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UO E-clips, Sept. 13-15
Top stories for September 13-15, 2008: Research by the UO's Helen Neville is among studies cited by The New York Times in a story called 'Training Young Brains to Behave'; the UO's Ed Weeks is quoted by the Register-Guard in a story about the U.S. Senate campaign of Jeff Merkley; and in his continuing guest-commentary series on climate change, the UO's Bob Doppelt write that the issue is a global problem
Training Young Brains to Behave (New York Times): After inflicting months of sleep deprivation on their parents, young children often switch course and begin what could be called a thought-deprivation campaign. This is the stage, around age 2 or 3, when their brains seem to send multiple messages to the body at once -- eat, scream, spill juice, throw crayons -- and good luck to anyone trying to form a complete sentence or thought in their presence. Toddlers are interruption machines, all impulse and little control. One reason is that an area of the brain that is critical to inhibiting urges, the prefrontal cortex, is still a work in progress. … a small group of educational and cognitive scientists now say that mental exercises of a certain kind can teach children to become more self-possessed at earlier ages, reducing stress levels at home and improving their experience in school. Researchers can test this ability, which they call executive function, and they say it is more strongly associated with school success than I.Q. … Parents, too, can help their children become more self-possessed in this way. Jessica Fanning and Helen J. Neville, who are neuroscientists at the University of Oregon, are testing how parent training classes affect the same kind of executive skills in youngsters. Their preliminary finding is that the children of parents taking the training have developed significantly better concentration and self-discipline than the others.
Portrayed as tax-and-spend Democrat (Register-Guard): Tax-and-spend liberals. The phrase conjures an instant image of Democratic politicians reaching for your wallet so they can grow more government. In an election cycle that has put GOP candidates on the defensive, one of their strongest lines of attacks appears to be hanging the big-tax collar on Democratic opponents. ... Even in a challenging election cycle for Republicans, running against high taxes -- and accusing their opponents of being for them -- is a calling card that still opens doors for GOP candidates, said Ed Weeks, a University of Oregon professor who directs the Deliberative Democracy Project.
Climate change is truly a global problem (Register-Guard, guest commentary by Bob Doppelt): Imagine it's the year 2015. As climate scientists predicted, the consequences of global climate change are intensifying. Sea levels are rising and big storm surges continually swamp the world's coastal cities. Typhoons are devastating the tropics and hurricanes regularly batter the U.S. Gulf Coast. Droughts in Asia, Africa and regions of the United States are causing food and water shortages. Climate refugees are streaming out of ravished areas to safer havens, causing political turmoil. (NOTE: Bob Doppelt has written a new book on sustainability.)