MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2013
PAGE 4
You know you've been here too long when you were around for KU football's last road win.
I lay down for a nap and my dog decides the bone that's been in his box all day sounds good now and proceeds to chew it loudly.
To the gentlemen who was passed out in front of Nunemaker: I don't think you are ready for the honors program.
We should have picture day in college. And it should be the day after dollar night.
TEXT FREE FOR ALL
Campus road rage: when I'm driving it's a crossrun not a crosswalk.
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
I'm published in the UDK more often than my friend, and he's a sports writer.
So apparently the words "twerk" and "seifie" have made it into the Oxford dictionary. They might as well remove "future" and "optimism."
Jeff Lang in regards to getting out of class early. "College students are the only people I know who want less for their money."
I'm hungover. Will you come watch "Homeward Bound" with me?
There is a Lance Armstrong lookalike riding his bike on campus!
The opinion pieces on Thursday, 9/12,
were great! Keep up the good work!
I'm watching "Dora the Explorer"
with a 15 month old baby. Am I
bringing sexy back yet?
Just because schol halls are right next to the Hawk doesn't mean you can mack on our porch.
I can tell if you're a freshman if your email is still letternumbernumberbernumberletternumbernumberber@ku.edu.
When Miley Cyrus gets naked and licks hammers it's called art. When ever I do it, all I ever get is kicked out of Home Depot.
AND THE HOME OF THE
CHIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEFs
Welp. KU football is 500!
Our weekly forecast shows highs in the 80s, a moderate chance of rain and 70 percent less sweat dripping from my body.
SCIENCE
Some dude on the bus had 1057 and he was trying his damndest to let everyone know it.
Animal testing advances medical field progress
Scientists poison, shock, burn torture and kill animals animals are treated like prisoners in laboratories, living in isolation and misery; humans do not share the same diseases as animals.
These are the kind of ignorant statements organizations like PETA and other animal rights groups advocate. This is part of PETA's campaign against the use of animals in research. Unfortunately, these testimonies of "animal cruelty" appeal to the emotional side of many individuals who do not possess a strong science or health background.
Why do we use non-human models? To study genetic disorders like Parkinson's or Down syndrome, we need to use models that are genetically similar to
numans. Mice share about 95 percent of its DNA with humans. They are also good models in looking at addiction or cognition, because many of our brain circuits are analogous like the reward (mesolimbic) pathway. Scientists use rats in substance abuse studies because they metabolize alcohol and drugs at a similar rate to humans. Chick embryos have provided valuable insights into the development of the nervous system, showing how cells migrate and differentiate. We can look at generations of animals in a short period of time as well as control the environment to greatly increase the power to detect genetic effects.
By Monica Saha msaha@kansan.com
searchers do in fact use mathematical models or computer simulations to predict population in epidemiology studies. HeLa, or human cell lines, are a great example of an immortal cell line used in cancer research. They are easily cultured and are derived from human epithelial cells. However, there are drawbacks in using cell cultures. Mainly, one does not know how other systems will be affected when looking at just cells.
This is the splendor of comparative medicine. Researchers use animal models to observe both similarities and differences to gain insight into the many complex human biological systems.
Animal research means medical progress. Whether it is a discovery of a novel protein, or synthesizing a new drug or vaccine development, animal research has vastly improved many fields. These include cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, birth defects and neurological disorders, to name a few. Like humans, animals like your pet cat or dog also deal with these sorts of ailments. It is a misconception to think laboratory animals are treated cruelly. Before one can work with the animals, a rigorous training session is required to go over proper techniques in handling the animals. The Public Health Service mandates high-quality housing, nutrition and veterinary care for research animals. Research institutions like universities are required to have an Institutional
Animal Care and Use Committee. The IACUC reviews and approves research protocols to ensure proper anesthetics and post- operational medications are used and integrated into the studies when necessary.
At the end of the day, researchers are saving lives and that's what motivates these investigations. There was a poster in my former lab of a rat to the left and a little girl on the right. It said, "Who would you RAT/HER see live?" This poster embodies the purpose of biomedical research. While it seems sad that mice, rats and chicks are sacrificed, it is for a common good to save the lives of humans and animals.
Monica Saha is a first year Pharmacy student from Overland Park.
CAMPUS
Walking to class benefits more than just your calves
If you asked me what I miss the most about living on-campus, it wouldn't be the unlimited fro-yo and Reese's Puffs or the constant free entertainment via bearded hula-hopper populating the Hashinger front steps. It would be...walking.
Walking?
Yes, walking. You see, my daily, failed attempts to appear graceful while hobbling down Daisy Hill, 'free' Mrs. E's coffee in one hand, cracked iPod in the other, with the cold morning air startling me awake while I not-so-subly kept my eyes peeled for basketball players near Jayhawker Towers (no shame), became oddly therapeutic to me. In my distant, exotic homeland of Chicagoland suburbia, the landscape ranged from completely flat, to slightly-less-flat. I grew to welcome the frequent hill-induced quadricep burn, the physical manifestation of my lack of a car, worsened by my penchant for flip-flops.
