How often do government officials use personal email for work? Cultural awareness on college campuses, a public school teacher sends his child to private school.
Clinton addresses email controversy, questions about transparency remain
Hillary Clinton spoke publicly yesterday for the first time about the controversy over her use of a personal email address while she was secretary of state. She defended her exclusive use of a private email account and email server for government business, but also conceded that it was a mistake.
Bill Allison, Senior Fellow with The Sunlight Foundation, joined Take Two to talk about the questions the controversy has raised about government transparency and accountability.
Combating racism and intolerance on the college campus
Investigations continue Wednesday at the University of Oklahoma after a video surfaced of fraternity members singing a racist chant.
Two members of the U of O's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity said to be leading the chant were expelled Tuesday. One of those students has apologized, as did the parents of the other.
The ugly behavior showcased on that brief video has sparked a lot of conversation. While many would like to believe this was an isolated incident, stereotyping and other racist beliefs and behaviors persist across college campuses in this country.
Belinda Tucker, vice provost of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures, says colleges can try to foster more awareness of cultural diversity by adding it to curriculum. She says UCLA is attempting to add a diversity requirement for undergraduate students in the College of Letters and Science, following the lead of universities around the country and in the UC system.
Tucker says the effort stems from trying to prevent OU's exact situation from happening elsewhere.
"Of course, no one can prevent intolerance, but we believe that you can create a climate at a university that is more accepting of difference," she said.
Inside LAPD's Mental Evaluation Unit
When L.A. police killed a man with a history of mental issues last week on Skid Row, it sparked renewed calls for better training.
But, the LAPD is actually a national leader when it comes to handling people going through a mental health crisis, thanks to a specially trained team called the Mental Evaluation Unit.
In a three-part series, Southern California Public Radio's Stephanie O'Neill takes a look at the unit.
Impatient: Are high deductibles ruining patients lives?
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, last year 80% of all employees covered by health insurance faced an annual deductible and almost one in five of those surveyed faced a deductible of at least $2,000.
Just a reminder, that’s the amount that they have to pay BEFORE most services are covered in their plans.
Southern California Public Radio’s
has been looking into how high-deductible health plans affect people’s health care decisions. Check out the Impatient blog, which is aimed at helping consumers navigate the healthcare system. She's been covering the high-deductible issue over there.
And she joins us every week for our consumer focused health segment of the same name, Impatient. This week, she sits down with A Martinez for a chat.
App Chat: Should you enroll in a medical study on your iPhone?
This week on App Chat we're taking a look at Apple's new software platform ResearchKit, which they announced alongside other products including the Apple Watch and a new Macbook.
What is Research Kit?
Imagine if researchers conducting medical studies could survey all 700 million plus iPhone users around the world. The sample size would be huge! And that's what ResearchKit is about.
It's a platform built by Apple that's supposed to make it easier for researchers to create apps that they can use to get more people involved in their studies. The idea's that by creating apps that let people answer questionnaire or track their medical conditions on their iPhones, researchers will be able to gather more accurate information from groups of people that might not be located in their area.
Say researchers want to survey fifty thousand Asthma patients and ask them a bunch of questions over a long period of time about their condition. Rather than have subjects come into a lab to be tested and surveyed, they can use an app on their phone to constantly update the researchers on what's going on with them. There's the potential that this platform could make it easier for patients to participate and more closely track different variables throughout the day than if they're tasked with recalling information while sitting in a lab setting.
If you're interested in checking out the studies that are available to enroll in, Apple's got a list of them on their website. They're related to asthma, diabetes, breast cancer, heart disease and Parkinson's disease.
If you do click through and download the apps, you'll be able to see if you qualify to participate in the studies that they're associated with. Some of the general guidelines include that you have to be over 18 and that you have to have the different conditions associated with each study.
Let's say that you are a breast cancer survivor and you decide to participate in the study that does followup on how breast cancer treatments impact patients lives. Before you enroll, you should consider the fact that you're inputting personal health related information on your cell phone, so the issue of security should be in your mind.
Apple says that they never view the information. That for studies, names and identifying info are replaced with codes so that people are kept anonymous. That and you'll always have to consent to how your information is used. But you still have to put your faith in a company and a team of researchers to keep your information safe.
Other red flags that come to mind include the issues of population bias, given that a very specific group of people is likely to own iPhones, improperly recorded data and the possibility that unqualified people will join the studies without scientists knowing. Fraud isn't out of the question if all you have to do to join a study is to hit confirm and answer a questionnaire on the app.
