Australian Open 1/26/11

Ben Siegel and Celeste Padula

The Australian Open is one of the four tennis tournaments that make up the Grand Slam, the others being the French Open, the US Open and Wimbledon. They are the biggest and most prestigious tournaments each year, but the Australian Open holds the record of the highest ever single-day night/day attendance. Australia has hosted a tennis tournament since 1880, and in 1969 the tournament was first called the Australian Open. It is the first Grand Slam tournament of each year, held in the middle of the Australian summer, on the last fortnight of the month of January.

The Australian open used to be played on grass until the year 1988, when they switched to hard ground courts. Mats Wilander is the only male player to have ever won on grass and hard courts. The two main courts used in the tournament have been named Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena.

Even with all the flooding that has happened in Australia recently, the tournament will still be held in an Australian city. Currently, 5 different Australian cities have ever held the Open and two New Zealand cities, despite the name, the ‘Australian’ Open.

This year, as in the past several years, American tennis fans have hoped that Andy Roddick, the top ranked American man, could win the tournament, even though there are many other good younger male players. There have been a lot of discussions and comments made by former top players about whether or not the American men can ever be the top ranked players again. A lot of pressure is always placed on Roddick.

Two big stars of the Australian Open are Federer and Nadal. Former American tennis star Andre Agassi said, “It is not brain surgery to realize how much they’ve (Federer and Nadal) dominated,” Agassi told NPR. “But what I am sort of suggesting across the board, globally speaking, is that tennis has gotten much more competitive.”

Agassi also stated that court surfaces are a reason that the American men are not able to keep up with some of the best players from around the world. Americans tend to play with a Clay court instead of Hard courts used in the Australian Open. Clay slow down the ball and produce a high bounce, taking away the advantage of big serves. Clay courts are cheaper than the other types of court like Hard and Grass. Learning how to play tennis on a Clay court is a disadvantage to Americans because out of the four Grand Slam tournaments, the French Open is the only to use Clay courts.

Andy Roddick, the last American man in the 2011 Australian Open Draw, lost in the fourth round to Stanislas Wawrinka. This is the first time since 1987 that there has not been an American man in the quarterfinals of the tournament. At the time of the loss, ESPN analyst Patrick McEnroe said that, “He [Roddick] has been thoroughly dominated tonight.”

While there are always some upsets in every tennis tournament, most people predict that Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will play each other in the final round for the championship. Nadal is ranked number 1 in the world. He has won the last 3 Grand Slams and is going for four, which would mean winning the Australian Open. The last person who won the four Grand Slams in a row was Rod Laver in 1969. It looks like Nadal could do it but the last time Nadal lost in a Grand Slam event was in the quarterfinal round in the 2010 Australian Open. Since Rod Laver, the Grand Slam record holder, has a stadium named after him, so a win by Nadal could give him one as well.

www.espn.com

http://www.australianopen.com/en_AU/event_guide/history.html

http://tennis.fanhouse.com/2010/09/03/from-the-baseline-us-mens-tennis-searching-for-answers

http://www.australianopen.com/en_AU/news/articles/2011-01-24/201101241295867813865.htm

http://www.australianopen.com/en_AU/news/articles/2011-01-24/201101241295867813865.html

http://www.wtatour.com/page/Tournaments/Info/0,,12781~836,00.html

http://www.australianopen.com/en_AU/news/articles/2011-01-23/201101231295746864454.html

http://tennis.india-server.com/australian-open/history.html

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/16/132975282/Flooding-Doesnt-Dampen-Australia-Open

World Today

Ben and Celeste

Despite the recent news about the potential risks of the Measles, Mumps, Rubella vaccine (MMR), there are many benefits of the vaccine, which seem to cancel out many of the risks. As with all vaccines, the most significant benefit is not getting the illness and the side effects are typically mild. Fewer than one in a million suffered a severe allergic reaction from the MMR vaccine. However, if one doesn’t vaccinated and, for example, does get measles the risks are; developing a rash, cough, and a fever. In a more severe case one may contract pneumonia, seizures, or even death.

In 1998 a British surgeon named Andrew Wakefield wrote an article that was published in the British Medical Journal where he claimed that there was a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. Now scientists have concluded that this was a deliberate misrepresentation. It has now been shown that a law firm hired Dr. Wakefield to provide scientific evidence that the vaccine caused autism. That firm paid him $750,000 for his work, which it now has been shown was false. Mr. Wakefield, also known as Dr. Wakefield until the British General Medical Council stripped Mr. Wakefield of his doctor license, published an article in The Lancet in 1998 saying that the MMR vaccine could cause autism for your child. Last year in February, The Lancet retracted the article after all the controversy it was getting, but perhaps a little to late.

“When his article was published, all the parents took it very seriously,” said Alison Singer on CNN. “Taking away the vaccine didn’t lower the risk of autism, but made the children more vulnerable to other diseases.” After the article triggered a boycott of the MMR vaccine in Britain, the immunization rates crashed to 80 per cent.

