New Smartpen and paper to help teach blind college students
All your health worries solved
Jurors ordered to hearing on bias remarks
Oral insulin could slow onset of Diabetes

New Smartpen and paper to help teach blind college students
NewsWise
Monday, Dec. 3

Subjects like physics, calculus and biology are challenging for most students, but imagine tackling these topics without being able to see the graphs and figures used to teach them. A new smartpen and paper technology that works with touch and records classroom audio aims to bring these subjects to life for blind students.

“Mainstream approaches to teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses all rely strongly on diagrams, graphs, charts and other figures, putting students with visual disabilities at a significant disadvantage,” Andy Van Schaack, lecturer in Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development, said. “Our goal is to enable students and teachers to produce and explore diagrams and figures through touch and sound using a smartpen and paper technology that is low-cost, portable and easy to use.”

All your health worries solved
Men's Health
Monday, Dec. 3

"No fear" looks impressive plastered on a longboard, but it's only surfing bravado. We know because we canvased your darkest medical concerns in a MensHealth.com poll. Turns out, (a) you fear plenty, but (b) you fear the wrong things. And that can be a deadly miscalculation.

Take testicular cancer and paralysis, relatively infrequent afflictions that scare the bejeezus out of you. And yet, you seem far less concerned about more common health menaces, such as lung cancer, heart attack, diabetes, and stroke. Why the misguided dread? "When you stand to lose a portion of your life from a disease striking in your later years, you weight the risk lower in the present," says W. Kip Viscusi, Ph.D., a world-renowned expert on health and safety risk management at Vanderbilt University law school.

Jurors ordered to hearing on bias remarks
The New York Times
Monday, Dec. 3

A Superior Court judge has ordered a jury that convicted a black man of the rape and murder of a white fashion writer in 2002 on Cape Cod back to court for a rare public hearing to consider whether racial bias influenced the verdict.

Judge Gary A. Nickerson granted a motion for juror inquiry filed by the defense and ordered the jurors to return to Superior Court in Barnstable, Mass., on Jan. 10 and 11. The jurors will be asked in open court about racial remarks reportedly made in their deliberations.

Two expert witnesses will also testify on racial bias.

Nancy J. King, a professor at the Vanderbilt Law School, is quoted.

Oral insulin could slow onset of Diabetes
Sky News Online
Monday, Dec. 3

A ground breaking national study in the United States if offering hope to children carrying antibodies which make them vulnerable to Type One Diabetes.

Researchers have found that mice given tiny amounts of insulin orally at a young age were slower to develop Diabetes.

Dr William Russell from Vanderbilt Children's Hospital says it's hoped that insulin in pill form could prevent or at least slow down the onset of Diabetes One in vulnerable children.

Hundreds of children are being enrolled in the study which poses no medical risk to them.