Today I have added some pictures to my blog. I figured out how to do it without messing up the format. It's a slower process, but it's doable, so I'm going to try to include some pictures from now on. Not all articles have pictures, but I tried to get as many pictures as I could. I hope you all enjoy them! Feel free to leave comments at the bottom of the page. :)
Today, I would like to point out something interesting to me. I have noticed that often a person's name somehow relates to a point in their life when they are featured in the news (their 15 minutes of fame). For instance, today there is an article about a young man named Jake Falls. He is featured because he helped save a young woman who was in danger of being swept into a dam. The picture of the dam looks like man made water falls. And so we see that Jake Falls 15 minutes of fame is coincidentally (cosmically?) connected to his fate.
I may not be able to post tomorrow, though I will try. Tomorrow evening my husband arrives...so I may get a little tied up. ;) Anyway, I hope you all enjoy today's articles and pictures. :)
Today's Top 5:
1. Opting Out Revolution a Myth: Study Shows Steep Gains for Women, Mothers (Eurekalert.org)
2. US Scientist Wins Finnish Award for Drug Delivery Systems (New Kerala)
3. Honolulu No. 1 Quality Place to Live in US (Honolulu Star Bulletin)
4. Fossils Found in Tibet by FSU Geologist Revise History of Elevation, Climate (esciencenews.com)
5. Phoenix Lander Has an Oven Full of Martian Soil (Physorg.com)
Honorable Mentions:
1. Scenes of Nature Trump Technology in Reducing Low Level Stress (University of Washington News)
2. Teenager Keeps His Cool as he Rescues Girl from Rushing water (The Yarmouth County Vanguard)
3. Size 12 Woman Wins Miss London, Will Compete for Miss England Title (Daily Mail UK)
1. Opting Out Revolution a Myth: Study Shows Steep Gains for Women, Mothers
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/asa-oor061008.php
11 Jun 2008
Sociological research debunks “opting out” trend; shows rising employment rates for professional women with children
WASHINGTON, DC — Contrary to the popular perception of a so-called "opting out revolution," new sociological research from the June issue of the American Sociological Review reveals that professional women's employment rates have continually pushed higher over time, and that the employment gap between mothers and childless women is shrinking.
To determine the truth behind the opting out phenomenon described in mass media reports, sociologist Christine Percheski examined trends among college-educated women born between 1906 and 1975 and found that professional women's employment levels have made steep gains over time, especially for mothers of young children and women in historically male professions.
Despite anecdotal reports of successful working women returning to the home to assume child care responsibilities, less than 8 percent of professional women born since 1956 leave the workforce for a year or more during their prime childbearing years, according to the study.
Percheski's research shows that the number of women with young children who work full-time year-round has increased steadily, growing from a rate of 5.6 percent of women born 1926 to 1935 (referred to as the "Baby Boom Parents" by Percheski), to 38.1 percent of women from Generation X (born 1966 to 1975). More professional Generation X mothers of young children were working full-time year-round than their counterparts in any previous generation.
Percheski finds that among mothers of older children (those age 6 to 18), full-time employment is the norm for professional women of Generation X.
When examining general labor force participation rates, Percheski finds even more drastic growth. About a third of women with young children from the Baby Boom Parents group participated in the labor force while their children were under age 6, but the rate increased to a little more than three-quarters for Generation X mothers of young children.
According to Percheski, the employment gains of recent cohorts do not seem to have been achieved through reductions in fertility, as fertility levels have remained similar across women born from 1946 to 1975.
Not only are more women with children working, but Percheski's research shows a trend of women working longer hours. The percentage of professional women working more than 50 hours a week increased from less than 10 percent of women born before 1935 to more than 15 percent for most women born after 1956. Long hours were more common even for mothers of young children. Ten percent of Generation X mothers with young children worked more than 50 hours a week; but just over 1 percent of their Baby Boom Parent counterparts worked more than 50 hours a week. For those with older children, the rate was 15 percent of Generation Xers working long hours versus about 2 percent of Baby Boom Parents doing so.
Percheski also examined the characteristics of professional, college-educated women in their main reproductive years, ages 25 to 39, who were not employed or enrolled in school the previous year. Although the vast majority of non-working women have children at home, Percheski found that an increasing percentage of women in the younger groups she studied did not. Fewer of these non-working women were married as well. Percheski asserts that this is evidence of the weakening influence of children and marriage on women's employment rates.
