THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2008
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Director to return to campus role
Former Thompson for President campaign manager Bill Lacy is sick and fatigued.
Although Lacy had hoped Thompson would survive the republican primaries and ultimately be elected president of the U.S., Lacy said he was ready for a vacation
Lacy, who is also the director of the Dole Institute of Politics said he would not return to his position at the University until mid-March.
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》ATHLETICS
Recreation center to be renamed
"I said to my wife,' My God! What did I do that the chancellor has to come to my house!" "Amber said."
Little did Ambler know, the University had decided to rename the recreation center the David A. Ambler Student Recreation Fitness Center.
When he listened to the message on his answering machine from Chancellor Hemenway's secretary, he had no idea why the chancellor would want to come to his home and talk to him.
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THEATER
KU Opera premieres 'La Traviata'
After months of work, the first of five performances of KU Opera's presentation of "La Traviata" made its debut Thursday night at Murphy Hall.
"La Traviata" is the story of love found then tragically lost in nineteenth century Paris.
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weather
VOLUME 118 ISSUE 82
39 22
A.M. Snow showers
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51 40 Mostly sunny
index
Classifieds...5A
Crossword...6A
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Opinion...7A
Sports...1B
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MYSTERY MEAT
Do they clone the pickles,too?
Students are unsure whether cloned meat is safe, but the Food and Drug Administration doesn't see a problem. The FDA concluded Jan. 15 that meat and milk from clones of animals were safe to eat.
Photo illustration by Mindy Ricketts/KANSAN
BY ANDY GREENHAW agreenhaw@kansan.com
After seven years of evaluating the risks involved, the Food and Drug Administration concluded Jan. 15 that meat and milk from clones of animals were as safe to eat as food
from conventionally bred animals, an FDA press release said.
The future of cloning is here, and it ties into the production of food.
A farmer in Wisconsin collects a skin cell from his prize cow. He then transplants the nucleus from the skin cell to an unfertilized egg, which he implants into the uterus of a host mother cow. Nine months later, the host gives birth to a calf that is genetically identical to the original cow. When it grows up, it could find itself in the deli of your local grocery store.
"I probably wouldn't consume it because
I be concerned about the chemicals going
Other students, such as Humboldt junior Melanie Weilert, are skeptical about the FDA's findings.
The FDA doesn't expect a significant number of clones to enter the food supply. Instead, the sexually reproduced offspring from the clones will be the ones used for food production.
into my body." Weilert said.
"I think it's a cool scientific development," said Gizaw. "I wouldn't be opposed to eating it."
Some students, such as Yonatan Gizaw, Ethiopia senior, welcome the idea of cloning animals for food production.
Erik Lundquist, associate professor of developmental neurobiology, said there was absolutely nothing to worry about.
In fact, Lundquist even encourages the idea of cloning animals for meat. If a specific animal has all the desirable characteristics a farmer is looking for, he said that breeding the animal the traditional way would only give you half the characteristics of the original, while cloning the animal would create a
"I think a lot of people are apprehensive because it's a very technical process and cloning holds a very powerful connotation, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the meat," said Lundquist. "You're not adding chemicals, altering genes, or adding hormones."
genetic copy.
Jack Dekkers, professor of Animal Science at Iowa State University, agrees with Lundquist, but he doesn't expect producers to begin cloning animals for food production just yet.
"Right now it is not cost effective to clone animals specifically for food production," Dekkers said. "The technology is still in development and I think it will be years before it becomes a cost-efficient practice."
Students such as Ryan Koerner, Andover Junior, can't wait for the market to jump on the new trend.
"If they find the best tasting cow and clone it, then hell, I'm all for it," Koerner said.
SCIENCE
—Edited by Samuel Lamb
Professor researches mountain formations
BY MARY SORRICK
maryrick@konsan.com
msorrick@kansan.com
While many KU students and faculty spent their last week of winter break shivering through the Kansas cold, Mike Taylor, assistant professor of geology, was sleeping under the stars in the Andes Mountains.
Taylor, who arrived back at KU on Jan. 15, was in Mendoza, Argentina, studying the mountains of the Andes, and looking at deformed rocks and fault lines along the range's eastern edge.
Sweating out the 100-degree heat of the southern hemisphere summer, Taylor spent his week in South America trying to determine characteristics of the Andes that might shed light on the real subject of his geologic devotion: Tibet.
"My bread and butter and deep passion is Asian tectonics." Taylor said. "It's the best place in the world to study mountain building."
Mountain building, or the process of chunks of the Earth's crust ramming together to form mountain ranges, has been Taylor's focus for years. He has studied the Himalayas in Tibet to better understand
not just mountain building, but earth quakes and other earth processes as well.
Taylor chose to conduct fieldwork in Argentina, he said, because the Andes and the Himalayas share a considerable link.
Taylor said fertile land similar to the one that surrounds Mendoza once thrived where Tibet's often cold and craggy mountain plateau now sits.
"South America is what Tibet looked like 50 million years ago," he said. "That was before India slammed into southern Asia and made the Tibetan Plateau."
That trait has made the Andes a place of interest for Taylor.
Clues in the faults and rock deformation of the Andes and Himalayas could also help answer fundamental questions about the nature of the two ranges, namely the slip rate, or rate at which two sides of a fault are moving. Taylor said. Finding the slip rate would help scientists determine how often earthquakes occur along any one fault.
However, Taylor said, the Andes and Himalayas are not entirely similar because the formation of the mountain ranges involved different types of continental drift.
Daniel Stockli, associate professor of geology, said the Andes formed as the result of an oceanic plate sliding under the western edge of South America. The Himalayas were formed by the direct collision of two continental plates.
"The Andes were like a one-car accident as opposed to a two-car accident in the Himalayas," Stockkl said.
That head on collision helped make the Himalayas as large and rugged as they are. It's a feature that contributes to another of Taylor's interests in Tibet, which has less to do with mountains and more to do with who lives among them.
"The distribution of nomads has been determined by the spacing of mountain ranges," he said. "The dialect each group speaks evolved independently of other groups because they're separated by mountains."
Having spent six trips of 60 to 100 days each mapping rocks in Tibet, Taylor has developed an appreciation for the people who live there.
In other words, he said, tectonics are controlling the language and lifestyle of Tibetan nomads.
"You come across people so isolated
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Mike Taylor, assistant professor of geology, spent a week of winter break in South America doing field research in the Andes Mountains.
they've never seen blonde hair or hazel eyes," Taylor said. "They're living the same as they did 100 to 200 years ago. It's magical."
— Edited by Patrick De Oliveira
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