THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
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Thursday November 19,1998
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Sports today
Vol. 109·No.65
http://www.kansan.com
Kansas forward Lester Earl was at the center of attention yesterday after LSU's basketball program was placed on three years probation.
SEE PAGE 1B
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Survey reveals desire for a new rec center
Task force waiting for phone results; stop sign proposed
By Seth Jones Kansan staff writer
Student Senate's Recreation Task Force presented student-group survey results to Senate last night, and the numbers were overwhelmingly in favor of taking action to improve the recreation facilities at University of Kansas.
The response to the survey question "Do you feel that new or improved recreational
From Oct. 13 to Nov. 11, the task force visited 23 different student groups and distributed surveys.
sports facilities should be a priority for the University of Kansas?" was very one-sided. Three hundred nine students answered "Yes", while 32 answered "No." Forty-three students said they had no opinion.
Allison McCallie, Nunemaker senator and task-force member, said the results of a phone survey of 468 students were still not available, but would be soon.
"We'll put more weight into the phone survey when we get the results back," she said.
"It was more scientific, and it had more of a random sample, which will provide for less of a margin of error."
McCallie said the recreation task force's job was finished with the presentation of
the data.
"We have something to present to Senate and to the Cancellor," she said. "It was worthwhile because the consensus of students said that something needs to be done."
Now, a committee of students and administrators will be formed. They will take the survey results and try to create a proposal sensitive to the needs and wants of the students.
Robert Futrell, graduate senator, said he still was not sure what type of improvements he wanted to see.
"It's obvious that we need to renovate to some extent," he said. "I'm not sure the costs include site development. If we built on West Campus, I think we'd see a different amount of money we'd have to pay."
A resolution to improve safety at the inter-
LEGISLATION
Passed:
A bill to allocate $300 to the KU Visual Arts Education Club
A bill to amend Student Senate rules and regulations. The bill outlines the minimum criteria for line item allocation.
A resolution to improve the safety at the
intersection of 15th Street and Engel Road.
A bill to grant block allocation status. The
■ A resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty
section of 15th Street and Engel Road passed without so much as a murmur in opposition. On Dec. 11, student senators who sponsored the resolution will speak with Roger
bill approves 20 groups to be eligible for block allocation.
■ A bill to change the agenda of Student Senate. The bill changes the order of the agenda by moving reports to the end of a meeting.
A bill to change the supplemental agenda. The supplemental agenda will now be approved as a whole.
A bill to allocate $129.60 to the Ballroom Dance Club. The money is to be used for advertising costs.
Orek, director of facilities management; Mike Wilden, city manager; and Provost David Shulenburger about what can be done at the intersection.
A KU Medical Center researcher and his colleagues have developed a device that warns people with epilepsy of impending seizures. The goal:
Arresting Seizures
Story by Sue Franke ● Photos by Augustus Anthony Piazza ● Graphics by Kyle Ramsey
Ron McDermid is a prisoner in his mother's home. His jailer comes in the form of epileptic seizures that strike without warning.
Although his seizures last only a minute, his mother must be nearby at all times. McDermid does not even know he has had a seizure until his mother tells him or he awakens in a
"The stigma with this disorder is more harmful than having seizures ... They have despaired so much for so long that they don't have hope they can turn their lives around."
Noreen Thompson Advanced-practice mental-health nurse
different room.
when brain waves cross a line into seizure mode.
He can't drive. He can't work. He has 17 seizures a month, on average. "I don't have any social life because of the seizures," the 38-year-old man said. "Some people shy away from me because my seizures are loud." A University of Kansas Medical Center researcher and his colleagues are perfecting a way to warn epileptics like McDermid of impending seizures. Ivan Osorio, director of the Med Center's Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and Mark Frei, Alumnus and mathematician, began testing a 6-inch
device last week that predicts seizures before they take hold. In about two years, the warning device will be miniaturized to the size of a pager and ready to test on people with epilepsy, the researchers said.
A formula encrypted in the prototype device detects impending seizures. The formula, called a mathematical algorithm, can tell
Predicting the Unpredictable
This revolutionary algorithm, developed by the researchers, predicts seizures an average of 16 seconds and up to three minutes in advance. It may not sound like much, but the lead-time can make a world of difference to a person with epilepsy.
