The Yeomen of the Guard, Oxford University G&S Society, OFS Studio

The Yeomen of the Guard is the odd one out in the Savoy canon; it was the nearest Sullivan came to writing grand opera (something he later achieved without Gilbert, with limited success) and the only tragedy. The Oxford University G&S Society’s artistic director Sally Outen has opted for a traditional approach, with an emphasis on the opera’s dark, brutal nature. The result is a pleasingly sympathetic and uncomplicated production, which, despite the ever-present sense of foreboding, still allows Gilbert’s irrepressible humour to burst through.

The most memorable performance comes from Zosia Kuczyñska, who sings strongly and beautifully as Phoebe Meryll, and captures the fun, mischievous side of the character to perfection. I also liked Robert Hazle’s finger-twisting, nail-biting Wilfred Shadbolt, and he wrings every ounce of humour from the shambling, self-deluded Jailer. Some of the best moments of the night came from the interplay between these two, particularly the ‘wooing’ scene, in which Phoebe uses all her charms on her loathsome admirer so that she can steal the keys to Fairfax’s cell.

David Jones is fleet of both foot and tongue as Jack Point, delivering the patter songs with admirable ease, while Alexandra Coghlan sings sweetly, though not strongly, as Elsie Maynard. But, with my pedant’s hat on, I must take issue with the phrasing of their opening duet. The correct phrasing in the verses is ‘…Who fled from the mocking throng, O!/It’s a song of a merryman…’ etc – NOT ‘…Who fled from the mocking throng/O, it’s a song of a merryman…’. The punctuation in the libretto makes it clear how this should be sung, yet this incorrect phrasing is repeated throughout. Why?

Among the rest of the cast, Katherine Fairhurst’s strongly-sung Dame Carruthers stands out, and there are pleasing performances from Thomas Wade as Fairfax, Michael Peyton-Jones as the Lieutenant and Stephen Smith as Sergeant Meryll. The chorus sings and acts throughout with great energy and conviction. What lets the production down, unfortunately, is the orchestra. I can forgive a few fluffed notes, but on the opening night the overture was riddled with them, and it was taken at a rather pedestrian tempo. There also needed to be greater cohesion between orchestra and singers, who parted company on several occasions.

But there is much to enjoy in this production – it is beautifully costumed, full of fun and the company’s enthusiasm is unquestionable.

Oxford University Press Has Its Own Super Pfund

Niko Pfund, the 43-year-old publisher of Oxford University Press’ academic and trade division, has had one occasion after another during the past few weeks to squeal with delight.

First: two Oxford Daily Show appearances, with The Least Worst Place author Karen Greenberg on Feb. 4 and Two Billion Cars author Daniel Sperling a week later. Then: a Lincoln Prize for Craig Symonds’ new book Lincoln and His Admirals, and separately, a full-page rave in the Feb. 22 The New York Times Book Review for Beverly Gage’s The Day Wall Street Exploded, which gave Mr. Pfund such a thrill that he felt compelled, shortly after reading it, to apologize for his “completely insufferable happiness.”

On Monday night, Mr. Pfund, a handsome, blue-eyed fellow who has been with Oxford for almost 10 years, really went flying, having just flipped through a copy of the new Thomas Ricks book on Iraq and discovered that one of Oxford’s authors—David Kilcullen, whose book on the surge comes out this month—is cited multiple times in its pages and designated with admiration as an extremely influential figure in counterinsurgency policy.

“Check it,” Mr. Pfund wrote in an email to five of his colleagues, before quoting all the parts in Mr. Ricks’ book where Mr. Kilcullen is mentioned and concluding that the “extremely influential figure” bit would be a valuable thing to secure for the back panel of the book’s next printing. “Very, very nice,” Mr. Pfund wrote.

But literary laurels aren’t everything. Oxford’s New York office laid off 60 people last month, reducing its workforce by almost 10 percent, and library and university budgets will likely be slashed this summer when they get recalculated for the first time since the recession started in earnest, a development that will send a delayed shudder through the university presses.

“We are struggling, so I don’t want to paint anything like a rosy picture!” Mr. Pfund admits. But he also argues that Oxford’s culture of controlled print runs, restrained advances, diverse online offerings and a commitment to print-on-demand technology will keep him above water.

“In order to be a good publisher, you do have to succumb sometimes to hopefulness over experience,” Mr. Pfund said by phone on Monday. “You have to say, ‘O.K., this time is different,’ or, ‘This book is so good that it’s going to overcome all these obstacles.’ But I just think that we allow ourselves to do that way, way too often.”

