WUSTL Culture & Living News

Folic acid may reduce some childhood cancers

Jessica Martin — 2012-05-21 00:00:00

Folic acid fortification of foods may reduce the incidence of the most common type of kidney cancer and a type of brain tumors in children, finds a new study by Kimberly J. Johnson, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, and Amy Linabery, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota.

Incidence reductions were found for Wilms’ tumor, a type of kidney cancer, and primitive neuroectodermal tumors (PNET), a type of brain cancer.

Since 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has mandated fortification of foods with folic acid because earlier studies show that prenatal consumption of folic acid significantly reduces the incidence of neural tube defects in babies.

“Our study is the largest to date to show that folic acid fortification may also lower the incidence of certain types of childhood cancer in the United States,” Johnson says.

The study, published in the current issue of Pediatrics, examined the incidence of childhood cancer pre- and post-mandated folic acid fortification.

“We found that Wilms’ tumor rates increased from 1986 to 1997 and decreased thereafter, which is an interesting finding since the downward change in the trend coincides exactly with folic acid fortification,” Johnson says.

“PNET rates increased from 1986 to 1993 and decreased thereafter. This change in the trend does not coincide exactly with folic acid fortification, but does coincide nicely with the 1992 recommendation for women of childbearing age to consume 400 micrograms of folic acid daily.”

Study authors used the 1986-2008 data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER), which has collected information on cancer cases in various areas of the U.S. since 1973. The study involved 8,829 children, from birth to age four, diagnosed with cancer.

“Declines in Wilms’ tumors and PNETs in children were detected by multiple analyses of the data,” Johnson says.

“Importantly, the reduced rates of Wilms’ tumors also were found in a smaller study conducted in Ontario, Canada, that was published in 2011.

“More research is needed to confirm these results and to rule out any other explanations.”

Julie A. Ross, PhD, professor and director of the Division of Pediatric Epidemiology & Clinical Research in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, was a study co-author.

Johnson notes that one concern countries face as they are deciding whether or not to fortify foods to reduce neural tube defects in newborns is the possibility that fortification may cause unintended harm, such as causing new cancers or pre-cancerous lesions.

“Here, we are showing that folic acid fortification does not appear to be increasing rates of childhood cancers, which is good news,” she says.

For the full study, “Childhood Cancer Incidence Trends in Association With Folic Acid,” visit: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2012/05/15/peds.2011-3418.full.pdf+html

Youth with autism face barriers to employment and education after high school

Jessica Martin — 2012-05-14 00:00:00

Compared with youth with other disabilities, young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) face a disproportionately difficult time navigating work and educational opportunities after high school, finds a new study by Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Thirty-five percent of the youth with ASDs had no engagement with employment or education in the first six years after high school,” Shattuck says.

“Rates of involvement in all employment and education were lower for those with lower income.”

The study, published in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics, examined data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2 (NLTS2), a nine-year study of adolescents who were enrolled in special education at the outset. The NLTS2 included groups of adolescents with ASDs, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities and speech and language impairments.

“Compared with youth in the three other disability categories, those with an ASD had significantly lower rates of employment and the highest overall rates of no participation in any work or education whatsoever,” Shattuck says.

“Those with an ASD had a greater than 50-percent chance of being unemployed and disengaged from higher education for the first two years after high school.”

http://youtu.be/Qyl2ZQRb4dsCompared with youth with other disabilities, young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) face a disproportionately difficult time navigating work and educational opportunities after high school, finds a new study by Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. Shattuck discusses the study results.

Shattuck notes that approximately 50,000 youth with ASDs will turn 18 this year in the United States.

“Many families with children with autism describe turning 18 as falling off a cliff because of the lack of services for adults with ASDs,” he says.

“The years immediately after high school are key. They are the time when people create an important foundation for the rest of their lives.

“There needs to be further research into services for young adults with ASDs to help them make the transition into adulthood and employment or further education.”

Shattuck says that particular attention should be paid to interventions that will help poorer youth overcome barriers to accessing services and achieving fuller participation in society.

This study was funded by the Organization for Autism Research, Autism Speaks and the National Institute of Mental health.

Shattuck’s study co-authors are Sarah Carter Narendorf, Benjamin Cooper and Paul Sterzing of the Brown School; Mary Wagner, PhD, of SRI International; and Julie Lounds Taylor, PhD, of Vanderbilt University.

Shattuck will give a keynote presentation on his research at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Toronto Thursday, May 16.

Study finds chronic child abuse strong indicator of negative adult experiences

2012-05-07 00:00:00

Child abuse or neglect are strong predictors of major health and emotional problems, but little is known about how the chronicity of the maltreatment may increase future harm apart from other risk factors in a child’s life.

In a new study published in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics, Melissa Jonson-Reid, PhD, child welfare expert and a professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at how chronic maltreatment impacted the future health and behavior of children and adults.

Jonson-Reid

The study tracked children by number of child maltreatment reports (zero to four or more) and followed the children into early adulthood, by which time some of the children had become parents.

The study sought to determine how well the number of child maltreatment reports predicted poor outcomes in adolescence, such as delinquency, substance abuse in the teen years or getting a sexually transmitted disease.

“For every measure studied, a more chronic history of child maltreatment reports was powerfully predictive of worse outcomes,” Jonson-Reid says.

“For most outcomes, having a single maltreatment report put children at a 20 percent to 50 percent higher risk than non-maltreated comparison children.

In addition, a series of adult outcomes were tracked to see if the chronicity of maltreatment still mattered after controlling for the poor outcomes in adolescence. Adult outcomes included adult substance abuse or growing up and having children whom they then maltreated.

“In models of adult outcomes, children with four or more reports were about least twice as likely to later abuse their own children and have contact with the mental health system, even when controlling for the negative outcomes during adolescence.”

Jonson-Reid says that there appears to be good reason to put resources into preventing ongoing maltreatment.

“Successfully interrupting chronic child maltreatment may well reduce risk of a wide range of other costly child and adolescent health and behavioral problems,” she says.

Jonson-Reid cites a recently published Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study estimating lifetime costs for a single year’s worth of children reported for maltreatment at $242 billion. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213411003140)

“What our study illustrates is that these costs are even more likely to accrue for children who continue to be re-reported,” she says.

The study also found that maltreatment predicts a range of negative adolescent outcomes, and those adolescent outcomes then predict poor adult outcomes.

“If the poor outcomes in adolescence can be dealt with effectively, then later adult outcomes may also be forestalled,” Jonson-Reid says.

“Our findings could therefore be interpreted as supporting many current evidence-based interventions that seek to improve behavioral and social functioning among children and adolescents who have experienced trauma like abuse or neglect.”

Jonson-Reid co-authored the study, “Child and Adult Outcomes of Chronic Child Maltreatment,” with fellow Brown School faculty members Patricia L. Kohl, PhD, associate professor, and F. Brett Drake, PhD, professor.

To view the full study visit: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2012/04/17/peds.2011-2529.abstract.

This chart illustrates the individual childhood and adult outcomes according to the number of reports that occurred before the event of interest. Because it was possible for some children to enter the study period with a pre-existing condition, these are indicated as gray or black bars with the legend indicating the outcome occurred “before the study.” Chronicity is associated with increasing risk for all but child maltreatment perpetration, violent delinquency, and head or brain injury. In these cases, there is a slight decline in prevalence for the highest category compared with middle categories, but in all cases having reports was associated with higher rates of outcomes.

The American dream still possible, but more difficult to achieve, students discover

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-05-10 00:00:00

http://youtu.be/Q1bJSiLDcMkWUSTL students in an interdisciplinary course this semester called "Economic Realities of the American Dream" were urged to consider the meaning of the American Dream and explored pathways to achieving it, including overall economic growth and rising standards of living, equality of opportunity, economic mobility and the availability and creation of jobs that will adequately provide for individuals and families.

In 1931, James Truslow Adams first defined the “American Dream” by writing that “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” regardless of social status or birth circumstance.

In a modern society struggling to loose the grip of a lengthy economic recession, is this dream really attainable?

The dream may still be possible, though much more difficult to achieve, say a renowned macroeconomist and one of America’s foremost experts on poverty, co-teachers of a course on the American Dream this semester at Washington University in St. Louis.

“The American Dream is really at the heart and soul of this country,” says Mark R. Rank, PhD, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at the Brown School and author of One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All.

“It’s the idea of what we stand for and what we represent — the idea of being able to pursue what you are really passionate about and to have a good life,” he says.

The interdisciplinary course, “Economic Realities of the American Dream,” came out of a long friendship between Rank and his co-teacher Steven Fazzari.

“I’ve read Mark’s books and being an economist they really got me thinking about perspectives on the realities of economic life in this country and how we formulate those ideas into this concept of an American Dream,” says Fazzari, PhD, professor of economics in Arts & Sciences.

He says the class has focused on three main components — the freedom to pursue what people want to do to reach their potential, the ability to have a secure and comfortable life and a sense of hope and optimism about the future.

“Many people think the American Dream is owning a home,” Fazzari says. “That may be one way to reach economic security and a sense of hope for the future but maybe it’s more of a pathway to the dream than a component of the dream itself.”

Students in the course examined the meaning of the American Dream and explored pathways to achieving it, including overall economic growth and rising standards of living, equality of opportunity, economic mobility and the availability and creation of jobs that will adequately provide for individuals and families.

“I decided to take this course because I wanted to experience the interdisciplinary approach that both professors provide,” says Doug Griesenauer, second-year master’s of social work student. “My view of the American Dream changed dramatically throughout the course. When it began, I understood it as more of an ephemeral idea, a concept that everyone really knew but you couldn’t pin down.

"Through discussions with both professors, we have been able to give substance to that idea and really understand what made the American Dream such an aspiring thing.”

Students participated in group projects and discussions from a variety of perspectives, including economics, sociology, social work and others.

“I’ve worked a lot with Professor Fazarri on Keynesian macroeconomics but living in St. Louis has gotten me really interested in issues of poverty and social justice,” says Madeleine Dapp, a junior mathematics and economics major in Arts & Sciences.

“I saw this course as a good opportunity to combine those two perspectives,” she says. “After I graduate, I’m hoping to work in agricultural policy. I think this class has really allowed me to more closely examine the problems that prevent people from accessing the American Dream, whether it’s problems with nutrition or something more economic.”

The interdisciplinary nature of the course has been its strong suit, Rank says.

“We have students from economics, social work and several other social sciences,” he says. “Having that mix in the classroom is really dynamic and provides a lot of interesting feedback, questions and discussions that help advance all of our thinking.”

Privacy law expert warns of the perils of social reading

2012-05-08 00:00:00

The Internet and social media have opened up new vistas for people to share preferences in films, books and music. Services such as Spotify and the Washington Post Social Reader already integrate reading and listening into social networks, providing what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “frictionless sharing.”

"But there’s a problem. A world of automatic, always-on disclosure should give us pause,” says Neil M. Richards, JD, privacy law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Richards

“'Frictionless sharing’ isn’t really frictionless – it forces on us the new frictions of worrying who knows what we’re reading and what our privacy settings are wherever and however we read electronically. It’s also not really sharing – real sharing is conscious sharing, a recommendation to read or not to read something rather than a data exhaust pipe of mental activity.

“Rather than ‘over-sharing,’ we should share better, which means consciously, and we should expand the limited legal protections for intellectual privacy rather than dismantling them.”

Richards says that what’s at stake is “intellectual privacy,” his term for the idea that records of our reading and movie watching deserve special protection compared to other kinds of personal information.

“The films we watch, the books we read and the websites we visit are essential to the ways we try to understand the world we live in,” he says.”

“Intellectual privacy protects our ability to think for ourselves, without worrying that other people might judge us based on what we read. It allows us to explore ideas that other people might not approve of, and to figure out our politics, sexuality and personal values, among other things.

“Sharing and commenting on books, films and ideas is the essence of free speech.”

Richards notes that the work of the American Libraries Association and its Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) offers an attractive solution to the problem of reader records.

“The OIF has argued passionately and correctly for the importance of solitary reading as well as the ethical need for those who enable reading – librarians, but also Internet companies – to protect the privacy and confidentiality of reading records,” he says.

“The norms of librarians suggest one successful and proven solution — professionals and companies holding reader records must only disclose them with the express conscious consent of the reader.

“The stakes in this debate are immense. Choices we make now about the boundaries between our individual and social selves, between consumers and companies, between citizens and the state, will have massive consequences for the societies our children and grandchildren inherit.”

Read more of Richards comments on intellectual privacy on the OIF Blog- http://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=3720 or read his full essay, "The Perils of Social Reading," at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2031307 .

National Day of Prayer takes on added significance in 2012

Jessica Martin — 2012-04-25 00:00:00

The National Day of Prayer typically sparks debate about whether the day violates the establishment clause from the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This year’s observance on May 3, however, likely will take on added significance, says John Inazu, JD, First Amendment expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. The reason? 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Engel v. Vitale, which invalidated official prayer in public schools.

“Some religious believers will likely use the day of prayer to call attention to what they view as a regrettable and consequential decision,” Inazu says.

Establishment clause questions persist

The constitutionality of the National Day of Prayer hinges on the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which has been interpreted to prohibit the establishment of state-endorsed religion and/or the preference of one religion over another.

Whether official recognition of the National Day of Prayer violates the establishment clause is a complicated question, says Gregory Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and WUSTL law professor.

“There are two particular aspects of the National Day of Prayer issue that make it a tough one,” Magarian says.

“First, the question whether official policies that favor religion generally over non-religion generally has divided the justices of the Supreme Court, with no truly authoritative resolution to the question. Arguably the National Day of Prayer is such a policy. On the other hand, it may not be; not all religious practices prominent in the United States involve ‘prayer’ as such.

“Second, the court tends to grow more concerned about official policies that favor religion when the policies entail some kind of actual observance. Official recognition of a National Day of Prayer, without more, doesn't make anyone do anything.”

Magarian says that if a public school imposed a prayer requirement on students in conjunction with the National Day of Prayer, it certainly would violate the establishment clause.

“But arguably official recognition of the day, without more, simply amounts to the sort of ‘ceremonial deism’ that the court has long tolerated, for example, in allowing the words ‘In God We Trust’ to appear on money,” he says.

“On the other hand, the court's prevailing doctrine rejects official practices that send a message of endorsement of religion, on grounds that such endorsements treat nonbelievers as second-class citizens.”

Magarian believes the current court would reject an establishment clause challenge to the National Day of Prayer, treating official recognition of the day as an inconsequential instance of ceremonial deism that shows equal regard to many religious beliefs.

Inazu agrees but cautions that secular opponents to prayer in schools should not be the only ones concerned by that outcome.

“For many religious believers, prayer matters because its object — God — matters. If the justification for ‘official’ prayer renders the prayer merely ‘ceremonial,’ then observing the National Day of Prayer may be at cross-purposes with faithfulness.