"Contrary to an opt-out revolution, professional women—including mothers of young children—are working more than ever," said Percheski. "Despite this increase in women's employment, we can not assume that combining professional work and family life is easy for most women. Indeed, many working women successfully combine these roles by making great personal sacrifices, including curtailing their sleep, civic involvement or leisure time."
Percheski used cross-sectional data from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey to examine trends by 10-year birth cohorts of college-educated professional and managerial women in the United States from 1960 to 2005. She analyzed labor force participation; full-time, year-round employment; and work hours exceeding 50 hours per week. She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and the Office of Population Research at Princeton University.
Sociologists have also studied the factors that affect the decisions of the small percentage of women who do "opt out" of the workforce. The fall 2007 issue of the American Sociological Association's Contexts magazine included sociologist Pamela Stone's examination of "The Rhetoric and Reality of Opting Out," in which Stone describes the home and workplace dynamics that contribute to these decisions. This article is available online at http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Fall07CNTFeature.pdf.
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Contact Jackie Cooper (202-247-9871, jcooper@asanet.org) to request an interview or a copy of Percheski's study from the June issue of the American Sociological Review, the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association.
The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions and use of sociology to society.
2. US Scientist Wins Finnish Award for Drug Delivery Systems
http://www.newkerala.com/one.php?action=fullnews&id=71889
11 June 2008
Helsinki, June 11 : Bioscientist Robert Langer of the US Wednesday won the Finnish Millennium Technology Prize for his contributions to developing drug delivery systems.
In all, six researchers in four categories were nominated for the prize worth a total of 1 million euros ($1.5 million).
Langer collected 800,000 euros ($1.2 million), becoming the third winner of the prize that was created in 2004, and is awarded every two years. The first winner was Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web.
In 2006, Japanese scientist and inventor Shuji Nakamura won the award for work on various light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and developing the blue laser which can be used in CD and DVD players.
A prolific inventor and institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technnology (MIT), Langer's systems are used to treat cancer, heart disease and other diseases.
Langer, 59, was also credited with making advances in tissue engineering, including synthetic replacements for biological tissues such as artificial skin.
Stig Gustavson, chairman of Technology Academy Finland, said the Millennium Technology Prize aimed to "recognise and inspire innovations offering solutions that promote quality of life and sustainable development".
3. Honolulu No. 1 Quality Place to Live in US
http://starbulletin.com/2008/06/11/business/story01.html
June 11, 2008
By Nina Wu
nwu@starbulletin.com
While European cities dominated the top of the global list, Honolulu was the highest-ranked U.S. city in the annual "Worldwide Quality of Living Survey" this year conducted by Mercer, a New York consulting firm.
Below is a list of the top U.S. and global cities based on quality of living:
Top U.S. cities
1. Honolulu (28)
2. San Francisco (29)
3. Boston (37)
4. Chicago (44)
5. Washington, D.C. (44)
6. New York (49)
7. Seattle (50)
8. Los Angeles (59)
9. Cleveland (59)
10. Houston (62)
Source: Mercer
Top Global Cities
1. Zurich, Switzerland
2. Vienna, Austria
3. Geneva, Switzerland
4. Vancouver, Canada
5. Auckland, New Zealand
6. Dusseldorf, Germany
7. Munich, Germany
7. Frankfurt, Germany
9. Bern, Switzerland
10. Sydney, Australia
28. Honolulu
Honolulu, at No. 28, was the top U.S. city on the list for overall quality of living, followed by San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York.
Mercer's rankings are based on a survey of 215 cities across the globe during September and November 2007, and conducted in an effort to help companies evaluate international assignments for their employees.
Rebecca Powers, Mercer principal, said Honolulu's top ranking should come as no surprise.
Honolulu's top U.S. ranking has been consistent for the last three years, although it slipped from No. 27 in both 2006 and 2007 to No. 28 in 2008.
"Honolulu does tend to score a little better, and the natural environment helps," said Powers.
She said the studies were developed to assist companies evaluate compensation and whether their employees are going to experience some reduction in the quality of life in moving to another location.
Another Mercer study evaluates cost of living across global cities. Only two U.S. cities -- New York City and Los Angeles -- made the top 50 most expensive cities to live in globally in 2007. Honolulu was not among that group.
