Friday, November 20, 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8371662.stm

Cern Large Hadron Collider machine restarts

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

The Atlas detector will join the hunt for the Higgs boson particle

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment has been restarted after a hiatus of 14 months.

Engineers working on the machine achieved a stable, circulating proton beam just after 2100 GMT on Friday.

The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel about 100m beneath the French-Swiss border.

The experiment is designed to smash together beams of protons in a bid to shed light on the nature of the Universe.

The LHC has been shut down for repairs since an accident in September 2008.

Operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), the LHC will create similar conditions to those which were present moments after the Big Bang.

"It's great to see beam circulating in the LHC again," said Cern's director-general Rolf Heuer.

Particle physicist Jim Virdee says that scientists are excited that the LHC is coming back online

"We've still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we're well on the way."

Engineers sent their first beam all the way round the LHC's 27km circumference after 1930 GMT on Friday.

The beams themselves are made up of "packets" - each about a metre long - containing billions of protons. But they would disperse if left to their own devices.

Electrical forces had to be used to "capture" the protons. This keeps them tightly huddled in packets, for a stable, circulating beam.

There are some 1,200 "superconducting" magnets which form the LHC's main "ring".

These magnets bend proton beams in opposite directions around the main "ring" at close to the speed of light.

At allotted points around the tunnel, the proton beams cross paths, smashing into one another with enormous energy. Large "detector" machines located at the crossing points will scour the wreckage of these collisions for discoveries that should extend our knowledge of physics.

1 - 14 quadrupole magnets replaced

2 - 39 dipole magnets replaced

3 - More than 200 electrical connections repaired

4 - Over 4km of beam pipe cleaned

5 - New restraining system installed for some magnets

6 - Hundreds of new helium ports being installed around machine

7 - Thousands of detectors added to early warning system

Among other things, scientists will search for signs of the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle that is crucial to our current understanding of physics. Although it is predicted to exist, scientists have never found it.

Engineers first circulated a beam all the way around the LHC on 10 September 2008.

But just nine days later, an electrical fault in one of the connections between superconducting magnets caused a tonne of liquid helium to leak into the tunnel.

Liquid helium is used to cool the LHC to its operating temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F).

The machine has been shut down ever since the accident, to allow repairs to take place.

Professor Norman McCubbin from the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, added: "I'm sure every particle physicist has been feeling just a little bit impatient as the 're-start' of the LHC has drawn nearer. It's great to see beams circulating again."

The damage caused to the collider meant 53 superconducting magnets had to be replaced and about 200 electrical connections repaired.

Engineers have also been installing a new early warning system which could prevent incidents of the kind which shut down the experiment.

Cern has spent some 40m Swiss Francs (£24m) on repairs to the collider.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Duke Study: Homework Helps Students Succeed in School, As Long as There Isn't Too Much

The study, led by professor Harris Cooper, also shows that the positive correlation is much stronger for secondary students than elementary students

Tuesday, March 7, 2006

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Note to Editors: Harris Cooper can be reached for additional comment at (919) 660-3167 or cooperh@duke.edu.

Durham, N.C. -- It turns out that parents are right to nag: To succeed in school, kids should do their homework.

Duke University researchers have reviewed more than 60 research studies on homework between 1987 and 2003 and concluded that homework does have a positive effect on student achievement.

Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and director of Duke’s Program in Education, said the research synthesis that he led showed the positive correlation was much stronger for secondary students -– those in grades 7 through 12 -– than those in elementary school.

“With only rare exception, the relationship between the amount of homework students do and their achievement outcomes was found to be positive and statistically significant,” the researchers report in a paper that appears in the spring 2006 edition of “Review of Educational Research.”

Cooper is the lead author; Jorgianne Civey Robinson, a Ph.D. student in psychology, and Erika Patall, a graduate student in psychology, are co-authors. The research was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

While it’s clear that homework is a critical part of the learning process, Cooper said the analysis also showed that too much homework can be counter-productive for students at all levels.

“Even for high school students, overloading them with homework is not associated with higher grades,” Cooper said.

Cooper said the research is consistent with the “10-minute rule” suggesting the optimum amount of homework that teachers ought to assign. The “10-minute rule,” Cooper said, is a commonly accepted practice in which teachers add 10 minutes of homework as students progress one grade. In other words, a fourth-grader would be assigned 40 minutes of homework a night, while a high school senior would be assigned about two hours. For upper high school students, after about two hours’ worth, more homework was not associated with higher achievement.