“Ceremonial deism risks harming believers as well as non-believers,” Inazu says.

McBride named 2012 National Rural Health Association’s Outstanding Researcher

2012-04-20 00:00:00

The National Rural Health Association (NRHA) honored Timothy D. McBride, PhD, associate dean for public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, with its Outstanding Researcher Award April 19 during the NRHA’s 35th annual Rural Health Conference.

McBride is part of a small group of individuals and organizations being recognized for their work in rural health care.

McBride

“We’re especially proud of this year’s winners,” says Alan Morgan, chief executive officer of the NRHA.

“They have each already made tremendous strides to advance rural health care, and we’re confident they will continue to help improve the lives of rural Americans.”

McBride has conducted rural health services research for more than 20 years. He is an influential health policy analyst and leading health economist shaping the national agenda in rural health care, health insurance, Medicare policy, health economics, and access to health care.

McBride’s work in rural health care focuses on studying the uninsured, Medicare Advantage and Part D in rural areas.

He is an advocate for rural people, providing testimony to Congress and consulting with important policy constituents in Medicare and rural health policy. He is a member of the Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI) Health Panel that provides expert advice on rural health issues to the U.S. Congress and other policymakers.

“I consider it a great honor to receive this award from the rural health association and my professional colleagues,” McBride says.

“At this critical juncture, when we are working to implement health reform in rural America, it means even more to me to receive this on behalf of rural Americans and others who need the kinds of reforms that are contained in the health reform law.

“However, I know that the work I have completed over the years would not have been possible without literally dozens of colleagues I have collaborated with over the years,” he says.

NRHA’s Annual Rural Health Conference is the largest gathering of rural health professionals in the nation.

“Every year, rural Americans come together to gain education and raise awareness on behalf of the 62 million Americans who live in rural areas and desperately need access to affordable health care,” Morgan says.

NRHA is a nonprofit organization working to improve the health and well-being of rural Americans and providing leadership on rural health issues through advocacy, communications, education and research.

NRHA membership is made up of 22,000 diverse individuals and organizations, all of whom share the common bond of an interest in rural health.

Reactions to POTUS Supreme Court comments ‘reflect historical ignorance’

Jessica Martin — 2012-04-05 00:00:00

The Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care act has prompted some interesting and provocative issues about – and between – the president and the judicial branch, says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and former clerk for retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

“President (Barack) Obama recently suggested that for the court to overrule a major federal statute would be ‘unprecedented,’” he says.

Magarian

“He quickly amended his remarks, and properly so. The landmark case of Marbury v. Madison long ago established that the Supreme Court has power to declare federal statutes unconstitutional.”

Some commentators and judges reacted with alarm to Obama’s original comments, suggesting that they amounted to presidential intimidation of the Supreme Court.

Judge Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals went so far as to lecture a Department of Justice lawyer about judicial power, ordering the lawyer to write the court a three-page memo explaining the court’s power to strike down statutes.

“These alarmed reactions reflect historical ignorance,” Magarian says.

“Presidents from the beginning of the republic, notably including Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, have verbally castigated the court in terms that make President Obama’s remarks sound like a fan letter.

“Presidents speak out on public issues, and the Supreme Court enjoys no immunity from the bully pulpit. Judge Smith’s tantrum is much more remarkable: for a federal judge to punish a government lawyer because the judge dislikes the president’s opinions reflects a startling lapse of professionalism and judicial temperament.”

Magarian says that even so, federal judges are supposed to be independent, and everyone – including believers in the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality – should respect that fact.

At least one liberal commentator has argued that Congress should impeach the justices of the Supreme Court if they strike down the act.

“The Constitution does allow Congress to impeach federal judges, like the president, for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ Congress has impeached and tried judges over the years, although it has not impeached a Supreme Court justice since the early days of the republic.

“But anyone who calls for impeachment of the justices based on opposition to their judicial opinions would do well to remember that the last major movement to impeach a member of the court targeted Chief Justice Earl Warren over the issue of school desegregation.

“The best understanding of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ is that only official misconduct warrants impeachment. The Supreme Court has made some awful decisions in its history, but even an awful decision is not a crime.”

Related history

The Supreme Court has struck down numerous federal statutes over the decades.

“What the president meant, as his amended remarks made clear, was that no precedent existed for the court to hold that a major economic regulation exceeded federal power,” Magarian says.

“That statement is correct. The court has struck down federal economic regulations, most recently in 1936, but beginning in 1937, the court sharply repudiated its earlier actions and adopted a very broad view of federal power to regulate the national economy.

“Thus, a Supreme Court decision to strike down the Affordable Care Act would be unprecedented -- although, in fairness, the ‘individual mandate’ at the heart of the case differs from earlier regulations the court has upheld.”

Can the Supreme Court survive a health-care decision?

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-03-30 00:00:00

After it rules on the highly contested health-care debate and makes other momentous decisions this term, will the U.S. Supreme have sufficient stores of legitimacy to weather the inevitable backlash? Yes, but barely, says a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.

James Gibson

"The Supreme Court may make the 'wrong' decisions on health care and other issues this spring. But as a widely legitimate institution, the court will be able to make these decisions with impunity," writes James L. Gibson, PhD, in Miller-McCune. "As it stands today, the U.S. Supreme Court is in fact nearly invincible. For better or for worse."

Still, the Court's decisions this year on the constitutionality of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and other blockbuster cases are likely to have vast political consequences, perhaps well beyond health care itself, writes Gibson, director of the Program on Citizenship and Democratic Values at the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy and the Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government in political science in Arts & Sciences.

A key question for 2012, he suggests, is whether there is partisan advantage in attacking the Supreme Court. The Republican candidates are already stumbling over themselves to question the authority of the Supreme Court, and Obama has not been reticent about criticizing the court for its decisions. Will attacks on the court resonate with partisans of different stripes?

The answer, according to a Weidenbaum Center survey, is no — attacks on the Supreme Court are unlikely to generate partisan advantages. Attitudes toward the court’s legitimacy are simply not connected to partisanship, at least among ordinary Americans.

“Undoubtedly, fierce criticism will be leveled against the decision by the losers. But, as with Bush v. Gore, efforts to transform this criticism into a successful attack on the court as an institution will be highly unlikely to succeed,” Gibson writes.

To read the rest of his piece, visit miller-mccune.com/legal-affairs/can-the-supreme-court-survive-a-health-care-decision-40598.

East Asian conference explores cultural aftermath of war and violence, April 6 and 7

Gerry Everding — 2012-03-29 00:00:00

U.S. Army photo by Maj. R.V. Spencer

With her brother on her back a war weary Korean girl tiredly trudges by a stalled M-26 tank in Haengju, Korea, June 9, 1951.

"War, Violence, and The Aftermath: Historical Memory, Literary Imagination, and Cultural Regeneration" is the focus of an international conference to be held Friday, April 6, and Saturday, April 7, in Room 276 of the Danforth University Center at Washington University in St. Louis.

The conference brings together leading international scholars for an exploration of how, in the particular context of East Asia, individuals who were caught in the midst of war and violence and those who lived in the aftermath rebuilt their lives and remembered and reflected on the suffering and devastation.

The conference also will explore how governments rebuilt social structures, political order and the cultural landscape, and more importantly, how physical ruins and psychological devastation led to short-term disruption and long-term displacement.

The conference is free and open to the public; advance registration is not required. A schedule of panel discussions and presentations, as well as related abstracts, is available on the conference website: ealc.wustl.edu/war_conference.

For more information, contact event co-sponsor, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures in Arts & Sciences (EALC) call (314) 935-4448 or email ealc@artsci.wustl.edu.

Organized conflicts and large-scale violence have commanded historical memory and literary imagination over the course of human history from the early settlements in antiquity to the current global communities.

This conference focuses on various moments of significant transition and turning points in the history of East Asia, among them:

the Yuan-Ming and Ming-Qing transitions;
the Imjin War;
the Taiping rebellion;
the battle of Sekigahara;
the Republican revolution;
Japan’s colonial rule of Korea and Taiwan;
WWI and WWII in East Asia;
the retreat of the Nationalist regime to Taiwan;
the Korean war; and
political campaigns and repressions during the Mao era.

Discussions are designed to provide a localized perspective on experiences of war and violence in their respective local historical timelines and cultural nexus, such as the destruction and reconstruction of local order, the disruption and continuity of local traditions, the transformation and reinvention of cultural models, and the movements and interactions of people.

James V. Wertsch, PhD, associate vice chancellor for international affairs, the Marshall S. Snow Professor in Arts & Sciences and director of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, will offer opening remarks at 9 a.m. Friday, April 6.

Robert E. Hegel, PhD, EALC chair, professor of Chinese language and literature and the Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature, offers closing thoughts on “War and Its Incomprehensibility” at 5 p.m. Saturday, April 7.

Other campus sponsors include Arts & Sciences and the university's McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

External supporters include the Taiwan Ministry of Education, the Fudan University Department of Chinese Language and Literature and the National Taiwan University Center for Taiwan Studies.

Study looks at discrimination’s impact on smoking

Jessica Martin — 2012-03-15 00:00:00

Smoking, the leading preventable cause of mortality in the United States, continues to disproportionately impact lower income members of racial and ethnic minority groups.

In a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, Jason Q. Purnell, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at how perceived discrimination influences smoking rates among these groups.

“We found that regardless of race or ethnicity, the odds of current smoking were higher among individuals who perceived that they were treated differently because of their race, though racial and ethnic minority groups were more likely to report discrimination,” he says.

Purnell

“In follow-up analyses considering specific types of discrimination, only worse treatment in the workplace was significantly associated with current smoking after accounting for other factors; individuals who reported worse treatment in the workplace were 42 percent more likely to smoke.”

The study also found that people who reported better treatment in health care settings than other races were 21 percent less likely to be current smokers.”

“It’s important to understand the factors that promote smoking among racial and ethnic minority groups,” Purnell says.

Analyzing a multistate, multiethnic study of over 85,000 individuals by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Purnell used data from 2004-08 from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Beginning in 2002, an optional module, Reactions to Race, was added to the BRFSS and adopted by several states in an attempt to capture data on perceived racial discrimination and its effects in a population-based sample.

“As expected, everyday smokers were more likely than occasional smokers, and occasional smokers were in turn more likely than nonsmokers, to report being the target of perceived discrimination in both health-care settings and the workplace,” he says.

“Smokers were more likely than nonsmokers to report emotional and physical symptoms in response to perceived discrimination, although occasional smokers were more likely than everyday smokers to report both emotional and physical symptoms.”

Purnell says the study highlights a potentially high-risk group of individuals who report feeling unfairly treated because of their race and who may be smoking as a means of coping with the psychological distress associated with discrimination.

“Identifying these individuals for targeted smoking cessation interventions may improve cessation rates,” he says.

“Our findings also suggest that alternative forms of coping with discrimination may be a fruitful area of discussion in counseling interventions designed to help individuals quit smoking.”

Purnell’s article, “Perceived Discrimination, Psychological Distress, and Current Smoking Status: Results From the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Reactions to Race Module, 2004–2008,” was written with:

Luke J. Peppone, PhD, research assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC);
Kassandra Alcaraz, doctoral student at WUSTL’s Brown School;
Amy McQueen, PhD, research assistant professor of internal medicine at the WUSTL School of Medicine;
Joseph J. Guido, associate in the department of biostatistics and computational biology at URMC;
Jennifer K. Carroll, MD, assistant professor of family medicine at URMC;
Enbal Shacham, PhD, assistant professor of behavioral science and health education at Saint Louis University; and
Gary R. Morrow, PhD, professor of radiation oncology and of psychiatry at URMC.

For the full study, visit ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300694.

Supreme Court’s health-care decision to shape presidential campaign, says WUSTL health economist

2012-03-23 00:00:00

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have a major impact on the presidential campaign, says Timothy D. McBride, PhD, health economist and associate dean for public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

McBride

“The health reform legislation was the signature piece of social legislation passed by President (Barack) Obama’s administration in his first term,” he says.

The court began hearing arguments in the case March 26. How its decision will influence the election could be quite complex, says McBride.

“If the court upholds the legislation, then the administration will herald this as a major victory and state that this as a major accomplishment, putting an exclamation point on their signature legislative accomplishment.

“On the other hand, if the court strikes down the ACA, on the surface this could be seen as a major blow to the administration, and a huge boost to the Republicans, who have argued for repeal of the whole legislation,” McBride says.

McBride notes that the administration asked for the Supreme Court to consider the ACA before the election.

“This surprised me, but I can see the strategy,” he says.

“If the court strikes down the ACA, the Obama administration can make it a campaign issue to rally their base and argue it is imperative to re-elect the President to stave off the attack on health reform.”

McBride says this case, in which the major issues are the individual mandate to purchase health insurance and the expansion of Medicaid, is widely anticipated because the challenges to health reform have largely halted the legislation’s implementation in many of the states.

Pow Wow celebrates American Indian cultures March 31

Jessica Martin — 2012-03-23 00:00:00

The 22nd annual Pow Wow at Washington University in St. Louis, a festival of American Indian cultures, will be held Saturday, March 31, in the Washington University Athletic Complex Field House.

This event, hosted by the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at the Brown School, is free and open to the public.

Visitors and participants will be able to enjoy dancing, singing, drumming, arts, crafts and food. Grand entries will take place at noon and 6 p.m. Traditional arts and crafts booths and community information booths open at 10 a.m.

“A Pow Wow is an important event for American Indian culture,” says Sarah Nelson, second-year student, Pow Wow co-chair and member of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

“A Pow Wow provides a social gathering for American Indians from all different tribal backgrounds and offers a way to share our culture with the public through song, dance and traditional arts and crafts.”

This year’s theme for the Pow Wow is “The Land Does Not Belong to Us, We Belong to the Land.”

“The theme was chosen to celebrate the environment and the great beauty that surrounds us in nature,” says Lindsay Belone, a Navajo, first-year student and Pow Wow co-chair.

“The theme reminds us of the struggles and strengths we have as native people and land use, as well as how we can use Native American practices and ideology to create a more sustainable environment for future generations,” Belone says.

The Buder Center, the Women’s Society of Washington University, the AMB Foundation, the Student Coordinating Council of the Brown School and the Creek Nation sponsor the Pow Wow.

For more information, call (314) 935-4510 or visit buder.wustl.edu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ-9QCDp9Ho&feature=player_embedded

Gambling addictions expert warns of dangers of Internet gambling, especially on youth

Jessica Martin — 2012-03-15 00:00:00

Participating in an online March Madness bracket or fantasy sport league is harmless fun for most people, but for someone with a gambling addiction, it can be a dangerous temptation.

“Now, with states entertaining the possibility of increasing revenue through legalizing internet gambling, it is even more important to pay attention to groups that may be vulnerable to problem gambling, particularly youth,” says Renee Cunningham-Williams, PhD, gambling addictions expert and associate professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Cunningham-Williams

“Internet gambling provides youth with increased opportunities to gamble, which is particularly concerning because this generation is arguably the most technologically savvy of any generation in history.”