For the quality-of-life study, Mercer grouped a total of 39 key quality-of-life variables into the following categories: Political and social environment, economic environment, socio-cultural environment, health and sanitation, schools and education, public services and transportation, recreation, availability of consumer goods, housing and natural environment.
Powers said that the political and social environment -- which include political stability, crime and law enforcement -- accounted for about 25 percent of the factors weighed.
Zurich, Switzerland, sat at the top of worldwide cities in quality of life with a score of 108, while Baghdad bottomed out the list, with a score of 3.8.
Switzerland ranks particularly high in medical care, while much of western Europe and Canada scored well because of their reliable and clean public transportation systems.
Honolulu ranked particularly high in the recreation and natural environment categories. The recreation category includes variety of restaurants, theaters, sports and leisure activities. Natural environment includes climate and record of natural disasters.
Powers said most of western Europe, Canada and the U.S. actually fall pretty close together in quality of life, with only a few points difference between them.
Cities with the lowest quality of living were Ndjamena, Chad, at No. 211, followed by Khartoum, Sudan; Brazzaville, Congo; and Bangui, Central African Republic. The war-torn Baghdad came in last, at No. 215.
In the Asia Pacific, Auckland, New Zealand, got the top score for best quality of living, followed by Sydney, Australia; Wellington, New Zealand; and Singapore. In the Americas category, Canadian cities actually dominated the rankings, with Vancouver in the top position at No. 4, followed by Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
Among the lowest-ranked U.S. cities in the 2008 study were Atlanta at 67, along with Detroit, St. Louis, Miami and Houston.
Mercer also conducted a survey based on personal safety, and found Canadian cities topped that list. In the U.S., Honolulu also topped the list, at the same ranking as Chicago; Houston; Lexington, Ky.; San Francisco and Winston-Salem, N.C.
"Canadian cities rank higher than U.S. cities on personal safety because of a relatively low crime rate and a stable political environment," said Powers. "Traffic congestion and pollution may have reduced air quality, which may undercut the otherwise pleasant living standards in some U.S. cities."
The most dangerous cities, apart from Baghdad, include Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Karachi, Pakistan; and Nairobi, Kenya.
4. Fossils Found in Tibet by FSU Geologist Revise History of Elevation, Climate
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/06/11/fossils.found.tibet.fsu.geologist.revise.history.elevation.climate
Published: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 - 13:49 in Earth & Climate
Courtesy of Associate Professor Yang Wang, Florida State University Department of Geological SciencesAbout 15,000 feet up on Tibet's desolate Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau, an international research team led by Florida State University geologist Yang Wang was surprised to find thick layers of ancient lake sediment filled with plant, fish and animal fossils typical of far lower elevations and warmer, wetter climates. Back at the FSU-based National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes in the fossils revealed the animals' diet (abundant plants) and the reason for their demise during the late Pliocene era in the region (a drastic climate change). Paleo-magnetic study determined the sample's age (a very young 2 or 3 million years old).
That fossil evidence from the rock desert and cold, treeless steppes that now comprise Earth's highest land mass suggests a literally groundbreaking possibility:
Major tectonic changes on the Tibetan Plateau may have caused it to attain its towering present-day elevations -- rendering it inhospitable to the plants and animals that once thrived there -- as recently as 2-3 million years ago, not millions of years earlier than that, as geologists have generally believed. The new evidence calls into question the validity of methods commonly used by scientists to reconstruct the past elevations of the region.
"Establishing an accurate history of tectonic and associated elevation changes in the region is important because uplift of the Tibetan Plateau has been suggested as a major driving mechanism of global climate change over the past 50-60 million years," said Yang, an associate professor in FSU's Department of Geological Sciences and a researcher at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. "What's more, the region also is thought to be important in driving the modern Asian monsoons, which control the environmental conditions over much of Asia, the most densely populated region on Earth."
The fossil findings and implications are described in the June 15, 2008 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The journal can be accessed online at www.elsevier.com/locate/epsl.
Yang co-authored the paper ("Stable isotopes in fossil mammals, fish and shells from Kunlun Pass Basin, Tibetan Plateau: Paleoclimatic and paleoelevation implications") with paleontologists from the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing). The collaborative research project, which since 2004 has featured summer field study on the remote Tibetan Plateau, is funded by a grant from the Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation.
"The uplift chronology of the Tibetan Plateau and its climatic and biotic consequences have been a matter of much debate and speculation because most of Tibet's spectacular mountains, gorges and glaciers remain barely touched by man and geologically unexplored," Yang said.