The authors suggest a number of reasons why older students benefit more from homework than younger students. First, the authors note, younger children are less able than older children to tune out distractions in their environment. Younger children also have less effective study habits.

But the reason also could have to do with why elementary teachers assign homework. Perhaps it is used more often to help young students develop better time management and study skills, not to immediately affect their achievement in particular subject areas.

“Kids burn out,” Cooper said. “The bottom line really is all kids should be doing homework, but the amount and type should vary according to their developmental level and home circumstances. Homework for young students should be short, lead to success without much struggle, occasionally involve parents and, when possible, use out-of-school activities that kids enjoy, such as their sports teams or high-interest reading.”

Cooper pointed out that there are limitations to current research on homework. For instance, little research has been done to assess whether a student’s race, socioeconomic status or ability level affects the importance of homework in his or her achievement.

This is Cooper’s second synthesis of homework research. His first was published in 1989 and covered nearly 120 studies in the 20 years before 1987. Cooper’s recent paper reconfirms many of the findings from the earlier study.

Cooper is the author of “The Battle over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents” (Corwin Press, 2001).

Kelly Gilmer

T: (919) 681-8065

Email: kelly.gilmer@duke.edu

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Harper urges climate rules for all countries

Harper urges climate rules for all countries
Last Updated: Saturday, November 14, 2009 | 9:05 PM ET Comments771Recommend81
CBC News

Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet at the APEC summit on Saturday.Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet at the APEC summit on Saturday. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)Full global participation in cutting greenhouse gases is necessary to tackle global warming, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said at an APEC summit in Singapore on Saturday.

Emerging economies already contribute close to half of all global emissions, and that proportion will rise to two-thirds in the future, he told reporters.

"If we don't control those, whatever we do in the developed world will have no impact on climate change," Harper said.

Prof. Tim Flannery of the Copenhagen Climate Council, also in Singapore for the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation countries, delivered a harsh assessment of Canada's record on reducing emissions.

Flannery told The Canadian Press that Canada faces an international credibility crisis because it is "by far the biggest defaulter" on previous Kyoto Protocol obligations.

He said even though Canada signed on 11 years ago, it has failed to meet its obligations.

"The people of Canada, through their government, made the commitment, and it needs to be honoured somehow or other, or it needs to be dealt with," the Australian climate-change expert said.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen chat with U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday.Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen chat with U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday. (PMO/Jason Ransom)

"Canada is by far the biggest defaulter on its Kyoto obligations on a tonnage basis. And as a result of that there is a lack of trust," he said.

The APEC summit comes less than a month before a United Nations climate change conference opens in Copenhagen, where leaders of almost 200 countries will gather to hash out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Harper acknowledged there are "significant differences" over how to tackle climate change, but he said every leader he's spoken to at the summit agrees on the need for a long-term plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

When it comes to the economy, the prime minister is pushing for a reduction of trade barriers, in light of the global recession.

David Emerson, Canada's former minister for international trade, told CBC News that in the 21st century, environmental issues cannot be separated from economic and trade issues "because they're becoming increasingly intertwined."

Canada needs to get more pro-active on boosting trade with emerging economies, including having a physical presence in those countries, which direct investment, Emerson said.

"It means moving people into those markets… it means cultural knowledge and adaptation and fluency with language," he said in an interview on CBC's The National on Saturday.

"It's a much different game today and it's going to take a much broader, deeper, more comprehensive effort for Canada to get back in the game in the way we should be."

Before heading to Singapore for the summit, U.S. President Barack Obama said in a speech in Tokyo that China's growing economy doesn't have to be seen as a negative force for the United States.

"We look to rising powers with the view that in the 21st century, the national security and economic growth of one country need not come at the expense of another," he said.

"In an inter-connected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another," Obama said. "Cultivating spheres of co-operation — not competing spheres of influence — will lead to progress in the Asia Pacific."

Heat pumps: hot air in from the cold

Heat pumps: hot air in from the cold
Last Updated: Friday, November 13, 2009 | 9:19 AM ET Comments7Recommend2
Grant Buckler, Special to CBC News

It sounds like it shouldn't work. To warm your home on a cold day, you bring in heat from outside.

