Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet orbiting another star. The images show the planet, named Fomalhaut b, as a tiny point source of light orbiting the nearby, bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis. An immense debris disk a
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Thursday, November 13, 2008
Hubble Discovers Planet 25 Light Years Away
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Deep-Sea Expedition Sets Sail, 20,000+ Students Along for Ride
Newswise — Setting sail on the Pacific, a University of Delaware-led research team has embarked on an extreme adventure that will find several of its members plunging deep into the sea to study hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor.
The team will be conducting research in environments that include scalding heat, high pressure, toxic chemicals and total darkness, as part of the National Science Foundation-funded “Extreme 2008: A Deep-Sea Adventure.”
The scientists are being joined by students from around the world on dry land who have signed up for an exciting virtual field trip. More than 20,000 students from 350 schools in the United States, Aruba, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Great Britain and New Zealand are participating.
The expedition, led by Craig Cary, professor of marine biosciences in the University of Delaware’s College of Marine and Earth Studies, left Monday, Nov. 10, aboard the research ship Atlantis from a port in Manzanillo, Mexico, with an expected return date of Dec. 1. For those interested in following the scientists, they will blog regularly about the voyage at the Extreme 2008 Web site [http://www.expeditions.udel.edu/extreme08].
Team members – researchers and graduate students – are from the University of Delaware, the University of Colorado, University of North Carolina, University of Southern California, J. Craig Venter Institute, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the University of Waikato, New Zealand.
The team is heading to destinations at two hydrothermal hot spots: Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California and a group of vents in the eastern Pacific Ocean about nine degrees north of the equator.
Once above the vents, the researchers will take the submersible Alvin down from one to nearly two miles below the surface. Built to withstand crushing pressures and to pierce the utter blackness of the deep, Alvin will let the scientists observe life around the steaming vents and collect samples for analysis. Both Atlantis and Alvin are owned by the U.S. Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The scientists' focus will be marine viruses and other tiny life called protists. These organisms prey on bacteria, the primary food for vent dwellers ranging from ghost-white vent crabs to bizarre-looking tubeworms.
“For many years, the vents have been explored with little to no attention to viruses and protists,” Cary says. “Yet because these organisms eat bacteria, they have the most dramatic effect on the bacterial communities that support the vent system. Our research programs are among the first to focus on these remarkable scavengers.”
Eric Wommack, an associate professor with joint appointments in both the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the College of Marine and Earth Studies, will join Cary in leading the UD contingent.
Wommack, who is based at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, is an expert on marine viruses and will be deploying specialized equipment to capture them for analysis in the shipboard lab.
Wommack says hydrothermal vents, although characterized by caustic chemistry, hot temperatures and high pressure, are oases of life in the deep sea. The vents provide an ecosystem for ancient and unusual microbes that are capable of extracting energy from volcanic rather than solar energy, and are home to viruses.
“As a group, viruses are the most abundant biological entities on Earth and contain its largest reservoir of unknown genes,” Wommack says. “We know that bacteria at the deep-sea hydrothermal vents are intimately associated with relatively abundant populations of viruses. Our goal is to explore the wilderness of viral genes existing at the vents.”
David Caron, professor of biological sciences in the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California, will be studying protozoa, a class of protists that feed on other organisms and that may form a crucial bridge between bacteria and animal life.
If Caron is correct, the samples from the deep will show that protozoa feed on bacteria or on the products of bacterial activity and are in turn eaten by larger life forms. The most surprising thing about the theory may be the lack of evidence for it. While other studies have found a protozoan-animal link in surface waters, the analogous middle step in the deep ocean has been overlooked.
“Protozoa are everywhere and they’re in virtually every environment. They play this intermediate food web role in a number of these environments, and there’s no reason to believe that they aren’t doing the same thing in the vents. It simply hasn’t been looked at to any degree,” Caron said.
As the scientists work at sea, they will be connected to students via an interactive Web site, where blogs, dive logs, video clips, photos and interviews will be posted daily. Students also will be able to write to the scientists, design experiments and participate in a virtual science fair.
A capstone experience for selected schools will be a “Phone Call to the Deep,” linking classrooms with researchers working live in the submersible Alvin on the seafloor.
The University of Delaware and the National Science Foundation are sponsoring the expedition. Additional support is being provided by Olympus and by MO BIO Laboratories.