"So far, my research colleagues and I have only worked in two basins in Tibet, representing a very small fraction of the Plateau, but it is very exciting that our work to-date has yielded surprising results that are inconsistent with the popular view of Tibetan uplift," she said.
This summer, Yang and her colleagues from Los Angeles and Beijing will conduct further fieldwork in areas near the Tibetan Plateau. "The next phase of our work will focus on examining the spatial and temporal patterns of long-term vegetative and environmental changes in and around the region," she said. "Such records are crucial for clarifying the linkages among climatic, biotic and tectonic changes."
There is much still to learn and understand about those changes.
"Many of the places we've visited in Tibet are now deserts, and yet we found those thick deposits of lake sediments with abundant fossil fish and shells," Yang said. "This begs the question: What came first and caused the disappearance of those lakes? Global climate change? Or, tectonic change?"
Source: Florida State University
5. Phoenix Lander Has An Oven Full Of Martian Soil
http://www.physorg.com/news132419371.html
Published: 1 hour ago, 16:09 EST, June 11, 2008
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager took this image on Sol 14 (June 8, 2008), the 14th Martian day after landing.
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has filled its first oven with Martian soil. "We have an oven full," Phoenix co-investigator Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said today. "It took 10 seconds to fill the oven. The ground moved."
Boynton leads the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument, or TEGA, for Phoenix. The instrument has eight separate tiny ovens to bake and sniff the soil to assess its volatile ingredients, such as water.
The lander's Robotic Arm delivered a partial scoopful of clumpy soil from a trench informally called "Baby Bear" to the number 4 oven on TEGA last Friday, June 6, which was 12 days after landing.
A screen covers each of TEGA's eight ovens. The screen is to prevent larger bits of soil from clogging the narrow port to each oven so that fine particles fill the oven cavity, which is no wider than a pencil lead. Each TEGA chute also has a whirligig mechanism that vibrates the screen to help shake small particles through.
Only a few particles got through when the screen on oven number 4 was vibrated on June 6, 8 and 9.
Boynton said that the oven might have filled because of the cumulative effects of all the vibrating, or because of changes in the soil's cohesiveness as it sat for days on the top of the screen.
"There's something very unusual about this soil, from a place on Mars we've never been before," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "We're interested in learning what sort of chemical and mineral activity has caused the particles to clump and stick together."
Plans prepared by the Phoenix team for the lander's activities on Thursday, June 12 include sprinkling Martian soil on the delivery port for the spacecraft's Optical Microscope and taking additional portions of a high-resolution color panorama of the lander's surroundings.
Honorable Mentions:
1. Scenes of Nature Trump Technology in Reducing Low Level Stress
http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=42419
June 10, 2008
Social Science
Joel Schwarz
joels@u.washington.edu
University of Washington
A college student looks at a plasma screen showing a natural scene. The same view seen through a window was shown to be more effective in lowering people's heart recovery rate than the plasma screen.
Technology can send a man to the moon, help unlock the secrets of DNA and let people around the world easily communicate through the Internet. But can it substitute for nature?
Apparently not, according to a new study that measured individuals' heart recovery rate from minor stress when exposed to a natural scene through a window, the same scene shown on a high-definition plasma screen, or a blank wall. The heart rate of people who looked at the scene through the window dropped more quickly than the others. In fact, the high-definition plasma screen had no more effect than the blank wall.
In addition, the research done through the Human Interaction with Nature and Technological Systems Lab at the University of Washington showed that when people spent more time looking at the natural scene their heart rates tended to decrease more. That was not the case with the plasma screen.
The study, funded by the National Science Foundation, is published in the current issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology.
"Technology is good and it can help our lives, but let's not be fooled into thinking we can live without nature," said Peter Kahn, a UW associate professor of psychology who led the research team.
"We are losing direct experiences with nature. Instead, more and more we're experiencing nature represented technologically through television and other media. Children grow up watching Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. That's probably better than nothing. But as a species we need interaction with actual nature for our physical and psychological well-being."
Part of this loss comes from what the researchers call environmental generational amnesia. This is the idea that across generations the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation views conditions it grew up with as largely non-degraded and normal. Children growing up today in the cities with the worst air pollution often, for example, don't believe that their communities are particularly polluted.
"This problem of environmental generational amnesia is particularly important for children coming of age with current technologies," said Rachel Severson, a co-author of the study and a UW psychology doctoral student. "Children may not realize they are not getting the benefits of actual nature when interacting with what we're calling technological nature."