Cunningham-Williams says that young people have not passed through the period of risk for many mental disorders, yet need to navigate coming of age in an environment of increased acceptability and accessibility to gambling.

“Based on available research, it is unclear if the Internet contributes to more gambling problems, but we know that those who choose to gamble using the Internet and experience problems are often involved in other forms of gambling as well,” she says.

“The Internet may make gambling opportunities more attractive, accessible and available.”

Cunningham-Williams agrees with the National Council on Problem Gambling’s position that advocates a harm-reduction public health approach to problem gambling.

“Such an approach recognizes that strong regulation is necessary but not sufficient,” she says.

“We need a comprehensive strategy that involves prevention and education about the harms associated with illegal and problem gambling, effective treatment, and continued research. We do not currently have a lead federal agency to advocate for efforts to reduce the harm associated with problem gambling.”

Cunningham-Williams says that although most Americans gamble without significant problems, for those who do experience problems, and the even larger at-risk groups, the individual, familial and social costs are devastating.

“There is help available — call 1-888-bets off,” she says.

Youth Justice Program at Washington University law school March 22 and 23

Jessica Martin — 2012-03-19 00:00:00

Experts on youth advocacy and school desegregation will come together March 22 and 23 for a series of events as part of the Youth Justice Program at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

Events are free and open to the public and will be held in the Bryan Cave Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 310.

The Youth Justice Program begins at noon Thursday, March 22, with a lecture by Kristin Henning, JD, juvenile justice expert and professor of law at Georgetown University. Henning will speak about “Overcriminalization of Normal Adolescent Development in Communities of Color and the Crisis in Indigent Juvenile.”

Henning’s lecture, part of the Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series, is co-sponsored by the law school’s Clinical Education Program, the Black Law Students Association and the American Constitution Society.

Program events continue from 1:15-5 p.m. March 22 with the conference “Liddell is 40: Commemorating the Desegregation Movement in St. Louis and a Look at the Future of Urban Education.”

The conference will cover topics such as segregation in St. Louis, the history of Liddell litigation and the failure of federal education initiatives.

To view a complete list of conference topics and speakers and to RSVP, visit http://law.wustl.edu/events/pages.aspx?id=9076.

On Friday, March 23, the Youth Justice Program concludes with the 12th annual Access to Equal Justice Colloquium sponsored by the Clinical Education Program on “Evolving Standards in Juvenile Justice: From Gault to Graham and Beyond,” from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

The colloquium will cover topics such as the past, present and future of juvenile court practices, adolescent development issues, and the disproportionate representation of minority youth in adult prisons.

Colloquium co-sponsors are the law school’s Juvenile Rights and Re-Entry Project – Civil Justice Clinic, the Missouri State Public Defender’s Office, the Gephardt Institute for Public Service and the National Juvenile Defender Center.

To view a complete list of topics and speakers and to RSVP, visit: http://law.wustl.edu/accessequaljustice/.

Study looks at impact of neighborhood, family environments on Latino youth violence

Jessica Martin — 2012-03-09 00:00:00

Research has shown that youth violence is a major cause of injury and death among Latinos. However, there is little understanding of violent behaviors of youths within various Latino ethnic subgroups such as Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Mexicans.

Lorena Estrada-Martínez, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, recently examined how family dynamics and neighborhood racial/ethnic composition and socioeconomic status (SES) impact youth violence among Latino subgroups.

Estrada-Martínez

“Higher levels of youth independence can reduce the risk of violence in primarily Latino neighborhoods,” Estrada-Martínez says. “When we looked at the interaction between SES and autonomy, it was a different story. We found that as the SES of a neighborhood increases, high levels of autonomy became a risk factor for youth violence.

“As Latino families transition to more middle-class neighborhoods, parental control becomes more important.”

Estrada-Martínez says this study underscores how grouping nationalities within pan-ethnic labels may obscure differences and hinder effective interventions necessary to address violence among Latino youth.

National estimates generally indicate that the risk for violence among Latino youth falls between the risk for white and black youth.

“The level of youth violence for the different Latino subgroups depends on their neighborhood context,” Estrada-Martínez says.

“As an example, Puerto Ricans, who have been previously found to have the highest risk of violence among the Latino subgroups, only had higher risk for violence in ethnically mixed neighborhoods compared with whites, and in primarily Latino neighborhoods compared with other Latino youths.”

Estrada-Martínez used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, an ethnically diverse sample of youth, for her study, “Families, Neighborhood Socio-Demographic Factors, and Violent Behaviors among Latino, White, and Black Adolescents,” published in the journal Youth & Society.

She found that violence among Cuban youth does not differ from that of white youth overall, and these patterns hold for comparisons within predominantly white and ethnically mixed neighborhoods.

Risks for violence among Mexican youth are heightened in predominantly white and ethnically mixed neighborhoods, compared with white youth in those same environments.

“Within predominantly Latino neighborhoods, Mexican youth do not differ significantly in risk compared to Cuban youth,” Estrada-Martínez says.

Study findings suggest that Mexican and Cuban youth living in primarily Latino neighborhoods may be living in ethnic-specific communities.

“Our research suggests that ethnic enclaves may exert a protective effect against youth violence,” she says.

“Puerto Rican youth in this study are more likely to live in neighborhoods with a more racially and ethnically heterogeneous population. Consequently, the protections ethnic enclaves afford to Cuban and Mexican youth may be less readily available to Puerto Rican youth.”

Reducing risk

This study suggests a number of potential points of intervention for reducing risk among Latino adolescents.

“It’s important to consider ethnic subgroups and neighborhood contexts when developing these interventions,” Estrada-Martínez says.

Estrada-Martínez and coauthors suggest focusing resources on interventions that strengthen family cohesion and provide support for parents, particularly those who may have reduced access to support from other adults, and those transitioning to neighborhoods with higher levels of SES, who may begin to be exposed to a number of stressors through acculturation processes.

Estrada-Martínez presented this study at the Critical Research Issues on Latino Mental Health conference.

Her study coauthors are Cleopatra Howard Caldwell, PhD, associate professor of health behavior and health education; Amy J. Schulz, PhD, professor of health behavior and health education; Ana V. Diez-Roux, MD, PhD, professor of epidemiology, and Silvia Pedraza, PhD, professor of sociology and American culture, all at the University of Michigan.

International Festival set for March 25

2012-03-20 00:00:00

Whitney Curtis

Students perform a Vietnamese dance during last year's International Festival. The annual event begins with food tastings, which are followed by a variety of student cultural performances.

Song, dance and dishes from a variety of nations represented by students at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis highlight the 18th annual International Festival Sunday, March 25, at the 560 Music Center.

The event, which is open to the public, begins at 3:30 p.m. with a food tasting of dishes from around the world. The tasting is followed by a variety of student cultural performances starting at 5:30 p.m. This year’s theme is “Around the World in 180 Minutes.”

Organized by Karen Cowley, assistant director of student affairs, and Brown School students, the festival enables members of the public and Brown School community to celebrate their cultures and traditions.

The 560 Music Center is located at 560 Trinity Blvd. in University City, Mo. Admission is $2 in advance and $5 at the door. Souvenir T-shirts will be available for $10 each.

For more information or to purchase a ticket, contact the International Festival Committee at intfestival@brownschool.wustl.edu.

Social Security’s ‘Chained COLA’ not ready for prime time

Jessica Martin — 2012-03-14 00:00:00

Social Security’s cost of living adjustments (COLA) are designed to protect against the erosion of retiree purchasing power when prices go up, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

“Now Social Security self-styled ‘reformers’ seek to lower COLA every year based on their claim that COLA overstates inflation,” says Merton C. Bernstein, LLB, a nationally recognized expert on Social Security.

The proposed substitute for the current CPI formula, ‘Chained COLA,’ is based on the assumption that benefit recipients substitute lower-priced goods as prices go up.

Bernstein

“This the assumption is unrealistic for those millions who only have access to convenience stores that typically offer fewer choice and higher prices,” says Bernstein, the Walter D. Coles Professor Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “And, further, it is not reasonable to assume that most consumers can outwit the wiles of merchandising experts.”

Bernstein says that it takes two years to determine the data on which to base chained COLA, making it unsuitable for offsetting price increases that occur all the time.

“To adapt chained COLA to handle such a task would be either impossible or, if feasible at all, more costly to do so,” he says.

Impact on the wallet

Social Security actuaries calculate that a chained COLA would be .03 percent lower each year than the benefits projected under existing arrangements.

“This may seem miniscule for those with current job earnings and multiple sources of income, but benefits now are extremely modest — on average, about $1,100 a month,” Bernstein says.

“Moreover, under the present structure, COLA still chronically lags behind prices.

“COLA becomes operative when prices measured in the fall exceed the corresponding prices in the preceding fall. That percentage is applied to each beneficiary’s benefit for the next year starting in January. In consequence, Social Security COLA does not offset price increases when they occur. And it does not offset prices increases that take place during the year it is operative.”

Bernstein discusses the new COLA proposal in his recent Huffington Post article, “Proposed Social Security Chained COLA Not Ready for Prime Time.”

Sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll revisited in 1968 mini-colloquium March 28 and 29

Gerry Everding — 2012-03-12 00:00:00

The tumultous year of 1968 will be examined in a two-day mini-colloquium keynoted by 1960s scholar Todd Gitlin.

Todd Gitlin, PhD, a noted 1960s cultural scholar and book author, will visit Washington University in St. Louis March 28 and 29 to keynote a two-day mini-colloquium exploring the counter-cultural movements of the year 1968, including a special focus on the many literary, social, political and artistic theories spawned by these movements.

Free and open to the public, the colloquium is organized by Stamos Metzidakis, PhD, professor of French, romance languages and comparative literature in Arts & Sciences, in conjunction with this semester's undergraduate/graduate course "1968-In Theory and Praxis."

For colloquium registration and session schedules, visit the event website amcs.wustl.edu/events/2012/03/event-261. For more information, email amcs@artsci.wustl.edu or call (314) 935-5216.

Gitlin

Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, describes 1968 as a pivotal year in which the convulsions of a decade converged and the country slouched over the edge of a precipice. What happened in 1968 still deserves the most sober reflection, he argues, because much of what happened in those days has been distorted and warped by popular misconceptions.

"The right way to remember the year 1968 is to give its complications their due," wrote Gitlin in a Los Angeles Times commentary on the year's 40th anniversary.

"The egalitarianism of the civil rights movement and a spirit of cultural adventure commingled with a whole mélange of joyful and desperate reactions against white supremacy, senseless war, empty materialism and supine obedience,” he writes. "The result was a mutiny against all establishments, usually for good and sufficient reason, although ends were frequently violated by means."

It was, Gitlin notes, the year of the Tet offensive in Vietnam; Walter Cronkite's televised farewell to victory in that "wretched" war; the My Lai massacre (unknown until the next year); Eugene McCarthy's presidential run; Columbia University's uprising; President Lyndon Johnson's decision not to run for a second full term; Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination; scores of subsequent riots; Robert F. Kennedy's assassination; the Chicago Democratic Convention riots; the Miss America protest in Atlantic City; Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and election; and, for good measure, the first manned voyages in the Apollo program — not to mention Prague Spring; the French student uprising; the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; and, in Mexico City, the massacre of protesting students and the black power salutes of Olympic athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith.

Discussion of these topics begins at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, with a keynote lecture by Gitlin in the Anheuser-Busch Dining Hall at the Charles F. Knight Center. At 7:45 p.m., Metzidakis will lead a roundtable discussion, followed by a reception.

At 11:30 a.m. Thursday, March 29, Gitlin leads an American Culture Studies workshop on issues related to his new book, Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street, scheduled for release in May.

Mini-colloquium panelists include Olivier Penot-Lacassagne, PhD, a graduate of WUSTL's Department of Romance Languages and Literatures doctoral program, and now a tenured "Maitre de conferences" at the New Sorbonne University in France.

The WUSTL panelists are Buzz Spector, the Jane Reuter Hitzeman and Herbert F. Hitzeman, Jr. Professor of Art and dean of the College and Graduate School of Art; and six from Arts & Sciences: Patrick Lawrence Burke, PhD, associate professor of music; Garrett A. Duncan, PhD, director and associate professor of African and African-American studies and associate professor of education; Seth R. Graebner, PhD, associate professor of French; Robert E. Hegel, PhD, professor of Chinese language and literature and the Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature; Lutz Koepnick, PhD, chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and a William Greenleaf Eliot Residential College faculty fellow; and Linda Nicholson, PhD, the Susan E. and William P. Stiritz Distinguished Professor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

The program is sponsored by the Departments of Music, Romance Languages and Literatures, Art History and Archaeology and German; the Programs in American Culture Studies, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, East Asian Studies, Comparative Literature, International and Area studies, and African and African-American studies; and the Center for the Humanities; all in Arts & Sciences.

Medical ethicists confront cancer in new book

Timothy Fox — 2012-03-02 00:00:00

Despite her own personal battle, Rebecca Dresser doesn’t view herself as a cancer “survivor.”

“Many people who have faced the disease are very courageous, but, in terms of defeating cancer, really, we were just lucky,” says Dresser, JD, the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law and professor of ethics at the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

Dresser, editor of and contributor to a new book on medical ethics and cancer, was diagnosed with head and neck cancer six years ago. While she has written and taught extensively about the legal and ethical dimensions of a variety of medical topics, personally enduring intense radiation and chemotherapy treatments spurred her interest in the ethics of cancer and cancer care medicine.

For perspective, she reached out to other medical ethicists who had either had cancer themselves or had a spouse diagnosed with the disease. One of them had experienced both.

The group met twice at Washington University. Those meetings were tape-recorded and then transcribed. The transcript became the basis for their book, Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer, published by Oxford University Press.

In an essay published in the Hastings Center Report, Dresser also reviewed six themes that surfaced as she and the other members of the group talked and wrote about their experiences.

“Cancer patients and caregivers operate in crisis mode,” Dresser writes. “Cancer knocked us off our feet. We were disoriented and unsure how to proceed.”

In that vulnerable state, cancer patients and their families sometimes make decisions that caregivers and others don’t understand. “Before facing cancer, we didn’t fully appreciate the psychology of patient decision-making,” she says.

Complicating things further, the many treatment options available — with their side effects and uncertain outcomes — often confuse cancer patients and their families.

Combined with the pressure to act quickly, patients may take a “leap of faith” when selecting treatment options.

As Dresser notes, “We now have a better sense of the real obstacles patients encounter in trying to make informed medical decisions.”

Patients in the group become painfully aware that they have given up a good deal of autonomy to the disease and those working to defeat it. “Despite being privileged patients with good health insurance and insider status, we were at the mercy of an overburdened and highly imperfect health-care system,” she writes.

