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6D · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2006 · USA TODAY www.usatoday.com
Internet use grows
in importance, time
Online communities have become so vital that close to half of those in the USA who participate — 43% —say their online friends and associates are as importantas groups they participate in face to face. That’s ac-cording to a wide-ranging report on Internet habitsand attitudes out today by the Annenberg School Cen-ter for the Digital Future at the University of SouthernCalifornia. The study also says 77.6% of Americans 12and older are Internet users, up from 66.9% in 2000.
Americans also are staying online a lot longer thanthey once did. In 2000, they were online an average of9.4 hours a week, compared with 14 hours a weeknow. Internet users have nearly doubled the amount oftime they spend playing computer games in the pastfive years. This year, they’re averaging 84.4 hours aweek playing games, compared with 46.5 in 2001.
They’re also listening to more radio. In 2006, they werelistening to the radio an average of 67.4 hours a week,up from 17 hours a week in 2001. The study was pri-marily based on a telephone survey with 2,269 U.S.
households from February to April 2006. Partial face transplant called a success
Wishing for a parade: Libby Magness, 79, always wanted to be in one. Her wish was granted in Philadelphia, as she rode in the city’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
of the world’s first partialface transplant, a Frenchmedical team is hailing the Wishes do come true
operation as a success andsays the patient, IsabelleDinoire, is gaining moreand more sensitivity andfacial mobility. Dinoire, 39, in these Twilight times
May 2005 by her pet Lab-rador. In November 2005,surgeons transplanted thelips, nose and chin of a Dinoire: About two
FDA studies Celebrex for kids’ arthritis
for all these years, I didn’t think I’d A federal review casts doubts on whether the pain- killer Celebrex should receive expanded approval to treat children with a devastating form of arthritis, doc- uments released Tuesday show. Drugmaker Pfizer wants Food and Drug Administration approval to sell Celebrex as a treatment for juvenile rheumatoid ar- thritis, which afflicts as many as 60,000 children in the USA. It causes painful joint swelling and can hinder growth and development. The FDA approved the drug see to it that it happens,” she jokes.
for use in adults with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis in 1998, but an agency review of Pfizer’s ap- “flop in” the snow “and roll in it,” plication questions whether the drug works for the instead of watching from the side- Wishing for snow: Yes, the white stuff fell in Chandler, Ariz., for Adele
pediatric disease. FDA’s advisers are scheduled to Reeder, celebrating her 79th birthday with daughter Diane Cornell.
evaluate the question today. The FDA isn’t required to follow the panel’s advice but usually does.
rade,” says Magness, of Cherry Hill, $19,600 in most states.) Thanks to a national organization lunch one day with her daughter. got to be in the nation’s oldest you-can-eat buffet when she saw Thanksgiving Day Parade in Phila- three older women carefully count- delphia, riding on a float with Ace ing their money to pay the bill. “It Young of American Idol and Paul hit me that this was a big deal for DiMeo of Extreme Makeover: Home them,” says Forkin, who ran a and looked around for worthy re- get,” she says. “I never received aEdition.
health care consulting business at cipients. The first grant was one she present like that before and maybe “Really,” she says, “it was beyond the time. So she decided to treat couldn’t have imagined: A tomb- I won’t ever again, so it was very my dreams. I’m creating another them — anonymously. But they stone that an 82-year-old woman in special.”memory so when I reach a time pressed the waitress into revealing a nursing home couldn’t afford to when I won’t be able to do (things), their benefactor. “I think I cried for two days, individuals; there are branches in member the time I was in a pa- one asked me to stand,” Forkin re- thinking about a senior in a nursing five states, but funding is still slim.
A day after birth: Yulka, left, swims with her baby.
rade.’ To be able to say that at this calls. “She gave me a big hug and home with no money and that’s Forkin is hoping for more volun-age, I think, is wonderful.” said, ‘I didn’t know there were still their wish,” Forkin says.
Captive baby beluga dies in marine park
This was the 730th wish for the people like you.’ I thought that was 3-year-old Twilight Wish Founda- pretty significant. It stayed with me granted all sorts of wishes. Some they just don’t have anybody who A baby beluga whale born in a Spanish marine park tion. Like the much better known for a long time.” are ambitious, such as taking a last cares about them,” says volunteer — the first beluga whale born in captivity in Europe — Then one day when she was trip home across state lines with a Rose Muzzy of Tucson. has died at the age of 25 days. Officials at the Ocea- dren with life-threatening illnesses, visiting nursing homes for her job, nurse to visit a relative or attend a nographic Marine Park in Valencia said Tuesday that the Twilight Wish Foundation also it occurred to her that while there class reunion. Many are simple: resa,” Forkin adds, “that loneliness the whale had died the previous day. Though the exact grants wishes, but for those who were plenty of organizations help- One man just wanted a harmonica and being forgotten are the greatest cause of the mammal’s death is uncertain, “the are 68 and over and who have an ing seniors with needs, few helped to replace the one he had lost. An- poverties. And that’s what happens incident probably occurred because the young whale income of not more than 200% of them achieve their wishes and other wanted a case of Dr Pepper.
never adapted to artificial milk,” a park statement said.
Some wishes are about basic member and (say) we care.” The young whale’s 8-year-old mother, Yulka, was un-able to nurse her infant and stopped producing milk,officials said.
For more information Visit www.twilightwish.org or call 877-893-9474.
Scientists urge greater scrutiny of research
ence, Nature and elsewhere.
Instead, the fraud findings of publishing in Science, or its led to university investigations, rival journal Nature, such as Lunch break: Kelley Hise uses the CDC’s new gym.
firings, prosecutions and crit- “enhanced reputation, visibility, A panel of scientists Tuesday icism of Science’s system of position or cash rewards is CDC gets health and fitness makeover
called for more scrutiny of peer review, in which experts sufficiently high that some independently assess whether may not adhere to the usual It’s no longer “do as I say” but “do as I do” at the lished by science journals, a re- study results should be pub- scientific standards.” Kennedy nation’s top public health agency, which is encourag- action to the bogus stem cell lished. Peer review is a bedrock said Science would follow ing its employees to exercise and eat healthier. In the findings trumpeted last year in of modern science.
past three years, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease the journal Science.
“Progress in science depends including: Control and Prevention has revamped cafeteria Tarnishing the already con- on breakthroughs and in taking menus, wheeled out produce carts and instituted troversial field of embryonic risks, both in research and in with surprising, newsworthy weight-management classes and seminars on health- stem cell research — and the publishing,” says the review or politically charged results.
ful grocery shopping, among other activities. And in prestige of Science — Seoul committee formed by Science June, the agency opened a state-of-the-art fitness cen- National University announced and headed by Stanford Univer- authors and co-authors.
ter. Workers are urged to use the gym during lulls in last year that a team led by sity’s John Brauman.
Hwang Woo Suk: Disgraced
the workday, to walk, and to have meetings in person. South Korea’s Hwang Woo Suk But “the current process, view standards with other scientist faked stem cell study. Music is piped into stairwells to increase the number faked its claim of easily cloning predicated on the assumption journals.
of employees who use stairs instead of the elevator.
“Science says that it is com- misconduct expert Nicholas Scientists had hoped to use tion, is not adequate,” con- mitted to change, so one should Steneck of the University of dation in Minneapolis. “The re- By Michelle Healy from staff and wire reports these cells to create rejection- cludes the panel, which includ- take them at their word and see Michigan in Ann Arbor.
ed Harvard’s Douglas Melton, a what follows,” says science The Hwang scandal follows creasingly risky position.”

Source: http://www.twilightwish.org/storage/documents/media_coverage/2006-11-29_USAToday.pdf