The program, coordinated by the Office of Communications & Marketing, is the sixth in UD's popular “Extreme” series, which has won state and national awards for public education.
Thanksgiving on a Budget: Seven Easy Ways to Save Money and Calories
Newswise — Rising costs at the grocery story will be especially painful for many families this Thanksgiving as they get ready for the biggest meal of the year.
“Food is an important part of holidays, and this is especially true for Thanksgiving,” said Jennifer Ebelhar McDaniel, a registered dietician and assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics at Saint Louis University.
“There’s a lot of pressure to serve a big, traditional Thanksgiving meal, but for many people that’s just not financially feasible this year.”
Fortunately, McDaniel says there are seven easy ways to slice your grocery bill without cutting the fun out of the holiday
1. Compose your shopping list one week in advance. This gives you time to search for sales, use coupons, etc. In addition, shopping off a list saves you extra trips to the grocery store (wasted gas) and unnecessary purchases.
2. Don't try to serve it all. You don't need to serve everybody's favorite dish. Choose one protein (usually a turkey), one starch (sweet potato dish), one vegetable and one dessert.
3. Know serving sizes. Make sure the recipes you create are modified for the correct number of people invited.
Read tips 4-7 after the jump!
4. Use frozen vegetables where you can. If you are preparing a recipe like broccoli and cheese casserole, choose frozen vegetables instead of fresh. Frozen vegetables are usually cheaper and offer the same nutrient quality.
5. Buy the whole bird. Usually it is cheaper to purchase the whole turkey rather than buy the pieces separately. Plus, leftover turkey tastes great in a turkey casserole, turkey burritos, turkey and cranberry sandwich, and you can use the bones for soups.
6. Ask for help. Offer to make one or two things and delegate the rest. To add a little fun into your potluck, ask your guests to bring copies of their recipe to share.
7. Skip the paper products. While paper plates and plastic utensils are easier than washing dishes, they are expensive and bad for the environment.
At the risk of sounding like the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving, McDaniel says there are several benefits to cutting back this year, even if it’s not financially necessary. First, in addition to saving money, you’ll also save calories.
“A typical Thanksgiving feast may include as many as 10 options. Even if you take just a little of each, the calories can really add up,” she said. “By limiting the number of dishes offered, your family will be less likely to overeat.”
But perhaps the biggest benefit of simplifying your Thanksgiving meal, McDaniel says, is that it will allow you to focus on your family and all you have to be thankful for.
“The holidays weren’t meant to be stressful. By simplifying your meal, you’ll have more time to relax and enjoy the time with your family,” she said.
Long a leader in educating health professionals, Saint Louis University began its nursing program in 1928 and offered its first degree in an allied health profession in 1929. Today the Doisy College of Health Sciences offers degrees in nursing, physical therapy, clinical laboratory science, nutrition and dietetics, health informatics and information management, medical imaging and radiation therapeutics, occupational science and occupational therapy, and physician assistant education. The college's unique curriculum prepares students to work with health professionals from all disciplines to ensure the best possible patient care.
Depression Can Hamper Glucose Control in People With Diabetes
Newswise — Depression can cause diabetes patients to suffer from higher glucose levels over time compared to those who are not depressed, finds a study of older veterans with the disease.
“Our study shows that depression is a major and important comorbidity in people with type 2 diabetes,” said study co-author Leonard Egede, M.D., from the Center for Health Disparities Research at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Through a combination of diet, exercise and medication, people with type 2 diabetes work to keep their blood glucose levels within a certain range. Past research has shown that those who are also depressed have a tougher time doing so. About 30 percent of adults with diabetes have depression and the combination is linked to poor glucose control, higher complication rates, decreased quality of life and increased risk of death.
The current study appears in the November/December issue of the journal General Hospital Psychiatry.
Egede and his colleagues analyzed data from 11,525 veterans (98 percent men) with type 2 diabetes who received medical care at a Veterans Administration facility in the Southeast. The participants’ average age was 66 years and 48 percent were white, 27 percent were African-American and 25 percent were of other races.
Researchers evaluated each participant at three-month intervals from 1997 to 2006, with 36 intervals. At each 3-month interval, clinicians checked their HbA1c level, a blood test that measures long-term glucose control. Experts recommend a target level of less than 7 percent.
Six percent of the participants had depression, researchers determined.
