Mason Media Blog

From hospital emergency rooms to the Roman Empire, many Mason professors take their expertise in the classroom and put it onto the bookshelf. Included below are some new releases that were written or edited by Mason faculty.

“To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death”

Suzanne Smith, History and Art History

Smith discusses African American funeral directors, who were historically among the few black individuals who were economically independent. She explains how their financial freedom gave them the ability to support the struggle for civil rights as well as bury the dead.

“The International Handbook on Aging”

Frank Whittington, Global and Community Health

Whittington responds to the United Nations World Assembly on Aging’s call for advancing health and well-being into old age by detailing what researchers worldwide are doing to answer that call.

“Successful Education: How to Educate Creative Engineers”

Tomasz Arciszewski, Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering

Arciszewski discusses methods of effective engineering education in college departments, using historical principles and practices, and explains why this education must undergo an evolution and how it can do so.

“Web Engineering Advancements and Trends: Building Dimensions of Information Technology”

David C. Rine, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science

Rine examines integrated approaches in new dimensions of social and organizational knowledge sharing, with an emphasis on intelligent and personalized access.

“Optimizing Emergency Department Throughput: Operations Management Solutions for Health Care Decision Makers”

Jay Shiver, Health Administration and Policy

Shiver focuses on providing health care leaders with the tools they can employ to optimize the performance of emergency departments and thereby improve service to patients, employees and communities.

“Searching for God in the Sixties”

Dave Williams, English

The book jacket blurb says that Williams’ “…book dares to rethink the whole of the ’60s experience, not from a political or sociological, but from a historical/theological perspective.”

“The Fall of the Roman Empire: Film and History”

Martin Winkler, Modern and Classical Languages

Winkler  presents essays relating to the film, “The Fall of the Roman Empire” from historical, historiographical  and cinematic perspectives.

Please note that this article was written by Robin Herron. A longer version originally appeared in the Gazette (http://gazette.gmu.edu/articles/15970).

George Mason University geologist Mark Uhen published a paper this week in Science that shows a strong link between the diversity of organisms at the bottom of the food chain and the diversity of mammals at the top.

Throughout the last 30 million years, changes in the diversity of whale species living at any given time period correlates with the evolution and diversification of diatoms, tiny, abundant algae that live in the ocean. In other words, the more kinds of diatoms living in a time period, the more kinds of whales there are.

What does it all mean? According to Uhen, “This study shows that if we look at the bottom of the food chain, it might tell you something about the top,” says Uhen. He believes that other similar links might be found in other animal groups, and hopes that future research can prove that.

Uhen is a term assistant professor in Mason’s Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences and is an expert in marine mammal fossils. In the future, he hopes to conduct research on how the body size of whales changes over time, and how whales became the largest living organisms in the world.

You can read the full press release here.

For a full copy of the study, or to interview Mark D. Uhen, please contact Tara Laskowski, Office of Media and Public Relations, at tlaskows@gmu.edu or 703-993-8815.

Amanuel Shitaye, a student at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, measures carefully while working in Mason's Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine. Creative Services photo

Can a high school student get a patent? Believe it or not, some do. Temple Douglas, a 2009 high school participant in Mason’s Aspiring Scientists Progrm (ASSIP), submitted a patent for early diagnosis of Lyme disease and was recently named as a finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search Competition.

ASSIP, which provides high school juniors, seniors and college undergraduates interested in exploring science and medicine the opportunity to work alongside the university’s faculty researchers, is currently accepting applications for its summer 2010 session. Participants spend eight 40-hour weeks at Mason’s Prince William and Fairfax campuses working on real-world science projects related to global challenges such as cancer, HIV, biodefense and climate change.

Since the program offers exposure to levels of science that many aspiring researchers will not see until they enter the workforce, those who participate will likely have long-term career benefits. Eleven students from previous sessions have had their work published in scientific journals or presented at professional conferences.
Founded in 2007 by cancer researchers Lance Liotta and Emanuel Petricoin III, co-directors of Mason’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, the program is now in its fourth year and has nearly doubled in size with slots for 45 participants.