"What heat?" you ask. "This is Canada in winter. The heat went south in the fall with the migratory birds."
Is a heat pump really environmentally friendly? It depends on your location and how your electricity is generated. (iStock)Is a heat pump really environmentally friendly? It depends on your location and how your electricity is generated. (iStock)

Yet, in fact, heat is out there. Anything at a temperature above absolute zero (273 below zero Celsius) contains heat. Just as emptying a glass of water into a bathtub raises the level in the tub — though only slightly — transferring some heat from outside to inside will warm the house.

The problem is how. You can't just open the window, because of the second law of thermodynamics, which says heat won't move on its own from a colder place to a hotter one. But the law doesn't say you can't transfer heat from cold to hot — just that you have to work at it.
Like a refrigerator

That is what heat pumps do. A heat pump doesn't create heat as a furnace does, but rather moves existing heat around. Most of the time it takes less energy to move heat than to create it, and that's why heat pumps are more efficient.

A heat pump isn't the only machine that moves heat. You have at least one appliance that does it: your refrigerator. A refrigerator cools by removing heat from inside the fridge to outside — from a colder place to a hotter one, just like a heat pump.

In fact, a heat pump does almost exactly what a refrigerator does, only on a larger scale and with an opposite goal: to warm the place the heat goes to rather than to cool the place it comes from. Unless, of course, it's summer and the heat pump is operating in cooling mode, when it reverses and removes heat from the house to outdoors. Sounds like an air conditioner? That's just what it is — heat pumps, air conditioners and refrigerators all work on the same principle.

The key is that compressing a gas heats it, says Brian Killins, a senior standards engineer in Natural Resources Canada's Office of Energy Efficiency. "That's kind of the basis for why this works."
How it works

There are other kinds of heat pumps, but for this explanation let's assume we're talking about one that extracts heat from outdoor air — an air-source heat pump.

You start with a liquid that is colder than the outside air. You circulate this through pipes outside, blowing outdoor air over it. Because it's colder than the outside air, it absorbs heat from the air (even though that air might be at below-zero temperatures).

Then you compress the liquid, causing it to heat up and turn into a gas. Once it is warmer than the indoor air, it passes through another series of pipes, called a heat exchanger. A fan blows air over the heat exchanger, heating the air and blowing it through ducts to heat your house, while cooling the gas in the pipes, which condenses back into liquid.

Then the liquid passes through an expansion valve, which decompresses it and thus cools it to below the outdoor temperature so the cycle can begin again.

If the heat pump is ground-source instead of air-source, then instead of blowing outdoor air over a coil you have pipes buried in the ground and liquid circulates through these to pick up heat from the earth. Most designs use a separate antifreeze solution in the underground pipes that transfers its heat to the refrigerant that goes inside the building, Killins says, but in some designs the same liquid circulates through the whole system.

In a water-source heat pump, water is pumped from a well, lake or pond, heat is extracted from it using the same process as with other heat pumps, and then the water is discharged into a second well or body or water.
Costs and considerations

Ground-source heat pumps are most efficient because the ground stays warmer in winter than the air does. Some of the heat in the ground comes from within the earth, so these types of heat pumps are often called geothermal systems. But ground-source heat pumps are also expensive, because they require a well or trench to bury pipes.

The cost depends partly on location. Killins says quite a few are being installed around Winnipeg, where drilling is fairly easy.

An air-source heat pump costs less, because the outdoor portion is just a metal box containing a compressor and some piping. But if the outdoor temperature drops too low, it won't heat a house. Thus air-source heat pumps are popular in the warmer climate of southern British Columbia, says Jeff Zimmerman, technical co-ordinator for the Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada.

They can also be combined with other heat sources. A typical installation might have an air-source heat pump and a conventional furnace, with a programmable thermostat that chooses which to activate based on the outdoor temperature and the amount of heat being called for inside.

Most air-source heat pumps work at outdoor temperatures down to around –15 Celsius, but air-source heat pump technology is improving. Killins says some newer units are designed to be effective at outdoor temperatures as low as –30 Celsius.
Ask about the refrigerant

Is a heat pump really environmentally friendly? It depends on your location and how your electricity is generated.

