Wednesday, September 4, 2013 VOLUME 32 / NUMBER 2 www.uicnews.uic.edu facebook.com/uicnews twitter.com/uicnews NEWS UIC youtube.com/uicmedia For the community of the University of Illinois at Chicago Photo: S.K. Vemmer April Rahman, a graduate student in educational policy studies, helps her son, Wage, 2, blow bubbles with, left, Adithyan Subramanian, a sophomore in bioengeering, and Danica Baguisa, a sophomore in kinesiology. They were spreading cheer for the Random Acts of Kindness club Friday in the lecture center plaza. Today’s Involvement Fair, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the plaza, will give students a chance to join clubs and organizations. UIC student groups say ‘join in!’ INSIDE: Profile / Quotable 2 | Campus News 4 | Calendar 8 | Student Voice 9 | Sports 12 Alan Schwartz studies the way we Campus rolls out the red carpet UIC students cultivate their own Soccer hangs tough in first make tough decisions for prospective students gardens at Monday showcase season match More on page 2 More on page 3 More on page 9 More on page 12 2 UIC NEWS I www.uicnews.uic.edu I SEPTEMBER 4, 2013 profile Send profile ideas to Gary Wisby, [email protected] Alan Schwartz finds solutions to tough medical decisions By Gary Wisby Alan Schwartz, an expert on medical decision making, asks you to imagine that you’re blind. Now, further imagine that he has a magic pill or miracle surgery that will restore your sight. But there’s a catch — it will shorten your life by a certain number of years. Say it’s three years out of a life expectancy of 30 years — many people would say, “Go ahead, give me the pill or do the surgery.” But what if your life would be shortened by 10 years. Would it be worth that to see again? “Eventually you get to the point where you’re on the fence,” said Schwartz, professor of clinical decision making and associate head of the department of medical education. Finding an example in recent news, Schwartz noted that the actress Angelina Jolie had undergone surgery. “She had to decide whether to spend the rest of her life with a double mastectomy or the likelihood of developing breast cancer,” he said. To get good medical decisions, physicians must be smart about interviewing patients. “One major area of research I’m involved in is why physicians fail to appreciate something unique about a patient,” he said. “Asthma, for example. If the doctor doesn’t find out you lost your job and can’t afford expensive medications, you won’t Photo: Joshua Clark be able to fill prescriptions and you’ll get worse.” Physicians must ask patients the right questions, says Alan Schwartz, professor of clinical decision making. “If the doctor doesn’t find out you So the physician needs to ask more questions in order to lost your job and can’t afford expensive medications, you won’t be able to fill prescriptions and you’ll get worse,” he says. Email and News Postings. — his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and Ph.D. are all from “Spam-filtering systems have gotten better” since the University of California, Berkeley. “One major area of research I’m the book came out in 1998, he said. “At UIC, the ACCC He’s been at UIC since 1997, and received an Award for [Academic Computing and Communications Center] folks Excellence in Teaching in 2009. involved in is why physicians fail do a really good job.” He lives in Oak Park with his wife, M.G. Bertulfo, who How did he come to write the book? teaches creative writing to children in her studio in the Oak to appreciate something unique “I was in graduate school and I needed the money,” he Park Arts District. They have a 12-year-old son. about a patient.” said. “It was a burgeoning topic where I could get a publisher. “I love to knit,” Schwartz said. There was a period when I had no higher mission than that.” anyone who was expecting a present from him knew it would find a solution, such as an inexpensive generic inhaler for the Schwartz, who got his first computer for his 8th birthday, be a hand-knitted hat, sweater or scarf. asthma sufferer. added, “Spam was annoying, and I knew something about it.” “But over the last year and a half I’ve not done as much as I Schwartz is co-author of the book Making Medical He is the director of APPD LEARN (Longitudinal would like to,” he said. Decisions: A Physician’s Guide. It translates theory and Educational Assessment Research Network) for the Asked what is so enjoyable about knitting, Schwartz said, research findings in decision science into practical approaches Association of Pediatric Program Directors. “It’s a physical activity that I find to be meditative. And the to help physicians guide their patients’ decisions. “The network is a collaborative of over 110 pediatric yarn is soft, I like the feel of