Daily Lobo new mexico
friday October 3, 2014 | Volume 119 | Issue 35
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Sex event titles, not content, provoke apology Sex Week program titles cause parents to reach out to administration By Lauren Marvin and Moriah Carty What’s in a name? Judging by the uproar surrounding UNM’s Sex Week, quite a bit. Sex Week, co-organized by the Women’s Health Resource Center and Self Serve Sexuality Resource Center, was designed to stress the importance of consent and raise awareness about sexual assaults, but not everyone was happy with the execution of the event. After the UNM president’s office received more than 40 complaints mostly from parents, Eliseo “Cheo” Torres, student affairs vice president, issued an apology on Wednesday. Torres said the complaints were primarily concerning the titles of the workshops. The most controversial titles included “Reid’s Negotiating Successful Threesomes” and “BJs and Beyond with Reid.” “It’s not what I see; it’s what the parents were concerned with, that is more important right now,” Torres said Thursday. “After I had explained that these were titles to attract students, some of them seemed to understand.” The average age of a UNM student is 24 or 25 years old, he said. But because these are parents who pay tuition, their voice had to be considered. It was a misunderstanding that could have been avoided by better worded or more thoroughly explained titles, he said. Sex education is important and while the University is a good place to start the discus-
Aaron Anglin / Daily Lobo / @AaronJAnglin
Around 60 students attend the “O Face Oral” workshop as part of UNM’s “Sex Week” on Thursday. The seminar took place one day after the University formally apologized for the controversial nature of the events.
sion, there was not enough oversight for the event, he said. “While the University administration believes that it is important to offer opportunities for sex education to college students, it should be done in a careful and respectful manner,”
Torres wrote in the apology. “We will do a better job in the future of vetting and selecting programs offered through campus groups.” Hunter Riley, the store manager of Self Serve and one of the event coordinators, said the idea behind the event was to stop the epidemic of vi-
olence on campus. After organizing sex education workshops for 10 years, the titles were designed to do one thing – get butts in the seats. “We know that the title of a class is very important and that a title like ‘Healthy communi-
New breath test may detect tuberculosis By Lauren Topper
Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Austen, George Orwell, Chopin — all are believed to have died from tuberculosis. Scientific advances have lowered death rates, particularly in the United States, where TB was once the leading cause of death and known as the “white plague.” Yet today, TB remains a leading infectious disease killer around the world. At the Health Sciences Center, associate professor Dr. Graham Timmins is continuing to make advances by developing a breath test that has the potential to determine if someone has TB within minutes.
By sampling the breath of the animals Timmins said he was able to tell 100 percent of the time whether or not an animal was infected with TB. Typical TB tests require several weeks to reach a diagnosis, and in developing countries where medical facilities are few and ill-equipped, detection sensitivity can be as low as 40 to 60 percent, he said. In an effort to speed up diagnosis time and improve sensitivity, Timmins developed a breath test that is the first of its kind for detection of TB, and has begun testing it on an animal model. TB is a contagious bacterial infection, typically in the lungs, that can lead to death when left untreated.
While it is a problem all over the world, its prevalence is particularly high in developing countries, Timmins said. “TB is a huge worldwide problem. Probably a third of the world is infected with TB. Most of that is what’s called ‘latent infections,’ so you’ll get exposed to it and if your immune system is strong then most people mount an effective immune response,” he said. “But (in latent TB) the TB doesn’t die - it will stay with you forever.” The disease can lie dormant indefinitely, but can become reactivated if a person’s immune system is dampened because of factors like poor diet, HIV infection, certain medications or even simply
How the Tuberculosis breath test works 1. The labeled an bio c is inhaled 2. TB bacteria (green) in the lungs breaks down the an bio cs (purple), releasing the label (orange)
Graphic by Lauren Topper / Daily Lobo /
@lauretopps
from getting older, Timmins said. The test works by harnessing TB bacteria’s own actions. Most drugs used to treat TB are actually broken down by the bacteria during the process. So, Timmins labeled a common antibiotic prescribed to TB patients, isoniazid, with a type of rocket fuel that contains an extremely rare gas molecule (15N2). The subject inhaled the labeled antibiotic into the lungs, where the TB bacteria broke the drug down. This degradation released the gas molecule and the animal breathed it out. If the animal was not infected with TB then the drug was not broken
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TB page 3
3. The label is exhaled and a breath sample is collected
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Sex page 2
Suspected bike thief baited by joint effort By Daniel Montaño
UNM Police have been cracking down on bike thieves through sting operations. A joint effort between UNMPD and the Albuquerque Police Department has already caught one alleged repeat offender, Daniel Lee Lawrence, who had a warrant for bike theft, said Lt. Tim Stump, UNMPD’s public information officer. Lawrence was arrested on Wednesday, after being seen riding a bait bicycle valued at $1,600, which was planted by APD at UNM Hospital, according to court documents. Stump said UNMPD plans to continue this sort of operation in the future in order to cut down on theft around campus. “Anytime we can utilize the sources that helped us with this, we will,” Stump said. The documents state APD planted the bike with a combination lock at the UNMH employee bike rack and officers were alerted that the bicycle had been taken around 1 p.m. Lawrence was later found riding the bike along the northbound frontage road of I-25 directly underneath the “Big I” according to the criminal complaint.
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Theft page 3