Reading Comprehension (BASIC LEVEL)

VERBAL
Lecture Sheet 6

GRE Reading Practice: Writers in The New York Times

By Kevin Rocci on March 18, 2014 in Reading Comprehension Strategies,

Reading in Context, Resources, Verbal.
When it comes to improving your reading ability and vocabulary, there is no shortcut. To be a better
reader, you have to read and you have to read often. So often we hear from students who have a month
left before their test and are looking for quick ways to improve their Verbal score. Sadly, there is not a
whole lot that can be done in a month besides rote memorization, which we know is not very effective.
Only sustained reading over a long period of time will bring the gains that students need for success.

It is for these reasons that we recommend improving your reading ability even before you begin
preparations for the test. I always tell my students that they need to allocate at least six months to
improving their reading. I tell them to read actively, read often, read material that mimics that of the test,
and read about subjects that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

But where to begin? What counts as decent reading material?

We have offered advice on news sources to read when students want to improve their vocabulary or
reading ability. But trying to find something worth reading in The New York Times of The Atlantic Monthly
can be overwhelming. Students still struggle with making a choice of what to read.

Ultimately, you should find your own favorite columnists and writers to read. Don’t just rely on what I
have to say. Ask others. Read authors that write about subjects you know and subjects you don’t know.
Expand your literary horizons. I have two prescriptions, though, for choosing a journalist or author to read:
make sure they have a wide readership and have been recognized by their peers for excellence in their
field. These are two strong metrics for quality writers.

Note: At the time of writing, The New York Times only allows users to read 10 articles per month.

Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and linguist at Harvard University. He is
one of the more popular and widely-read academics of our time. He often writes opinion pieces for The
NYTimes. He’s also a regular speaker at TED.

All About Evil

The Sugary Secret of Self Control

Mark Bittman is a food writer for at The Times. He focuses on simple, delicious meals and has written a
popular cookbook, How to Cook Everything. In addition to writing recipes, he contributes opinion pieces
about the environment, the food industry, and the politics of food. He also gave a TED Talk.

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Tobacco, Firearms and Food

A Practical Farmer Who Showed the Way

Errol Morris is an Academy-Award-winning documentary filmmaker who writes opinion editorials. He

focuses much of his writing on the nature of truth, knowing, and deception. He is a deeply thoughtful
person writing about culture, film, photography, history, and anything else that captures his attention.

McNamara in Context

Believing is Seeing

Paul Krugman is a Professor at Princeton, contributor to The New York Times, and winner of the Nobel in
Economics. He is a regular columnist, publishing articles every Monday and Friday.

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

David Brooks is an author and columnist for The New York Times. His topics range from politics to
popular culture. He has also given a compelling TED Talk. His articles come out every Tuesday and
Friday.

The Hard and the Soft

Riders on the Storm

Thomas L. Friedman won the Pulitzer Prize three times while at The New York Times. He is an insightful
and powerfully intelligent commentator on international affairs, politics, and economics. His column is
released every Sunday and Wednesday.

A Tea Party Without Nuts

Where Did ‘We’ Go

This list is far from comprehensive and fairly subjective. These are the people I like to read and won’t
necessarily resonate with you. So begin here, but search out people that inspire you and challenge you

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How do I choose articles to read? (GRE)

As you already know, it's very important to read a wide range of articles that cover topics that you find
really interesting and that you find completely dull as well. Thankfully, we've written a great blog on
exactly how to do this and where to find those articles, which you can read here! In case you're in a rush
and want to get straight to reading, here's a few places we recommend:

 The Economist
 The New York Times
 The Atlantic
 Arts & Letters Daily
 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
 SCIENTIFICAMERICA.COM

STRATEGY TO READ ARTICLES

After you choose a few places to read from, look for these features in reading that will benefit
you:

 Broad subject base (the GRE doesn't care what you haven't read, after all!)
 Asserts an opinion or viewpoint (analysis skills can only be developed this way)
 Length (if you can read long articles well the GRE will be a breeze)
 Density (the quicker you get at moving through complex passages with understanding,
the better)

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America's Teenage courts

Where teenagers are judged by others of the same age group
In the small city of Odessa, western Texas, local judicial authorities have reinterpreted the old
legal principle that offenders should be tried by a jury of their peers. Odessa's "Teen Court" is
one of over a thousand such courts in the USA, where teens themselves are responsible for trying
and sentencing teenage offenders. And the results are very encouraging..

