TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: The state Health Department says Tuesday that 42 days have passed with no new cases in Rockland. That’s the equivalent of two incubation periods and the timeframe when measles outbreaks are typically declared over. The nation’s worst measles epidemic in 27 years emerged a year ago, with most of the cases centered in Orthodox Jewish communities in Rockland and New York City. Health officials administered nearly 30,000 measles vaccinations in Rockland County as part of efforts to stop the outbreak. Over the summer, the state eliminated non-medical exemptions for measles vaccinations required for school children and tightened rules for granting medical exemptions.

SOLUTION: Measles outbreak that sickened 312 in Rockland declared over.

PROBLEM: There are four slashes among the women’s siblings, others among her immediate family, and most family members’ symbols are partially colored in. Each partially filled circle represents a cancer diagnosis. Each slash indicates a death. Although white women get breast cancer more frequently, it’s usually diagnosed later and is more severe in African American women. Breast cancer death rates among black women were about 40 percent higher than among white women between 1999 and 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Ricks-Santi, director of the Hampton University Cancer Research Center, and another Hampton colleague, John McDonald, recently received a $446,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the genetics behind breast cancer diagnoses in African American women. In particular, they’re trying to refine genetic tests that don’t seem to be as effective for black women as white. “I wanted to make sure that there was equity in the way that genetics and genomics was being applied across populations,” Ricks-Santi said. She has a longstanding interest in cancer research, dating back to when she was a kid. Her family has a history of cancer; her father has prostate cancer. That led her to pursue an undergraduate degree at Hampton University and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University. She worked as a post-doctoral fellow in a joint cancer studies program between Georgetown and Howard University. There, she saw a trend among genetic tests for breast cancer, particularly the most common ones, BRCA 1 and 2. They are sometimes an indicator for some of the hardest to treat forms, and they’re also correlated with other kinds of cancer in men and women. At Georgetown’s cancer center, which Ricks-Santi said served mostly white and affluent patients, BRCA tests often helped doctors decide if women were candidates for preventative treatment or if they needed additional testing. At Howard’s cancer center, which served more black patients, BRCA tests often came back inconclusive. This, Ricks-Santi said, makes it hard for oncologists to come up with specific, informed approaches for patients of color. “You can’t do that if you’re not identifying the right risk factor, the right gene,” said Melissa Gomes, a mental health nurse practitioner and a co-investigator on the study. “You can’t make that personalized approach if it wasn’t based on a population that included you.” The study that Ricks-Santi and McDonald are leading uses family history and genetic data from 300 breast cancer patients at Howard, along with relatives without cancer diagnoses and other types of cancer. Ricks-Santi will conduct statistical research to find candidate genes that could provide a better test. McDonald, an assistant professor of physics, will then conduct the laboratory phase of the study, injecting those genes into cancer cells in Petri dishes to determine exactly what kind of effect those have. They’re also working with Hampton University students on the project, who will be paid with grant money. “It’s nice to create that pipeline of researchers that look like the population we want to study,” Gomes said. This round of funding lasts for three years. But they’re already looking toward the next phase. That’s where Gomes’ experience comes in, whose background is clinical psychiatry. She sees patients four days a week. In a second study, once they’ve isolated some possible genes, they want to control for those genes and then investigate social circumstances that might contribute to breast and other kinds of cancer. Gomes hopes to use her background in psychiatry and patient care to help build connections in Hampton Roads in addition to helping with the social research. “Nurses are considered one of the most trusted health professionals,” Gomes said. “I think that the community trusts us and they value their opinion.” Ricks-Santi is hopeful about this holistic approach, citing her father’s own experience. Because of the small size of his tumor, they took a more wait-and-see approach to treatment. He moved to Puerto Rico for six months to relax. It seemed to work. His prostate-specific antigen levels, an indicator of that kind of cancer, dropped significantly and have stayed stable. “It’s scary and exciting,” Ricks-Santi said. “There’s so many possibilities.” ___ Information from: Daily Press, http://www.dailypress.com/

SOLUTION: University studies cancer risk and testing for black women.