He recalled a vaguely morbid game he and his friend Tim Bartlett (now an editor at Random House) used to play at the London Book Fair when the two of them were colleagues at New York University Press: visiting the wholesalers who sold remaindered books and looking through their titles in search of those that had been remaindered in the largest quantities.

“The dealers would write in pencil on the first page of each book the number of copies they were selling,” Mr. Pfund said. “One year Tim found one, and it was the autobiography of—shit, what was her name? Who was the sexpot on Taxi? Marilu Henner. It was the autobiography of Marilu Henner, and there were like 32,000 copies all being remaindered. And Tim looked at me and said, ‘You know, it’s a sobering thought that three or four years ago, some editor hung up the phone in New York and pumped his fist in the air and said, ‘Yes! I got the Marilu Henner autobiography!’”

At Oxford, even the books that are intended to reach a broad, general audience usually don’t see initial print runs above 7,500, while the really specialized stuff—see The Squid Giant Synapse: A Model for Chemical Transmission—hovers around 250. When something works, Oxford goes back to press again and again until demand tapers off, as it did with Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion, which saw almost a dozen reprints in its first year.

According to Mr. Pfund, the team responsible for monitoring inventory and working with the sales staff at Oxford to figure out print runs is “reordering in ever smaller and more frequent increments” in hopes of keeping returns low, and as a result, books like Marshall Goldman’s Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia and Joseph Nye’s The Power to Lead continue to sell instead of coming back in boxes.

In a “previous day,” Mr. Pfund said, those were books that might have been shipped in batches of eight or ten thousand right out of the gate, and more often than not, they’d sit in stores for nine months or so, at which point anywhere from 25 percent to 40 percent of them would come back.

These days, that doesn’t happen at Oxford, and between that and the fact that a couple of titles—namely Massacre at Mountain Meadows and 1994’s Defiance, which was turned into a movie last year by Ed Zwick—broke out head and shoulders above the rest, the house’s trade sales at the end of January were up almost 10 percent for the year.

Big print runs are tempting, though, as they guarantee that a book that experiences an unexpected uptick in demand will be in stock. If Barack Obama is photographed reading a book you’ve published and suddenly everyone wants to read it, you’re basically forfeiting the opportunity if you don’t make sure the thing is widely available.

Only relatively recently, Mr. Pfund said, did print-on-demand technology become sophisticated and cost-effective enough to avoid the big print runs, and today, something like 10,000 previously out-of-print titles from Oxford are available to anyone who wants them.

“When I started out, we had between six and eight thousand books for which we had some demand and that were just in this purgatory of ‘out of stock indefinitely,’” Mr. Pfund said. “Basically readers and booksellers would ask, ‘Hey, can you guys sell us this book?’ And we would reply, ‘No, sorry, can’t do it! Can’t reprint it! Economies of scale! Our bad! Off you go.”

Mr. Pfund said that the print-on-demand business has grown to the point where it brings in “several million dollars a year,” though he would not give a precise figure.

“It is inexcusable to be sitting on this content and not to liberate it somehow if people want it. Especially if you’re a university press, for God’s sake! That’s your job. That’s why you exist.”

Mr. Pfund said that Oxford’s expansive online offerings--including numerous subject-based reference databases and dynamic subscription packages like Oxford Scholarship Online--give users access to scholarly monographs and academic journals, and are part of the house's “raison d’être” as well.

As he put it in an email: “OUP’s challenge is going to be how to transition to an online world where we’re providing the same kind of authoritative service for people as we did when we weren’t all choking on the firehose of data that keeps coming at us faster and faster. We’ve gone from an environment of information scarcity to one of complete overload in just under a generation, and so it’s not a question of more data but of better data.”

Over lunch last Friday at a vegan noodle bar around the corner from Oxford’s offices on 35th and Madison, Mr. Pfund talked about big advances, and why the editors who work for him never offer the sort of exorbitant sums so common in auctions involving big commercial houses.

“You can make all these arguments, as all of us do when we overpay for books, but you’ve gotta attach some parameters of rationality and reason around those numbers!” he said. “I’m just completely unsympathetic when people say, ‘Oh my God, times are so tough.’ But times are so tough because we make them so tough, you know?”

The fact that Oxford has no corporate owners to answer to—the fact that Mr. Pfund’s bosses, as he put it, are academics, and don’t expect anything like 15 percent annual growth—means that Oxford does plenty by just surviving. Paging through Oxford’s 2008 catalog, Mr. Pfund said he saw only a few books that had “completely bombed.”