The teen court in Odessa, Texas.

In the year 1215, the Norman barons of England drew up an ultimatum that they presented to King
John and forced him to sign. Among other things, the document, called Magna Carta, the great
charter, formally recognized basic human rights, and re-established one of the fundamental
principles of English law — that a man should be judged by his peers, or equals. Trial by a jury
has been a key feature of English law ever since.

When Thomas Jefferson and others drew up the American Declaration of Independence in 1776,
one of the complaints that they made was that the King of England had deprived Americans of
their right to trial by jury. Twelve years later, this right was enshrined in Article III of the new
Constitution of the United States, where it has remained ever since.

But what is a jury of equals? Is a teenager, faced with a jury composed of people his parents' age,
being judged by his peers? Most teens would answer "no".

The idea of "teen courts" has been around in the USA for many years. It was in the 1980s in
Odessa that the Teen Court was first suggested. Realizing that many teenage offenders were

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alienated by a justice system organized and controlled by people of a different generation, the
court in Odessa decided to let offenders opt to be tried by other teenagers.

Many thousands of teens have since been tried by their peers in Odessa, and almost all agree
that it was the right thing to do. Statistics confirm this, as rates of recidivism among teens tried in
different Teen Courts are under 5% (compared to up to 50% with normal courts).

Odessa's Teen Court is one of many now operating in the state of Texas, which in 1990
became the first American state to establish a state-wide organization to develop teen
courts. Until the 1990s, the number of new courts increased slowly; but since the millennium,
hundreds more cities all across the USA have seen that the system works, and have introduced it
in their own community. In 2007, the idea crossed the Atlantic, with the opening of the first teen
court in England, in Preston, Lancashire.

Teen courts operate in just the same way as a real court, the major difference being that the
only professional in the process is the judge. Run by volunteers, the court sits every Tuesday
evening under the control of a local judge, also a volunteer; proceedings are conducted as in a
real court, with teenagers taking the roles of prosecution and defense: a panel of teens sits as
jury, and it is they who propose the sentence they consider to be appropriate.

While there is no possibility of an Odessa teen jury fining an offender or sending him or her to
prison, there is a range of punishments available, including community service, driving classes,
counseling and also jury service in the Teen Court. The range of sentences available reflects the
type of offenses referred to the court, minor misdeeds such as traffic violations, (including
speeding), fighting, vandalism and intoxication. Furthermore, the Court only has the right to
judge other teens who have (a) decided to plead guilty, and (b) agreed to be tried by their peers.
Most other Teen Courts that have been set up operate with similar restrictions, though some,
more controversially, have been given powers to determine guilt or innocence in certain cases,
and even recommend detention.

Teens who opt for trial by the Teen Court, thinking that it will be a soft option, are generally
surprised. A Los Angeles teen jury recently sentenced 14-year old Michael C. to 600 hours (!) of
community service for stealing a car stereo. Judge Jamie Corral, presiding, reduced the sentence
to 200 hours, but Michael still had to spend a lot of his free time for six months doing

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community service as a gardener at Abraham Lincoln High School. "I didn't expect them to be so
hard on me, but I deserved it," he said afterwards.
In 2015, there are well over 1000 teen courts in operation across the United States, and the
number is increasing month by month. Teens, judges and community leaders all agree that the
system is good, and especially good at stopping young offenders going any further down the road
to a life of crime. Evidence shows that young offenders are much more receptive to warnings and
reprimands and punishments delivered by their peers, than to those delivered by "the
authorities".