They found that over the four-year period, the HbA1c values in the veterans who were depressed averaged 0.13 percent higher than the veterans who were not depressed. Egede said the difference is quite significant — enough to raise people with diabetes above the desirable range for glucose control, putting them at higher risk.
“The fact that the difference persisted over time and that the depressed group had higher mean HbA1c at all 36 time points was surprising,” Egede said.
The researchers also found that the change in HbA1c among the depressed participants did not differ based on race or age.
Evette Joy Ludman, Ph.D., senior research associate at the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle, said that although the link between depression and diabetes complications might seem daunting, it is possible for adults to follow treatment orders for their depression while also managing their diabetes.
“I think it is a reasonable expectation that health care teams can help patients who have both depression and diabetes manage both conditions,” she said. “I don’t think patients see themselves as a collection of different illnesses and if we take a more proactive, integrated approach to caring for them, it is likely they can benefit. Research currently in the field is addressing that exact question.”
General Hospital Psychiatry is a peer-reviewed research journal published bimonthly by Elsevier Science. For information about the journal, contact Wayne Katon, M.D., at (206) 543-7177.
Richardson LK, et al. Longitudinal effects of depression on glycemic control in veterans with type 2 diabetes. General Hosp Psychiatry, 30(6), 2008.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Similarities Found in Media Coverage of Palin and Ferraro
Twenty-four years after Geraldine Ferraro campaigned as the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic party, has anything changed in the way the media handles a woman candidate for vice president?
In the case of Sarah Palin, “The Palin Watch” project at The University of Alabama says the media has used similar frames to describe these women, in spite of their obvious idealogical differences. They identified at least three common themes in media coverage of the first two women to run for the number 2 spot: 1) their questionable experience, 2) their selection as a political stunt, and 3) their selection as a gamble.
In the case of Sarah Palin, “The Palin Watch” project at The University of Alabama says the media has used similar frames to describe these women, in spite of their obvious idealogical differences. They identified at least three common themes in media coverage of the first two women to run for the number 2 spot: 1) their questionable experience, 2) their selection as a political stunt, and 3) their selection as a gamble.
From the article:
Twenty-four years and a gulf of ideology separates the first two women to share the nation’s major party tickets. But has the way the media talks about Sarah Palin and Geraldine Ferraro changed? Not so much, according to ongoing research by members of “the Palin Watch” at The University of Alabama.
Newspapers around North America have used similar media frames to describe these very different women, who made vice-presidential runs at different times for different parties. Both of these women’s candidacies were framed around, 1) their questionable experience, 2) their selection as a political stunt, and 3) their selection as a gamble.
Experience: Both Palin and Ferraro were discussed in terms of their questionable experience, perhaps because both were relative unknowns on the national stage. Unlike many VP nominees, they had not participated in the Presidential primaries. In 1984, the Washington Post observed that Ferraro compared poorly with other House representatives of her generation. In 2008, the Sunday New York Times noted individuals and groups that cited Palin’s lack of experience.
Political stunt: Both Palin and Ferraro were discussed as token stunts to appease particular voting demographics. In 1984, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times referred to the demands of feminists that presumably guided Mondale’s choice and Ferraro’s campaign. In 2008, the New York Times identified McCain’s choice of Palin as not only an appeal for votes from embittered Hillary Clinton loyalists, but a “knuckling under” to the religious right.
Gambling: Both choices were referred to as a political gamble (as opposed to a positive, bold stroke), consistent with the inexperience and tokenism frames. In 1984, the Christian Science Monitor suggested that choosing Ferarro was Mondale’s attempt to “deal the cards differently,” while the Atlanta Daily World called the choice a “gamble” predicated on the strength of women’s support. In 2008, the Toronto Globe and Mail called the choice of Palin “one of the bigger gambles in U.S. political history,” while the Los Angeles Times counted the Palin selection as part of McCain’s penchant for gambles.
“The Palin Watch” project is directed by Dr. Janis Edwards, associate professor of communication studies in the UA College of Communication and Information Sciences and editor of a forthcoming book on gender and political communication in America. Edwards has written extensively on the roles and rhetoric of women candidates and first ladies, and their representation in political cartoons and other media formats for a number of academic journals and conferences.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Red Wine May Lower Lung Cancer Risk
Moderate consumption of red wine may decrease the risk of lung cancer in men, according to a report in the October issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention¸ a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
“An antioxidant component in red wine may be protective of lung cancer, particularly among smokers,” said Chun Chao, Ph.D., a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente Department of Research and Evaluation in Pasadena, California.