it. In January he became editor in chief of Medical Decision residency programs that want to work together on multi-site “I’m kind of a crafty person. I like the idea that I can take Making, a peer-reviewed journal published eight times a year. educational research,” he said. a piece of yarn and make something I could wear and stay Schwartz is also co-author of a book on a completely Schwartz grew up in Los Angeles. Asked where he earned warm.” different subject. It’s Stopping Spam: Stamping Out Unwanted his college degrees, he replied, “Berkeley, Berkeley, Berkeley” [email protected] quotable “Compared to a century ago, garbage not only “Our thought was that since we’ve known for about “This is supposed to be the place that defied differs in generation rate, but also in composition. 35 years that a great principal could improve student aristocracy, that gave the ordinary person a chance, Intuitively, the amount of garbage increases along learning in schools, that we ought to try to produce so you would think that would also work in favor of with economic growth.” such principals instead of wait for them to come a labor movement to bring the bottom up. But it has along.” always been contested, always a matter of struggle, Ning Ai, assistant professor of urban planning and policy, and in recent years the balance has shifted even more on Chicago garbage collection over the last century, Aug. Steve Tozer, head of the Urban Education Leadership toward the forces of finance and business power.” 28 WBEZ-FM program and professor of educational policy studies, on UIC’s program to train school principals, Aug. 29 PBS Leon Fink, professor of history, on the connection between News Hour civil rights and labor rights, Sept. 1 Chicago Tribune SEPTEMBER 4, 2013 I UIC NEWS I www.uicnews.uic.edu 3 Alcohol breaks brain connections for processing social cues By Sharon Parmet four or more drinks for women — put them at high risk for dynamic, interactive relationship. How the amygdala and developing alcohol dependence. prefrontal cortex interact enables us to accurately appraise Alcohol intoxication reduces communication between The participants were given a beverage containing either our environment and modulate our reactions to it,” Phan two areas of the brain that work together to properly a high dose of alcohol (16 percent) or placebo. They then had said. interpret and respond to social signals, according to a an fMRI scan as they tried to match photographs of faces “If these two areas are uncoupled, as they are during study by College of Medicine researchers. with the same expression. acute alcohol intoxication, then our ability to assess and “This research gives us a much better idea of what is They were shown three faces on a screen, one at the top appropriately respond to the non-verbal message conveyed going on in the brain that leads to some of the maladaptive and two at the bottom, and asked to pick the face on the on the faces of others may be impaired.” behaviors we see in alcohol intoxication, including social bottom showing the same emotion as the one on top. The Stephanie Gorka and Daniel Fitzgerald from UIC and disinhibition, aggression and social withdrawal,” said K. faces were angry, fearful, happy or neutral. Andrea King from the University of Chicago contributed Luan Phan, professor of psychiatry and corresponding When participants processed images of angry, fearful and to the research, which was supported by a Brain Research author for the study, published in the September issue of happy faces, alcohol reduced Psychopharmacology. the coupling between the Previous research has shown that alcohol suppresses amygdala and the orbitofrontal On Placebo On Alcohol activity in the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible cortex, an area of the for perceiving social cues such as facial expressions. prefrontal cortex implicated in “Because emotional processing involves both the socio-emotional information amygdala and areas of the brain located in the prefrontal processing and decision- cortex responsible for cognition and modulation of making. behavior, we wanted to see if there were any alterations in The researchers also the functional connectivity or communication between noticed that alcohol reduced these two brain regions that might underlie alcohol’s the reaction in the amygdala effects,” Phan said. to threat signals — angry or Phan and colleagues examined alcohol’s effects on fearful faces. connectivity between the amygdala and the prefrontal “This suggests that during cortex during the processing of emotional stimuli — acute alcohol intoxication, photographs of happy, fearful and angry faces — using emotional cues that signal functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI.