Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Blogging makes for good professional development

[neonvincent]

A couple of hours ago, I posted Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending June 25, 2011 on Crazy Eddie's Motie News. One of the themes that emerged as I wrote this post was "how I have to add information I've learned in these posts to my teaching." This is one of the reasons I justify my blogging to my colleagues and superiors at work. They agreed, and list my science blogging as professional development. Seriously.

Following are three examples of why I use that justification and my co-workers agree.

Indiana University: IU Public Policy Institute releases report on private, public value of higher education
June 23, 2011

INDIANAPOLIS -- With recent headlines asking "Is college worth it?" and reports of a burgeoning student loan crisis, there has been considerable public discussion about the costs and benefits of higher education.

Often, those discussions are limited to how much individuals pay for school and how much they earn upon graduation. But from a policy-making perspective, evaluating higher education requires broader measures of economic and social benefits.

This is the purpose of a research review released by the Indiana University Public Policy Institute as part of its Policy Choices for Indiana's Future project. The Policy Choices initiative is designed to provide objective recommendations on key issues for future Indiana legislative and gubernatorial candidates.

"From lower incarceration and obesity rates to higher levels of civic engagement and volunteerism, education is associated with a broad array of benefits to both individuals and society," according to the report. "While the costs incurred educating our society are enormous, and growing, we must be aware that the costs of failing to do so might be even greater."

One of the mistakes people make about higher education is to consider it to be primarily an economic activity that improves the student's future earning power and decreases the student's risk of unemployment. I'm guilty of this myself, as I use Calculated Risk's graphs of unemployment over time for Americans of different education levels, such as this one.



I make the point that the students are engaging in an activity to increase their human capital, and they are. However, human capital doesn't just consist of the skills and knowledge they can apply to economic activity. It also includes one's ability to contribute to society. Just look at the list of social benefits--"lower incarceration and obesity rates to higher levels of civic engagement and volunteerism"--for examples.

Indiana University: New IUPUI Center for Urban Health focuses on half the world’s population
June 23, 2011

INDIANAPOLIS -- A new center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis has a tall order to fill -- improving the quality of life for billions of people.

The Center for Urban Health, hosted by the School of Science at IUPUI, will focus on the issues that affect individuals living in urban environments. The world's population is swelling, as are urban areas. Global population is projected to reach seven billion within the next year and nearly 50 percent will live in cities.

"Cities present unique challenges to the health of the individuals who reside in them. We need to know how to help more than three billion people live in a healthy way in places with high population density; a legacy of environmental burdens; current atmospheric and soil contamination; limited amounts of green space, and many other particularly urban issues," said Gabriel Filippelli, professor of earth sciences in the School of Science at IUPUI and the biogeochemist who is the founding director of the Center for Urban Health.

I point out to my students that population problems will present themselves as urban problems because of the combination of population growth and urbanization. After reading this article, I need to add health problems to the list of issues I lecture about.

Speaking of adding health issues to my lectures, check out the list of ailments in this next entry.

University of Wisconsin: Study details how heat waves drive hospital admissions
Importantly, the study identifies temperature thresholds that, when surpassed, tend to prompt increases in the incidence of particular conditions.
by Terry Devitt
June 22, 2011

In cities, the number of human deaths caused by heat waves is often the barometer of summer weather severity.

Yet mortality in urban areas is only a partial measure of the human toll of extreme hot weather. Now, a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Purdue University and the National Center for Climatic Research and appearing this week (June 22, 2011) in the journal Climatic Change, documents the medical conditions aggravated by hot weather, the age groups most affected, and forecasts an increase in hospital admissions in urban areas due to predicted climate change and accompanying weather extremes.

The study, which utilizes meteorological, air pollution and hospital admission data for the years 1989-2005 for the city of Milwaukee, is important because it documents the primary medical causes of heat-related hospital admission. The report also assesses potential future climate change and accompanying hot weather extremes and how those may affect vulnerable populations in the urban Midwestern United States.
...
Heat-sensitive illnesses and conditions identified by Patz’s group include diabetes, urinary tract and renal diseases such as kidney stones, respiratory conditions, accidents and suicide attempts. Surprisingly, the study did not find an increase in the incidence of hospital admissions due to heart disease, but Patz and his colleagues speculate that acute episodes of heart disease may be more lethal and are therefore reflected in records of mortality. Mortality records were intentionally excluded from the current study.

I've mentioned to my students that more people die during heat waves than die during severe cold snaps, then point out the irony of the policies of governments and utilities that subsidize heat in the winter, but not air conditioning in the summer. That's because, as one of my students put it, "air conditioning is considered to be a luxury." Tell that to my wife. She would be absolutely miserable without it.

See what you're missing if 1) you're not reading Crazy Eddie's Motie News and/or 2) I'm not crossposting articles to Dreamwidth and LiveJournal?

Speaking of which, I ran a poll on my LJ for which posts from the past week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News I should repost on my personal journals. Right now, it's a three-way tie among Transformation Detroit, when Business as Usual attempts sustainability, Gas prices drop for a second week in Metro Detroit, and Kroger in Royal Oak, the videos. I'll be posting them after midnight as "fan" posts. If you want me to post more, go over to the poll and vote.  I'll comply.