates. These results contradicted the previous study done in Nepal which showed that cleansing anywhere from one to seven days lowered infant mortality. While the study offers several possible explanations for this apparent aberration, the simple fact is that more research needs to be done in order to understand chlorohexidine’s fullest impact on neonatal mortality.

Despite the deviation in data from multiple cleanings, Baqui and his group emphasize the fact that chlorohexidine “has an excellent safety record and it is simple and inexpensive to deliver.” By increasing awareness to implement these methods of cleansing, Baqui hopes to improve neonatal survival in the places that need it most.

Although the exact cause of the disease is yet unknown, the build-up protein called Amyloid-beta (A-beta), which leads to the development of amyloid plaques, is one of the two hallmarks of the disease, the other being the abnormal tangles created by Tau protein. A-beta itself is not problematic; in fact, all human brains produce A-beta, but, in healthy individuals, enzymes break the fragments down with help from a protein

called Apolipoprotein E (ApoE).
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 5.4 million Americans are living with AD today. One in eight Americans aged 65 and over, and nearly half of people aged 85 and older have the disease. Every 69 seconds, another American develops AD. It is estimated that by 2050, approximately 16 million Americans will be suffering from AD.

AD is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and the only cause of death among the top 10 in America without a way to prevent, cure or even slow its progression. Between 2000 and 2008, mortality rates for AD increased by 66 percent, whereas the mortality rates for other major diseases, including heart diseases, decreased.

For years, scientists and doctors have searched for the cure of this disease, which has resulted in no fruitful outcomes. According to the National Institute of Health, as of 2012, more than 1,000 clinical trials have been or are being conducted to find ways to treat AD, but so far we have been able to treat only symptoms of the disease.

The results of the study were impressive; in two months old mice with Alzheimer’s-like condition, within 6 hours of administering the drug, brain interstitial fluid Aβ40 and Aβ42 levels were rapidly reduced, with 25% reduction by 24 hours. There was a 30% reduction in soluble Aβ levels throughout 14 days treatment and 40% reduction in insoluble Aβ level 72 hours post drug administration with progressive decrease over subsequent 14 days. Total Aβ plaques were reduced by nearly 75% after 14 days of treatment. Similar results were obtained in older mice, indicating that the bexarotene works efficiently in both early and later stages of AD in mouse model.

The drug rapidly restored cognition and memory, which were assessed by contextual fear conditioning. Also, mice treated with bexarotene for 90 days exhibited improved hippocampal function, which was assessed by Morris water maze performance. Furthermore, just 72 hours post treatment with bexarotene nest construction behavior was restored in mice. And finally, 9 days treatment of bexarotene significantly improved the odor habituation behavior in mice.

Ultimately, bexarotene has the potential to help more than 36 million people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease worldwide. Plus, the drug has a good safety and side-effect profile. According to the authors of the study, there is a plan to launch a clinical trial of the drug as soon as possible.

The goal of Innovega is to find a way to project complex displays, such as virtual reality and augmented reality, to someone’s eyes without the need to wear bulky headgear such as helmets. This would provide greater convenience and functionality for consumers of many different products, such as cell phones and games. Researchers claim that the displays projected on the lenses have a screen size equal to that of a 240-inch television when viewed from 10 feet away. Also, the contact lenses project a slightly different picture to each eye, which creates the illusion of 3D.

These displays would have a variety of different purposes. Mainly, they could be used in conjunction with mobile devices to give users a better look at the screen. Other applications include watching videos, playing games and creating augmented reality displays, which allow users to view computer-generated images overlaid over the real world.

Innovega researchers also hope that their device will be able to be used by the military. A few specific uses for the contact lenses in a military environment are to assist soldiers who pilot the drones looking for bombs, to help medics who need to get information about injured soldiers quickly and to aid soldiers on the ground that need unobstructed vision but also data and maps of the area.

Medically, these contact lenses could assist people with vision problems such as macular degeneration, which is a disease that compromises the retina’s ability to pick up on details. This disease affects about 10 million people in the United States.

Other researchers have also looked into contact lenses with displays. Scientists at U. Washington conducted research about putting virtual displays into contact lenses back in 2008, but could only manage to project one or two pixels and only for a short amount of time. However, they took a different approach, encapsulating LEDs inside the lens.

Innovega’s main target audience is the 100 million people who already wear contact lenses, particularly those between the ages of 18 and 34. Eventually, the designers hope that users can simply change prescriptions to Innovega’s contact lenses.

However, for those who don’t want to worry about inserting and removing contact lenses every day, researchers also plan to develop lenses that could be directly implanted into customers’ eyes. This would be performed similarly to a cataract operation, where part of the patient’s own lens is replaced with the contact lens. In addition to providing customers with all the displays that would be available on the contact lens, it would also improve the patient’s vision. This process would be useful for the vision-impaired and also for soldiers, who don’t want to have to worry about contact lenses.

The company exhibited the lenses in January at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Los Vegas. Innovega plans to put out the first prototypes of their devices throughout 2012 and 2013. This year, they are also planning to get FDA approval to manufacture the lenses commercially. The first release of the lenses will most likely be in 2014 to the defense community and those with vision problems. Eventually, in 2014 and 2015 Innovega wants to release the lenses to the general public, hopefully after reaching deals with other companies, such as gaming companies.

University endocrinologist Mary Lee Vance and University neurosurgeon Jason Sheehan treated 8-foot-3 Turk Sultan Kosen in 2010.

Kosen had previously been diagnosed with acromegaly, a disease in which the patient suffers excessive growth, caused by a pituitary tumor. The tumor spiked the amount of growth hormone Kosen’s body produced, which led to his gigantism, according to the statement.

Vance said the Discovery Channel contacted her in May 2010 and asked her to appear on one of the network’s programs, right before Kosen came to the University for treatment.

“We’re a very large center for referral for patients with pituitary gland problems,” Vance said.

Vance gave Kosen new medication designed to control the production of the growth hormone and to stop his growth in May 2010. The tumor, however, had spread into Kosen’s brain and he had to return to the Medical Center in August 2010, Vance said.

Sheehan then performed radiosurgery on Kosen using a Gamma Knife, which Vance said is a “one-time focused radiation treatment,” which halts the spread of the tumor.

“The treatments that we provided at the University of Virginia have stopped the production of his excess growth hormone and stopped the growth of the tumor itself,” Sheehan said in the statement.

Kosen currently holds the 2012 Guinness World Record for tallest man.

Binge drinking is “defined as consuming five or more drinks in a row,” according to the study.

According to a study conducted by James D. Sargent, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School, young teens who watch movies laden with alcohol advertisements are twice as likely to start drinking earlier than their peers.

Kids who see a lot of movies are twice as likely to binge drink compared with kids who do not see a lot of movies, Sargent said.

The study tested 6,522 American children, 10 to 14 years old. Each child was tested to see their personal exposure to drinking by their friends and family. The subject’s exposure to alcohol in movies was also tested.

“This study shows that exposure to movie depictions of alcohol predicts alcohol onset and progression to binge drinking during adolescence,” Sargent said.

Sargent said that alcohol is present in almost 90 percent of films.

“Movies are like influenza, only they’re a commodity,” Sargent said.

Movies made in the United States are distributed worldwide — and children in other continents are influenced in the same way as adolescents in the United States, he said.

Penn State U. senior Shelby Lordi said one of her favorite movies was “Superbad,” in which the characters’ ability to obtain alcohol made them look popular, she said.

“It makes you look like the cool kid…if you have the alcohol,” Lordi said.

At Penn State, Smeal College of Business Professor Emeritus of Marketing Marvin Goldberg researched alcohol and tobacco marketing to youth. Goldberg said when people go to movies, their guard is down — they are not expecting to see an alcohol advertisement. Movies are created reality that can influence our subconscious, he said.

He said that like alcohol, cigarette companies are also advertised in movies. Cigarette companies used to pay actors and actresses to smoke their brand, Goldberg said.

Sargent said parents should avoid any material that increases their children’s exposure to alcohol. To prevent their exposure, parents should not let their children watch adult-rated movies, he said.

But Lordi said forbidding movies with alcohol might just make children want to watch them even more.

Dr. Susanne E. Tanski, a pediatric physician and contributor to the Dartmouth Medical School study, said parents should be aware of risks associated with alcohol and media to help alleviate future problems.

Tanski said it is important to reinforce that alcohol-saturated movies are not reality. Parents should counter-advertise the message alcohol sends in movies to prevent binge drinking, she said.

After a year of research in the UW Waisman Center, ophthalmology professor David Gamm and his team were able to produce chemical retinal structures from stem cells that were derived from human blood. The research produced findings that can be used to treat patients with retinal disorders associated with blindness, Gamm said.

These findings will help scientists study degenerative diseases of the retina, such as retinitis pigmentosa, a prominent cause of blindness in children and young adults, according to a UW statement.

Gamm said the research findings were based on the ability to study stem cell composition.

“Our lab was interested in understanding the basic science behind how to take an undifferentiated stem cell and how to systematically get it to become something as specialized as a photoreceptor cell in the retina,” Gamm said.

Lead study author Joseph Phillips said in an email to The Badger Herald the research team was able to discover this by observing collections of cells from early retinal structures.

The research showed for the first time that retinal cells can be derived from blood, Gamm said. Past research in this area had only been successful by using the patient’s skin, which is more difficult to obtain than taking a blood sample, he added.

Gamm said the study also provided revolutionary evidence that human cells can be used to build primitive tissues and assemble themselves into layers, much like what is seen in the back of the eye.

According to Phillips, it is unclear whether the retinal structures will behave similarly to a real human eye. He added the human retina is highly organized and consists of several layers.

“The functions of the retina-like structures have not been directly tested yet, although our work suggests that some individual neurons may be functional,” Phillips said. “Further tests are required to determine how much these structures behave like a real human retina.”

Phillips said the next step in the lab for eye research is to uncover underlying mechanisms so that scientists can direct the process and increase their efficiency.

This technology will hopefully lead to the creation of complex retinal tissues from stem cells to help people who were previously blind see in the future, Gamm said.

According to Gamm, the lab is also interested in building better models of retinas in a dish by working with blood samples of the patients.

Gamm said when a patient provides a blood sample, it is developed into a stem cell and then engineered into retinal tissue. The method is advantageous, he added, because scientists can use the individual’s sample as a model of that particular patient’s retina in a dish to test its response to drugs, understand how the disease affects that retina and ultimately find a way to stop it.

Gamm said he ultimately hopes to use the results found by his team to help families and children combat serious eye diseases in the future.

Cameron, the wife of British Prime Minister David Cameron, was accompanying her husband on an official trip to Washington when she joined the First Lady for the celebratory student Olympics.

About 60 elementary school children played each other in tennis, basketball and soccer.

Obama showed off her own athletic skills as she walked into Bender Arena halfway through the games, picked up a tennis racket and played against a team of grinning students on the other side of the court.

“You guys know Let’s Move is about me ensuring that young people like you guys get up and get moving,” she said in a speech addressing the children. “And we want to use these Games as a way to jumpstart.”

After the student games came to an end, Obama announced that she will lead the presidential delegation to the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Olympic Games.

“I’m particularly excited that the Camerons are visiting our country this week because, as it turns out, I will be visiting their country this summer,” Obama said.

But she also said the Olympic games are not about winning – they are about commitment, determination and teamwork.

“The Games are about finding our inner strength,” Obama said. “It’s about digging down deep and finding the thing that makes you want to do more.”

She referenced Dominique Dawes, a now-retired gymnast and three-time Olympian who spent as much time in a gym as people spend at a full-time job. Obama also praised Kortney Clemons, a former combat medic who lost his leg in Iraq at age 24, who competed as a sprinter in the Paralympics.

“He didn’t let that stop him from reaching his goals, see?” she said. “And that’s the beauty of it.”

Other Olympians and Paralympians who helped lead the event included Lisa Leslie, Lori Ann Lindsey, Dan O’Brien, Becky Sauerbrunn and David Wagner.

Obama asked the children to join them in an initiative to promote Let’s Move.

“You guys are going to get some medals, but I need you to be our ambassadors,” she said. “I need you to send the word out to people in your lives and in your community about how important it is to stay active and healthy.”

Anita McBride, former Chief of Staff to First Lady Laura Bush and an AU executive in residence, said Obama has an important role in making a difference for Americans. This event is one of many examples of Obama’s ability to use her status to have the voices of her cause be heard, she said.

“It demonstrates for us the power of a first lady’s platform,” McBride said. “This is clearly something Mrs. Obama has cared about and has cared about since she has come into the role of First Lady.”

First Ladies are required to write their own job descriptions and build these around initiatives they care about.

“They really are best at it when they engage in something they really care about deeply,” she said. “Because they bring a lot of credibility and authenticity to it.”

To thank AU for allowing Obama to host the event, the First Lady presented a gift to the university’s arboretum: a seed from a famous magnolia tree on the south grounds of the White House, planted by Andrew Jackson in 1835.

“She’s bringing a seedling of one of the most important and iconic trees of the White House grounds,” McBride said.

According to HB 462 “a qualified medical professional… shall perform fetal ultrasound imaging and… fetal heart tone services on the patient undergoing the abortion” at least 24 hours before a woman has an abortion. A woman who resides more than 100 miles from a clinic can have an ultrasound just two hours before undergoing the abortion.

“In Charlottesville, women come from as far as West Virginia… around 100 miles away,” Semones said. “What’s the difference between 100 miles and 99 miles? It just makes for additional costs for childcare, lodging, [and other costs].”

Olivia Gans, president of the Virginia Society for Human Life, said mandating the ultrasound will help pregnant women make more informed decisions.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the discussion in Virginia has taken a turn that doing this procedure, which gives women more information about their bodies, [about] the state of their pregnancy, and about the development of their unborn child… all of which are completely relevant medical information,… [is bad],” Gans said. “To suggest that women shouldn’t or don’t want medical information is a bit hypocritical on the part of abortion providers.”

The bill also requires the medical professional performing the ultrasound to offer the patient a printed copy of the ultrasound image, which is then kept in the patient’s medical file for the next seven years.

“The bill’s effects will be felt in the kind of treatment women will now receive from their doctors,” University Democrats President James Schwab said. “The ultrasound requirement places Gov. McDonnell and the Republican state legislatures directly between a woman and her doctor in requiring unnecessary steps to receive legal medical services.”

Gans, however, said she felt the bill is entirely “pro-woman.”

“It is important that we not deny [a woman] information because some in the abortion industry might not want her to change her mind,” Gans said.

Tanya Semones, field coordinator for Planned Parenthood in Southwest Virginia, said she did not think the bill would affect the number of women seeking abortions.

“[These women] have already made their decision,” she said. “The bill just makes it harder for them [to execute it].”

The University’s Center for Politics spokesperson Geoff Skelley said the conservative-leaning bill reflects Republican control of both houses of the General Assembly as well as the governorship.

“You saw this at a national level in 2008 and some people thought the Democrats overreached there,” Skelley said. “[A party] does [its] best to satisfy their base and I think that’s what the Republicans were trying to do [with the ultrasound bill].”

The bill signing comes at a critical time, with McDonnell on the short list to be the Republican vice presidential candidate should Mitt Romney win the party’s presidential nomination, Skelley said.

“This complicates things for [McDonnell],” Skelley said. “Romney’s message now and in the general election is the economy… this issue will distract from that.”

Semones said protests held during this past month in response to this and other controversial bills regarding women’s rights have impacted pending legislation. In its original form, HB 462 imposed a transvaginal ultrasound requirement on women seeking abortions. The signed law instead requires an abdominal procedure. Semones said “the only reason [the ultrasound bill] was amended was because of” these protests.

More than 1,000 women and men protested the bill the first weekend of March in front of the Richmond Capitol, resulting in the arrests of 30 protestors.

“No other bill has created such backlash from the Virginia populace,” Schwab said.

Protesters from Roanoke, Richmond, Northern Virginia and Virginia Beach rallied for changes to legislation Feb. 23 for Virginia’s pro-choice day of action.

“[These rallies] were a great opportunity to engage supporters in Virginia and raise awareness about women’s health,” Semones said.

McDonnell also pushed for the transabdominal amendment to the original HB 462. Skelley said McDonnell’s changes hinted at attempts to find middle ground on the ultrasound issue.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) condemned the bill for being physically invasive and economically burdensome.

According to ACOG’s 2009 bulletin, “the use of either two-dimensional or three-dimensional ultrasonography only to view the fetus, obtain a picture of the fetus, or determine the fetal sex without a medical indication is inappropriate and contrary to responsible medical practice.”

Under these standards, an ultrasound must only be performed if there is a valid medical indication.

Because McDonnell had expressed support for the bill and his legislative record implied agreement, Skelley said the Republican Party’s control of the General Assembly made the bill’s passage almost inevitable.

“[McDonnell] had previously co-sponsored legislation in this realm,” Skelley said. To lessen the shock value, however, “we did see him hesitate for a moment and have [lawmakers] make it a less aggressive bill.”

Well, if you live in one of the thirty-three states that currently taxes soft drinks at a mean rate of 5.2 percent, you probably don’t mind too much. The tax rate is too low to deter consumers from buying soft drinks, which are a cause for international health concern.

It is common knowledge that obesity has become an epidemic in recent years, with approximately 12.5 million children and adolescents classifying as obese. But what effect has sugary drinks had on this figure? Is the harm significant enough to create a heavy tax? From a public health perspective, the answer is clearly yes.

More studies are emerging around the world on the effects of sugar on the body. While the term “sugar high” is loosely used in common culture, it actually may not be too far from the truth. One study conducted by Oxford U. in 2007 examined how rats react when exposed to water sweetened with saccharin and intravenous cocaine. The rats were given both substances with increasing doses of cocaine to the point of addiction. The study found that a shocking 94 percent of the rats preferred the taste of the sweetened water as opposed to the cocaine. This clearly displayed the addictive potential of intense sweetness.

As if the higher sugar consumption isn’t bad enough, it is correlated with a significant decrease in milk consumption. Rates of heart disease and diabetes have also increased in a similar pattern to the sugary beverage line. The influence of media, targeted advertising, availability and the relatively low cost of sugar drinks have all added to the tempting trend to switch out healthier alternatives for less expensive ones. But what if drinking healthier was more cost efficient?

If a tax of one cent per ounce is placed on sugary drinks, the state of Maryland alone would generate about $243,933,134 if people still decided to buy the products, according to calculations from the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The kind of revenue gained could be used to create access to healthy beverages and foods in socioeconomically challenged areas where obesity-related illnesses run rampant due to a lack of affordable food choices. Over time, people won’t feel the need to spend extra money for sugary beverages when healthier, more affordable alternatives exist. This could very well create a domino effect for positive healthy lifestyle changes and reduced incidence of disease.

Having an occasional soft drink will not pose a threat to your health, but, when thinking of the accumulative results displayed by the Oxford rat study, it is easy to make a small treat turn into an unhealthy habit. A sugar tax seems to be the most viable solution to help stimulate lasting changes that will make people think twice before taking a sip of that soda.

Wellenius and his team retrieved the medical records of 1,705 patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston hospitalized with ischemic stroke ­— a condition often caused by the blockage of an artery to the brain ­— and compared the timing of the onset of their symptoms with air pollution values.

Previous studies had used the date of hospital admission rather than timing the onset of symptoms, a methodology more ‘prone to error’ as half of patients had their strokes on a different calendar day than the date of their hospitalization, Wellenius said.