Finally, it is not only teens who are benefitting from the Teen Court. In Odessa, teenage
offenders have now contributed over 100,000 hours of community service to the city and to
volunteer organizations since the Teen Court was first set up, something that has not gone
unnoticed by local residents. "Because of these youth giving the community service hours back
to the City of Odessa, they have become an effective part of our community," says Tammy
Hawkins, the project's coordinator. "We have found that the kids that are active in the Teen
Court Program have less of a desire to drop out of school. They've found a purpose in their lives,
and in their own neighborhoods they feel safer because they are becoming an active part of the
community."

WORDS
offender: minor criminal - to try: to judge - peer: person of similar situation deprive of : take
away something - enshrined: included - alienated : marginalized - recidivism: reoffending,
committing the same crime again - process: system (this word has no judicial meaning) -
prosecution: lawyers who accuse - fine: impose a financial punishment - guilty: opposite of
"innocence" –

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Hillary CLINTON - the early years

The first woman to be nominated by a major party as a presidential candidate, Hillary
Clinton is a woman who inspires great enthusiasm, or great dislike. This article was
originally written for Linguapress's Spectrum magazine in 1994 by Nicole Bernheim,
former New York correspondent of France's Le Monde newspaper.

Hillary Clinton is certainly the incarnation of the dreams of many American women of her
generation. She has got "everything": a family, a fine career, and a husband who not only
supports her and approves of what she does, but also allows her to use her talents to the full.

Hillary Rodham was born in Chicago in 1947, the daughter of a textile manufacturer. Her
family was comfortably off, but not rich; she had two brothers, and her mother did not work.
At school, she was always a brilliant student, though not the kind of girl who spent all her time
in her books. On the contrary, she spent a lot of time on outside activities, something which is
always greatly appreciated in American schools.

It was while she was still at high school that Hillary began to take an interest in social issues,
working in the poorer districts of town among immigrant families, and helping them to
participate in elections.

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After graduating from high school, she went on to study at Wellesley College, one of the best
universities on the East Coast, where she was elected President of the Students' Union. Photos
taken at the time show her as a fairly plump young woman, dressed in rather shapeless clothes,
and wearing large glasses. Looking smart was not one of her major concerns.

It was at Yale Law School that Hillary first met Bill Clinton, a good looking young man who,
in spite of his reputation as a dilettante, was actually one of the brightest students in his year.
The legend says that Bill finally "noticed" Hillary because she spoke so well.

At the time, Hillary was actively involved in the Women's Liberation movement, and seemed
to be much more interested in her career than in marriage. When, several years later, she was
asked how it was that, after a long complicated relationship, she finally ended up marrying Bill
Clinton, she answered: "Because he was the only guy I dated who wasn't afraid of me!"

Meanwhile, while Bill had gone back to his native Arkansas, intending to follow a career in
politics, Hillary became a brilliant lawyer in Washington, where she took part in the famous
Watergate hearings. Though several major firms of lawyers asked her to join them, she decided
in 1973 to leave Washington and join Bill in Arkansas. They got married in 1975, and Hillary
joined a firm of lawyers in Little Rock (the capital of Arkansas).

In 1979, at the age of 32, Bill Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas, becoming the
youngest state Governor in the U.S.A. A year later, Hillary gave birth to their daughter Chelsea,
named after a favorite hit song of the 1960's.

During Bill's twelve years in office as Governor of Arkansas, Hillary helped him to radically
reform the state's public school system, and establish a school medical welfare system that had
no equivalent anywhere else in the United States.

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As a solitary concession to the powerful conservative lobby in the Deep South, who were not
accustomed to seeing wives working in partnership with their husbands, she agreed to add her
husband's name to her own, and be called Hillary Rodham Clinton just to show that she really
was married.
She also changed her look, began to dress much more smartly, got a new hairstyle and
replaced her glasses with contact lenses. She was ready for Washington.

