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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2005
INSIDENEWS
Effort to give schools control over interest income stalls
About $1.8 million could be split among the six Regents universities if a bill passes legislation. The bill would allow the schools to control the interest earned from student tuition and fees, but it has stalled. PAGE 1A
Site for new Multicultural Resource Center dedicated
Students, faculty and staff gathered to recognize those who were instrumental in making the dream of building a new center come true. Construction will begin this fall and is scheduled to be completed by September 2006. PAGE 1A
University works to establish bioinformatics center
Recruitment is under way for students and faculty whose research intersects life sciences and computer science. One faculty member has been hired, and the center will move to its permanent home in the Multidisciplinary Research Building this winter. PAGE 1A
Fault line in Kansas could shake things up
Study finds lower rates of cancer in Hispanic neighborhoods A recent study co-authored by a University of Kansas Medical Center assistant professor links lower cancer rates to Hispanics that live in highly populated Hispanic neighborhoods. PAGE 2A
The Humboldt Fault Zone in Pottawattamie County, northeast of Manhattan, could produce earthquakes in Karsas. Research indicates that the likelihood of a serious earthquake is low, but a magnitude 2 to magnitude 3 earthquake is possible. PAGE 2A
Column: What will be the final act of the U.S. occupation in Iraq? Stephen Shupe says it will be a catastrophe for the Bush administration, not necessarily for the Iraqi people if some form of a democracy ever really happens there PAGE 5A
INSIDEOPINION
Column: Why do gays want to get married when most of them fail?
Julia Melm Coelho ponders why gays want to join an institution as flawed as marriage. About half of marriages don't even work well enough for straight couples, so the question gets applied to them as well. PAGE 5A
INSIDESPORTS
All-star lineup scheduled for Kansas Relays
Olympic champions Marion Jones, Maurice Green, Stacy Draglia and University of Kansas graduate Charlie Gruber are all planning to participate in the Kansas Relays on April 23. Inviting big names such as these is part of a new format added to the Relays. PAGE 12A
Softball team loses to Nebraska
The Cornhuskers defeated the Jayhawks yesterday, 7-3. Kansas will face Wichita State in a double-header today in Wichita, and all three Jayhawk pitchers are expected to play. PAGE 12A
Kansas baseball team rises up from some hard hits
Bill Cross suggests that the next time you go out for a drink you should toast coach Ritch Price for a job well done. The coach and the team has faced some setbacks, including the suspension of a team member, but were able to win eight games in a row. PAGE 12A
Three men's basketball recruits represented the West in the annual McDonald's All-American high school basketball game last night. Guard Mario Chalmers led the team with 20 points, while fellow incoming Jayhawks Micah Downs and Julian Wright, both forwards, contributed. The Kansas recruits and their cohorts fell to their counterparts from the East, 115-100. PAGE 12A
Pi Kappa Phi wins its first softball game
The Center of Latin American Studies will sponsor a Merienda Brown Bag lecture by Gerard Behague of the University of Texas-Austin on "Afro-Brazilian Religious Music: The Feast of Iemanja, Goddess of the Sea" at noon today at room 318 in Bailey Hall. Call 864-4213 for more information.
ON CAMPUS
- Student Union Activities will sponsor a screening of the film "Ocean's Twelve" at 7 and 9:30 tonight and tomorrow night at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. Tickets are $2 or free with SUA Movie Card. Call 864-SHOW for more information.
- The KU Memorial Unions will sponsor a lecture by U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun from 12:30 to 1 p.m. today at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union. Call 864-4651 for more information.
- The Center for East Asian Studies will screen the film "Oasis" as part of its East Asian film festival at 7 tonight at the Spencer Museum of Art auditorium. Call 864-4710 for more information.
- English Alternative Theatre will present the play "Jocasta" from 8 to 9:30 tonight at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 New Hampshire St. Tickets are $6 for students. Call 864-3642 for more information.
pose of the building is to make it easier for researchers in different fields to interact.
Research
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
Bioinformatics will play a major role in the new facility. Weaver said.
A supercomputer capable of processing data 200 times faster than a normal computer is being developed for the center. It will be housed in the Computer Center on the main campus and connected to the Multidisciplinary Research Building. Weaver said.
when the Multidisciplinary-Research. Building is complete.