“People conflate intellectual capital with financial capital,” he said later. “[Laurence Tribe’s new book, The Invisible Constitution] is gonna be one of the most important books we publish this year, but it’s not going to make anybody rich, you know?”

lneyfakh@observer.com

Teachers, students get a lesson on first aid

First hour of a medical emergency is called the golden hour. Proper first-aid given during this period is crucial, as it can save lives. Elucidating its importance, a training programme was organised by Times NIE in collaboration with Sterling Hospital recently. Teachers and students representing 16 schools from the city participated in this programme.

The event kicked off with a presentation on first-aid. What do you when a person is choking or how do you treat a dehydrated person? Dr Irsaan Trivedi answered these questions from students outlining dos and don'ts of first-aid.

Talking about the need for such drives, Divine Buds School teacher Rajesh Pareira said, "People have many myths about dealing with medical emergencies. Such events are eye openers which help us understand the facts."

Jay Mehta, a class IX student from Doon International School shared a similar view. "As children, we keep getting hurt often. This information will help me deal with it when there is no adult around. Now, I feel more equipped to handle emergency situations," he said.

Chandramauli Rawal, chief medical administrator, Sterling Hospital outlined the need for such initiatives. "Many times teachers are ill-equipped to handle medical pinches in schools. Also, if untrained people give first aid, it can worsen the injury. Right information can go a long way in saving lives at schools and homes, till patient is attended to by a medical expert," said Rawal.

Participating schools included Reubs School, Pragati Primary & High School, Hebron School, Doon International School, Divine Buds School, Best Primary School, Brams English School, Vedant International Primary & Secondary, Sarvogyam, Sr CG High School, Blue Bell, Don Bosco, Sharda Mandir Vinay Mandir (Gujarati & English medium).

Unabated power rostering hampers exam preparations

Taking a swipe at Kesco officials, a BCom second year student Anu Bindra remarks, "with candle in one hand and books in other - this is how the future of the country is groomed and nurtured. The power distribution company employees are wanting to test the city student under the toughest of conditions."

Expressing anguish Anu, the Christ Church student is among lakhs of city students, deprived of proper exam preparations due to unabated power rostering in the city.

With not more than 15 days left for the commencement of university and board examinations, majority of the students are toiling in want of proper power supply, which is not only taking toll of their exam preparations but also of the mental frame.

Notably, a total of 1,12, 729 students are appearing for high school and intermediate exams from the Kanpur district. Over 5.5 lakh students would be appearing in university exams and the strength of the students appearing in ICSE and CBSE board exams is even higher. And as the power failure is playing a spoilsport amidst their preparations, students are left with no option but to curse the Kesco officials and the local leaders.

As city student, Nishant Kapoor quipped, "where are the political leaders now who regard youth as the future of the country. At the time of elections, they assure provision of 24 hour power supply and now, when we require their help, the most, they have vanished in the thin air, and when not required they are busy in protests and demonstration."

Candles, invertors and lanterns are serving as the substitute of power supply during the night hours. The students are relying upon candle lights during the evening hours to save power back up in invertors, as the invertors do not last for the entire night, leaving the student in an awkward position.

Charu Garodiya, a board examinee feels that students during the examination period are on a loss from the either side. "for all those students to be appearing in board exams, how to study during night hours is a big question. The preparations as such gets hampered, if we plan to study in night hours, and if we think of taking a nap, we would be deprived of a sound sleep." The students are in a loss.

Another class XII student and board examinee, Ravi Pandey has his reason for worry about his exam preparations. "Night hours are the best period to study but with no power supply the job is made a tough one," opined this 17-year-old student. And he went on to add, "Day time as such is full of noise, but the night hours there is no disturbance apart from the night rostering," he said.

Not only the students but even their parents are a harried lot. Vivek Upadhyay's son would be undergoing his university exams, but the entire family members are making best possible efforts to help the child.

"Even during the hot afternoon hours, we do not use invertor," he said and added, "even during the night hours family members avoid use of fan so that my son can get electricity for five to six hours during the night." Meanwhile he advised, the parents of wards appearing in exams to hold Kesco responsible if the result failed to meet their expectations.

Ultra-quick, low cost TB screening system to be launched in India

An innovative TB breathalyser, the outcome of an intensive six-year programme, will be ultra-quick and most reliable yet cost effective mode of detecting early stage tuberculosis.