Boston was ‘always in compliance with federal standards’ for air pollution during the study, Wellenius said, and yet the team found a 34 percent higher risk of stroke on days with ‘moderate’ levels of pollution, as compared to ‘good’ days.

Pollution, as defined by the EPA, includes measurements of ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, as well as different size fractions of particles and lead, though this last component is not as prevalent since it ceased to be present in gasoline.

‘At levels that the EPA considers to be generally safe, we’re seeing a large increase in rate of stroke, which suggests that the EPA may not be adequately protecting the public,’ Wellenius said. ‘This really is a public health problem.’ Wellenius offered the tightening of regulations as a potential solution.

‘I certainly can imagine where air quality will affect all sorts of things health-wise,’ said Elaine Jones, who specializes in stroke at Roger Williams Medical Center. ‘Why there should be a direct effect on strokes is a little surprising to me.’

Even though the study suggests a correlation between air quality and stroke risk, there may not be a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the two, Jones said.

‘In science, you can have things that appear to be related but have nothing to do with each other,’ she continued. ‘On days of poor air quality, perhaps people will eat differently, you know?’

Jones added she would not change her patients’ care or public policy based on Wellenius’s study.

Wellenius’ next goal is to replicate his findings in different cities across the country, as they may have different health risks. ‘Pollution mixtures change in different cities,’ he said. ‘So the pollution in (Los Angeles) is very different from the pollution in Boston.’

Government intervention should occur to “prevent the spread of a potential epidemic of food disorders,” according to a discussion paper that proposed an economic model of eating disorders.

Anorexia nervosa affects women between 15 and 34 and is usually socially induced, according to the paper, published by The London School of Economics and Political Science.

“The distorted self-perception of women with food disorders and the importance or the peer effects may prompt governments to take action to influence role models and compensate for social pressure on women driving the trade-off between ideal weight and health,” according to the paper.

Dr. Alison Field, an associate in medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston, said women need to look at weight as a health issue rather than an issue on body perception.

“We want people to be thoughtful enough to be active and diet, but not overly focused,” Field said. “Women need to look not just at the scale, but look at all the other wonderful attributes they have.”

Elizabeth Saviteer, program coordinator for the National Eating Disorders Association, said it is important to keep in mind that beauty is subjective.

“Women need to learn to appreciate to the diversity of body shapes and sizes as well as accept their own body image,” Saviteer said. “They need to appreciate what the body can do as well as what it looks like.”

Saviteer said numerous studies have shown unrealistic body images in the media affect self-esteem and can lead to dieting.

“The ideal figure has certainly got much thinner, as well as our body dissatisfaction,” she said.

The media is one of the factors that affect how people see themselves, according to the paper.

“The ‘ideal’ body image portrayed by the media influences social interaction and this may in turn make it more dominant,” according to the paper. “This circularity only makes the power of social interactions in shaping people’s self-identity more extreme.”

The Council of Fashion Designers of America recently released a set of rules and regulations for models to encourage healthy eating and dieting habits in the industry.

Saviteer said NEDA supports the CFDA’s new guidelines for models, but eating disorder screenings should be required for minors in the industry.

NEDA is working with the organization “Off Our Chests!,” a women’s magazine that promotes happiness for women and girls.

Saviteer said they are working to get disclosure on images in the media saying the images have been digitally altered.

“Photoshop has a negative impact on body image and self esteem,” Saviteer said.

Field said the media should not use these thin models and eating disorders should not be glorified.

“Wherever we are we’re reminded of this perfect image,” Field said. “At the grocery store, the tabloids say ‘Perfect Bikini’ or ‘Best Dress.’”

More than 90 percent of people with anorexia nervosa are female, according to the American Psychiatric Association.

Katie Heimer, the community and education coordinator at the Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association, Inc., said there are more people across society struggling with eating disorders, but it might be too much to say the media is the sole cause.

“Media is definitely one factor, but if someone is dealing with other emotional issues, media is an extra burden or strain,” Heimer said.

Heimer, however, said there needs to be more done about advertiser claims. The misleading nature of airbrushing photographs is false advertising, she said.

“Real human beings have flaws, little imperfections, and it is easy to forget that is the case when there are these images,” Heimer said.

Anorexia and bulimia affect between 5 and 10 million women and about 1 million men, Heimer said.

“I think a huge key is media literacy,” Heimer said. “It’s really important to teach children from an early age to be aware of media images because it’s hard to detect if you’re not consciously looking at it.”

Boston U. College of Communication sophomore Kelsey Mulvey, who has a fashion blog called “The Trendologist,” said she was not surprised that people would demand change considering the super skinny model image.

“I definitely think there should be some regulation to just how healthy [the models] should be,” Mulvey said. “I don’t think fashion industry is fully to blame. It’s not just models, but Photoshop, and celebrities and Hollywood. Everyone has to change.”

Mulvey said the aspect of having “no curves” offers a “blank slate” for designers.

No matter what, models are going to be underweight because they portray a certain look, she said.

“I feel like in generations to come there might be a change in image.” Mulvey said. “But now, the whole idea of being super skinny will haunt us.”

“Students are paying to go to college to get a job in the future and hopefully also to learn material that will help with their careers,” said David Lawrance, medical director of McKinley Health Center at U. Illinois.

Though cramming a semester’s worth of material might provide a student with a passing grade, long-term memory will suffer. Lawrance explained that while short-term retention can be achieved through this technique, remembering information later that day — and more importantly, in the future — can be difficult. Sleep is necessary for long-term memory retention.

Andrew Groll, UI senior in Engineering, knows what it’s like to pull an ‘all-nighter,’ as it has become a weekly routine for him.

“There aren’t enough hours in a day so it’s a necessity at times,” Groll said.

Groll keeps busy with two research positions, writing for a publication and volunteering, not to mention classes and homework. He does what he feels is necessary in order to get everything done.

“I’ve been up for 72 hours straight before and after a period like that I tend to crash for 10 or 12 hours,” he said.

This extreme lack of sleep causes lack of focus which can sometimes lead to unnecessary mistakes.

“Sometimes I add an extra zero somewhere it shouldn’t be and not have the opportunity to check my work, and I’ll find out I lost two or three points (which is) really frustrating,” Groll said.

Sleep deprivation will not only affect the memory and concentration, but can also physically affect someone.

“In limited quantities, (cramming) might seem helpful, but it will take a toll on physical well-being if not emotional and mental well-being as well,” said Jennifer Carson, health educator at McKinley Health Center.

Losing sleep can cause immunosuppressive symptoms, meaning the immune system is weakened and sickness is much more likely. Carson explained that the effects of sleep deprivation may not appear immediately, but will build up and cause the body to crash. Groll has experience with this.

“There have been times where I’ll come back from school and it’ll all hit me at once and I’ll get extremely sick,” he said.

Carson said that when stress causes us to forget about taking care of our bodies, our entire well-being can be affected.

“It’s easy to neglect our personal needs when we’re feeling stressed and some of those needs are sleep, eating well enough and physical activity,” Carson said.

One thing students often forget to monitor is their caffeine intake. Lawrance stated that students sometimes visit McKinley because of the effects of sleep deprivation on their bodies. Copious amounts of caffeine can cause fogginess, disorientation and even hallucinations.

Lawrance said that coffee may be healthy in small amounts, but is concerned with students’ reliance on substances to keep them awake.
“Caffeine is taxing on the cardiovascular system because it’s a stimulant,” Lawrance said.

Years of excessive caffeine use can lead to serious repercussions like strokes and heart attacks.

It takes effort to get back to a normal sleep-cycle and the longer a student stays awake, the greater adjustment their body has to make. Carson said it’s vital that students establish regular sleep schedules and in order to do that, they can take advantage of the resources Mckinley and other University outlets have to offer.

“Being able to get back on track when we need to is important,” Carson said.

The U.S. is becoming significantly more sleep deprived as a nation, according to Psychology Today. It’s probably safe to say that college students only add to this problem.

But like the convergent thinkers we were taught to be, give us a problem and we’ll find a solution. The solution for our sleep deprivation takes us back to the 1990s and the floors of our kindergarten classrooms. I’m talking about the classic midday nap.

Everyone has probably heard from some source or another that naps are good for you. Or they just assume a quick snooze is beneficial because they feel better afterward. But is this really true?

According to the Mayo Clinic’s website, naps can increase relaxation and alertness, improve mood and cognitive performance and reduce fatigue. That’s quite the list of accolades for 10 to 30 minutes of shut-eye.

Sleeping does more than just rest our bodies and minds; it also clears out a region of the brain called the hippocampus, making room for the formation of new memories. The hippocampus is responsible for temporarily storing fact-based memories before other regions of the brain can process the information, according to Psychology Today.

Getting enough sleep can also positively affect the immune system and metabolic rates that help keep you healthy.

Experts agree, though, that while napping has its benefits, it can’t make up for a sleep deficit. One doctor, JoAnn Manson of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, never recommends naps for healthy young adults.

Manson told Glamour Magazine that most studies which suggest benefits of naps are performed on sleep-deprived subjects like astronauts. Instead, Manson encourages healthy, young subjects to refresh by taking a walk or simply getting more sleep each night.

When I read this article, I was actually upset: Here’s a professional doctor telling me that naps are not the answer. That’s like telling young children not to ask “why.” Naps are just a part of my lifestyle.

I represent the tiny fraction of college students who go to bed before midnight and wake up before 9 a.m. But still, every day I crave a nap. Most mornings, the only thing that gets me out of bed is telling myself that I can get back in later.

College students nap for many different reasons. I’m going to go ahead and assume most of us don’t lay our heads down thinking, “I better sleep so my hippocampus can empty.”

No, we nap because we were up all hours of the morning the night before studying. (Or most likely doing anything but studying.) We also nap to procrastinate on school work. Convincing yourself that you’re doing something beneficial for your learning while simultaneously not studying is like the golden ticket. Finally, we nap as a form of luxury and self-indulgence. Better yet, it’s free — if you don’t count the time you spend doing it.

Do what works best for you. Maybe naps make you drowsy (try cutting it down to less than half an hour, before you get into the deep, rapid eye movement cycle). Or maybe exercising and caffeine does the trick.

To be honest, it doesn’t matter how many doctors tell me taking a 20-minute walk would have more rejuvenating benefits than 20 minutes of sleep. We work hard, and we deserve to nap.

The study began in 2000 as a survey of teens in northern New England, according to James Sargent, a pediatrics professor at Dartmouth Medical School and one of the leading authors of the study.

“The thing that’s striking about our research is how strong the data is across studies and across study designs,” Sargent said.

The study — which surveyed 6,500 participants between the ages of 10 and 14 in the U.S. — regularly quizzed adolescents over a two-year period about levels of alcohol consumption and potential sources of influence, including movies and marketing, home environment, peer pressure and personal rebellion.

The study’s authors randomly selected 50 movies from the top 100 U.S. box office hits in each of the past five years, as well as 32 films that had grossed more than $15 million in the first quarter of 2003, the survey’s first year, according to DHMC’s website.

Coders charted the number of seconds of on-screen alcohol use in each of these movies, as well as alcoholic beverage product placement. The researchers found that the adolescents had viewed approximately 4.5 hours of on-screen alcohol use on average, with many viewing more than eight hours.

The participants who had been exposed to the most on-screen alcohol use were twice as likely as their peers to begin drinking, according to the study. They were also 63 percent more likely to progress to binge drinking.

Product placement in films plays a large role in motivating teens to drink, according to the study.

While product placement for cigarettes has been forbidden in the U.S., it is “legal and commonplace” for alcohol companies to promote their products in films, the study says. Drinking scenes, however, should be subjected to the same scrutiny as cigarette product placement, according to the study’s authors.

Dartmouth psychology professor Todd Heatherton said the researchers’ findings reflect the intentions of marketing, built on the premise that the portrayal of certain behaviors can influence consumers.

“I do think it’s very interesting, though, and a little bit scary, for parents especially to know how much the media can affect a child’s behavior,” Heatherton said.

In addition to documenting the effects of on-screen alcohol consumption, researchers found that teens with friends who drank, felt the need to rebel or owned branded merchandise featuring the name of a beer, wine or spirit company were also more likely to begin drinking and then progress to binge drinking.

The study’s authors also found that parent drinking habits and availability of alcohol in the home were motivators for teens to drink, but did not necessarily cause them to progress to binge drinking.

Students interviewed by The Dartmouth said the results of the study were compelling.

“I think growing up and seeing parents have a glass of wine at dinner encourages kids to have an image of alcohol that leads them to think of drinking as something to be done in an adult, composed situation,” Bridget Shaia said.

Shaia said the results of the study are not surprising given the “powerful” role television and movies can play on influencing young people’s decisions.

The study was published on Feb. 20 in the online medical journal BMJ Open.

Researchers of the U. Kansas Medical Center have a non-hormonal contraceptive pill for men in the works. Joseph Tash, reproductive biologist at the center, said he began his studies in the late 1960s after noticing how all reproductive responsibility fell upon the female.

“I felt it was one-sided, and if I could do something to develop a male pill that would help the situation I would,” Tash said. “I’ve been working on it since.”

During the past 10 years, Tash and his research team have been experimenting with a pill that could potentially change the role of contraceptives.

“We are targeting a variety of different aspects of male reproduction that ultimately prevent the sperm from either getting to the egg or being produced, period,” Tash said.

This method employs the use of H2-gamendazole, a compound that stops sperm from developing in the testes. Derived from an anticancer drug, Tash said gamendazole prevents mature, competent sperm from ever producing.

The new drug development has no effects on the male’s hormonal system, which is dissimilar than that of the female birth control pill. The female pill uses hormones to prevent ovulation; tricking the brain into thinking it had already ovulated, thus turning off egg production.

There have been attempts with hormonal methods for men, but unlike women, shutting down the reproductive system is a little more complicated. While women make one egg each month, men produce about 1,000 sperm every second, said Ajay Nangia, urologist at the center and researcher alongside Tash.

“It’s a much more defined hormonal cycle that can be targeted,” Nangia said.

But giving men testosterone, like giving women estrogen and progesterone, is not as effective as one would think, Nangia said. Some men’s hormones shut down more readily than others, a factor that could be attributed to race. Researchers are unsure of why.

“The hormones that are used effect more than just the production of sperm or eggs, and this is where the side effect issues can become problematic with the hormonal approach,” Tash said. “You’re affecting more systems than just the sperm in the testes.”

But because gamendazole only targets later stages of sperm production, the pill would act as a quicker and safer method than that of a hormonal contraceptive. This also means there are minimal side effects.

Should such a pill hit supermarket shelves, will men actually take it?

Evan Hall, Kansas State U. senior in fine arts, said he’s not sure if he likes the idea of a male birth control method, but he would not completely rule out using the contraceptive.

“I think birth control is for women,” he said. “But if I wanted to be absolutely certain I wouldn’t get a girl pregnant, I would use it.”

Nangia conducted a study of around 300 people in the Kansas City area to gauge social acceptability of a male contraceptive. What he found is that peoples’ responses were dependent on the stage in their life and stability within relationships.

“Ninety-plus percent of both men and women agree that it’s a joint responsibility,” Nangia said. “It’s the responsibility that women have felt all along; that they need to take control and take charge but they have other issues that they also, both male and females in their college years, have to be considerate of, which is STD prevention.”

Jordan Louis, KSU junior in elementary education, said a new birth control method for men takes away built-up pressure for women. Too often, she said, guys blame the female if their birth control fails. Now, men will be held equally responsible.

Such a pill is required to hold promise for being safe, effective and, also importantly, reversible. The center has begun its discussions with the Food and Drug Administration and is currently in pre-clinical status. However, Tash said he is ready to approach them regarding what additional studies need to be completed before human trials.

“It has to be very effective,” Nangia said. “One hundred percent if at all possible; 100 percent reversible and no side effects. That’s a high bar to aim for.”

Safety is the main factor in if the FDA will grant human trials. As of now, Tash is ready to present his extensive safety data, but additional safety tests will ultimately be required to determine any possible side effects.

The amount of time it will take for gamendazole to complete all phases will be determined by the administration. However, Tash said he hopes that the research between the center and the department of urology will lead to human clinical trials within the next few years.

All of these schools have been impacted by shootings in some shape or form, and were of different magnitudes, fatalities and motives. But all of them centered around violence and issues that adolescents might face every day.

The most recent being the shooting at Chardon High School near Cleveland, Ohio, Monday morning. The shooting left three students dead and two injured, but in stable condition. The alleged gunman, Thomas Lane, 17, began shooting in the cafeteria and was later chased out of the school. He later turned himself in and is in custody, according to multiple reports.

Multiple news reports suggest Lane was bullied and that could have been one of several possible motives.

Dr. Deanna Wilkinson, an associate professor in the Ohio State U. Department of Human Development and Family Science, highlighted that reports of bullying being at the root of the shooting are not substantiated.

“It looks more like it’s a mental health, depression issue more so than bullying being a major part of it,” Wilkinson said.

Because bullying in schools has received more media attention recently, it might be easy to jump to the issue while overlooking other important aspects, said Mollie Blackburn, an associate professor in the OSU College of Education and Human Ecology.

“Everyone is anti-bullying,” said Blackburn, who has taught anti-bullying classes in Columbus City schools. “I worry that when people jump to the cause of bullying that they jump past a lot of the other things that are part of the dynamic.”

Blackburn said it’s important to understand bullying is not just between a bully and a victim.

“It’s a bullying dynamic, and it sounds like it’s a situation as well where somebody who has been bullied also bullies other people,” Blackburn said.

Wilkinson said she heard Lane wrote a Facebook post prior to the shooting that could have been a warning sign, but said teens will often post things and not always mean it.

“Social media plays a huge part in the roles of adolescents,” Wilkinson said. “But what we can do with that, is use that information to prevent stuff … We certainly need to use our resources to work on the other end of dealing with the underlying issues that are causing someone to feel so emotionally distraught to do something like this.”

Monitoring social media accounts in high schools could be difficult, Wilkinson said, but more action needs to be taken to prevent similar incidents in the future.

“I think we could build a system that would protect us 100 percent from things like this happening again,” Wilkinson said. “I think that we can certainly do a better job of providing the support, paying attention to the seriousness of depression and looking into warning signs around those issues.”

Part of Wilkinson’s research deals with what people think when they are armed and angry. Any social media posts Lane might or might not have written would indicate premeditation, but Wilkinson said this is rarely the case in such a situation.

“What I’ve found is that there is very little premeditation,” Wilkinson said. “What is more common is for the violence to sort of emerge out of the situation. The premeditation may be that they carry the gun around and they’re armed, and they put themselves in these situations but whether or not they actually use the gun in a conflict situation has a whole lot more to do with who else is there, what’s the nature of the grievance, are they drunk or high, there’s all these other factors that come into play.”

According to multiple reports on Tuesday, Lane did not know the victims and chose them at random. In court Tuesday, Lane admitted to firing 10 shots at CHS and will be held until charged; prosecutors have until March 1 to charge him, according to multiple reports.

Considering Lane turned himself in after the shooting, Wilkinson said it’s difficult to rationalize such a situation.

“Whether you’re a victim or a perpetrator of crime, your brain and your body gives off chemicals as you’re going through that moment that you can’t actually predict what you’re going to do in that situation,” Wilkinson said.

While the shooting has received international attention, Wilkinson said she does not believe the media surrounding it will spark copy-cat events.

