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Sports Both Sports: basketball teams take-aways were busy over the from this weekend’s games break (Page 5)
Opinion: Shop local to support your community during the holidays (Page 3)
L&A: Need a break from textbooks? Pick up this comic relief. (Page 6)
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ACADEMICS
Double major students decrease While students pursuing two majors increase nationwide, OU numbers fall KATE BERGUM
Assistant News Editor @kateclaire_b
Students taking double majors are becoming more common throughout the United States, according to a recent study, but they are less common at OU. The percentage of students pursuing double majors is increasing slightly in the United States with steeper increases within select universities, according to a study released by Vanderbilt University in 2012. Inversely, the number of double majors at OU decreased
from 1,083 students during fall 2010 to 1,044 students during the fall of this year, according to records from OU Institutional Research and Reporting. This decline hit its lowest ebb last fall, when only 1,001 students took multiple degrees or majors, according to the data. Junior Danielle Jackson is one of the 1,044 undergraduate students at OU pursuing multiple majors this semester. Jackson came to OU as a management information systems major and decided to pursue a second major in international business, she said. Many double majors who visit OU Career Services pursue majors in highly related fields, such as business and accounting or business and finance, said Bette Scott, director of Career Services. Alternately, some students pursue very different majors that allow them to engage with a topic that really interests them, such as women’s and
MEET OU PANDA
gender studies, Scott said. Jackson said she feels taking on two majors not only might help her for a career in international business law, but it also allows her to take classes in a variety of subjects she enjoys, she said. “I think almost everyone, including me, has more than one interest,” Jackson said. Jackson’s two majors, in addition to minors in French and piano, keep her busy, she said. She typically takes between 19 and 22 credit hours per semester so she will be able to graduate in four years, she said. Though her schedule can be brutal at times, Jackson gets by with a lot of caffeine and the knowledge that she’s pursuing her passions, she said. SEE MAJORS PAGE 2
SCIENCE
Professor discovers new fish phylogeny Evolutionary tree established by OU research now accepted across world JUSTINE ALEXANDER News Reporter @caffeinejustine
YA JIN/THE DAILY
OU Panda takes a stroll outside of the Honors residence halls. OU students have been posing in pictures with OU Panda on social media ever since he first appeared on campus.
Panda causes a stir on campus Costumed human interviewed via translator Thagard. I obliged. On the morning of his interview Panda arrived to The Daily’s newsroom with Thagard. Panda was dressed for the occasion in a red tie. quirrels aren’t the only furry critters that roam OU’s Throughout the interview, Panda did not make a sound but campus. This semester, a new animal has arrived, made several physical expressions to the questions. Thagard and he’s doing more than burying nuts outside — he’s verbally answered all of the questions, which I sent him going to classes and runs a Twitter account, too. beforehand. You may have seen him around. He’s black, white and goes by the name OU Panda, or just Panda. THE Q&A* Panda, a human dressed in a full-body panda costume, The Daily: Where does Panda get his bamboo? made his first documented appearance Oct. 15 in the Oklahoma Memorial Union when, in the middle of the night, Thagard: The first batch I had imported from China, but he took some of that and planted it on campus in a secret garden, he decided to get some food from Crossroads. This prompted OU students to tweet pictures of him. and even I don’t know where that is. Although this was his first documented excursion, Panda said he’s been walking around on campus since the first weeks of The Daily: Which does Panda prefer, bamboo or the food the semester. from Couch Restaurants? After the trip to the Union on Oct. 15, Panda created his Thagard: He’ll eat from Couch [Restaurants] if he has to, own Twitter account: @OU_Panda, where he tweets about but he prefers the bamboo. bamboo and retweets pictures taken with him. I wanted to find out more about the infamous panda, so I contacted Panda on his Twitter account. He agreed to the The Daily: Panda’s only been seen at night. Is he nocturnal? interview but said that he had to bring someone with him Thagard: He just feels like the campus is more alive at night. to interpret because he could not speak English. He asked People are more fun and lively. He’s out right now, awake, me to send the questions beforehand to his human, Britton probably a little tired. PAGE JONES
Everybody knows that there are plenty of fish in the sea, but one OU professor wants to know how they are all related to each other. Biology professor Richard Broughton led a team to build a classification framework of bony fishes that is now used worldwide. Although fish have been studied for over 200 years, little was known about their relationships to each other until now, said Broughton. For most of the last couple hundred years, fish classification was based on anatomical characteristics of the fish, which is an imprecise method. “They’re all fish,” Broughton said of differing species like the flounder, tuna and puffer fish. “But beyond that, there are no similarities between any pair that would suggest a relationship.” The older classification system saw many orders of fish, each containing hundreds to thousands of species, as nothing more than different branches of the same limb of the phylogenetic, or evolutionary, tree, Broughton said. “There are a lot of cases like that where morphology just didn’t have the answers,” Broughton said. To remedy this confusion, Broughton devised a classification system that is based on molecular data: clues from the sequences of 21 different genes from over 14,000 different species, many of which had never before been sequenced, Broughton said. More recent studies using molecular data have investigated genetic relationships within an order or family because the studies that tried to incorporate broader parts of the tree didn’t have enough individual gene sequences, Broughton said. “What our project provided was the ability to analyze the whole tree all at once, a single comprehensive analysis,” Broughton said. For the study, all fish that swim in the water and have bones were included, and each family of fish had anywhere from one to 10 representatives in the study. Broughton said other kinds of animals, including humans, were also included in the tree to help decipher relationships. Before the research team could start collecting any data, they first needed to identify the most informative genes to sequence.
News Reporter @pageousm
SEE FISH PAGE 4
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SEE PANDA PAGE 4
WEATHER Partly cloudy today with a high of 34, low of 23. Follow @AndrewGortonWX on Twitter for weather updates.
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CHRIS MICHIE/THE DAILY
Different types of fish are kept in jars and tubes to have their genes analyzed. Richard Broughton has devised a classification system for fish based on molecular data rather than anatomical.
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