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  • Bills Introduced: Adopting Children in Foster Care; Enhancing Pre-& Post Adoptive Services, Adoptive Incentive Payments

    Some Congressional bills introduced and considered last week:

    AdoptionState Department Intercountry Adoption

    S. 1511—-Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV)/Finance (9/17/13)—A bill to remove barriers to the adoption of children in foster care through reauthorization and improvement of the adoption incentives program, and for other purposes.

    S. 1527—-Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)/Finance (9/19/13)—A bill to enhance pre- and post-adoptive support services.

    International

    H.R. 3117—-Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)/Foreign Affairs, Ways and Means (9/17/13)—A bill to bring an end to the spread of HIV/AIDS in the United States and around the world.

    Human Trafficking

    S. 1518—-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)/Finance (9/18/13)—A bill to improve outcomes for youth at risk for sex trafficking, and other purposes.

    Tax Policy/Adoption

    H.R. 3124—-Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL)/Ways and Means (9/18/13)—A bill to extend the adoption incentive payments program to incentive payments for foster child exits to reunification, adoption, and guardianship, and for other purposes.

    This week:

    Floor Action:

    Appropriations- This week, the Senate is scheduled to consider a continuing resolution (H. J. Res. 59) to fund the government until mid-December.

    Hearings:

    Human Trafficking- On Monday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing, “Combating Human Trafficking: Federal, State, and Local Perspectives.”

    Health- On Thursday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee on Children and Families will hold a hearing, “Newborn Screening Saves Lives: The Past, Present, and Future of the Newborn Screening System.”

    In this issue: 

    Food Assistance Bill Considered by House
    On September 19, the House approved the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act (H.R. 3102).

    CCDBG Bill Clears Senate Hurdle
    On September 18, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee approved the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act, S. 1086.

  • Finding Fame and Fortune As A Writer (Ha!)

    By Rose Madeline Mula

    When  people learn that I write, they immediately assume I’ve got it made.  Look at J. K. Rowling, they think.  Didn’t she make a gazillion bucks (or in her case pounds) writing about that nerdy little wizard, Harry Potter?  True.  And my career does bear a striking resemblance to JK’s, up to a point — the point where she went from being a struggling unknown, to cashing her first staggering royalty check.

    Not that I presume to compare my flippant fluff to JK’s fanciful fantasies, but neither do I expect her degree of fame and fortune.  I’d be happy with a tiny percentage of her success.  But how to achieve it? the Elephant House

    The Elephant House – one of the cafés in Edinburgh in which Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter novel. Wikipedia photograph taken by Nicolai Schäfer

    When my first collection of humorous essays (If These Are Laugh Lines, I’m Having Way Too Much Fun) was accepted by Pelican Publishing, I was ecstatic!  A publisher!  I was on my way!  But, alas, to oblivion, not stardom.  The book is terrific, as is my second book, also published by Pelican (The Beautiful People and Other Aggravations).  Unfortunately, that’s just my (and my family’s) opinion, but that’s only because apparently no one else has read them.  And that’s because no one else has seen them.   And that’s because publishers invest promotional dollars only in writers who are already well-known — like celebrities who scribble children’s books and titillating memoirs … politicians who pen scandalous autobiographies … notorious authors of fifty shades of erotica…  Theirs are the books that are piled high on the front tables of bookstores and stacked by the check-out registers to seduce buyers into impulse purchases, while my books are buried on obscure shelves or just online,  to be unearthed only by  afore-mentioned relatives, who must search them out and buy them in order to maintain family unity. 

    Friends offer helpful advice:  “You should go on Oprah!”… or The View … or The Today Show…   They actually believe all I have to do is pick up the phone or send a quick email notifying the media that I’m available, and I’ll be deluged with invitations.  They have absolutely no idea that for an unknown,  it’s easier to walk on water than to get on any nationally-syndicated show.   I should know.  I’ve tried everything.

    A few years ago, during his then-popular TV show, Regis Philbin and wife Joy extravagantly touted a book written by their daughter; so I emailed them asking if they would adopt me.  I admitted that I was probably older than both of them, but assured them that I’m an orphan and available and would be happy to allow them to publicize my books.  I said I couldn’t wait to call them “Mom” and “Dad.”  They apparently were not touched.  I never received a reply.  (Note to any other celebrities who may read this:  I’m still available for adoption and shameless exploitation. Call, email, tweet or Facebook me.)

