Daily Lobo new mexico
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Risque business — See pages 8 & 9
thursday September 18, 2014 | Volume 119 | Issue 24
Fall’s freshmen are first-rate, stats say By Raleigh Silversmith
Sergio Jiménez / Daily Lobo / @SXfoto
Joy Coy undoes her one-piece during her performance at Burlesque Noir’s “Keepin’ It Classy” event at The Launchpad on Saturday night. The event showcased Burlesque Noir performers and featured special guests from Albuquerque, Santa Fe and El Paso, Texas.
This fall’s incoming freshmen are apparently prepared for college, boasting the highest average GPAs and ACT scores in UNM’s history. The latest influx of students is entering with an average grade point average of 3.4 and an average ACT score of 23, UNM President Bob Frank said at the September Board of Regents meeting. “This year’s incoming class is the best,” he said. The performance of these students brought a high school graduating GPA increase of five percent and an ACT score increase of three percent, surpassing past and even current students. “This is really good news, that students are coming to UNM more academically prepared,” said Kate Krause, professor of economics and dean of University College. “The
University is always better positioned when it attracts students that did well on standardized tests.” Many university officials credited these higher numbers partially to UNM’s Honors College, which the officials believe has helped attract the best and brightest of New Mexico’s graduating high school students. Frank also pointed out that the number of ACT scores above 30 is up 20 percent compared to prior groups, and believes this “reflects how powerful and how effective the creation of our Honors College has been.” Associate Vice President Terry Babbitt agreed that the creation of the Honors College has added a real boost to UNM’s brand. Babbitt said the higher numbers reflect rising expectations of incoming students at UNM, which most agree is a good thing.
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GPA page 2
Current therapy currently in development By Tomas Lujan From the ancient Greeks, who wrapped electric eels around their heads to remove evil spirits, to modern drugs advertised to increase focus and retention, human beings have long pondered how to expand the power of the mind. The ancient Greeks, it turns out, may have been on to something. Recent research at the UNM Psychology Clinical Neuroscience Center suggests that low-level applications of electrical current may temporarily boost brain performance in humans. Vince Clark, a psychology professor and director of the PCNC, said that by employing a non-invasive technique known as transcranial direct current stimulation, they successfully enhanced test subjects’ working memory dramatically – without the chemical side effects of modern drugs like Adderall. The technique involves wiring the brain to a nine-volt battery, developing a small current of less than two milliamps as electricity flows from one electrode to the other. Some of this electricity passes into the brain, interacting with the nervous system and altering how it operates for a short period
of time, he said. After wiring them up, Clark asked subjects to perform certain tasks. Using fMRI brain scans, he was able to determine which areas of the brain were most active during each series of tasks. He then found that by placing electrodes over those areas and sending electric current through them, subjects were able to complete the same tasks much more quickly, he said. “In the first series of studies we had people identify objects in complex pictures,” Clark said. “It was a difficult task and it took a long time (under normal conditions) for people to learn it really well. However, we found with tDCS people were able to learn it twice as fast, so their ability to learn essentially doubled.” Clark said the combination of brain studies helped to verify the results to some degree, and guided future studies in determining where to place the electrodes to yield greater results. Michael Hunter, a Ph.D. student and PCNC research assistant, said that out of the variety brain stimulation techniques in use today, tDCS is unique in that it is used only to enhance performance in existing neural networks.
“The brain communicates via action potentials which are distributed throughout the brain,” Hunter said. “If you are able to change the polarity on those action potentials, then you can enhance particular regions and enhance performance.” Hunter said tDCS enhance performance by increasing the brain’s electrical potential.Through it, they can either enhance or suppress how an individual area functions and how that area interacts with other areas of the brain. While initial results appear promising; Clark said the driving mechanism behind tDCS treatment is not fully understood. “We think tDCS influences the electrical activity in the synapses and either enhances or suppresses the activity depending on how you do it,” Clark said. “That alters how those areas interact and communicate with each other.” Raja Parasuraman, psychology professor at George Mason University in Virginia, said he worked closely with Clark in the initial stages of the research, and successfully replicated the results of Clark’s experiment in a separate study. Parasuraman said the technology might one day have the potential to improve a person’s ability to identify threats and analyze complex
William Aranda / Daily Lobo / @_WilliamAranda
A Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation device sits inside the Psychology Clinical Neuroscience Center at Logan Hall. This device is used to temporarily alter the human nervous system with electricity.
situations and images, drawing a lot of attention from national defense initiatives like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. However, both Clark and Parasuraman said the potential applications in medicine and cognitive development will be much more significant. “I’d like to see straightforward, side-by-side competition between tDCS and antidepressants,” Parasuraman said in an interview
with the Atlantic magazine. “May the best thing win.” For now, Clark said they would continue to explore the possibilities of the emerging technology, and hope their research will reveal other possible applications. Tomas Lujan is a staff reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @TomasVLujan.
Grant enables statewide prevention service By Matt Reisen
State money is going to support a coalition of drug prevention groups at colleges all over New Mexico. John Steiner, program manager of Campus Office of Substance Abuse Prevention at UNM, said a state grant that began eight years ago has allowed student outreach to spread to other colleges within the state. The grant allocates about $8,000 per school, funding everything from media campaigns to brochures and
campus outreach, he said. The coalition is made up of six colleges: UNM, NMSU, Eastern New Mexico University, New Mexico Tech, Sante Fe Community College and San Juan College. Most of these schools had no prevention programs of any kind before this grant began, Steiner said. This needed to be addressed considering some of the stereotypes about college life. “It works to reduce the misconception that college is a place where
nothing but wild drinking is going on,” he said. “It relieves a little bit of the pressure to feel like you need to conform to that social norm.” Graduation and retention are paramount to COSAP and its affiliates, Steiner said. The funding formula looks closely at how many students are completing their degrees in comparison to the total number of students each institution has in attendance. This and other information is collected monthly and eventually
compiled into annual reports, which are compared with those of past years to observe the results of the coalition and find where they can improve. Every month Martinez sends out a progress report to other institutions involved in the coalition, she said, to determine the scope of work and the results of resources being presently provided. Many resources have been made available since the coalition began, from individual programs to statewide assistance offered to students
from their own homes, she said. One such program is E-CHUG, or Electronic Checkup to Go, a program aimed at students who have questions about their own drinking and risk factors. Martinez said the program is provided to all institutions through the grant and is accessible online from any student’s own computer. E-CHUG is a viable resource for data collection and information, currently used by over 500 institutions
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COSAP page 2