To see how people reacted to nature and a technological representation of it, the researchers recruited 90 college students to participate in an experiment that had them work on four mental tasks while sitting at a desk in an office. With 30 of the students, the desk faced a window overlooking a campus scene that included a large fountain and trees. For a second group of 30 students, the window was replaced with the plasma screen that showed the same nature scene in real time. For the remaining 30 students, curtains covered the plasma screen and the desk faced a blank wall.
Participants were tested individually. Each was welcomed by a researcher, hooked up to a heart rate monitor and told to wait for five minutes while the researcher stepped out of sight. A camera mounted on the wall near the window or plasma screen was synchronized with the heart monitor and tracked participants' eye movements. At the end of the waiting period, the researcher returned, explained the first task and stepped out of sight. This was repeated for the remaining three tasks and then the subject was told to wait again for five minutes.
Heart recovery rate was based on how quickly each participant's heart rate dropped in the 60 seconds after being told to wait or to have one of the tasks explained. Each person's performance was tallied on the basis of six measurements, once after every task and the two waiting periods. Low-level stress was created by having to deal with another person in a social situation and the anticipation or performance anxiety each might have experienced to do well on the four tasks.
The researchers found that participants with the plasma screen actually looked at it just as often as did those who had the window. However, the window held the students' attention significantly longer than the plasma screen did. When participants spent more time looking at the window, their heart rates decreased faster than on tasks when they spent less time looking at the window. This was not true with the plasma screen.
"I was surprised by this," said Kahn. "I thought the plasma screen would come somewhere between the glass window and the blank wall. This study is important because it shows the importance of nature in human lives and at least one limitation of technological nature.
"In the years ahead, technological nature will get more sophisticated and compelling. But if it continues to replace our interaction with actual nature, it will come at a cost. To thrive as a species, we still need to interact with nature by encountering an animal in the wild, walking along the ocean's edge or sleeping under the enormity of the night sky."
Co-authors of the study are Batya Friedman, Jennifer Hagman, Erika Feldman and Anna Stolyar of the UW, Brian Gill of Seattle Pacific University, Nathan Freier of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Sybil Carrẻre of California State University, San Bernardino. Freier and Carrẻre were both at the UW when they worked on the study.
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For more information, contact Kahn at (206) 616-9395 or pkahn@u.washington.edu before June 17. After that contact Severson at (206) 616-6986 or raches@u.washington.edu
More information about the Human Interactions with Nature and Technological Systems Lab is available at http://depts.washington.edu/hints/
2. Teenager Keeps His Cool as He Rescues Girl From Rushing Water
http://www.novanewsnow.com/article-221492-Teenager-keeps-his-cool-as-he-rescues-girl-from-rushing-water.html
Article online since June 10th 2008, 16:53
Eighteen-year-old Jake Falls points to the area on the Nova Scotia Power hydro dam at Lake Vaughan in Tusket Falls where he laid to help pull a girl to safety who was clinging to the concrete post below him. Tina Comeau photo View all pictures Teenager keeps his cool as he rescues girl from rushing water
"You realize you don't have the world to wait"
By Tina Comeau
Like many people in Yarmouth County on Monday, cooling off was on Jake Falls mind when the 18-year-old and his grandmother pulled up to a beach area near the dam in Tusket Falls. The temperature was exceptionally hot for June 9 and Falls had decided to go for a swim.
Keeping cool, in turned out, was exactly was Falls ended up doing.
And for that a 16-year-old girl owes him her thanks, if not her life.
Falls and his grandmother had literally just pulled up when some young people came running over, frantically looking for help for their friend who had been pulled in a spillway of the Nova Scotia Power hydro dam by a strong undercurrent. With the water powerfully rushing past her, she was clinging to a concrete post, which was the only thing preventing her from plunging into the concrete spill box below, where more swirling water threatened her harm.
“I was looking at the situation, saw her hanging on the pole, her friends looked a little lost, they had this rope, I was looking at it seeing how tight it was. They were saying they were afraid it might rip. I thought, that’s not good for us,” Falls said in an interview on Tuesday. “But it got worse for her, she started slipping.”
As his grandmother called 911, Falls knew he had to spring into action. But getting to where the girl was wasn’t easy. The area is fenced off, with locked gates – their purpose being to keep people out of an area that is considered quite dangerous. Falls had to get around the fence, cross over a fish ladder and climb over the gate to get to the top of the dam where the girl was.