Another theme that emerged was how seemingly mundane decisions on the part of health-care providers took on ethical dimensions. Does the doctor make eye contact when describing a treatment’s risks and side effects? Does he or she listen and respond when patients complain about those side effects? These seemingly minor behaviors take on an added dimension when the stakes are life and death.

Of course, not every patient responds to the disease in the same way; each patient brings to the table his or her own medical histories, tolerance for pain or discomfort, and past experiences with the medical establishment. Medical professionals need to be willing to adapt to meet the needs of each patient.

Finally, there is also considerable variation in how ordinary people and family members react to patients. While some are incredibly helpful and understanding, “a fair number of them have no idea how to behave toward seriously ill patients and their families,” Dresser writes. Reactions by these people range from denial to simply ignoring the patient.

“Death and dying may have a bigger public presence than they once did, but too many people remain ill-equipped to respond when serious illness strikes someone they know,” Dresser writes.

“Malignant intends to begin a conversation about the ethics of illness in everyday life. We hope it will encourage colleagues to turn their attention to this neglected topic.”

Another, broader response Dresser hopes her book will have is to raise the possibility of practicing “first-person bioethics.” While bioethics typically strives to be objective and dispassionate, facing the grim reality of a disease like cancer can make even the most analytical academic confront the fact that he or she is ultimately at the mercy of the medical establishment and a good portion of “luck.”

“Bioethics operates in the shadow of death,” Dresser writes. “A bioethics that fails to recognize and respond to the experience of illness will have limited value for patients and their families.”

A prolific author, Dresser has written and or co-written numerous articles and three other books: Bioethics and Law: Cases, Materials and Problems; When Science Offers Salvation: Patient Advocacy and Research Ethics; and The Human Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice.

Work & Livable Lives Conference Feb. 27 and 28

2012-02-15 00:00:00

Washington University in St. Louis will host the “Work & Livable Lives Conference” Feb. 27 and 28 to address current employment-related challenges and how they limit the ability of U.S. households to lead secure and stable lives, raise children successfully, and contribute to the community.

“The conference will not only focus on problems, but also on constructive solutions, exploring policy approaches to employment supports, health care, and job creation,” says Michael Sherraden, PhD, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development and director of the Brown School’s Center for Social Development, one of the sponsors of the conference.

The conference will include panels on household financial fragility, measurement of economic security, the American Dream, labor and employment policy, and health policy and employment.

Jared Bernstein, PhD, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and former chief economist and economic policy adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, will deliver the conference keynote address, “Rebuilding an Opportunity Society: The Roles of Policy and Power,” at 4:30 p.m. Feb. 27. A reception will follow Bernstein’s speech.

All conference events will be held in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall and are free and open to the public. A complete schedule of events is available at http://law.wustl.edu/centeris/pages.aspx?id=9009.

“With persistently high unemployment and underemployment — and growing inequality in wages — an increasing number of American families are no longer adequately supported by employment income and basic benefits,” says Marion Crain, JD, the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law and director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Work & Social Capital at the School of Law, which co-sponsors the conference.

“Many older workers have ‘retired’ before they are ready, and many young workers cannot find a foothold in the job market,” she says. “A silent crisis is under way, with huge social and economic costs for the nation.”

Other WUSTL conference sponsors are the Center for New Institutional Social Sciences; the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy; the American Culture Studies department in Arts & Sciences; and the Office of the Provost.

The conference is held in partnership with the Brown School Policy Forum at Washington University and the New America Foundation in Washington, DC.

This event is part of the university-wide Livable Lives Initiative, which investigates social conditions and policy supports that can make life with a low or moderate income stable, secure, satisfying and successful.

WU-Slam 2012: Poetry comes alive

2012-02-21 00:00:00

jerry naunheim jr. (2)

Pat Hollinger (above), a junior majoring in philosophy in Arts & Sciences, placed first out of 10 poets who performed Feb. 17 during the Fourth Annual Poetry Grand Slam in Edison Theatre. Hollinger, along with the other competing students, read original works to a randomly selected judging panel and a packed crowd of more than 650 — including an estimated 150 who watched via live streaming video. From this competition, five poets, including Hollinger and Lauren Banka (below center), will represent WUSTL in the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI), a national collegiate poetry slam April 18-21 in Ontario, Calif. In 2011, WU-SLam placed second at CUPSI out of more than 30 teams. Below, Banka, a senior in printmaking in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, and others listen as Aaron Samuels performs. Samuels, a 2011 WUSTL alumnus and nationally renowned spoken-word poet, founded the WU-SLAM student group and returned this year to host the competition.

Olin MBA student aims to walk his way into history books

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-02-21 00:00:00

Mike McLaughlin has had a difficult life.

The MBA student at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis was emotionally and physically abused as a child at the hands of his mother and stepfather — a tragedy in its own right, but one in which he says helped prepare him for his next big challenge.

http://youtu.be/NRdnzS31TmUMike McLaughlin, MBA ’13, will walk more than 2,500 miles over six months by thru-hiking the Appalachian and Ozark trails back-to-back, sleeping not in a tent, but a covered hammock. He is trying to bring attention to the plight of underprivileged children in St. Louis and Africa by raising funds for the Family Resource Center and a school for neglected blind children in Cameroon, Africa.

This spring and summer, McLaughlin will through-hike the entire Appalachian and Ozark trails back-to-back, helping to raise funds and awareness for underprivileged children, both locally and in Africa.

He’s hoping to become the first person ever to through-hike both trails consecutively.

A hike kick-off event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at noon Friday, Feb. 24, in Simon Hall’s May Auditorium on WUSTL’s Danforth Campus. McLaughlin will leave immediately following to begin his journey.

McLaughlin’s organization, hike4kids.com, is raising money for the St. Louis Family Resource Center and for a school for neglected blind children in Cameroon, Africa, which fellow MBA student Brooke James, herself legally blind, helped to found.

The six-month journey will be nothing compared to what many children around the world experience every day, McLaughlin says.

“Hike4kids is not about one guy doing a hike,” he says. “It’s about an entire community of people coming together to help these underprivileged kids and make sure they get a chance to have a good life for themselves.”

McLaughlin’s MBA class at Olin has rallied behind the cause, helping to raise funds through events, parties and other outreach efforts.

He says the idea for the hike came to him after spending time with James and getting to know about her efforts in Africa.

“Brooke is a truly amazing person,” McLaughlin says. “Although she’s legally blind, it’s hardly noticeable in class. She makes presentations and participates in discussions. I felt like our backgrounds dealing with adversity meshed well and after I heard about her efforts with the school in Africa, I began thinking of ways I could help out.”

James spent more than two years volunteering with the Peace Corps in Africa, helping to build a school for neglected blind children in Cameroon.

The school provides room, board and education for 25 children on a budget of less than $5,000 a year.

“I’m really thankful for Mike’s friendship and support,” James says. “He’s overcome so much in his life and I know how much it means for him to be able to give back to these kids.”

McLaughlin literally bears the scars of abuse. He has had one on his face since age 12, the result of his mother hitting him with a lamp after he lent a pair of pants to a friend. He and his sister were routinely locked in closets, electrocuted, starved and belittled.

But out of that tragedy, McLaughlin says, comes the ability and desire to give back.

“I felt so helpless when I was younger,” he says. “I was powerless to defend what was happening. But now, I’m in a position where I can fight back and do something that will have a direct positive impact on the lives of so many kids.”

For more information, visit hike4kids.com.

Twitter subpoenas a challenge to intellectual privacy

Jessica Martin — 2012-02-14 00:00:00

The City of New York recently subpoenaed a Twitter account as part of an ongoing Occupy Wall Street criminal case. The Occupy protester named in the case is challenging the subpoena.

Richards

Privacy law expert Neil Richards, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, says that it’s not surprising that law enforcement groups are interested in accessing the volume of records relating to our speech that social media platforms generate.

“By and large, this data should remain private, and online companies should keep the data confidential and not share it any more broadly than we as users and speakers want it to be shared,” Richards says.

“Records of our communications involve our intellectual privacy, and to allow the state to study our private thoughts and words is to allow monitoring of our civil liberties on an Orwellian scale.”

Richards says that U.S. law is somewhat protective of online communications, though the main line of defense comes not from the law but from the behavior of records holders like Google, Twitter, and Facebook.

He applauds companies like Twitter who resist handing broad swathes of intellectual data to the government. Mozilla and Google also have a good record of protecting the privacy and confidentiality of their users.

“In our digital world, the battles for civil liberties are increasingly being fought on the front lines of social media, and social media companies are our first line of defense against the kind of Big Brother-style surveillance our traditions reject,” Richards says.

“In the absence of stronger laws, the positions these companies take have a real impact on the practical state of our civil liberties. I’m very glad that Twitter is siding with its users as citizens in these debates rather than the government.”

The full subpoena is available at www.scribd.com/doc/79940746/Subpoena-on-destructuremal.

Public attitudes toward federal spending, taxes deeply divided, new poll finds

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-02-17 00:00:00

The American public exhibits deep partisan divisions about the direction that federal fiscal policy should take, finds a new national survey from Washington University in St. Louis.

The American Panel Survey, which monthly polls the same group of 2,000 citizens, finds in its debut January survey that prospective voters for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney differ widely in preferences for spending and taxes, although both groups favor increasing taxes on high-income households.

Respondents were asked whether spending or taxes in each of several categories should increase, stay the same or decrease. The results, illustrated in the following graphs, show a stark contrast between likely voters for Obama and Romney in a two-way race.

The first figure below shows how sharply polarized the two camps of panelists are across most domestic programs. With the exceptions of Social Security and veterans health programs, the balance of pro-Obama respondents favor more spending and the balance of pro-Romney respondents favor less spending.

On defense, the balance of pro-Obama respondents favor less spending and the balance of pro-Romney respondents favor more spending.

The second figure illustrates the differences between partisan groups in their positions on taxation. The balance of opinion in both camps supports tax increases for high-income households. The camps differ in their position on corporate and capital gains taxes.

The American Panel Survey (TAPS) is based on a national probability sample. It launched last fall and the January results are its first publicly released findings. As a panel, the survey returns to the same respondents each month, which allows for measuring change in attitudes among individuals over time and results in the accumulation of more data about the respondents than in most surveys.

The typical monthly survey includes about 1,600 respondents from a larger panel of 2,100.

TAPS is a project of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. The survey is implemented by Knowledge Networks of Palo Alto, Calif.

For more information on the project or other data from this month’s survey, email Steven S. Smith, PhD, the Kate M. Gregg Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences and director of the Weidenbaum Center, at taps@wustl.edu.

More information about TAPS is available at taps.wustl.edu.

New study looks at medication use of kids with ASD, ADHD

Jessica Martin — 2012-02-17 00:00:00

Many children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can benefit from medication for related disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

“Unfortunately, there is very poor understanding of overall medication use for kids with autism,” says Paul T. Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Shattuck

As a step toward improving the situation, Shattuck and colleagues studied psychotropic medication use compared across individuals with an ASD, ADHD and both an ASD with ADHD.

They found that children and young adults with both an ASD and ADHD had the highest rates of medicine use (58.2 percent) followed by youths with ADHD-only (49 percent) and youths with ASD-only (34.3 percent).

African-American children with ASDs-only and with ASD and ADHD were less likely to receive medication than white youths.

“Also striking are the high rates of antipsychotic, antidepressant/antianxiety and stimulant medication use in these youths,” Shattuck says.

“Observations from the present study reinforce the complexity of pharmacologic treatment of challenging behavior in kids with ASDs and ADHD. There needs to be a clearer guide for treating kids with both an ASD and ADHD.”

Shattuck says that pharmacological treatment for ASD reflects a trial and error approach based on associated symptoms.

“Additional studies examining the treatment of core and associated ASD symptoms are needed to guide the treatment of these kids,” he says.

The study, “Prevalence and Correlates of Psychotropic Medication Use in Adolescents with an Autism Spectrum Disorder with and without Caregiver-Reported Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder,” is published in the current issue of the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology. Thomas W. Frazier, PhD, of the Center for Autism at the Cleveland Clinic, was lead author of the study.

Researchers examined data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2 (NLTS2), a group of more than 1,000 adolescents enrolled in special education. The NLTS2 includes groups of adolescents with ASDs, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities and speech and language impairments.

In addition to Frazier and Shattuck, study authors are: Sarah Carter Narendorf, doctoral candidate at the Brown School; Benjamin Cooper, data analyst at the Brown School; Mary Wagner, PhD, SRI International; and Edward L. Spitznagel, PhD, professor of mathematics in Arts & Sciences at WUSTL.

Saturday Science looks at unusual experiments

2012-02-15 00:00:00

The progress of physics requires the collaboration of both experimentalists and theorists; only the rare physicist, such as Enrico Fermi, has been successful at both lines of work.

Experimental physicists often exercise great ingenuity to arrange instrumented events that can either verify or falsify the clever ideas of their theoretical friends, who return the favor by laboring to fold the experimentalists' most improbable findings into their theories.

At Washington University in St. Louis this semester, the Department of Physics and University College, both in Arts & Sciences, will describe a few of the experimentalists' greatest successes. Four lectures on great physics experiments will be held at 10 a.m. on four consecutive Saturday mornings, March 10–31, in the Hughes Lecture Room, Room 201 in Crow Hall.

Presented by faculty members of the physics department and tailored for the general public, the lectures are free and open to the public.

The Saturday Science lectures have been organized since their inception 19 years ago by Michael Friedlander, PhD, professor of physics.

Friedlander

Friedlander, an experimentalist who studies cosmic rays and infrared and gamma-ray astronomy, has also written about pseudoscience and the conduct of science. He feels that scientists have an obligation to engage the public.

“As scientists,” he says, “we have an obligation to explain to the non-expert public what we are doing, what is exciting about our findings and where we think all of this may lead.

“In this way, we would hope that the public would gain some understanding of the methods of science, be willing to continue to support our efforts and will also not try to impose ideological restrictions to what we may study.

“History shows that none of this should be taken for granted,” he says.

The schedule

March 10, “The Discovery of Cosmic Rays and What They Are,” Martin Israel, PhD, professor of physics

This year, 2012, is the centennial of the discovery of cosmic rays – ionizing radiation bombarding the Earth from space. Israel will describe the early balloon observations by Victor Hess, who showed that the radiation was coming from space rather than originating on Earth.

TIGER, a WUSTL and NASA balloon-borne experiment to measure the elemental abundances of galactic cosmic rays.

Twenty years later, through his worldwide cosmic ray survey, WUSTL’s Arthur Holly Compton was able to show that the cosmic rays were not “rays” but rather were charged particles. Meanwhile, in studies of cosmic-ray particles in the laboratory, Carl Anderson found a positively charged electron — the theoretically-predicted “positron,” and in 1936 Hess and Anderson shared the Nobel Prize in physics.

