12.10.08
Posted in Anthropology, Cognitive Science, Consumer Culture, Education, Jacob Canon, Kluge, Obesity, The Oscar Show, University of Virginia, biology, physical health at 12:04 pm by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, based on a recent article by Jane Ford, Senior News officer for the Office of Public Affairs, we introduce and speak with UVa Graduate, and the Commonwealth’s first ever Doctor of Nursing Practice Degree recipient, Amy Drake Boitnott.
On November 14, 2008, the UVa Nursing School granted the Commonwealth’s first ever Doctor of Nursing Practice Degree to Amy Drake Boitnott. John Kirchgessner, assistant professor of nursing and chairman of Boitnott’s review committee said, the DNP differs from a Ph.D. mainly in the focus of the research. A Ph.D.’s primary interest is in pure research. A DNP is a clinical scholar who uses evidence-based research to develop interventions that may improve clinical practice.
Boitnott, an instructor at the School of Nursing since 2004, and a practicing nurse since 1991, recently sat down to discuss her main clinical focus, childhood obesity.
Nursing School Grants First Doctor of Nursing Practice Degree in VA [6:15m]:
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Asked about the focus of her work, Boitnott said, “As part of taking care of children, our patient is not just the child, our patient is the family. And I began to recognize and the see the interactions between parent and child, and responses that the children have to their disease process, based on their parents responses. So, it’s all intertwined, and that was very interesting to me, that my patient was not just this one person and one body, it was this entire dynamic of a family.”
Boitnott said her work was unique, “We’re doing something very different… than is currently being done… in this study …and in my intervention. We’re directly targeting the parent exclusively from their child.”
Concerning childhood obesity and some of the contributing factors, Boitnott said, “childhood obesity has increased by over 30 percent in the past 30 years. So there is a huge issue now. It’s considered a(n) epidemic now in our country and globally.”
“And there are so many factors which are thought to contribute to the increased incidence, anywhere from the comfort foods. Foods are now more easily accessible, they’re pre-packaged… they’re fast foods… fast foods are cheaper. So parents and families who are on the go, more than they are 30 years ago, can quickly go through those kinds of things. So that is one thing… Food availability.”
“Another thing is our children are having more sedentary time than they use to, and because of technology and all of these wonderful things that the internet and the TV provides our children. It is sedentary activity none the less, so that is another issue.”
“Urban Sprawl has a factor in it. Kids use to walk to friend’s houses and walk to school, and walk to the store. It doesn’t happen as much as it used to because our communities are farther from those places.”
Boitnott said, “It’s very devastating to see the children and the families that we see in the clinic. They’ve been afflicted with this horrible thing of Obesity. And, I (just) think that what we can do in the clinic… that hopefully this intervention will go into the primary care arena. I am a primary care nurse practitioner, I see people where they come for that sore throat, and for those kinds of things. And if we can then add in education and knowledge about obesity patterns and trends and what we can do to avoid them, in every interaction we have with patients, I think that it is so very important to make this preventative.”
But added, “There’s not one simple answer, that’s the thing… There’s so many answers and so many things, and it’s going to a problem in our country for some time.”
When asked about the major behaviors that people could adopt to help fight this trend in their own lives Boitnott said, “I think that one major thing is the sedentary lifestyles… Just moving, and moving our bodies, and finding ways to move them with our family members…”
“And the other major thing is making wise decisions at the grocery store in what you’re going to bring into your home. Because a lot of my patients will say, “I got that bag of chips and he just wants a couple of them.” Well it’s really hard for a child when they see something they really want… so the parent controlling the nutrition habits and what is brought into the home… controlling that environment, because children still need help with making those decisions.”
For those families who would like more information, Boitnott referenced America on the Move.org for information on nutrition and activities for the family. For families to participate in the clinic, their child must be in the 85th percentile to be considered for the 6 month intervention. If they are, she directs them to call the Children’s Fitness Clinic at the Kluge Rehabilitation Center for more information. Their phone number is 434-982-1627.
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will look at former dean of UVa’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Melvyn P. Leffler, who recently was named to receive the American Historical Association’s 2008 George Louis Beer Prize for his book “For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.”
