UTSA On April 12, the 9th annual African American Studies Symposium will take place in the Denman Ballroom on Main Campus. The theme of this year’s symposium is “The Power of Story”. It will feature presentations by contributors to A History of African American Autobiography edited by UTSA’s Joycelyn Moody for Cambridge University Press.
TEXAS-SIZED PAY DISPARITY: UT-System executives make millions.
UTSA lecturers receive lowest salaries in entire UT System.
U.S. Joseph Medicine Crow, last war chief of the Crow Tribe in Montana, has died at 102. He was known for being a historian of his peoples’ history, works including a firsthand account of what life was like on Indian reservations. According to The New York Times, Mr. Medicine Crow was the last person to have heard direct oral testimony from people who were present before the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Among many reasons, he was infamous for stealing 50 Nazi warhorses during World War II. Mr. Medicine Crow received the Medal of Freedom from President Obama in 2009.
The UT System Board of Regents approved hefty increases for senior UT System officials and university presidents’ bonuses in the past year, leading some to make six figures. The Board is the governing body for The University of Texas System, composed of nine members appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate. Known as incentive payments, the bonuses are a part of a plan that the regents adopted in 2012.
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World
The Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of approximately 11.5 million files from Mossack Fonesca, the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm. Obtained by an anonymous source, the files were shared with media outlets across the globe by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and German newspaper, Güddeutsche Zeitung. A slew of world leaders, including Vladimir Putin, have been exposed by the leak for using secret shell companies and offshore accounts. While nothing blatantly illegal has been revealed in the leak, such companies and accounts are often used to conceal the origin and ownership of financial transactions.
Science
2016 International Dark Sky Week will run from April 4 to 10 in connection with Global Astronomy Month. The intent of the week is to draw attention to light pollution and ways to combat it. According to National Geographic, the planet Mercury will be visible along the skyline an hour or so after sunset. This is remarkable since the small planet’s proximity to the sun results in it drowning in the solar glare. The crescent moon will guide skywatchers to the faint planet Friday evening.
Graphics by Randi Gillmore
3D bioprinter prints living cells Trans Day of Visibility:
awareness and art
Lyanne Rodriguez Staff Writer
Marina Vences
@ThePaisano news@paisano-online.com
The UTSA biomedical engineering program has obtained a rare machine that is capable of printing tissues and can possibly regenerate organs. The acquired device is a new development in regenerative medicine, and UTSA is currently the only Texas university that has this type of technology. The piece of equipment formally called the Envision-TEC 3D-Bioplotter System, or better known as a 3D bioprinter, resides in assistant professor of biomedical engineering, Dr. Teja Guda’s laboratory. The device is often compared to an average 3D printer, but unlike a 3D printer, it is able to print living cells and can keep them from dying. This is possible because the bioprinter functions without high pressure or heating. The new technology is predicted to eventually offer benefits such as preventing amputations, transplanting organs and regenerating tissues. Dr. Guda explains a driving factor to his current research, “a large amount of this research is inspired by the ability to restore wounded soldiers coming back from war so they don’t have amputations and have better choices in terms of regenerating tissues.” Dr. Guda and his team of undergraduate and graduate students have already
Staff Writer
@Marina_vences news@paisano-online.com
The device is often compared to a 3D printer but, unlike a 3D printer, this machine prints living cells and keep them from dying.
started testing the 3D bioprinter with silicone. They have recently printed a silicone jawbone by using a CT scan of a man’s jawbone that was injured in a rodeo accident. Dr. Guda will soon move on to printing skeletal muscle, bone grafts, salivary glands and organ tissue using extracted cell samples from lab rats. Dr. Guda and his team will essentially develop their own materials with embedded living cells. “What our lab focuses on is creating inks with living cells so we can put them into the machine,” says Guda. The cells will be loaded up into small syringes that will be inserted into the bioprinter. The device will then print out the tissue material layer by layer and which will allow for fine, delicate and intricate construction of the organ or tissue printed. Once printed, the tissue will be transplanted into the animal to determine if the tissue will work like the original tissue. The challenge of the process will be to make sure the tissue’s cells remain alive and that the tis-
Andrea Velgis, The Paisano
sue maintains its shape. Dr. Guda explains that although this technology now exists with the 3 bioprinter, there is still progress that needs to be made to better understand how tissue regeneration can be achieved, “with biology, the science usually takes a while to catch up, so it’s not so much a technology problem as it is a science and clinical problem to ensure that people have safe solutions for regenerative medicine.” While Dr. Guda’s research is in its beginning stages, there are great prospects to this new technology. He believes that transplantation of simpler tissues will become achievable in about four to five years. When it comes to more complex organs such as livers, hearts and kidneys, Dr. Guda believes the printed organ transplantation will be possible in about a decade. According to Dr. Guda, the bio printer is a building block for the progressive future of regenerative medicine.
Transgender people are 9 times more likely than cisgender people to commit suicide; but transgender people with a strong support system are 82 percent less likely to attempt suicide, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA. Student organization Intersections, held an art exhibition in the Sombrilla on Thursday, March 31 for Transgender Visibility Day. The art featured several paintings and poems about the lives and experiences of trans people and their allies. The exhibition was open to submissions from both trans people and cis-gender people to be inclusive. Senior political science and Mexican American Studies major Bryant Andrade Meza says the group decided on an art exhibition because it was the best medium to show the trans presence on campus. For Meza, the Trans Day of Visibility is about emphasizing trans experiences, “I think the effect we will have on campus is one that does exactly what Trans Day of Visibility is supposed to do, remind the UTSA community that Trans people exist. I hope to build in someway a better relationship between non trans and trans people in the UTSA community.” Meza hopes that the event will bring awareness to trans
issues and open a dialogue that will answer questions people might have. “I think people forget that these are artistic people, people that have a creative outlet, we want to sort of normalize trans people in society, to make it a more welcoming environment.” Junior pre-business major Emmanuelle Taylor Maher (who prefers the pronouns “they/ them”) said the “T” in LGBT is often ignored by both people in and out of the community. They wants to ensure that people know there is still progress to be made regarding LGBT rights, “a lot of people— allies, gay and non trans people believe that after gay marriage has been legalized we don’t need to make any more LGBT strides but it’s kind of comparing apples to oranges — it’s not the same.” Though Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) was a win for marriage equality activists, Maher believes there is still more to be done. According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality, 41 percent of trans people have attempted suicide in their lifetime, in comparison to 4.6 percent of the general US population.
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