The breathalyser will be launched first in India and South Africa, which are ranked first and fifth respectively on the WHO list of high burden TB countries.

Its performance has been validated in extensive clinical trials within India and in Ethiopia, supervised by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Set to revolutionise tuberculosis (TB) screening, the Cambridge University developed Rapid Biosensor Systems (RBS) breathalyser, based on patented bio-optical sensor technologies, is a lightweight portable system.

Dennis Camilleri, CEO-RBS, informed that the many advantages of the device over current screening methods will arouse significant interest among stakeholder groups in TB care.

"The most prevalent method of screening currently is the Mantoux TB test, which involves a health worker injecting test fluid under the patient's skin, then waiting for up to 72 hours to see if there is a localised reaction that indicates the presence of TB.

"By contrast, the RBS breathalyser delivers an unequivocal positive or negative result within minutes, with no interpretation required. Significantly, it is highly specific to detecting active TB and is not compromised by the presence of HIV or other co-infections," said Camilleri.

"TB is one of the greatest threats to global health and the terrifying ease with which it is transmitted means that national boundaries and global demographics are irrelevant in preventing its spread," he said, according to a Cambridge release.

"The unit is extremely portable and easy to use and requires no running water or electricity for operation, it can therefore be deployed in remote locations, without the need for subjects to attend a screening clinic," Camilleri said.

The WHO estimates 8.8 million active cases of TB are diagnosed worldwide every year out of which almost two million die. Once thought to be under control or even close to extinction, TB infection levels are rising and the threat is compounded by new, virulent and drug-resistant strains.

Oxford University off to winning start in National Under-20 Championship

OXFORD University launched their National Under-20 Championship campaign with a 17-11 win over Notts, Lincs & Derbyshire at Derby yesterday.

Tries from prop Lewis Anderson (University College) and wingers Hugo Phillips (University College) and Sam Beer (Oriel College) gave Oxford the edge in the rearranged Midlands Region B encounter.

Fly-half Jonathan Hudson (Brasenose College) added a conversion.

NL&D got the deficit down to a point at one stage when they rallied from being 7-3 down at half-time to trail 12-11.

Winger Alex Leverton (Nottingham) scored NL&D’s only try and centre Jonno Williams (Mansfield) kicked a penalty in each half.

NL&D’s next outing is against North Midlands, the defending Midlands champions, on February 22, a game that has been switched from Moseley to Droitwich.

Moseley’s Billesley Common pitch is still recovering from the recent heavy snow and rain and they have a home National League One match scheduled for next Saturday.

National Under-20 Championship
Midlands Region A fixtures: February 24: Cambridge University v East Midlands at Grange Road (7.30pm), 25 Leicestershire v Staffordshire at South Leicester (7.30pm), March 4: East Midlands v Leicestershire at Northampton Old Scouts (7.30pm), Staffordshire v Cambridge University at Walsall (7.30pm). TBC: East Midlands v Staffordshire, Leicestershire v Cambridge University.

Midlands Region B fixtures: February 8: North Midlands 13 Warwickshire 10 at Dudley Kingswinford, 15 Notts, Lincs & Derbyshire 11 Oxford University 17 at Derby, 22: North Midlands v Notts, Lincs & Derbyshire at Droitwich (2.30pm), Warwickshire v Oxford University at Broadstreet (2.30pm), March 8: Oxford University v North Midlands at Iffley Road (2.30pm), Warwickshire v Notts, Lincs & Derbyshire at Broadstreet (2.30pm)

Pill architects win university deal

THERE are no economic blues for a Pill firm of architects after it won a major contract from an Oxford university.

GSS Architecture has been appointed by Oxford Brookes University to carry out the detailed design of a £17 million student accommodation project.

It will provide an additional 358 places for both post graduates and undergraduates.

GSS partner Michael Magri said: "The attractive new buildings will comprise a series of linked three and four storey pavilions arranged around a central quadrangle."

Final drawings are now being prepared so that construction tenders can be sought.

It is hoped to have some of the new accommodation ready by September 2010.

GSS has been working with Oxford Brookes University for over ten years, and in that time has designed projects valued at over £72 million.

Take Part In A Free University Hospital Heart Month Health Fair

Heart disease and stroke are leading causes of death in the United States. Fortunately, lifestyle changes and early detection can reduce your risk, and a University Heart Health Fair is the perfect place to begin. Education, encouragement and support will be provided to help you embark on a healthier lifestyle, and all of it is absolutely free.