    Some time later, when I had been writing frequently for The Saturday Evening Post, the magazine featured me on a Contributors Page, along with a write-up of Dr. Oz, who had written a column for the same issue.  I immediately contacted him, sending a copy of that Contributors Page and suggesting that he do a segment on his show about senior citizens — starring me, of course — who are off their rockers (chairs, that is) and who are preserving their mental health by still actively pursuing their dreams.   I guess he wasn’t impressed by the honor of sharing a Saturday Evening Post Contributors Page with me.  I’m still waiting for an answer.

     Years ago, a friend, convinced that Oprah would love me, wrote to tell her about what she considers to be my incredible writing talent.  (I told you — she’s a friend .)  She also stressed that I would be an asset to Oprah’s show because of my sparkling personality and my hysterical stand-up routine tested at dozens of senior centers at which I spoke and knocked them dead. (Admittedly, it wasn’t that hard; some of them were really old and sick.)  Oprah has since moved on to a different show on her OWN network.  My friend’s letter must have gotten lost in that move because she never heard back.

    I’ve also contacted Ellen de Generis, who often features talented children, suggesting that she should give seniors equal time.  No, I didn’t threaten her with legal action — I merely hinted that it was a possibility.  To date I’ve heard nothing from Ellen or her attorneys.

    Most recently I pleaded with Steve Harvey to provide me a platform on his show to give Betty White a run for her money.  Why should she be the only geriatric star?  Steve didn’t take the bait.  I guess he doesn’t want to tangle with Betty.   Can’t say I blame him.  He’s a big guy, but I hear Betty has a powerful left hook.

    In addition to the afore-mentioned senior center appearances (where my audiences are all on social security and have no money to buy books), I have tried other less-ambitious publicity ploys, including bookstore signings, which have been utterly demoralizing.  Except for faithful friends, few (if any) people show up, other than the guy who strolled by at one of my signings and asked, “Who are you?”   I smiled brightly and held up my book.  “I’m the author!” I beamed.  “Yeah,” he answered, “but are you anybody?”  I had to admit I’m nobody.

    Maybe my new book, Grandmother Goose: Rhymes For a Second Childhood, will make me a Somebody.  All I need is some good publicity.

    Any suggestions?

    And please don’t say, “You should go on Oprah!”

     ©2013 Rose Mula for SeniorWomen.com                                                                         

     

     

  • How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in U.S. Hospitals?

    by Marshall Allen, ProPublica

    Agnew Clinic by Thomas EakinsThomas Eakins, The Agnew Clinic, 1889; oil on canvas.

    It seems that every time researchers estimate how often a medical mistake contributes to a hospital patient’s death, the numbers come out worse.

    In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous To Err Is Human report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals. The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media.

    In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year.

    Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.

    That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second.

    The new estimates were developed by John T. James, a toxicologist at NASA’s space center in Houston who runs an advocacy organization called Patient Safety America. James has also written a book about the death of his 19-year-old son after what James maintains was negligent hospital care.

    Asked about the higher estimates, a spokesman for the American Hospital Association said the group has more confidence in the IOM’s estimate of 98,000 deaths. ProPublica asked three prominent patient safety researchers to review James’ study, however, and all said his methods and findings were credible.

    What’s the right number? Nobody knows for sure. There’s never been an actual count of how many patients experience preventable harm. So we’re left with approximations, which are imperfect in part because of inaccuracies in medical records and the reluctance of some providers to report mistakes.

    Patient safety experts say measuring the problem is nonetheless important because estimates bring awareness and research dollars to a major public health problem that persists despite decades of improvement efforts.

    “We need to get a sense of the magnitude of this,” James said in an interview.

    James based his estimates on the findings of four recent studies that identified preventable harm suffered by patients – known as “adverse events” in the medical vernacular – using use a screening method called the Global Trigger Tool, which guides reviewers through medical records, searching for signs of infection, injury or error. Medical records flagged during the initial screening are reviewed by a doctor, who determines the extent of the harm.

    In the four studies, which examined records of more than 4,200 patients hospitalized between 2002 and 2008, researchers found serious adverse events in as many as 21 percent of cases reviewed and rates of lethal adverse events as high as 1.4 percent of cases.

    By combining the findings and extrapolating across 34 million hospitalizations in 2007, James concluded that preventable errors contribute to the deaths of 210,000 hospital patients annually.

