briefs

(U-WIRE) WACO, Texas – According to a recent study, college students’ attitudes toward… (U-WIRE) WACO, Texas – According to a recent study, college students’ attitudes toward politics and civic engagement are shifting from apathetic unawareness to civic activism.

The Center for Information ‘ Research on Civic Learning ‘ Engagement (CIRCLE) and the Charles F. Kettering Foundation released a report earlier this month that revealed the Millennial Generation, those born between 1985 and 2004, are more eager to become engaged politically and civically than their predecessors, Generation X. Particularly members of this generation enrolled in college show a strong interest in political discourse free of confrontation yet full of diversity.

The report serves as a follow-up to a 1993 study published by the Kettering Foundation that showed college students to have little to no interest in politics, as they felt it was irrelevant to their lives.

However, current students recognize the importance of being educated about various issues but ignore much of the information provided for them because it is often thrown at them in a biased and controversial way.

“Young people sometimes wonder why everyone is trying to pitch them into such a black and white political spectrum,” CIRCLE research associate Karlo Marcelo said. “They are trying to figure it out, trying to navigate through all their options.” – Sommer Ingram, The Lariat (Baylor U.)

(U-WIRE) MADISON, Wis. – ABC News and the popular social networking site Facebook announced a partnership Monday in providing coverage of the 2008 presidential election.

According to ABC News, the partnership will include up-to-date news on each candidate’s campaign trail as well as interactive forums, discussion boards and blogs.

“We thought it would be a great opportunity for us to make available to the people already having the ongoing discussion and debate on Facebook the full range of ABC News political reporting,” ABC News President David Weston said in a release.

In addition to adding the U.S. News application, Facebook users will be able to “friend” ABC News reporters who will be following election events. The reporters will provide updated information on blogs, upload photographs and behind-the-scenes election footage.

“The goal is to extend the debate from being a one-hour session that happens on television to a dialogue that can take place before, after and now during the debate between voters,” Facebook vice president of business development Dan Rose said.

As of Monday night, the U.S. News Facebook application had 4,591 active users. Facebook currently has more then 53 million users in 55,000 networks worldwide – and according to the site, the user demographic group that is growing the most is those over 25. – Carl Jaeger, Badger Herald (U. Wisconsin)

(U-WIRE) NEW YORK – Breakthroughs could make the use of stem cell research at Columbia University Medical Center and institutions across the globe less ethically polarizing by eliminating the need to destroy embryos.

Piggybacking on the work of two researchers from Kyoto University who this summer turned mice’s skin cells into stem cells, two groups from Japan and the United States independently confirmed last week that they had successfully done the same with human cells. This breakthrough might eliminate the need for destroying human embryos to obtain embryonic stem cells, garnering hope that the revolutionary method may eventually be available to treat certain medical conditions without touching upon the ethical concerns raised by using human embryonic stem cells.

Stem cells are uncoded to perform any specific function in the human body system. The new process reprograms skin cells, removing the specific coding and reverting them to the pluripotent stem-cell state.

In this process, adult skin cells are converted to stem cells through a virus. Only four genes need to be added to make the skin cells analogous to stem cells. In contrast, the amount of eggs needed for the current procedure, therapeutic cloning, can make it an unwieldy proposition.

The Columbia University Medical Center has been involved in a $50 million first-phase initiative for stem-cell research launched in June 2005, about $25 million of which was already privately raised upon launch.

But there are risks involved in the new procedure, including an increased danger of cancer that may arise from the virus which is used in the process of converting the skin cells to stem cells. – Sandeep Soman, Columbia Daily Spectator