“If you’re suffering from mental illness, and then all of a sudden your famous for a minute and you’re a household name … for some people who really are troubled, that’s an attractive, appealing thing,” Wilkinson said. “But I think that the fact they are suffering so much, it’s not worth it.”

Kevin Jackson, a third-year in strategic communication, said he wishes more could be done to prevent shootings.

“My first reaction was that it’s a shame that after all the past school shootings, someone hasn’t figured out a way to be more aware of kids that may be struggling emotionally,” Jackson said.

The key to prevention is paying more attention, Wilkinson said.

“I think we can do a better job of paying attention to depression, paying attention to just how difficult it can be to be an adolescent when your parents don’t have their lives together,” Wilkinson said.

The issue of concealed carry laws was called into question, but Wilkinson said she doesn’t think different gun laws would have prevented the incident.

“I think that whatever he had in his mind, he was already moving down that,” Wilkinson said. “I don’t think the implication of this is we need more concealed carry. I think that we need more services for mental health issues.”

One of the victims of the shooting, 16-year-old Daniel Parmertor, died Monday morning. Russell King Jr., 17, was pronounced brain dead Monday and later died. Demetrius Hewlin, 16, was the third student victim to die from the shooting, according to MetroHealth Medical Center.

Bianca Mandato, 18, was at school during the shooting and while she did not witness the incident, she said she is good friends with one of the victims who is still in the hospital.

“He (the victim) was just somebody who you never thought that this would happen to,” Mandato said. “It’s heartbreaking … it came out of nowhere ya know, out of the blue. It’s almost like a nightmare I keep trying to wake up from but I can’t.”

Ritika Shah contributed to this story.

After studying an experiment in which a chip was implanted into a woman significantly increased her sex drive, Oxford U. Senior Fellow Morten Kringelbach started researching the orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain behind the eyes that derives pleasure from activities such as eating and sex. He eventually found that the orbitofrontal cortex could be a “new stimulation target” for those who suffer from anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure from events that would normally induce it. A small, surgically implanted chip could help those suffering from the condition, and Tipu Aziz, Kringelbach’s colleague and a professor of neurosurgery at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, has stated that he has high hopes for the technological development becoming an accessible reality during the next decade.

Implanting such a sex chip requires connecting a wire from a heart pacemaker to the brain. Although Aziz said the procedure is “intrusive and crude,” future scientists may have the ability to create a chip that would be controlled by a handheld device. It could have great implications for therapy, helping those who normally cannot experience pleasure without this form of outside stimulation, he said in The Sunday Times, a British newspaper.

Belinda Overstreet, counseling and psychological services psychologist at U. Virginia’s Student Health Center, also said she believes such a device could be effective in terms of therapy. “If [the device] is used for someone who is having sexual problems because of illness or injury, I think it could be helpful as long as it is something people in a relationship are talking about, is included in discussions of what is problematic in the relationship and how this would be an improvement,” she said, noting that the possibility for chip implant abuse exists.

The chip also has made its way to the United States, albeit by accident. In North Carolina, Dr. Stuart Meloy recently has been developing a chip he trademarked the “Orgasmatron,” mimicking the fictional machine in Woody Allen’s 1973 comedy “Sleeper.” According to the Los Angeles Times, Meloy made his discovery when he inadvertently implanted electrodes into the incorrect position on a patient’s spine for a pain in her leg — and she suddenly had an orgasm.

Meloy’s study, published in the Journal of the Neuromodulation Society, followed the implantation of a chip approved for bladder control in 11 different women, some of whom have never had an orgasm.

In this study, two electrodes were placed between the women’s spines and the vertebrae. With handheld remotes, the women controlled varying degrees of electronic pulsing that stimulated a variety of nerve networks, particularly nerves near the pelvis that enter the spinal cord via the tailbone.

The device was able to sexually stimulate 10 of the 11 women. Four out of five women who had never had an orgasm received some pleasurable stimulus from the chip but were still unable to oragasm. The fifth woman did not use the device because of work-related stress, she said. Meloy speculated that perhaps the women could not orgasm because the foundations required for having an orgasm were not there in the first place. Similarly, those who had regained their ability to orgasm lost it again without the chip, he told the Los Angeles Times.

Men, who had experienced erectile dysfunction in the past, also participated in the study. They not only had the ability to maintain an erection, but also experienced a powerful ejaculation, according to Meloy’s report. Meloy said these results, paired with the results from the women who were having trouble achieving an orgasm, suggest that these types of implanted devices have the potential to rehabilitate those who physically cannot experience pleasure, supporting Aziz’s claim about such a device’s potential for therapy.

Meloy’s procedure, which he said he believes could be approved by the Food and Drug Administration in two or three years, would cost about $12,000 for those who would want such a device for nonmedicinal purposes.

Overstreet said she is not too worried about the chip detracting from the emotional aspect of relationships, especially if used as directed.

“If it’s hedonistic and not with the desire to do something helpful for the relationship then I don’t think it’s any different than casual sex,” Overstreet said. “There isn’t a desire to build a relationship from that.”

It comes as no surprise that the introduction of the philosophical concept of predetermination into the physical realm — in the sense of being able to generate orgasms almost at will — could create controversy. While some may encourage this type of sexual research for positive rehabilitation, correction or therapy, others may be wary of the potential for abuse, both physically and emotionally.

For ten years, researchers from U. Miami and Columbia U. followed about 2,500 New Yorkers who were over age 40 and had never had a stroke before the study.

The participants declared their soda-drinking habits before the study, and researchers contacted the participants about changes in their health each year. The participants who drank diet soda daily were most likely to experience a stroke or heart attack than the other participants.

The study that was published Jan. 27 showed that daily diet soda consumption was associated with more vascular risk factors.

The vascular risk factors are linked to metabolic syndrome. U. Kentucky HealthCare cardiologist Alison Bailey described metabolic syndrome as a “constellation of everything bad.”

Metabolic syndrome includes high blood pressure, obesity, low HDL (heart protective) cholesterol, high triglycerides (fat) and high glucose.

“We know that your risk in developing cardiovascular disease over your lifetime is related to the number of risk factors you have,” Bailey said. “All of these things are risk factors.”

Bailey said it’s unknown whether something in the soda causes the risks or if people who drink more soda have unhealthy lifestyles. She said she believes it’s a combination of both.

“A lot of people will have a high-fat meal, or high-calorie meal, and grab a diet soda and think it equals out,” she said.

Bailey said some studies show that diet soda’s artificial sweeteners, which taste sweeter than sugar, can lead to more sugar cravings. She said when people eat sugar, they tend to eat more of it because it takes more sugar from other sources to satisfy the brain.

Bailey quit drinking diet soda a year and a half ago and lost ten pounds without changing any other habits. She said she doesn’t crave sweets as much and feels healthier.

Keith Parrott, a UK junior, said he drinks about three diet sodas daily and often craves sugar.

“Not having that extra sugar makes you want to get more sugar from another source,” Parrott said. “I could see where it would make you want to drink regular pop or eat chocolate cake or something like that.”

Amanda Kirby, a UK freshman, said she quit drinking soda for seven months. After having just one, she started drinking it again.

“I just drank one and then I just couldn’t stop,” she said. “They’re really good, but I just know they’re bad for you.”

She quit drinking soda again in January and said she can see a difference in weight.

“Whenever I drink more soda, I just don’t feel like exercising,” Kirby said. “I don’t feel like doing anything.”

She said she feels better and makes healthier choices overall when she doesn’t drink soda.

Bailey said if diet soda can’t be proven bad, it definitely can’t be proven good. She said water is the best choice.

However, Bailey said completely giving up soda might not be necessary.

“Moderation is key to everything in life,” she said. “I think if you drink one diet soda a week or one regular soda a week, you’ll be fine.”

Bailey said maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly, avoiding cigarette smoke and eating a healthy diet – vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean protein sources – is how to have a healthy heart.

In a study published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, a group of psychologists recruited 57 people who were clinically afraid of spiders to interact five times with tarantulas, which were in uncovered glass tanks. Participants were asked how afraid they were on a scale from 0 to 100 after standing 12 feet away from the spiders and after touching the spider with an 8-inch or shorter probe.

Afterward, they were taken away from the tarantulas and asked to draw a line on a sheet of paper representing how big they thought the tarantula was.

“Some people drew lines up to two times as big as the spider was,” said Michael Vilensky, co-author of the study and graduate student researcher at Ohio State U. “The average fearful person did not overestimate the size of the spider, but the very fearful did.”

He said the new research shows there may be a link between the parts of the brain that control visual connection and the parts that control fear and anxiety.

“When you start feeling afraid, that fear system starts talking to your visual perception. It is telling the brain to get away from there,” he said.

U. Oregon psychology professor Paul Dassonville said the study is similar to previous research that found people who are afraid of heights tend to overestimate the height of a balcony.

“It’s not surprising that our emotions affect our perceptions,” Dassonville said. “People have the general perception that when they look at the world, they see it how it is, but that’s been proven not to be true.”

He cited other studies that have found people overestimate the steepness of a hill depending on how tired they feel. With the new research on phobias, he said psychologists are finding more about how the brain can be fooled by context.

Vilensky said his team has already conducted follow-up studies; in one study, researchers found that people overestimated the size of a spider even while they were looking at it. He also said that fear made people overestimate the size of other objects, such as a block or a plastic flower.

“When someone’s afraid, it’s almost like this magnification effect happens, and they start seeing things differently,” he said.

Commonly known cosmetic companies listed with the highest amount of lead concentration found in their lipsticks include L’Oreal, Maybelline and Cover Girl. Color Sensation lipstick in Pink Petal by Maybelline contains the highest amount, with 7.19 parts per million, or .0007 percent. The average of all 400 shades found to contain lead in the study was 1.11 parts per million.

“I feel that a lot of girls use makeup and if they found out what was inside the stuff they are using, they might back up and think about what they put on their face,” said Sylvia Yakoo, a U. Arizona biochemistry freshman.

Rules for cosmetic safety are regulated under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Cosmetic products have to be pre-approved by the FDA if they are using any color additives like those found in lipsticks. Though the FDA has set specifications for lead in color additives to no more than 20 parts per million, or .002 percent in a single product, there is no set limit for the amount of lead that can be found in cosmetics.

“It’s kind of surprising to me they still put lead in lipstick,” said Ronald Wysocki, an assistant staff scientist for chemistry and biochemistry labs at UA. “The FDA must have to keep close tabs on these products.”

Reports finding lead in lipstick are nothing new. Commercial labratory testing in the 1990s suggested lead found in lipstick might be a health concern, and in 2007, the FDA tested a small selection of 33 popular lipsticks, concluding that 61 percent contained lead.

When Kitty Martinez, customer service supervisor for the UofA Bookstore and buyer for the store’s Clinique counter, found out about the FDA’s study, she contacted the office of global communications for Estée Lauder Companies to see if any of the products available at the bookstore have lead. The company confirmed that none of Clinique’s current products contain lead.

“Clinique provides training tools for their counter representatives to speak intelligently about the products they sell,” Martinez said in a statement.

In addition to training cosmetic counter employees about the products they carry in the bookstore, Clinique also provides them with extra training where they explain the components of each of their products.

“I think it is the responsibility of companies to let people know what they put in their products,” said Jessica Haap, a psychology sophomore. “Especially if there are reported side effects, there needs to be some type of warning at least.”

Exposure to lead over months or years can cause lead poisoning, which affects a person’s nervous system and organ function. High lead exposure can especially be harmful to children and pregnant women due to potential effects on brain development, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not identified a safe lead level in blood. Because of this, the center recommends that people should avoid places and products that contain high concentrations of lead, such as lead-based paints, which were discontinued in the 1970s.

After the lipstick study was released, FDA researchers said none of the amounts of lead detected posed a safety risk to consumers.

“I think the FDA had made a pretty good case that it is safe,” Wysocki said. “They tend to be very conservative in these decisions and because of that, I feel pretty comfortable.”

Since the study, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics said the FDA should set a limit to the amount of lead found in cosmetics. But until a lead limit can be decided and approved by the FDA, it will be up to the makeup companies to decide if they will continue carrying these products.

Snyder was not describing a frat house on a Saturday night or the mad dash for the ladies’ room during the intermission of a lengthy play. Instead, he was talking about his study, which took one afternoon, cost less than $2 and ultimately won him and his team a 2012 MSNBC Weird Science award. The study also caught the eye of the team of Nobel Laureates who determined the winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes, designed to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think,” according to their website.

Snyder’s research showed that the painful need to urinate causes levels of cognitive deterioration on par with staying awake for 24 consecutive hours or having a blood alcohol content level of 0.05, just shy of the legal limit for driving.

But Snyder did not set out to determine the effects of a full bladder. In order to test the effects of drugs on people’s mental capabilities, Snyder’s team was trying to design cognitive tests that would resist the “practice effect” — the improvement that subjects show after being tested multiple times in the same day.

But a test that avoids the practice effect still must be able to measure small changes in cognitive performance.

Using pain to affect cognition is an old idea, Snyder said, but his team was the first to ask people to withhold their urine. Snyder and his colleague, Paul Maruff, came up with this idea after realizing that “the urge to void” is not only painful but is also easily relieved and cheap, Snyder said. The entire study cost around $1.25, far less than the thousands of dollars his usual brain-imaging research requires.

Snyder and his team ran the study on eight individuals, who each drank 250 milliliters of water every 15 minutes until they reached their “breaking point,” where they could no longer hold their urine. As subjects’ self-reported pain levels increased, so too did their levels of cognitive impairment as measured by simple tasks on the computer that tested attention and working memory.

Snyder said the results reflect the anatomical organization of the underlying neural networks that are involved in modulating pain and sustaining concentration — two networks he said are close together.

Geert Crombez, a professor of health psychology at Ghent U. in Belgium who researches how pain affects cognition, described Snyder’s study as “weird, but fascinating” in an email to The Herald.

“It is in line with our theoretical model, which essentially states that there are some basic motives that demand urgent action,” he wrote. “These urges interrupt and call for additional attentional resources. They also need to be controlled at the expense of cognitive resources.”

The study’s results have real-world implications Snyder and his team did not anticipate. “We didn’t set out to really talk about the risk of driving when you really need to break to go to the bathroom,” he said. “Honestly, this didn’t occur to us, that it’s the same as drinking until you are too drunk to drive.”

Since publishing the study, he said he has heard from truck drivers who have experienced first-hand cognitive impairment from needing to pee. “At least three or four people who are either truck drivers themselves or are related to truck drivers have told me that they almost killed themselves because they weren’t paying attention when they had to go so badly,” he said.

Since winning the Ig Nobel Prize last year, Snyder has added a “Dubious Honors” section to his resume. “If you can’t laugh at what you do sometimes, then there’s a problem,” he said.

You probably think this article is about you. And it might be.

A new study conducted by researchers at U. Michigan and U. Virginia suggests narcissism might be especially detrimental to men’s mental and physiological health, more so than for women.

“Prior work shows that narcissism is associated with relationship problems, but seemed to have no negative consequences for narcissists,” said study co-author Sara Konrath, an assistant research professor at U. Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

Studies showed people with narcissism might have trouble maintaining trusting relationships, but they appear mentally healthy on a number of other self-report measures, according to Konrath.

“They score lower in depression and anxiety,” she said, “and higher in happiness and self-esteem, compared to people who are less narcissistic.”

However, Konrath’s study examined what is going on “under a man’s skin.”

“Narcissists actually have more stress hormones floating around in their veins,” she said, “which has implications for their long-term health if this physiological state of ‘high alert’ goes unacknowledged.”

So, men’s health is more at risk.

These implications pertain to cardiovascular wellness because the stress hormone cortisol can lead to high blood pressure and heart problems, especially in narcissistic males, Konrath said.

The researchers tested 106 undergraduate students, 79 females and 27 males, to determine whether a person had an “unhealthy” or “healthy” narcissism score.

Participants first provided a saliva sample to measure the level of basal cortisol in their bodies. Basal cortisol concentrations measure peoples’ stress while they are in a resting, or non-stressed state, according to Konrath.

After two assessments, the basal cortisol revealed how overactivated people’s physiological stress systems were, even when in a non-stressful environment.

Some studies examine how cortisol levels are affected by stressors, but the researchers were only testing cortisol at its baseline, Konrath said.

She said there isn’t a determining factor for “abnormal” cortisol, but higher baseline scores seem more detrimental if they are maintained for a long period of time. High levels of cortisol are linked to negative health outcomes, such as poor cardiovascular health.

The participants took a 40-question narcissism personality test with responses such as, “If I ruled the world it would be a better place,” and “The thought of ruling the world frightens the hell out of me.”

The total number of narcissistic responses were summed together, with higher scores indicating higher levels of narcissism. The study also examined whether specific narcissism traits were related to cortisol.

An unhealthy narcissism score was created by adding up the entitlement and exploitative subscales of the test. A healthy narcissism score was created by summing the leadership/authority, self-sufficiency, superiority, and vanity traits.

Konrath said that in her understanding of the terms “healthy” and “unhealthy” narcissism, the main distinction is how people see themselves versus how they treat others. The “unhealthy” narcissism can more easily cause harm to others than the “healthy” type, she said.

Narcissistic personality traits are also capable of being diagnosed as a personality disorder, according to MayoClinic.com.

“Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration,” the website says.

Kay Konz, a mental health therapist at Lincoln Behavioral Health Clinic, said personality disorders are difficult to diagnose without a comprehensive clinical interview and history based on a pattern of behavior over time. She said the researchers did not identify participants as having a narcissistic personality disorder during the study.

“A 40-item tool measuring narcissistic traits does not diagnose narcissistic personality disorder,” Konz said.

Konz said a 40-item scale measuring six different traits has obvious limitations, including using only a few questions to identify a trait. She said there was no information provided about the validity of the measure and also no control group.

“Maybe all men who have ‘unhealthy’ personality traits like aggressiveness, suspiciousness, etc., have higher cortisol levels,” she said.

While the small sample size of men compared to women did not show any sex differences, it may have been biased by coincidence, according to Konz. She said that this could have happened because it was a small sample, or may have been due to selection bias – the nature of women who agreed to participate in the study as compared to men.

Konz said people with narcissistic personality disorder are not as likely to seek therapy or stay with it, as they don’t see themselves as the problem.

“Narcissistic personality disorder is very hard to treat,” she said. “Narcissistic traits may not be.”

Konrath said there are a number of ways narcissistic males can help alleviate potential risks to their health.

“First, they can try to work on having a more realistic sense of their self-worth, but this would likely be difficult for them,” she said.

They should also work on their connections with others, she said. Social relationships are associated with a number of health benefits, and narcissists generally have low-quality relationships because they don’t value others and they aren’t afraid to make that obvious.

Konrath lastly recommended narcissistic males deal with the physiological overreactivity by finding ways to reduce stress levels.

“They may want to go to the gym more,” she said, “try out a low-key activity such as yoga or tai chi, or try a variety of mental strategies to cope with stress.”

One factor the researchers didn’t collect was sexual orientation, Konrath said. The difference in narcissism levels between heterosexuals and homosexuals would be an interesting question for future research, she added.

Konrath said future research will look into why women don’t respond physiologically to narcissism as men do.

Scientists may be one step closer on the path to finding a cure for the millions of people living with AIDS worldwide. This month researchers found that the protein SAMHD1 can slow or stop HIV growth by removing cells that form the virus.

NYU Langone Medical Center, U. Rochester Medical Center and research groups from France have worked together for five years to look into the role of SAMHD1 in contracting AIDS.