A heat pump using electricity generated from fossil fuels may not ultimately be more efficient than a high-efficiency gas furnace, Killins says, but electricity from hydro plants is better.

Another possible environmental concern is the refrigerant in the heat pump. Like older air conditioners, early heat pumps used chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that have been linked to depletion of the ozone layer and global warming. Other substances have since replaced these. One more recent refrigerant, a hydrochlorofluorcarbon (H-CFC) called R-22, has been widely used but will be banned as of next year.

Zimmerman says the market is largely moving to the safer hydrofluorocarbon R-410A. He recommends asking about the refrigerant when buying a heat pump.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Greenland ice loss 'accelerating'

Greenland ice loss 'accelerating'
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Ilulissat glacier (Image: BBC)
The Ilulissat glacier has retreated by approximately 15km over the past decade

The Greenland ice sheet is losing its mass faster than in previous years and making an increasing contribution to sea level rise, a study has confirmed.

Published in the journal Science, it has also given scientists a clearer view of why the sheet is shrinking.

The team used weather data, satellite readings and models of ice sheet behaviour to analyse the annual loss of 273 thousand million tonnes of ice.

Melting of the entire sheet would raise sea levels globally by about 7m (20ft).

For the period 2000-2008, melting Greenland ice raised sea levels by an average of about 0.46mm per year.

If you multiply these numbers up it puts us well beyond the IPCC estimates for 2100
Professor Roger Barry

Since 2006, that has increased to 0.75mm per year.

"Since 2000, there's clearly been an accelerating loss of mass [from the ice sheet]," said lead researcher Michiel van den Broeke from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

"But we've had three very warm summers, and that's enhanced the melt considerably.

"If this is going to continue, I cannot tell - but we do of course expect the climate to become warmer in the future."

In total, sea levels are rising by about 3mm per year, principally because seawater is expanding as it warms.

Sea change

Changes to the Greenland sheet and its much larger counterpart in Antarctica are subjects commanding a lot of interest within the scientific community because of the potential they have to raise sea levels to an extent that would flood many of the world's major cities.
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The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report projected a sea level rise of 28-43cm during this century.

But it acknowledged this was almost certainly an underestimate because understanding of how ice behaves was not good enough to make reliable projections.

By combining different sources of data in the way it has, and by quantifying the causes of mass loss, the new study has taken a big step forwards, according to Roger Barry, director of the World Data Center for Glaciology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US.

"I think it's a very significant paper; the results in it are certainly very significant and new," he said.

"It does show that the [ice loss] trend has accelerated, and the reported contribution to sea level rise also shows a significant acceleration - so if you multiply these numbers up it puts us well beyond the IPCC estimates for 2100."

Professor Barry was an editor on the section of the IPCC report dealing with the polar regions.

On reflection

An ice sheet can lose mass because of increased melting on the surface, because glaciers flow more quickly into the ocean, or because there is less precipitation in the winter so less bulk is added inland.

The new research shows that in Greenland, about half the loss comes from faster flow to the oceans, and the other half from changes on the ice sheet itself - principally surface melting.
Artist's impression of Grace satellite in orbit
The Grace satellites provide a twin eye on gravity at the Earth's surface

Another analysis of satellite data, published in September, showed that of 111 fast-moving Greenland glaciers studied, 81 were thinning at twice the rate of the slow-moving ice beside them.

This indicates that the glaciers are accelerating and taking more ice into the surrounding sea.

Melting on the ice sheet's surface acts as a feedback mechanism, Dr van den Broeke explained, because the liquid water absorbs more and reflects less of the incoming solar radiation - resulting in a heating of the ice.

"Over the last 10 years, it's quite simple; warming over Greenland has caused the melting to increase, and that's set off this albedo feedback process," he told BBC News.

"Quite likely the oceans have also warmed, and it's likely that explains the [acceleration of] outlet glaciers because they're warmed from below."

Data provided over just the last few years by the Grace satellite mission - used in this study - is giving researchers a closer view of regional variations across the territory.

Grace's twin satellites map gravity at the Earth's surface in unprecedented detail; and it is now possible to tease out from the data that most of the mass is being lost in the southeast, southwest and northwest at low elevations where the air will generally be warmer than at high altitudes.