WORDS:
- comfortably off: moderately rich - to date: to go out with - dilettante: amateur, not a serious
student - - hearings: judicial enquiry - incarnation: real example - lawyer: legal expert,
advocate - manufacturer : maker - plump: moderately fat - social issues : social questions
- solitary: single, just one - students' union : students' association - welfare: aid, social help

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

We Use Less Information to Make Decisions

Than We Think
We live in an age of unprecedented access to information. To buy the right phone, find the best
tacos, or hire the perfect employee, just hop online and do as much research as you need before
choosing. Having so much information at our fingertips has made us more knowledgeable than
ever before.

Or has it? The information age certainly has the potential to improve our understanding. But new
evidence suggests that access to information may work better in theory than in practice. People
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think they will rationally assess all available information before forming conclusions, but then,
with so much information at their disposal, they actually form conclusions nearly right away.
Minds are made up long before we make it through the evidence.

Quicker To Judge Than We Think

In seven experiments, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
my co-author Nadav Klein and I tested the hypothesis that people overestimate how much
information they will assess before making up their minds. In one experiment, 214 participants (a
mix of University of Chicago students and passersby around the city) completed a taste test. First,
they drank one 0.5-ounce sample cup of an unmarked juice. Second, we divided participants into
predictor or experiencer conditions. Predictors were asked to estimate how many additional cups
they would need to drink before making up their minds about whether they liked or disliked the
juice. We compared these estimates with the actual number consumed by experiencers, who drank
as many as they needed to make up their minds. Predictors believed they would wait to drink more
than double the number of cups (three or four on average), compared to the actual number
consumed by experiencers (one or two on average), before deciding whether they liked or disliked
the juice. Participants thought they would wait to form conclusions, but in reality, their minds were
made up at the first few sips.

We replicated these findings in an experiment involving artwork. Two hundred and seven online
participants evaluated sample paintings, all depicting the same general style of art. Again, we
divided participants into predictors or experiencers. Predictors first saw one painting (selected at
random from a pool of 40), and then were asked to estimate how many additional paintings (up to
40) they would need to see before making up their minds about whether they liked or disliked that
style. Experiencers actually viewed a random selection of these painting one by one, and stopped
when they made up their minds. Predictors believed they would wait to view quadruple the number
of paintings (16 or 17 on average) compared to the actual number viewed by experiencers (three
or four on average) before deciding. We know that this speed truly reflected the point when
experiencers made up their minds, rather than general impatience to end the study, because they
were informed beforehand that they would have to stick around to view all paintings regardless of
their response. Their quick stopping point was not simply a sneaky exit strategy.

In a third experiment, we moved to social judgments. Four hundred online participants read about
a variety of social situations, each involving assessing piecemeal evidence. For example, we asked
them to consider: suppose you are a manager assessing the task-to-task performance of a new
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employee. How many good performances would convince you that you have hired the right
person? How many bad performances would convince you to search for someone new? In either
case, you probably think you will wait longer to cast judgment compared to how long it actually
takes you to decide. Participants in our experiment thought they would wait to see many more
good actions before deeming others good actors, and likewise thought they would wait to see many
more bad actions before condemning others as bad actors, than they actually waited to observe in
real time. Whether tracking the outcomes of an employee, the grades of a student, or the behavior
of a child, people’s desire to reward or to punish came through much quicker than they planned.

These experiments all highlight the same psychological trap. People view the mind as a rational
arbiter, assuming that they and others will withhold judgment until they finish flipping through all
the evidence. But the mind isn’t just a passive information processor; it’s also emotional. In reality,
once people begin to experience that evidence in real time, they will inevitably react to it as they
go along. We won’t need to see later information if we already love or hate the very first piece.