Most recently, they discovered building blocks of HIV virus disappeared when the anti-viral protein SAMHD1 was placed in an AIDS-infected cell. As a result, DNA components of the virus replicated slower or stopped replicating.

Nathaniel Landau, an NYU professor and one of the main researchers of the study, said the discovery will lead to new understandings of HIV.

“It may lead to mechanisms or ways to boost the immune systems response,” he said. “It will not cure somebody, but it will allow the immune system to control the violence [of AIDS].”

But Landau said these new findings cannot be seen as a cure for HIV.

“This tells us how the immune system tries to fight the virus and how the virus tries to escape from the immune system,” he said. “Now we have to think about how to prevent the virus from escaping. A cure for HIV will not be coming up soon.”

However, Landau said the group will research further to understand the idea of attacking the HIV infection.

Pablo Tebas, director of the adult AIDS Clinical Trials Unit research site at the University of Pennsylvania, said the study is an interesting mechanism to fight against viral infection.

“The cells of the body have developed multiple mechanisms to fight viral infections and prevent the virus for taking over,” Tebas said. “It seems that the investigators identified another protein that is part of that system.”

Sita Awasthi, a researcher of Infectious Disease Division at Penn, said finding the function in relation to HIV infection was groundbreaking.

“[The] HIV-1 field will [now] be exploring therapeutic potential of this [SAMHD1] finding in controlling HIV-1 infections,” she said.

This is actually a pretty bad idea, and would probably end up doing more harm than good. Although hitting up the doctor’s office might not seem much better if you base your decision on co-pay, if you even have it, or fears of malpractice, it is still safer than attempting to self-medicate. You shouldn’t replace a doctor with a checklist you found on Reddit.

Some people might, however, and one of the most popular means of self-medicating is to use WebMD. Although it is pretty useful if you are just trying to determine whether your symptoms require medical attention, it is not a replacement for a physical visit to the doctor. Doctors are trained to look at the broader picture. Although some doctors might simply run through a symptoms checklist, a good doctor will notice subtleties that can lead to the discovery of the root cause of a problem. By being able to study your entire medical record, it is possible for a doctor to determine correlation between past and present symptoms.

Other sites offering alternative treatments or self-medication are for the most part unbelievably terrible and unreliable. One of the worst sites for this is the Yahoo! Answers Health section. For some reason, a frightening number of people seem to turn to this site with serious medical questions despite the fact it is crawling with Internet trolls and gives really terrible advice.

Sites like Yahoo! Answers, that provide a forum for nonprofessionals to solicit and provide information to one another, really display the worst of the Internet (outside of Facebook). Forums that allow for some type of anonymity usually have users that intentionally ask facetious questions, and the same people asking these types of questions are usually answering them with unhelpful information for laughs. Outside of forums, there is still concern about the validity of diagnostic material when presented by serious and somewhat non-anonymous sources.

A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine stated YouTube also served as a particularly bad resource for providing information concerning illness and treatment. The study found that the top viewed videos involving psychogenic disorders listed symptoms that were poor or outright misleading, like videos about Parkinson’s disease. According to another study done by the Cleveland Clinical Foundation, in many cases, pharmaceutical companies posted videos that were disguised as original user content but were actually ads for their medical products.

For the most part, most medical information you find online is unreliable. WebMD is useful only to the extent that it can give you a better idea of whether your symptoms are causes for concern, but it isn’t always accurate for diagnosing a particular illness or disease. If you really are paranoid about the quality of medical care you are receiving, or have heard bad things about a practitioner, go to another one. Whatever doctor you choose, he or she will still probably provide you more educated advice than “remoserjr107” or “BIG DADDY COOL” will on Yahoo! Answers.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a microchip that could eventually take the place of required daily medical injections for people with chronic diseases.

The chip has 20 tiny reservoirs that hold a prescribed drug and is programmed to release a dose into the body whenever the patient needs it up to once daily for 20 days.

Doctors can reprogram the chip with a remote from outside the body in case the dosage needs to be changed.

The first successful test of this chip in a human was announced last Thursday. The MIT researchers tested the chip on a group of eight women, ages 65 to 70, and found there were no foreseeable side effects. The subjects did not have discomfort and the doses were accurate.

The chip is less than 2 inches long and is implanted under the skin in a regular doctor’s office using a local anesthetic.

It is not the first invention of its kind, but it is supposedly more reliable than previous under-skin pumps since it proved equally as effective as daily injections, Michael Cima, professor of engineering at MIT, said.

Diabetics, the most obvious candidates for this treatment, could not use the device to replace insulin injections, because insulin molecules are not small enough to fit into the chip. However, they could potentially keep a medicine in the chip for emergencies, if they install a sensor to detect low blood sugar, Cima said.

Implanted treatments sometimes give people the illusion that their problems are solved, Dr. Lauren Barron, lecturer in medical humanities at Baylor U., said.

“But that’s not the case,” she said. “In some cases, you need more vigilance to make sure it’s working properly.”

Barron also said the needles people usually use for the daily injections they give themselves are so small that the shots are not nearly as onerous as they used to be.

Dr. Sharon Stern, medical director at Baylor’s health clinic, believes there could be a problem with the medicines being stored in a chip inside the body because “most medicines are kept at a considerably lower temperature to increase shelf life.”

Stern also said it will take years of testing for scientists to determine whether there are negative side effects or major risks.

“Biomedical engineering is fascinating and may reveal the future of medicine,” she said. “However, scientists are cautious and repeat studies many times in order to make sure that all devices are safe and effective.”

There could be other complications, like the inability for patients to have an MRI because of the metal in their body, Barron said.

Also, infections or allergic reactions could be an issue.

“If you have a bad reaction to a pill, we can just discontinue it,” she said. “If it’s implanted in your skin, it’s harder.”

Barron also said absorption of drugs can vary based on a person’s body composition, and that physical things like “bumping around on a tractor in a field” could affect how well the chip works.

“It’s a brilliant idea, and we’ve had success with implanted things like pacemakers and insulin pumps, but it wouldn’t erase the person’s need to be aware and take care of themselves in other ways,” Barron said. “Lifestyle changes can be powerful for treating many medical problems.”

“The message needs to go to parents that they need to find ways that they can protect and support their children if they’re gender nonconforming because the discrimination and abuse that these kids experience has lasting impacts on their health,” said lead author Andrea L. Roberts, a research associate in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at the School of Public Health.

“Schools also need to teach tolerance and work hard to prevent bullying,” she said.

According to Roberts, past research has suggested that people are uncomfortable with gender nonconformity and may discriminate against those who fall outside of gender norms. Parents may become harsher in an attempt to change their children’s behavior to better conform to gender stereotypes.

Nearly 9,000 young adults answered a questionnaire in which they self-reported their childhood behavior and interests.

The questionnaire asked participants—whose average age was 22—to recall their experiences from before age 11, including favorite toys and games, roles they took while playing, and television or movie characters they admired or imitated.

They also answered questions about physical, sexual, or emotional abuse that they may have experienced throughout the course of their lives, and were screened for PTSD.

Roberts said that children who are considered “unusual”—including children who are disabled—are often targeted by sexual predators. Children who are gender nonconforming may also be at risk, she said.

Despite common assumptions about gender nonconformity in childhood, 85 percent of the children who were gender nonconforming identified as heterosexual as adults.

Men and women who ranked in the top 10th percentile of childhood gender nonconformity reported a higher prevalence of abuse compared with those who ranked below the median of nonconformity. Young adults who were gender nonconforming in childhood faced nearly twice the risk rate of PTSD than those who followed the norms of gender expression.

Victor G. Carrion, an associate professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, wrote in an email, “beyond screening for adverse childhood experiences, the pediatric and mental health community need to engage in policy and legislation that protects these children and educate their parents.”

Carrion acknowledged that regardless of sexual orientation or role identity, children are also vulnerable during periods in which they are exploring their identities if they do not conform to societal expectations.

“The message is tolerance, protection, and support,” Roberts said.

The nationwide study’s results were published on Monday in an online edition of Pediatrics, a research journal.

AeroShot comes in a lipstick-sized tube and sprays caffeine and B vitamins into the mouth.

In December, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, asked the Food and Drug Administration to review AeroShot’s safety because it could be used as a club drug, ABC News reported.

“It has a high degree of potential for abuse,” said Bruce Goldberger, professor and director of toxicology at U. Florida’s College of Medicine.

AeroShot isn’t available in Florida stores yet, but it can be purchased online. Each AeroShot tube contains 100 milligrams of caffeine — as much as one cup of coffee. AeroShot’s website doesn’t recommend consumption of more than three tubes per day.

AeroShot is cheap at $2.99 a tube, and it is marketed to young people in social settings, Goldberger said.

He said he’s worried young people will use AeroShot and alcohol together with potentially severe health risks.

“All you have to do is look at Four Loko and its niche among young people,” Goldberger said.

Paul Stanley, a 22-year-old U. Florida senior and admitted caffeine addict, said he is curious about AeroShot, but he would never replace coffee with it.

Brandon Webb, marketing and media relations for Blinn College, said even though the number of students at the Bryan campus has decreased by 2.14 percent, the total number of students in the Blinn system has increased by 1.23 percent. On top of that, the number of contact hours — the hours a student spends in the classroom — has increased both at the Bryan campus and in the Blinn system overall by 7.13 percent. Because of this, it’s difficult to judge whether or not Blinn will lose funds.

“We report that number of contact hours to the legislature, and that’s what they reimburse us by,” Webb said. “Our reimbursement from the state will go up, but our tuition revenue will go down a little bit, so it’s a little hard to measure.”

Webb said he thinks the meningitis vaccine requirement is to blame, but that it is difficult to determine with complete certainty.

“It’s a tough question to speculate on,” Webb said. “We think it had an impact. If people drop off and never come back we don’t know if it’s because of the vaccine or a death in the family or something else.”

Webb said that since the new law only affects new students, some students who attend Texas A&M U. and wanted to take one or two classes at Blinn might have decided against it after learning they would have to get the vaccine.

“If you’re a new student, you’d have to show evidence of the vaccine,” Webb said. “If they were already enrolled before the legislation passed, they could stay here without getting the vaccine. It’s a complicated piece of legislation that had to be interpreted quite a bit.”

Webb said Blinn is in the process of figuring out how to increase enrollment in the future.

“We have completely renovated our recruiting process, not necessarily due to ups and downs semester to semester, but it was just time,” Webb said. “We’ve been doing the same recruiting for a number of years. We’ve had steady upward enrollment and we’re not in trouble, but that’s something you constantly want to fine tune to make sure we’re reaching students how they want to be reached.”

Mike Spies, assistant director for transfer admissions at A&M, said that the decrease in enrollment at the Blinn Bryan campus probably will not affect the number of students enrolled at A&M. The University has a partnership with Blinn College in which students are enrolled in classes part-time at both institutions while trying to gain full admittance into A&M.

“We can’t really say for sure one way or the other but I don’t think it’s going to be a major factor on our enrollment,” Spies said. “We get a lot of students from Blinn, but we get students from all over the state and country. We don’t have any shortage of applicants.”

Hallie Pierce, a senior psychology major who transferred from Blinn to A&M, said she can imagine the vaccine being a reason why enrollment at the Bryan campus has decreased.

“People don’t like being forced to get a vaccine,” Pierce said. “Required vaccines are pretty expensive.  A fee for parking is different than a fee for your health. It doesn’t affect different aspects of your life, whereas with your health, it’s your health.”

“We noticed products containing organic brown rice syrup often had very high concentrations of arsenic,” study co-author and earth sciences post-doctoral researcher Vivien Taylor said. “This led to a study of foods such as infant formulas, cereal bars and energy foods, which use organic brown rice syrup. These foods tend to be marketed to health-conscious consumers who would unintentionally be exposed to a known carcinogen.”

Concentrations of arsenic in some products were above the Environmental Protection Agency standard of 10 parts per billion for drinking water, according to the study.

Past studies by Dartmouth researchers and others have identified arsenic consumption through rice, an observation which spurred the rice syrup study by the Dartmouth Superfund Research Program, which included Kathy Cottingham, Margaret Karagas, Tracy Punshon, Taylor and lead author Brian Jackson. The team concluded that foods containing organic brown rice syrup as a primary ingredient can be a significant source of arsenic.

“By publishing these results, we hope that U.S. food standards authorities will set guidelines for arsenic in food,” Punshon, a research assistant, said. “We want to see that manufacturers using products containing processed forms of rice begin to measure the arsenic concentrations of these ingredients routinely.”

Researchers examined 17 infant formulas, 29 cereal bars and three types of energy drinks purchased from Upper Valley stores. Using plasma mass spectroscopy at the Trace Element Analysis Core facility at the College, the team compared food products containing organic brown rice syrup with similar products that did not use the syrup. The report did not specify which product brands were tested.

Of the 17 toddler formulas tested, two listed organic brown rice syrup as a main ingredient. These formulas — one dairy-based and one soy-based — were found to have arsenic concentrations 20 times greater than the formulas made without organic brown rice syrup. The concentration of inorganic arsenic averaged 8.6 parts per billion for the dairy-based formula and 21.4 parts per billion for the soy-based formula.

High arsenic concentrations in infant formula are greatly concerning, Jackson said. EPA standards for drinking water are set for full-grown adults, so the impact of these arsenic levels might be far greater for infants due to their low body weight and developing brains, he said.

“Ideally, levels for arsenic in infant formula should at least be at the drinking water level, but lower levels would probably be advisable,” Jackson said.

The researchers also examined cereal bars and energy products obtained from local markets. Twenty-two of the cereal bars listed one of four rice products — organic brown rice syrup, rice grain, rice flakes or rice flour — in the first five ingredients.

Like infant formula, cereal bars and high-energy foods containing organic brown rice syrup also had higher arsenic concentrations than those that did not contain the syrup. The cereal bars that had no rice-based ingredients ranged from 8 to 27 parts per billion of arsenic, while those containing a rice ingredient ranged from 23 to 128 parts per billion.

Compared to the potential problems with infant formula, there is minimal risk associated with eating a cereal bar every few days, according to Jackson.

Nevertheless, the research team and other biologists agree that the arsenic concentrations in foods necessitate more research as well as changes in food standard regulations.

“We need to know more about what we eat and drink,” biology professor Rob McClung said. “Hopefully we will start testing foodstuffs for contaminants — not necessarily all foodstuffs — but where scientific research suggests there are issues.”

Research professor Celia Chen suggested the potential for new research exploring the specific health effects of arsenic exposure through food and a means to limit arsenic uptake by plants.

Since the study’s publication, media and concerned parents have given its findings a great deal of consideration, according to Jackson.

“The attention is flabbergasting,” she said. “I hope that this response will be positive in helping set much needed guidelines and regulations.”

Now, a new study uncovers what causes those heels to be so painful that they just have to come off.

Conducted by researchers at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, the study found that wearing high heels for extended periods of time entirely changes the mechanics of how women walk. Women who wore heels frequently had shorter, more forceful strides and put more strain on their muscles, caused in part by a shortening of the calf muscle fibers, according to the study.

When walking regularly, the muscles and tendons should work together to allow women to stretch each leg and stride out, Stephen Piazza, associate professor of kinesiology at Penn State U., said.

But as someone walks in high heels, the toe remains pointed downward with the heel up. The tendons are never given the opportunity to stretch out and the calf muscles remain short.

“If you walk all the time with your feet in a plantar flexed position, which is what you have to do in high heels, your muscle fibers are going to become shorter,” Piazza said. “As you’re always pointing your toes and you walk around that way for enough time the muscle learns to adapt, and it’ll become permanent.”

The tendons in the leg also store elastic energy as someone walks and stretches. As those springy tendons are doing their job it actually saves the walker metabolic energy, Piazza said. But when a person wearing high heels does not allow that tendon to stretch it becomes tight and doesn’t have the same capacity for energy storage. Instead, high heel walkers rely almost solely on their muscles, which can cause rapid muscle fatigue.

These tight tendons and shortened muscles can also cause other problems.

“If they become short and tight, they’re not as able to generate as much of contraction. There’s not much room to shorten since they’re already short,” Piazza said. “You can’t generate as much energy with your muscles when you’re walking and that’s bad because you need to generate energy when you walk and you need to be able to push off.”

To conduct the University of Jyväskylä experiment, researchers enlisted nine women who had worn high heels for 40 hours a week for at least two years and 10 women who wore high heels periodically for less than 10 hours a week.

The women were equipped with electrodes to track their muscle activity and various other attributes as they walked. According to the study, not only did strides appear shorter and choppier, and put more strain on the muscles when the women were in high heels, those who wore high heels frequently saw the same effects when walking barefoot.

With research available on the negative effects of high heels, Piazza poses a question.

“If high heels are so bad, why is there no change in usage? The reason is people think they look good in high-heels,” Piazza said. “How far are women willing to go to look good even though they’re doing damage?”

Several Penn State students came to the same general consensus — they’ll continue to wear high heels because they love how they look in them.

“It makes an outfit look better. You have to complete the look with shoes,” sophomore Danielle Weiss said.

And while they agree that high heels can be painful and potentially harmful, they’ll continue to slip their feet into them on a regular basis.

“You may pay for it later, but there’s worse stuff out there than high heels,” junior Lauren Applegate said.

The recently published study documented the recovery of 2,616 women with uterine cancer who underwent one of two treatment methods, gynecologic oncologist Dr. Joan Walker said during a press conference Tuesday at the Peggy and Charles Stephenson Cancer Center.

One-third of patients were treated with laparotomies, or open surgery requiring large abdominal incisions, which had served as the traditional means of treatment, Walker said.

The remainder of the study’s participants received laparoscopies, which allow surgeons to operate through incisions generally 0.5 to 1.5 centimeters in size, Walker said.

Women receiving either treatment had virtually identical survival rates, according to the results of the study, which were co-authored by Walker and published in February’s “Journal of Clinical Oncology.”

“Therefore, we have the ability to recommend that laparoscopy, or minimally invasive surgery, is the preferred method for treating uterine cancer,” Walker said.

Laparoscopies were known to cause less short-term harm to patients than laparotomies, but researchers conducted a five-year follow-up period to gauge the long-term effectiveness of the newer, less invasive procedure, Walker said.

“When you change technology, you change the way you treat someone because you believe it is better for [patients’] short-term outcomes, meaning going home from the hospital quicker, having less pain, having fewer infectious complications,” Walker said. “That’s great, but it’s not great if the patients have a higher rate of failure, … recurrences or have a lower rate of survival.”

Traditional laparotomies are generally conducted through large incisions in the abdomen and result in more pain during recovery, longer hospital stays and a longer time before the return of proper bowel functions, Walker said.

Laparoscopies, by comparison, required a median hospital stay of two days after the surgery was completed and demonstrated fewer complications due to infections at the incision, Walker said.

“The first six weeks there is a marked difference in how people feel,” Walker said.

Uterine cancer will affect more than 47,000 women and claim the lives of about 8,000 women in the U.S. this year, according to statistics from the National Cancer Institute.

Carolyn Zacharitz, Oklahoma resident, was diagnosed with uterine cancer shortly before deciding to participate in the Health Sciences Center study, she said at Tuesday’s press conference.

“If I was able to participate in a clinical study that might help someone else down the line, I was happy to do that,” she said.

The study’s results come as a reassurance to Zacharitz, she said, because the laparoscopic procedure’s less-harmful nature, coupled with its effectiveness, has proven to be a win-win situation.

