Temple Law’s Spiro addresses New York Is Home Act in national media
The voice of Peter Spiro, an immigration law expert at Temple’s Beasley School of Law and author of Beyond Citizenship, was prominent in the media on June 24 as the national spotlight turned to the New York Is Home Act, an effort by the state to create a new path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Opinion pieces by Spiro were published by the New York Times and Al Jazeera America, and Spiro joined the set of “Radio Times” for a broad discussion of immigration. “The New York Is Home Act supplies a new way of framing immigrant rights,” Spiro wrote. “If immigrants are members of the local community, why shouldn’t they enjoy equality within that community, even if they are uninterested or ineligible for membership in the national one?”
New York Times, WHYY-FM’s “Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane,” Al Jazeera America, more | June 1, 2014

Temple Contemporary gives crumbling Philadelphia rowhome proper burial
A dilapidated row house was torn down in Philadelphia in May. That’s not unusual—it happens all the time. But this house got an elaborate memorial service, complete with a eulogy, a church choir and a community procession. The project, masterminded by Robert Blackson of Temple Contemporary, is called “Funeral for a Home,” and artists and historians used it as a way to honor the Mantua neighborhood’s changing history. There is nothing exceptional about the house, but that’s exactly why Temple historian Patrick Grossi says it deserves a funeral. “The loss of vernacular architecture is often hidden in plain sight,” he said. “When a kind of modest house is being run down, you are erasing a century of lifetimes.”
NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Reuters, Associated Press, Al Jazeera America, Philadelphia Inquirer, National Post (Canada), Philadelphia CityPaper, Atlantic’s “CityLab,” PlanPhilly, many more | May 29-June 1, 2014

Temple engineers slam into pig aortas—to make cars safer
The aorta is a marvel of elasticity, contracting millions of times a year with each heartbeat. Yet the body’s largest artery is not so elastic when a metal block slams into it at nearly 30 m.p.h. This is what mechanical engineer Kurosh Darvish does in a lab at Temple, again and again, in an effort to make cars safer. Darvish and his students have rigged up a track where they simulate a crash’s violent impact. He wants to help develop better restraint systems. And for people who survive a crash with a damaged aorta, Darvish wants to help doctors identify which injuries will heal on their own and which require surgery. “We need to predict what happens before it gets too late,” Darvish said in story on the front of the Inquirer’s “Health” section.
Philadelphia Inquirer | June 1, 2014

School of Pharmacy and U.S. Attorney’s Office tackle prescription drug abuse
Zane Memeger, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and Peter Doukas, dean of Temple University’s School of Pharmacy, hosted a daylong series of discussions under the title of “Rx for Prevention: Preventing and Responding to Prescription Drug Abuse on Campus.” Doukas said he hoped the gathering would spur doctors, pharmacists and patients to be more realistic about the dangers of such medicine when it is misused. He told the group that the human body exists in a “moving and dynamic equilibrium,” but that human nature prompts people to unknowingly test its limits. “That’s where you get progress,” Doukas said. “But that’s also where you get catastrophe.”
Philadelphia Inquirer, KYW News Radio, NBC10, 6ABC, CBS3, more | June 11-12, 2014

Wall Street Journal: TUJ’s Kingston on Korea’s leprosy victims
Hundreds of cured leprosy patients in South Korea are plaintiffs in lawsuits seeking compensation from the government for alleged abuses in national medical centers. South Korea’s system of isolation and reproductive control for leprosy patients was a holdover of policies implemented by Japan during its occupation of Korea. Jeffrey Kingston of Temple University, Japan Campus, says the tactics were modeled on 19th-century practices of containing leprosy that had fallen out of favor in the West as doctors discovered the disease could be cured with antibiotics. “It was a tragic policy error that ruined people’s lives” in Japan as well as its former colonial possessions of Korea and Taiwan, Kingston said.
Wall Street Journal | June 24, 2014

Temple joins study of ibuprofen’s effect on emphysema
Is it possible a cheap, over-the-counter drug could help patients with the lung disease emphysema? Temple University Hospital is among a small group of research centers testing the hypothesis that the anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen might slow lung damage in patients with emphysema. Gerard Criner, director of the Temple Lung Center, said he was excited about testing a medicine that may approach the disease differently from anything currently available. “I think it’s a novel pathway,” he said. Temple is one of three clinical sites that will conduct the study. National Jewish Health in Denver and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center are also recruiting patients.
Philadelphia Inquirer, KYW News Radio | June 12-16, 2014

Is there still a place for women’s magazines? SMC’s Kitch says ‘yes’
After a 130-year run, Ladies Home Journal is drastically reducing its publication schedule and ending its subscription service, another in a long line of women’s magazines to try and reinvent itself or discontinue publication in the digital age. Temple journalism professor Carolyn Kitch, who wrote for Good Housekeeping and McCall’s in the 1980s and 90s, says LHJ was “the first magazine to hit 1 million subscribers” and the first to feature different illustrations on its cover for every issue. In an extended interview, Kitch explained how images of women portrayed in magazines have changed over time.
Iowa Public Radio | May 13, 2014

Another wave of coverage for Rongjia Tao’s “tornado walls” hypothesis
Can we stop tornadoes in “Tornado Alley,” the zone in America’s heartland where tornadoes are most common, by building giant walls? Temple physicist Rongjia Tao proposed the unusual solution in an article in the International Journal of Modern Physics B. The region’s vast expanse of flat ground provides the perfect mixing bowl for cool polar and warm subtropical air masses, leading to supercell thunderstorms and roaring monstrosities like the dual funnels that hit Nebraska recently. Tao believes there are lessons to be learned from the geography of China, where east-west mountain ranges dampen the climate effects that make Tornado Alley vulnerable.
Atlantic’s “CityLab,” Ars Technica, RedOrbit, Philadelphia magazine, more | June 24, 2014

Karen Turner tells Inquirer’s Jenice Armstrong why skit on race fell flat
A black female writer for “Saturday Night Live” struck a raw nerve when she tried to joke about slavery, colorism and problems that African-American females have finding suitable mates. “The first time I watched it, I was offended because it just seemed to be so stereotypical—not only in what she said, but with her body movements,” said Karen M. Turner, a professor of journalism at Temple. “She was dealing with very complicated issues that we don’t deal with as black women.”
Philadelphia Inquirer | May 14, 2014

Fox’s Petrucci: It’s a job-seeker’s market as businesses recover from recession
The nation’s job market is slowly recovering. What it is like in our area? Tony Petrucci, an assistant professor of human resources management at Temple’s Fox School of Business and founder of Career Movement Executive Search, says the tables have turned in this job market in favor of the job seeker. “Most industries are picking up,” he said. “Companies are sitting on a lot of cash. Previously during the recession, people were looking for very specific skill sets and they weren’t going to compromise.” Petrucci says employers are allowing upwardly mobile folks to morph into positions.
KYW News Radio | June 12, 2014

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