Mr. Wakefield is now at the possible risk of criminal charges. In his study on autism, Mr. Wakefield had ‘in an unmistakably intentional way, altered the data to produce a result that wasn’t there,’ said the BMJ. Over two-dozen other studies prove that Mr. Wakefield must have changed something to get this false answer. Mr. Wakefield, though, continues to defend himself, saying that he didn’t transform the answer into something else, and that he would never do such a thing.

Dr. Richard Besser (my best friends dad!), ABC News Senior Health and Medical Editor, recently wrote an article entitled “The Fallout of Fruad” about Dr. Wakefield’s fraudulent study. Dr. Besser stated, “I’ve worked around the globe and have watched children die from measles, meningitis, tetanus and other diseases that could have been prevented had there been access to vaccines.” While Besser was clearly bothered by Wakefield’s study questioning the vaccine safety, he also stated that, “the journal had a responsibility to more thoroughly review a paper presenting such a novel theory.”

Even though Dr. Wakefield’s study has been shown to be false, there are parents of autistic children who will always believe that the cause of the autism was a vaccine or a combination of vaccines. A lot of research money is being spent on finding out the cause of autism and how to prevent and cure this disease. Hopefully, a cure and treatments will be found, and that not too many parents will shy away from giving vaccines to their kids. The benefits of vaccines have proven to far outweigh the risks.

It is hoped that parents will be reassured that vaccines don’t cause autism. Dr. Besser said, “study after study that tried to verify Wakefield’s hypothesis found no connection between vaccines and autism. Scientifically, the issue has been laid to rest. Convincing the general public of the safety of vaccines is a task that may fall to those experts who take up the cause in the popular media.”

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Editorials/1221024.html

http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/07/the-mystery-of-autism/?iref=allsearch

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/door-closed-on-autism-vaccine-health-scare/story-e6frg12c-1225983434121

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-02/health/lancet.retraction.autism_1_andrew-wakefield-mmr-vaccine-and-autism-general-medical-council?_s=PM:HEALTH

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/autism-mmr-vaccine-study-author-andrew-wakefield-hits-back/story-e6frg12c-1225983487308

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40930256/ns/health-mental_health/

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Autism/dr-bessers-notebook-autism-vaccine-link-fraud/story?id=12555692

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002026.htm

Ben and Celeste

January 5, 2011

Conflict in Ivory Coast

On October 31, 2010, Alassane Ouattara challenged Laurent Gbagbo for the Presidency of Ivory Coast. This election was very close and ended with a run-off that was held on November 28, 2010. The runoff was very close, and in the end the country’s top elections officer declared that the former president, Laurent Gbagbo, had lost his power to Alassane Ouattara. Gbagbo, mad at losing his presidency, refused to give up his power. As a result of Gbagbo’s reaction to the election and his anger, the people of Ivory Coast are taking sides and causing violence in the streets. The natives there are scared that they will witness and be a part of a second civil war.

The day after the news of Ouattara’s win, the head of the Constitutional Council, a close ally of Gbagbo, threw out the vote totals from parts of the north (the base of Ouattara’s support) and claimed that Gbagbo was the winner, causing both men to claim presidency.

Then another sign of Gbagbo’s anger over his 45% to 55% loss to Ouattara was when he then closed the borders down and blocked all foreign television stations. The next night 8 people who supported Ouattara were shot and killed by automatic-weapon-toting gunmen at an opposition party headquarters.

The former president still has support over the army and is brushing aside threats to leave office from neighboring countries, which are expected to have to go to using military force if Gbagbo doesn’t leave soon. Ouattara is now barricaded in a hotel with the help of the United Nations peacekeeping troops, angered by Gbagbo’s stubbornness.

Since most of the citizens are not armed, they have cleverly decided to bang their pots and pans together to make it sound like gunshots. One lady named Edwige Tonete, who is so scared to even step outside of her house, talked to CNN about these recent days in Abidjan. Edwige Tonete is just old enough to remember the last recent civil war in Ivory Coast, which took place in 1958. She told the CNN reporters, “I don’t want to live like we did.” Tonete speaks for all Ivorian people when she says that, those that lived through the last civil war and those that were either not born or not old enough to recall it. Without saying anything specific about the conditions during the last civil war, it was clear from Tonete’s tone and the fear in her voice that no one would want to live through something as frightening as a civil war.

Not surprisingly at all, the United States and a few other countries have stepped up in this situation of horror in Ivory Coast. They have recruited a large number of soldiers to help with a United Nations peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast. Another thing that the U.S has done alongside the U.N, the European Union, the African Union, and some West African states is create a group called ECOWAS, Economic Community Of West African States, which has gotten together with the electoral commission to peacefully convince to Gbagbo and his supporters that Alassane Ouattara is the winner of the election, and that Ouattara is now the President of Ivory Coast.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/23/AR2010122305481.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/world/africa/04ivory.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=ivory%20coast&st=cse

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-30/world/ivory.coast.impact_1_ivory-coast-laurent-gbagbo-abidjan?_s=PM:WORLD

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/world/africa/03ivory.html?_r=2