“This study is very reassuring because … now I have even more confidence that the long-term results will be the same, so I’m very grateful.”

Members of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Public Health received mixed reviews at the Massachusetts State House on Tuesday from residents living near wind turbines.

The discussion was the first of the three public hearings about a recent report on the potential health effects associated with proximity to wind turbines.

“Over the last year and a half, we have heard some reports that people were experiencing health or other types of problems they believe are associated with living near wind turbines,” said MassDEP Commissioner Kenneth Kimmell to the audience in the Gardner Auditorium at the State House.

He said the reports prompted MassDEP commissioners to start a “fact-finding mission.”

They compiled an independent, scientific panel of bachelors from various disciplines to perform a scientific review using protocols of the National Academy of Sciences, Kimmell said.

This, he said, was intended to help give MassDEP a sense of what the literature tells them about wind turbines’ potential health effects.

Opponents of the report’s findings said the noise, vibrations and shadow flickers from the wind turbines do indeed have health impacts on residents.

This contradicts the findings that said there was “insufficient epidemiologic evidence” to determine “an association between noise from wind turbines and measures of psychological distress or mental health problems,” according to the report.

Neil Andersen, of Falmouth, was the first to speak on behalf of those affected by the turbines.

“By ignoring those of us in Falmouth and excluding most of our supporting literature and testimonials,” Andersen said, “this so-called health study has done a great injustice to the citizens of this Commonwealth.”

Andersen said he lives a quarter mile from the 500-foot tall structures with eight-ton rotating blades and that there have been thousands of complaints since their installation.

“It is certainly obvious that there are quite a few people who aren’t doing their jobs,” Andersen said.

Professor Wendy Heiger-Bernays, of Boston U.’s School of Public Health, said this is a complex issue the panel has spent many months studying, according to a State House press release.

“By reviewing the available data and information, we believe that we have significantly added to the understanding of the potential for health effects from wind turbines,” she said.

The panel included three BU professors.

Andersen said the wind turbines “do not belong anywhere near neighborhoods” because they make people sick.

He gave examples of his own headaches, heart palpitations, vertigo and more health complications that have disappeared since the turbines were turned off in November.

“We cannot get used to it,” Andersen said. “There is no compromise. There is no mitigation.”

But members of Northeastern U.’s Wind Action Committee said MassDEP should adopt the conclusions of the study.

WAC Founder Emily Rochon, of Dorchester, said to the panel that the wind turbines are far safer and cleaner than other sources of power.

Other supporters of the independent report, including members from New England’s Environmental Business Council, said it was well conceived and has attainable goals.

Still, residents said anecdotal evidence must be taken into consideration.

Former environmental science student Kathryn Elder, of Falmouth, said she lives 1,700 feet from a wind turbine and that her life has been turned upside-down by the turbine because it has been built too close to her house.

“It is not my perception, it is not my opinion and it is certainly not annoyance that wakes me up repeatedly at night,” Elder said to the panel. “Members of my family . . . have extreme anxiety and other physical issues in response to being close to the turbine.”

Sebastian Seung, an MIT professor of computational neuroscience, believes that the secret to understanding how the brain works lies in finding all of those connections and mapping them, and he explores this idea in “Connectome,” his fascinating new book. It seems simple enough that we should understand how the brain works once we figure out all of those connections interact, but that’s even less elegant than trying to understand the way weather works by keeping track of all of the particles in the atmosphere.

Still, for confounding questions like how we learn, perhaps a brute force method may not be such a bad idea.

The idea of a connectome, or map of the brain, forms the backbone of the book. That’s not all it’s about, but it does provide structure for Seung to address some of the questions that many readers will have about the brain and explain some interesting experiments, including one that suggests that individual neurons may be responsible for recognizing specific faces (the “Jennifer Aniston neuron,” for instance).

Seung’s book also addresses questions of nature and nurture by explaining that things aren’t so simple that they can be so easily categorized. Brains are far too complicated to be explicitly described in our genes, but that doesn’t mean our genes can’t build them. As a result, identical twins have unidentical brains, since their experiences have been different. At the same time, they’re more similar than fraternal twins as shown through personality and IQ tests. In other words, both nature and nurture seem to have an effect on the brain.

The final portion of the book may be the most exciting for many readers, though it’s also the most speculative. In it, Seung discusses immortality and two different ways of achieving it, neither of which seem particularly appealing. The first involves cryonics, or freezing the body of a near-death patient in the hopes that future generations will be able to unfreeze and cure him. There are a lot of “if’s” in the idea, but since we’re playing with your life and the risks are negligible, it’s worth a shot.

If you lose, you die, but if you don’t play, you also die. The second involves transferring your brain to a computer, where a virtual you would live forever, but if it’s a true and exact copy of your brain, is it really virtual? Seung takes the correct approach here in presenting these as speculative ideas that may or may not pan out, rather than committing to them as absolute certainties. If he’s learned anything by studying the brain, it’s to be cautious in predicting the future of our understanding.

“Connectome” is a book about a topic that we’re only slowly beginning to understand. The brain may very well be the most difficult mystery for science to crack, continuing to baffle us even as it solves mysteries of the entire universe. Seung does a good job of putting things in perspective, and manages to engage the reader while doing it, but if the book makes anything clear, it’s that we’ve still got a long way before we understand that hunk of grey matter that exists between our ears.

In order to establish a baseline control, 33 people in their 20s were tested on their walking abilities when not using a cell phone. They were first shown a target on the floor eight meters away. Then the participants were blindfolded and asked to walk casually to where they thought the target was. The amount of time it took to reach the target and where the participant landed were recorded.

One week later, participants returned and did this exact same task, but with two additional experimental conditions. One third of the returning participants walked while texting. Another third did the same task while talking on a cell phone. The final third of the participants did the task without any changes.

Results surprised the researchers. They found that both talking and texting on cell phones were disruptive. Those who used a cell phone in either scenario walked slower and deviated from the intended target than the control group.

Participants who talked on cell phones had a 16 percent reduction in speed and a lateral deviation of 13 percent, compared to those who texted, with a 33 and 61 percent deviation, respectively.

Dr. Lamberg of Stony Brook U. explains that these results can be attributed to the fact that certain areas in the brain require conscious engagement while walking, despite the fact that it is a seemingly intuitive ability.

When one uses a cell phone while walking, areas of the brain are affected, and working memory is subsequently lessened.

However, more experimental studies with larger and more varied subjects are required to render anything conclusive.

Nonetheless, these results may be useful in helping physical therapy patients regain mobility.

In addition, this experiment can help scientists further understand why walking while using a cell phone is difficult.

Finally, these results could help with creating new and safer technology, such as voice-activated text devices, so that people can be safer not only while driving, but also when walking.

For more information on the study, it was published in the online edition of Gait and Posture.

A study done by the Johns Hopkins U. Bloomberg School of Public Health in collaboration with other institutes investigated how much secondhand smoke can really find its way into the body. Their findings were reported in the most recent edition of British Medical Journal.

From 2007 to 2009, researchers took samples from 24 bars and restaurants in America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. They included 10 venues per city and five employees per venue. In total, 625 non-smoking and 311 smoking employees were subjected to testing to build an incredibly large and diverse study on the topic.

Locations ranged from bars right here in Baltimore all the way to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. The basis of the study looked to compute air nicotine concentrations at each location and then see if there was any correlation between that and the nicotine concentrations in the subjects’ hair, a good biomarker of nicotine presence in people.

The data collected showed that air nicotine concentrations ranged from 0.1μg/m3 to 0.7μg/m3 in non-smoking locations and from 1.5μg/m3 to 8.5μg/m3 in smoking areas, a dramatic but expected increase.

Along with samples of air quality, the researchers took samples of hair from their selected participants in order to determine if there was any correlation to higher air nicotine levels. In order to maintain consistency throughout the data, researchers went to such lengths as taking hair near the back of the scalp where hair growth is uniform amongst different people.

Researchers then utilized gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to determine hair nicotine amounts. After analyzing the results, they were able to determine that for each 1μg/m3 increase in air nicotine concentrations, hair nicotine concentration went up five percent for non-smokers and three percent for smokers.

In order to account for other possible sources of nicotine, each participant was asked a series of questions to allow researchers to make necessary adjustments for age, sex, education, living with a smoker, hair treatment, region and former smoking status.

In conclusion to their data, the researchers believe that not enough bars and restaurants have rules against smoking, which puts their very own employees at risk. The 2012 study cited research done in 1993, which found that there is about a 50 percent increase in lung cancer risk among employees in bars and restaurants compared to the general population. However, as of 2011, only 11 percent of the world’s population fell under protection of some sort of policy prohibiting smoking in bars, restaurants and nightclubs.

The study suggests that there is not enough non-smoking legislation but also recognizes the strides that have been made in recent years toward reducing the number of smoking venues. Researchers found that since 2008, over 385 million people have fallen under protection of smoke-free laws, a 6 percent increase in the world’s population that is protected. The key now is to continue that trend in order to allow employees of bars and restaurants to breathe clean air.

U. Texas economics professor Daniel Hamermesh co-authored a study examining how people spent their free time after a permanent cut in work hours by reviewing data from national time-use diaries from 1976-2006 in Japan and 1999-2009 in Korea. The study was completed last year and was conducted with UT alumnus Jungmin Lee and associate economic professors from Korea and Japan. Hamermesh said the study used thousands of daily time diaries from before and after the governments of Japan and Korea passed laws making it more costly for employers to use overtime work. The study examined how those keeping diaries spent the time they had free.

Hamermesh said the results showed that people spent their free time engaging in relaxing activities.

“In neither country was the extra time used to clean the house, take care of the kids, cook or shop,” Hamermesh said. “It was used for leisure and/or personal maintenance, such as grooming.”

Hamermesh said he has done much research on time use and finds the study to be a topic that has intrigued people for many years.

“It is very difficult to answer because so many things are happening at once, but this data provides the opportunity to get a clean answer,” Hamermesh said.

Although the study did not include Americans, Hamermesh said he firmly believes that Americans generally work too much and Europeans do much less work but seem happier.

Advertising senior Amanda Cummings, president of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, said she spends every day studying and is constantly doing something for her organization or taking care of her priorities. However, she said she does separate some time to collect herself after she learned that relaxation is also a key aspect of living life, as the study has shown.

“I would always be busy and would emotionally break down,” Cummings said. “Now, I find it’s important to make free time for yourself.”

Psychology sophomore Ian Bell, an officer of the Longhorn Powerlifting team, said he spends his free time working out in order to stay fit and keep busy. However, Bell said his daily routine includes about an hour of relaxation in order to keep his life balanced, which relates to the study’s conclusion that people do prefer more relaxing activities.

“Without my free time, I wouldn’t be able to work out as much as I would want to,” he said. “If you use your free time efficiently, then you can accomplish more things throughout the day and keep things from piling up.”

An in-depth view of Hamermesh’s study will be published this spring in the American Economic Review Journal.

L-CTCL is a cancer that affects a type of white blood cell known as the T-cell and causes damage to the skin and other organs. Once diagnosed, patients with the disease generally have a poor prognosis—with an average of three years to live.

BWH Department of Dermatology chairman Thomas S. Kupper and BWH assistant professor of dermatology Rachael A. Clark led a study which explored the efficacy of a new drug regimen to treat L-CTCL. Their report, which was published in Science Translational Medicine, showed that a low dosage of the drug Campath, or alemtuzumab, combats L-CTCL by selectively targeting cancer cells. In addition, they found that the low-dose Campath allows for treatment without increasing their patients’ risk of acquiring infections.

“Standard chemotherapies and alemtuzumab can put L-CTCL into partial or complete remission, but the disease is not curable and eventually will recur,” Kupper wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson.

Much of Clark and Kupper’s work involved understanding Campath’s interaction with the immune system, specifically T-cells. Though previously believed to kill all T-cells and B-cells—the cells at the frontline of the immune response—the researchers found that Campath actually only kills T-cells that enter the blood stream.

“The amazing thing about Campath is that it kills all the T-cells in the circulation but it doesn’t kill the T-cells in the skin,” said Clark. “They [the T-cells in the skin] are protected from the medication because they don’t circulate.”

Through the course of the study, Clark and Kupper administered Campath to patients with L-CTCL. They found that the patients improved most significantly when given low doses of the drug. In order to study the physiological effects of the drug, the researchers then took blood samples and skin biopsies. Upon examination, they found that T-cells in the skin remained greatly unaffected as the patients improved.

“We sampled their skin through skin biopsies [and] found large numbers of T-cells in the skin,” Clark said. “Here was the drug that was supposed to kill all the T-cells and yet there they were.”

With this finding, Clark and Kupper were led to further investigate the nature of these unaffected skin T-cells. Their research demonstrated for the first time that there were two types of T-cell populations in humans and validated extensive research on the migratory patterns of T-cells within tissues.

“This is still a very novel concept—a sort of paradigm shift in the way we view the immune system—but our work and that of others suggest that we need to pay very close attention to what is happening in tissues,” said Kupper.

With the publication of these ground-breaking findings, the scientists wished to acknowledge the patients who participated in their research.

“The real heroes of this work are our patients, who in spite of this devastating disease willingly and often enthusiastically donated their blood and skin biopsies for this work,” said Kupper.

“Our findings indicate that physicians with normal BMI more frequently reported discussing weight loss with patients than overweight or obese physicians,” the lead author of the study, Sara Bleich, said in a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health news release.

The study said that 93 percent of normal-weight doctors would likely diagnose a patient as obese if the patient’s BMI was the same or greater than their own.

Bleich, an assistant professor with the school of public health, said physicians with normal BMI have a greater confidence in their ability to provide diet and exercise counseling and perceive their weight loss advice as trustworthy when compared to overweight or obese doctors.

Only 7 percent of overweight and obese doctors were likely to report feeling the same.

The study was titled “Impact of Physician BMI on Obesity Care and Beliefs” and was published in the online research journal “Obesity.”  The research was conducted from a national cross-sectional survey of 500 primary care doctors. Bleich and other researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine determined that physicians with a self-reported BMI below 25 were of “normal-weight.” Any BMI above 25 were considered overweight, and over 30 — obese.

Weight and height are used to calculate a patient’s BMI, said Dr. Nate Haecker, chief of staff of the University Health Center at U. Nebraska-Lincoln.

“The University Health Center sees many students who are obese,” Haecker said. “About one-third of U.S. adults are obese so it is a problem in all health care settings.”

Haecker said the health center probably sees slightly less obesity than a typical clinic in the community because less than 20 percent of obese patients are adolescents — a different patient population than what the UHC receives.

“But it is still a problem on college campuses,” he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity is estimated to cost $147 billion annually in health care costs. Obesity increases a person’s risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said that only one-third of overweight and obese patients report receiving an obesity diagnosis or weight-related counseling from their physicians. In addition, an article in the Associated Press reported that many doctors aren’t talking to overweight kids about their weight, according to a study conducted by U. North Carolina.

Haecker said there wasn’t much formal education about non-surgical weight management and nutrition options for doctors when he was attending medical school. Despite this, Haecker said his years of practice have made him very comfortable about discussing obesity with his patients.

He also said that he thinks most health care providers feel obligated to practice what they preach, yet there are still lots of physicians that do a poor job of caring for their own body.

“One of the best physicians I’ve ever met was an overweight smoker but was adored by his patients and provided wonderful care,” Haecker said. “His patients appreciated the fact that he was ‘real’ and admitted to struggling with the same issues they did.”

Jason Thomas, a first-year medical student at the U. Nebraska Medical Center, said doctors who are in shape are more likely to talk to their patients about getting in shape.

“A lot of taboo things that need to be talked about are overlooked in the doctor’s office,” Thomas said.

Tyler White, a UNL senior pre-med and biology major, said that it’s tough for the doctor. He said that although he understands the weight of younger doctors coming out of medical school who work 30 to 40 hour weeks during their residency, he would have a hard time taking advice from a 35-year-old obese doctor.

“It’s frustrating for doctors when patients don’t take their advice and then repeatedly come back with more complaints,” White said. “You can’t be there every second to slap their hand away from that cookie.”

Whether it was for my parents’ and teacher’s sake or my own sake, I can remember being forced to nap throughout my early childhood. It was a duty, an obligation. Like eating all the green things on my plate before I could eat something actually substantial (like Oreos or Little Debbie cakes), it had to be done. Thinking back, I wish that I could have traded all the time that I wasted napping back then and use it now.

According to a survey taken in 2010, 40 percent of U.S. college students feel well rested only two days of the week, and only 11 percent of college students claim to sleep well.

Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to find the time to sleep in college without sacrificing something, whether it’s schoolwork, socializing, exercising or other activities. Even if some of these activities are given up, it’s still often hard to find the time to get a sufficient amount of sleep.

Although it’s sometimes impossible to keep up with classes without giving up at least a few hours of sleep, an inadequate amount of sleep is thought to impact on a person’s memory and ability to learn. Studies have even shown that sleep loss reduces a person’s ability to retain recent memories.

So while students may think that they’re doing their academic lives a favor by giving up on a good night’s sleep, they’re actually decreasing their ability to do as well in school. It’s a bit of a paradox.

Admittedly, it may not be possible for students to increase the consecutive hours of sleep that they get, but they can turn to napping as a source of much needed rest.

“You can get incredible benefits from 15 to 20 minutes of napping,” says Sara C. Mednick, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at U. California, San Diego. “You reset the system and get a burst of alertness and increased motor performance. That’s what most people really need to stave off sleepiness and get an energy boost.”

Napping is meant to complement, and not replace actual sleep. Studies have shown that naps tend to make people feel better and help them to keep going until bedtime.

Tips for napping: Always set an alarm or make sure that you have someone who will wake you up, otherwise a nap could turn into a regular sleep period. Sleep in a friend’s room if your roommate won’t be around or if you’re not sure that you’ll wake up to your alarm. Schedule some sort of activity after your nap so that you can wake your body and mind up. Don’t nap for more than 30 minutes — napping for too long can leave you groggy and ruin the point of your nap.

According to a recent study conducted by Louisiana State U.’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center, excess calories are the cause of fat gain, and fat gain does not always translate to weight gain.

In Pennington’s study, 25 participants aged 18 to 35 spent 10 to 12 weeks living in a monitored metabolic unit.

During the first few weeks, participants were fed a normal diet after determining a daily caloric intake level that would not change their current weights. But in the final eight weeks of the study, participants were overfed by 954 calories a day.

Study participants were assigned to one of three diets — a low protein diet containing 5 percent of calories from protein, a normal protein diet containing 15 percent of calories from protein or a high protein diet containing 25 percent of calories from protein. Carbohydrate intake was the same among all diets.

Participants were given food that met their dietary requirements, monitored to ensure everything was eaten and discouraged from exercise.

The study found that all participants gained weight over the three-month investigation period. Those assigned the low protein diet lost lean body mass, while the other two groups gained it.

Those in the low protein group gained less weight than the higher protein groups, but more of the excess calories were stored as fat.

According to the study, 90 percent of the extra energy in the low protein group was stored as fat, whereas 50 percent was stored as fat for the other diet groups.

George Bray, chief of Pennington’s Division of Clinical Obesity and Metabolism and a researcher on the study, summarized the results in an e-mail to The Daily Reveille saying, “In a controlled setting, the increase in body fat during overeating is determined by the excess caloric intake. Protein affects thermogenesis (energy expenditure) and gain of lean body mass, but not body fat.”

