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Virginia Richardson, College of Social Work

November 18, 2009

How does caregiving affect a person’s health?
Caregiving is an increasingly important issue as people live longer and die from chronic illnesses more often than in the past. Although there are many gifts that come from caring for a loved one who is ill, spousal caregivers also confront many challenges. Caregiving is especially stressful when loved ones suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or some other protracted illness. Some caregivers develop adverse psychological and physiological effects especially if their caregiving is protracted, they become socially isolated, they have limited family supports or they care for spouses who suffer before dying. Some spousal caregivers develop complicated grief reactions that affect their well-being and immune systems and increase their likelihood of illness, depression and hospitalization.

I am currently working with several other researchers to test a new model of bereavement, the Dual Process Model of Bereavement, that Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands proposed 10 years ago. The first empirical findings will be reported in a special issue of Omega: Journal of Death and Dying in 2010.

And during the November 2009 meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, a group of us will present our findings about the physiological stress effects of caregiving during bereavement. We use longitudinal data from the Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) study that was collected by the University of Michigan. These data include interviews with more than 1,000 older couples, which were conducted once before bereavement and six months, 18 months and 48 months after bereavement, and urine and blood samples taken before and after bereavement. We found that spouses who were involved in long-term caregiving had higher levels of cortisol and other stress hormones 18 months after bereavement than spouses who were not caregivers. We found that levels of stress hormones were significantly higher among bereaved spouses than among a control of similarly matched older married persons. Although others have found that caregiving can cause adverse stress reactions, these data show that the stress reactions are strongest for those whose spouses died long, protracted deaths and presumably required extensive caregiving.

What’s being done to help these caregivers?
In future research by an inter-university partnership between researchers from OSU’s College of Social Work, including assistant professors Holly Dabelko-Schoeny and Keith Anderson, and Miami University’s Scripps Gerontology Center, we plan to identify and evaluate the community services and other supports that most effectively reduce caregivers’ stress and prevent complicated grief reactions during bereavement. If we can strengthen the effective supports and determine evidenced-based interventions, we may be able to reduce complicated grief reactions among those at greatest risk. Early intervention during the most stressful times of caregiving should enhance bereaved spousal caregivers’ well-being, strengthen their immune systems and prevent them from becoming ill, ultimately reducing their need for medical care and health care costs. However, this requires a longitudinal research design that allows us to monitor participants for many years.

Tim Haab, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics

November 4, 2009

What are the basics of the recent energy policy proposals in Congress?
There are two energy bills moving through Congress right now: The American Clean Energy and Security Act in the House of Representatives (cosponsored by Waxman-Markey) and the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act in the Senate (sponsored by Boxer-Kerry). The meat of both energy policy proposals is a Cap and Trade program for carbon dioxide emissions — a principal greenhouse gas to which climate change is attributed — in the US. Cap and Trade is a program for capping total carbon dioxide emission and creating a market for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions among potential polluters. Regulators decide the total amount of CO2 society desires (the Cap) and then allocates permits or allowances to emitters totaling that amount. These allowances are fully marketable commodities (the Trade).

What are the potential economic impacts of a national CO2 Cap and Trade system?
There is no way around the reality that a Cap and Trade system (or any CO2 reduction regulation for that matter) will raise carbon-intensive energy prices and this rise in energy prices will trickle through in some way to most end products. As with the production of any final product, raising the price of an essential input — which in this case, CO2 can be thought of as an essential input into the production of energy and most other final products — will raise the price of the final products. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the new prices will, if designed correctly, reflect the full social cost of energy production, including the costs of climate change.
Preliminary results from National Science Foundation-funded research that I have been involved in with Professors Bhavik Bakshi and Prem Goel indicates that a carbon allowance price of $.05 per kilogram of carbon — a carbon price consistent with the price increase expected under either the House or Senate version of the Cap and Trade program — will result in a 15 percent increase in the price of coal-fired electricity and a 10 percent increase in the price of petroleum-fired electricity.

Why should Ohio care?
The three sectors most impacted by a carbon pricing scheme, manufacturing, transportation and coal fired electricity, constitute 24 percent of Ohio’s GDP. Comparing that to the national average for these three of 17 percent, it is clear that Ohio is heavily invested in impacted sectors relative to other states. Ohio is currently among the nation’s least invested states in renewable energy production. A strong case can be made for carbon allowances to be allocated in such a way that the resulting redistribution of revenues from energy production results in increased investment in renewable energy production in Ohio, thereby reducing the economic burden.