  • Eye of the Beholder: Seeing the Vivid Color Pallet During Cataract Surgery

    By Adrienne G. Cannon

    “Calm yourself,” are the words I hear from my inner voice.  “Yes,” I answer back, “but tell me, how do I do that when shortly a man will approach me and stick a needle into my eye!”sunglasses

    I am being prepared for cataract surgery, an operation performed hundreds of times by my ophthalmologist.  He is competent and has explained the operation to me. And I am highly motivated because I have not only the aging variety of a scratchy lens, but an additional cataract that obscures my line of vision. 

    I have been “prepared,” hospital style for the surgery — left eye identified by me and marked by the nurse, intravenous line situated and started and a promise that soon I will receive something to soothe and calm me. Yet that frightened interior voice still nags at me – “Can I get up and leave now?

    I am caught up in hospital procedure and find myself gliding along on my rolling gurney and entering the operating room. It is not a “theater” but rather a room with shelves and lights that will be positioned over my head and eyes.

    “Keep your head still,” says the doctor in an professorial tone. And I obey. 

    It must be the calming potion that has taken the fight, and some of the fright, out of me.  Somehow my eye has been numbed and I feel nothing but I hear all of the conversation swirling around.  It is not about eye surgery but about trips and travel and celebrations of the approaching holiday.  All is so normal, so routine … so disconnected from the activity going on in my eye. 

    Just as related by my friends who have had cataract surgery, I see the vivid color pallet of the spectrum as it is broken up by the surgical procedures.  I can tell when my eye is flushed out by the change in the colorful water pool that fills my vision. But I can’t tell when the miracle occurs and the old lens is broken up and removed and the new one is gently inserted, coached to unroll, and then centered and adjusted to the proper position.

    And then it is over!  I hear a silk tape being removed from my forehead. It wasn’t only obedience that kept me still as I had help in the form of gentle taping. I am rolled back into the recovery area and am offered the first coffee of the day.  And then I notice: the obstruction in my vision is gone. I can see clearly! (Does that sound like a song?)   A short while later I emerge from the hospital and, as a special treat, nature has brought light snow and I have to put on sun glasses in mid-winter.

    My eye is a little blurry and aches but I can already detect a change in the perception of my “new” eye. It is a bit disconcerting at first but the colors adjust themselves as the day progresses. And there is a depth of field I perceive when I look at objects. The highlights seem sharper and the shadows are deeper. I play a game in which I cover, first one eye and then the other, to see the difference in the view. I know there will be more changes, more adjustments, and more delights as I discover my new 20/20 distance vision and savor the clarity permitted by my new lens.

    For the moment, I am happy with the world I behold.

    ©2013 Adrienne G. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com

    Editor’s Note: Sources for questions about cataracts:

    http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/wilmer/conditions/cataracts_faq.html

    http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002957.htm

    http://www.gulfcoasteyecare.com/cataract-surgery/overview-tampa-fl/

    Note: See Jane See and the dedicated website, www.seejanesee.org will offer free information and downloadable tip sheets created specifically for women on a variety of issues across the age spectrum such as Dry Eye, Cosmetics Safety, Pregnancy, Vision and Nutritional Supplements, and age-related eye disease.  Information will also include symptoms, causes and treatment options for a variety of conditions.

  • A Gifting Idea: Using Engineering Skills With a DIY Dollhouse Kit

    Roominate toy is brainchild of Stanford engineers Bettina Chen and Alice Brooks

    by Susan Rebecca Fisk, Clayman Institute

    Sabine sat cross-legged on the floor fiddling with a miniature fan to find the “optimal” position so the blade would blow the right amount of air into the dollhouse she was building. She also wanted to add a disco ball. After a few unsuccessful attempts Sabine realized she needed to brace it in the back because the ball was too heavy.Girl building a doll house

    Nope, this is not your average dollhouse. Sabine was building a room with Roominate, the DIY, wired dollhouse kit that encourages girls to build, create, solve problems, and develop confidence in their abilities. The creators of Roominate, both recent MS graduates from Stanford’s engineering department, recently held a playdate at the Clayman Institute to introduce the toy to a group of fourth-grade girls.