Chao analyzed data collected through the California Men’s Health Study, which linked clinical data from California’s health system with self-reported data from 84,170 men aged 45 to 69 years. Researchers obtained demographics and lifestyle data from surveys computed between 2000 and 2003, and identified 210 cases of lung cancer.
Researchers measured the effect of beer, red wine, white wine and liquor consumption on the risk of lung cancer. Adjustments were made for age, race/ethnicity, education, income, body mass index, history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema, and smoking history.
Among the study participants, there was on average a two percent lower lung cancer risk associated with each glass of red wine consumed per month. The most substantial risk reduction was among smokers who drank one to two glasses of red wine per day. The researchers reported a 60 percent reduced lung cancer risk in these men. Researchers warned men to stop smoking as the best way to reduce lung cancer risk; noting that even men who drank one to two glasses of red wine per day still face higher lung cancer risk than do non-smokers.
No clear associations with lung cancer were noted for consumption of white wine, beer, or liquor. “Red wine is known to contain high levels of antioxidants. There is a compound called resveratrol that is very rich in red wine because it is derived from the grape skin. This compound has shown significant health benefits in preclinical studies,” Chao said.
Chao said their findings should not be construed to recommend heavy alcohol consumption.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Microwaves Can Extract Water from Moon, Mars
Newswise —Astronauts landing on the Moon in the not too distant future will be able to pick up some fuel and a refreshing container of liquid.
"A lot of people think that water doesn't exist on the Moon," said Bill Kaukler, an Associate Research Professor in the Center for Materials Research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "However, in the polar regions, exploratory satellites have found huge amounts of hydrogen, which is evidence that water exists."
Kaukler has performed research with NASA, and for the past three years has been investigating the use of microwaves to extract water from the Moon.
When astronauts land on the Moon in the not too distant future, it's possible they will be visiting an outpost where they can pick up some fuel and a refreshing container of liquid.
That outpost won't be offering the 64-ounce Big Gulp soft drinks that you find at many of the convenience stores across the country, but it will be offering a critical commodity water.
Research conducted by material scientists may lead to the ability to extract water from the Moon and possibly Mars by shooting microwave beams into their surface, according to Bill Kaukler, an Associate Research Professor in the Center for Materials Research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
³A lot of people think that water doesn¹t exist on the Moon,² said Kaukler. ³It¹s true that not all parts of the Moon have water. Where the Apollo missions landed, there isn¹t much water because it is exposed to the sun half of the time. However, in the polar regions, exploratory satellites have found huge amounts of hydrogen, which is evidence that water exists.²
Kaukler has performed research with NASA for more than 25 years and for the past three years has been investigating the use of microwaves to replenish water on space missions or as a rocket fuel supply.
The Moon¹s surface is covered with over two meters deep of regolith (like soil), a layer of loose, powdery, heterogeneous material created by hundreds of millions of years of meteorite and comet bombardment. Below that covering lies bedrock. ³Ice is just inches below the surface of the moon in craters at the poles (where solar heating doesn¹t occur),² he said.
Kaukler and Marshall Space Flight Center scientist Edwin Ethridge have been conducting research on the use of microwaves to warm the lunar regolith to draw the water up to the surface.
³Using microwaves to heat the soil offers several advantages,² Kaukler said. ³Microwaves are not strongly absorbed by the regolith (soil) so it can penetrate several feet into the soil and heat it.² Heating is possible because the Moon¹s soil has about 5 percent iron, similar to volcanic rock on Earth, according to Kaukler. Microwave absorption is the most efficient method to heat large volumes of regolith or rock.
He said research shows that if the regolith can be warmed from a minus 150 degrees Celsius to minus 50 degrees, the vapor pressure of the water mixed in with the regolith particles is much higher than the Moon¹s atmospheric pressure. Kaukler said the moon¹s vacuum environment literally percolates the water vapor to the surface through the regolith particles. The water vapor collects on a cold (below minus 50 C) plate where it forms as ice and is scraped off for human consumption or where it can be converted by electrolysis to hydrogen and oxygen to be used as a fuel and oxidizer that can be used in space travel, like going to Mars.
The scientists have been confident of their research, but were encouraged by findings this summer when the Phoenix Mars lander confirmed the presence of water ice on the Martian surface. The lander scratched just two inches below the surface of Mars to expose the ice.