Research from the center will help the work of the future Adams Center for Bioanalytical Chemistry and the Center for Pharmaceutical Chemistry, two new centers that will come on line
The connection between the two facilities may need to be improved before experiments can be run, he said.
Edited by Kim Sweet Rubenstein
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Study shows Hispanics have lower cancer risk
HEALTH
Hispanics who live in close proximity may be healthier
By FRANK TANKARD
correspondent@kansan.com
KANSAN CORRESPONDENT
Maybe Michael Lopez should move. Because Lopez, a Mexican American Kansas City, Kan., junior, lives in a lower-middle-income neighborhood with a small Hispanic population, he may have a greater chance of contracting certain types of cancer than he would if he lived in a low-income, densely Hispanic community, according to a recent study.
Jonathan D. Mahnken, an assistant professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center and one of the study's three authors, said by e-mail that the study was part of a cluster of research that has been done on what has been called the "Hispanic paradox."
Maybe Michael Lopez should move.
The term "Hispanic paradox" was possibly coined in the mid-1980s when a study found that Hispanics in the Southwest had lower rates of various chronic illnesses than non-Hispanic whites, despite a relative disadvantage in income and health care coverage, according to author Paul McFedries' Web site. www.worldspv.com.
Since then, researchers have discovered cancer rates to be 33 percent lower in Hispanics than in non-Hispanic whites and cancer mortality rates to be 38 percent lower, according to Mahnken's study.
Mahnken said the purpose of the study was to find whether these rates decreased among Hispanics who had assimilated into mainstream culture, living in middle-class neighborhoods with a Hispanic population of less than 20 percent.
Mahnken began working on the study after the National Institutes of Health gave a grant to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 2003 to research the "Hispanic paradox."
Mahnken listed variants in diet, tobacco use, exercise, alcohol intake, exposure to pollutants and stress as possible disparities between Hispanics living in non-Hispanic communities and those living in Hispanic communities.
increasing in Latinos as the percentage of Hispanics living in their neighborhood decreased.
They looked at five common types of cancer: lung cancer, colorectal cancer, female breast cancer, prostate cancer and cervical cancer. Mahken said they found a general decrease in the number of Latinos with cancer in Hispanic neighborhoods compared with non-Hispanic neighborhoods.
"Unfortunately, our data did not have these measures," Mahnken said. "But we feel that our results point toward the need for future studies."
But the results varied significantly among the five types of cancer. Cervical cancer rates actually increased in Hispanic neighborhoods. Prostate cancer incidences in Latinos were about the same regardless of neighborhood. The three other types of cancer showed a general trend of
In essence, this study shows that lower cancer rates among Hispanics dissipate with economic and ethnic assimilation into mainstream society.
The researchers compared data of cancer cases with U.S. Census Bureau data to determine how various cancer rates fluctuated between Hispanics from predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods (which roughly corresponded to lower incomes) to Hispanics from predominantly non-Hispanic neighborhoods (which roughly corresponded to middle and higher incomes).
Victor Aguilar, president of the Hispanic American Leadership Organization, was also surprised by the results of the study at first, but said the results could probably be attributed to the type of food people eat.
Karl Eschbach, associate professor, and James S. Goodwin, professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, the other authors, came up with the idea for the study and asked Mahnken, who was a research associate at the school, to be the statistician. When Mahnken came to the Med center last year, he continued his work until the study was published this year.
"I was expecting it to be much higher in highly Hispanic communities, because they probably have less resources," he said.
Michael Lopez said he was surprised by the results of the study.
"I guess you could say my family was lower-income," said Aguilar, a Mexican-American Dodge City sophomore. "My mom made everything herself. That's something you don't see among the middle and higher class. They have the money to go out to fast food restaurants every day. As we know, fast food isn't the healthiest thing in the world."
— Edited by Jennifer Voldness
— Tankard is a Kansan sports writer
GEOLOGY
Kansas could tremble in future
A fault in Pottawattamie might produce a low-magnitude earthquake
BY JONATHAN KEALING
correspondent@hansan.com
KANSAN CORRESPONDENT
Kansas may not be the first place that most think of when considering where an earthquake is likely to happen, but according to recent research, maybe it should be.
Associate Scientist of the Kansas geological survey Gregory Olmacher recently published an article in the journal Tectonophysics on the prevalence of and potential for earthquake activity on a portion of the Humboldt Fault Zone in Pottawattamie County, Kansas.