One consequence of misunderstanding how fast we judge is that it can be costly. In one experiment,
we tested whether people overestimate the value of long-term product trials. We designed an email
service called “The Daily Cute,” in which users receive an email each morning containing a funny
video and links to share on social media. We recruited 150 online participants to complete a 5-day
trial. At the start of the week, they predicted that each day of the trial would be highly valuable for
figuring out whether they liked or disliked the service. They also stated that they would be willing
to pay more and more money for longer and longer trials. However, as their trial unfolded and we
measured actual ratings of value after each day, a different picture emerged. By about the third
day (on average), users had seen enough to form their judgment. This suggests that for experiences
that don’t actually require much time or effort to evaluate, our intuition to acquire lots of
information might backfire, because we may pay up for something we’ll never use.

If we are quicker to judge than we realize, might we also underestimate the speed at which others
judge us? We conducted a final experiment to test this in the context of job applications. First, 124
Chicago Booth MBA students completed a hypothetical job application, which involved writing
multiple essays about their past management experiences. Second, 124 professional hiring
managers were recruited to evaluate each application, which involved reading through each
applicant’s essays one-by-one and stopping whenever they developed a good sense of this person
as a manager. Critically, the MBA students were instructed to write exactly as many essays as they
believed the hiring managers would read before hitting this point – write too few or too many, and
you lose the job. The MBA students failed. They wrote double the number of essays (about four

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on average) that hiring managers cared to read (about two on average). Evaluators may make up
their minds faster than applicants realize, rendering one’s obsessive efforts to impress unnoticed,
or as in this case, actively harmful.

A Little Planning Goes A Long Way

How much should you sample a product before purchasing? How long should you wait before
giving up on an employee? How hard should you work on your résumé, before others stop
noticing? It’s difficult to know how much information will end up impacting your own or your
audience’s impressions. But a few simple strategies can make it easier.

First, diagnose the problem. Some experiences don’t change much over time. Your tenth sip of a
juice will probably taste like the first. In these cases, you have a prediction problem – fight your
intuition to acquire a lot of information, because you won’t need it. Other experiences are more
complex. Your tenth interaction with a new employee might be nothing like the ones before. In
these cases, you have an experience problem — fight your emotional reaction to stop short,
because things might change. It’s not always obvious which experiences will end up changing over
time, but doing some work beforehand to make an educated guess can pay off.

Second, consider others’ perspectives. It’s compelling to assume that others will notice each and
every perfectly crafted line on our applications, just as we see it ourselves. They probably won’t.
Remember how quickly an audience will size you up. When looking to impress, dedicate most of
your time and energy into fine-tuning some information, rather than worrying and working on
every little piece. Evaluators likely won’t fully process each page of your 20-page résumé – but
will form an impression right at page one.

Third, keep score. You’ve spent your life sampling new information. When have you impatiently
drawn premature conclusions? When have you amassed so much information that it simply built
dust? The more that you can draw on data from your own life, the better you’ll be in knowing
how much to acquire or to share the next time. Chances are that you make up your mind—and
others make up their minds about you—quicker than you care to admit. Knowing this fact will
allow you to paint more realistic expectations moving forward – and, hopefully, help you truly
take advantage of today’s information age.

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4 Reasons Good Employees Lose Their

Motivation
Motivation — the willingness to get the job done by starting rather than procrastinating, persisting in
the face of distractions, and investing enough mental effort to succeed — accounts for 40% of the
success of team projects. Yet managers are often at a loss as to how to effectively motivate uninspired
employees. Our review of research on motivation indicates that the key is for managers to first
accurately identify the reason for an employee’s lack of motivation and then apply a targeted strategy.

Carefully assessing the nature of the motivational failure — before taking action — is crucial. Applying
the wrong strategy (say, urging an employee to work harder, when the reason is that they’re convinced
they can’t do it) can actually backfire, causing motivation to falter further.

These reasons fall into four categories — a quartet we call the motivation traps. Namely, they are 1)
values mismatch, 2) lack of self-efficacy, 3) disruptive emotions, and 4) attribution errors. Each of these
four traps has distinct causes and comes with specific strategies to release an employee from its
clutches.

Here are the four motivation traps and each targeted strategy to help your employees escape them:

Trap 1, Values Mismatch: I don’t care enough to do this.

How this trap ensnares employees: When a task doesn’t connect with or contribute to something
workers value, they won’t be motivated to do it.