Kaukler, Ethridge and other materials scientists have developed a prototype and have used simulated lunar regolith to test their ideas. Their prototype has the power of one kilowatt, about the same as a typical home microwave oven.
What their experiments show is that they are able to remove 99 percent of water-ice through sublimation, or converting the frozen water directly into a gas, and could capture 95 percent of the liberated water.
While the one-kilowatt device may prove the concept, Kaukler said a 10-kilowatt unit would speed up the process of collecting water and make it more effective on the Moon¹s surface. He envisions a robotic, roving device powered by a nuclear generator to roam the Moon¹s surface in search of water sources.
Kaukler believes the concept of shooting microwave beams into the surface of the Moon or Mars to extract water offers several distinct advantages: not having to dig the regolith and put it into a furnace is a big advantage since heavy equipment won¹t be needed; leaving the Moon essentially undisturbed is important; not worrying about the underlying geology is practical since hidden or buried rocks (that have no water) could damage digging equipment.
Perhaps the most important factor of this project is not carrying water on a journey, thus saving space and weight on long-distance trips. ³This is the essence of the concept of In Situ Resource Utilization or ISRU, ³ Kaukler said. ³The philosophy is to use what is on the Moon (or Mars) to make habitats without having to bring the material from Earth.²
Another crucial factor is safety. The microwave process penetrates into the surface at least two meters deep, thus eliminating the need to dig into the surface to get to the ice, according to the scientists. Kaukler said the idea of kicking up dust by digging on the Moon poses a problem for equipment and astronauts if the abrasive dust finds its way into the wrong places, as it did for the Apollo astronauts.
Research continues, according to Kaukler. More investigation is necessary to learn about the electromagnetic properties of regolith in the various microwave frequencies. Altering those frequencies could allow the device to penetrate deeper into the surface if necessary to reach additional water.
Kaukler and Ethridge are also exploring the use of microwaves for melting or sintering the regolith to make structures on the Moon.
An important concept they developed was the use of microwave melting of the regolith surface to make a dust-free crust. Such surfaces have uses as a landing pad (no dust kicked around the landing site by rockets), working surfaces to stabilize equipment and floors or roadways for astronauts to live and travel on. Conventional bricks, blocks or walls can also be prepared this way without bringing adhesives or special cements to Moon.
Visualizing Election Polls in Animated, Interactive Ways
Do you want to know the percentage of white women who support vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin? What about college-educated versus high school-educated white women? Or those who also hunt? University of Utah computer scientists have written software they hope eventually will allow news reporters and citizens to easily, interactively and visually answer such questions when analyzing election results, political opinion polls or other surveys. The software displays data in the form of ³radial² charts that are doughnut-shaped and include features of traditional pie charts and bar graphs. The charts are interactive and animated so they change as a computer user asks to analyze poll results as a function of various demographic data. ³We have developed new techniques for exposing complex relationships that are not obvious by usual methods of statistical analysis,² says Richard Riesenfeld, a University of Utah professor of computer science and co-author of a study outlining the new way of visualizing polling data. Geoff Draper, a doctoral student and researcher with the university¹s Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, devised the new method as part of his Ph.D. thesis. Riesenfeld is his thesis advisor. ³I wanted to create a way to make it easy for the masses to analyze data,² and that includes news reporters and television news anchors, says Draper, who is scheduled to present his study on Oct. 19 during the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Information Visualization Conference in Columbus, Ohio.
Analyzing the Numbers: From Elections to Diseases to Terrorism When pollsters release their results, extensive survey data often are boiled down to a few key questions. TV news anchors and reporters cannot easily manipulate the data on the air to quickly answer a question that may arise, such as in a college town how full-time students feel about Obama and McCain. To produce tables and graphs with common poll-analysis software, users must receive training, and then manipulate a spreadsheet containing large grids of numbers. ³If you generate a graph and don¹t like the way it looks, you cannot change the graph just by manipulating the graph itself,² says Draper. ³You have to go back to the source data. You have to throw away the graph and start over.² Charts in the new software are animated and change in real time as a person uses a computer mouse to drag and drop parameters such as ³female,² ³black² or ³income over $50,000² into the center of the doughnut-shaped chart displaying poll results. "Rather than navigate an external interface, queries [new questions about poll results] are constructed directly within the visualization itself,² Draper and Riesenfeld wrote in their study outlining the new method. Despite developing the software to analyze poll or election results, ³the tool is general enough to let you analyze any type of demographic data,² Draper says, noting that a university might use it to easily categorize students by various demographic groups. The software also could be used by health officials to analyze demographic characteristics of patients with a certain disease, or by homeland security officials and police to look for common factors among known terrorists or other criminals.
