October 5, 2006
On Tuesday, Peel Regional Police arrested a 43-year-old suspected of prowling the University of Toronto at Mississauga campus and peering into residence windows. Police had been investigating a series of complaints in regards to a prowler since May. (Peel Regional Police media release:
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/October2006/04/c4968.html )
A recent StatsCan study reports that Generation Xers are three times more likely to return home to their parents than baby boomers were. Almost one-third return home within five years. The pursuit of higher education, with its heavy debt loads, was a chief reason, and returning home is acceptable because of declining stigma and more egalitarian parent-child relationships. In former generations, young adults moved out to get married or because they had found jobs.
Globe & Mail On Wednesday, Roger Kornberg, a professor at Stanford University’s medical school, was named winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.” According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Kornberg created a picture of transcription the process by which information stored in genes is copied, moves to the outer parts of the cells, and is used for the production of proteins that construct organisms and their functions. (See
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2006/ )
On Monday, Yale University announced two grants from the Greenberg Foundation and the Starr Foundation, totaling $50 M US, which will fund the Greenberg Scholars program (to support Chinese students at Yale and Yale students in China), the World Fellows program, and the new Greenberg International Conference Center at Yale for executive education. (See Yale press release at
http://www.yale.edu/opa/newsr/06-09-28-03.all.html )
On Tuesday the US National Institutes of Health announced $100 M US to create a national consortium of leading academic medical facilities, to speed the development of new treatments to patients. Institutions involved include Columbia, Duke, Oregon Health & Science, Rockefeller, and Yale Universities; the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine; and the Universities of California at Davis, California at San Francisco, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Rochester, and Texas. (See
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/oct2006/ncrr-03.htm )
A Penn State study published in the current issue of the Health Communication journal reports that binge-drinking US college students, particularly males, take their cues from their friends, not from “social norms” campaigns that attempt to persuade them their peers drink less. It has been estimated that two in five college students engage in binge drinking, or having five drinks in one sitting. (For more detail see
http://live.psu.edu/story/19866 )
Two US economists argue in a study released last month that social drinkers tend to have more charisma, a fatter Rolodex and more friends than those who abstain or drink alone. The impact of social drinking is measurable on paycheques, too, resulting in 10% bigger salaries for men and 14% bigger for women. The paycheque boost doesn’t diminish until after 35 drinks per week. The research, published by the LA-based Libertarian Reason Foundation and the Journal of Labor Research, takes aim at efforts in several communities to crack down on college binge drinking as well as proposals to raise alcohol taxes. Drawing from a large national database, they argue that social drinking actually leads to "superior market outcomes." (See the article in the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-drink14sep14,1,1511855.story?ctrack=1&cset=true )
“Digital native” millennial students are spending as much as 16 hours a day online, and checking messages is a “constant pastime.” Some recent studies have tied rising time online to dropping academic grades. Almost a third of US campuses provide blanket wireless coverage, and twice as many have a strategic plan to implement wireless. Ball State University, Intel’s “top wireless campus” in the US last year, offers Wi-Fi in all its buildings, green spaces, the football stadium and even on campus shuttle buses. Most of the residence halls have an internet-based laundry system to reserve washers and dryers, monitor the wash online and get an e-mail alert when it's done. (For a thoughtful article from USAToday, see
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-10-02-gennext-tech_x.htm )
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