How to help an employee out of this trap: Find out what the employee cares about and connect it to the
task. Too often, managers think about what motivates themselves and assume the same is true of their
employees. Engage in probing conversation and perspective-taking to identify what your employee
cares about and how that value links with the task.

There are different types of value which you can draw out. One is interest value, or how intellectually
compelling a task is. For this, find connections between the task and the things that the employee finds
intrinsically interesting. Another is identity value, or how central the skill set demanded by a task is to an
employee’s self-conception. Point out how the job at hand draws on a capacity that they consider an
important part of their identity or role — such as engaging in teamwork, analytical problem solving or
working under pressure.

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Importance value is how important a task is. Identify ways to highlight how crucial the task is to achieve
the team’s or company’s mission. Finally, utility value is a measure of the cost of achieving (and
avoiding) the task versus the larger benefits of achieving. Find ways to show how completing this
particular task contributes to the employee’s larger goals and avoids blowback. Sometimes it may be
necessary to ask an employee to, essentially, hold their nose while carrying out an undesirable task —
making clear to them the future benefit its completion will yield or the problems it will prevent.

When an employee doesn’t value a task at the outset and the values mismatch may not be apparent, a
manager’s best bet is to try to appeal to multiple values. One or more of them may resonate with the
employee.

Trap 2, Lack of Self-Efficacy: I don’t think I’m able to do this.

How this trap ensnares employees: When workers believe they lack the capacity to carry out a task, they
won’t be motivated to do it.

How to help an employee out of this trap: Build the employee’s sense of confidence and competence.
This can be done in several ways. One is to point out times in the past when they’ve surmounted similar
challenges. Perhaps share examples of others just like them who overcame the same challenges in a way
the employee can do, too. Build their sense of self-efficacy with progressively more difficult challenges,
or by breaking down the current task into manageable chunks.

Often, employees who lack self-efficacy are convinced that succeeding at a particular task will require
the investment of far more time and energy than they can afford. Explain that they have the ability to
succeed but may have misjudged the effort required; urge them to invest more effort while expressing
confidence that additional effort will lead to success. It helps if managers offer some extra support as
work gets underway.

Occasionally employees have the opposite motivation trap. They may lack motivation because they feel,
in a sense, overqualified. Employees with inflated self-efficacy pose one of the more difficult
motivational management challenges. Overconfident people often make mistakes, even as they’re
certain they know what they are doing. When they err, they insist that it’s the criteria for judging
success on the task that is flawed, so they take no responsibility for their failures.

When dealing with such employees, it’s important to avoid challenging their ability or expertise. Instead,
demonstrate to them that they have misjudged the requirements of the task, and convince them that it
requires a different approach.

Trap 3, Disruptive Emotions: I’m too upset to do this.

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How this trap ensnares employees: When workers are consumed with negative emotions such as
anxiety, anger, or depression, they won’t be motivated to carry out a task.

How to help an employee out of this trap: Begin in a setting where you cannot be overheard. Tell them
you want to understand why they are upset and engage in active listening. Do not agree or disagree. Be
nonjudgmental by asking what the employee believes is causing them to be upset. Then, briefly
summarize what they said back to them and ask if you have understood. If they say “no,” apologize and
tell them you are listening carefully and to “please try again.” When people feel they have been
understood, their negative emotions soften a bit. It may be useful to tell them that you want to consider
what they told you and schedule a time the next day to discuss. This often helps the person get more
control over their emotions.

Keep in mind that anger is the belief that someone or something external to the person has caused or
will cause them harm. Ask an employee feeling angry to try to reframe their belief about the external as
resulting from ignorance or accident, not intention. Suggest ways they could invest the effort to
eliminate the threat. Depression sometimes results from employees’ belief that they are internally
inadequate in some way that they cannot control. In this case, it often helps to suggest that they are not
“broken” or “inadequate” but only need to invest more effort in effective strategies. Offer your help.
Anxious or fearful employees often respond positively to assistance with their approach to the task as
well as to reminders that they are capable and can succeed with more effort.

