OH RATS!: UW research professor and bioengineer Henry Lai’s new study that links exposure to microwave radiation similar to that emitted by cellular telephones with long-term memory loss in rats captured the attention of broadcast news’ heavy hitters last week. CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, CBS Radio, and national broadcasts by ABC, NBC, CNN and the Fox News Channel featured Lai and his research. On Friday, Lai took part in a radio talk show out of Boulder, Colo., and on Saturday he taped a segment with MSNBC. Reports have also run on ABC’s 20/20 and in newspapers as far away as London.

PLANT GENEAOLOGY: After more than a hundred years of arguing and theorizing, new results compiled by four distinct research teams seem to provide the missing link that maps the geneaology of today’s flowering plants. “It’s going to really change our view of what the most ancestral type of flowering plant was like,” Dick Olmstead, a UW plant evolutionary biologist, told The New York Times. The four independent research teams agreed that the three most ancient groups of flowering plants are water lilies, relatives of the spice star anise and Amborella.

BEFORE YOU SAY ‘I DO’: Marriage and its frequent failure to last “til death do us part” has been a hot topic for decades. Two UW researchers recently revealed that they can predict a marriage’s success or failure with a high degree of accuracy based on about three minutes. “The way you start a conversation is absolutely critical,” John Gottman, who has followed more than 120 newlyweds for nearly a decade, told the Dallas Morning News. Gottman, a psychologist, and research scientist Sybil Carre videotaped married couples as they argued. If arguments begin with an open attack, they said, the marriage often fails.

ARTIFICIAL CONCEPTION: Modern technology may soon allow people to have their sperm and eggs frozen for use when they’re ready to have a child and to have themselves sterilized so they won’t have any unplanned pregnancies in the meantime. In a recent article on the subject, Health & Discovery asked Philip Bereano, a professor of technical communication at the UW, about potential pitfalls of the technology. “Technologies are the results of decisions made by humans and human institutions,” he said in the article. “Rather than, ‘Should we consume it or not?’ the question is ‘Should we produce it or not?’”

TRAINING THE TIMID: Technology can serve as an enhancement to the classroom experience, but not if you don’t know how to use it or, worse, if you are afraid to use it. One group that is taking the fear out of teaching with technology is the UW’s own UWired, a technology training group. Their unique approach was the subject of a recent feature in the Information Technology section of The Chronicle of Higher Education. The article quotes participant and Associate Professor of Psychology Debbie Ward as saying, “I would never have come this far if I hadn’t had friendly, easy-going, socially skilled people lead me. They didn’t make fun of us for not understanding the technology.” ¶