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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 3, 2000)
Smaller-born babies tend to earn lower incomes 1 CHICAGO — Babies bom smaller than normal tend to have lower incomes as adults but are just as likely as normal birth weight people to be employed, married and satisfied with their lives, a study found. The study linked the lower in comes to lower achievement in school, which led to lower-pay ing, blue-collar jobs. Previous studies have linked low birth weight to problems with brain development in children. But those studies did not track low birth-weight babies past mid childhood, said Dr. Richard S. Strauss, the study’s lead re searcher and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The study, which was pub lished in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Associa tion, tracked about 1,000 full-term babies who weighed less than about 5.5 pounds at birth in Britain in 1970. They were exam ined at ages 10, 16 and 26 and compared with normal-size ba bies born the same year. The adults born small earned about 10 percent less, and those who had normal birth weights were twice as likely to become professionals. Web site to give away scholarship money 2BOSTON — An Internet site to be launched Thursday is promising to give away $10,000 a day in college scholarship money. No essay required. No nerve wracking interview. Just the luck of the draw. Newlpigest The savvy marketers at FreeScholarships.com know the sweepstakes may sound too good to be true. But it’s the latest of a host of Web sites handing out mil lions to Web surfers willing to tell marketers about themselves. The scholarships from the new Cambridge-based company are fi nanced largely by marketers and advertisers who are particularly keen on the teen-age and 20-some thing markets. And the incentives for coughing up demographic information are great. FreeScholarships plans to award an additional $25,000 every month and $50,000 each quarter, in addition to the daily giveaway of $10,000. The money is available for col lege, graduate school, even private school for children. College grads with loans to pay off are also eligi ble, as are parents planning for fu ture college bills. Winners need only be U.S. citizens over 13. The Web site sounds well-in tentioned enough, said Mark Can non, deputy executive director of the National Association for Col lege Admission Counseling, which represents guidance coun selors and admissions officers. Tables turn when prison guards charged with murder 3STARKE, Fla. — Four prison guards were arrested and charged with second-degree mur der Wednesday in the fatal beat ing of a death-row inmate. Capt. Timothy Thornton, Sgt. Jason Griffis, and Sgt. Charles A. Brown all turned themselves into the Bradford County Jail, where they were being held on $100,000 bond, according to jail officials. Also arrested was Sgt. Robert W. Sauls, who was to be booked Wednesday evening, according to a law enforcement source who re quested anonymity. A grand jury investigating the death issued sealed indictments Wednesday. The indictments were expected to be unsealed Thursday. All were scheduled to make . their first court appearance Thurs day morning. They face up to life in prison if convicted. “It’s a travesty of justice,” said Thornton’s attorney, Gloria Fletcher. “The man didn’t do any thing. He was doing his job.” Guards claimed Valdes, 36, had severely injured himself by throw ing himself off his bunk onto the concrete floor of his cell. The medical examiner said an autopsy showed Valdes was beat en to death. The inmate had boot marks on his body, his ribs were broken and his testicles were swollen. Valdes was sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of a prison guard while attempting to help a fellow inmate escape in 1987. New AIDS drugs should require fewer pills 4 SAN FRANCISCO—Powerful new AIDS drugs in develop ment should help relieve one of the biggest problems of treatment —the pill burden. Over the past four years, new treatment combinations have rev olutionized AIDS care, changing HIV infection from a death sen tence to a disease that is treatable, if not curable. Patients, however, must adhere to a tedious and exacting schedule of downing pills, often more than 20 a day. Now, drugmakers are working on new drugs that require much smaller doses as well as better ver sions of the old standbys that can be taken less frequently. Experts say that if all goes well, over the next two or so years it may be possible to reduce the pill burden to just four tablets taken once a day. “Most drugs are dosed twice or three times a day for a reason. Once a day is not enough. The Holy Grail would be to take all your medicines once a day with as few capsules as possible. We are not so far from that, maybe in the next couple of years, ” said Dr. Eu gene Sun, head of antiviral drug research at Abbott Laboratories. The Associated Press an really put your in perspective