Free activities include:

—Blood sugar testing, blood pressure screening and total cholesterol testing (LDL, HDL, and Triglycerides)

—Healthy heart information

—One-on-one heart counseling

—Special gifts and door prizes

When and Where:

Saturday, Feb. 21, 2009
Dillard’s Aiken Mall, 10 a.m.—2 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009
Columbia County Library/7022 Evans Town
Center Blvd., Evans, 10 a.m.—2 p.m.

For additional information, call University’s Heart Line at (706) 828-2828 or (866) 601-2828.

Education gets a big boost

UPA's interim budget has delivered on all the big-ticket promises -- new IITs, IIMs,

central universities, schools of planning and architecture -- while still keeping its feet on the ground by not ignoring elementary education.

Compared to last year's revised estimates, there is an increase of 16% in higher education, 10% in elementary, 13% in technical education and 52% in secondary education. However, it needs to be pointed out that the hike in secondary education is due to underperformance in the current fiscal. Out of Rs 5,139 crore (plan and non-plan) allocated to secondary sector, only Rs 4,056 crore could be spent.

But the emphasis is on higher education, reflected in the 900% increase in this sector in the 11th Plan. A liberal allocation of Rs 200 crore has been made for eight new IITs (six are already functioning), Rs 20 crore for four of the six new IIMs that would come up by the next academic year.

Strangely, Pranab Mukherjee said a new IIM would come up in Rajasthan, a fact not known to HRD officials. According to the ministry, six IIMs will come up in Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, J&K, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Haryana.

Generous allocation has also been made for Indian Institutes of Science for Education and Research and Schools of Planning and Architecture.

A big draw on University Grants Commission's financial health would be payment of revised salary to university/college teachers. However, it is unclear where the money would come from. Also, funds for 15 new central universities has not been sourced.

In elementary education, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan continues to get pride of place with Rs 13,100 crore allocation. Its complementary programme Mid-Day Meal Scheme has also seen an increase in allocation to Rs 8,000 crore. Though SSA allocation is same as last year, it is still an increase since the funding pattern from this year would change to 60:40 instead of 65:35. Madhav Chavan of Pratham said in SSA pressure of constructing schools is easing, "but it is time now that states take up the initiative and work towards improving quality".

In secondary education, Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan and 6,000 model schools at block level finally take off with big allocation of Rs 1,353.98 crore and Rs 350 crore, respectively.

Over 1 million women demand access to life education

Gandhiji challenged free India to take up Life Education' but it is not

clear if the 2% education cess is helping provide such
education.

SEWA's over one million women members also demanded access to such life education, which we did through life schools or Jeevanshalas' that we run in 18 districts of Gujarat. But our reach in Ahmedabad was limited.

Children of SEWA's construction workers, vegetable vendors and head loaders hover around the workplace of parents. If the mother does not get work, the child goes hungry. Hungry children is a reality even in today's Ahmedabad.

But these hungry bodies have hungry minds eager to learn new languages, master arithmetic skills, how the municipal corporation works, how the police force functions, how a bank lends money. They want to know about Chandrayaan, India's steps towards moon. But the world of these children is limited to the worksite.

Teach India gave SEWA an opportunity to reach out to over 3500 such children in 3 months through 71 centres in the city's poorer localities with the help of its volunteers, whom we called gyan saathis'. They teach the children with passion and commitment.

The role educated gyan saathis doctors, mill owners, social workers, engineers, government servants, businessmen, college students, corporate executives and chartered accountants have played in teaching these children has made SEWA proud.

The partnership under Teach India with SEWA has resulted in building a bridge between educated professionals and poor informal sector households.

Gyansathis have committed to continue providing their service even after the campaign ends. At all the centres, Gyansathis not only contribute their time, but also bring nutritious food, books, teaching aids as well all voluntarily. At some Jeevanshalas, gyansathis have also adopted centres and support education with fees, books and uniforms.

Because of the powerful impact and increased demand from its members in Ahmedabad, SEWA is now institutionalizing these 71 Jeevanshalas as a low cost, community based learning by and with the community. Individuals and businesses are contacting SEWA to join this effort. This is the true impact of Teach India.

Perhaps the Teach India experience in Ahmedabad can throw some light on how the 2% cess collected for education can be better spent.

(The writer, Reema Nanavaty, is director of economic and rural development at SEWA)

Education philanthropist missing

A prominent educational philanthropist has been reported missing from his home in south-west London.