Jared Gardner, English/Film studies

October 21, 2009

How has the rise of the DVD changed the way films are taught?
When I started out studying film, VHS wasn’t even widely available for most classic titles, so teaching film required ordering films from 16mm rental companies. There was little time to stop and study the film, and in fact freezing a film to get a specific shot for close analysis required specialized equipment that most of us didn’t have. By the time I got to graduate school, VHS was everywhere and more titles were available. For the first time we could show clips, revisit sequences, etc. But there were downsides to VHS as well: Most of them panned-and-scanned the original film ratio to fit a television, destroying the original composition of the cinematography. The quality of the image was always vastly inferior to original film. DVD transformed film classrooms, allowing access to anywhere in the film, perfect stills, slow-motion, zoom, etc.

For me, the best advantage as a teacher is being able to respond to a question or insight from my students in class by going promptly to the scene in question. In the DVD age, students are used to re-watching films, zooming in or freezing on shots that particularly capture their imagination.

How has the DVD changed the film industry?
In countless ways, still to be measured. Increasingly the bulk of studio revenue from a film comes from DVD sales, not from theatrical release. So filmmakers and studios are starting to think about audiences less as passive spectators in the picture palace on opening night and more as a new kind of audience, watching on TV or laptops with a remote control in hand. As filmmaking increasingly merges with the small screen, everything from cinematography to screenwriting to editing changes, inevitably. The full measure of these changes won’t be clear for a generation, but we can already see some clear changes in, for example, the rise of the “cinema of complexity” (or “puzzle films”) specifically designed for viewers to watch more than once, to hunt through for clues, etc.

What are some benefits and detriments to using film as a teaching tool?
For me, film is a rewarding teaching tool for a number of reasons, perhaps foremost because my students come to class — even if it is their first film course — already with highly developed powers of visual analysis. And there is a unique pleasure to consuming our primary text together, in class, something that can’t be duplicated when I am teaching a triple-decker nineteenth-century novel, for example. The biggest challenges tend to be technical ones: A projector bulb goes out in the middle of a screening, I can’t get the lights to shut off for a screening or the sound system shorts out on me. But we have terrific support from classroom services here, and they can usually solve most of our technical problems quickly.

Aparna Dial, program director in energy and sustainability

October 7, 2009

What can I do from my desk to help with the campus green initiatives?
The Ohio State University, as a flagship of public education and research and as a function of its commitment to sustainability, has the responsibility to be a leader in addressing sustainability by setting expectations for the conduct of our campus community. The commitment to campus sustainability is a responsibility shared by each and every member of our campus community. Here are some guidelines that each of us can follow:
• Shut off all non-essential lighting particularly in classrooms, restrooms and office space when not in use particularly during nights and weekends. Shut off artificial lighting when natural light is sufficient for the task at hand.
• Purchase and use environmentally friendly products such as energy-efficient appliances and lighting fixtures with features enabled.
• Turn off energy-consuming devices, such as personal computers, fax machines, printers, copiers, other office equipment, electric space heaters and window air conditioners when not in use — particularly during nights and weekends.
• Dress appropriately for the season and expect office and academic spaces to be at 70°F and 76°F during the heating and air conditioning seasons respectively.
• Report all issues such as leaks, dripping faucets and fixtures that do not shut off, energy issues such as overheating and overcooling of building areas to Service2Facilities by calling 292-HELP (Medical Center call 293-8645).
• Reduce waste and conserve resources by making double-sided copies only and printing only when necessary.
• Recycle. Use the campus recycling bins for recyclable items which include printed and written paper, bottles and cans (fod.osu.edu/recycling).
• Reuse. Check with OSU Surplus (8help.osu.edu/3774.html) for your office furniture needs or for donating unwanted furniture items or office equipment such as computers rather than throwing it away, and set up a storage area in your office for used office supplies so they can be reused by others.
• Dispose of chemicals and chemical waste appropriately by calling 292-1284 or requesting a pickup at ehs.ohio-state.edu/secure.
• Conserve water whenever possible.
• Use sustainable transportation modes and options such as walking, biking, car pooling and public transportation whenever possible.

