|
Findings
November/December 2007
Reconciliation by radio
by Marc Wortman
In the early 1990s, a Rwanda radio station began to broadcast messages
of Hutu hatred for the nation’s Tutsi ethnic minority. Hate radio helped
unleash the infamous 1994 genocidal rampage, resulting in the murders of some
800,000 Rwandans, mainly Tutsis. Today, radio programs designed to promote
reconciliation among the survivors are being broadcast. According to a
pioneering study by a Yale graduate student, the message is getting through.
Social psychologist Elizabeth Levy Paluck '00, '07PhD, now a research
fellow at Harvard, had never been to Africa before she heard about a radio soap
opera, Musekeweya, or “New Dawn,”
created by a Dutch organization called La Benevolencija. In Rwanda, radio
serves as the principal form of mass media; citizens typically gather in groups
around the few radios in a village to listen and then discuss what they hear.
La Benevolencija broadcasts entertainment programs with messages of tolerance
and nonviolence, in hopes of bringing reconciliation.
For her doctoral research, Levy Paluck and a team of Rwandans spent a
year bringing together 12 ethnically mixed groups of randomly selected adults
(480 in total), in villages around the country, once each month, to listen to
recordings. Half heard successive episodes of Musekeweya; the other half listened to public health
programming. Nearly all of the listeners had been present during the genocide.
While the Musekeweya listeners showed little change in their personal beliefs, the program “did
substantially influence listeners' perceptions of social norms,” notes Levy
Paluck: they were more accepting of intermarriage, open dissent, and discussion
of trauma than were the health program listeners. And, she adds, they were “more
likely to speak out and ultimately to cooperate” on community issues.
“Media can affect local group norms and the kind of behavior that is
acceptable,” she says. “You can turn hate radio on its head.”
Not quite a quantum leap
by Bruce Fellman
The quantum computer, a device capable of solving currently intractable
calculation problems, has moved a little closer to reality. “We figured out how
to reliably move quantum information between two points in a circuit,” says
Robert Schoelkopf, a professor of applied physics and physics.
In the September 20 and 27 issues of Nature, Schoelkopf and his colleagues report on a method
they developed that uses tiny bundles of electromagnetic energy called
microwave photons as a kind of information bus. In a traditional computer, data
is stored and transferred in the form of bits—ones or zeros. But in a
computer that can make use of the laws of quantum physics, information in the
form of quantum bits (qubits) could exist as ones, zeros, and both—separately
but simultaneously. This ability would multiply the device’s information
capacity enormously, enabling it to handle huge numbers and perform, in an
instant, calculations that Schoelkopf says “would take a Pentium a thousand
years.”
The researchers worked with two qubits, each built from a trillion
aluminum atoms. When cooled to near absolute zero, the trillion atoms behaved
as a single atom. The scientists then showed that information from one qubit
could be transferred to a microwave photon. Finally, they demonstrated that the
photons could shuttle information between two qubits that were placed some
distance apart (seven millimeters) on a circuit board. “It’s a small but
significant step,” says Schoelkopf. But a usable quantum computer would need at
least 10,000 interconnected qubits to do the kinds of calculations physicists
hope for, he notes: “Don’t look for one on your desktop anytime soon.”
Maybe it does take a village
by Rhea Hirshman
For many expectant mothers, the standard model for prenatal care—one
woman and one doctor—may not be the best way to ensure a healthy
pregnancy. In a recent study, Jeannette R. Ickovics, professor of epidemiology
and public health, and her colleagues showed that group prenatal care improved
pregnancy outcomes and patient satisfaction for young women with low incomes—at
no increase in cost.
In the first randomized clinical trial of a model developed by Sharon
Schindler Rising '67MSN, Ickovics and her team compared its effectiveness with
that of the traditional model. The study, conducted at hospital prenatal
clinics in New Haven and Atlanta, involved 1,047 pregnant women, ages 14 to 25.
Women in the groups actively participated in their prenatal care with
other women who had the same expected delivery month. Each of the ten two-hour
sessions, facilitated by obstetricians, midwives, and nurses, began with
individual clinical assessments and updating of medical records. During most of
the session, the women and clinicians sat together for discussion, education,
and skills-building in the areas of prenatal health, childbirth preparation,
and postpartum and parenting roles.
In the August 2007 issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the researchers reported a 33 percent reduction in
the odds of preterm births among those receiving group care. (Preterm births
account for 35 percent of all U.S. health care spending for infants, and are a
major contributor to infant deaths.) The women in the group settings were also
more likely to initiate breast-feeding.
“Every expectant mother
wants a healthy pregnancy and baby,” says Ickovics. “For especially vulnerable
women, group prenatal care looks like a good, economical way to help achieve
this.”
Don’t know much about … biostatistics
by Rhea Hirshman
Almost every medical school student takes a course or two in
biostatistics to learn how to understand research data. But Donna Windish, an
assistant professor at the School of Medicine, has shown that the information
often doesn’t stick. “A significant percentage of physicians-in-training do not
understand the statistics they encounter in the medical literature,” she says.
Windish and her team evaluated how well internal medicine residents in
11 Connecticut programs could interpret and evaluate biostatistics and clinical
research results published in medical papers. The residents scored an average
of only 41 percent. Interns performed better (45.6 percent) than chief residents
(38.1 percent)—in all likelihood, says Windish, because the subject is
usually taught in preclinical years and not reinforced with practical
applications in residency training. Residents who scored the highest had
additional advanced degrees, such as a master’s in public health, a PhD, or
previous biostatistics training. (The findings appeared in the Journal of
the American Medical Association's
September 5 special issue on medical education.)
In her own teaching, Windish had seen that trainees often read only the
abstracts, or “ignored the statistics and skipped right to the results.” This
practice turns out to be common throughout the medical profession—and
potentially troubling. “An abstract usually says little about methods of
design, conduct, and analysis,” says Windish, citing an earlier study that
showed frequent data mismatches between the abstract and the paper.
Windish and other Yale faculty are now developing and teaching a
program of increased and improved biostatistical education for all three years
of residency. Windish is currently analyzing test results from the initial
program, which she expects will show a measurable increase in biostatistical
fluency.
“Doctors don’t necessarily need to know how to do the mathematical
calculations,” Windish says. “They need to understand the concepts and how to
use them.”  |