How the New Software Works The software produces charts with three parts: -- An outer ring listing one or more questions asked during a survey, such as, ³What is your opinion of John McCain?² and ³What is your opinion of Barack Obama?² -- An inner doughnut hole that is used to narrow the question to certain demographic groups. If the hole is empty, the answers to the questions come from all respondents to the poll. But the software user can click on a menu, then drag into the hole parameters such as ³college graduate or post-graduate² and ³earn between $100,000 and $150,000 per year.² -- The poll results are shown in a large middle ring between the outer ring and the inner hole. The large ring is divided into curved bars somewhat like pie slices with their tips chopped off and each bar lists an answer and related percentage (such as ³Mostly favorable, 48.1 percent² under ³Opinion of John McCain²). When the center hole is empty, the results list the percentages of all survey respondents with opinions of McCain and Obama that are ³very favorable,² ³mostly favorable,² ³mostly unfavorable² and so on. When parameters such as education and income are dragged and dropped into the center hole, the results shown reflect only the opinions of those groups shown, such as college grads and post-graduates with incomes between $100,000 and $150,000 per year. Draper says his poll-analysis software is not quite ready for prime time. ³Right now it is an academic project. My goal is to get the idea out there and let other software developers incorporate our visual methods into their products. The software would be useful for news reporters to go on the air and move the icons around and show how different demographic groups voted, how they feel about certain issues. Eventually, it might be used by the general public.² Draper tested the software using exit polling data for the November 2007 election on two ballot measures and the election of Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker. He asked two political science professors and 52 novices to try it. They were asked to use the software to perform nine analysis tasks, such as, ³What percentage of women voted for Ralph Becker?² and ³Of those voters whose location is east of State Street, what percentage earned a post-graduate degree?² Eighty-eight percent said they enjoyed using the software and 71 percent completed all the tasks without errors. Draper named the new software Simple Query Interface with a Radial Layout, or SQiRL (pronounced ³squirrel²).
A video demonstrating the new poll-analysis software may be viewed at the following address. It may take a few minutes to load: http://solar.sci.utah.edu/media/visalert/2008_Dartboard/2008_Dartboard-H.264_960x540.mov (Credit video to Geoff Draper and Chems Touati, University of Utah Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute.)
For more information about the University of Utah College of Engineering, see: http://www.coe.utah.edu
-- Thomas Canalichio Director of Media Outreach Newswise http://www.newswise.com/libraries/latest/ 215 5th Street S.W., Suite 100 Charlottesville, VA 22903 434-296-9417
Whites Avoid Discussing Race
Newswise — White people including children as young as 10 -- may avoid talking about race so as not to appear prejudiced, according to new research. But that approach often backfires as blacks tend to view this 'colorblind' approach as evidence of prejudice, especially when race is clearly relevant.
101 white undergraduate students were paired with either a white or black female partner in the study led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. The pairs were presented with 30 photographs of faces that varied in race, gender and background color. The objective was to guess which of the photographs the partner was holding by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible.
Even though asking about the race of the person in the photograph was a sound strategy for completing the task, white participants were far less likely to do so with a black versus a white partner. Moreover, when the black partner was the first one to have a turn asking questions, whether she mentioned race had a dramatic effect. White participants whose black partner asked about race mentioned race on their own turn 95 percent of the time. When the black partner never asked about race, white participants only did so 10 percent of the time.
These results are from two separate sets of experiments led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. Their findings are reported in the October issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the September issue of Developmental Psychology. Both journals are published by the American Psychological Association.
³Efforts to talk about race are fraught with the potential for misunderstandings,² said the studies¹ lead author, Evan Apfelbaum, a PhD candidate at Tufts University. ³One way that whites try to appear unbiased is to avoid talking about race altogether, a tendency we refer to as strategic colorblindness.²
In one study, 101 white undergraduate students were paired with either a white or black female partner who pretended to be another participant. The pairs were presented with 30 photographs of faces that varied in race, gender and background color. Each white participant¹s objective was to guess which of the photographs the partner was holding by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible.