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10.01.08
Posted in Cognitive Science, Education, Gender Bias, Jacob Canon, Politics, Psychology, Racism, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, elections, ethics, history at 11:04 am by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, we share comments and reflections from the UVa Faculty Roundtable concerning Race and Gender in Politics.
Last Thursday, the Miller Center of Public Affairs hosted the UVa Faculty Round Table on Race and Gender in Politics. Sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Arts & Sciences Magazine, the forum was moderated by Douglas Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. The panel included UVa faculty members, Paul Freedman, Brian Nosek, Lynn Sanders, Vesla Weaver and Nick Winter.
Moderator, Douglas Blackmon called this point in time “an extraordinary moment in American history and American discourse,” while Associate Politics Professor Paul Freedman referred to this time as “Christmas” for political scientists because of the multicultural base of the presidential candidates.
Reflections on Race and Gender in Politics Forum [7:30m]:
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Freedman said the implicit message in political advertising is the important element of political ads. An example of this was a 2006 Republican ad run in Tennessee, concerning Democrat, Harold Ford, Jr. Freedman said, the ad included “a white woman who claimed to have had met Harold at the Playboy Party and she suggested that he call her, the ad concluded with the text on the screen, Harold Ford…’he’s just not right.’ And many people suggested that the implicit message was, ‘he’s just not white.’” Freedman added this year’s election has seen less of these types of messages.
Associate Politics Professor Lynn Sanders, spoke to the question, “will Obama lose this election due to race.” Referring to a recent Stanford AP poll and the subsequent media spin that Obama will lose the election by six to fifteen percent simply because he is black, Sanders said, “I think that it is really, really interesting how tied we are to that kind of pessimism. There is an alternative framework that we could be focusing on, which is… that we’re living in a time when we have accomplished such a feat that we can have these different kinds of candidates.” Referring to the Bradley/Wilder effect - when voters tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, yet, on Election Day, they vote for the white candidate - Sanders said this effect has lessened over the past forty to fifty years and the reverse was observed in the 2006 Tennessee race between Ford and the Republican candidate.
Assistant Politics Professor Nick Winter spoke about the book he is working on, “The Secret History of Gender.” Winter said, looking at data from the last three decades, the Democratic party is associated with stereotypically feminine traits such as being “… compassionate, generous, egalitarian, and so forth and conversely they like the republican party for relatively stereotypically masculine characteristics, it’s efficient, supports the work ethic…” Yet, when it comes to Presidential candidates, he said the electorate tends to feel “… that our ideas about what it makes a good leader are themselves very associated with ideas about men and masculinity.”
Associate Professor of Psychology Brian Nosek’s data suggests that some political choices we make are influenced by “implicit” feelings toward blacks, women or the aged without us even realizing it. Nosek said of people who participate in his online surveys, “… 80% of white Americans who come on and try this task have a stronger association of black with bad, than white with bad, suggesting that they have associations in their minds that are quite distinct from the egalitarian values that they tend to express. Likewise with gender, it’s harder to associate female with leader or female with career than males, even if they will explicitly say, ‘no, I’m egalitarian minded… we don’t necessarily know that these things are happening.”
Mr. Blackmon observed that the research of the panelist had led to potentially opposed ideas of how much race and gender effect the election process.
Answering this question, Assistant Politics Professor Vesla Weaver satirically noted, that this may be the first time that professor Sanders and she had been considered the “racial optimist in a room.” She went on to say, “I’m certainly not saying that there aren’t negative racial attributions that happen. I do think we need to question how much the Bradley Effect has been overstated, how much the negative aspect of race is the thing that makes headlines, and what effect that has on perceptions, on people, on raising sensitivities, on looking for it.” Professor Sanders added that it was interesting “…the way conservative and optimistic, and liberal and pessimistic, are associated. And this is a real consistent theme in this year’s election.” She said that none of the panelist felt that bigotry and racism were no longer issues, yet much had changed in the short time since the 1960’s.
