Academic Envy

I was reminded at AMIA how going to a conference brings a mixed set of emotions: excitement at the cutting edge research and envy that I didn't think of most of that research. In the most recent episode on the podcast No Stupid Questions, Angela Duckworth and Stephen Dubner discuss psychological research on a question submitted by a listener about coveting. Angela referred to a meta-analysis on the relation of envy and Schadenfreude that says envy starts with pain--the feeling of inferiority that unconsciously comes to us. It then branches into one of two types of envy:

• Benign envy is the desire for the envy object that is accompanied by motivation to improve yourself and emulate the other

• Malicious envy includes negative communication about the other or even aggression towards the other

I haven't read the article yet, but I wondered if there is a third type of envy--the type that leads you to retreat and quit, because you think you will never be as good as the other. I admire how on this episode and others, Angela is very open about her academic envy of her colleague Adam Grant.

Someone we might feel benign envy towards is Kas Thursky, who has built a national program for antimicrobial stewardship that is broad reaching, impactful, and inspiring many people. For Antimicrobial Awareness Week, CDTH co-sponsored the National Antimicrobial Stewardship Symposium that showcased research and application in human and veterinary health. Several of us were lucky enough to speak and serve on panels.

The Validitron SimLab was busy this week . Our Making Digital Health Real guest speaker from Dartmouth, Inas Khayal, came through and talked about how combining digital and systems thinking is necessary to transform healthcare (I highly recommend watching her talk once Meg posts it on Youtube). Kit, Kara, and Victor brought ANDHealth, Oracle/Cerner, and Microsoft through and we had some fascinating discussions. My ideas of how the Validitron can be of use are expanding as we talk with these thoughtful groups of people.

Coming up at the end of the month: Please register to attend the LHS Academy Symposium and the Digital Health Problem Pitchathon hosted by the CDTH Education Team. And congrats to Sat who has been named as a Superstar of STEM by Science and Technology Australia. We have all benefited from her talent in creating visual representations to assist people in learning about and understanding scientific information.

Regional Linguistic Quirks. Have you noticed the generational differences in slang in Australia? ANU's Dr Kidd said older Australians are likely to shorten words with an 'ie' sound, or an 'o'. For example 'truck driver' becomes 'truckie' and 'ambulance' becomes 'ambo'. This contrasts with younger Australians who will clip words to the first one or two syllables, or shorten with an 's' sound. For example 'mobile phone' becomes 'mobes', and 'maybe' becomes 'maybes'.