If the emotions do not soften with time and effort or if they spring from outside the workplace, for
example, it may be advisable to help the employee access counseling.

Trap 4, Attribution Errors: I don’t know what went wrong with this.

How this trap ensnares employees: When employees can’t accurately identify the reason for their
struggles with a task, or when they attribute their struggles to a reason beyond their control, they won’t
be motivated to do it.

How to help an employee out of this trap: Help the employee think clearly about the cause of their
struggles with a task. Attribution errors are often to blame when employees seem to be finding excuses
not to carry out a task (calling in sick, pleading overcommitment or “not enough time,” trying to foist the
task on colleagues). Helping the employee identify exactly why the task seems insurmountable can help
them move past such avoidance. If they identify a cause that’s out of their control (blaming other
people, for example, or a flaw in themselves that can’t be fixed), suggest other causes that are under
their control, such as the need to adopt a new strategy or to apply a greater level of planning.

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With each of these four motivation traps, the trick is to think more comprehensively about what stops
employees from initiating, persisting, and putting in mental effort. The research suggests that managers
can do more to diagnose the motivation problems of employees. When motivation goes off the rails,
identifying exactly which trap has ensnared your employees — and applying just the right targeted
intervention — can get things moving again.

SCIENTIFICAMERICA.COM

Gene expression in tumor cells and stroma in

dsRed 4T1 tumors in eGFP-expressing mice
with and without enhanced oxygenation.
Abstract
BACKGROUND:

The tumor microenvironment is pivotal in tumor progression. Thus, we aimed to develop a

mammary tumor model to elucidate molecular characteristics in the stroma versus the tumor cell
compartment by global gene expression. Secondly, since tumor hypoxia influences several
aspects of tumor pathophysiology, we hypothesized that hyperoxia might have an inhibitory
effect on tumor growth per se. Finally, we aimed to identify differences in gene expression and
key molecular mechanisms, both in the native state and following treatment.

METHODS:

4T1 dsRed breast cancer cells were injected into eGFP expressing NOD/SCID mice. Group 1
was exposed to 3 intermittent HBO treatments (Day 1, 4 and 7), Group 2 to 7 daily HBO
treatments (both 2.5 bar, 100% O₂, à 90 min), whereas the controls were exposed to a normal
atmosphere. Tumor growth, histology, vascularisation, cell proliferation, cell death and
metastasis were assessed. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting was used to separate tumor cells
from stromal cells prior to gene expression analysis.

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RESULTS:

The purity of sorted cells was verified by fluorescence microscopy. Gene expression profiling
demonstrated that highly expressed genes in the untreated tumor stroma included constituents of
the extracellular matrix and matrix metalloproteinases. Tumor growth was significantly inhibited
by HBO, and the MAPK pathway was found to be significantly reduced. Immunohistochemistry
indicated a significantly reduced microvessel density after intermittent HBO, whereas daily HBO
did not show a similar effect. The anti-angiogenic response was reflected in the expression trends
of angiogenic factors.

CONCLUSIONS:

The present in vivo mammary tumor model enabled us to separate tumor and stromal cells, and
demonstrated that the two compartments are characterized by distinct gene expressions, both in
the native state and following HBO treatments. Furthermore, hyperoxia induced a significant
tumor growth-inhibitory effect, with significant down-regulation of the MAPK pathway. An
anti-angiogenic effect after intermittent HBO was observed, and reflected in the gene expression
profile.

Infertility and the Leaky Pipeline

Difficulty in conceiving a baby should not be allowed to wreck a woman’s scientific career

The challenges of parenthood for working parents are well known and, in STEM (Science,
Technology, Math and Engineering) fields, have been strongly linked to the “leaky pipeline”—the
loss of women from scientific careers at much higher rates than men. In contrast, the challenges
that many women face in trying to conceive a baby, and the implications of these struggles for
retention in STEM careers, remain veiled and stigmatized. This silence around the impacts of
infertility can be largely attributed to societal stigmas and discrimination, especially in STEM
fields where women are in the minority.

