A Cornell University parent-education program has shown it can triple the likelihood that parents will discuss risk reduction and related information about HIV, the AIDS virus, with their children. The program also significantly increases the likelihood that the parents themselves will make personal risk behavior changes and obtain HIV testing. It also will be tested in a new National Institute for Mental Health-funded clinical trial to be conducted by the Center for Family Studies at the University of Miami, whose staff will be trained by Cornell educators. It has become fairly commonplace for homeowners to test their houses for radon, the colorless, odorless and tasteless radioactive gas that seeps from the ground and can cause lung cancer. But schools, where a child can spend 14,000 hours by the time of high school graduation, often are overlooked, two Cornell University housing experts report.
Children are more sensitive to air pollution than adults.
They breathe more air relative to their body weight and are more likely to breathe through their mouths than adults, which bypasses the nasal cavity's protective functions. Laquatra and Lorraine Maxwell, also an associate professor in the department, have published a fact sheet on radon in schools to provide guidance and advice to parents and administrators. Aiming to facilitate job growth and sustainable industrial expansion in economically distressed communities, the new center will encourage industrial ecology, establish eco-industrial parks and expand the use of processes to maximize communities' development potential. Cornell's Work and Environment Initiative has been providing assistance to proposed eco-industrial parks since 1993. Electrons and positrons annihilate each other in CESR to produce forms of matter important to our understanding of the early stages of the evolution of the universe.