March 17 “The LHC and the search for the Higgs,” Michael C. Ogilvie, PhD, professor of physics

An essential component of experiments that explore the internal structure of atomic nuclei are beams of high-speed nuclei. These are accelerated and made to collide. Debris from their collisions is examined and provide the clues being sought.

A simulation of the debris that would result if a collision at the collider in Geneva did produce a Higgs particle.

Ogilvie will describe experiments in progress at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, where the existence of the predicted Higgs particle might be demonstrated.

March 24, “The Lamb Shift,” John Rigden, PhD, adjunct professor of physics

Rigden will describe the Lamb Shift, named for Willis Lamb who was awarded the Nobel Prize for experiments that explored the internal energy of the hydrogen atom.

March 31, “The Ingenious Experiments of Baron Roland von Eötvös,” Ramanath Cowsik, PhD, professor of physics and director of WUSTL’s McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences

The Eötvös experiment, planned by Baron Roland Eötvös in the early years of the 20th century, provides deep insights into the nature of gravity, and Einstein drew on these experimental observations as he formulated his General Theory of Gravitation.

For more information, contact Sarah Hedley at (314) 935-6276 or visit physics.wustl.edu. Click “Seminars/Events” and then “Saturday Lectures.”

Students aim to make campus landscaping more sustainable

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-02-14 00:00:00

A proposal by two Washington University in St. Louis students to introduce turf reduction, large bio-swales, more cisterns and even sheep “lawnmowers” to campus as part of a plan to make landscaping more sustainable at the university won the $5,000 first prize in the annual Olin Sustainability Case Competition.

Three teams of finalists orally presented their recommendations on sustainable landscape strategies Feb. 10 to a panel of judges.

The winning team — Maria Elena Morales, a doctoral student in neurosciences, and Michael Naucas, a dual masters degree student in landscape architecture and architecture — will have the opportunity to present their case study to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and several senior administrators.

“The judges had a tough decision because there were a lot of good ideas presented,” Morales says. “I think they recognized that we took a holistic approach to sustainable landscape design. The recommendations we proposed had a lot of complimentary components that could address our three main goals in multiple ways.”

Morales and Naucas focused their plan on water, walkways, and turf and trees.

They propose a 10-percent reduction in turf area by converting grassy areas that lack an occupational function to bio-swales to detain rain water and runoff, to areas of perennial planting and mulch and to a highly visible expansion of the student-run organic Burning Kumquat garden.

They also propose the creation of a cooperative partnership with Forest Park Forever to manage a small flock of sheep, “nature’s lawn mowers,” to maintain selected turf areas on campus, leading to a drastic reduction in carbon emissions.

“Winning the competition is some validation that interdisciplinary collaboration really works,” Naucas says. “On a project like this, I'm encouraged that there is clearly room for people from many different disciplines to contribute valued ideas to larger goals of environmental quality.

"For the university, the competition itself is really important and I applaud Olin for being a leader within the university, generating new ideas by getting students at all levels involved in thinking about how we live in the world.”

Previous competition winners have included Morales — who won by herself last year with a proposal for an incentive system that reduces electricity use in WUSTL science laboratories — and a group of Olin students in 2010 who proposed a parking reduction plan on campus by targeting graduate students in university housing as the most likely to use public transportation and bicycles if services and pathways were improved.

Many aspects of both winning proposals already have been implemented.

Eighteen teams entered this year’s contest. A group of 10 judges narrowed that to seven and a video presentation narrowed the finalists to three.

Two other teams each won $1,000 for their proposals.

A team made up of second-year MBA students Caitlin Jones, Nalin Katta, Adam Loomans and Michael Offerman focused their proposal on native plantings, green roofs and strategic tree planting.

The other team, consisting of four sophomores — Alexandar Francisci, engineering and computer science in the School of Engineering & Applied Science; Jenny Fung, environmental biology in Arts & Sciences; Anthony Tyrpin, environmental biology; and Andrew Scheinman, architecture — focused on native plants, composting, more cisterns and a renovated smart sprinkler system.

“This competition helps the sustainability efforts on campus because it generates several realistic solutions that can decrease the university's impact on our environment,” Morales says. “Phil Valko (director of sustainability at WUSTL and contest judge) is clearly interested in taking actions that will make our campus more sustainable, so there is a real possibility that our plan can become a reality. He implemented components of last year's winning proposal and is already seeing benefits.”

The competition is sponsored by Novus International Inc.; Tarlton; Olin Business School; Schlafly Brewery; WUSTL's Whittemore House; AT Kearney; Mackey Mitchell Architects; Net Impact; and the Olin Strategy and Consulting Association.

Book by WUSTL English professor examines themes of medieval love poetry

Jessica Daues — 2012-02-13 00:00:00

This Valentine’s Day, flip through cable TV listings and you’ll see a bevy of romances. While those movies may feature modern actors and storylines, many of the common themes and conflicts can be traced back to medieval times.

What is considered “romantic” in contemporary Western society — love from afar, willingness to suffer, idealization of the love object — is partly a legacy of themes in medieval romantic poetry, says Jessica Rosenfeld, PhD, assistant professor of English in Arts & Sciences and author of the book Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry: Love after Aristotle (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

It was those medieval writers who first “defined love and made it the topic for literature,” Rosenfeld says. And movies.

Those medieval writers include Marie de France, Dante, Petrarch and Geoffrey Chaucer.

“Chaucer is best known for the Canterbury Tales, but his Troilus and Criseyde is one of the great medieval romances,” Rosenfeld says.

Much medieval love poetry emphasizes suffering for love that can seem morbid or perverse, Rosenfeld says.

“We still enjoy a story of love overcoming obstacles, but in medieval poetry, it can often seem as though the obstacles and the pain are in fact the goal,” she says.

“One of the things I write about in my book is the way that certain authors found this odd and perverse themselves, and tried to depict the pursuit of love as the pursuit of happiness rather than suffering.”

In medieval Europe, happiness largely was understood in the context of Christianity and therefore was sought in the afterlife, not in the earthly life, Rosenfeld says.

“But love poetry was one place where medieval writers allowed themselves to think about earthly happiness on its own terms,” she says. “One of the central ethical questions — then and now — is how to define happiness, a life well-lived.”

Around the 13th century, Greek philosopher Aristotle’s writings on earthly happiness became available in Latin to literate members of medieval society.

This allowed Aristotle’s ideas about happiness to be applied to questions of love — whether love led to earthly happiness, and whether true happiness was even possible this side of heaven — that were discussed and examined by medieval philosophers and poets, Rosenfeld says.

Many popular medieval romances were set in the life of the court, featuring knights, fair maidens and royalty.

“Many romances explore the conflicts that arise when a knight falls in love — the love affair often takes him away from his knightly duties, though being in love can also strengthen him and provide inspiration in battle,” Rosenfeld says.

“The most famous conflict between chivalric duty and love is, of course, Lancelot’s affair with King Arthur’s wife, Guinevere.”

For more information about Rosenfeld’s book Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry, visit cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item5731726/?site_locale=en_GB.

New book explores forgotten freedom of assembly

Jessica Martin — 2012-02-02 00:00:00

Freedom of assembly has become the forgotten constitutional right, with courts’ attention focused more on freedoms of association and speech.

Both the Occupy and Tea Party movements, however, are reminders of how the right to assemble has been “at the heart of some of the most important social movements in American history: antebellum abolitionism, women’s suffrage and the Civil Rights Movement,” says John Inazu, JD, PhD, associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

“The right of assembly protects the members of a group based not upon their principles or politics but by virtue of their coming together in a way of life.”

In his new book, Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly, recently published by Yale University Press, Inazu examines why freedom of assembly has become “a historical footnote in American law and political theory,” and what has been lost with the weakening of protections for private groups.

“Claims of assembly stood against the ideological tyranny that exploded during the first Red Scare in the years surrounding the First World War and the Second Red Scare of 1950s’ McCarthyism,” he says.

http://youtu.be/SvNQSuLTzv4John Inazu, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses the forgotten right of assembly — a right that has been “at the heart of some of the most important social movements in American history.”
“By losing touch with our past recognition of the freedom of assembly and the groups that have been embodied it,” Inazu argues, “we cede to the state the authority over what kinds of groups are acceptable in the democratic experiment.”

Inazu says that the right to assemble could begin to return to its earlier prominence through constitutional litigation.

His current research looks at freedom of assembly in the digital space.

For more information and to read the book visit: http://law.wustl.edu/faculty_profiles/inazu/?page_id=36

Military service changes personality, makes vets less agreeable

Gerry Everding — 2012-02-09 00:00:00

It’s no secret that battlefield trauma can leave veterans with deep emotional scars that impact their ability to function in civilian life. But new research led by Washington University in St. Louis suggests that military service, even without combat, has a subtle lingering effect on a man’s personality, making it potentially more difficult for veterans to get along with friends, family and co-workers.

“Our results suggest that personality traits play an important role in military training, both in the sort of men who are attracted to the military in the first place, and in the lasting impact that this service has on an individual’s outlook on life,” says study lead author Joshua J. Jackson, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences.

Published in the journal Psychological Science, the study found that men who have experienced military service tend to score lower than civilian counterparts on measures of agreeableness — a dimension of personality that influences our ability to be pleasant and accommodating in social situations.

The study confirms that the military attracts men who are generally less neurotic, less likely to worry, less likely to be concerned about seeking out novel experiences. When compared with men in civilian pursuits, those entering the military also are more aggressive, more interested in competition than cooperation and less concerned about the feelings of others, the study finds.

"Military recruits are a little less warm and friendly to begin with and the military experience seems to reinforce this — as after service, men score even lower on agreeableness when compared to individuals who did not go into the military,” Jackson says. “Interestingly, this influence appears to linger long after the soldier has re-entered the workforce or returned to college."

Jackson points out that being less agreeable is not always a negative human trait. While it may make it more challenging to maintain positive relationships with friends and romantic partners, it can be seen as a positive influence on career success.

“On the flip side,” he says, “people with lower levels of agreeableness are often more likely to fight their way up the corporate ladder and to make the sometimes unpopular decisions that can be necessary for business success.”

Either way, this study offers evidence that experiences in basic training and other military service do shape the way people approach the world.

“These changes in personality appear to be small, but they could make a big difference in the lives of those who have served in the military,” he says.

Jackson’s research is based on a six-year study that tracked the personality traits of a group of young men in German high schools who chose to meet mandatory public service requirements through either military or civilian service.

Co-authored with Felix Thoemmes, Kathrin Jonkmann, Oliver Lüdtke and Ulrich Trautwein, all of the University of Tübingen in Germany, the study is among the first to empirically test whether a particular life experience can truly change an individual’s personality, something that many psychologists have long considered to be unlikely.

As Jackson explains, psychologists generally view personality as one of the most stable and difficult-to-change human traits. While some studies have tracked small changes in personality over time, such as changes related to the aging process, there is little research on why these changes occur, or on what sorts of life experiences might contribute to the changes.

Jackson's research team saw the military as the perfect laboratory in which to test for personality-changing life experiences.

“The whole military experience is sold as an opportunity for a life-changing transformation,” Jackson says. “Recruiting materials of military forces around the world bolster the idea of military experience as being a catalyst for change. For example, recent slogans in the United States, such as ‘Be all you can be,’ ‘Accelerate your life,’ and ‘Aim high,’ all imply that military experiences affect life trajectories.

“It’s one of the few situations in life where an individual’s daily actions and expectations are completely controlled by someone else. Where, from the moment you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night, someone is actively working to break down anything that’s individual about you and to build up something else in its place.”

Researchers tested the men’s personalities during high school and re-tested them three times in the six years following either civilian or military service. Not surprisingly, all of the participants scored higher on measures indicative of maturity, such as increased conscientiousness and less neuroticism.

And while the military group did show some increases in measures of agreeableness, the change was much lower than that measured for participants in the civilian service group.

“While the military often promises to ‘make a man out of you,’ our analysis suggests that much of the advertised post-military increase in maturity can be attributed to normal changes that most young men experience during this stage of their lives," Jackson says.

"And while military service doesn’t seem to have much impact on other personality traits, such as levels of anxiety or gregariousness, it appears to have a small but significant influence on measures of agreeableness.”

Jackson’s findings may offer a new explanation for why military service members tend to differ from civilians in their rates of divorce, longevity, salaries and health issues.

“Often these differences are interpreted in terms of the social opportunities that either exist or don't exist for military members, but rarely is it suggested that military experience changes something about the person, which then influences these outcomes,” Jackson says.

“It’s not a cut-and-dried issue, but this study shows that changes in personality may be one reason that military service is associated with different rates of important life outcomes, like divorce or occupational attainment.”

Apply now to spend three weeks in China next summer

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:37:59 CST

Wikimedia Commons

The Prince’s Residence and Garden from the Qing Dynasty located on the grounds of the Tsinghua University

Reluctant to spend another summer in steamy St. Louis? Consider taking a month to learn about China in China while helping Chinese students learn English.

Frank Yin, PhD, ambassador to Tsinghua University, a partner institution in the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, invites Washington University in St. Louis faculty and students to participate in Tsinghua’s annual English summer camp, which will be held from June 26 to July 13.

Last summer, WUSTL sent seven teachers and eight volunteers to Tsinghua. The same number will attend this year, says Yin, the Stephen F. and Camilla T. Brauer Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering and chair of the department of biomedical engineering in WUSTL’s School of Engineering & Applied Science.

Tsinghua, one of China’s premier universities, is located in northwest Beijing, on the former site of Qing Dynasty royal gardens. The campus retains Chinese-style landscaping as well as traditional buildings.

The English summer camp is an intensive English language experience for Tsinghua students. Each day is devoted to lessons, lectures, and various activities, including seminars, song and dance competitions, and other games.

The camp is for students who have just completed their freshmen year at Tsinghua. The university anticipates about 3,300 students to take part this summer.

The camp’s goal is to increase the students’ interest and enthusiasm in learning English as well as to improve their basic English skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

WUSTL native or near-native English speakers are invited to join the camp as visiting teachers and volunteers.

Visiting teachers will teach English classes, give lectures on topics of interest, and help out with group activities. Volunteers will facilitate lecture discussion seminars and lead group activities, such as competitions involving music, speech and drama.

Teachers should hold at least a master’s degree or be a currently enrolled graduate student, and; volunteers should be currently enrolled undergraduate students.

During the camp’s three weeks, teachers and volunteers will be provided free meals and on-campus accommodations. Teachers will receive a stipend of approximately $2,000 in U.S. dollars and volunteers a stipend of approximately $470 in U.S. dollars.

There will be two days of orientation and team coordination prior to the camp (June 23-24), and both teachers and volunteers arrive in Beijing on June 21 or 22. Transportation between the Beijing airport and the Tsinghua campus will be provided.

To view the camp’s website, visit flc.tsinghua.edu.cn. For more information or to apply, email Yin at yin@biomed.wustl.edu.