To learn more, visit http://eagle.gmu.edu/newsroom/800/.

Over the weekend, George Mason University basketball coach Jim Larranaga watched his sons Jay and Jon play a few games of pick-up basketball with President Obama at Fort McNair in Southwest Washington, D.C. Jon, you might remember, played for the Patriots from 1999-2003.  The excellent Dan Steinberg has more at the Washington Post’s D.C. Sports Bog.

Even though 2009 saw venture capital funding at its lowest rate in five years, the entrepreneurial spirit is still high. Approximately 100 students are preparing to descend on the Johnson Center on George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus this Fri., Feb. 19 from 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. for the Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA). The annual event, planned by the School of Management (SOM), brings aspiring entrepreneurs together to learn practical business skills and apply their entrepreneurial spirit in pursuit of their career goals. Offering a blend of keynote presentations and workshops, participants gain first-hand advice and insight from seasoned entrepreneurs.

This year’s YEA opening speaker will be David Andrukonis, co-founder of AlumniFidelity and a young entrepreneur himself who will talk about student entrepreneurship.  AlumniFidelity, one of the hottest start-ups in the Washington, D.C. region, helps “schools boost alumni participation with the social networking tools that smashed political fundraising records.” Closing out the day will be Jim Wolfe, assistant professor of management and SOM’s entrepreneur-in-residence. With more than 25 years experience helping  emerging growth firms, Wolfe has been a founder, director or consultant to more than 50 early-stage firms in a wide range of industries.  He was also one of the first Americans called to East Germany to help with the economic transition following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Wolfe will deliver the closing keynote address on the impact of entrepreneurship on the global economy and entrepreneur’s moral obligations.

The YEA will also include breakout sessions discussing topics that are critical for successful business development. Breakout sessions will cover marketing, what does it take to reach your market; finance, how to raise OPM—Other People’s Money; and creativity, an exercise for students wanting to know if they have what it takes to be a creative leader and entrepreneur. Participants will also hear from successful entrepreneurs during a panel discussion. Moderated by David Miller, a doctoral candidate in entrepreneurship, the session will feature successful entrepreneurs who are either students or who are serving the student market.

“It’s exciting to see how early the entrepreneurial spirit is hitting people. It’s happening more and more often to students who are still in high school or college and many of them come to YEA having already started a business or with an idea in mind,” says Wolfe. “By providing the opportunity to learn business skills, network with other entrepreneurs, hear first-hand lessons learned and discover the impact entrepreneurs can have on the economy, we believe we are setting these young entrepreneurs on the path to success.“

If you would like to attend the YEA, please contact Jennifer Edgerly at jedgerly@gmu.edu or 703-993-8699. For a full schedule of events for the day can be found on the SOM web site.

Recycling, using tote bags for groceries, carpooling, buying energy efficient appliances. You may agree that these are all actions we should be taking to reduce climate change, but are you actually doing any of them?

A new survey by Edward Maibach of the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) at Mason shows that we are not.

While 88 percent of Americans say that it is important to recycle at home, only 51 percent “often” or “always” do; while 81 percent say it is important to use re-usable shopping bags, only 33 percent “often” or “always” do; and 76 percent of us say it is important to buy locally grown food, but only 26 percent “often” or “always” do.

This gap between attitude and action may have many reasons behind it, say the researchers. They suggest that continuing to make options such as public transportation more readily available and convenient to people may start to turn the statistics around.

The survey was conducted by 4C and the Yale Project on Climate Change. For more information, check out the press release and full report.

According to the White House, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis today announced a total of nearly $1 billion in Recovery Act awards to help health care providers advance the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology (IT) and train workers for the health care jobs of the future. The full White House announcement can be viewed online. Several experts from Mason in the areas of health data management and computer security are available to comment on this development as well as other issues related to health data administration and electronic medical records. To view a full list of featured faculty, visit http://eagle.gmu.edu/newsroom/760/.