Bray said he and the rest of the research team were interested in the subject because they wanted to investigate ideas from past studies.

“Some earlier research suggested that if you ate a low protein diet you might ‘waste’ calories. This is clearly not the case, but it was an interesting hypothesis to test,” Bray said.

Vanessa Richard, LSU Student Health Center dietitian, said gaining body fat is dangerous because it can increase risk for chronic diseases later in life.

One could be a normal weight, or even underweight, and still have an above-normal percentage of body fat, Richard said.

“Just because someone is thin doesn’t mean their body is healthy on the inside,” she said.

Richard said body weight is not an accurate measure, as it’s impossible to determine if fat or muscle is being gained or lost. A body composition analysis is more accurate, she said.

Richard said she recommends eating consistently throughout the day and “frontloading” calories, or eating a substantial breakfast in lieu of a large dinner.

Bray recommends consuming a diet comprising 15 to 18 percent of protein, with high fruit and vegetable intake and low-fat dairy products.

The results of this study will be reviewed when the Dietary Guidelines Panel reconvenes in 2015, Bray said. The results could possibly lead to an increase in the national recommended daily protein intake.

“I’d encourage people to take the ideas from this study and apply them to their daily lives, in combination with general balanced eating,” Richard said.

Depression, a psychological disorder currently diagnosed by matching a certain number of patient symptoms to those listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, has been known to have physiological indicators. According to George I. Papakostas, the primary researcher for the new test at MGH, after more than 50 years of experimenting with depression there were still many questions about the biological signals of the disorder.

“There were signs, but not strong enough for a test,” said Papakostas, who is also a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

He and the other researchers in his lab wondered, “what if the solution is multi-faceted?”

After a series of experiments, a blood test was designed to measure the level of nine different chemicals shown to be associated with depression. According to Papakostas, when the results of the blood tests were compared to the diagnoses of a trained clinical psychologist, the blood test proved to be surprisingly accurate.

The test is designed to be simple, Papakostas said. The patient comes in for a regular blood draw and then the blood is sent to a lab for testing.

The results of this test are translated into a point system that indicates whether a patient is likely suffering from depression.

According the Papakostas, the most important implications of this discovery are the new questions it raises and its potential applications. He and his researchers are now asking whether it can be used to monitor the recovery of a patient suffering from depression, find patients who have a potential to be depressed, or indicate that a patient is likely to relapse into depression. However, the question currently at the forefront for Papakostas is whether or not this test is effective in screening subjects in a doctor’s clinic.

Papakostas said the test will undergo further study, this time in a clinical field, to gauge how effective it is in the real world. He hopes it will become a helpful tool for diagnosticians and a clue to help researchers better understand depression.

Papakostas does not see this test as a new standard for clinical diagnosis.

“Testing negative is not a reason for insurance companies to not cover the expenses of treatment or reason to absolutely reject depression as a diagnosis,” said Papakostas. “The test is supposed to complement clinical care.”

Luckily, it is not 2030, but 2012. I am writing this article because I think it is time that we as a nation step up to the plate and tackle this problem head on. Yes, I think it is fantastic that the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (NAPA) passed in January 2011. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, “The National Alzheimer’s Project Act requires creation of a national strategic plan to address the rapidly escalating Alzheimer’s disease crisis and will coordinate Alzheimer’s disease efforts across the federal government.” NAPA was a start, but we need to pass legislation which will actually accomplish goals and not just state them. Congress needs to follow through and pass the Alzheimer’s legislation that is on the table: the HOPE Act and the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Act. These two acts provide legislation that will implement the goals set in the NAPA Act. It is an election year, and so many people do not think much legislation will be passed this year. This is my message to Congress: Prove me wrong and pass this legislation to start the path to end Alzheimer’s.

Congress — if we hold off investing for a cure or a way to slow the progression of the disease today, we will be paying for it later. According to the Alzheimer’s Association: “Over the next 40 years, caring for individuals with Alzheimer’s will cost American society $20 trillion — including $15 trillion to Medicare and Medicaid.” With a health care system that already has its problems, Alzheimer’s disease will only escalate them.

As a nation, we can ill-afford to continue with the status quo in dealing with Alzheimer’s. And frankly, the members of Congress are in an age group that should be very concerned about Alzheimer’s. According to the Congressional Research Service, in the 112th Congress the average age of a U.S. Senator is 62.2 years old and the average age of a U.S. Representative is 56.7 years old. The problems accompanying aging are sobering to think about, and they are an honest reality which our lawmakers should consider.

Finally, I want to reach out to my generation. I am 22 years old and know firsthand the effects of Alzheimer’s, as my grandfather had the disease. I also know that I am in the generation which many older Americans describe as “the screwed generation.” We are the generation which is going to have to pay the piper from the federal deficit. We are the generation which will not get Social Security and other benefits which older Americans receive today. Does that mean we are supposed to just accept every problem and not try to improve things? No, we can do our part and try to help best we can.

It always helps to have a celebrity who supports a cause that needs attention. Seth Rogen and his wife, Lauren Miller, recently held an event called “Hilarity For Charity” to raise money and awareness among the younger generation about Alzheimer’s disease. To quote Seth, “Hilarity for Charity started as a message to my generation that it’s time to step up and realize that Alzheimer’s is not just an ‘old person disease,’ but something that will greatly affect all of us.”

Seth and Lauren are actively involved in raising awareness and fundraising for Alzheimer’s, as Lauren’s mother was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 55. They raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for their event and are a great example of how younger generations can make a difference.

Where does that leave us? Of course we do not have the same outreach as a Hollywood star, but we can do plenty. We can be a voice. Please go to this website — http://www.alzimpact.org/Legislative-Action-Center — to write your Congressmen and ask him to help pass legislation which can help cure Alzheimer’s. You can also take 30 seconds to fill out a form which will go to President Obama to ask him to include Alzheimer’s in his budget this year: http://www.alz.org/petition/. It may not feel like much, but it truly will make a difference.

I first explored giving blood during my sophomore year at Dartmouth, finally deeming myself mentally and physically ready to join in this selfless act of social responsibility. After mentioning my decision to a group of friends, one quickly noted that I was ineligible because I was gay. Although I have been monogamous for the last two and a half years, just one partner would be enough to disqualify me from donating. I could certainly lie and give blood anyway, but the idea of doing so felt dirty and subversive. I instead volunteered at the blood drive, though I was disappointed that my participation was limited to carrying the blood of my moral superiors from their lounges to a central collection table. It was there that I was first able to read the eligibility forms myself, to feast my eyes on the words of my figurative oppressors. Afterwards, each successive bag of blood seemed to scream of my inferiority.

Current FDA guidelines restrict donations from any man who has had sex with another man since 1977, a rough estimate for when HIV became prevalent in the United States. At the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and early 1990s, such a policy helped to curb the spread of what was, at that time, a latent and undetectable virus.

Consequently, men who have sex with men — or “MSM” as the FDA calls them — are lumped into a single, marginalized “high-risk” category, ignoring inherent differences in sexual behavior and experiences among those within the gay and bisexual population (Kramer says there are too many of us to be called a “community”). These restrictions serve only to reinforce the prevalent stigmas against homosexual men in American society. The FDA should instead determine risks based on a donor’s sexual history and behaviors, not his or her orientation.

Current HIV tests process blood with nearly 100 percent accuracy and can detect the presence of the virus within nine to 11 days after infection, a far shorter period than those of earlier procedures. Some relatively unexplored procedures of donor pretesting could further reduce the risk of collecting blood containing the HIV virus, regardless of a donor’s sexual orientation.

Of course the LGBTQ community is still reeling from the effects of the epidemic. Some Americans are unaware that they are HIV positive, and those that are aware do not always have access to treatment. It would be foolish not to recognize that HIV /AIDS still poses a risk to homosexual men as well as heterosexuals. Still, the current restrictions are antiquated and prevent many potential donors from giving blood within a medically advanced system that has the power to effectively screen donations and minimize the risks to transfusion recipients. As summarized by a student in the U. Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, “Under the blanket ban, one is presumed guilty of risky behavior and communicable disease simply by being gay.”

My blood is as good as anyone else’s. It carries oxygen and nutrients as it courses through my veins, bringing energy and life to a mind that can only hope that one day my rights in this country will not be contingent on who I love. I am not advocating a boycott of blood drives, which undoubtedly save countless lives and illustrate some of the most admirable elements of human nature. My best friend’s sister, who was hit by a truck, is alive today because of blood transfusions. Instead, I am asking that we look beyond what has existed in search of what is right. Regulations that worked 30 years ago do not necessarily work now. Only consistent and honest revisiting of the institutions that govern this country will enable our daily lives to align with our society’s ostensible values of freedom, equality and justice.

Dr. Carson Mencken and Dr. Charles Tolbert, Baylor professors of sociology, along with Dr. Troy Blanchard, associate professor of sociology at LSU, conducted a study that examines the relationship between small businesses and the health of people in their community.

“It was the first study to show that small businesses are healthier for the growth of a population,” Mencken said.

The researchers found the growth of small-businesses might produce positive results in the health of the residents in the community, Blanchard said.

The researchers used data from several different national databases and examined the relationship between the sizes of businesses in a community (small or large) and the health percentages of the community.

Mencken said there are many theses regarding the growth of big businesses and the relationship to the health of local populations. The professors were attempting to test the hypothesis that small businesses lead to healthier local populations than big businesses.

Blanchard said the health of a community is part of its growth and that there are different ways a community can grow and become stable. He said the first way is attracting large businesses from outside the community. “This approach is common, and we know it tends to yield positive benefits,” Blanchard said.

The second way of growing a community is by stimulating small business growth and allowing small businesses to be successful, he said.

With this method, Blanchard said it is often hard to see how it affects local residents because small businesses are not usually expected to improve the health of the population.

“Most people assume small locally owned businesses cannot provide health stability,” Mencken said. “We showed the opposite.”

The goal of the study was to understand how small businesses have added benefits over big businesses.

“The big places come and go; the small places commit to the community,” Mencken said, regarding the conclusion of their study. “A more grounded approach can be better for long-term growth.” The commitment to the community is what helps people become healthier, Mencken said.

The study found the mortality rates, the rate of diabetes and the obesity rates of populations surrounded by a variety of small businesses were lower than those surrounded by large businesses, Blanchard said.

In a press release, Tolbert said small businesses have an attitude of determination and take “a practical problem-solving approach in which a community takes control of its own destiny.”

The hypothesis the researchers studied was established on the idea small businesses, unlike large businesses, have more invested in a community and have more at stake concerning customers, employees, and others, according to the press release. The release also said local businesses are more likely to support bond issues for health infrastructures, recruit physicians, push for local anti-smoking legislation, promote community health programs and activities and support local farmers’ markets. To conduct the study, the professors studied the data provided by the 2000 Census of Population and Housing, the 2007 Centers for Disease Control Obesity and Diabetes Estimates, National Center for Health Statistics Compressed Mortality records from 1994-2006, the 2002 County Business Patterns and the 2002 Nonemployer Statistics.

The study, conducted at Utah Valley U. and published in January in the journal, “Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking,” is based on previous research that people use computer-mediated communication like Facebook to optimize their self-presentation, or present themselves in a positive way they want others to see.

“We usually see the bright side of others, especially from the positive images and comments posted on Facebook,” said Hui-Tzu Grace Chou, sociologist and main researcher of the study. “If we only see the sunny sides of others, it is easier for people to feel that others have a better life, or life is unfair, especially when they themselves are having some difficult times in life.”

Chou and research partner, Nicholas Edge, surveyed 425 undergraduate students from UVU, asking them to gauge their agreement with statements like, “Many of my friends are happier than me,” and “Life is fair,” while comparing factors such as how long they had a Facebook, how often they used it and how many of their Facebook friends are essentially strangers.

The study found that people who have had Facebook longer and had more Facebook friends they didn’t actually know perceived others to be happier than they were and thought life was less fair.

Polly Isurin, a fourth-year Ohio State U. student who has never had a Facebook account, said she’s never felt the need for it and doesn’t plan on getting one. She said she feels that on top of having more time than those with a Facebook, she’s better off without it.

“I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily happier,” Isurin said. “Just probably less self-conscious because I don’t compare myself because I have nothing to compare it to.”

Chou said there are also positive sociological effects of Facebook, like connecting with friends and a sense of belonging, but it shouldn’t replace face-to-face interaction.

Shelby Spressart, a third-year OSU student, said she tries to be careful about the time she spends on Facebook.

“In general I like it because it’s mostly how I find things to do with my friends and see what’s going on and pictures,” Spressart said. “I get on it, then I see what’s going on, then I get off. I can’t stay on too long because then I just get frustrated with other people.”

Hollie Kinney, a fourth-year OSU student, said she enjoys Facebook because of the sometimes negative light in which people present themselves.

“I spend a lot of time on Facebook out of boredom.” Kinney said. “I think it’s fun, it gives people something to do and you can see which of your friends are idiots and drama wh-res. That’s kind of an elitist thing to say, but whatever.”

Facebook has filed registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public, and has set a preliminary goal of $5 billion for its initial public offering.

Spressart said she’s thought about quitting Facebook so she wouldn’t have to hear about peoples’ lives all the time, but could never bring herself to do it.

Isurin said the people she knows who don’t have a Facebook had it at one point, then got rid of it most likely due to the way people present themselves.

“I don’t think Facebook is bad,” Isurin said. “But I think it has gotten out of hand.”

Medical research has confirmed the connection between oral health and overall health, yet many people, including students, lack proper dental care.

“The mouth is the window to the body,” said Connie White, professor at U. Missouri-Kansas City School of Dentistry.

Oral care has been shown to relate so closely to overall health that a dentist can suspect almost immediately if a patient is suffering from other health problems. Diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune diseases such as H.I.V., eating disorders, drinking problems, tobacco use, fungal infections, oral cancer and leukemia all manifest themselves in the mouth, White said.

“The link between gum disease and heart disease is becoming established in the literature. The bacteria in the mouth from gum disease can actually travel through the vessels and contribute to the thickening of the vessel walls and this contributes to heart disease,” White said.

“One slogan we tell our students to consider is: ‘Your mouth is talking. Are you listening?’” she said.

“College life is like a perfect storm because we do all the bad stuff,” White said. More stress, poor diet, alcohol and tobacco use and a tendency to get less sleep all contribute to oral health problems.

Lack of sleep and stress both lower the body’s autoimmune response, making it less efficient at fighting off infection.

“Alcohol is a biggie,” White said. “I can tell immediately if a person drinks or smokes heavily because it dries out the mouth.”

A dry mouth can lead to an increase in tooth decay, tooth sensitivity and possibility of gum disease.

“Smokeless tobacco is not your friend either. I’ve seen horrible cases of oral cancer,” White said.

“Be your own best citizen by paying attention to any changes in your mouth,” White said. “Lumps, bumps, discoloration of gum tissue and bleeding of the gums are all signs that something is wrong.”

Flossing and brushing twice a day is strongly recommended, she said.

“And try to make it to a dentist at least once a year, preferably twice a year, just to get your mouth looked at,” White said.

Many dentists are sensitive to the needs of uninsured people and offer payment plans.

Dr. Stephen Rodgers, the medical director for the James Madison U. Health Center, has the science to back it up. He said recent studies prove that students with less sleep have lower GPAs than students who do get sleep.

“The mean GPA for students is 2.8, but for sleep-deprived students, it’s 2.65,” Rodgers said.

Only 11.4 percent of students in the past week have gotten enough sleep to feel rested, according to the 2011 health survey by the American College Health Association.

One contributor to this pervasive sleepiness might be all-nighters. They may be a great way to cram for exams, but all-nighters aren’t exactly the best idea. Lack of sleep causes depression and irritability, which affects the brain’s ability to retain information, Rodgers explained.

A crucial part of adding new information to memory is the part of the sleep cycle called rapid eye movement sleep. During REM sleep, the brain embeds the information it’s taken the day before.

Without REM sleep, the brain can’t perform up to its full ability or retain memory.

Jeff Dyche, a JMU psychology professor, said that cramming limits the amount of information the brain can actually learn due to an enzyme produced called protein phosphatase 1.

“It is a molecular constraint to learning,” Dyche said. “In other words, it keeps you from learning things very well. The only way to avoid this is to distribute your studying over a long period of time.”

Caffeine, after a certain point, doesn’t help either.

“Up to three cups of coffee or soda would help performance,” Rodgers said, “but anything more than that would lead to a crash and then more drowsiness the next day during a test.”

Some students said exam week was the most popular time to pull all-nighters.

JMU sophomore Katie Dudek has gone a few sleepless nights to study for exams.

“I have done maybe eight total, and it was during midterm and finals time,” Dudek said. “The most I’ve ever done is two nights in a row, but I had naps during the day. It was finals week.”

JMU freshman Nick Minahan said all-nighters are a necessary evil. He said he gets hit harder with tests and projects on some weeks more than others.

“I feel as if all-nighters aren’t even optional at times, especially around midterms,” Minahan said. “So with that said, they’re worth it because it’s the only way I can complete my work and study an adequate amount.”

Dyche hopes to dispel the popularity of all-nighters.

“I think there are students who think they haven’t studied enough unless they pull an all- nighter,” Dyche said, “so they think it is a requirement or something.”

This decision comes three days after the breast cancer movement organization pulled its funding from Planned Parenthood, citing a federal investigation into Planned Parenthood as the cause for the decision.

The original announcement created a social media uproar of citizens who believed that cause for the withdrawal of funds came from pro-life activist pressures.

“We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives. The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not,” Brinker said in a statement released to the public.

Komen funding to Planned Parenthood goes toward breast exams and cancer screenings for low-income patients.

Since the announcement was made Tuesday, Planned Parenthood has reported nearly $1 million in donations, which includes a $250,000 donation from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

“We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives,” the statement said.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation is the nation’s leading breast cancer charity organization.

“Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation,” the statement said. “We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”

According to a CNN Wire report, in Washington, at least 22 Senate Democrats signed a letter calling on Komen to reconsider its decision.

CREDO, which describes itself as the largest corporate donor to Planned Parenthood, said Thursday that 250,000 of its members had signed a petition urging the Komen Foundation to reverse its decision.

The group reinforced that its only goal is to support those fighting against breast cancer and that changes to its criteria will make sure that politics does not affect the grant process.

It will continue to fund its existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, the statement said.

The foundation granted 19 Planned Parenthood affiliates about $680,000 last year and $580,000 the previous year for breast cancer screenings and breast health education.

It contributes to a wide suite of diseases, including those of the liver and heart, along with diabetes, obesity and cancer.

It is widely available, even to children, to whom its makers and pushers market it, and its use has exploded in the last few decades.

It costs the United States tens to hundreds of billions of dollars per year in lost productivity and health care costs and damages national security.

Clearly, substance X is nasty and changes need to be made.

Substance X is sugar.

A little sugar is a great thing. Indeed, that’s why we’re evolutionarily programmed to love and even crave it. In nature, it is scarce. But, in the modern world, it is ubiquitous.

The average American now consumes 73 pounds of added sugar a year (which is an increase of 50 percent in the last 35 years), including 55 gallons of soda.

That’s not entirely the fault of all of us who have a sweet tooth. Multiple studies have shown addiction-type reactions to sugar, including dependence, tolerance and withdrawal.

But, for its delicious temptation, sugar is likely responsible for what doctors call “metabolic syndrome.” Metabolic syndrome consists of a group of health problems that tend to show up in the same people, including diabetes, high blood pressure and heart and liver disease.