SCPR's Rebecca Plevin interviewed some experts about these concerns and she has a great post over at her blog, Impatient.
So, should you enroll in a medical study on your iPhone? If you're aware of the risks and you want to help out with some studies, it could be worth it. And in the future the ResearchKit apps that come out might be able to read information from your iPhone's Health app, which means that researchers could be able to see how often you're working out, what you ate or what your heart rate looks like throughout the day. You'll have to give consent for all of that though.
Since this is App Chat, I had to recommend a couple of fitness focused apps. This week they were My Fitness Pal and Strava. The first is great for counting calories while the second is all about virtually competing with fellow runners and cyclists on digital courses around the city.
And if you want to race me, here's a link to my Strava profile.
If you have any recommendations for apps and technology, or if you just want to touch base, you can always shoot me an e-mail at JMargolis@scpr.org.
Sports roundup: AEG drops downtown LA stadium plan, why NFL players retire early
San Francisco 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis may be just the latest high-profile athlete to retire at an early age. Is this a trend in pro sports? And with AEG ending its plan for a downtown NFL stadium, where could the next LA team end up? We're joined by
.
A public school teacher's choice to send his child to private school
L.A.'s private schools sent out acceptance letters lsat week, meaning plenty of parents will be facing a difficult choice - figuring out whether to send their kid to a private school or a public one.
Michael Godsey, a public school teacher who wrote about his own experience for the Atlantic, said it was a choice that was especially difficult.
But ultimately, he decided to send his child to private school.
"I'm really proud of what I do, and I'm really proud of who I work with, and I think we give a great product. I just think, for a child [who] really gets into what they're doing and who wants a culture in which she's is surrounded by students that are like that, I want to put her in that environment," he said.
Massive CA earthquake chances increase; are you prepared?
A new report out from the US Geological Survey shows the chances that California will experience a magnitude-8.0 earthquake in the next 30 years has increased to 7 percent.
Ned Field, lead author of the report, tells more about the study, and Lisa Harris, community ambassador for the American Red Cross Los Angeles Region explains how to talk to your family about preparing for an earthquake.
San Francisco officials propose warning labels on ads for soda
San Francisco is poised to become the first city in the nation to require warning labels on ads for soda an other sugary beverages. It's the latest move to curb cola consumption after a soda tax failed to garner enough votes last fall.
San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener joined Take Two to explain more about the proposed warning labels.
The Adolescents' Tony Cadena on punk band's early years, new album and Kelly Thomas case
Back in 1979, a 16-year-old kid named Tony Cadena formed a band in Fullerton, California with a buddy of his, calling it the Adolescents. Decades later, the legendary punk band has continued its tradition of taking on social issues – from the killing of Kelly Thomas to the Fukushima nuclear disaster – on its latest album, La Vandetta...é un piatto che va servito freddo.
Tony Cadena, aka Tony Reflex, stopped by the studio to speak with Take Two's Alex Cohen. Highlights from the interview:
On exploring music and sounds as a child:
We had one of these organs in the house, it was an electronic organ and it had these floppy records that you would put in. We made quite a racket, my brother and I. We did a lot of experimenting with noise and sound and finding music in the world. It was really quite fun, actually.
On why he was first drawn to punk music:
For me there was the lack of boundaries, it was timeless music. You could experiment with things and it was OK to do that. We were making our own music. There were plenty of bands that were playing music from other people, but from the outset we had determined that, hey, this wasn't that hard. The idea of creating something was more appealing than taking something that someone had already done and recycling it.
On why the band took on the case of Kelly Thomas and the issue of homelessness and mental illness in its song "A Dish Best Served Cold":
The idea is to open up a dialogue. The difficulty for the police is they know they're being watched. They're in a very, very awkward and difficult position. I don't bait people and I'm not a naysayer, but there's some things in the way that policing is done that need to change...the responses that we're finding to outbursts for the mentally ill, especially, and for the homeless have been severe and that's what this song is really addressing.
Washington state using pot sales for playgrounds, other projects
Washington state has come up with another use for pot: to pay for playgrounds, and other local projects.
It's part of an unconventional setup in the city of North Bonneville, which includes the nation's first recreational marijuana shop operated and owned by a government agency. North Bonneville Mayor Don Stevens explains more.