Even though asking about the race of the person in the photograph was a sound strategy for completing the task, white participants were far less likely to do so with a black versus a white partner. Moreover, when the black partner was the first one to have a turn asking questions, whether she mentioned race had a dramatic effect. White participants whose black partner asked about race mentioned race on their own turn 95 percent of the time. When the black partner never asked about race, white participants only did so 10 percent of the time.
³There was clear evidence the white participants¹ behavior was influenced by the precedent set by their partner, but especially when that partner was black,² said Samuel Sommers, assistant professor at Tufts and co-author of both papers. ³Whites are strategically avoiding the topic of race because they¹re worried that they¹ll look bad if they admit they notice it in other people.²
The researchers also wanted to see how outsiders interpreted such interactions. In another experiment, 74 black and white college students evaluated videos of whites engaging in the photo task. The results showed that whites¹ effort to appear colorblind backfired. Black observers rated whites¹ avoidance of asking about race as being evidence of prejudice. What¹s more, when the researchers showed silent video clips of whites from the study to another group of individuals, those whites who avoided asking about race were judged as less friendly, just on the basis of their nonverbal behavior.
³The findings suggest that when race is clearly relevant, whites who think that it is a wise social strategy to avoid talking about race should think again,² said Apfelbaum.
Even children appear to adopt this strategically colorblind approach. In another set of experiments, 101 white children between the ages of 8 and 11 were asked to perform a similar photo task. The children were told that asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible would mean they would get a higher score on the task.
The results showed that the older children, ages 10 and 11, avoided asking about race more than the younger children, even though this led them to perform less efficiently than their younger counterparts on the task. In a control version where all the faces in the photos were white, the older children outperformed the younger children, as expected. ³This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,² said Kristin Pauker, a PhD candidate at Tufts and co-author of this study.
The authors associated with both studies said their findings offer several important implications. ³Our findings don¹t suggest that individuals who avoid talking about race are racists,² Apfelbaum explained. ³On the contrary, most are well-intentioned people who earnestly believe that colorblindness is the culturally sensitive way to interact. But, as we¹ve shown, bending over backward to avoid even mentioning race sometimes creates more interpersonal problems than it solves.²
Article: "Seeing Race and Seeming Racist? Evaluating Strategic Colorblindness in Social Interaction," Evan P. Apfelbaum, PhD candidate, and Samuel R. Sommers, PhD, Tufts University; Michael Norton, PhD, Harvard Business School; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 95, No. 4. (Full text of this article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp954918.pdf)
Article: ³Learning (Not) to Talk About Race: When Older Children Underperform in Social Categorization,² Evan P. Apfelbaum, PhD candidate, Kristin Pauker, PhD candidate, Nalini Ambady, PhD, and Samuel R. Sommers, PhD, Tufts University; Michael I. Norton, PhD, Harvard Business School; Developmental Psychology, Vol. 44, No. 5. (Full text of this article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/dev4451513.pdf)
The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 148,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.
Using a Fan During Sleep May Reduce Infant SIDS Risk
Newswise — Infants who slept in a bedroom with a fan ventilating the air had a 72 percent lower risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome compared to infants who slept in a bedroom without a fan. The study examines an association between better air ventilation in infants' bedrooms and reduced SIDS risk, results appearing in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.