    Girls gathered at the Clayman Institute for a Roominate playdate. (Source: Clayman Institute)

    Girls gathered at the Clayman Institute for a Roominate playdate (Source: Clayman Institute) – See more at: http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2013/girls-practice-engineering-skills-diy-dollhouse-kit?utm_source=Sept+17&utm_campaign=9%2F3%2F2013+Gender+News+&utm_medium=email#sthash.JqVH8zR0.dpuf
    Girls gathered at the Clayman Institute for a Roominate playdate (Source: Clayman Institute) – See more at: http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2013/girls-practice-engineering-skills-diy-dollhouse-kit?utm_source=Sept+17&utm_campaign=9%2F3%2F2013+Gender+News+&utm_medium=email#sthash.JqVH8zR0.dpuf

    “Roominate allowed Sabine to combine her mutual love of engineering and creativity, which are linked, but often disconnected in the classroom,” said Sabine’s mother Sigrid Close, assistant professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford.

    Childhood play experiences are essential for children to develop spatial skills, problem-solving abilities, and confidence to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math, known as “STEM” fields. However, girls’ toys are less likely than boys’ toys to cultivate STEM interest and skills. Studies find that girls’ toys are more likely to focus on enhancing physical attractiveness, domestic skills, and care-taking work than boys’ toys, which generally build spatial awareness and problem solving. As a result, girls are disadvantaged relative to boys when it comes to STEM fields, even before they have thought about their careers.

    The creators of Roominate, Alice Brooks and Bettina Chen, didn’t grow up playing with traditional girl toys. When Brooks asked for a Barbie her father gave her a mini-saw. Chen adored Legos and built hundreds of extravagant creations with her brothers. These experiences, they agree, led them into engineering: Brooks majored in mechanical engineering at MIT, while Bettina studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. When they met as graduate students at Stanford, said Chen, “We thought that there’d be a lot more women in grad school, but there weren’t.” 

    “We both had that baseline of confidence because of the things we played with,” said Brooks. “You are going to have to keep adding to that confidence as you get older to deal with things like guys at MIT saying that you got in because you’re a girl.” 

  • An Anatomical Marker for Chronic Pain in the Brain

    Brain’s white matter may determine susceptibility to chronic pain

    The structure of the brain may predict whether a person will suffer chronic low back pain, according to researchers who used brain scans. The results, published in the journal Pain, support the growing idea that the brain plays a critical role in chronic pain, a concept that may lead to changes in the way doctors treat patients. The research was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health.

    “We may have found an anatomical marker for chronic pain in the brain,” said Vania Apkarian, Ph.D., a senior author of the study and professor of physiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

    Chronic pain affects nearly 100 million Americans and costs the United States up to $635 billion per year to treat. According to the Institute of Medicine, an independent research organization, chronic pain affects a growing number of people.

    Image of a brain scan

    A Map of Chronic Pain
    Scientists used the structure of the brain’s white matter (green lines) to predict whether a subject would recover from low back pain. Red dots represent differences in white matter structure between subjects who recovered and who suffered chronic pain. Courtesy of Apkarian lab, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

    “Pain is becoming an enormous burden on the public. The US government recently outlined steps to reduce the future burden of pain through broad-ranging efforts, including enhanced research,” said Linda Porter, Ph.D, the pain policy advisor at NINDS and a leader of NIH’s Pain Consortium. “This study is a good example of the kind of innovative research we hope will reduce chronic pain which affects a huge portion of the population.”

    Low back pain represents about 28 percent of all causes of pain in the United States; about 23 percent of these patients suffer chronic, or long-term, low back pain.

    Scientists have thought the cause of low back pain could be found at the site of injury. However, recent studies suggest that the brain may be more involved with chronic pain.

    “Currently we know very little about why some patients suffer chronic low back pain,” said Debra Babcock, M.D., Ph.D., a program director at NINDS. “The earlier we detect pain will become chronic, the better we may be able to treat patients.”

    Dr. Apkarian and his colleagues addressed this by scanning the brains of 46 people who had low back pain for about three months before coming to the hospital but who had not had any pain for at least a year before.

  • House Hearing on Sex-Selective Abortion: India’s Missing Girls

    Editor’s Note: In preparing this article, we encountered this September 15th, 2013 article in the Times of India:Girls in Chhattisgarh, India

    Girl students, Chhattisgarh, India, 2005. Wikimedia Commons’ photograph

    Seeking divine help to rectify skewed sex ratio: Jaipur: Concerned over the declining sex ratio, the health department is knocking at the doors of temples and shrines in the state.

    Rajasthan’s child sex ratio has gone down drastically by 21 points from 909 to 888 over a decade, which has forced the health department to look at ways to sensitize public against sex selection and female feticide.

