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A dozen sites
I'm diggin'


1. Some have called Seesmic "YouTube meets Facebook." It's a social networking site with mega video capability. What if news sites allowed people to post comments via video rather than just text?

2. Blogger.com is better than ever now that you can post vertical photos. And Google Docs has upgraded its feature that enables you to embed a presentation in your blog.

3. As ABC's John Stossel explained, "Intrade is set up like a commodities market where buying and selling goes on 24 hours a day. Instead of betting on the price of copper or oil, you can bet on politics, economics, the weather, pop culture, etc."

4. Msnbc.com's NewsWare site includes games, widgets and tons of other stuff.

5. iCue is a new NBC News site that uses archived news and political video in educational ways.

6. See how much the airlines will ding you for an extra bag or overweight luggage.

7. I have been a big fan of Snapz Pro X as a screen and video capture device, but I may be falling in love with ScreenFlow.

8. My 300 or so favorite online resources and news ideas for journalists.

9. Virtual Gumshoe offers investigative links to help you find people, search criminal records and more.

10. RetailMeNot delivers more than 13,000 discount coupons to online sites. Do not buy ANYTHING online without checking this site first to see if you can get a discount.

11. Finally, a way to get those camera lights off your video cameras so you are not blasting the subject with light. The Xtender looks xcellent.

12. A Final Cut editing tutorial.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.





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Should We Believe Those Alarming Teen STD Stats?
I wonder if we should be stating so definitively that one in four teen girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease.

The finding was released this week at a big STD prevention conference in Chicago. (See the report.)

The Associated Press reports:

At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.

A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls aged 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls -- nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] found.


The study that has been so widely reported nationwide was based on a survey of 838 girls, aged 14 to 19, who took part in a 2003-04 government health survey. The analysis was conducted by CDC researcher Dr. Sara Forhan.

Is 838 a large enough sample to draw national conclusions with the authority that media are stating? Is there no margin of error here? Shouldn't the stats be put in some perspective?
 
Similar stats have been around for years:

In the U.S., 1 in 4 sexually active teens become infected with an STD every year.2 Some common STDs are chlamydia, gonorrhea, genital warts (also known as HPV -- human papillomavirus), and herpes. (Facts in Brief: Teen Sex and Pregnancy, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York, 1996).

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has STD fact sheets available here.

The Wall Street Journal points out that "STD" may not be as precise a phrase as some think it is. It does not always mean a raging case of herpes. A large percentage of the people who have STDs may not even know it because sometimes the conditions clear up on their own.

The WSJ reports:

The majority of those cases are infections with strains of a virus, human papillomavirus, that are associated with genital warts and cancer. But most people who get infected with HPV never know it, because the virus goes away without causing any health problems. "It is important to realize that most HPV infections clear on their own," noted a summary of the study that the CDC emailed to us.

Indeed, several common infections lumped into the big bin labeled "STD" can have mild or no effects on many patients -- an issue that has prompted some leaders in the field to call for a dialing back of the nomenclature. The home page of the American Social Health Association says:

The concept of "disease," as in STD, implies a clear medical problem, usually some obvious signs or symptoms. But in truth several of the most common [sexually transmitted infections] have no signs or symptoms in the majority of persons infected. Or they have mild signs and symptoms that can be easily overlooked. So the sexually transmitted virus or bacteria can be described as creating "infection," which may or may not result in "disease." This is true of chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, and human papillomavirus (HPV), to name a few.


Posted at 10:08:43 AM

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