The goals of the panel to open public discussion on these issues were summarized by Professor Weaver’s salient comments concerning what would occur if the topic of race and gender were not brought to the public’s attention. Weaver said, the danger is not only, not having this type of public discourse, but that “it opens up space for a powerful counter narrative to develop on November 5th. And that is the counter narrative that, for blacks, for young voters, for anyone that was mobilized… and saw this as the first time their constituency was being spoken to, the counter narrative would be, if not now, then when.” She added, “it opens up a rift in that powerful American dream logic. It opens a rift in the notion that this is an egalitarian society. That we can move forward together… And so if we don’t have that very public conversation now about race, the public conversation that going to get had when we look in the mirror on November 5th is going to be a conversation that is going to be uglier.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will discuss the work of Brad Cox, professor of physics and a principal investigator with the University of Virginia’s High Energy Physics Group and his involvement with the new Large Hadron Collider in Geneva Switzerland.
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09.24.08
Posted in Cognitive Science, Education, Jacob Canon, Politics, Social Psychology, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, elections, ethics, history, sociology at 11:04 am by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, we introduce the Moderator and UVa Faculty panel participating in the Race and Gender in Politics Forum being held tomorrow evening at 7:00 PM at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, located at 2201 Old Ivy Road, in Charlottesville, VA. This event is free to the public.
With the election season upon us, and the diverse nature of the major candidates, Americans are faced with unique challenges when they go to the polls this November 4th. With the notable exception of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, the major candidates for the office of President of the United States have been white males. But this election season, both major political parties have offered candidates that begin to explore the multicultural basis of our nation.
Race and Gender in Politics [5:48m]:
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Tomorrow evening, September 25th at 7:00PM, the Miller Center of Public Affairs will be hosting the UVa Faculty Round Table on Race and Gender in Politics. This event is sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Arts & Sciences Magazine will be Moderated by Douglas A Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. This forum will discuss many of the issues that face the electorate this season. The panel will include UVa faculty members, Paul Freedman, Brian Nosek, Lynn Sanders, Vesla Weaver and Nick Winter.
The moderator, Douglas A. Blackmon, has written extensively about the American quandary of race. Many of his stories in The Wall Street Journal have explored the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct and racial segregation.
Associate Politics Professor Paul Freedman, has written about the negative advertising that is present in American politics, and has come to the conclusion that this type of discourse has positive effects in educating the public concerning issues. Freedman found that voters who saw more campaign advertising were more energized and knowledgeable.
Associate Professor of Psychology Brian Nosek’s interest in politics emerged while he was doing research in implicit cognition, which examines thought and feeling outside of awareness and control. His data suggests that some political choices we make may be influenced by “implicit” feelings toward blacks, women or the aged without us even realizing it.
Associate Politics Professor Lynn Sanders, has found another dynamic at work in the American political system. Sanders research has found there are differences in survey data received depending on the race of the interviewer and interviewee. If they are the same race, prejudices are more likely to be revealed. She found this evidenced by the differing results in the public vote of caucus states versus the private vote found in primaries states during the recent Democratic campaign.
Assistant Politics Professor Vesla Weaver’s research has detailed the disparities between the outcomes of whites to darker- and lighter-skinned blacks and Hispanics, including lower incomes, high incarceration rates and higher execution rates for the dark-skinned. Her data appears to show that the gradient of skin tone also appears to have an effect, and that this disparity carries over to politics as well.
Assistant Politics Professor Nick Winter’s book, Dangerous Frames explores the ways that political leaders can mobilize our ideas about race and gender in ways we don’t realize; his current project is exploring the ways that ideas about masculinity and femininity shape political discourse and public opinion.
So, as this multicultural dynamic changes the Presidential debate continues across America, you are invited to the Miller Center tomorrow evening, September 25th at 7:00 PM to hear this panel discuss gender and race and how they effect the political landscape.
The Miller Center address is 2201 Old Ivy Road, Charlottesville, VA. For more information or direction to the event please call 434-243-8974 or email Cristina Martinez de Andino at clm6q@virginia.edu.
For those who can’t attend, you can watch the forum online by going to www.millercenter.org and the link will appear on the home page shortly before the panel starts.