    The department has prepared a list of all the temples and Sufi shrines in the state where people gather in large numbers during special occasions. Devotees will be informed about the negative impact of a declining sex ratio. They will also be given examples of successful women from different faiths to emphasize on the equality of both sexes.

    Sex-Selective Abortion Subject of House Hearing

    On September 10, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations held a hearing on India’s Missing Girls. The hearing focused on the practice of sex-selective abortion, which remains prevalent in many areas of India in spite of the fact that the practice is against the law.

    In his opening remarks, Chair Chris Smith (R-NJ) said:

    “Sex-selective abortion and female infanticide have led to lopsided sex ratios. In parts of India, for example, 126 boys are born for every 100 girls. This in turn leads to a shortage of marriageable women, which then leads to trafficking in persons, bride selling, and prostitution.

    “Perhaps the best figures we have concerning the magnitude of the problem come from India’s 2011 census figures, which find that there are approximately 37 million more men than women in India…

    “Even when they are not killed outright either in the womb or just after birth, this bias against girl children manifests itself in situations where family resources are limited and little food is available, in boys being fed before girls, leading to greater incidents of malnutrition among girls and a mortality rate that is 75 percent higher for girls below age five than for boys.”

    Rep. Smith noted that, “While India has taken steps to curb these practices — passing laws to ban sex-selective abortion and temper cultural facts, such as the need for brides to provide a high dowry that contribute to parents looking at their daughters as a liability — these laws are irregularly enforced. Moreover, there are laws at the state level that exacerbate the problem, mandating that parents only have two children, penalizing those who exceed this number and denying benefits. This leads inevitably to sex-selective abortion and, particularly in poorer areas, female infanticide, as parents will opt to have a son over a daughter, especially when their first child is a daughter.”

    In explaining her organization’s approach to ending gender-based violence, including sex-selective abortions, in India, Mallika Dutt, president and chief executive officer of Breakthrough, said, “Breakthrough is currently working to eliminate gender-biased sex selection in Haryana, which at 877 females to 1,000 males has the lowest sex ratio in India. This work engages multiple community stakeholders to challenge patriarchal norms and son preference, an approach that is championed by governments, UN agencies, and others. Indeed, Justice Balakrishnan, chair of India’s National Human Rights Commission, at a recent conference on this issue stated: ‘The need of the hour is therefore to bring about a change in the mindset of the people whereby both girls and boys are treated at par.’”

    “In order to determine the best communication and community engagement strategy, in Haryana and other states, we have conducted comprehensive research. Through community, government, and multi-sectoral interviews, we have found that there are complex interrelated social, political, and economic causes that lead to gender-biased sex selection. These include dowry and inheritance laws, lack of women’s agencies in relation to safety, security, and sexuality, ineffective implementation of existing laws, and lack of women’s financial independence — all crucial requirements in eroding gender-biased sex selection.”

    The following witnesses also testified:

    Courtesy of Women’s Policy, Inc; The Source on Women’s Issues in Congress

  • Taylor Branch, Barbara Kingsolver, Katherine Paterson, Natasha Trethewey: Authors at the National Book Festival

    2013 National Book Festival Poster

    Renowned authors and poets Margaret Atwood, Marie Arana, Taylor Branch, Don DeLillo, Khaled Hosseini, Barbara Kingsolver, Brad Meltzer, Joyce Carol Oates, Katherine Paterson and U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey will be among more than 100 writers speaking at the 13th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival, on Saturday, Sept. 21 and Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013, between 9th and 14th streets on the National Mall. The event, free and open to the public, will run from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday and from noon to 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, rain or shine.

    Festival Poster by Suzy Lee

    Other poets and authors slated to appear at the festival include Katherine Applegate, Rick Atkinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Nicholson Baker, Bonnie Benwick, A. Scott Berg, Holly Black, Monica Brown, Steve Coll, Susan Cooper, Justin Cronin, Kathryn Erskine, Richard Paul Evans, Brian Floca, Eric Gansworth, Albert Goldbarth, Mark Helprin, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Juan Felipe Herrera, Jennifer and Matthew Holm, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Pati Jinich, Adam Johnson, William P. Jones, Cynthia Kadohata, Jamaica Kincaid, Matthew J. Kirby, Jon Klassen, Kirby Larson, Grace Lin, Mario Livio, Rafael López, Kenneth W. Mack, William Martin, Ayana Mathis, James McBride, D.J. MacHale, Heather McHugh, Lisa McMann, Terry McMillan, Elizabeth Moon, Christopher Myers, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Kadir Nelson, Patrick Ness, Katherine Paterson, Matt de la Peña, Daniel Pink, Andrea and Brian Pinkney, Matthew Quick, Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome, Vaddey Ratner, Christel Schmidt, Jon and Casey Scieszka, Chad “Corntassel” Smith, Andrew Solomon, Sonya Sones, Walter Stahr, Manil Suri, James L. Swanson, Mark Teague, Evan Thomas, Charles Whelan, Henry Wiencek, Steve Vogel and Dean Young, .