Infants who slept in a bedroom with a fan ventilating the air had a 72 percent lower risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome compared to infants who slept in a bedroom without a fan, according to a new study by the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. The study appears in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. This is the first study to examine an association between better air ventilation in infants' bedrooms and reduced SIDS risk. The finding is consistent with previous research that showed factors influencing a baby's sleep environment may change SIDS risk. Among those factors are sleeping on the stomach and soft bedding, both of which may limit air ventilation around an infant¹s breathing pathway and thus increase the chance of re-breathing exhaled carbon dioxide, said the researchers They explained that fan use is no substitute for practices known to reduce the risk for sudden infant death syndrome, which include: always placing infants to sleep on their backs, putting infants to sleep on firm mattresses and avoiding soft bedding materials like comforters and quilts, providing a separate sleep environment, preventing infants from overheating, and not smoking around infants. ³Although this is the first finding linking fan use to SIDS, concerned parents can take measures to improve ventilation of infants sleep environment, by adding fans in rooms or opening windows. Other studies have found that parents can also reduce the chance of re-breathing carbon dioxide by putting infants to sleep on their back, avoiding soft bedding and overheating, and by using a pacifier,² said study author Dr. De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente¹s Division of Research in Oakland. The study also found that opening a window in infant¹s room reduced the risk of SIDS by 36 percent compared to babies who slept in a room with closed windows, though this connection was not statistically significant according to the researchers. ³More studies need to be done to determine the exact relationship between the types of ventilation and the risks of SIDS,² said Li, who also authored a 2006 study in the British Medical Journal that found that using a pacifier can reduce SIDS risk by 90 percent. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, this latest study looked at 185 babies who died from SIDS in 10 Northern California counties and Los Angeles County from 1997 to 2000. They were compared to 312 infants of a similar age and from similar socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds in the same counties. Researchers identified SIDS cases through records from the California Department of Health Services and the Los Angeles County coroner¹s office and interviewed participating mothers by trained interviewers in English and Spanish with an average of 3.8 months after the baby¹s death. The study found that if an infant was in a high-risk sleep environment such as sleeping on their stomach or without a pacifier, or sharing a bed with someone other than parents or in an overheated room, using a fan to improve room ventilation was particularly beneficial. SIDS is the leading cause of death among infants aged 1 to 12 months, and the third leading cause of overall infant mortality in the United States. SIDS is defined as sudden death of an infant under the age of 1, which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including an autopsy, examination of the death scene and a review of clinical history. ³Though this needs to be studied further before we can make clinical recommendations, this finding is consistent with the other factors that we know impact the SIDS risk by influencing sleeping environment, such as prone sleep position, soft bedding, and use of a pacifier,² said Dr. Fern Hauck of the University of Virginia Health Systems, who is a SIDS researcher and an American Academy of Pediatrics SIDS Task Force member. ³The finding that better ventilation had a greater reduced risk of SIDS in the presence of other risk factors affecting sleep environment (prone sleep position, bed sharing other than parents -- , high temperature, and not using pacifiers) further supports the hypothesis that environmental factors play a major role in SIDS risk,² Hauck said. Because of the difficult nature of the study (interviewing mothers whose babies had died suddenly), participation was relatively low. Also, in a case-control study, recall bias is always a potential concern. The study involved infants and their mothers from Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Marin, Monterey, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Los Angeles counties. Other authors on the study included: Kimberly Coleman-Phox, MPH, of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research and the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health; and Roxana Odouli, MSPH, of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. More information on reducing the risk of SIDS is available from National Institutes of Health¹s Back to Sleep Campaign, http://www.nichd.nih.gov/sids/. About the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research (http://www.dor.kaiser.org/) The Kaiser Permanente Division of Research conducts, publishes, and disseminates epidemiologic and health services research to improve the health and medical care of Kaiser Permanente members and the society at large. It seeks to understand the determinants of illness and well being and to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of health care. Currently, the center's 400-plus staff is working on more than 250 epidemiological and health services research projects. About Kaiser Permanente Research Kaiser Permanente's eight research centers comprise one of the largest research programs in the United States and engage in work designed to improve the health of individuals everywhere. KP HealthConnect� , Kaiser Permanente¹s electronic health record, and other resources provide population data for research, and in turn, research findings are fed into KP HealthConnect to arm physicians with research and clinical data. Kaiser Permanente's research program works with national and local health agencies and community organizations to share and widely disseminate its research data. Kaiser Permanente¹s research program is funded in part by Kaiser Permanente¹s Community Benefit division, which in 2007 directed an estimated $1 billion in health services, technology, and funding toward total community health. About Kaiser Permanente Kaiser Permanente is America's leading integrated health plan. Founded in 1945, the program is headquartered in Oakland, Calif. Kaiser Permanente serves 8.7 million members in nine states and the District of Columbia. Today it encompasses Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and their subsidiaries, and the Permanente Medical Groups. Nationwide, Kaiser Permanente includes approximately 159,000 technical, administrative and clerical employees and caregivers, and 14,000 physicians representing all specialties. The organization¹s Labor Management Partnership is the largest such health care partnership in the United States. It governs how more than 130,000 workers, managers, physicians and dentists work together to make Kaiser Permanente the best place to receive care, and the best place to work. For more Kaiser Permanente news, visit the KP News Center at: http://xnet.kp.org/newscenter
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