PROBLEM: "Toilet seats just got political. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a constitutional lawyer recently elected to Congress, says they’re an intimate example of federal overreach. He name-dropped the familiar fixtures in his March 16, 2013, speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. ""We have a federal government that thinks they have the authority to regulate our toilet seats,"" he said. Does the long arm of the law extend into your bathroom? Yes. But some constitutional scholars say that’s too far. Plumbing the Constitution Cruz, a Republican, is no stranger to the nation’s founding documents. He argued before the U.S. Supreme Court as the solicitor general of Texas and has written more than 80 briefs for the nation’s highest court. He might like to flush some of its decisions. Here’s what he told his CPAC audience: ""There's the 10th Amendment, something our omnipotent federal government seems to have forgotten all about. The 10th Amendment provides that the powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states and to the people. ""How did we get a $16.5 trillion national debt? We have a federal government that thinks they have the authority to regulate our toilet seats and our light bulbs. We need to get back to the Constitution."" We’ve written plenty about light bulbs (which, yes, are regulated) but hadn’t taken up the question of toilet seats. Here’s the thing about toilet seats and the Constitution. The 10th Amendment reserves powers for the states and the people — except those given to the federal government. And under current interpretations of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and 14th Amendment, there’s power to federally regulate toilet seats. (Take that, commode!) How? Well, the federal government can regulate consumer products, access to public facilities for people with disabilities and workplace health and safety. Thus: • The Mine Safety & Health Administration says, ""sanitary toilets shall have an attached toilet seat with a hinged lid and a toilet paper holder together with an adequate supply of toilet tissue."" • The Occupational Safety & Health Administration says construction sites with 20 employees or more shall provide ""1 toilet seat and 1 urinal per 40 workers."" • The U.S. Access Board requires most restrooms to have at least one ""accessible"" toilet in buildings covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, which means, in part, a toilet seat at a height of 17 inches to 19 inches. Springs to return seats to a lifted position aren’t allowed. Those MSHA and OSHA rules? Cruz’s office says the federal government ""has no business regulating such minutia."" It could be — and has been — worse. Take the Great Horseshoe Seat Scandal of the 1970s. The brand-new Occupational Safety & Health Administration — which draws constitutional authority mainly from the Commerce Clause — had decided to implement a variety of voluntary industry standards as law. And it turned out that plumbers had for decades agreed that public toilets should have open-front, elongated seats rather than the closed rings of home bathroom seats. (Why? Oh, it’s a matter of speculation that’s made us the laughing-stock of Europe, where experts make jokes that the chief of one American lab was too polite to repeat. But it might have something to do with, um, hygiene.) So businesses suddenly faced a federal mandate on seat shape. The ""resultant outcries about picayune government regulations,"" as one newspaper columnist put it, helped land hundreds of OSHA regulations on a to-delete list. The shape of your public toilet seat was no longer federally regulated by the ‘80s. Plumbing fixtures now generally don’t face federal regulation. Instead, manufacturers follow voluntary industry standards, which often get the force of law from state and local governments. But they could. Commodes and the Commerce Clause Meanwhile, the regulations that yet exist — about workplace seat availability and public restroom seat height — strike Cruz as ""regulating down to the minutia"" on issues best left to states and local governments, said his press secretary, Catherine Frazier. He’s right that the federal government ""thinks"" it has that authority, according to constitutional scholars we consulted. Cruz’s former constitutional law professor at Harvard, Laurence Tribe, offered some examples where toilet seats are ""obviously subject to federal regulation"" under settled law: • The commercial sale of toilet seats, like other commodities, in transactions involving an interstate market are subject to regulation under the Commerce Clause. • The provision of adequate toilet facilities to workers in businesses affecting interstate commerce is subject to federal regulation under the Commerce Clause. • Ensuring that toilet facilities, like others, are made available without regard to race or disability is subject to regulation under the Commerce Clause and equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The question of whether the Constitution should be interpreted to grant such power to the federal government exposes a deep rift among experts. Randy Barnett, who represented opponents of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, argues for a narrower Commerce Clause, as do libertarian scholars such as Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute. A few decisions since the 1990s have gone their way, including the recent ruling that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate wasn’t justified by the Commerce Clause. The framers ""gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it,"" justices ruled. (The mandate was upheld under the government’s taxing power, instead.) But settled law still says toilet seats are fair game. ""Basically, Cruz is taking an example that sounds silly — toilet seats! — but if you look at the legal basis for the regulatory authority, it's pretty well-established and not all that silly,"" said Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. ""This is just political posturing, and Cruz, as a Harvard law grad, presumably knows it."" Our ruling Cruz, railing against modern interpretations of the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, said, ""We have a federal government that thinks they have the authority to regulate our toilet seats."" While federal attention to toilet seats has dropped since its brief foray into seat shape in the ‘70s, and now mainly addresses toilet access for workers and height for wheelchair users, Cruz is firmly right that the courts, Congress, and executive agencies claim federal power to regulate them. His toilet trivia is . Editor's note: We updated this item on March 26, 2013, to clarify that the U.S. Access Board requires most restrooms in ADA-covered buildings to have at least one accessible toilet."

SOLUTION:
We have a federal government that thinks they have the authority to regulate our toilet seats.