The application deadline for teachers is Feb.22. The deadline for volunteers is March 15.

New book examines impact of U.S. tobacco industry

Jessica Daues — 2012-02-08 00:00:00

Princeton University Press

For a hi-res image, click here.

Most research that focuses on tobacco examines health risks associated with smoking, says Peter Benson, PhD, a sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

What has been neglected is research on tobacco production in the United States, and specifically on the people who work and live in the rural, traditional tobacco-growing areas of North Carolina.

Benson’s new book, Tobacco Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2011), examines the impact of the transformation of the tobacco industry on farmers, workers and the American public. It reveals public health threats, the impact of off-shoring, and the immigration issues related to tobacco production.

The book also examines the new public relations strategies of the tobacco industry and its recent corporate social responsibility “makeover”.

“There are whole groups of people — farmers and farm workers — in our society who dedicate themselves to growing a crop that is vilified,” says Benson, assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

“But this book is not just about good people doing a bad thing. What I found was, in going to North Carolina and going to these farms, that the story becomes much more complex.”

http://youtu.be/drG-hTDzJmo

Pressure on farmers and questions of identity

Tobacco farms often go back generations. A father’s father’s father farmed land still owned by his great-grandson.

Tobacco farmers take great pride in their family’s history and role in tobacco production, Benson says.

But like many other American industries, tobacco companies are increasingly purchasing their products overseas, buying more tobacco leaves from farmers in places like Brazil and fewer from farmers in North Carolina, Benson says.

“Tobacco is cheaper to produce in developing countries because the labor costs are lower and there are less stringent environmental and labor laws,” Benson says.

Not only is less American tobacco leaf being bought by tobacco companies, but also what is purchased from U.S. farmers is bought at increasingly lowered prices to compete with overseas farms.

As their relationship with tobacco companies deteriorates, tobacco farmers also face public derision and sometimes internal ambivalence about growing what is widely seen as a dangerous product.

Off-shoring. Lowered prices. Negative public perception. With all these issues swirling, many tobacco farmers see their livelihood and family heritage — their identity — as under attack from many sides.

“Tobacco growers in North Carolina are understandably distressed,” Benson says. “And there’s hardly any relief from a public that often sees smoking, and I think rightly so, as something that ought not exist.”

Public health risks and immigration issues

The public health effects of tobacco production go beyond the risk of tobacco use itself, Benson says. It also shows in the chronic vulnerability of the migrant workers who harvest it.

Many of the workers who harvest the tobacco crop are undocumented migrant farm workers from Mexico and Central America, Benson says. They live in “labor camps” of barracks-style housing, often dilapidated or poorly constructed.

“These are dangerous places to live,” Benson says. “Labor camp conditions for migrant farm workers are notoriously bad. There might be housing code violations, insect and rodent infestations, and, in the North Carolina summer, heat — intense, oppressive heat.

“They are living as a vulnerable population without resources, without access to certain things like health care, legal services and employment benefits,” Benson says. “And yet, they are there, going to Wal-Mart on Saturdays and Sundays, just like everybody else.”

With many farmers already feeling a sense of insecurity about their livelihood and identity, a change in their small, rural communities — such as an influx of immigrant workers — can lead to cultural tensions.

“Hiring undocumented workers to compete economically with cheaper foreign leaf challenges the cultural status of family farms as national icons,” Benson says. “It also puts tobacco farmers at the heart of contentious political debates in the U.S. about immigration.”

Tobacco company marketing strategies

Since the late 1990s, tobacco companies have undergone what Benson calls a “corporate social responsibility makeover,” shifting responsibility from the companies (for making a harmful product) to consumers (for supposedly choosing to use it) and claiming to create “safer” tobacco products.

“They are telling the public, ‘Look, we are a responsible corporate citizen. We make a risky product, yes, but it’s your choice to use it. You are a parent. Help your kids make good decisions.’

“They’ve rerouted responsibility for tobacco onto parents, convenience store clerks, police officers, people checking identification cards, so that tobacco and smoking seem to be a problem of bad parenting and the family, not an inherently harmful industry,” Benson says.

Tobacco companies also are promoting smokeless tobacco, electronic cigarettes and cigarettes with modified tobacco content as “safer” alternatives to cigarettes.

Problem is, there’s no such thing as safe tobacco use, Benson says, and people may be misled into thinking they are making a good choice by purchasing these “safer” products.

“The tobacco industry wants you to go to the convenience store, and instead of buying a pack of Nicorette gum because you want to quit cigarettes, it wants you to choose that reduced-risk tobacco product,” Benson says.

“Safe tobacco. Safe cigarette. Those words just don’t go together.”

Benson compares tobacco companies’ “safer” tobacco to pharmaceutical companies’ cholesterol-reducing drugs like Lipitor.

“If cholesterol is to be managed by Lipitor, and Lipitor is to be taken for your entire life, then that distracts attention, public health resources and political will from the idea that you can prevent high cholesterol in other ways — for example, by modifying the food system at much lower cost — but not to the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry,” Benson says.

Instead of managing the problem of disease through a narrow focus on the consumer, Benson says, Americans, as a society, should really examine the root causes of chronic disease, especially the role of powerful industries like tobacco.

For more information about the book Tobacco Capitalism, visit press.princeton.edu/titles/9612.html.

Facebook valuation will be high, but justified, expert says

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-02-07 00:00:00

Facebook’s initial public offering (IPO) filing shows real numbers for profit and revenues, which are likely to drive a valuation that could be as high as $100 billion.

This astronomical number does require some aggressive assumptions about future growth, but the high valuation may be more justified than for other Internet companies, says an expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

“This is a huge market cap for such a young firm,” says Mark T. Leary, PhD, assistant professor of finance at Olin Business School.

“But I think there are a few factors that separate Facebook from some of the earlier Internet IPOs that may have been overhyped,” he says.

The Internet itself is a more established advertising medium than it was in the late 1990s, Leary says.

“There is less uncertainty about the total size of the market, and other firms have proven the viability of a business model based largely on online advertising revenue,” he says. “But I think this model is only viable for the ‘winners’ in capturing online share.”

The other important element is that Facebook has already established itself, to some extent, as the winner in the social networking arena, he says.

“They are more mature than the typical firm we saw going public at the height of the Internet bubble.” Leary says. “Their user base is huge, and they are already profitable.

“And unlike some other Internet companies, like Groupon, Facebook’s competitive position seems sustainable. Once everyone’s part of their network, there are high costs of switching to another social networking site that tries to start up.

“So while I’m sure the $100 billion valuation requires some aggressive assumptions about future growth, the downside risk in terms of revenue generation seems much lower for Facebook than other net firms,” Leary says.

Google holds the record for the largest U.S. Internet IPO by raising $1.9 billion at a valuation of $23 billion in 2004.

“I think the comparison with Google comes not just from the size of the offering, but Facebook is the first firm since Google to attract such a large and loyal following, which obviously enables them to attract advertisers,” he says.

“For Facebook, growth in users is likely to slow down in the coming years. The challenge going forward is finding new ways to leverage that large user base to grow earnings.”

Facebook says it hopes to raise as much as $10 billion when it begins selling shares this spring.

Among U.S. companies, only Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless have held larger offerings than $10 billion.

American Airlines layoffs could spell end of the airline

Neil Schoenherr and Jessica Martin — 2012-02-03 00:00:00

American Airlines’ plan to lay off more than 13,000 employees and eliminate all four of its pension plans as part of its bankruptcy reorganization could eventually spell the end of the airline and leave its pilots with dramatically reduced pensions, say two experts at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Like GM, Kodak, US Steel and several of the other legacy airlines, American made promises to pilots and other employees about pay, benefits, retirement and employment, and many of these promises are not going to be kept,” says Glenn MacDonald, PhD, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Strategy at Olin Business School.

“American's competitive position will not generate profit sufficient to keep those promises,” he says. “In fact, absent significant reduction in what American will provide its employees, it will soon be gone, not just reorganized, with pieces bought by Delta, USAir and others.”

He says what the company will or won’t do for its employees will take time to sort out in court.

Part of the airlines’ plan, if approved by bankruptcy court, would be to place its pensions with the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), an agency funded by premiums levied on employers that sponsor pensions.

 If PBGC does take over the plans, the agency will assume the responsibility for paying retirees' benefits — but not necessarily all of them. The agency caps the monthly benefit it pays at about $4,653 a month for plans ended in 2012.

This is not a good sign for pilots, says Peter J. Wiedenbeck, JD, the Joseph H. Zumbalen Professor of Law.

“The legacy-carrier airlines tend to have special plans for pilots that promise far more generous benefits, so pilots might be shorted by plan termination in reorganization,” says Wiedenbeck, an expert on pension policy and employee benefit law.

However, he says, other American employees could fare well.

“The maximum PBGC-guaranteed benefit for plans terminated in 2012 is $55,840.92 for a 65-year-old retiree,” he says. “Compared to the average level of private pensions, that’s pretty high, so in general a large majority of workers, something like 85 percent, covered by terminated PBGC-insured plans get the full amount they are due. ”

Wiedenbeck also noted that under a special rule, commercial airlines were permitted to elect a slower pension funding schedule in 2006 or 2007 than the schedule that applies to other businesses.

"If American made that election, then the amount of PBGC-guaranteed benefits would be set by reference to pensions earned when that funding extension took effect, rather than the actual amounts accrued as of plan termination in 2012.”

YouthBridge SEIC finalists named

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-01-31 00:00:00

Nine finalists were selected Jan. 26 to compete for more than $125,000 in grants in April at the 2011-12 YouthBridge Social Enterprise and Innovation Competition (SEIC) at Washington University in St. Louis. The competition is a joint partnership between the YouthBridge Community Foundation and WUSTL’s Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

The finalists, culled from a field of 15 semifinalists, were chosen by a panel of judges after presenting their social enterprise idea in an “elevator pitch” competition.

A total of 37 competitors entered this year’s contest.

“The judges and I are very pleased with the creativity of our entrepreneurs in addressing social problems,” says Ken Harrington, managing director of the Skandalaris Center. “With the work the Brown School is doing on social entrepreneurship curriculum for graduate and undergraduate students, we are enthusiastic about opportunities to find solutions while being financially sustainable and adding significant social value.”

The finalists will present completed business plans and oral presentations to the judges privately in April, with the awards announced April 11 in Simon Hall’s May Auditorium.

They are (* indicates a team founded by students. Other teams may have students on them):

Cherokee Street International Farmers Market, providing low-income residents with nutritious produce and encouraging at-risk youth and immigrant refugees to grow and sell food at the farmers market;
Club KidFit, providing child-directed wellness curriculum through fun fitness programs;
Dahlia, providing education to school health-care professionals, coaches and counselors about eating disorders to increase early intervention, family support and positive dialogue about a healthy body image;
Explore Transplant, providing an educational program for dialysis providers on how to educate kidney transplant patients;
Fostering Life, providing resources for teenage girls in foster care who are pregnant;
Metamo4ic Math Center, motivating and educating St. Louis children to learn and enjoy mathematics through a children’s museum;
* Migrant and Immigrant Community Action (MICA) Project, combining legal representation, social services and community development to promote the voice and human dignity of immigrant communities;
One Bright Day Vending Coffee Service, servicing soda and snack machines to provide healthy options along with traditional inventory; and
Sweet Sensation, teaching North St. Louis teens about entrepreneurship and sustainable living through apiculture, or beekeeping.

Awards for the 2011-12 competition will be granted from the following partner and community sponsors.

YouthBridge Community Foundation: $35,000 to fund a venture serving children and youth;
Lutheran Foundation of St. Louis: $30,000 to fund an organization promoting a healthier community;
Daughters of Charity Foundation of St. Louis: Up to $30,000 to fund an organization serving the poor and vulnerable; and
Skandalaris Center: $25,000 to fund a venture with an innovation solution to effect social change.

With a $5,000 award to the best student team and in-kind support from Skandalaris sponsors, the total amount awarded will be more than $125,000.

In June 2005, YouthBridge and the Skandalaris Center each pledged $500,000 to fund a five-year initiative to develop a program to stimulate social entrepreneurship. The program, then called the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition, was an opportunity for nonprofits to learn business skills, collaborate, receive feedback and compete annually for more than $100,000 in awards.

In August 2009, YouthBridge renewed its partnership with the Skandalaris Center and pledged to fund the annual YouthBridge SEIC on an ongoing basis.

The YouthBridge SEIC is unique in St. Louis and, in terms of monetary awards, is one of the largest competitions of its kind in the United States.

Since its inception in 2005, the competition has awarded more than $732,000 in cash and in-kind prizes to 28 social ventures, including an annual $5,000 prize to the best student-founded or supported team.

Additional sponsors of the Skandalaris Center are the St. Louis Regional Commerce and Growth Association, St. Louis Commerce Magazine, RubinBrown LLP, Polsinelli Shughart PC and Lopata Flegel & Company LLP.

Study looks at how kids with autism spend their screen time

Jessica Martin — 2012-01-25 00:00:00

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) tend to be preoccupied with screen-based media. A new study by Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looks at how children with ASDs spend their screen time.

“We found a very high rate of use of solitary screen-based media such as video games and television with a markedly lower rate of use of social interactive media, including email,” Shattuck says.

The study examined data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2 (NLTS2), a group of more than 1,000 adolescents enrolled in special education. The NLTS2 includes groups of adolescents with ASDs, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities and speech and language impairments.

Data revealed that nearly 60.3 percent of the youths with ASDs were reported to spend “most of his/her time” watching television or videos.

“This rate appears to be high, given that among typically developing adolescents, only 28 percent have been shown to be ‘high users’ of television,” Shattuck says.

“Television viewing is clearly a preferred activity for children with ASDs, regardless of symptoms, functional level or family status.”

Nearly half of the youth with ASDs in the study (41.4 percent) spent most of their free time (outside of school or work) playing video games.

“Given that only 18 percent of youths in the general population are considered to be high users of video games, it seems reasonable to infer based on the current results, that kids with ASDs are at significantly greater risk of high use of this media than are youths without ASDs,” Shattuck says.

Shattuck says that the high use of video games on children is concerning because it makes the youth unavailable for social interaction or learning.

Social media contrast

Study data show strikingly lower rates of use of email and social media among youth with ASDs.

“We found that 64.4 percent of youth with ASDs did not use email or chat at all,” Shattuck says.

“Kids with speech and language impairments and learning disabilities were about two times more likely to use email or chat rooms than those with ASDs.”

Shattuck says that as cognitive skills increased and children with ASDs grew older, use of social media increased.

“This proclivity for screen time might be turned into something we can take advantage of to enhance social skills and learning achievement, especially recent innovations in devices like iPads,” he says.

The study, “Prevalence and Correlates of Screen-Based Media Use Among Youths with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” is published in the current issue of the Journal of Autism Developmental Disorders.

