Research
Citations

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Reading magazines may cause lung cancer
Despite a ban on cigarette advertising directed at children, U.S. tobacco companies have actually increased youth targeting. Paul Chung and Craig Garfield, both Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars at the Pritzker School of Medicine, reported in the March/April Health Affairs that while tobacco companies obey FDA advertising limits in "youth magazines"-those with more than 2 million readers under age 18 or with more than 15 percent young readers, including Sports Illustrated and People-they have instead increased ad placement in magazines with youth readership just under those limits, such as Glamour. Cigarette ads in such magazines have increased by 14 percent since the 1998 FDA ban. "This finding," Garfield says, "reinforces the need to consider a ban against tobacco advertising in magazines like the bans in existence for TV, radio, and billboards."

Battle of the sexes
Wen-Hsiung Li, the George Beadle professor of ecology & evolution, has confirmed what women have suspected all along: that men are the shiftier sex. But that's not a bad thing. Genetic mutations occur five times more often in men than in women. Mutations occur during the process of cell division, and since sperm stem cells divide constantly, there is an increased opportunity for genetic error; these genetic changes, however, drive evolution. Li's study, reported in the April 11 Nature, challenges two recent genetic studies that said the male-female mutation ratio was only 2:1, a difference not large enough, he says, to account for evolution.

Hold the chemo
Ruth Heimann, associate professor of radiation & cellular oncology, has discovered four biochemical markers that are significant in predicting the likelihood that a breast cancer patient's disease will spread. Women with early-stage breast cancer are usually given chemotherapy as a precaution, even though simply removing the tumor will cure 70-80 percent. Heimann says that her research, reported at the third European Breast Cancer Conference in Barcelona, Spain, will allow doctors to "tailor treatments and give chemotherapy only to the women who really need it."

Make that 6.5 percent
The current unemployment rate would be at least half a percentage point higher if certain disability filers were counted, argue Mark Duggan, assistant professor in economics, and David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Changes in the Social Security disability insurance program have allowed a greater range of illnesses and injuries to meet the program's standards. Duggan and Autor's report, forthcoming in the February 2003 Quarterly Journal of Economics, says that these changes draw younger filers who strain the system because they live longer.

Mother's milk
Babies who were held and breast-fed during a painful needle prick to draw blood cried and grimaced less and their heart rate increased significantly less than those babies who were not nursed, reported Lawrence Gray, clinical instructor in pediatrics, in the April Pediatrics. Most hospitals currently do painful procedures quickly and let the infants cry-an approach that may now change.

Considering cosmopolitanism
In a global culture, cosmopolitanism-thinking and acting beyond one's own society-is a pressing issue. With essays from scholars of anthropology, art history, literary studies, and South Asian studies, Cosmopolitanism (Duke, 2002) asks whether practices such as globalization and multiculturalism promote solidarity or erode the very differences that make cultures unique. Edited by Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, all in the South Asian languages & civilizations department, and Harvard professor Homi Bhabha, essay topics range from eroticism in Senegal to urban cleansing in Mumbai.
- S.A.Z.

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