“I laid down and I could see her…and I saw that I could grab her. I grabbed one of her arms, grabbed the other one, got my feet going and just pulled her up,” says the Grade 12 Yarmouth high student.
It may sound simple, but it was far from that. Falls estimates it probably took five minutes to pull the girl to safety. The rushing water, he said, was so powerful. The girl kept slipping.
“At first it looked like an easy situation. She was there, waiting for some help. But as time went by she slipped around, she was on the edge, and that’s when you realize you don’t have the world to wait,” Falls said.
He knew his grandmother was calling for help, but he had no idea how long it would take for help to arrive. And with the gates seemingly separating the world from where he was lying on the dam – and not being able to communicate with his grandmother as she was on the phone – he knew when it came to saving the girl, he was it.
Asked if she was panicking, he said she seemed scared.
“She was really worried when I was holding her and her feet were touching the water as it was rushing by. She was just screaming but I told her, ‘I’ve got you’, and I just pulled her up.
“I remember when I had both her hands and her feet were dangling against the water it just hit you again, the situation…Afterwards it was just ‘Wow.’ I sat down for a little bit, thinking about what could have happened.”
The girl, who Falls doesn’t know, thanked and hugged him.
After Falls pulled the girl to safety, he saw volunteer firefighters coming towards them and police arriving on the scene.
While thankful this incident had a fortunate outcome, police, fire department and Nova Scotia Power officials are using it as a means of reminding the public about the danger associated with swimming close to the dam.
Falls himself said that’s an area of water he never ventures into, opting instead for a safer swimming option further away. He also thinks people should exercise extreme caution around the dam.
“When you’re looking around and you see a dangerous area, it’s not the best place to be,” he said.
Meanwhile, the next morning at school Falls’ friends were pretty impressed with his heroics.
“They all came up to me and said, ‘Oh Mr. Hero, what’s going on?’ They were all asking me for the story,” he said
Asked how he feels about being called a hero, Falls said it’s a pretty big title, but he feels his actions can live up to it.
“I was helping somebody in need, that’s a big thing,” he said. “You never think you’ll ever do that.”
(See related story in Yarmouth County section of NovaNewsNow.com about the rescue and the safety warnings officials are issuing.)
3. Size 12 Woman Wins Miss London, Will Compete for Miss England Title
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1025639/The-size-12-girl-big-model-wins-beauty-title.html
By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 3:30 PM on 11th June 2008
Healthy attitude: Aspiring size 12 model Leah Green, who was told she needed to lose weight by modelling agencies, has now been crowned Miss London
An aspiring model who was rejected by leading model agencies for being a size 12 has beaten 200 other girls to be crowned Miss London.
Leah Green, 22, will next month compete for the Miss England title with regional finalists from across the country.
Today she told how she was rejected by several model agencies, despite being two dress sizes smaller than the average British woman. Her experiences follow the debate over the trend for size-zero models - equivalent to a British size four.
"I have tried to get into modelling," she said. "But I have been turned away as I'm apparently too big to be a regular model. I've been told I'm too fat and I need to lose weight. One agent told me I would have to work hard to achieve the gaunt look he was after.
"If you have to be the size of Victoria Beckham or Girls Aloud to even get a look in, then it just isn't for me."
One of the agencies that rejected Miss Green, of Primrose Hill, North London, over her size was Models 1. Only a plus-size agency showed any interest.
The London College of Fashion graduate, who works as a design assistant at French Connection, said the industry was fixated with thin models and was responsible for many girls developing eating disorders.
"I helped out with London Fashion Week last year and many of the models looked like they were about to keel over and die," she said.
A spokeswoman for Models 1 said it did not employ models larger than size 10, but it was not the agency that labelled Miss Green "fat" or told her to lose weight.
Storm Model Management also rejected Miss Green but its owner said it was not because of her size.
Sarah Doukas said she had not been aware of Miss Green's case but added: "I think she has a fantastic figure. We have four girls on our books who are more than a size 12. If she was rejected, it might simply be that her look wasn't right for us. I'm shocked that anybody would say such terrible things."
Miss Green hopes to offer women an alternative role model by competing in Miss England. "I saw it as a chance to get my message across," she said.
The Miss England final takes place on 18 July at the Troxy, in Stepney, London.
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