Pottawattamie County is northeast of Manhattan.
"It turned out that it is possible that there could be an earthquake," Ohlmacher said. "What this research can't tell us is the magnitude of such an earthquake."
Ohlmacher then went out into the field, confirmed his initial finding and mapped several other faults in the area. He intended to determine how old the fault was, when it was created and whether or not it could be reactivated, he said.
"I started looking at some aerial photography of the area, and I found a fault on the aerial photography," Ohlmacher said. "I wasn't expecting to find that. It's very difficult to find faults around here."
After gathering the information, Ohlmacher fed the data into a computer and determined how much of what kind of force was needed to make the fault move. Armed with this data, Ohlmacher was ready to compare what he had discovered with what was already known.
Ohlmacher quickly added that the likelihood of a serious earthquake was extremely low, but that something in the range of a magnitude 2 to magnitude 3 earthquake would be fairly easy to conceive of.
To compare, the two recent earthquakes that have struck Indonesia were about a magnitude 9. Each increase in magnitude indicates a tenfold increase in earthquake power.
Such an earthquake, if centered around the area where Ohlmacher researched, would probably be felt across the area of Pottawattamie county. Even if the earthquake were on the magnitude of one that struck Kansas in the late 19th century, about a magnitude 5.5, it would be felt across an area from about Salina to Kansas City. Ohlmacher said.
"The faults are aligned properly that we will see earthquakes. And we do see earthquakes in Kansas." Ohlmacher said.
The area that Ohlmacher researched composes only a small portion of the vast Humboldt Fault Zone. Stretching from southern Nebraska to northern Oklahoma, Humboldt is responsible for producing earthquakes of a magnitude 1 to magnitude 3 on a regular basis. Little of this is ever felt anywhere but directly over the fault, however there is concern that a bigger earthquake could occur.
A study of dam strength in areas near the Humboldt Fault was undertaken by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in July 2002. In it, the Army Corps established two levels of projected earthquake activity. The first, lower, level is the maximum
likely intensity, while the second higher, level is the maximum possible intensity.
While Ohlmacher's research was unable to provide a projection for the intensity of an earthquake in the area of study, according to the Army Corps report, a standard earthquake would be a magnitude 4.9 earthquake.
The Army Corps set 6.6 as the maximum foreseeable strength of an earthquake in the Humboldt area.
Don Steeples, vice provost and distinguished professor of geology, said that data indicated that an earthquake on the order of magnitude 5 to magnitude 5.5 would only occur about once every 100 to 200 years.
"It is possible that a magnitude 6 to 6.5 could occur on a long-term average of about every 2,000 to 3,000 years." Steeples said.
"The 6 to 6.5 events are so infrequent that only designers of major structures like large dams and nuclear power plants need to worry about them," Steeples said.
Because the magnitude of earthquakes in Kansas is relatively low, this new information probably won't change many of the procedures that builders and homeowners follow when constructing and refurbishing structures.
While major earthquakes could occur, even their damage would be limited and only cause significant damage to delicate structures, Steeples said.
— Edited by Lori Bettes
— Kealing is a Kansan designer and associate sports editor
NATION
Jury convicts black D.A. in discrimination trial
NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans' first black district attorney discriminated against 43 whites when he fired them en masse and replaced them with blacks upon taking office in 2003, a federal jury decided yesterday. The jury awarded the employees about $1.8 million in back pay and damages.
The jury — made up of eight whites and two blacks — returned the unanimous verdict in the third
The Associated Press
day of deliberations in the racial discrimination case against District Attorney Eddie Jordan.
Sprint, cable providers to combine for services
Under U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval's instructions, jurors had to find Jordan liable if they concluded the firings were racially motivated. The law bars the mass firing of a specific group, even if the intent is to create diversity.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Sprint Corp.
is looking to team up with cable companies to provide more integrated phone services for cable customers, chief operations officer Len Lauer said yesterday.
Lauer said talks were still in the early stages. But he said he envisioned customers viewing film clips on their cell phones and remotely programming a TiVo-like device at home to record that movie or other programs through their cable provider
Time Warner Cable is currently selling Sprint services in selected markets, and Sprint is working with several cable companies to provide Internet phone service.
The Associated Press
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