Drinking more often may be good for heart

(U-WIRE) CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – If you’re… Drinking more often may be good for heart

(U-WIRE) CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – If you’re going to go to John Harvard’s for a brew, researchers suggest that making the trip several times a week could be healthier than limiting yourself to a few times a month.

Drinking a glass of beer, wine or spirits at least three times per week can reduce men’s risk of heart attacks up to 35 percent, according to a study released last week by the Harvard School for Public Health. But drinking just several times a month proved less effective.

The research showed a link between drinking moderate amounts of alcohol regularly – and every day is best – and a lower risk of coronary heart disease. The connection held up regardless of the type or quantity of alcoholic beverage consumed and did not depend on other factors, such as whether or not drinks were consumed with meals.

“One of the more important things the study found is that the regularity of consumption is more important than the amount consumed,” said Eric Rimm, associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition and a senior author on the study.

The results from the study, conducted through Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, extend health benefits previously thought to come chiefly from red wine to all types of alcoholic beverages.

– Christina M. Anderson

Harvard Crimson (Harvard U.)

Fairleigh Dickinson University requires students to log on

HACKENSACK, N.J. – After a semester of intense discussions, Laura Schwendeman, a sophomore at Fairleigh Dickinson University, has come to know her classmates from Core 106: The Global Challenge pretty well.

She just can’t recognize any of them. All the work for Core 106, a mandatory course for all FDU students, is done online. So she knows them only as names floating on her laptop’s flat screen.

For some FDU students, it’s a liberating experience – “going to class” whenever they choose, being able to think before answering a professor’s question. Others find the experience a little frustrating, because of technological glitches or the lack of face-to-face interaction.

But like it or not, there is no escaping it.

FDU requires that all of its students take an online course each year – the only conventional university in the United States to do so. Distance learning, a term rarely used a decade ago, is usually touted as a way for students to take courses that otherwise would be unavailable because of geography or schedule constraints.

FDU decided that online education should be an end in itself. By making students more adept at Internet-based learning, President J. Michael Adams reasoned, the university would further its broader mission of being “the leader in global education.”

“We’re not telling our students that the Web is the best form of education,” said Michael Sperling, an associate provost at FDU. “But we do feel that … our students are going to have to make very creative and active use of digital technology in their lifetimes to be successful.”

– Brian Kladko

The Record (Bergen County, N.J.) (KRT)

Plagiarism cases increase during fall at Duke

(U-WIRE) DURHAM, N.C. – Despite increased efforts at Duke University to educate undergraduates on how to avoid plagiarism and correctly cite sources, academic dishonesty case numbers increased dramatically at the end of the fall semester.

At least 26 cases were referred to the Undergraduate Judicial Board last semester, up from 15 to 20 per semester in previous years, Dean of Judicial Affairs Kacie Wallace said.

“The majority of them were plagiarism cases, although there were some [instances] of cheating [on exams],” Wallace said. “We had the full range of plagiarism of a few sentences to entire papers that have been cut and pasted or downloaded.”

Wallace has been holding as many as three hearings a day related to academic dishonesty since the beginning of the semester, and about half of the cases have been resolved. Punishment has ranged from probation to three-semester suspension, but no expulsions have been administered thus far.

The rise of the Internet as the primary place for student research has changed the shape of plagiarism, she noted.

“The Internet presents some dangers and some ease and some accessibility,” Wallace said. “Students are writing their papers by cutting and pasting their articles into their papers and then trying to rewrite them.”

She added that students are not discriminating between different sources, using an article from a “paper mill” site with the same consideration as one written by someone with a doctorate.

“[They think that] if they find it on the Internet, it must be OK,” Wallace said.

The Community Standard, a combination of the university’s old Honor Code and Fundamental Standard, will take effect next fall and is currently in the middle of an “education year.” It will allow for some self-adjudication between faculty and students for very minor cases: failing to cite several sentences, for example.

– Alex Garinger

The Chronicle (Duke U.)

Ryan clears out death row

(U-WIRE) CHICAGO – Outgoing Gov. George Ryan emptied Illinois’ death row of 167 inmates in a Saturday speech at the Law School, validating years of work by Northwestern University faculty and students to free the wrongfully convicted.

The governor’s historic move was greeted by several standing ovations from the invitation-only crowd of anti-death penalty activists, lawyers and exonerated prisoners, including three of the four former death row inmates pardoned only the previous day.

“Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death,” said Ryan, borrowing the words of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun.

Governor-elect Rod Blagojevich, Cook County state’s attorney Richard Devine and some victims’ families met Ryan’s announcement with anger and were quick to criticize the decision as a mistake.

“[The death penalty decision] was ripped away from the courts by a man who is a pharmacist by training and a politician by trade,” Devine said, according to The Associated Press. “Yes, the system is broken, and the governor broke it today.”

On Friday at DePaul University’s College of Law, Ryan pardoned Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard, Leroy Orange and Aaron Patterson, saying their convictions were based on false confessions coerced by police brutality.

Two of the men have ties to Northwestern. Students in Northwestern professor David Protess’ investigative journalism class worked on Patterson’s case for five years, and law professor Thomas Geraghty and his students at the Law School’s Bluhm Legal Clinic had been working on Orange’s case since 1989.

Ollie Dodds, mother of a woman who died in an apartment fire that Hobley was convicted of setting, told the AP she still believes Hobley is guilty.

“I don’t know how [Ryan] could do it,” she said. “It’s a hurting thing to hear him say something like that. [Hobley] doesn’t deserve to be out there.”

– Elaine Helm

Daily Northwestern (Northwestern U.)