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An independent student newspaper serving Iowa State since 1890
THURSDAY
02.27.2020 Vol. 220 No. 106
A threat to polar bears CAITLIN YAMADA/ IOWA STATE DAILY Attendees of the Iowa State Rare Disease Awareness Club’s Rare Disease Day event learned from several presentations.
Iowa State club hosts event to bring attention to rare diseases
The warming Arctic affects polar bears’ food supply BY SAGE.SMITH @iowastatedaily.com
With the diminishing population of polar bears, future generations may only know polar bears as the
ones on Coca-Cola cans and in zoos. Thursday is International Polar Bear Day to bring awareness to the challenges facing polar bears. Polar bears are starving to death as the continuing warming of the Arctic, due to climate change, melts the sea ice. This leaves the bears without their main food source: seals. Polar bears are listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. According to the most recent study (Hamilton and Derocher, 2018), there are about 23,000 polar bears worldwide. Andrew Derocher, professor of biology at the University of Alberta, is a longtime scientific adviser for Polar Bears International. He has been
studying polar bears for about 36 years, mainly in the Canadian Arctic, but he also worked in the Norwegian Arctic for seven years. “The simplest way to look at the ecology of polar bears is it’s what we call a sea ice obligate species, so they’re only found where sea ice persists for most of the year,” Derocher said. “They’re highly adapted to be a predator from the surface of the sea ice. So sea ice is their preferred habitat. It’s where they travel, it’s where they hunt, it’s where they mate and even some parts of their distribution, such as often the north coast of Alaska, pregnant females will actually den out on the sea
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BY OLIVIA.RUF @iowastatedaily.com The Iowa State Rare Disease Awareness Club (RDAC) hosted an event dedicated to Rare Disease Day, a day to raise awareness and educate the public about rare diseases. The event was kicked off by John Bunney, senior in physics and president of RDAC at Iowa State. Bunney gave a presentation that highlighted the statistics surrounding rare diseases and the importance of awareness. He had also discussed his experience as someone who lives with a rare disease. “The internet may be your best friend,” Bunney said. “For me, it helped me learn because doctors didn’t have the resources to study my rare disease.” Next, Bunney discussed the importance of conversation when it comes to rare diseases, especially in regard to mental health. “Spending years looking for a diagnosis means, for some patients, that it becomes impossible to stay hopeful that they’ll ever find answers,” Bunney said. “Incidence of depression and anxiety is greater than 75 percent.” Following Bunney ’s speech was a presentation given by Lillian Howard, a graduate from Iowa State who has a master’s degree in genetic counseling. She spoke on her experience as a genetic counselor and the stigmas that surround those with rare diseases and their families. Howard had also stressed the importance of funding for genetic testing, a method used to learn more about rare diseases and their symptoms. She refers to her patients as zebras, a common term used in the medical field, to describe those with rare diseases. “It ’s easier when you have a herd. When you have those people to lean on, you can see hope. With rare diseases, you need to get horses involved. Not just zebras,” Howard said. Howard then introduced the audience
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Debating StuGov scholarships BY CASSIE.LEHMANN @iowastatedaily.com Student Government addressed a bill that would change a scholarship receiving, looked at two funding bills, seated a senator to the Public Relations Committee and passed a resolution in support of a Tobacco-Free Campus Policy at Wednesday night’s meeting. Currently, the finance director
of Student Government receives a scholarship equivalent to threefourths in-state undergraduate tuition. During Annual Allocations, the finance director spends over 60 hours with club questions, budget requests and line-item transfers, according to the document. Due to the heavy workload of the finance director, Sen. Travis Lipford, senior in finance, introduced a bill to have
the scholarship change for the position. With the scholarship offering the equivalent to in-state undergraduate tuition, the bill garnered discussion. “A three-fourths scholarship, I think, is adequate to compensate for the role,” said Jacob Schrader, vice speaker and junior in economics and political science. “This position means that you probably cannot hold a job for
many other hours. So that the reason behind the compensation, we want to make sure people can do the role and not have finances be an issue, but I don’t think we should be spending more money on ourselves. We are all asked to sacrifice for the sake of the organization, so with that, I would be against this bill.” Following along the same lines,
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