Being overweight is less risky than you think.
Will your life expectancy go down if the number on your bathroom scale goes up? Not necessarily, according to Maya Mathur, an assistant professor of pediatrics and of biomedical informatics. About one-third of Americans are overweight (but not obese), defined by a body mass index between 25 and 29.9. Mather partnered with her mother, Vandana Mathur, a Bay Area physician and biomedical researcher, to survey 200 doctors about their view of mortality for overweight adults. They found that 90 percent of the surveyed doctors believed being overweight slashed patients’ life spans, even though clinical guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association say that being overweight is not linked to a higher risk of mortality.
“It seems there’s a really big gap between the empirical evidence and the physicians’ perceptions,” Mathur told Stanford Medicine’s Scope blog. She speculates that some of the misperception comes from literature that lumps overweight and obese patients together (a BMI of 30 or higher is associated with elevated mortality risk), and guidelines that suggest that the higher the BMI, the greater the risk of mortality. Mathur says doctors should adhere to the research when talking with patients about weight. “Focusing excessively on being overweight as its own risk factor for mortality, independent of biomarkers or metabolic health, does not seem warranted.”
1973 called, and they love what we’ve done with the place.
Stanford magazine turns 50 this fall, and in honor of the occasion, we took a dive into the year of our birth. Some of the goings-on in the 1973–74 school year seem perennial. Professors debated the extent of academic freedom. A pair of fraternity brothers plotted to steal the Axe from Cal. Other events were more particular to the era. A professor witnessed a coup in Chile. A benefactor committed to donating 89 Rodin sculptures. Skylab 3 orbited Earth with Stanford’s first astronaut aboard.
Against that backdrop, an alumni magazine debuted. In the five decades since, Stanford has chronicled the story of the university and its alumni, from scholarship to sports, history to humor, profiles to poems. Walk with us down memory lane as we sample some of the wonders and horrors of that year on the Farm, and in the world around.
Welcome home!
Photo: H. Taghap
Last week, the university welcomed 1,710 first-year undergraduates, 58 undergraduate transfer students, and 2,772 new graduate students. More than 35 percent of the new grad students come from outside the United States. The new undergrads hail from 49 states and 76 countries, and a total of 89 unique languages are spoken in their homes. President Richard Saller greeted the Class of 2027 at the university’s 133rd Convocation ceremony (video). “My main advice for you this afternoon,” he said, “is to have the self-confidence to seek out the opportunities offered by Stanford that will contribute to your own personal fulfillment.”
The vision test quest.
Move over, eye chart, here comes PlayStation. Standard vision tests, like the cover-uncover test, date back to 1862 and don’t assess all aspects of vision, such as your ability to distinguish objects in the dark. “You might not be performing as well as you want in some real-life scenarios, but we might not be able to pick it up in today’s eye exams,” said Khizer Khaderi, a clinical associate professor of ophthalmology. So he and colleagues created Balloon Pop and Picture Perfect—video games that assess a person’s visual performance index, . The VPI captures aspects of vision that could be affected by glaucoma, cataracts, or other conditions. In Balloon Pop, for example, as patients click striped balloons on a screen, doctors gain insight into their peripheral vision, visual endurance, and color discrimination. Khaderi hopes VPI can be adapted to popular games such as Fortnight or League of Legends, which could be prescribed to patients to monitor eye disease. Something to look forward to, Gen Z.
Fighting fire with policy.
U.S. wildfires are burning bigger and brighter while federal firefighters contend with long hours, little sleep, and life-threatening work conditions. Their hard work, researchers say, is rewarded with low pay, poor work-life balance, and particular mental health challenges that are often inadequately addressed. This makes it difficult to recruit new firefighters and retain those already on the job. Last year, the U.S. Forest Service was unable to fill about 10 percent of seasonal firefighter positions and 20 percent of permanent ones. “We have to keep the force we have intact,” said Michael Wara, JD ’06, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program and a senior research scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment, in an interview. Ahead of the September 30 deadline for Congress to extend a federal wildland firefighter pay increase, Wara co-authored a white paper to offer solutions for some of the issues facing fire-prone landscapes and the responders who protect them, including the reintroduction of prescribed burns, collaboration with tribal governments, and expansion of mental health care leave for firefighters.
But wait, there’s more.
Keep your eyes on your inbox: Stanford wants your input on the next university president. A 20-member presidential search committee, including faculty, students, staff, alumni, and trustees, has been assembled. All alumni will receive an email providing a link where you can express your thoughts on what Stanford needs in its next leader.
Stanford’s Neighborhoods Task Force is seeking alumni feedback to help inform recommendations for improving the undergraduate residential system. Get on this one now—the survey closes October 10.
You might think you’re superior to a worm, but can you regrow your head after someone cuts it off? If you can, here’s a survey link—just kidding! Where were we? Worms. By tracking signals from planarian worms’ injured tissue, researchers found hundreds of genes that turned on and off, possibly responsible for body regeneration. That’s good news for you because, whether you like it or not, you share a lot of genes with worms.
It’s true, a mechanical watch can’t play a YouTube video or hail an Uber, but it can tell a story. That’s what hooked Thomas Fleming, ’19, a watch collector and enthusiast whose watch company, Fleming, is about to release its first timepiece. But this particular story is not for the faint of funds. One watch will run you about $50,000.
As hot strike summer bleeds into fall, professor emeritus of economics John Pencavel says the low unemployment rate makes this a good time for workers across industries to put pressure on their employers to raise their pay.
And in news from the other side of the Bay, a Cal task force is recommending the university rename its athletics department to solve the problem of some people thinking Cal and UC Berkeley are two different schools. Rebrand all you want. We know exactly who you are.
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