Outlet: nbc12.com On Your Side
Title/Program: Weight gain eroding Americans’ quality of life
Publication Date: 08/03/2010
Extract: As Americans’ average weight keeps rising, their quality of life is falling, according to new research. The nationwide study found that the number of healthy days per year that Americans lose due to obesity has more than doubled over the past two decades. Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis, said the study made clear that the trend will have a profound effect on society and the healthcare system if nothing changes. More people will work fewer years and need more social support, contends Diekman, and public facilities will need to be redesigned to accommodate heavier people with more health problems who can’t walk or climb stairs easily. Link to Article
Outlet: KETC-TV
Title/Program: Living St. Louis
Extract: St. Louis public television station KETC takes a tour of a historic telescope located on top of Crow Hall on Washington University’s Danforth Campus. The telescope was donated to the university almost 150 years ago (1859) by a gentleman named James Yeatman, who was one of the members of the board of trustees at the time. Martin H. Israel, PhD, professor of physics and a fellow in the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, hosts the tour. Historic footage of WUSTL’s early downtown St. Louis campus is included. Link to Broadcast
Outlet: NPR
Title/Program: Orangutans aren’t lazy, just evolved to hang around
Publication Date: 08/03/2010
Extract: Orangutans are known as nimble navigators of the trees, but a new study shows the animals may also be among the most energy-efficient animals in the world. Herman Pontzer, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, found that orangutans use less energy, pound-for-pound than any mammal ever studied, except for the tree sloth. The surprise finding shows how orangutans have evolved to survive in their native habitat, the forests of Sumatra and Borneo in Southeast Asia. Link to Article
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Outlet: Saint Louis Beacon
Title/Program: How do you fix a broken immigration system?
Publication Date: 08/03/2010
Extract: Stephen H. Legomsky, the John S. Lehmann University Professor at Washington University, answers questions on current immigration policies. Legomsky teaches immigration law at Washington University and has advised both Republican and Democratic administrations on immigration and refugee issues. He’s also testified before Congress and chaired several nationwide committees on the subjects. His immigration law textbook is used at more than 150 law schools. Link to Article
Outlet: UPI.com
Title/Program: What you say of others reflects on you
Publication Date: 08/03/2010
Extract: A person’s comments about others reflect more about themselves than about those they are speaking of, U.S. researchers suggest. Dustin Wood, assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, Peter Harms at the University of Nebraska and Simine Vazire of Washington University in St. Louis say a person’s tendency to describe others in positive terms is an important indicator of the positivity of the person’s own personality traits and their emotional stability. Link to Article
Outlet: Switchboard
Title/Program: EPA to reconsider lead monitoring rule! | Avi Kar’s Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC
Publication Date: 08/02/2010
Extract: The Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic at the Washington University School of Law has received good news from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA just granted a petition filed by the clinic and other environmental groups and will reconsider its decision not to monitor the pollution from facilities that emit less than one ton a year of lead.
Link to Article
News in higher education
Midwest Seismic Zone Became Frozen in Time
The New York Times
August 2, 2010
The New Madrid seismic zone in southeastern Missouri and northwestern Tennessee, roughly halfway between St. Louis and Memphis, has raised concerns about the need for earthquake preparedness in St. Louis. A ferocious swarm of earthquakes shook the center of the United States two centuries ago, and it remains a mystery how such strong temblors could have occurred there, in the middle of the North American tectonic plate where the ground ought to be stable. However, in the current issue of the journal Nature, researchers suggest that the quakes were essentially set off by the end of the last ice age thousands of years earlier, and another major earthquake in this area may be unlikely. Link to Article
Outlet: National Public Radio Talk of the Nation
Title/Program: Op-Ed: ‘Higher Education’ Is A Waste Of Money
Publication Date: August 2, 2010
Excerpt: Professor Andrew Hacker says that higher education in the U.S. is broken. He argues that too many undergraduate courses are taught by graduate assistants or professors who have no interest in teaching. Hacker proposes numerous changes, including an end to the tenure system, in his book, Higher Education? Listen to the Broadcast
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