Paul from Paris

Banish your stereotypes about teen geeks, at least those from Cleveland and elsewhere in the American Midwest.

Lead researcher Scott Frank and colleagues from Case Western Reserve University presented a study this week at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA).

“Hyper-networking” (spending more than three hours daily on social networking sites) and “hyper-texting” (sending more than 120 text messages daily) were associated with all kinds of problems:

• fighting
• smoking
• binge drinking
• drug use
• depression
• sexual activity
• sexual activity with four or more partners (presumably sequentially, not concurrently)
• television viewing
• parental permissiveness (my favorite of the findings)

“The startling results of this study suggest that when left unchecked texting and other widely popular methods of staying connected can have dangerous health effects on teenagers,” reported Frank.

What remarkable findings! At least in Cleveland, young geeks are rebellion dynamos, on a course of hell-raising that would seem incompatible with intensive computer and cell phone use.

Frank’s study does not seem to have looked into hyper-networked hyper-texters’ recourse to video games or rap music, but one can assume the worst.

More seriously, might the findings stem from small numbers and survey respondents who jokingly “checked the box” to everything, answering every question in the affirmative? And the study doesn’t seem to assert a causal relationship, so why not simply assert a preference for moderation in all things, including texting and networking?

Of course, the APHA’s annual meeting itself has a formidable social media presence.

An American reader pointed out to me that young people do not only excel at sports, but can also accomplish remarkable studies in math and science.

In the United States, the Society for Science & the Public has run a contest for students in their final year of secondary school. From 1942 through 1997, Westinghouse sponsored the contest; since 1998, Intel has sponsored it.

The Intel Science Talent Search fields about 1,600 entries from young people who do independent (individual, original) research in math and science. Each entrant submits:

• a 20-page research report;
• a statement from a supervising scientist;
• recommendations from teachers;
• details on educational and personal background;
• various essays that:
  • abstract the research project (akin to what a scientific journal would print);
  • summarize the research in plain-language;
  • answer the question: What is a major scientific question in your field whose answer you believe will have a significant impact on the world in the next 20 years, and why?
  • answer the question: What have you done that illustrates scientific attitude, curiosity, inventiveness, and initiative? (The STS is not for the modest.)

An initial round of judging yields 300 semifinalists; each receives $1,000, and his or her school also receives $1,000. A pool of 40 finalists is invited for a week in Washington, D.C., for additional judging, cultural events, and group interaction. All receive at least $7,500 in awards. The top ten finalists receive larger awards, culminating in a $100,000 award for the first-place winner. The awards are intended to finance higher education.

Intel and the Society for Science & the Public generously posted short presentations by finalists.

This year’s first-place winner is Erika de Benedictis, from Albuquerque, New Mexico; she investigated spacecraft navigation.

The second-place winner this year is David Liu, from Saratoga, California; he developed a system to recognize and understand digital images (and tells a great story about his consulting experience).

The 2010 third-place winner is Akhil Mathew, from Madison, New Jersey; his math project examined Deligne categories.

Nearly all the finalists would like to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which deserves an award for its outreach and marketing among  scientifically inclined youth.

The Intel STS comforts those who are concerned about scientific talent in the United States. To my European friends, I would ask: why isn’t a similar contest done in Europe?

French president Sarkozy, like President Obama, enjoys proclaiming new initiatives that seek to promote change.

The next French initiative will probably be a national campaign for nutrition and against obesity.

Is an anti-obesity campaign needed in France? Aren’t French people thin enough as things stand today? Aren’t there more pressing concerns, such as persistent unemployment or flagging purchasing power?

While nutrition and obesity may join a list of national causes, the issues are taken very seriously in France.

President Sarkozy created a high-profile commission last year to study the issues and make recommendations. The commission’s report has not yet been made public, but a summary of its advice. Among the points that caught my eye:

• Encourage more physical activity (exercise) at and out of school. This is important because the French school day tends to be long and sedentary, not conducive to daily exercise.
• Promote nursing (by mothers of infants). In 2005, 55% of new mothers nursed their baby; French health authorities hope to increase this percentage, to 70%, given that 75% of expecting women say that they want to nurse.
• Install water fountains in public spaces: schools, sports facilities, government buildings, trains stations, airports, work sites.
• Promote Type 80 flour (household flour is Type 45, more heavily refined) and less than 18 grams of sale per kilogram of flour in breadmaking.
• Offer food stamps specifically for fresh fruits and vegetables (€10/month).

The City of Paris (which has administrative responsibility over elementary schools in the capital) has launched its own initiative in favor of nutrition and against childhood obesity. It has a collection of action plans to prevent and treat obesity, none of which seem especialy innovative. What struck me most was this statistic, from a study the city carried out: among third graders, 15.6% –about one in six– are overweight.

This might be the most remarkable aspect of the French campaign against obesity: the problem seems small, by US or UK standards, yet the response in uncontroversial and coordinated.

As an American in Paris, here’s something I never stop noticing: French people are thin.

What I notice most are waist sizes: men seem to wear trousers sized for teens, and women seem especially thin-waisted. I’m not alone in this observation. Others have noticed, and made best-sellers from their investigations.

The French instititute for preventive health and education (French acronym: INPES) has just come out with a survey –the third in a series– with data on eating and exercise. It’s a serious work, with a lot of data.

Where relative thinness is concerned, three points struck me:

1. French people don’t snack. Only 5% of French people (age 15-75) eat repeatedly outside three daily meals. (There’s a definition issue here: having one snack doesn’t count, but eating twice outside meal times counts, for the French, as “snacking”.) The result is generation and age-sensitive: close to 10% of those age 12-25 snack, compared to 2.8% of those age 55-75.
2. French people eat at home. Images of cafés and restaurants aside, most French people eat at home most of the time. Specifically, 65% of French people, age 15 to 75, eat lunch at home. (More than 92% eat breakfast at home and 87% eat dinner at home.) When you consider only people who work, a majority –55.9%– eat lunch at home. Most French people mostly eat home-cooked meals, at home, with their family.
3. French people don’t drink often. The stereotype of French people downing glasses of wine also doesn’t exactly reflect how people live. Only 37.4% of French people (age 15-75) had one or more drinks (with alcohol) the day before they were interviewed. This percentage has fallen consistently over the past decade –44.7% had had at least one drink the day before being surveyed in 1996– and has fallen most for people over 35. This point struck me less for what it says about alcohol and drinking than for its insights into hidden calories.

INED, the French demographics institute, came out with an intriguing report on suicide among the incarcerated. These points struck me:

• The suicide rate among incarcerated men in France is six times higher than the rate among the general male population;
• The French rate has increased over 50 years, from 4 in 10,000 in 1960 to 19 in 10,000 in 2008;
• French prisoners exhibit the highest suicide rate among prisoners in the 15 members of European Union for the period 2002-2006;
• Prison overcrowding does not explain the French suicide rate among the incarcerated;
• In France, suicide is most likely to occur at the beginning of detention. This aggravates the suicide rate among those who are detained before trial or judgment. Among those tried and sentenced, suicide correlates with gravity of the offense committed, with convicted murderers and rapists being most likely to commit suicide.

Granted that there are definition and measurement problems, but there’s important social science still to be done on this subject, in Europe and beyond.