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will follow up this show with comments and reflections from the UVa Faculty Roundtable concerning Race and Gender in Politics.
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02.06.08
Posted in Cognitive Science, Jacob Canon, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, Uncategorized, University of Virginia, nuerology, physical health, physiology, sensory inputs, technology, visual processing at 12:06 pm by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, adapted from an article published on the Oscar web site written by Linda Kobert, we examine the work of Dennis Proffitt, Professor and Director of the Cognitive Science Program, whose research focuses on creating computer interfaces to help make life more bearable for patients with ALS and other diseases that are the cause of locked-in syndrome.
Locked-In Syndrome [6:23m]:
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Up to now, the most iconic connection to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease, is the famous farewell in Yankee stadium By Mr. Gerhig. Forced to retire from baseball, the profession he loved and was best known for, he became the personification of this devastating disease.
In 2002, Peggy Chun, a popular artist was diagnosed with ALS. This debilitating neurological disorder progressively destroys a person’s motor neurons. As a victim of this incurable disease, Chun can feel, see, smell, taste, think and imagine, but she can no longer move in any way. She is, in the parlance of the medical profession, “locked-in.” ALS is the most frequent cause of locked-in syndrome, which begins with numbness in the extremities and progresses upward until all motor function disappears.
Usually the last thing you lose is eye movement,” says Dennis Proffitt, U.Va. cognitive psychologist and Commonwealth Professor of Psychology. “When you lose that, you are cognitively alert, you can think, you can feel, but you can’t move a thing. As a result, you can’t communicate in any way. It’s awful.”
Funded by the National Science Foundation, Proffitt, his colleagues at Georgia Tech and a company called Archinoetics in Hawaii are working to develop computer interfaces that may one day make life for locked-in patients more bearable.
Scientists know different parts of the brain are activated when a person performs different functions. For example, moving the left arm activates an area on the right side of the brain, the back of the brain is active with visual imagery and the frontal lobe is active when one tries to focus attention on something. Proffitt’s system simply detects whether or not a particular area of the brain is actively engaged at the time.
With this in mind, researchers are currently testing a technology that allows Chun and other locked-in patients to answer simple yes/no questions. An interface using functional near infrared imaging (fNIR) assesses activity in Broca’s area, a part of the brain where verbal working memory occurs. They strap a device, just above the left ear that projects a light beam through the skull measuring changes in blood volume and oxygenation when Broca’s area is engaged.
With the device in place, subjects are asked to count in their head when they want to activate the verbal working memory and initiate a “yes” response. When they want to say “no,” subjects think of clouds or rest or think “la la la.” It’s a process that most people can engage easily without having to spend a long time training to do it.
Proffitt said, “it was hard for us to think of something we could ask a person to do — something easy to control, something you can turn on and off — that we could measure in this way. What we came up with was sub-vocal speech … talking to yourself. You could be counting, or you could be reciting a poem. We couldn’t tell the difference. We have no idea what you’re doing. We just know the kind of thing you’re doing.”
He stresses, “It’s not reading your thoughts, we can’t do that.”
Proffitt admitted, “at this time the system is primitive, but it’s a start. Right now it’s an on/off switch. What we want to do is to get continuous control so the person is not just activating … Not just ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but small to large, continuous control within some range. If we could achieve that in the next few years, that would be a huge improvement in what we will be able to do with the technology.”
For the half million people in the world with locked-in syndrome, having the ability to communicate, even in this primitive fashion, can make the difference between suffering in silence and a meaningful life.
But Peggy Chun isn’t waiting for the technology to evolve. This future icon of the human spirit refuses to be shut down. She uses the system now as a tool for creativity. With the sensor in place over her left ear, the artist activates Broca’s area to select shades from a palette that show up on a computer screen as horizontal gradations of color. She calls it “brain art,” and it may be simple, but it’s selling like hotcakes.
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when our topic will be the research of Jared Harris, assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business concerning business ethics and strategy, as he looks to answer the questions, “What motivates a company to cook the books? And, what happens to businesses that get caught committing financial fraud?”
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