Exit Polling, Need for MRI Scans, Technology Transfer

How Exit Polling Works Guest: David Magleby, PhD, Professor of Political Science, BYU Tomorrow, news media will call the election long before all the ballots are counted. One reason they can do that with confidence is because of exit polls. Utah is considered by some to be a toss-up for the presidential race this time around, because independent Evan McMullin has drawn a fair amount of support. As a result, the Republican candidate isn’t a clear shoo-in to win Utah as has been the case in the past. So, you may actually hear the Utah Colleges Exit Poll cited on some national news outlets tomorrow night.  Did You Really Need that MRI? Guest: Daniel Wolfson, Executive Vice President and COO of American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation For the past decade in American medicine, there’s been a less-is-more movement pushing back against the idea that doctors and patients should pull out all stops, conduct all tests, do all interventions. Maybe you recall a New Yorker article in 2009 that got a lot of attention for highlighting a hospital in Texas called McAllen Medical Center that was found to have the highest health care costs per person in the entire country. The reason was not that the hospital’s patients were sicker than at other hospitals. It was that doctors at McAllen were ordering lots and lots of tests and treatments. But, their patients weren’t made any healthier, for the extra work.  In fact, part of this less-is-more push in medicine is the fact that sometimes extra tests and interventions actually do more harm to a patient. But how do you tell a doctor not to do something a patient wants adamantly? How do you convince a patient not to have a test or intervention when we’re conditioned to believe that, in health and medicine, more is the best approach? These are the goals of an ongoing campaign by the American Board of Internal Medicine called “Choosing Wisely.”  Racially-Segregated Preschools Guest: Erica Frankenberg, PhD, Associate Professor of Education and Demography, Pennsylvania State University, Co-Director of the Center for Education and Civil Rights More American children are going to pre-school, which experts consider a good thing, particularly for children who are economically disadvantaged and need the extra learning boost. But a worrisome trend of racial segregation has emerged in US pre-schools. The typical black or Hispanic preschooler attends a school where more than half of the students are from his or her same race. Conversely, more than a fifth of white students attend preschools that are almost entirely white.  Is Daylight Saving Worth It? Guest: Laura Grant, PhD, Claremont McKenna College It’ll be darker when you get home from work tonight, thanks to that quirky clock-changing thing we do twice a year. What’s the point of Daylight Saving Time? Nearly a dozen state legislatures tried – and failed – to opt out of it last year, so clearly the value is in question. Dr. Strange and Trolls Guest: Rod Gustafson, parentpreviews.com He’s been in a Star Trek movie and the Hobbit series and starred as Sherlock Holmes, so really it was only a matter of time before Benedict Cumberbatch got a superhero movie. The Disney/Marvel movie Dr. Strange did better than expected at the box office over the weekend. Securing the Internet of Things Guest: Dave Brown, Tech Transfer, BYU; Todd Berrett, Managing Director of Infrastructure Services in the Office of Information Technology, BYU There are lots of advantages to this “Internet of Things” as it’s called. There are also serious security concerns: like when hackers tap into baby monitor cameras, or harness the connectivity of blu-ray players and other internet-enabled devices to orchestrate an attack on a key internet service provider. That actually happened a few weeks ago and was a real wake-up call to the industry.