Professor Barry cautioned that the Grace mission, which has produced valuable data about Antarctica as well as Greenland, has only a further two years to run, and that no replacement is currently scheduled.

Greek Church acts on crucifix ban

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8358027.stm

The Greek Orthodox Church is urging Christians across Europe to unite in an appeal against a ban on crucifixes in classrooms in Italy.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled last week that the presence of crucifixes violated a child's right to freedom of religion.

Greece's Orthodox Church fears the Italian case will set a precedent.

It has called an emergency Holy Synod meeting for next week to devise an action plan.

Although the Greek Orthodox Church has been at odds with Roman Catholicism for 1,000 years, the judicial threat to Christian symbols has acted as a unifying force.

The European Court of Human Rights found that the compulsory display of crucifixes violated parents' rights to educate their children as they saw fit and restricted the right of children to believe or not to believe.

'Worthy symbols'

The head of the Greek Church, Archbishop Ieronymos, shares Catholic complaints that the court is ignoring the role of Christianity in forming Europe's identity.

It is not only minorities that have rights but majorities as well, said the archbishop.

One of his subordinates, Bishop Nicholas from central Greece, lamented that at this rate youngsters will not have any worthy symbols at all to inspire and protect them.

The mayor of one Italian town displayed a 2m high crucifix in protest

Football and pop idols are very poor substitutes, he said.

The Greek Church has ostensibly intervened in this case in response to an appeal by a Greek mother whose son is studying in Italy.

But without doubt it is concerned that its omnipotence in Greece is under threat.

A human rights group called Helsinki Monitor is seeking to use the Italian case as a precedent.

It has demanded that Greek courts remove icons of Jesus Christ from above the judge's bench and that the gospel no longer be used for swearing oaths in the witness box.

Helsinki Monitor is urging trade unions to challenge the presence of religious symbols in Greek schools.

The socialist government here is also considering imposing new taxes on the Church's vast fortune, but at the same time is urging it to do more to help immigrants and poor Greeks.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Unions...

http://www.martlet.ca/article/20214-cfs-q-receives-legal-threats

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21089026/CFSreformPackage-14October2009

Media: Point of View

Read the difference between the two articles:

BBC.CO.UK ""Canadian rescued from Arctic ice" and CBC "Nunavut teen rescued from ice floe"

Friday, November 6, 2009

Africa Americas Asia-Pacific Europe Middle East South Asia UK Business Health Science & Environment Technology Entertainment Also in the news -------

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8344969.stm

By Mark Kinver
Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Alps and valley, Switzerland (Image: BBC)

Different models predicted differing outlooks for Alpine species

Some large-scale computer simulations may be overestimating the impact of climate change on biodiversity in some regions, researchers have suggested.

They said models that analyse vast areas often failed to take into account local variations, such as topography and microclimates.

Local-scale simulations, which did include these factors, often delivered a more optimistic outlook, they added.

The findings have been published in the journal, Science.

One of the studies cited in the paper looked at the fate of plant species in the Swiss Alps.

"A coarse European-scale model (with 16km by 16km grid cells) predicted a loss of all suitable habitats during the 21st Century," the researchers wrote.

"Whereas a model run using local-scale data (25m by 25m grid cells) predicted (the) persistence of suitable habitats for up to 100% of plant species."

Micro v macro

Co-author Shonil Bhagwat, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, UK, said when vegetation was looked at on a smaller scale, scientists saw a different picture.

"For example, smaller plots give data on microclimatic variations, whereas large-scale models predict (uniform) changes throughout the landscape."

Advances in computing power meant that more large-scale datasets were being made available to scientists, Dr Bhagwat explained.

"There is more interest in predicting widespread, large-scale effects," she told BBC News, "that is why coarser-scale models are normally used.

"However, the changes in communities of vegetation occur at a much smaller scale."

In the paper, Dr Bhagwat and co-author Professor Kathy Willis, wrote: "These studies highlight the complexities that we are faced with trying to model and predict the possible consequences of future climate change on biodiversity."

The researchers called for more micro-scale studies to be carried out that complement the overall picture presented by larger models.

However, they added that the overall picture for biodiversity loss was still bleak, especially once the rate of habitat loss and fragmentation was taken into account.

"Predicting the fate of biodiversity in response to climate change combined with habitat fragmentation is a serious undertaking fraught with caveats and complexities," they observed.