Many people, and researchers, have suggested the metabolic syndrome is a consequence of too many total calories and obesity, rather than just sugar, per se. But 20 percent of obese people don’t suffer from metabolic syndrome, and 40 percent of normal-weight people do, so obesity and metabolic syndrome aren’t just two sides of the same coin.

Furthermore, as industrial, western foods – characterized by highly processed, carbohydrate-rich calories – spread around the world, the diseases of metabolic syndrome follow in their shadow.

Metabolic syndrome costs the U.S. $65 billion a year in lost productivity and another $150 billion a year in health care costs.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said obesity, which is driven by increasing sugar consumption, poses a threat to national security because a quarter of all military applicants are now rejected for being obese.

Clearly, something must be done about this scourge.

First, on the personal responsibility front, there should be a limit on sugar intake. Obvious culprits, such as soda and candy, will blow your sugar consumption through the roof, but be sure to check nutrition labels on processed foods and restaurant items, which often contain lots of added sugar.

It gets easier to keep sugar consumption down after the first few days. I know that both from the science and from personal experience.

Like any addiction, you’ll feel a little low energy and grumpy for a while, and you’ll likely find yourself thinking about sugar-rich foods surprisingly often. But, after just a couple of days, those candy daydreams will pass and your energy level and mood will be better and steadier throughout the day.

Telling people to eat less sugar isn’t enough. Sugar consumption poses a public health threat and needs to be treated as such.

As U. California San Francisco professor Robert Lustig and colleagues argue in a commentary in the current issue of “Nature,” governments regulate alcohol and tobacco sales to protect public health and well-being, and it’s time to do the same with sugar.

We wouldn’t let vending machines in our schools distribute cigarettes, whisky or cocaine to children. Sugar has similar addiction and health consequences, and yet we flood children with sugar in schools, at home and on holidays.

If that sounds radical, remember there used to be cocaine in Coca-Cola and cigarettes used to be smoked in every building.

As science continues to discover where there are threats to our health, it is our duty as a society to limit the ability of those threats to hurt us.

As it becomes clearer that sugar posses a public health threat, we should insist it be more difficult for children to access sugar and that it be taxed to discourage its use and to pay for the costs the public bears for its consequences.

For a woman who has spent the majority of her life pushing 12,000 calorie Krispy Kreme bread pudding, and fried chocolate covered cheesecake, her recent confession of having been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes over 2 years ago doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Of course Deen has diabetes. How could she not?

During the 2-year span while the butter-loving darling of southern cuisine was hiding her disease, she managed to pump out her fourteenth cookbook, “Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible: The New Classic Guide to Delicious Dishes With More Than 300 Recipes.” Just holding her cookbook can clog your arteries, however that hasn’t stopped people from buying them.

What’s hard to accept is that in the same interview on the “Today” show where she announced her Type 2 diabetes, Deen announced she’s the new spokeswoman for the diabetes drug manufacturer, Novo Nordisk. Not only is she endorsing her fat laden recipes, once you develop diabetes from eating her fried butter and cream cheese sticks, she’s got you covered too.

I happen to agree with Deen’s explanation, “You’ve got to be responsible for yourself.” You and you alone determine what to put on your plate at every meal. If you live on a diet of fried foods, you have to deal with the consequences.

Deen continued, “On my show, I share all these yummy, fattening recipes, but I tell people (to eat) in moderation.” She then reminds us, “I’m your cook, not your doctor.”

She evades any sort of responsibility for the fat content of what she’s selling. She continued to add blocks of Velveeta into recipes that are hardly improved with the additional ingredient, all while knowing the consequences of her edible actions.

Is she being helpful in the slightest while suggesting we take a hamburger, fried egg and bacon and slap that between two donuts and call it the “Brunch Burger?”

Don’t forget one of Deen’s favorite salad recipes, which calls for onion, pepper, a few tomatoes, a loaf of corn bread, two cups of cheddar cheese and an entire bottle of ranch dressing. Now that sounds like a meal for someone counting calories, the more the better.

Meal after meal it has become apparent that Deen has little to no consideration for her viewers waistlines or overall health, maybe this was the plan all along, fatten ‘em up and then pump ‘em full of drugs. The sheer timing lends itself to this conclusion.

The latest addition to the Food Network line up is Deen’s son, Bobby’s show “Not My Mama’s Meals,” which was shamefully pitched on the “Today” show by his Mama. The new show is geared at those wishing to avoid the life of a Type 2 diabetes sufferer.

The bottom line is Deen did a disservice to her fans. She continually pumped out buttery, greasy delectable’s without acknowledging her first hand experience of how a person can be burned by it.

The Komen Foundation says it held the funds because of a new policy of refusing grants to organizations that are under investigation by the government. Planned Parenthood supporters have attributed the change in policy instead to pressure on the Komen Foundation exerted by pro−life activists.

Even if we give the Komen Foundation the benefit of the doubt and assume it cut funding of its own volition, the decision is nonsensical. It is one thing to pull funding from an organization that has been indicted or convicted of a criminal act, but the congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood’s alleged misuse of federal tax dollars is ongoing. Moreover, the investigation itself is suspect, since the accusations of misconduct originated with the staunchly pro−life National Right to Life organization and has been overseen by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R−Fla.), one of the most outspoken abortion opponents in all of Congress.

Regardless of the investigation’s validity, no one has determined that Planned Parenthood is guilty of any wrongdoing, so the decision to defund the organization is unfair and premature.

The decision is especially ridiculous given that the money from the Komen Foundation was earmarked for breast cancer screenings, whereas the federal investigation concerns tax dollars that were allegedly used to fund abortions — a claim that Planned Parenthood adamantly denies.

Abortions comprise only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services to women. The rest come in the form of cancer screenings, sex education, treatment for STDs, and other crucial health services. The breast cancer screenings that the Komen Foundation would have helped fund are irrefutably beneficial.

Women’s health care options should not become a casualty of the political tug of war over the morality of abortion. All this decision accomplishes is to make it more difficult for women to receive quality care, and that doesn’t help anyone.

Pfizer Inc., a pharmaceutical company, identified problems in 14 lots of Lo/Ovral-28 oral tablets and 14 lots of Norgestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol oral tablets. All were since recalled, according to a press release on Pfizer’s website.

Pfizer spokesman Chris Loder said though one million packets were recalled, only about 28 packets were affected.

“If we identify even one packet, our strong commitment to quality compels us to recall entire lots,” Loder said.

Some of the pills may have inexact counts of active ingredients may be out of sequence, according to the press release.

Though the defects will not cause any immediate health risks, they could increase the risk of pregnancy by leaving women with inadequate contraception, according to the press release.

The expiration dates on the packages range from July 31, 2013 to March 31, 2014, according to the press release.

The issue was identified as a result of a customer complaint, Loder said in an email. An investigation was launched at the manufacturing plant to determine the root cause of the issue, he said.

Following a retail level recall in late December, the Food and Drug Administration completed its own assessment and determined that a patient-level recall was warranted. It requested that Pfizer issue a press release to broadly inform patients, which it did last night, Loder wrote in the email.

Pfizer is advising consumers who have been exposed to the defective pills to begin using a non-hormonal form of contraception immediately, Loder said. He said consumers should go to pfizer.com to see pictures and lot numbers of the product.

Anyone who is in possession of the recalled products is also advised to notify their physician and return the product to the pharmacy, according to the press release.

Penn State U. Health Services Director Dr. Margaret Spear said anyone who has questions about the recall should call Qualitest at 1-877-300-6153 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Central Time.

The pharmaceutical company said it corrected the problem for their future products, according to the release.

“Pfizer has responded rapidly to ensure that its products continue to meet the company’s high quality standards. The safety of patients who take our medicines is our first priority,” the release states.

Decade after decade, the American Psychiatric Association chooses a panel which comprises of psychologists, clinicians and a host of other scholars. The panel has grappled with a myriad of categories to best characterize autism, but a study recently done by the panel shows that the proposed changes to the newest DSM may disqualify certain individuals who don’t pass under the new set of criteria, therefore reducing aid and other resources afflicted persons require.

In the 17 years since the release of the DSM-IV, the rise in the prevalence of autism was believed to be partly attributed to the relatively vague, ambiguous criteria in diagnosing autism or Asperger’s syndrome. This was a primary factor for the reorganization of the criteria cited under autism.

But there’s a fine line to balance when it comes to drafting new changes to the DSM, which lies between unhindered day-to-day functionality and severed operation. And it teeters among factors like schools’ budget cuts to special education services, the extent of health care coverage for treatment and the rate of diagnosis in recent years.

Many experts working on the DSM-V disagree with the study’s results, unsure about how the panel concluded the proposed changes would damagingly exclude people in need of aid only available to those diagnosed as autistic.

We can’t be certain the study’s results will play out just as it predicts if the new systematization of diagnosing autism is kept in the DSM. But for the individuals afflicted with autism and who need the services that are available to them only under the DSM-IV, the prognosis of the revisions is paramount to how they will live their lives. The suggested changes should be concluded after our knowledge of the disorder is supported by research conducted by numerous groups. Otherwise, we risk undercutting individuals of necessary resources.

After buying the house, like any responsible couple, they shopped for home insurance. They were told that the foundation will need to be repaired within the next year, so no insurance plan would cover the home’s foundation at a price John could afford.

This makes business sense from the side of the insurance company. Because insurance is based on calculating risk, the company does not want to take on coverage of a home that is guaranteed to need repairs.

If John can only pay an insurance premium of $1,000 a month, then he will not receive coverage for a repair that will cost $20,000 almost immediately. Why not? Let’s analyze.

If John purchases the home and insurance in January and four months later needs the foundation to be repaired, he has paid the insurance company $4,000. That means that the insurance company is down $16,000. If John drops his coverage after the repair, then the company loses that money. If he stays with the company, then the company doesn’t break even until August the following year, assuming no other repairs were needed.

John will either have to pay a higher premium or have to choose not to cover his foundation. Of course, the insurance company has the option of keeping John’s premium at $1,000 while slightly raising other customers’ premiums to compensate, which is unfair to the other customers.

Compare John’s situation with Jane’s. Instead of home insurance, Jane is shopping for health insurance. However, she has a pre-existing condition that will require a high amount of medical expenses in the near future.

Like John, the insurance company does not want to cover Jane at a normal rate. Instead, they want to either charge her a higher premium or not cover her altogether.

With the Affordable Health Care for America Act, insurance companies will be forced to cover Jane, no matter the pre-existing condition, at a rate that she can afford. As a result, the insurance company will be paying out far more than it is taking in on Jane.

Because insurance companies are businesses, they want to make up the lost money on Jane. They do so by raising premiums on other customers. While Jane’s situation may only affect the other customers slightly, there are thousands of others in Jane’s situation, meaning that each premium will be slightly affected thousands of times.

While many feel sorry for John, they would not push for the insurance company to cover him at $1,000 a month. However, they will push, and even force, the insurance company to cover Jane.

Both home and health are considered necessities in America, and we know that unfortunate situations do arise. In the end, though, we should not believe that everyone should pay for others’ misfortunes.

Students who are under the age of 21 almost triple their drinking habits while studying abroad, according to a study done by U. Washington.

“I was the only UA student within my program. I did take advantage of the lower drinking age, but not as much the nightlife,” said Keely Dye, a U. Arkansas senior majoring in international relations, European studies and economics. “A lot of the drinking that took place within my study abroad experience was with my homestay family. They would have wine or spirits at almost every dinner and any celebrations I was a part of.”

Most countries have lower drinking ages than the U.S., which cause students to become more attracted to the party life abroad.

“I definitely think other students took advantage of being able to go out and drink, legally,” said Jessica Hawley, a UA senior majoring in Spanish. “That was the most popular thing to do for the majority of the students in the program.”

Studying abroad is a great opportunity for students to gain experience with other cultures while gaining credits toward their degree, but often students are distracted from this goal from overseas nightlife.

“My observation is that students do take advantage of the lower drinking age, not necessarily with the intention of abusing the privilege, but in part to enjoy the freedom,” said DeDe Long, Director of Study Abroad and International Exchange. “Learning how to drink responsibly is so important.”

While many underage students drink in the United States, the University of Washington found that those who increased their drinking levels abroad still continued their excessive drinking when they returned home.

“Once you do start drinking, it is easier to continue doing so once you go back home,” Hawley said.

The most popular study abroad destinations for American students are the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain, all of which have a legal drinking age of 18. Germany, Greece and Luxembourg have a minimum drinking age as low as 16 while Albania and Vietnam have no drinking age at all. The United States is one of only five countries in the world to have the legal age set at 21.

A factor that causes students to drink more while abroad is the convenience.

“The major appeal of the nightlife is living in an area with public transportation. You have a set way to get home without any worry of drunk driving,” Dye said. “You also are in a program with students in the same situation as yourself: away from home, more relaxed academic schedule and more accessible nightlife with almost no age restrictions.”

The U. Washington researchers discovered that studying abroad in Australia, New Zealand and European countries caused students to drink more heavily than those who studied in Asian, African, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries.

“Students need to take responsibility for themselves abroad just like they do when they participate in college life here in Fayetteville,” Long said. “If they get caught up in drinking here, they are going to have to be extremely careful not to mimic that behavior in another country, where access may be much easier.”

Studying abroad allows the student to learn new perspectives from being in a foreign country, but if drinking becomes too much of a distraction, the chance of a lifetime can become threatened.

“I think that those who did [drink more] tended to go to class less and focus less on their studies,” Hawley said. “School and studying was not their priority.”

The cornerstone of studying abroad is to acquire knowledge not already found in the United States, and the opportunity can benefit the future of the student.

“Study abroad is a significant investment of time and money,” Long said. “What a waste it would be to throw such a great learning experience away by finding yourself without money or a passport, or on a plane home after an accident caused by poor judgment.”

The study abroad program is trying to prevent and raise awareness of binge drinking overseas.

“In our pre-departure meetings with students, we continually stress how important it is for students to be mindful of their surroundings, take care of themselves, and to represent the University of Arkansas well,” Long said. “We strongly discourage over-drinking. Over-drinking can easily put a student in a vulnerable position, this is when they get lost, hurt or robbed.”

Some students already find normal college life to be distracting enough and factoring in the culture and exciting night life of a foreign country may lead them to stray away from the aspiration of studying abroad.

“I would tell students who are apprehensive about studying abroad that they should not worry,” Hawley said. “The partying scene wasn’t for me, and I had a very enjoyable time abroad without partying. I think you can have an enjoyable time anywhere, without having to drink or hang out at clubs.”

So it is not surprising that area parents voiced extreme dissatisfaction upon the revelation that some area elementary schools allocated just 15 minutes for lunch. Opponents argue that short lunch periods lead to unhealthy eating habits.

Though this might be a worthwhile debate for the future, if parents are genuinely concerned with the nutritional well-being of their children, they should focus on the quality of the food their children eat more than how much time they have to eat it. Childhood obesity rates in the United States are alarming, and the country will be certain to pay for it with the world’s only two certainties: death and taxes.

Given the projected health-care costs associated with Type 2 diabetes, federal and state governments should look into investing in higher-quality food supplied to and from the National School Lunch Program.

As The Daily Iowan reported Monday, 21 percent of low-income children in Iowa risk malnutrition. This is especially important when you consider these children are overwhelmingly likely to rely on school-sponsored lunches as a source of nutrition. Moreover, it is important to distinguish between the caloric and the nutritional substance of food. Even though the poor are disproportionately at risk of malnutrition, they are 70 percent more likely to be obese.

This would lead one to believe that school lunches are associated with higher rates of obesity. Several studies over the past decade confirm this suspicion. A 2003 study sponsored by the American Journal of Agricultural Economics found that while school-sponsored lunches were associated with higher vitamin and mineral levels, they were also associated with higher fat and saturated fat intake. A 2009 study published in the Journal of Human Resources concluded that National School Lunch Program participants were more likely to be obese than nonparticipants.

A 2009 investigation conducted by USA Today found food standards for many fast-food restaurants, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC, to be higher than those of the lunch program. A different USA Today article reported that the government spent more than $145 million on spent-hen meat for schools over the last decade. Campbell’s stopped using spent-hen carcasses in its soups well more than a decade ago because of “quality considerations.”

As of the last year data were available, nearly 32 percent of America’s youth were either overweight or obese, of whom more than half were obese — in 1980, only 5 percent of American children were obese.

In Iowa, that number is 26.5 percent. No Iowan should take pride or solace in that fact. While the obesity rate in Iowa is comparatively low, no one should find comfort in the fact that 26.5 percent of children in the state have become more likely to develop Type II Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and numerous forms of cancer. And, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 70 percent of obese children exhibit at least one high-risk factor for heart disease.

Moreover, the costs of obesity are not solely borne by any one individual. Obesity has very real and measurable societal costs. The Society of Actuaries found that, in 2009, the average annual cost of obesity in the U.S. was nearly $300 billion in additional medical costs and lost productivity. That cost is expected to surpass more than $340 billion a year before the decade is out.

Lest anyone think that the costs are only borne in old age, the CDC found that the costs of hospitalizing children for obesity-related issues rose from $125.9 million in 2001 to $237.6 million in 2005. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that children treated for obesity-related issues are liable to cost either their parents or the government (if they are covered by Medicaid) $2,500 to $4,200 more than a normal-weight child per year.

By failing to make the right argument for the right reason, the implicit issue at the heart of this controversy — the alarming degradation of children’s health in this country — has turned into a debate over minutes and seconds when it should be a debate over vitamins, minerals, and calories. If parents are genuinely concerned about the health of their children, there is no room for error. The individual costs are too high and the societal costs too grand for parents to waste boundless time and energy making the wrong argument, regardless of whether it is for the right reason.

It would be wise to spend a fraction of what would be future health-care costs on our children’s nutrition today. Fighting to extend lunch hours is fine, but a community doing so for penny-wise, pound-foolish reasons speaks to a very fundamental problem.

Christina Shay, assistant professor at OU and lead investigator of the study, looked at health profiles of more than 5,000 children and teenagers, ages 12 to 19, she said. The results indicated that none of them met all the criteria outlined by the American Heart Association for ideal cardiovascular health.

The study looked at whether participants smoked, their body mass indexes, diets, physical activity, total cholesterol, blood glucose and blood pressure, Shay said.

The three most important factors influencing obesity and heart disease in the U.S. are long periods of sedentary behavior, low rates of physical activity and poor diets, Shay said. Smoking and obesity levels contribute to why residents in Oklahoma typically rank below national averages on healthy lifestyle measures.

“Healthy lifestyles and diet both affect blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol,” epidemiology professor Gary E. Raskob said, “Those issues should be dealt with as early as possible to avoid cardiovascular disease and related disease”.

The study also revealed that more females had ideal healthy diet scores, and the percent of overweight or obese participants was nearly the same in males and females, Shay said.

The American Heart Association recommends an hour each day of physical activity for children and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables but low in sugar drinks, OU Health Sciences Center graduate student Yi Xiong said.

The BU press release stated associate professor of medicine Joanne Murabito and biostatistics professor Kathryn Lunetta concluded the genes associated with a woman’s age at menopause include genes involved in DNA repair and immune function in addition to genes involved in hormonal regulation. Their findings were published in a Jan. 22 article in Nature Genetics.

“Our findings suggest that ovarian aging and aging per se may be regulated by some of the same biological mechanisms,” Lunetta said in an email interview.

