George Washington University reached a settlement on Wednesday with a former student who sued the school for barring him from campus on the basis of his unstable mental condition. In October 2004, Jordan Nott checked himself into GWU hospital due to depression and suicidal thoughts, according to the Washington Post. Hours later, the school notified Nott that he would not be allowed in his residence, leading to his withdrawal from the school. GWU spokeswoman Tracy Schario said that the university has been reviewing its policies and is expected to announce a revised policy soon, Insidehighered.com reported.
Making college more affordable ranked high on the list of platforms that would cause voters aged 18 to 30 to vote Democratic, according to a poll conducted by Celinda Lake, a political strategist for the Democratic Party. Lake, who is also the president of Lake Research Partners, reported that if Democratic candidates could offer solutions to the rising cost of higher education, students would get out and vote Democratic. The poll's respondents ranked the issue of "education and the cost of college" above the economy and Iraq in terms of importance. For 17 percent of voters, making college more affordable was the number one issue of focus. Seventy percent of individuals surveyed believed that college affordability should be discussed more by politicians.
Early CT scan detection of lung cancer, followed by immediate treatment, increases the chances that patients survive the disease, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine this Wednesday. When traditional chest x-rays can detect the cancer, it is often already at its most malignant stage. Dr. William Black, a radiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, remained skeptical about the study's conclusions because it lacked a control group. Black is in the midst of a longitudinal study due out in late 2009 or early 2010 called the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial. The project is funded by the National Cancer Institute and follows 50,000 smokers, comparing death rates of patients who received CT scans and others who only received traditional chest x-rays.