Just like the strange bond formed between two poor souls on adjacent treadmills, I considered myself a member of the exclusive 'walkers club' (it's too elusive to warrant a more creative name); a group whose membership fluctuated seasonally but had its core of dedicated trekkers. We had different schedules and never acknowledged our unspoken connection, but the comradery lived, at least in my sometimes overly imaginative mind. Maybe that guy who
By Erin Calhoun
ecallhoun@kansan.com
didn't get the memo that shark tooth necklaces went out with frosted tips and Backstreet Boys was smiling at me in ancknowledgement of our mutual love for walking as we passed each other on overlapping routes, or maybe 'Quit Playin' Games With My Heart,' just shuffled over his iPhone—I may never know. But a girl can dream, right?
The ability to walk wasn't just a way to trick myself into exercising—although any mom with a fitness Pinterest board would tell you that increased physical activity is certainly not a bad thing—it was a freedom to savor the journey. There's something very un-romantic about dragging yourself out of bed in your cement-bunker dorm room onto a carpeted seat in a slow-moving bus into a foldout lecture chair. You never see sunlight, you never feel a pull in your muscles, never a shiver on your exposed skin—you're just shuffling from seat-to-seat, scrolling through subtweets about your quasi-friend's recent breakups until lecture begins. To walk to class was to separate myself from the non-academic and take time to shake off the cobwebs, notice the changing foliage and mentally prepare for the day ahead. It was a time free of the seemingly constant, mindless stimuli—there was no screen in my face, no music in my ears
drowning out my thoughts, no forced small talk to fill the air (pardon the bias of an introvert.)
Perhaps the buses are so cramped because we view transportation as a right, as a sacred necessity. Why walk three blocks to the store when you could drive? You could spare yourself slight physical exhaustion and maybe the 10 minutes you could have spent on YouTube—seems like a simple enough choice, right? But when you realize the somewhat meditative value of a walk, when you learn to relish the things and people you pass even briefly, the extra time doesn't seem so wasted.
I could be looking back at my walking days through rose-colored glass, undoubtedly, but absence truly does make the heart grow fonder, and my current 35-minute bus ride provides quite a stark contrast. Instead of skillfully maneuvering cross-walks, I now attempt to steer myself clear of the horribly awkward face-to-standing stranger's crochet scenario that a crowded bus ride inevitably yields. I try just to fill my journey instead of taking the time to enjoy it. So, selfishly, I issue a plea to you lucky on-campus dwellers: keep my secret, most likely imagined club alive. Let me live vicariously through you. Take the time to walk, and just try not to love it.
Erin Calhoun is a pre-med student from Naperville, IL.
BOOKS
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
'Open City' dissects self-perception issues
Teju Cole is a Nigerian-American writer who was raised in Nigeria and moved to the States at age 17. His first novel, "Open City" (published 2011), was nominated for, and won, several awards. The novel is narrated by Julius, a Nigerian immigrant living in New York finishing the final year of his psychiatry residency. The beauty of "Open City" is that you, the reader, can see yourself in Julius despite his disparate life circumstances. The events of the book center around Julius' increasingly far-flung walks through the city of New York (and for some time a trip to Belgium), the people he meets, the philosophical conversations he has with them and his inner thoughts. Julius' relationships also play a central role in the story; his recent breakup is perhaps the impetus for the walks—he visits an elderly professor he is close with, spends time with a jazz-loving friend (a foil to Julius' passion for classical music) and meets another girl later on.
Julius' conversations with others and his reflections on his own life and experiences are told with an intimate, honest tone. Julius narrates the novel in a retrospective manner, as if looking back on his last year in residency in a conversation with a close friend, or perhaps a private diary. The novel delves into universal themes like dealing with loss and death, the blurred line between sanity and madness, the still-present racism here in America and elsewhere, and the struggle of self and perception. This work is worth reading because of the truths we can see about ourselves in it. It's worth reading because of the way it challenges those deep-seated beliefs we may have about ourselves. Somewhere in the pages of the novel you'll find yourself, or something you can identify with. In one of the defining moments of the novel, one character describes to Julius a time that he caused great emotional damage to him/her. Julius had been unaware
By Jason Bates
jbates@kansan.com
of the harm hed done until this moment. This long-ago wound redefined the life of the wounded person; similarly, it redefines Julius, both in his self-perception and in the reader's eyes. Julius avers that "...we play, and only play, the hero, and in the swirl of other people's stories, insofar as those stories concern us at all, we are never less than heroic... And so, what does it mean when, in someone else's version, I am the villain?"
Have you had one of these revelatory moments in which you realize you've been someone else's villain, while before you had convinced yourself you were the hero in your own story? I have. These are moments when I've wanted to rewrite the story, be more caring, be more understanding, efface selfish thoughts in favor of selflessness. While you may be the hero of your own story, there's a greater human narrative. All our stories intertwine and mesh to form this story. It's the story of the American Dream, from the Nigerian immigrant to the son of a CEO. Or you could say it's that of God, Allah, Yahweh, Buddha, humanism, scientific progress. My constant struggle is to orient and inform my own story in relation to a greater story. In doing so I hope to be the best version of myself.
What's your story? Are you the hero? What about your professor's story? What about your roommates'? What about your RAs? Are you the hero in theirs too? Probably not, but your stories are nevertheless interconnected. I think it's worthwhile to consider the ways our stories connect to others'. Let's use those connections to craft an even better story together.
Jason Bates is a senior majoring in Chemical Engineering from Overland Park, Kan. Follow him on Twitter @schutebates.
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