Sir Peter Lampl, the multimillionaire chairman of the Sutton Trust charitable foundation, went missing from his Wimbledon home on Sunday morning.

Sir Peter's disappearance is described by police as being "entirely out of character" for the 61-year-old.

Police in Merton said Sir Peter was last seen wearing a blue sweater and blue casual trousers.

Anyone with information of his whereabouts is asked to contact police.

Police said he did not have his long-term medication with him. He is described as 5ft 8in (1.7m) tall with fair, greying hair, blue eyes and a light suntan.

Sir Peter's Sutton Trust channels about £3m annually into projects that promote bright children and encourage higher education.

A self-made millionaire, Sir Peter worked in finance both in Europe and America before returning to Britain in 1996.

Interim budget proves beneficial for education sector

The sixth interim budget presented by Pranab Mukherjee passed with flying colors in terms of allocated investments in the critical education sector. The outlay on higher education increased 9 fold in the Eleventh Five Year Plan also an ordinance promulgated for establishing 15 Central Universities.

The major higlights seen where, a newly centrally sponsored scheme launched to universalize education at secondary stage in the year 2008-09. In addition to 6 new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, Punjab and Gujrat which started functioning in 2008-09, two more IITs in Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh are expected to commence their academic session in
2009-10.

5 Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) announced earlier have become functional. 2 new schools of planning and architecture at Vijayawada and Bhopal have started functioning.

Teaching is expected to commence from academic year 2009-10 in four out of six new Indian Institute of Management proposed for the Eleventh Plan in Haryana, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Tamilnadu. 500 ITIs upgraded into centers of excellence, while a National Skill Development Corporation was created in July, 2008 with initial corpus of Rs. 10 billion.

Thanks to revision in educational loan scheme by the government number of beneficiaries increased from 0.31 million to 1.4 million and amount of loan outstanding increased from Rs.45 billion as on Mar, 31, 2004 to Rs.242.60 billion as on Sep. 30, 2008.

Kids' cholesterol study reassuring, doctors say

Fewer than 1 percent of American teens are likely to need cholesterol drugs, says a new study that offers some reassuring news on the childhood obesity front.

Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued eyebrow-raising new guidelines: Doctors were urged to consider cholesterol drugs for more kids, even as young as 8, if they had high levels of "bad cholesterol," or LDL, along with other health problems like obesity and high blood pressure.

The academy didn't address how many children might fall into that category. Now, a new study published online Monday in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation helps allay concerns that "many, many" children might need to be on cholesterol drugs, said Dr. Stephen Daniels, lead author of the pediatric guidelines.

"The concern was I think, because there's an increasing level in obesity, that it would lead to higher and higher cholesterol levels. They don't seem to be going up," he said.

The new pediatrics guidance was based on growing evidence that damage leading to heart disease begins early in life. At the same time, recent research has shown that cholesterol-fighting drugs are generally safe for children.

For the new study, researchers looked at data from about 10,000 children who took part in a national government health survey from 1999 to 2006. Of those, about 2,700 in the 12-to-17 group had LDL levels measured. About 5 percent to 7 percent of these youth had elevated LDL.

Then the researchers checked those numbers against the pediatric academy guidelines, advising other factors that should be weighed in recommending medication. About 0.8 percent fit the profile of those needing treatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs to ward off future heart problems. Based on 25 million Americans in that age group, the findings translate to about 200,000 young people.

"I think it provides some perspective on the issue," said lead study author Dr. Earl Ford, medical officer in the U.S. Public Health Service.

Ford said that he'd noticed that after the academy guidelines came out last July, one thing missing from the debate was how many children might be affected.

"I think a lot of people thought large numbers of children were probably going to be put on medications for long periods of time," he said.

When total cholesterol levels — which include both LDL and "good" cholesterol, HDL — were measured for all ages, 6-17, researchers found that roughly 10 percent had levels that were too high.

The study doesn't provide specifics for one of the more disturbing aspects of the new pediatrics guidelines: that some children as young as 8 might need cholesterol-fighting pills. LDL readings for children under age 12 weren't available.

However, Ford believes the results from the older group probably apply to the younger children as well.

"This just confirms that it's a conservative set of recommendations," said Daniels, pediatrician-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Denver.

Cardiologist Dr. William Scott, a pediatrics professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said that unless a child has a genetic predisposition to high cholesterol, regular exercise and an appropriate diet will help keep cholesterol in check.

"You really are empowered by your diet and activity," said Scott.

On the Net:
American Heart Association: http://www.americanheart.org