"With enough warning, I could get to a safe place if I were in the middle of an activity." McDermid said. "A
warning device would give me the freedom to come and go without being stuck like I am right now."
Osorio, a physician, is motivated by the hold this neurological disorder has on the 2.5 million to 5 million people that it affects in the United States.
"It renders people helpless. It's tragic," he said, "Think of being fine most of the time but never knowing when a seizure will strike. You're struck, and afterward you don't know what's happened to you."
rithm is a breakthrough in the world of epilepsy research.
Osorio and Frei's predictive algo
"The existing methods to detect seizures use rudimentary mathematics, which don't work well to uncover what's going on in the brain," Frei said. "There has never been this level of accuracy. The best algorithm averaged multiple false detections every hour. Our algorithm has had no false detections and no missed seizures."
See BREAKING on page 6A
Court halts construction of trafficway
By Liz Wristen
Kansan staff writer
Studies delay work on road's eastern leg
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld Monday a district court decision to bar the Kansas Department of Transportation and Douglas County from continuing work on the
A federal court has ordered construction to cease on the South Lawrence Trafficway.
Bruce Plenk, the lawyer representing the wetlands supporters in the case, said the decision was issued because of the long history of federal involvement in the case. The trafficway began as a federal project in 1986. Federal money was used to finance the project, and the Fed-
Opponents of the trafficway are against its construction because it will destroy a portion of the Haskell-Baker Wetlands along 31st Street and part of the sacred land at Haskell Indian Nations University.
eastern leg of the trafficway until a supplementary environmental impact statement and a noise study are completed.
eral Highway Administration was involved with reviewing project contracts.
But the state and county chose to discontinue federal involvement in 1997 when they realized that they would have to comply with federal laws, namely the National Environmental Policy Act, Plenk said. This act requires an environmental impact statement and a noise study to be performed.
The court of appeals ruled that the trafficway still would be considered a federal project and that federal laws would apply.
See ENVIRONMENTAL on page 2A
Jason Benavides / KANSAN
Kansan staff writer
By Sue Franke
Smokeout discourages lighting up
Today, the American Cancer Society is asking people who smoke to quit for the day in honor of its Great American Smoke-out today.
With an increase in smoking among college-age students, having a plan to quit for more than just a day and following through with it is critical to succeeding, said Bob Pisciotta, chair of the Great American Smokeout and associate director of operations for the University of Kansas Medical Center's Dykes Library.
Although health professionals typically have focused on educating children and older people about the hazards of smoking. 28 percent of college students smoked last year, up from 22 percent in 1993, according to a study by Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health.
The majority of students developed the habit of smoking before they reached college. Of Kansas high school seniors, 33 percent started smoking at age 18 or younger, according to a 1996 survey by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Huy Doy, Dodge City senior, is one of those students. He started smoking at 18.
"I hung around a lot of people who smoked," he said. "In college, it became a social thing to go to a party and smoke. After awhile, it became a habitual thing."
It helps to have a plan to quit, which is why the American Cancer Society and its corporate sponsor SmithKline Beecham created the "Commit to Quit" program. The program has three phases: deciding to quit, which asks smokers to state why they want to quit; preparing to quit, which means choosing a method such as cold turkey; and following through, which includes having a support program in place.
Pisiotta said the goal of the Great American Smokeout was to provide information about the dangers of smoking and about the benefits of quitting for those who truly are interested in kicking the habit.
"Smokers trying to quit need to look for people interested in seeing them get over the hump," Pisciotta said. "In preparing to quit, people should select a quit date and then build toward that day."
Do plans to quit on his birthday, Jan. 1.
"Setting a time frame for quitting and then thinking about it is the only way it will work," he said. "I plan to smoke all I want the day before my birthday and then quit."
Doug Frost, Topeka sophomore, quit smoking for two years but started again because it was a familiar habit. He plans to kick the habit, but not today.
"I plan on quitting a year before my wife and I have a child because I know it's bad for my health," he said.
According to the American Cancer Society, smoking accounts for 29 percent of all cancer deaths, and about half of all continuing smokers die prematurely from smoking.
The organization also attributes smoking as the cause of 87 percent of lung cancers. Tobacco use is responsible for nearly one in five deaths in the United States, according to the society. The annual American death toll from tobacco is estimated at 419,000.