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THE UNIVERSITY OF JAIRY KANSAN
THURSDAY OCTOBER 23, 2000
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2009
NEWS
7A
Reported chlamydia cases by age and gender in 2007
HEALTH
Researchers work to prevent STD
The red are host cells and the green is chlamydia itself. It is the most common bacterial STD with more than a million infections reported in the U.S., according to the CDC.
Graphic by Nick Gerik/KANSAN
BY JESSE BROWN jbrown@kansan.com
Chlamydia trachomatis, or chlamydia for short, is the most common bacterial sexually transmitted disease reported not only in the United States, but worldwide.
According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,030,911, chlamydial infections were reported in the United States in 2006, though many cases go unreported.
The research team consists of Hefty, two research technicians three graduate students and one undergraduate student.
Scott Hefty, professor of molecular bioscience, is working with a team of researchers to create the basis for an antibiotic to treat the disease. Hefty said the team hoped to discover how to prevent the growth of chlamydial infections by understanding the basic functions of the disease.
"Our laboratory is focused on trying to disrupt the growth of the organism or identify specific steps that are important for this organism to grow," Hefty said.
Follow Jesse Brown
at twitter.com/
jessebrownthe1.
"We're trying to figure out what makes it tick," Kemgee said of the disease. "If we know how it works, we know how to mess it up."
Kyle Kemgee is a Wichita graduate student working with the team to combat the disease.
Kemenge said each student or technician was working on his or her own basic project as part of the overall research. Kemenge is working on decoding a specific protein, called protein CT009, that is not entirely understood. He said even understanding such a basic part of the chlamydial growth would make
a difference in their research.
The protein regulates the function of the disease.
"This protein, in some ways, is similar to other proteins that are major regulators in other organisms," Kemege said.
He also said their research focuses on trying to understand this unknown protein and the role it has in the developmental cycle of chlamydia.
Zane Jaafar, is one of the research technicians and is taking a year off before graduate school to participate in this research. As a former KU student, Jaafar has worked with the researchers in the past.
Iaafar is taking a broader approach to the problem and is trying understand a large number of the proteins around the disease.
Although Hefty said understanding the basic functions to disrupt chlamydial growth was the laboratory's short-term goal, the longer goal was to develop the basis for an antibiotic to effectively treat chlamydia within five to 10 years.
Hefty said there were antibiotics such as doxycycline, which slows the growth of bacteria, used to cure the disease, but problems were arising as people became more resistant to the antibiotic.
"Bacteria will eventually gain resistance to those antibiotics we use." Hefty said. "In chlamydia, there already has been resistance that has been demonstrated against doxycycline, so we need new antibiotics."
chlamydia is known as a "silent"
"It's really interesting to work on a micro-organism that has such a significant impact on public health worldwide," Kemege said. "I feel like it has a major impact on the world and health."
disease because about 75 percent of women and 50 percent of men show no symptoms, according to the CDC. If these infections continue to go untreated, serious reproductive and other health problems can occur. The CDC Web site has more information on chlamydia and its health risks.
Edited by Anna Kathaqnarath
CRIME
Clerk steals winning lottery ticket and flees
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN, Texas - A 25-year-old convenience store clerk pocked a customer's $1 million winning lottery ticket, claimed the prize and skipped town, possibly back to his native Nepal, authorities said.
Pankaj Joshi took 67-year-old Willis Winnie' winning Mega Millions megaplier ticket after Willis asked Joshi in May to check whether any of his numbers were winners, investigators said in a search warrant affidavit.
warrant amdavit last month.
Joshi claimed the prize — about $750,000 after taxes — at the lottery claim center in Austin, had the money wired to a bank account and disan-
"We were shocked. We didn't know he could do anything like this."
peared, authorities said.
"Never to this degree have we seen a clerk steal a megaplier winning ticket," assistant district attorney Patty Robertson said Wednesday.
Nick Parveez, Joshi's former manager at Lucky's Food Store in Grand Prairie, near Dallas, called the lottery commission in July to voice his suspicions about Joshi after hearing that his store sold a $1 million winning ticket, according to the affidavit.
No one at Lucky's had ever seen Joshi play the lottery, assistant manager Mike Rahman said.