    The 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival will feature authors, poets and illustrators in several pavilions, including two Sunday-only pavilions: Graphic Novels/Science Fiction and Special Presentations. Festival-goers can meet and hear firsthand from their favorite poets and authors, get books signed, have photos taken with PBS storybook characters and participate in a variety of activities. An estimated 210,000 people attended in 2012. Details about the Library of Congress National Book Festival can be found on its website.

    • Margaret Atwood, a native of Canada, has authored more than 50 works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s literature. She is best known for her novels including The Handmaid’s Tale,  The Blind Assassin, which won the Booker Prize in 2000; Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and her latest book,  MaddAddam.
    • Marie Arana is an author, literary critic, former books editor at The Washington Post, and former executive vice president at Simon & Schuster Publishers and Harcourt Brace & Co. Her memoir American Chica, about her childhood in Peru, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN-Memoir Award. Her novels, Cellophane and Lima Nights were named among the best books of the year. Her current book is Bolívar: American Liberator.
    • Taylor Branch is the author of Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63; Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65; At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968; and The Clinton Tapes. He has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
    • Don DeLillo has written 15 novels, including Underworld, Falling Man, White Noise, and Libra. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his overall body of work, and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, he was awarded the PEN/Saul Bellow Prize. Last year he received the Carl Sandburg Literary Award for his body of work.

  • The Cheater’s High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior

    Cheating at Cards

    The Cheat With the Ace of Diamonds; Painting by Georges de la Tour, 1635. Oil on canvas. Louvre

    Behaving unethically may lead to feeling better than being guilt-free, research discovers

    People who get away with cheating when they believe no one is hurt by their dishonesty are more likely to feel upbeat than remorseful afterward, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. 

    Although people predict they will feel bad after cheating or being dishonest, many of them don’t, reports a study published online in APA’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology®.

    “When people do something wrong specifically to harm someone else, such as apply an electrical shock, the consistent reaction in previous research has been that they feel bad about their behavior,” said the study’s lead author, Nicole E. Ruedy, of the University of Washington. “Our study reveals people actually may experience a ‘cheater’s high’ after doing something unethical that doesn’t directly harm someone else.”

    Even when there was no tangible reward, people who cheated felt better on average than those who didn’t cheat, according to results of several experiments that involved more than 1,000 people in the US and England. A little more than half the study participants were men, with 400 from the general public in their late 20s or early 30s and the rest in their 20s at universities. 

    Participants predicted that they or someone else who cheated on a test or logged more hours than they had worked to get a bonus would feel bad or ambivalent afterward. When participants actually cheated, they generally got a significant emotional boost instead, according to responses to questionnaires that gauged their feelings before and after several experiments.

    In one experiment, participants who cheated on math and logic problems were overall happier afterward than those who didn’t and those who had no opportunity to cheat. The participants took tests on computers in two groups. In one group, when participants completed an answer, they were automatically moved to the next question. In the other group, participants could click a button on the screen to see the correct answer, but they were told to disregard the button and solve the problem on their own. Graders could see who used the correct-answer button and found that 68 percent of the participants in that group did, which the researchers counted as cheating. 

    People who gained from another person’s misdeeds felt better on average than those who didn’t, another experiment found. Researchers at a London university observed two groups in which each participant solved math puzzles while in a room with another person who was pretending to be a participant. The actual participants were told they would be paid for each puzzle they solved within a time limit and that the other “participant” would grade the test when the time was up. In one group, the actor inflated the participant’s score when reporting it to the experimenter. In the other group, the actor scored the participant accurately. None of the participants in the group with the cheating actor reported the lie, the authors said. 

