Philadelphia City Safety

It's been a few weeks since we've had to write a blog, and in that time I've been deluged with text messages from our school about various muggings or robberies around campus. I am, as are most students, signed up for the emergency alert text message system. But never have I seen it used so frequently! I'm used to one or two events happening a semester that they alert us about, but there were at least 4-5 in the span of a few weeks. And all seemed to center around the same few blocks.

Stranger was the news this weekend about incidents around our area. Just two blocks from my house a car flipped over and damaged several parked cars (luckily not mine...). I don't know why this particular incident happened, and by the time I heard about it and went to go look the car had been removed. Then last night apparently two armed men stole a car around 50th St. and ended up crashing it at 40th and Locust, on Penn's  campus. A shootout with Philadelphia police ensued and one of the men was killed, with the other being taken into custody.

I consider myself lucky over the last four years that I have not been involved in any incidents like these around our area. But I know people who have, and on Saturday night my roommate was walking back to our house from a bar at the time the carjacking/shootout occurred. Thankfully he took a different route home. I'm always torn about what to say to parents of prospective students when they come to admissions events and ask about safety. I think that the area just around campus is relatively safe, but people have to remember that we do live in a large urban environment. Crime happens everyday in the neighborhoods around us, and I think that these events are a good reminder for students to be careful when walking around at night. I won't lecture about all the ways to avoid danger, but the bottom line is to stay in groups and stay on the busier roads (like Spruce St). Both for this holiday season and the rest of your time at school, please be smart when you're off campus and stay safe.

Link to an article (which doesn't really tell much more info because the event was so recent)-
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2010/11/21/1260855/carjacking-ends-on-penn-campus.html

Sleep Research

This week, I thought I'd talk about my job at Penn. I work as a research assistant for a group of insomnia researchers. At the moment, there are four different studies that are going on, each of which focuses on a different aspect of insomnia. The first study is almost over, and is the one I have been working on the longest. It involves the stress response and its role in insomnia. The idea is that if people suffering from insomnia are stressed before going to bed, their sleep will get worse and they will have a different salivary cortisol response to the stressor than healthy sleepers. The fun part of the study, for me, is the "stress" night...where I get to use an electric shock machine to administer a mild shock to the wrist of the participants. That is the initial stressor, as well as the knowledge that they could be shocked up to three times during the night. Before shocking them, of course, I show them that the shock is not that bad by administering it to myself.

The other study I am most involved in is a study examining the treatment of insomnia in cancer survivors. The study compares the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) treatment with or without the use of a drug that is intended to reduce daytime fatigue. CBT-I is supposed to help those who suffer from insomnia manage their sleep habits at night in order to increase their sleep time and their sleep efficiency (which is a measure of time asleep vs. time spent in bed). The drug should help with insomnia by reducing daytime fatigue and allowing the person to actually be tired enough at night to fall asleep. So together these treatments should be better than either one alone. The study is double-blind (of course), with those participants not receiving the medication receiving a placebo instead. My role is mainly in recruitment of participants from the cancer clinic at Penn, as well as consenting/screening participants who seem eligible.

The other two studies I am less involved in, but I will detail in a later post.

Halloween Health Hazards

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. But it is also a holiday that seems to be regarded as dangerous, at least compared  to others like Christmas or Thanksgiving. As a kid, the dangers all centered around trick-or-treating. My mom lectured my sister and I each year before we went out about staying together, only going to lit houses, not entering strangers houses, etc. Then, when we (miraculously) came home unharmed, her attention switched to my beloved candy. Even when I was in high school she still checked each piece for puncture marks (from  poisoned needles?) in the wrapping and any other signs of tampering. Finally, my sister and I had intense negotiations in order to maximize the candies we liked and get rid of anything we didn't before it was all put away and strictly rationed over the next few months (which I always found a way around when my mom wasn't home).


As my friends and I grew older, the dangers of Halloween reversed themselves; instead of being worried about something from the night harming me, my mom became worried that I would go out and harm the neighborhood. Once, during a Halloween party at my house, the police came because we were loud and down the street some other people had been egging houses. To my knowledge, none of the people at my house were involved and the police did believe us...after my mom vouched for us being home all night.


The last few years the dangers associated with Halloween have changed again. This Friday all USP students got an email from the dean warning of the dangers of alcohol assumption, date rape, and walking around at night in the city (presumably at/after a Halloween party). While those concerns are legitimate on any college campus, especially the latter given the number of muggings the last two weeks, it's interesting that Halloween is the only holiday I still get warned about. But as always, I've had a great Halloween weekend and made it home safely at the end...unfortunately with no candy to get me through the rest of the semester.


http://www.suite101.com/content/halloween-health-and-safety-reminders-a296271