If everyone who works at OSU does as you suggest, what would that mean in terms of effect?
Mahatma Gandhi said, “We must be the change we seek.” Seeds of change are sprouting all over campus. Sustainability is a team sport; it is not possible for one individual or even a department to create institutional change — it takes everyone’s buy-in and participation to make a real change. This is completely consistent with President Gee’s mandate of one Ohio State University. If we all do our part, OSU will become a learning and living laboratory for the practice and development of sustainability. These actions will have positive economic, societal and environmental impacts. For instance, we will achieve our 40 percent recycling goal, we will reduce our annual utility bill for the Columbus campus (which is expected to be almost $70 million for fiscal year 2010) and we will reduce our campus carbon footprint. We are going through tough economic times. In a period where we are struggling to generate resources, one of our most effective weapons is to conserve and efficiently use the resources that we have.

John Gray, Fisher College of Business

September 23, 2009

What are outsourcing and offshoring?
Good question; the terms are often misused. Outsourcing refers to the act of turning over an activity (e.g., manufacturing, IT, call center) to a separate company, regardless of the location in which the activity is performed. Offshoring refers to the act of locating an activity in a separate (usually low-wage) country. Offshore outsourcing refers to doing both.

What are the trends in outsourcing, offshoring and offshore outsourcing?
Outsourcing and offshoring have been around for a long time and they are here to stay. Outsourcing has increased in the last two decades for various reasons, including companies being encouraged to focus on their “core competence,” the increasing technological complexity of products and service offerings (making it difficult for one firm to be the best at everything) and technological advances that have made the management across organizational boundaries easier. Offshoring has also been increasing for many years, due to liberalization of trade policies, ease and costlessness of information transmission due to the Internet as well as the improvement of capabilities and infrastructure in many low-cost countries. High shipping costs due to oil prices in 2008, a spate of quality recalls since 2007, issues with intellectual property, rising costs in China and other destinations as well as a feared loss of innovation capability have all caused some rethinking of offshoring. Even GE’s CEO has recently called for a reindustrialization of America. Overall, it seems that the growth in offshoring is slowing to some degree.

What are some of the downsides?
The benefits are fairly clear, at least with offshoring, which usually benefits firms through lower costs and/or learning about a potential new market. Outsourcing often is about cost, but is also about getting specialists to perform work better than can be performed in-house. The potential risks of both outsourcing and offshoring are numerous but often are harder to quantify and articulate than the benefits. For example, my research has shown that both offshoring and outsourcing can pose a quality risk, which is difficult to quantify. Both outsourcing and offshoring create distinct coordination challenges. Outsourcing involves dealing with a separate company with its own objectives. Providers have been known to sell their services below cost to win the business, especially in situations where the buyers will be locked in to a relationship due to the necessity of relationship-specific investments and/or the lack of a competitive provider market. Offshoring also poses numerous risks. With manufactured goods, there is increased risk of supply disruption due to the sheer length of the supply chain as well as possible port shutdowns, etc. And shipping costs are a larger percentage of costs and are subject to change due to fluctuations in oil prices.

Further, exchange rate fluctuations and local tax policy can have a significant impact on profitability. For example, the Chinese government (as of 2008) was phasing out the tax refunds it gave to many traditional manufacturing industries. These refunds were on the order of 10 percent of sales — a big change. And the rapidly evolving local labor market can cause problems. Wages have increased steadily in China in the last few years. Numerous firms who have offshored IT work to India have faced extensive employee turnover — quite detrimental in knowledge-intensive work. All in all, the risks and downsides are real but often underappreciated. Much of my research has been to rigorously identify and quantify these risks, as well as approaches to mitigate them. However, the presence of these risks does not mean that offshoring and outsourcing are not often the right thing to do — the savings and other benefits often far outweigh these risks.

Boyce Lancaster, WOSU Public Media

July 15, 2009

How well does classical music resonate with today’s listeners?
Classical music listening is like drinking wine — you don’t have to be an expert, you just have to know what you like. Continue reading ‘Boyce Lancaster, WOSU Public Media’

Gregory Travalio, Law

June 3, 2009

 

Why is there such a debate over what constitutes torture or enhanced interrogation techniques?

 

Continue reading ‘Gregory Travalio, Law’

David Stebenne, History

May 21, 2009

Has the Republican Party become too conservative to compete effectively at the national level? Continue reading ‘David Stebenne, History’

Category: Ask the Expert