Their investigation, which took more than 18 months to complete, involved a study of more than 53,000 people of European decent who had experienced menopause between the ages of 40 and 60, Lunetta said. The data involved 36 separate studies from more than 180 researchers.

“Women who have entered menopause are at higher risk for a variety of health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, low bone density and breast cancer,” Lunetta said. “We hope that by identifying the factors that affect age at menopause, we will also identify new pathway for treatment of these conditions.”

New technologies and statistical methods will help researchers identify additional genetic factors contributing to menopause in the near future, Lunetta said.

“However, we have only just begun to understand the genetic factors that contribute to the age at which a woman enters menopause,” she said. “We expect that new technologies and statistical methods will help us identify additional genetic factors contributing to menopause in the near future.”

The researchers said they plan to continue their research on menopause.

One study that is underway examines genetic variations among African-American women and will be used to compare their findings from European women, Lunetta said.

“We also hope that our findings will lead us to new therapies for women who suffer from premature ovarian failure and early menopause,” she said.

Another ongoing project involves working to determine whether genetic factors that contribute to normal menopause age influence early menopause onset in some women.

Andrew, whose name has been changed by request, first encountered porn when he was 10 years old. He received an email containing images of a woman’s breasts and a message that said something like, “Hey, come check out my website!” he said. Out of curiosity, he clicked on the link in the email.

Among college-age adults, 87 percent of men and 31 percent of women watch pornography, according to a 2008 study by researchers at Brigham Young U.

“Everybody in my dorm watched it and talked about it,” said Jack Podczerwinski, a UA political science junior. “We’re all sexual beings. It is what it is.”

While online pornography may be used to satisfy sexual and physiological needs, it may also be used to escape from mental and emotional pressures. People turn to porn to alleviate stress, loneliness and depression, said Debra Cox-Howard, a counselor at UA Counseling and Psych Services. What initially seems like a casual pastime can turn into an addiction, she said.

To combat the problem, an addict might find something to replace the substance, just like a cigarette smoker might start chewing gum. However, the problem with Internet pornography is that it is ubiquitous and easily accessible, Cox-Howard said.

“We’re married to our computers,” she added.

In the beginning, Andrew satisfied his curiosity by looking at pictures of women’s breasts. But soon he was visiting sex blogs, having sexually explicit conversations in online chat rooms and sharing pornographic pictures with other users.

“At first, it was only spending like 15 minutes or so at a time on the computer, but at the worst point, sometimes it would be like five or six hours,” he said. “One thing that pornography does too is that it always demands more. So, what you did online the night before almost never is good enough for tonight. So you always want more and more and more — something new, you always want something new.”

His addiction followed him to college and began to take a toll on his social life.

“A couple times in undergrad my roommate would say, ‘Hey, do you want to go do this or that?’ and I’d be like, ‘No, not really,’ and then, as soon as he’d leave, I’d be on the computer,” he said.

Spending several hours hunched over the computer caused Andrew to lose sleep, waste time and develop poor posture and severe back pain. In social situations, he noticed he couldn’t resist “checking people out,” especially women.

“I could never let girls get too close because I felt like I would somehow make them dirty just by being around them,” he said. “I couldn’t be a true friend, sometimes.”

Then, about three years ago, Andrew exchanged sexually explicit photos with a female friend. At the time, he was dating another woman, and sharing pictures with his friend felt like betraying his girlfriend, he said.

For Andrew, this was the final straw. Soon after, he found a counselor who helped him understand his needs, his insecurities and his obsession with pornography.

“I felt comfortable just telling the straight truth to him (the counselor), which was helpful,” he said. “He could tell when I was kind of wiggling around the truth and he’d call me out on it.”

Finding a counselor, a support group or an accountability partner can sometimes be the most challenging aspect of combating porn addiction, said Philip Alderink, a campus chaplain for the Graduate Christian Fellowship at UA. Alderink often counsels graduate students struggling with such problems. The negative social stigma attributed to porn addiction prevents users from admitting their obsession and seeking help, he said.

Alderink described pornography as “rampant” among college students, and said he expects every man he meets has viewed pornography.

“I don’t think that anybody is immune from it,” he said. “Society is fooling itself if it thinks pornography is not a problem.”

The UA Main Library is all too familiar with the popularity of porn. While porn isn’t illegal in Arizona, viewing it publicly is. The UA Main Library staff catches people viewing pornography on the public computers “several times per week,” according to Travis Teetor, library operations supervisor. Those caught watching porn on library computers are asked to stop.

“If they refuse to discontinue their behavior or to comply with our request, we would call UAPD immediately,” Teetor said.

Many anti-pornography advocacy groups, such as Enough is Enough and Pure Hope, say pornography motivates people to perform bizarre or violent sexual activities in their real lives, leading them to sexually abuse others. Some believe pornography objectifies women, encouraging viewers to devalue the women they interact with on a day-to-day basis.

However, some argue that consuming pornography actually prevents users from abusing and objectifying others. Viewing pornography allows people to explore their sexual desires; this keeps them from experimenting and potentially harming their sexual partners, said Brion Scroggins, district manager for Continental Adult Shop.

“The industry is an outlet for males, females, couples to get out sexual frustrations and desires,” Scroggins said. “We’re here to make money because people want to come in here and buy what we sell; we’re here to increase people’s sexual awareness. We’re not here to increase the negative aspects,” Scroggins said.

For Andrew, the “negative aspects” — social isolation, a “splintered” identity, emotional detachment, guilt and shame — grew unbearable.

“Once you get tired of being sick and tired, I think that’s a good thing. Because that’s when you’re ready to admit you have a problem, to really look for change,” he said.

It has been almost 15 years since he opened that first email. Andrew has confronted his addiction and managed to be porn-free for the better part of a year.

“I feel a ton of relief, a ton of gratitude, and I feel like I can connect to people again,” he said. “I get a lot more sleep, which is great. I don’t feel dirty like I used to feel. I’m not over sexualized, I don’t feel like a brute.”

The study also found that on any given weekend, at least 10 percent of students could be hosting a party.

Natalie Milliron, a first-year Ohio State U. student, said this research is definitely in line with her personal experiences.

“Whenever, I go to (off-campus) parties, I would say the people who host them are going pretty crazy,” Milliron said.

Random samples of students were given online surveys on high- and low-risk weekends between 2005-2007, said Cynthia Buettner, assistant professor in the OSU College of Education and Human Ecology and lead author of the study.

Buettner said the research focused on party hosts because it was an audience that had not been closely studied. And the results are not too surprising, Buettner said.

Off-campus party hosts consumed an average of nine drinks while those on campus consumed an average of 4.5 drinks.

Research found that people hosting on-campus parties drink less than those attending.

The average number of drinks consumed by attendees at on- and off-campus parties was about the same: 7.5 drinks.

Students hosting parties on campus might worry about university-sanctioned consequences while off-campus hosts are less likely to do so, Buettner said.

“We know from research that one of the things that makes a difference in people’s drinking is whether they think that the policies and laws around drinking will be enforced and how likely they are to be caught,” she said.

While he agrees with the findings, Tommy Glace, a first-year OSU student, said it all depends on the situation.

“If somebody has all these people in their house they might (not drink) to watch what people are doing,” Glace said. “But it depends on the person.”

Milliron said she agrees there might be something to be said for staying sober if you’re hosting a party.

“I’ve actually had a bunch of friends who have had stuff stolen because they just don’t know what’s going on,” Milliron said.

On the other hand, safety could also be a factor that would encourage off-campus party hosts to drink more heavily.

“When you go to parties, you can’t drink to the point where you can pass out, you have to walk home,” Milliron said. “But (off-campus party hosts) can just pass out and go upstairs or go to bed.”

Max Layman, a third-year OSU student, hosts large parties once or twice a quarter with his roommates and said some party hosts drink to be social.

“If you’re having a party, you want to enjoy it,” Layman said.

Layman said money might also be an issue for off-campus hosts. If you have a party and buy alcohol, you’re probably going to drink some of it because you paid for it, Layman said.

Buettner said she hopes students who do host are aware of the risks.

“(As a party host), you’re less likely to be able to control the party at your place because you’ve had too much to drink,” Buettner said. “All of the risks that go along with drinking too much are just increased if you’re a party host off campus.”

The study, which was published earlier this month by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, found that using touch-screen computer tablets strained muscles in the head and neck more than a desktop or laptop computer would.

Microsoft participated in the research, contributing funding and a team of scientists to the study which appeared in “Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment, and Rehabilitation.”

Researchers looked at the four most common positions for tablet use: on the lap and in the user’s hand (lap-hand), on the lap and in a case (lap-case), on a table and in a case (table-case), and on a table at a greater angle in the case (table-movie). The table-movie position was deemed the safest because it placed the tablet at an angle where users didn’t have to look down to see the screen. The other three positions put a lot of strain on the head and neck.

Kay Coots, director of Environmental Health and Safety at U. Oregon, wasn’t surprised by the study.

“Whether it’s an iPad, a tablet or a mobile device, the more we use those small devices, the greater chance we’ll have to strain the neck, arms, shoulders, or wrists,” Coots said. “It’s like watching a movie with your head turned 45 degrees. Of course your neck would hurt by the end of it.”

Although Apple gives safety tips on its website for using desktop computers, the company hasn’t provided safety tips for its popular iPad. New research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project show that the number of Americans who own a computer tablet or e-reader jumped from 18 percent in December to 29 percent in January. And with worldwide iPad sales expected to go from an estimated 17.6 million in 2010 to 300 million in 2015, Coots worries that with the tablets’ sudden popularity, users won’t know how to use them safely.

UO sophomore Kayla Steindorf lounged in a chair in the EMU during the week while playing games on her Kindle Fire between classes. Steindorf uses her Kindle to take notes in class and said she hasn’t had problems with neck pain.

“It’s the same as looking at a piece of paper or taking notes on a piece of paper,” Steindorf said.

UO sophomore Leah Mancino also said working on her iPad isn’t any different than reading a textbook. Mancino said she usually props her iPad up on a desk at home.

“It’s a bit more difficult to hold up sometimes compared to other e-readers,” Mancino said. “But it’s much better than having actual textbooks.”

Coots agreed that iPads and other tablets may not strain the neck much more than looking down at textbooks and notes, but she urged students to pay attention to their head and neck posture while studying either way. Coots recommends students take breaks and stretch every 30 minutes if they plan to use the tablets for several hours. She also suggested students create a workstation where the tablet is propped up with a keyboard plugged in, similar to how a desktop computer is set up.

“There’s a lot of alternatives,” she said. “My best advice is to not be on these things for long periods of time.”

With a wide variety of symptoms from jaundice to heart palpitations, the dangers of dietary supplements are usually more than dieters bargain for.

In a society fueled by beauty, it’s easy for students to feel pressured to be thin at any cost. In the aftermath of holiday indulgence, many students trudge away on the elliptical machines at the HPER and avoid carbohydrates like the plague. Some even turn to the seemingly miraculous solution of diet pills.

However, doctors have found that suppressing the appetite through chemicals is not only taking the easy way out—it is also dangerous and potentially fatal.

They come in all sizes, shapes and colorful boxes, but all diet pills promise the same thing: fast, painless weight loss without strenuous diet and exercise. Seem a bit fishy? Doctors agree.

“Selling anti-obesity drugs over the counter will perpetuate the myth that obesity can be fixed simply by popping a pill and could further undermine efforts to promote healthy living, which is the only long-term escape from obesity,” said Gareth Williams, professor of medicine at U. Bristol and the author of Obesity: Science To Practice.

Additionally, many diet pills have had adverse affects on consumers in the past. In 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a formal warning against the popular dietary supplement Hydroxycut. The FDA “received 23 reports of serious health problems ranging from jaundice and elevated liver enzymes, an indicator of potential liver injury, to liver damage requiring liver transplant.” There was even one reported death from the use of Hydroxycut.

Some U. Arkansas students have also experienced detrimental effects from diet pills in the past. 2011 graduate Blake Dixon recalls a frightening experience from use of the supplement Ripped Fuel. “I bought them at Walmart, thinking they would give me a boost of energy before a workout,” Dixon said.

The diet pill gave more than a boost, however. “A few minutes into my workout,” Dixon remembers, “I felt like I was having a heart attack.”

As spring break rapidly approaches, it’s important to keep a clear perspective on weight loss. Diet and exercise may take a few weeks to see results, but nothing feels better than the blissful payoff of self-discipline (a lack of jaundice doesn’t hurt, either).

What may appear to be a useful, easy way to lose weight comes with many potential health risks and should never be used without professional guidance from a doctor.

According to the School of Public Health study, published in Science Translational Medicine, dietary intake of amino acids and protein before surgery might increase chances of health complications such as heart attack or stroke.

“We were interested in picking apart…what’s missing in the diet,” said James R. Mitchell, assistant professor of genetics and complex diseases at the School of Public Health. “What are we eating that we shouldn’t be eating?”

Previous studies over the past few decades have suggested that long-term dietary restrictions can extend longevity and slow the aging process. A recent study also demonstrated the benefits of restricting protein with fruit flies.

“What we found was that a brief dietary intervention in a mouse could protect against [surgical complications],” Mitchell said. “We wanted to know what the nutritional and genetic basis of that protection is.”

Researchers analyzed two groups of mice, with one group allowed to eat normally for 6 to 14 days while the other group ate an amino acid or protein-free diet.

When both groups were placed under surgical stress, 40 percent of the mice with a normal diet died. All of the mice with amino acid and protein-free diets survived.

According to Mitchell, he said he plans to further elucidate the nutritional basis and the underlying genetic mechanisms behind the study’s discovered link.

“Currently, there are no nutritional guidelines in and around the time of surgery. It’s just not a part of medical management specifically,” Mitchell said. “We think this might be an opportunity that, if this works in people…we can reduce stress resistance in the human body by a simple dietary restriction.”

Mitchell said that before this research can be translated to the clinical level, his team of researchers still needs to determine the optimal diet—and how long it should be maintained—for it to be effective.

Balding’s study suggests that because smartphone’s allow for easy access to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, the pressure to keep up with one’s social life becomes a large contributor to stress.

“The presence of information a smartphone can provide may indeed work to overwhelm people within their already busy and demanding environment,” St. Thomas U. psychology professor Paul Beckmann said. “It’s like having a fire hose of information.”

Many students said that they agree with the study, and St. Thomas sophomore Mauricio Carranza said that smartphones keep people “wondering what everyone is doing at every minute of every hour of every day.”

“Then you are wondering what other people think of what you are doing,” Carranza said.

St. Thomas freshman Samantha Bogdanovich said that she agrees that smartphones not only add stress, but they also interrupt everyday activities.

“If you are talking to someone on Facebook or texting and then there is something going on that is stressful, it interrupts what you are doing,” Bogdanovich said.

Beckmann said that smartphones are an issue because people “don’t have the mental horsepower to deal with everything in the environment.”

“There may be other things going on in an environment, but we are selecting those things out,” Bechmann said.

Bogdanovich said that she does not believe turning the device off will necessarily solve the problem.

“I feel like maybe if you just didn’t have it with you because you can always just turn it back on, I think that would help,” Bogdanovich

The study also found that smartphone use for work purposes did not increase stress levels.

“I prefer to read my emails on my phone,” St. Thomas sophomore Max Bischmann said. “If I am out on the go, I want to know what is going on.”

Carranza said that he is sometimes relieved when his phone is not able to distract him.

“I am actually sometimes happy when it (phone) is not charged or the battery goes out sometimes. You’re like, ‘OK, I don’t have to worry about that anymore,’” Carranza said.

The research suggests that those people who are most stressed out, experience phantom vibrations. A phantom vibration is when a person thinks their phone has vibrated when it really has not.

“You can develop heightened sensitivity under conditions of stress…if they have a high level of stress they may have a muscle tremor,” Beckmann said. “That muscle tremor may be a real movement of their skin against their cellphone rather than their cellphone against their skin.”

The study was conducted by a questionnaire that was administered to over 100 participants, including university students and employees from a range of occupations.

Approximately 20 percent of American adults experience some sort of mental illness, and 5 percent suffer from a severe case, according to the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The study—which surveyed approximately 70,000 individuals—found that people who are young, female, unemployed or part of a lower socioeconomic bracket are the most susceptible to experiencing mental illness.

“Psychiatric disorders are far more common than we thought in the past,” said Dr. Marvin Swartz, division head of social and community psychiatry at Duke Medicine. “College [and college-age] students do have higher rates of mental disorder in general.”

Nearly 30 percent of young adults ages 18 to 25 suffer from mental illness, but their symptoms range from mild to severe. People who suffer from a disorder are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol and are more susceptible to post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders, according to the study, which was conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The most troubling part of the study is that less than half of affected individuals seek treatment for their condition, said David Rabiner, Duke U. director of undergraduate studies and associate research professor of psychology and neuroscience. Rabiner added that a serious mental disorder constitutes any set of problems that significantly impairs a person’s ability to function socially, whether it is depression, anxiety or any other problem,

As such, defining what constitutes as an illness is debatable, said Allen Frances, a retired Duke professor of psychiatry.

“There isn’t a clear, bright-line definition of ‘serious mental illness,’” said Frances, who was quoted in a Washington Post article about the study. “There’s no biological test that tells us who does and who does not have a mental disorder. The milder the condition, the more it borders on normality, and it’s a popular border.”

Both Rabiner and Allen noted that the 5 percent of Americans who suffer from a severe case of mental illness may not capture the full extent of the issue. A larger number of people have disorders that are psychiatric in nature but are not included in the 5 percent estimate.

“The 5 percent is substantially lower than [the percentage of those with a] psychiatric illness,” Rabiner said.

According to a study published in this month’s issue of General Hospital Psychiatry, excessive use of the Internet can cause Internet Addiction Disorder, or IAD, which can lead to anxiety and depression.

“Something becomes an addiction when it becomes problematic, when you choose to continue to do something in spite of consistently negative consequences,” said Bill Arck, director of Kansas State U.’s Alcohol and Other Drug Education Service.

The concept of IAD was introduced in 1995 by researcher Ivan Goldberg, according to the study. Since then, there have been a variety of definitions of excessive Internet usage, including compulsive computer use, pathological Internet use or Internet addiction.

The study, authored by Frederico Tonioni, et al, and entitled “Internet addiction: hours spent online, behaviors and psychological symptoms,” defines the important criteria to diagnose IAD as “a misuse of Internet, characterized by many hours spent online avoiding interpersonal relationships with real and known people.”

In the study, 86 participants were given various tests, surveys and interviews about their Internet usage. Only time spent on non-studying and non-working purposes was counted in the research. All participants exhibiting current drug or alcohol addiction, psychotic disorders or other deficits were eliminated from the participant pool.

There are key questions that can help determine if an addiction is occurring, Arck said.

“I ask questions such as ‘Is it affecting your interpersonal relationships?,’ ‘Do you ever feel guilty about the time you spend on the computer?’ or ‘Have you even been annoyed by other’s criticism about time you spend on the Internet?’” Arck said, adding that he asks very similar questions when asking about substance abuse problems.

The survey consisted of a total of 20 similar questions gauging participants’ Internet usage. At the end of the study, 21 participants were found to exhibit symptoms of IAD. Of those participants, non-working and non-studying Internet use ranged from 20.3 to 75.3 hours per week.

The remaining 65 participants were used as the control group.

Participants who were labeled as exhibiting IAD scored higher on each question except “How often do you check your email before something else