06
March
2015
|
05:05 AM
America/New_York

Ohio State News Tips 3/6/15

Ohio State hosts Midwest Slavic Conference – March 13 – 15. The 2015 Midwest Slavic Conference organized by the Center for Slavic and East European Studies, will take place Friday-Sunday, March 13 - 15. It opens with a keynote address by Karen Dawisha (Miami University) on “Is Putin's Russia a Kleptocracy? And So What?” The address begins at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, March 13 in the Faculty Club, 181 S. Oval Drive. To attend, please RSVP to csees@osu.edu. The conference is open to the public. CONTACT: Eileen Kunkler, assistant director, Center for Slavic and East European Studies, kunkler.10@osu.edu, (614) 292-8770.

Spring break checklist: Travel, learn, serve – March 14 – 21. Ohio State’s spring break begins on March 14. Students will fan out across Ohio, the nation and the world to participate in public service projects. The Office of Student Life’s Buck-I-SERV is a weeklong, substance-free community service program with a mission to provide students with a challenging and fun opportunity to lead and learn through direct service experiences. Students will travel to sites and work with numerous service organizations including numerous Habitat for Humanity sites; Constru Casa, Guatemala; Food and Friends, Washington, D.C.; Gay Men’s Health Crisis, New York, N.Y.; God’s Pantry Food Bank, Lexington, Ky; One World Running, Belize City, Belize; College Access in Appalachian Ohio; and many more. SEE: http://buckiserv.osu.edu/.

Expert: Raising tobacco sales age to 21 is best way to prevent lifelong addiction. Raising the minimum age to buy cigarettes to 21 would save lives by preventing adolescents from ever taking up smoking, a new report suggests.
The minimum age to buy tobacco products in most of the country is 18.
In a new white paper released this week, Ohio State University public health experts detail how raising the minimum tobacco sales age would be effective in improving health and note the economic consequences to retailers would be minimal.
The white paper focuses on Ohio, but the results would be the same for any region that raises the minimum sales age, the authors say.“The key point is that if people get through adolescence without smoking, it is highly unlikely they will ever start,” saidMicah Berman, assistant professor ofpublic healthandlawat Ohio State. “The flip side of that is if they do start smoking in adolescence, everything we have learned about teen brain development shows that it will be much harder for them to quit later.” SEE: http://news.osu.edu/news/2015/03/03/tobacco-sales-age/

Gaming for good. A video game created by a team of researchers at The Ohio State University could revolutionize therapy for the more than 2 million people who experience upper extremity motor impairment following a stroke, brain injury, multiple sclerosis or other neurological conditions.
Less than 1 percent of those affected receive constraint-induced movement therapy (CI therapy), which is proven to work better than other interventions and produce long-lasting results. Access to CI therapy is limited due to the treatment’s expense of approximately $9,000 and a lack of trained providers.By incorporating a Microsoft Xbox Kinect body action sensor, the Recovery Rapids game recreates CI therapy and provides an in-home delivery option that addresses access and affordability limitations. “By having rehabilitation at their fingertips, patients will be empowered to drive their own recovery, to maintain their improvements and to continue to progress when clinic-based therapy is no longer accessible to them,” saidRoger Crawfis, associate professor of computer science and engineering, who has worked on the project since it began more than three years ago. SEE: https://engineering.osu.edu/news/2015/03/gaming-good.

The person listed as the CONTACT will have the most current information about the story. Call on our media relations staff for help with any Ohio State story: Jane Carroll, 614-292-5220 or carroll.296@osu.edu; Liz Cook, 614-292-7276 or cook.17@osu.edu; Gary Lewis, 614-688-2048 or lewis.330@osu.edu; or Amy Murray, 614-292-8385 or murray-goedde.1@osu.edu.