Lead author on the study is Micah O. Mazurek, PhD, assistant professor of health psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Remaining authors are Shattuck; Mary Wagner, PhD, principal scientist at SRI International; and Benjamin Cooper, a data analyst at the Brown School.

The full study is available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/984812t131480547/.

RCGA head Reagan to speak at annual Olin Cup awards

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-01-26 00:00:00

Marking his first day as CEO of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association (RCGA), Joe Reagan will discuss “Innovation & Entrepreneurship: Creating the Future Economy” during the annual Olin Cup awards ceremony beginning at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, in Simon Hall’s May Auditorium on Washington University in St. Louis’ Danforth Campus.

Hosted by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, the presentation and awards ceremony is free and open to the public.

Seven finalists from an original field of 40 are vying for $70,000 in seed money to start their own company, $50,000 to the first place finisher and $20,000 for second place.

Three of the remaining teams are student-supported and in the running for an additional $5,000 student prize.

“We are honored that Joe will be joining us on his first day at the RCGA,” says Ken Harrington, managing director of the Skandalaris Center. “Many exciting things are happening to support the entrepreneurial environment in St. Louis, including Joe’s move here, the new Arch Grants program, Capital Innovators and Startup Missouri. We are looking forward to hearing from Joe, welcoming him to Washington University and to announcing this year’s winning teams.”

Reagan begins his duties Feb. 1 as CEO of the RCGA. He succeeds Dick Fleming, who led the organization since 1994. Reagan has been president and CEO of the Greater Louisville Inc.-Metro Chamber of Commerce since 2005.

He has more than 20 years of practitioner and CEO experience in private sector initiatives in community and economic development, public policy, and regional strategy and community problem-solving.

Prior to his leadership roles in community and economic development, Reagan worked in the business side of radio and was an entrepreneur, heading a marketing firm.

Following Reagan’s presentation, each team will make a 90-second elevator pitch. After the winners’ announcement, the audience will have the opportunity to meet the teams and learn more about their ventures at a poster board session and reception.

This year’s finalists are (* indicates student-owned or student-supported venture):
• Edthena, developing a video improvement platform for educators;
• Eyelton Therapeutics, developing therapies to treat age-related macular degeneration;
• *Freiezo LLC, a company developing high-efficiency distributed wind energy systems;
• HomeNav by Sustaining Spaces, an online homeowners manual and resource guide;
• *Inclusion Sports, which has developed a new sport called Bulletball, allowing everyone to participate and compete on a level playing field;
• *Loadmaster Toolkit, which enables Air Force loadmasters to manage aircraft payload and passengers; and
• SoMoLend, a web-based peer-to-peer lending company.

The Olin Cup was created as a cross-campus activity in 1988 by Olin Business School, and has awarded funding to winning commercial ventures since 2003.

The competition is sponsored by the RCGA; RubinBrown; Lopata, Flegel & Company LLP; Polsinelli Shughart; St. Louis Commerce Magazine; and Olin Business School.

To register for the event, visit ideabounce.com/skandalaris/events. For more information on the Olin Cup, visit sc.wustl.edu/Programs/Pages/OlinCup.aspx.

Super Bowl advertisers should skip TV ads, focus online

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-01-25 00:00:00

Last year’s hit Super Bowl ad, a Volkswagen spot featuring a boy dressed as Darth Vader, was unique in that it was actually released before the game.

This year, nearly all ad agencies are expected to run previews of their commercials before the Feb. 5 Super Bowl on YouTube and other sites, leading a marketing expert at Washington University in St. Louis to question the wisdom of running a television ad at all.

“Pre-releasing a teaser to a Super Bowl commercial certainly evokes interest for consumers to ‘anticipate’ what is going to come on Super Bowl Sunday, thus improving the quality of ad consumption,” says Seethu Seetharaman

Seetharaman

, PhD, the W. Patrick McGinnis Professor of Marketing at Olin Business School.

“But the $3-million-dollar question is whether that Super Bowl commercial will lead to incremental buying,” he says. “Is there any significant return on investment for the $3 million spent? I doubt it.”

The average cost for a 30-second spot during this year’s Super Bowl is $3.5 million, with some time slots costing as much as $4 million.

With the continuing trend toward viral commercial releases, Seetharaman advocates companies reconsider traditional television ads and focus their efforts on the Internet, saving them millions of dollars in the process.

“The return on investment for a viral ad is far greater, since it is much cheaper to get the commercial in front of viewers,” he says. “A viral campaign, at best, produces incremental sales at zero cost, and at worst, produces a lot of social conversation without any incremental sales, like a well-noticed Super Bowl ad would, but without a $3 million spend,” he says.

Last year’s Volkswagen ad with the child dressed up as Darth Vader has been viewed online more than 50 million times.

Seetharaman says a purely online viral ad campaign, without the actual television Super Bowl component, does not impose any prohibitive costs on a company.

“Water cooler conversation does not a purchase make. Just because a company spends $3 million or more for a 30-second ad, it does not automatically increase purchase of their product. Viral videos are cheaper to produce and have a much longer shelf life.”

The final purpose of the Super Bowl ad, Seetharaman says, is to stimulate sales, not to stimulate consumption of online videos.

“Fifty million hits for the Darth Vader ad on YouTube, advertising awards etc., will only give cold comfort to VW if the YouTube hits do not end up selling more VW cars,” he says.

“Take the ‘Will It Blend’ campaign from BlendTec, which was rolled out on YouTube. It not only reached online viewers running in to tens of millions, but more importantly, it increased BlendTec blender sales by 700 percent in the first few months of its rollout.

“That is what an effective promotional campaign must do."

Gehlert named senior fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research

Jessica Martin — 2012-01-25 00:00:00

Sarah Gehlert, PhD, the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Racial and Ethnic Diversity at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, was recently appointed senior fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR).

In her role, Gehlert will represent social work research to federal agencies and policy makers. She will meet with leaders of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and their related institutes and centers to discuss how ongoing and current social work research aligns with their missions.

Gehlert also will attend the public portions of National Advisory Council meetings at pertinent NIH institutes to comment on their plans from the standpoint of social work research.

Gehlert

Gehlert, a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at the School of Medicine, focuses her scholarship on social influences on health, especially the health of vulnerable populations.

She currently is working on the influence of neighborhood and community factors, such as community violence and unsafe housing, on psychosocial functioning among African-American women newly diagnosed with breast cancer, with an eye toward how these factors “get under the skin” to affect gene expression and tumorigenesis.

Gehlert is an editor for the Handbook of Health Social Work, Second Edition, a key resource for social workers, offering a comprehensive and evidence-based overview of social work practice in health care.

At WUSTL, Gehlert, a scholar in the Institute of Public Health, is co-program leader of the Prevention and Control Program of the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center; co-director of the Transdisciplinary Center on Energetics and Cancer (TREC); and training program director of the Program for the Elimination of Cancer Disparities (PECaD).

She serves on the executive committee of the university’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (a CTSA) and is co-chair of the Center for Community-Engaged Research.  

On a national level, Gehlert is a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH. She is co-chair of the Population Health Advisory Committee of the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research at NIH.

Gehlert is a charter member of NIH’s Community-Level Health Promotion Scientific Review Panel and a member of the scientific review panel for Oncology Social Work at the American Cancer Society.

She is a fellow in the American Association of Social Work and Social Welfare. She also is past president of the Society for Social Work and Research and serves on the editorial boards of Health & Social Work, Social Work Research, Social Service Review, Research in Social Work Practice, and Oxford Bibliographies Online (Social Work).

SSWR is dedicated to the advancement of social work research. The organization works collaboratively with a number of other groups that are committed to improving support for research among social workers.

‘Public Education at a Crossroads’: Brown School, Teach for America co-sponsor panel discussion Jan. 26

2012-01-23 00:00:00

Teach For America-St. Louis and the Brown School Policy Forum at Washington University in St. Louis will host a panel discussion on “St. Louis Public Education at a Crossroads: The Outstanding Schools Act, Turner v. Clayton, and the Future,” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, in Brown Hall, Room 100.

The event will bring together Missouri legislators and education officials to discuss how Turner v. Clayton is impacting state legislation.

In Turner v. Clayton, a court ruled that the State of Missouri must enforce the Outstanding Schools Act, which states that students living in unaccredited districts may attend school at a neighboring accredited district at the expense of the unaccredited district. The decision, in favor of the Turner family, has since been appealed and is waiting to be heard again.

The case and resulting judicial or legislative action will have significant ramifications for many of the students in the St. Louis area.

Panelists are:

State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal ;
State Sen. Jane Cunningham ;
State Rep. Scott Diekhaus, chair, House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education;
State Rep. Tishaura Jones ;
Chris Nicastro, commissioner of education for the State of Missouri ; and
Don Senti, executive director, Cooperating School Districts.

Kimberly Jade Norwood, JD, professor of law at WUSTL, will serve as moderator.

Register for the event at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dE0wTGVDT2lQOUpLdkNtQ0pzSW92cVE6MQ#gid=0.

For more information contact, Lisa Clancy, coordinator of alumni affairs at Teach For America-St. Louis (lisa.clancy@teachforamerica.org) or Susan Stepleton, director of the Brown School Policy Forum (sstepleton@brownschool.wustl.edu).

SOPA would be sour note for music industry

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-01-19 00:00:00

The controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is merely an attempt to shore up a dying and inefficient business model, grafted onto an attempt to control the Internet, says an expert on the business of entertainment at Washington University in St. Louis.

MacDonald

“It really should be called ‘POBM, for Protect the Outmoded Business Model,’” says Glenn MacDonald, PhD, the John M. Olin Professor of Economics and Strategy at Olin Business School.

MacDonald teaches the popular “Economics of Entertainment” course, which covers the institutions, data, economics and management challenges of the entertainment industry, with emphasis on the music and movie industries.

If passed, SOPA would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.

Sites could be punished for hosting pirated content — and Internet companies are worried they could be held liable for users' actions.

“We have copyright laws that allow inventors to charge prices above the costs of reproduction so as to induce them to invent in the first place,” MacDonald says. “We put up with a misallocation of resources — those who value the good above its cost of reproduction but less than the above-cost price do not consume it — in order to get the good invented in the first place.

“Copyright is not a good thing per se, just an imperfect fix for the problem of how to compensate inventors for the up-front cost of inventing goods whose cost of reproduction are close to zero,” MacDonald says.

The Internet, he says, has wrecked the traditional music industry model of producing records and compact discs, since it has made controlling copyright next to impossible.

“This process is what SOPA seeks to reverse,” MacDonald says. “It does not seek to protect intellectual property. It seeks to protect the old business model that sacrifices efficient allocation of resources to pay for up front investments and some other activities that have become redundant.”

He says the proposed bill is an awful idea for several reasons.

“SOPA, as presently conceived, will do nothing more than impose costs on Internet service providers and others as they become responsible for dealing with those who share music and continue an inefficient allocation of music, with too few new songs going to too few consumers,” MacDonald says.

“And it will open the door for harming one of the Internet’s most valuable features — its open access and its fast paced, innovation-fostering freedom from government control. If the FCC were running the Internet, would we even have email?”

The natural question, MacDonald says, is how are the music companies going to get paid without the traditional model?

“The answer is that artists will pay them for their valuable developmental services and any other useful things they do,” he says. “They won’t pay them for distributing CDs or distributing music on the Internet.

“Music companies can, and increasingly are, compensated by the artists, who give up some of their future concert, merchandise and endorsement revenue to acquire the considerable development expertise of the music companies. Music companies would be better served by increasing their focus on how to make artists’ music, and especially their concerts, even better.”

McDonnell Academy welcomes 12 new scholars from around the world

2012-01-20 00:00:00

A select group of research universities in countries throughout the world are partners in the McDonnell International Scholars Academy. Graduates of the 27 partner institutions are eligible to apply to become McDonnell Scholars.

The McDonnell International Scholars Academy at Washington University in St. Louis welcomed 12 new talented graduate and professional students for the 2011-12 academic year.

The new scholars are graduates of one of 27 premier universities from around the world partnered with Washington University in the McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

The new scholars are: Naoko Akimoto, Chen Li, Richa Joshi, Li Yunzi, Li Weijie, Lin Chih-Chung, Leandro Medina de Oliveira, Bharatkumar Suthar, Wu Mengfei, Antonio Zanutto, Zhang Liu and Zhu Chuanmei.

Headquartered at Washington University, the McDonnell Academy enrolls exceptional graduate and professional students across all graduate disciplines at the university.

The McDonnell Academy Scholars are expected to be future global leaders. As such, they are provided not only with a rigorous graduate education at Washington University, but also with cultural, political and social activities designed to prepare them as leaders knowledgeable about the United States, other countries and critical international issues.

Employing an unusual approach, the McDonnell Academy brings together top scholars from Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America to pursue world-class education and research while forging a strong network with one another.

Key to this are partnerships Washington University has established with top universities and corporations around the world, with an eye to increasing opportunities for joint research and global education.

“In creating an international network of research universities, Washington University intends to develop a cohort of future leaders in a global university system and promote global awareness and social responsibility,” says McDonnell Academy Director James V. Wertsch, PhD, associate vice chancellor for international affairs and the Marshall S. Snow Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

“Since getting to know our newest class of scholars over this past semester, I know that they are making great contributions to the research effort at Washington University as well as enhancing the educational experiences of our domestic students through sharing their culture, history and the politics of their countries,” Wertsch says.

Academy ambassadors

Once selected for this highly competitive program, each academy scholar is matched with a distinguished member of the WUSTL faculty who serves as a mentor and also as an academy “ambassador” to the university partner from which the scholar has graduated.

The academy ambassador assists the McDonnell scholar in academic and professional life and travels annually with the scholar to the partner university to build relationships between the two institutions.

“The scholars, working with their ambassadors, help foster collaborative research and educational efforts across the academy institutions on issues such as energy and sustainability, international understanding and public health,” Wertsch says. “The academy is an incubator of new ideas on global networks in research and education and will continue to pursue new initiatives in the future.”

The McDonnell Academy organizes special events for the scholars, including leadership training, cultural opportunities, seminars and workshops with experts in key areas, conferences on crucial issues, and sessions in Washington, D.C., with U.S. government policymakers and grant administrators.

Scholar support

The McDonnell Academy Scholars receive funding for full tuition and living expenses for the time it takes to get a degree at WUSTL. The academy also provides support for an annual trip back to the scholar’s alma mater.

To help foster a sense of community, many of the scholars reside in two fully equipped and furnished apartment buildings near campus.

Funding is provided through a sustaining endowment gift from John F. McDonnell, vice chair of WUSTL’s Board of Trustees and retired chairman of the board of McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Additional support comes from 22 multinational corporations, foundations and individual sponsors. Sponsoring corporations also offer internships and on-site educational opportunities for the academy’s corporate fellows.

