Human Behavior
Yale Will Strengthen Teaching on Race and Ethnicity
• Responding to student demonstrations and demands related to
the racial climate at Yale University, its president, Peter Salovey,
introduced a host of initiatives and promises in a letter to
alumni on Tuesday.
• “It is clear that we need to make significant changes so that all
members of our community truly feel welcome and can
participate equally in the activities of the university, and to
reaffirm and reinforce our commitment to a campus where
hatred and discrimination have no place,” he wrote.
• In early November, students accused administrators of being
insensitive to concerns about Halloween costumes considered to
be culturally offensive. After the university’s Intercultural Affairs
Council advised student to avoid costumes featuring elements like
feathered headdresses, turbans or blackface.
• http://www.nytimes.com
The War on Campus Sexual Assault Goes Digital
• As the problem of sexual assault on college campuses has
become a hot-button issue for school administrators and
federal education regulators, one question keeps coming
up: Why don’t more students report attacks?
• According to a recent study of 27 schools, about onequarter of female undergraduates and students who
identified as queer or transgender said they had
experienced nonconsensual sex or touching since entering
college, but most of the students said they did not report it
to school officials or support services.
• Some felt the incidents weren’t serious enough. Others said
they did not think anyone would believe them or they
feared negative social consequences. Some felt it would be
too emotionally difficult.
• Now, in an effort to give students additional options — and
to provide schools with more concrete data — a nonprofit
software start-up in San Francisco called Sexual Health
Innovations has developed an online reporting system for
campus sexual violence
• Callisto’s hypothesis is that some college students — who
already socialize, study and shop online — will be more
likely initially to document a sexual assault on a third-party
site than to report it to school officials on the phone or in
person.
• “If you have to walk into a building to report, you can only
go at certain times of day and you’re not certain who you
have to talk to, how many people you have to talk to, what
they will ask,” Jessica Ladd, the nonprofit’s founder and
chief executive, said in a recent interview in New York.
“Whereas online, you can fill out a form at any time of day
or night from anywhere and push a button.”
• http://www.nytimes.com
Breast-Feeding Is Good for Mothers, Not Just Babies
• Breast milk may provide the ideal nourishment for an infant,
but two recent studies are putting a different spin on the
bottle-versus-breast debate, suggesting it is mothers, and
not just babies, who may have much to gain from breastfeeding.
• One study found that breast-feeding may help protect
women from a particularly vicious type of breast cancer. The
other suggests that breast-feeding may act as a sort of
“reset” button for metabolism after pregnancy, helping
women who had gestational diabetes avoid becoming
lifelong diabetics.
• The findings complement earlier research showing
that women who breast-feed have a lower risk for breast
and ovarian cancers, Type 2 diabetes, and rheumatoid
arthritis. Breast-feeding may also promote cardiovascular
health, including a healthy blood pressure.
• “This is a win-win — it’s good for the baby, too,” said Dr.
Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, a professor of medicine at the
University of California, Davis. She called for paid maternity
leave, citing earlier research showing that near-universal
breast-feeding in the United States could spare an estimated
5,000 women a breast cancer diagnosis every year and cut
nearly 14,000 heart attacks. “For all the women who want to
do something to reduce breast cancer, this is doable. We need
to make sure that’s part of the debate,” she said.
• But the physiological changes of lactation extend beyond the
breast. Some scientists have started referring to breastfeeding as the “fourth trimester” of pregnancy that completes
the reproductive cycle, restoring a woman’s body to long-term
metabolic and cardiac health.
• http://www.scientificamerican.com/
Bountiful bikes: Can a share program get more
people cycling around cities?
• Bicycling brings many benefits over driving a car: a workout,
less pollution and lower carbon dioxide emissions. So, why is it
that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2007American
Community Survey, only 0.5 percent of Americans rely on two
wheels to get to work?
• The answer is likely a combination of obstacles: convenience,
culture and collisions.
A new system in Montreal now expanding to other big cities
may address at least the first two issues. Scattered among 300
cyclist stations throughout Montreal are 3,000 bikes, each
ready and waiting for its next rider. Now, plans are under way
for a similar bounty of bikes in Boston, according to The New
York Times. And additional biking infrastructure—including
new bike lanes—could also help cities overcome the third
obstacle.
• The bikes themselves—fully equipped with everything from
LED headlights and tail lights to three-speed hub gear and
bell—are "designed to minimize damage from vandals, to
thwart parts thieves and to keep rolling with the minimum of
maintenance rather than for lightness or speed,"
the Times reported. Riders can simply scan their credit card
and pedal away.
But convenience isn't the only barrier to biking in Boston. The
city suffers from a confusing array of old narrow streets and
notoriously aggressive drivers, which combine to generate
high rates of bike accidents—from cyclists colliding with
moving cars to car doors opening into bike lanes. (The author
has personal experience with being "doored" in the city.)
In contrast, the model city for accommodating biking
is Portland, Ore., where 300 miles of protected bike lanes
inspire riding rates about eight times that of the national
average, according to The Boston Globe.
• http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/