Trends in the Health of Older Californians: Data From the 2001, 2003 and 2005 California Health Interview Surveys

Analyzes trends in the health status and use of preventive services among Californians age 65 and over by race/ethnicity, insurance type, and region. Reports rises in doctor visits and in cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity, and other illnesses

Extinction-induced variability in human behavior

Participants earned points by pressing a computer space bar (Experiment 1) or forming rectangles on the screen with the mouse (Experiment 2) under differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedules, followed by extinction. Variability in interresponse time (the contingent dimension) increased during extinction, as for Morgan and Lee (1996); variability in diagonal length (the noncontingent dimension, Experiment 2) did not. In Experiment 3, points were contingent on rectangle size. Rectangle size and interresponse-time (the noncontingent dimension) variability increased in extinction. There was greater variability in the contingent dimension during extinction for participants with the more varied history of reinforcement in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 3. Overall, variability in the contingent dimension increased in extinction, but the degree of increase was affected by reinforcement history

Preparing Journalism Students for the Blameless Bugle and the Guilty Gazette

First paragraph: When a 13-year-old girl from my children’s school drowned with her father in a boating accident a few years ago, the story prompted me, as a journalist and lecturer in journalism, to reflect again on the way journalists act. I remembered why my training on a regional daily paper convinced me I was not cut out for a career in hard news. I now teach students about how to approach death knocks and rehearse for them the arguments of news editors about why these have to be done, but I was never convinced by the latter and consequently never comfortable about doing the former. Intruding into a family’s grief and shock is, it seems to me still, a low-rent way to make a living. I know editors say the family often finds it therapeutic to talk, or may be keen to see the loved one honoured, but I doubt whether many families would choose to be pursued by a pack of baying hacks within hours of a tragic death. The justifications for death knocks are spurious, as any journalist knows deep down. And, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, (McKay 2006: 217-218) journalists are definitely not the most appropriate or helpful people to speak to in a time of great personal trouble

Defoe's The storm as a model for contemporary reporting

First paragraph: Daniel Foe was born into a family of a successful tradesman in 1660. As a young man he went into business too, dealing at various times in meat, hosiery, wine, tobacco, perfume, horses and bricks, often with disastrous results such as bankruptcy and imprisonment in 1692 and 1703. Defoe married in 1684 and was the father of at least six children, one of whom became a journalist, although without notable success. Foe added the prefix De to his name in 1695, perhaps, as some have speculated, to enhance his social standing by the adoption of a name that sounds more aristocratic (Richetti 2006: 19). He was educated at the Nonconformist Morton’s Academy, renowned for its forward-thinking approach to education which stressed science, economics and modern rather than classical languages. Defoe acquired a strong interest in politics and social affairs as well as religion, at a time when deep divisions separated Catholic from Protestant in all aspects of life including the accession to the throne. Along with his business activities Defoe held public office but by the 1690s he was establishing himself as an energetic and eloquent writer of political, religious and moral polemic and satire. This got him into trouble with the authorities for which the punishment was to stand in the pillory. From the early years of the eighteenth century Defoe depended on highlevel patronage for his livelihood and was employed as a propagandist and a secret agent charged with setting up an intelligence network by those in power, most notably Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, MP, Speaker of the House of Commons, a Secretary of State ‘and prime minister in all but name’ (Downie 1979: 2). Defoe developed his extraordinary facility with words to become a writer of astounding productivity and invention. He is widely credited with a role in the foundation of at least two genres – journalism and the novel, although his most famous fiction, Robinson Crusoe, was not written until 1719 when Defoe was nearly 60. He died in 1731, alone and impoverished. 2 For someone who wrote so much there is surprisingly little known about his personal and domestic life

Journalism and the Literature of Reality

First paragraph: Journalism matters to us all. I believe that or I wouldn’t have spent my working life as a journalist and then as a lecturer in journalism, training students in the skills they’ll need if they want to be reporters and writers of features. Some of the skills have changed -- familiarity with HTML or how to produce a podcast wasn’t needed when I worked for the Newcastle Evening Chronicle or Brides magazine. Equally, some have not – the ability to use words well is as vital for journalists today as it ever was, and old-fashioned shorthand remains a key skill, at least for news reporters

The Impact of Sleepiness and Sleep Constructs on Driving Performance

Sleepiness causes performance decrements that lead to thousands of crashes and fatalities annually. Research supports the conclusions that sleep duration and circadian rhythms impact sleepiness and affect driving performance. Conflicting in the literature is whether severity of sleep disorders, sleep quality and subjective sleepiness affect driving performance. The correlation between a driver\u27s perception of their sleepiness and their driving performance is also unclear. The primary goal of this study was to create an in-depth model demonstrating which measures of sleepiness influence driving performance. It was hypothesized that sleep quality, sleep apnea severity and subjective sleepiness add to a model of how sleep constructs impact driving performance. The secondary goal of this study was to compare trait and state sleepiness to determine which correlates with driving performance. It was hypothesized that participants with state sleepiness would have a greater decline across the 60-minute drive as compared to participants with trait sleepiness. Both sleepiness groups would have increased lane position variability compared to the normal group. The tertiary goal was to examine driving performance decrements of sleep apnea drivers compared with healthy controls. It was hypothesized that the sleep apnea group would perform worse on the driving simulator test compared with the control group. Results indicate that sleep quality and subjective trait sleepiness significantly add to models of sleepiness and driving performance. The model developed here show that years with driver\u27s license, sleep efficiency and trait sleepiness are significant predictors of lane position variability. Also, results show that driving performance is worse for participants high in trait sleepiness. Participants with high state sleepiness had no significant performance differences compared to non-sleepy participants. Sleep apnea participants did not perform significantly worse than controls as hypothesized but there was a significant group by time interaction indicating that sleep apnea participants\u27 performance degraded more quickly over the course of the drive. These results can be generalized to the community members and students, but not necessarily to sleep disorder center patients

Invisible Journalists

First paragraph: If you go into a newsagent to buy a magazine you’re likely to find around 450 titles to choose from. If you shop at one of the bigger supermarkets there might even be as many as 800. Yet this still represents only a small selection of the total number of magazines published in the UK. That figure is about 8,500 and can’t be precise because every year another 500 or so titles are launched. Some disappear too but the fact is that the UK has a large and lively periodicals industry publishing a huge range of titles to expanding audiences at home and abroad. These audiences tend to trust what they read in their magazines more than they trust their newspapers. Millions of magazines are sold weekly and almost everyone reads or buys one, or more likely several, at least on an occasional basis