For example, Dr Bhagwat explained, the current system of having fixed nature reserves may need to be reconsidered.

"We have 12% of the Earth's land surface covered in protected areas, but climate change is likely to push species out of their home ranges and out of reserves," she added.

"So we need to look beyond reserves and create the conditions that allow the migration of species."

Large Hadron Collider Halted By Bird Crumbs

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,572567,00.html?test=latestnews

The massive machine at the center of the world's biggest scientific experiment has malfunctioned again – derailed by a bit of bread dropped by a bird.

The Hadron Collider, buried 100m under the ground near Geneva, Switzerland, is supposed to recreate conditions seen after the Big Bang. Scientists hope the $7.3 billion machine will shed light on the event that many scientists believe gave birth to the universe around 14 billion years ago, but the project has suffered a series of setbacks.

The latest saw a "bit of baguette," thought to have been dropped by a bird, fall onto machinery, causing a fault.

SLIDESHOW: The world's largest atom smasher

Sections of the machine, which fires protons round a 17-mile-long tunnel at close to the speed of light in order to smash them in to each other, then overheated. Members of the public who had been looking at data published online noticed the temperature changes and contacted journalists at The Register.

They alerted those in charge of the project at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern). According to scientists, had the Collider been in operation at the time it would have shut down automatically, avoiding the damage of last September when a large amount of helium leaked into the tunnel.

But the difficulties faced by those working on the project have prompted some members of the scientific community to speculate, in all seriousness, that the machine is sabotaging itself — from the future.

The theory is that the particle that physicists hope to produce might be "abhorrent to nature," so that once created it would work backwards through time to put a stop to whatever created it. However Dr Mike Lamont, who works at the Cern control center, said that the nature of the experiment meant that glitches were inevitable.

"This thing is so complicated and so big, it's bound to have problems sometimes," he said.

H1N1 overplayed by media, public health: MDs

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/11/06/h1n1-media.html

Public health officials and journalists have overstated the importance of the swine flu, a former Ontario chief medical officer of health says.

Dr. Richard Schabas, chief medical officer of health for Hastings and Prince Edward Counties in eastern Ontario, said the H1N1 influenza outbreak needs to be put into proper perspective.

About 200,000 people die in Canada every year from all causes combined, including about 4,000 from seasonal flu.

"By the time all the dust has settled on H1N1, somewhere between 200 and 300 people will have died in this country," Schabas said Thursday during a panel on media coverage of H1N1 on CBC-TV's The National.

Schabas criticized the media for not trying to put the story into perspective, and for being "a little too easy to spin sometimes" by public health officials.

"I'm not letting the media off the hook totally, but I think the real villains of the piece here have been those public health officials who have consistently overplayed and overstated the importance of what is happening," he said.

"By the time all is said and done, this is not a major public health event, but you'd never know that from what some people are saying."

13-year-old's death

The panel also looked at the front-page coverage given to the death of Evan Frustaglio, a 13-year-old hockey player from Toronto. Evan died on the eve of the H1N1 vaccine becoming available, and demand for the vaccine jumped overnight, catching health officials by surprise.

"It was very clear when we were reporting the lines that most of the people in there did say, 'We came because we saw the story about that little boy,' " CBC reporter Ioanna Roumeliotis said.

Evan's death and his grieving father's plea to parents to consider vaccinating their children was a tremendous human interest story, agreed Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital.

But "I'm quite sure that the people who were reporting that didn't necessarily think about what the consequences of that would be or the context that was in," McGeer said. "What we saw afterwards was that it caused an enormous amount of fear and anxiety that we would all like not to have seen."

A healthy child in Canada is about 20 times more likely to be killed by a car than by the H1N1 virus, Schabas said, but that isn't going to make the national news.

"Children actually die of flu every year and a few more die of H1N1. This was not unexpected, and the way it was presented — as if this was a sudden bolt out of the blue, some change in our perspective of H1N1 — that's what created the anxiety. It was the way it was presented."

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Obama gets personal, shares oldest daughter's test scores

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/11/04/obama-gets-personal-shares-oldest-daughters-test-scores/

During a speech about education reform, the president got personal and shared his daughter's test scores.
Source: WISN | Added November 4, 2009

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