Thursday, March 31, 2016 | Volume 211 | Number 126 | 40 cents | iowastatedaily.com | An independent student newspaper serving Iowa State since 1890.
STUDENT GOVERNMENT
ALLOCATES MORE THAN Faculty $1.6 MILLION create invisible material
Courtesy of Liang Dong
Liang Dong and Jiming Song, electrical and computer engineering professors, hold up their meta-skin invention.
Professors make flexible radar-proof meta-skin in ISU lab By Andria.Homewood @iowastatedaily.com By Zach.Clemens @iowastatedaily.com
T
he Great Hall of the Memorial Union was packed with people and anticipation as almost 100 different student groups awaited the Student Government Senate’s decision on if their respective group would receive funding for the next year. Student Government holds an annual meeting at the end of the spring semester called regular allocations. This is an opportunity for student organizations and clubs to receive funding from Student Government for the following academic year. Student Government does a regular funding allocation once a year, said Student Government President Dan Breitbarth, but they have tried to streamline the process and make it easier using online portals. Student organizations must meet a number of requirements before they can even be considered for funding. Requirements The leadership of each student organization must come to an informational meeting, where Finance Director Hamad Abbas, a senior in political science, explains the requirements and gives them the permission to upload their organization budget in the online
Katy Klopfenstein/Iowa State Daily
Student Government allocated funds to nearly 100 student groups Wednesday.
system Student Government uses. The organization must fit into the following before submitting their budget: • The organization must be officially recognized by the Student Activities Center and must be open to all activity fee-paying students and spouse cardholders. • The organization must not endorse or support—or receive support—from any political candidate or party that is recognized in the United States or the state of Iowa, with the exception of Student Government candidates. • The organization FUNDS p10
Design: Jordan Jones/Iowa State Daily
Officials release info on Tong Shao By Alex.Connor @iowastatedaily.com As new details emerge in the murder of 20-year-old and former ISU student Tong Shao, the verdict of a case that has been ongoing for the past year and a half might finally bring some relief to family and friends. Xiangnan Li, 23, confessed to the murder of Shao at his trial in the Intermediate People’s Court in Wenzhou, China, on Wednesday, March 23. He was charged with international homicide. After a seven-hour trial, Li is waiting on a verdict that will determine whether he faces a sentencing from 10 years to life in prison, and even the death penalty, which is a possibility for his charge according to Chinese law. It was revealed by Iowa authorities at a news conference on Monday in Iowa City that Li’s motive for murder was based on a conversation he had overheard, in which Shao discussed wishing to date another individual. Authorities said that the murder was most likely premedative. Shao was first reported missing on Sept. 18, 2014. Her body was later discovered in Iowa City stuffed in the trunk of her car, which Iowa City Police identified on Sept. 26, 2014. However, Li, a former University of Iowa international student in business, had already returned to China on a one-way ticket that he bought a few days prior to Shao’s death. Li supposedly returned on “family business,” but according to Johnson County Attorney Janet Lyness, Li’s mother was unaware he had even returned to China. “Why would he suddenly get a one-way ticket?” Lyness said. “He told people it was for a family
emergency, but his mother didn’t even know he was going back to China. So, not much of a family emergency could be proven.” Lyness said that Li fled to Tibet, 2,748 miles from his home in Wenzhou. Further evidence was also present that leads to the conclusion that the murder could have been premeditative. This is due to the fact that Li bought the oneway ticket before the murder, purchased hand weights and a new suitcase. Li said that he bought the suitcase because he was planning on moving apartments, but Lyness said after talking with Li’s landlord, they discovered there was no discussion of Li moving and that it was a “total fabrication.” Investigators were also able to trace Li’s phone the night of the murder. They discovered he had driven from his and Shao’s hotel in Nevada to the Skunk River, where officials believe that he planned to sink the suitcase with Shao’s body in the river. However, the water had receded at the time. Police then tracked Li’s route from Ames to Iowa City via cellphone technology where he then took a cab from Iowa City to the airport, leaving Shao’s body abandoned in the trunk of her Toyota Camry at the Dolphin Lake Point Enclave, where Li lived at the time. Shao’s body was discovered nearly a month after her disappearance, and an autopsy conducted by the Johnson County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that Shao died of asphyxiation. Officials also said that Shao received blunt force trauma. “The blunt force trauma she sustained to the face was not enough to cause her death,” said
Courtesy of Ames Police Department
Tong Shao went missing in the fall of 2014 and was later found dead in her car.
Detective David Gonzalez with the Iowa City Police Department at the news conference Monday. “Because she was placed into a suitcase, and the material the suitcase was made out of, we believe it was some type of asphyxiation.” Gonzalez, along with Detective Andrew Rich and Assistant Johnson County Attorney Elizabeth Dupuich all traveled to China to assist in the trial. Lyness said that it was “extremely unique” for Gonzalez, Rich and Dupuich to travel to China for the investigation, an opportunity not many, if any had done before. Because there is no extradition treaty between the U.S. and China, the Chinese government did not have to cooperate with the U.S. or its laws. However, Lyness said that they had been very cooperative not only in hosting
their detectives and attorney, but in accepting evidence beneficial to the case. “They were treated very well by the Chinese authorities,” Lyness said. Lyness said that Gonzalez and Rich felt that in having investigators from Iowa present for the case, that the Chinese authorities took more interest in the case. *** Li turned himself into authorities on May 13 and was immediately put into criminal detention. Because of Li’s cooperation in turning himself in, nearly nine months following Shao’s death, the Chinese system will take that act into account before sentencing him, a factor that is not considered in the U.S. Li denies that the death of his girlfriend Shao was premeditated argues that it was a crime of passion.
Like something straight out of a science fiction movie, researchers at Iowa State have created a flexible material that will make any object invisible to radar waves. The idea came after researchers noticed a problem with a wall designed to cloak objects. Items placed behind the wall could still be seen in certain circumstances. To remedy the problem, the research team decided to make the cloaking material flexible so it could be wrapped around objects. “In the material we have … a ring, but there’s a cut [in the ring] … this configuration can be called a resonator,” said Liang Dong, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. “This resonator plays the role to trap electromagnetic waves or radar waves at particular wavelengths.” The rings are made from a form of liquid metal that is encapsulated inside a flexible polymer. The process to create the rings isn’t simple, Dong said, adding that one of the graduate students who worked on this project happened to invent a way to create them. The ring inside acts as a resonator that traps electromagnetic waves. However, these waves could have different wavelengths and the flexible material of the cloaking skin allows for all different wavelengths to be captured, Dong said. Making the product is actually less expensive than one might think. While the process of creating the metal rings is economically and human intensive to be done correctly, the polymer itself is actually quite inexpensive, Dong added. Jiming Song, professor of electrical and computer engineering, explained how the “meta-skin” was tested in the Electromagnetic Antenna Lab at Coover Hall. To test the material, researchers wrapped it around a bar and placed it inside an area surrounded by “microwave absorbing material,” Song said. An antenna then fired waves at the object while another antenna recorded the waves that bounced off of it. Any object that has the meta-skin applied to it is virtually invisible, according to the graphs that Song and the team published in their paper. The team has filed for a patent and hopes it will be accepted soon, so companies can start contacting them to use their “meta-skin,” he said. Song and the team hope the military will want to use this product, but they also hope future research efforts can go into using their discovery to do other things. For example, they hope to see work put into protecting bodily implants from harmful electromagnetic waves. They also hope to develop a way that radio-frequency identification chips (RFIDs) can be placed on metal objects and still have the information on the chip be readable.