MIKE RAHMAN
Lucky's assistant
manager
"We were shocked. We didn't know he could do anything like this"
Joshi, who was a student at the University of Texas at Arlington and had worked at the store for five years, was charged in Travis County in September with one count of claiming a lottery prize by fraud. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison.
"He just left," Rahman said.
The Austin American Statesman first reported on the charge Wednesday.
Joshi transferred some of the
money to various bank accounts after the initial deposit by the lottery, prosecutors said. Authorities have recovered $365,000 from Joshi's account. It wasn't clear when the money might be returned to Willis, if it's proven in court to be his.
"We hope to return the stolen funds back to the victim," Robertson said.
Investigators believe Joshi may have returned to Nepal. When he quit his job in June, Joshi said he was returning to the South Asian country to help his cousin with her perfume business, Parveez told investigators.
Willis, a regular customer at Lucky's, said he played the lottery two to three times a week using a set batch of numbers. He said he bought $10 worth of Mega Millions megaplier tickets on May 29 for that night's drawing, according to the affidavit.
BUSINESS
discovered missing this summer from a narcotics kit used in training. Two officers lost it in April, but they're unsure where. It could've been the police parking lot or an airport rental car, but the likely spot was a hotel.
Competing Greek yogurts, Agro-Farma's Chobani, left, and Stonyfield Farm's Oikos set up at a dairy farm in Washington, N.H. The two companies are ennared in dueling lawsuits.
the kit to train their police dogs, but the one who usually handles the drugs was called to a scene. By the time she returned, the dogs were energetic and destroying the room.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The veteran pair checked out
Associated Press
Now that competition is playing out in federal court. It's hardly the stuff of Greek tragedy, but as one judge put it: "This case involves a dispute among yogurt manufacturers over a relationship gone sour."
CONCORD, N.H. — As a growing number of manufacturers compete to meet consumer demand for thick, tangy Greek-style yogurt, it's not only the yogurt that's getting strained.
For most of the last decade, a Greek dairy company dominated the U.S. market for the yogurt, which is produced by straining out the liquid whey from conventional yogurt. But as the product caught on, competitors cropped up, including New Hampshire-based Stonyfield Farm, the country's largest organic yogurt company.
Relationship sours between two Greek yogurt producers
ASSOCIATED PRESS
When Stonyfield launched its Greek-style yogurt, "Oikos," in 2007, the market was mostly cornered by the Greek company Fage (pronounced FA-yeh). So Stonyfield teamed up with Agro-Farma Inc., whose Turkish-born owner, Hamdi Ulakaya, already owned a feta
cheese company and was looking into producing Greek-style yogurt.
But in late 2008, Oikos disappeared from grocery store shelves for a month. On its Web site, Stonyfield blamed a glitch as it increased production.
style yogurt called Chobani, claims Stonyfield stole its yogurt-making secrets and handed them to another manufacturer.
NATIONAL Police looking for drugs missing from training kit
NAPLES, Fla. — Police in Naples are on the lookout for cocaine. Somehow, they lost their stash. A 2-gram packet was
The fierce competition is no surprise given yogurt's status as.
"For the last 10 years, nothing has increased as much as yogurt."
HARRY BALZAR
VP of ncpd
research for NDP group
has increased as much as yogurt," he said. "It's a category that's growing at breakfast, lunch, supper. It's a main dish, it's a side dish, it's a dessert. When we look back on this period in history 200 years from now, an archaeologist finds a little cup of yogurt, they may not know it, but they've stumbled upon what probably is the most identifiable trend associated with eating in America today."
"the food of the decade," said Harry Balzar, vice president of consumer research firm NPD Group. The number of Americans who eat yogurt regularly has increased 75 percent during the last decade, he said.
Sales of Chobani yogurt between
"For the last 10 years, nothing
late June and early September increased 351 percent compared to the previous 12 weeks, according to data that market research firm Information Resources Inc. provided to Agro-Farma. Oikos sales were up 282 percent.
producing Oikos for Stonyfield at its New Berlin, N.Y., in plant in May 2007. Production stopped in November 2008 after Stonyfield said it had to destroy a shipment of yogurt because it was too acidic; Agro-Farma denied the yogurt was defective.
According to the lawsuits, Agro-Farma began
HPV Fact #12 Condoms may not fully protect against HPV.
There's something you can do. Visit your campus health center.