Return to winning ways
Conduct of code
The Daily Wildcat editorial board thinks it’s high time for ASUA to change its Elections Code.
Arizona softball sweeps Cal-State Northridge in final non-conference tune-up. SPORTS, 13
PERSPECTIVES, 4
ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT monday, march ,
tucson, arizona
dailywildcat.com
DREAMS DASHED
Regents seek student input Arizona board to hold tuition hearing before its next meeting By Brenna Goth ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT Students can voice their opinions and concerns about next year’s tuition increases during an Arizona Board of Regents hearing today. An interactive videoconference will allow students and community members to give their input on the levels of tuition and mandatory fees before the regents’ next meeting on April 7. UA President Robert Shelton proposed a $1,500 tuition increase for resident students and $600 for non-resident students for next year. Access sites for the hearing will be held at university campuses across the state. Comments are accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis rotating between locations. Student participation has affected regents’ opinions in the past, according to Regent Ernest Calderón. “We get to hear where students are coming from on it,” he said. “It serves a great benefit.” Student government leaders are also given a designated time to speak. Associated Students of the University of Arizona President Emily Fritze will address the regents along with Emily Connally, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council. Fritze said she will not have a completed tuition proposal by the hearing but will present student reaction and other information for the regents to consider. “I won’t have the formal document but can make some preliminary comments,” she said. Both ASUA and the Arizona Students’ Association are
Mike Christy/Arizona Daily Wildcat
Senior Jamelle Horne, 42, is consoled by teammate Derrick Williams after missing a last-second shot in Arizona’s 65-63 loss to UConn in the Elite Eight on Saturday in Anaheim, Calif. The Wildcats shot just 4-for-21 on 3-pointers in the loss. Arizona finished the season with a 30-8 record.
SPORTS, 14
New funds for elderly study
National Institutes of Health awards grant to study immune responses in older people By Michelle Weiss ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT The UA Department of Immunobiology and the UA’s Arizona Center on Aging were awarded an $11.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the decline of immunity in the elderly. “The overall purpose of the study is really to understand why immunity in old people declines so drastically,” said Dr. Janko Nikolich-Zugich, head of the immunobiology department. “We’re working to fix it.” Nikolich-Zugich, the primary investigator of the study, said infections are one of the top five causes of death in people
over the age of 65. “We don’t like that statistic, so that’s something we’re trying to change,” said Kristin Renkema, a third-year immunobiology graduate student working on the study. Previous research has shown parts of the immune system decline with age, and the most dramatic decline happens with T-lymphocyte cells , also known as T-cells. They are part of the adaptive immune system and they attack viruses with high precision, NikolichZugich said. The problem that elderly people are facing is that the number of T-cells in their bodies decrease with time, he said.
“We have also discovered that those (T-cells) that are around do not get activated the way that they should be and they cannot divide as robustly as they did in youth,” he said. In the course of an immune response, it is very important for cells to multiply, NikolichZugich said. Normally, expansion and division of cells takes place, but the frequency of that process declines in older people. The division of cells and the process of differentiation are impaired, he said. In past work, researchers have identified some of these defects in a model using mice. They are now trying to apply it to human treatment and new vaccines that might allow older
organisms to better defend the body against infection. Renkema works primarily with the mouse model. Her project examines the aging defects in the T-cell itself, she said. “We have actually found some defects in the components of the cell that seem to be a common defect that can cause the broad-scale defects we see in the immune system,” Renkema said. The thymus gland, which is how the T-cell received its name, greatly reduces manufacturing cells at the time of puberty, Nikolich-Zugich said. It shrinks and produces less than one-tenth of what it produced GRANT, page 2
TUITION, page 2
Students marry more By Eliza Molk ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT College-educated young adults are more likely than those without a bachelor’s degree to be married by age 30, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. In 2008, 62 percent of collegeeducated 30 year olds were married or had been married, in comparison to 60 percent of 30 year olds who did not have a college degree. This is said to be a reversal of long-standing marital patterns, according to the Pew Research Center. In 1990, 69 percent of college-educated 30 year olds were married or had been married, in comparison to 75 percent of not college-educated 30 year olds. Megan Leidenz, a 21-yearold psychology junior, married earlier this month. “We love each other, we knew
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we would be together for the rest of our lives, so we just figured why not,” she said. Leidenz has been in a relationship with her husband for five years. She said that they had talked about marriage for years, and the only reason they would have considered waiting to wed is to “have a bit more money.” She added that her parents were very supportive in her decision to marry young, and that her father’s only concern was that she would not complete her degree. The research center said that a possible explanation for this shift is the declining economic successes of young men without a college degree and their increasing tendency to live with a partner rather than marry them. From 1990 to 2008, the inflationadjusted median annual earnings of college-educated men from ages 25 to 34 increased by 5 percent, while the median annual earnings of individuals with a high school
education declined by 12 percent. Another possible explanation given by the center is that young women with college degrees are now just as likely as women without college degrees to marry, which was, according to the center, not the case in 1990. Courtney Burford, a nutritional sciences junior, has been dating her fiance for four years and is planning to get married in the summer of 2012, although she has not yet picked an official date. She explained that she did not consider waiting to wed because they had been dating so long that they “knew for a while that they were going to get married.” She also said they do not need to wait because they both have set career paths — her as a clinical dietician, and him with Cox Communications, his employer for the past few years. She added that her family is excited for the future wedding, and that her fiance asked her mom’s permission to marry beforehand.
ONLINE/VIDEO
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A Daily Wildcat videographer gets reactions to the polarizing border fence on campus and interviews an artist who came to the UA to contribute to the project.
Will Ferguson/Arizona Daily Wildcat
Rebecca Winegar, a first-year nursing student, and husband RJ Winegar, 22, a mechanic at Precision Toyota, had been married for six months on Feb. 14. A Pew Research report shows that college-educated people are more likely to marry before they turn 30 years old, a reversal of long-standing trends, according to the study.
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