Women experiencing infertility often suffer feelings of shame, failure and isolation and couples
struggling with infertility have high rates of anxiety and depression, with many reporting that
infertility is the most upsetting thing to have occured in their lives. Anxiety and depression rates
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associated with infertility are comparable to those associated with cancer or heart attack. People
struggling with infertility need support, but this support has been largely confined to online
groups and whispers among friends. We need to start having open and honest conversations
about the struggles of starting a family if we want to see real changes and make infertility less of
a burden.

Infertility is professionally and legally regarded as a disease. It is diagnosed by failure to achieve

pregnancy after 12 months of trying to conceive unsuccessfully. Approximately one in six
couples in the US are affected by infertility and although infertility affects both men and women,
women bear the brunt of time and cost in the treatment for infertility. Furthermore, cultural
stereotypes often inhibit African-American and Hispanic women from seeking treatment, and
most LGBTQ couples need at least some assistance in their efforts to conceive. Therefore,
infertility, and the challenges it poses, disproportionately affects women—in particular women
of color—and LGBTQ families.

Infertility treatment is extremely time consuming, poses tremendous challenges to mental health,
and is cripplingly expensive because it is often not covered by health insurance. Infertility, like
the frequently discussed “baby penalty,” contributes to the academic “leaky pipeline” by hitting
women at an age when they are most vulnerable in their careers. For women in STEM, this can
be devastating to research productivity due to the time and stress involved with treatment.
Miscarriages, common in general but especially among women dealing with infertility, enact
their own physical and emotional tolls.

The struggle is real

Struggles with infertility pose logistical challenges that can have severe impacts on women’s
careers. Conception has to be timed, which can pose difficulties. Infertility treatments and IVF
(in vitro fertilization) schedules can be intense, requiring daily monitoring during critical
intervals and invasive procedures that must occur at specific times during the treatment cycle.

Together, these issues can conflict with work schedules and work-related travel, which is
common in academic and science careers. Cancelling or rescheduling meetings, stopping
fieldwork and attendance of conferences in disease-prevalent areas (zika, malaria), declining
invitations for seminars and workshop participation, and rearranging other commitments is often
necessary and becomes commonplace during infertility treatments.

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This creates the illusion that the researcher is not serious about science or their career.
Furthermore, those who do not live in cities large enough to have fertility clinics often have to
travel long distances for treatment. All of these issues lead to losses in terms of chances to
conduct important research, connect with colleagues, develop collaborations, and network in the
ways which are crucial to a successful scientific career. Missing out on such opportunities is
particularly harmful to early-career scientists—and these are just the pure timing and scheduling
aspects of infertility, not to mention the physical and emotional tolls these treatments incur.

Women struggling with infertility frequently face these challenges in an environment where they
do not feel comfortable revealing what they are going through. Sometimes, there is already
pressure to not have children. Fear of judgmental and insensitive comments, as well as the
intensely personal nature of the struggle make it difficult for women to be open about infertility
and treatment. The social isolation that this produces contributes to the stress associated with
infertility treatment.

The crippling cost of infertility

In the US, costs for infertility treatment are higher than anywhere else in the world. IVF in the
US currently costs more than $23,000 per cycle on average, and more than half of patients
complete more than one cycle. Most health insurance plans provide no coverage for infertility
treatment in the US, and plans offered by universities and other academic institutions are no
exception. Adoption and fostering also involve a significant investment of time and money,
including many fees that are rarely covered by insurance. The average cost of a private adoption
in the US is $37,000.

Like infertility treatment, adoption also does not guarantee a baby: the current US adoption failure rate
is 20 percent due to situations where the adoption doesn’t go through or failures to match before the
expiration of adoption agency and attorney retainer fees (typically 18 months). For most young families,
these are unimaginably large financial burdens, with enormous risks and uncertainty.

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