    In another trial, researchers asked the participants not to cheat because it would make their responses unreliable, yet those who cheated were more likely to feel more satisfied afterward than those who didn’t. Moreover, the cheaters who were reminded at the end of the test how important it was not to cheat reported feeling even better on average than other cheaters who were not given this message, the authors said. Researchers gave participants a list of anagrams to unscramble and emphasized that they should unscramble them in consecutive order and not move on to the next word until the previous anagram was solved. The third jumble on the list was “unaagt,” which can spell only the word taguan, a species of flying squirrel. Previous testing has shown that the likelihood of someone solving this anagram is minuscule. The graders considered anyone who went beyond the third word to have cheated and found that more than half the participants did, the authors said.

    “The good feeling some people get when they cheat may be one reason people are unethical even when the payoff is small,” Ruedy said. “It’s important that we understand how our moral behavior influences our emotions. Future research should examine whether this ‘cheater’s high’ could motivate people to repeat the unethical behavior.”

    Article: “The Cheater’s High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior,” (PDF, 208KB) Nicole E. Ruedy, PhD, University of Washington; Celia Moore, PhD, London Business School; Francesca Gino, PhD, Harvard University; and Maurice E. Schweitzer, PhD, University of Pennsylvania; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, online, Sept. 3, 2013. 

    Nicole E. Ruedy can be contacted in the U.S. by email or by phone at (206) 543-0494.

    Celia Moore can be contacted in the U.K. by email or by phone at +44 (0) 7780-462-357.

  • Plutonium Mountain: Inside the 17-Year Mission to Secure a Legacy of Soviet Nuclear Testing

    Semipalatinsk Test Site

     The 18,000 km2 expanse of the Semipalatinsk Test Site (indicated in red), attached to Kurchatov (along the Irtysh river), and near Semey, as well as Karagandy, and Astana. The site comprised an area the size of Wales

    Report, Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School; August 15, 2013. Authors: Eben Harrell, Associate, Project on Managing the Atom, David E. Hoffman; Belfer Center Programs or Projects

     INTRODUCTION

    On the desolate steppe of eastern Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union carried out 456 nuclear explosive tests during the Cold War at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, which sprawls over an area approximately the size of Belgium. Of these, the Soviet Union performed 116 tests in the atmosphere, and 340 underground. While some of the nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk involved atomic explosions, other experiments were designed to study the impact of conventional explosives on plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU), the fissile materials used in nuclear bombs, or to ensure the safety of nuclear weapons during a simulated accident such as a fire or nearby explosion.

    Some of these tests — particularly tests involving plutonium — did not vaporize the material in a nuclear blast. It remained in tunnels and containers, in forms that could be recovered and recycled into a bomb. In addition, the Soviet Union discarded equipment that included high-purity plutonium that would have provided materials and information that could lead to a relatively sophisticated nuclear device if it had been found.

    When scientists and military personnel withdrew from Kazakhstan following the collapse of the Soviet Union, they abandoned tunnels and bore holes filled with plutonium residue — enough plutonium, if fully reclaimed, for terrorists or a state to construct dozens of nuclear bombs. Between 1991 and 2012, scavengers looking for valuable metal and equipment from the former Soviet test site came within yards of the unguarded fissile material; in two cases the scavengers broke into the vessels used to contain some of the experiments, although there is no evidence that they removed any plutonium.

    In October, 2012, at the foot of a rocky hillside, at a spot known as Degelen Mountain, several dozen Kazakh, Russian, and American nuclear scientists and engineers gathered for a small ceremony that marked the completion of a 17-year, $150 million operation to secure the plutonium in the tunnels of Degelen Mountain and in surrounding bore holes by filling portions of the tunnels and holes with a special concrete, greatly reducing one of the largest nuclear security threats since the collapse of the Soviet Union. They unveiled a three-sided stone monument, etched in English, Russian, and Kazakh, which declared: “1996-2012. The world has become safer.”

    The story of the operation at Semipalatinsk is a tale of scientists working together to achieve real results in reducing nuclear threats. It began in 1995, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when experts from the Los Alamos National Laboratory were told during a visit to Kazakhstan that plutonium residue in recoverable form was likely to have been abandoned at the test site. Two years later, in 1997, Siegfried S. Hecker, just retiring as director of Los Alamos, decided to look more closely. Hecker, who helped pioneer cooperation with his counterparts in the Soviet and later Russian nuclear weapons laboratories, used personal connections to push for action. He succeeded in enlisting the cooperation of Russian nuclear scientists who had been involved in the testing program in Kazakhstan before the Soviet collapse.