To view a list of the academy sponsors, visit http://mcdonnell.wustl.edu/sponsors/.

Partner universities

Partner universities in the academy are committed to excellence in education and research and to the importance of international collaboration.

The select group of worldwide research universities that are partners with the McDonnell International Scholars Academy follows:

Ankara
Middle East Technical University
Bangkok
Chulalongkorn University
Beijing
China Agricultural University
Peking University
Tsinghua University
Brisbane
The University of Queensland
Budapest
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Campinas
State University of Campinas
Haifa
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
Herzliya
Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya
Hong Kong
Chinese University of Hong Kong
University of Hong Kong
Istanbul
Bogaziçi University
Jakarta
University of Indonesia
Melbourne
The University of Melbourne
Mumbai
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Tata Institute of Social Sciences
New Dehli
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Santiago
University of Chile
Seoul
Korea University
Seoul National
Yonsei University
Shanghai
Fudan University
Singapore
National University of Singapore
Taipei
National Taiwan University
Tokyo
University of Tokyo
Utrecht
Utrecht University

Work, Families and Public Policy series continues Jan. 23

Jessica Martin — 2012-01-18 00:00:00

Faculty and graduate students from St. Louis-area universities with an interest in labor, households, health care, law and social welfare are invited to take part in a series of Monday brown-bag luncheon seminars to be held biweekly on the Danforth Campus at Washington University in St. Louis beginning Monday, Jan. 23, through Monday, April 16.

In its 16th year, the Work, Families and Public Policy series features one-hour presentations on research interests of faculty from local and national universities. The series is designed to promote interdisciplinary research.

Presentations will be from noon-1 p.m. in Seigle Hall, Room 348.

The series continues Monday, Jan. 23, with a lecture by Kelly Bishop, PhD, assistant professor of economics in Arts & Sciences, on “Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Estimating Marginal Willingness to Pay for Differentiated Products without Instrumental Variables.”

The remaining presentations are:

Feb. 6. Donna K. Ginther, PhD, professor of economics at the University of Kansas, on “The Diversity of NIH Research Awardees in Academic Medicine”;

Feb. 20. Maria E. Canon, PhD, economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, on “The Role of Schools in the Production of Achievement”;

March 5. V. Joseph Hotz, PhD, the Arts & Sciences Professor of Economics at Duke University, on “The Family that Shares is the Family that Cares: Are Extended Families Efficient in their Sharing?”;

March 19. Duncan Thomas, PhD, professor of economics and global health at Duke University, on “Decision-Making by Households and Families”;

April 2. Kimberly D. Krawiec, JD, the Kathrine Robinson Everett Professor of Law at Duke University, on “Kidneys Without Contracts: The Legal And Ethical Implications of NEAD Chain Bridge Donor Contracts”;

April 16. Sandra E. Black, PhD, professor of economics at the University of Texas, on “Does Money Matter? The Effect of Child Care Subsidies on Academic Performance.”

Robert A. Pollak, PhD, the Hernreich Distinguished Professor of Economics in Arts & Sciences and in the Olin Business School, has been the lead organizer of the series for the past 15 years.

Co-organizer is Michael Sherraden, PhD, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development at the Brown School at WUSTL.

The series is sponsored by the Olin Business School; the Brown School and the Center for Social Development; the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Work and Social Capital in the School of Law; the Department of Economics in Arts & Sciences; the College of Arts & Sciences; and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The classroom is courtesy of the Department of Economics.

For more information, contact Pollak at (314) 935-4918 or pollak@wustl.edu; Sherraden at (314) 935-6691 or at sherrad@wustl.edu; or visit olin.wustl.edu/Events/Pages/default.aspx and search for the seminar by date.

Nominations sought for Civic Scholars program

2012-01-18 00:00:00

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service is accepting nominations for the Civic Scholars program, which recognizes Washington University in St. Louis undergraduate students who exemplify future potential for civic leadership.

Five to seven rising juniors will be selected based on their commitment to community service and civic engagement.

For two years, Civic Scholars take academic coursework with American Culture Studies in Arts & Sciences, receive intensive leadership training, and form a mentorship network to prepare them for a life dedicated to public service. They also are awarded a scholarship of $5,000 to support a substantial civic project or internship for the summer after junior year.

“In my position at the university, I have the opportunity to meet many exceptional undergraduates,” says Amy O’Brien, program coordinator for the Institute for School Partnership.

“The Civic Scholars program is a way to recognize those students who are standouts in leadership and community service,” she says. “Last year, I nominated four students, and two were chosen for the inaugural group.

“I encourage everyone to nominate students who are looking for an experience that will shape their future in civic service.”

Nominate a current sophomore by Friday, Feb. 3, by filling out a brief form on surveymonkey.com/s/CivicScholarsNominationForm.

Self-nominations, peer nominations and nominations from faculty and staff are welcome.

Nominees will be invited to submit full applications by March 5 and the cohort will be announced in April.

For an application or more information, contact Gephardt Institute Program Manager Jenni Harpring at Jharpring@wustl.edu or call (314) 935-8182.

Active lifestyle associated with less Alzheimer disease-related brain change among persons with APOE ε4 genotype

2012-01-16 00:00:00

A sedentary lifestyle is associated with greater cerebral amyloid deposition, which is characteristic of Alzheimer's disease (AD), among cognitively normal individuals with the ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"The presence of an APOE ε4 allele is the most established genetic risk factor for Alzheimer disease (AD), with a higher percentage of individuals with AD having an ε4 allele in comparison with the general population," the authors write as background information in the article. "It has been suggested that APOE status may modify associations between lifestyle factors such as exercise engagement and risk of cognitive decline and dementia."

To examine the association between exercise and cerebral amyloid deposition among patients with and without the APOE ε4 allele, Denise Head, Ph.D., and colleagues from Washington University in St. Louis, performed APOE genotyping and administered a questionnaire on physical exercise engagement over the last decade to 201 cognitively normal adults (135 women) age 45 to 88 years recruited from the Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Samples of cerebrospinal fluid were collected from 165 participants and brain amyloid imaging with positron emission tomography (PET) of the amyloid binding agent carbon 11-labeled Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) was performed on 163 patients.

Patients who reported higher amounts of exercise had a lower mean (average) cortical PIB binding (binding potential values from the prefrontal cortex, gyrus rectus, lateral temporal, and precuneus regions) than did patients who reported lower amounts of exercise. Participants who were ε4-positive also had higher levels of cortical amyloid compared with individuals negative for the ε4 allele. The authors also observed a "novel interaction between APOE status and exercise engagement for [11C] PiB binding [carbon 11-labeled Pittsburgh Compound B] such that a more sedentary lifestyle was significantly associated with higher [11C] PiB binding for ε4 carriers but not for noncarriers. All findings remain significant after controlling for age; sex; educational level; body mass index; the presence or history of hypertension; diabetes mellitus; heart problems, or depression; and the interval between assessments."

According to past research "APOE status is associated with increased risk of cognitive decline and elevated amyloid deposition. In contrast, exercise engagement has been associated with reduced risk of cognitive decline and lower levels of amyloid deposition," the authors note. "In summary, our findings suggest that exercise at levels recommended by the AHA [American Heart Association] may be particularly beneficial in reducing the risk of brain amyloid deposition in cognitively normal ε4-positive individuals."

Editor's Note: To contact Denise Head, Ph.D., call Gerry Everding at 314-935-6375 or e-mail gerry_everding@wustl.edu. For more information, contact JAMA/Archives media relations at 312/464-JAMA (5262) or e-mail mediarelations@jama-archives.org.

SOPA, PROTECT IP will stifle creativity and diminish free speech, say WUSTL experts

Jessica Martin — 2012-01-17 00:00:00

Wikipedia and other sites plan to go dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act under consideration in Congress. Three law professors from Washington University in St. Louis, Kevin Collins, Gregory Magarian and Neil Richards, signed a letter to Congress in opposition to the PROTECT IP Act. Below are Magarian and Richards’ current comments on SOPA and PROTECT IP.

Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law and free speech expert, says that PROTECT IP Act and SOPA are to intellectual property what the infamous Communications Decency Act was to “indecent” online material – an incredibly powerful, blunt instrument that would drastically diminish free speech in the name of protecting copyrights.

Magarian

“The proposed statutes use vaguely phrased standards for determining the identity of infringing websites, and they would allow the government to bar transactions with, and even links to, cites that it finds to infringe,” he says.

“A search engine could violate the law simply by returning the name of an ‘infringing’ site in a search. This is akin to punishing a publisher who prepares a list of names and addresses of purveyors of obscene materials. It is a frightening and far-reaching form of thought control.

“The proposed statutes continue and exacerbate the trend of wealthy copyright holders’ prevailing on Congress to inflate copyright protection beyond any reasonable construction of the Constitution’s Copyright Clause, without regard to the public’s interest in access to information.”

Neil Richards, JD, First Amendment and privacy law expert, says that both SOPA and the Protect IP Act are unnecessary to protect copyrighted media from unfair uses.

“Copyright holders already have substantial powers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other statutes, and new copyrights granted today can last for a century or more, at the expense of the vibrant public domain that makes any creativity possible,” he says.

Richards

“At a time when our copyright law is over-protective in both duration and scope, stifling creativity by individuals, we need less protection for copyrighted works, and not more. The sheer amount of lobbying money that the copyright industries have been able to dump into the political process on this issue is testament both to their corporate profitability and their greed.”

More importantly, Richards notes, the means that these bills would give government to protect copyright holders are unprecedented in scope, giving them the power to break the Internet in pursuit of little more than extra profit.

“These powers are inconsistent with our historic commitments to the free exchange of information and ideas, they threaten First Amendment values, and they are certainly unconstitutional as they currently drafted,” Richards says.

“These values of free expression are coded into the current structure of the Internet, and SOPA and the Protect-IP Act would try to change the nature of the Internet, making it closed rather than open. Given this reality, it should be no surprise that virtually all of the big Internet companies have come out in opposition to these terrible bills.”

‘Making Your Money Work for You’ focus of free community seminar Jan. 21

Jessica Martin — 2012-01-16 00:00:00

Jerry Naunheim Jr.

The annual Financial Freedom seminar brings in top speakers each year, like Yvonne Sparks of the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, who spoke in January 2011.

In remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr., the Society of Black Student Social Workers (SBSSW) at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis will host the sixth annual “Financial Freedom Seminar: Making Your Money Work for You,” from 9 a.m.- 3:00 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21, in Brown and Goldfarb halls.

The seminar, free and open to the public, is designed for St. Louis community youth and adults interested in building wealth, repairing and maintaining good credit, purchasing a home or starting and expanding a business.

Seminar participants will be able to choose a morning and afternoon workshop from the following:

Morning workshops:

Saving and Investing for Retirement;
The Path to Homeownership;
Homeownership;
Credit Building;
Budgeting;
Homeownership and Foreclosure; and
PNC Financial Services Group’s Foundation of Money Management.

Afternoon workshops:

Starting a Small Business;
Because A Child's Education is Worth the Effort;
PNC Financial Services Group’s Foundation of Money Management;
Long term Investment; and
Guarding Against Risk, Protection Planning.

The seminar will begin with a panel discussion featuring many of the workshop presenters.

Interested participants need to register at brownschool.wustl.edu/Events/Pages/FF2012.aspx. Event check-in will be in Goldfarb Hall Commons.

For more information, e-mail kcowley@brownschool.wustl.edu or call (314) 935-3466.

Lunch will be provided.

Hosanna-Tabor an important victory for religious liberty

2012-01-12 00:00:00

The U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is an important victory for religious liberty says First Amendment expert John Inazu, JD, associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

The case pitted the freedom of a church to select its own leaders against a terminated employee’s ability to bring a disability discrimination claim.

“Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion for the Court made clear that both the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses ‘bar the government from interfering with the decision of a religious group to fire one of its ministers,’” Inazu says.

“A church cannot be made ‘to accept or retain an unwanted minister’ because doing so ‘interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs.’”

Inazu says the case is significant for at least three reasons.

“First, it entrenches the ministerial exception -- which the lower courts have recognized for four decades,” he says.

“Second, it applies the exception to an employee who worked beyond the four corners a church, in this case, to a school operated by the church. Third, it applies the exception based on an overall assessment of the employee’s role, based in part on the church’s understanding of that role.”

“This third point is worth underscoring: it signifies a kind of institutional deference that cannot be reduced to rote formula. Each of these three assertions provides vital protections for religious groups whose freedoms have been threatened by the Court’s 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith and its 2010 decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.”

Employment Division v. Smith limited the protections of the free exercise clause against generally applicable laws like employment discrimination laws. Christian Legal Society v. Martinez folded the claims to freedom of religious association into a less protective speech framework.

“In light of Smith and Martinez, Hosanna-Tabor is a welcome reminder that the Court has not lost sight of ‘the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.’”

Powerful people think they are taller than they really are, new study finds

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-01-13 00:00:00

Napoleon Bonaparte, the notoriously “short” French emperor, may have stood only 5 feet 6, but being a powerful military and political leader probably made him feel much taller, suggests a new study by an organizational behavior expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Although a great deal of research has shown that more physically imposing individuals are more likely to acquire power, this work is the first to show that powerful people feel taller than they are,” says Michelle M. Duguid, PhD, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Olin Business School.

Duguid is co-author, with Jack Concalo, PhD, of Cornell University, of “Living Large: The Powerful Overestimate Their Own Height,” published in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science.

In a series of three experiments, the researchers found a definite correlation between feeling powerful and feeling tall, and even suggest that future research may want to examine whether employers should consider placing short high-ranking workers in higher offices to raise their psychological sense of power.

“Height is often used as a metaphor for power,” Duguid says. “Powerful people ‘feel like the big man on campus,’ and people ‘look up to them.’ We find that the psychological experience of power may cause individuals to feel taller than objective measurement indicates they really are.”

In the researcher’s first experiment, some participants were asked to recall an incident in which they had power over another individual while others were asked to recall an incident in which someone else had power over them.

They were then asked to estimate their size in relation to a pole that had been set precisely 20 inches taller than their actual heights.

Those who had been conditioned to feel ‘empowered’ thought the pole was nearer in height to them than those who’d been made to feel subordinate.

In the second experiment, two pairs of volunteers were asked to role play a scenario in which one was a manager and the other an ordinary worker.

They were then asked to give their exact heights in a questionnaire, with those having played the role of manager supplying exaggerated figures.

Finally, the participants were conditioned in the same way as they were in the first experiment and then asked to choose an avatar in a second-life game that they thought best represented them. The more empowered volunteers consistently chose taller avatars.

“These findings may be a starting point for exploring the reciprocal relationship between the psychological and physical experiences of power,” Duguid says. “An interesting direction for future research would be to determine whether associations between power and size extend to other self-perceptions and self-categorization.”

To read the full study, go to pss.sagepub.com/content/23/1/36.full.