Do physicians provide more services to Medicare patients to make up for lower Medicare fees? With almost 42 million people enrolled in Medicare in the United States in 2008, it’s a question that could have a very costly answer.

Jack Hadley, Senior Health Services Researcher in George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services

Jack Hadley, professor and senior health services researcher in George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services, along with co-authors James Reschovsky of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), Catherine Corey of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and Stephen Zuckerman of The Urban Institute, analyzed thousands of physicians and their Medicare insurance claims to investigate volume-offset behavior, the belief that physicians respond to lower Medicare fees by increasing service volume to make up for potential lost revenue.

The results of the study, “Medicare Fees and the Volume of Physicians’ Services,” were published online Feb. 10 in the health-policy journal “Inquiry.”

“In recent years, Medicare fees have fallen after accounting for inflation, while overall physician costs and volume of physician services have grown. Although suggestive of volume-offset behavior, national trend data do not necessarily reflect how physicians respond to variations in specific Medicare fees. Our analysis isolated this relationship by controlling for other factors that also influence service volume,” Hadley said.

To learn more, visit http://news.gmu.edu/articles/1681.

In a nail-biting, come-from-behind victory, Mason edged out Virginia Commonwealth University in its first Facebook Face-off challenge.

Mason rallied from an early 4,000-fan deficit to come within 20 fans of VCU in the last 15 minutes of the contest. Patriot fans pushed through and overtook VCU in the final moments and never looked back. In the end, Mason won the challenge by an 87-fan margin.

However, both schools came out winners on Facebook, where they each more than doubled their fan bases over the contest duration. Mason gained 14,496 new fans, for a total of 22,870. That number is almost three times the 8,374 fans with which the university began the contest. VCU gained 14,409 new fans in the contest, for a total of 25,126 fans.

The contest tipped off at noon on Jan. 19 and ended at noon on Feb. 9. The results were announced during halftime at the Feb. 9 VCU-Mason men’s basketball game, where Mason again prevailed in a come-from-behind victory, knocking off VCU 82-77 in overtime at the Patriot Center.

The idea for the Facebook Face-off sprang from a similar challenge between Louisiana State University and Texas A&M. At the time of their challenge, those schools had the largest fan bases among universities on Facebook.

“It was really wonderful to see the way the Mason Nation came together to fight for this win,” says Tara Laskowski, a manager in Mason’s Office of Media and Public Relations, which spearheaded the campaign.

“The school spirit was amazing. We had thousands of people — students, alumni, faculty, staff and fans — spreading the word. The friendly competition between our fan pages really mirrored the basketball rivalry on the court that night.”

As part of the contest, Mason also hosted a contest for four premium Homecoming tickets for the men’s basketball game on Feb. 20. To enter, fans had to write their favorite Mason tradition on the university’s Facebook wall during the Face-off. Thousands of fans entered the contest, and the winner will soon be announced.

Laskowski and the Media and Public Relations staff thank all who participated in the Face-off.  Even though the contest is over, it’s never too late to join other Mason fans on Facebook. Just log in to your Facebook account and visit www.facebook.com/georgemason.

Allison Macfarlane

Allison Macfarlane, associate professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University, was one of 15 experts chosen by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu for a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. The commission will provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the nation’s used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.

In light of the administration’s decision not to proceed with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, President Obama directed Secretary Chu to establish the commission to conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle.  The commission will provide advice and make recommendations on issues including alternatives for the storage, processing and disposal of civilian and defense spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.

Macfarlane has been studying the issue of nuclear energy policy for more than a decade and is a leading expert on nuclear-waste disposal. She recently sat on a National Research Council committee evaluating the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear-power research and development programs and is chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

The Las Vegas Sun and the New Statesman have been among the media outlets that have covered this story.

Read the full press release here.