NEWS
The Daily Cougar
Friday, March 4, 2011
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FACULTY
Professor looking for gold in Pakistani mountains THE DAILY COUGAR A UH geology professor has started a new project to find gold in the mountains of Pakistan. Shuhab Khan decided to start this investigation because people have found small specks of gold in sand from the rivers of this region. However, no one has investigated the area where the actual gold deposit is. “People have been doing this for 2,000 years. But still we do not have any known location where the actual motherlode is,” Khan said. “If you are finding specks of gold, what does this mean? There is gold.” This zone is in the north of Pakistan, where the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram and the Himalayan mountains meet. Because this is one of the most remote regions in the world, Khan is using remote sensing technology, which allows him to get data from the mountains through his lab.
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of a global event intended to raise awareness about the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” House bill, sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. According to Walk for Choice Publicist Jessica Roy, more than 12,000 people marched nationwide, not counting those who participated in Pakistan and the United Kingdom. SFO took the rally one step further by garnering support against the addition of the Pence Amendment to Title X that calls for an end to federal funding of Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions. SFO held an “I Stand with Planned Parenthood” petition signing on Feb. 23 in front of the M.D. Anderson Memorial Library while promoting the weekend’s Walk For Choice. The group collected over 150 signatures from UH students, which Williams considers a success. SFO members engaged every person who signed the petition in conversation.
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schools, scholars, practicing attorneys and prospective students,” UH Law Center Dean Ray Nimmer said. “Congratulations not only to the current editors and faculty advisers, but to everyone who has contributed to the Law Review over the years.” T h e Ho u s t o n L a w Re v i e w strives to improve the journal’s visibility and reputation in the legal community. “Our most recent endeavor is HLRe, the Law Review’s new,
“We will be identifying the areas that we want, and then we will be using hyper-spectral remote sensing,” he said. The characteristics of gold and other minerals, such as copper, can be identified through satellite pictures. The images can be seen in 3D and with many different colors, which indicate the minerals that are in the mountains. The project, which started in November, received a grant of $370,000 from the National Academies of Sciences. Khan’s project was among 271 other proposals to research in Pakistan; only 14 were selected. This project also includes participation from the University of Peshawar, Khan’s Alma mater. He will be going to Pakistan during the summer to do research in the area. Working with Khan at UH is graduate student Kivanc Biber, who will also be going to Pakistan. Biber took a class with Khan last semester and decided to get involved in this project’s research because of his interest in the
“By doing that, it’s a way of empowering them to take the issues to someone else,” Williams said. “For every one person that we reached out to, they can potentially reach out to two more people or three more people. The signatures were great, that was very pragmatic, but the most important thing is that we reached out to them.” The Pence Amendment has garnered a lot of attention in the past couple of weeks as the House passed it on Feb. 18 and Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., revealed on the House floor that she had had an abortion. SFO is particularly interested in seeing this amendment not pass because the organization sees it as a women’s health issue as well as an issue about the rights of women’s bodies. “We were debunking some myths about Planned Parenthood … and introduced a lot of people for the first time to Planned Parenthood and their services,” said Williams about SFO’s petition signing. “Our main goal was to introduce the issue to them (students) and how it concerns society as a whole, and why they should protect the health
online-only publication geared towards legal practitioners, law clerks, judges, and attorneys,” Gray said. “HLRe is an attempt to step outside the box of traditional law review scholarship in order to find and publish articles aimed at the practice of law. Our editors believe that HLRe is a wonderful complement to our traditional print journal.” The national rankings are established according to the number of citations to the journal. “In order to calculate a ranking, the number of citations to the journal is weighed with the number of articles published by the
subject. Biber, who is originally from Turkey, is not scared of the violence that has erupted during the last few years. “We have some dangerous areas in Turkey, and I have worked in those areas doing explorations. I think I’m used to it, it doesn’t scare me,” Biber said. According to Khan, the region in Pakistan that they will visit is safe. “We do not take a risk,” Khan said. “I know this area, we know this area is very stable, very settled.” If gold is discovered, the Pakistani government will keep all of it. Neither Khan nor his team members will be getting the gold, but that doesn’t worry them. “This gold is flashy for the public, but at the end of the day we are there for the academics. We want to understand what made the gold be there,” Khan said. The project is expected to last three years.
An audience of around 70 people took time to listen to the cadence of Ted Estess as he read from his new book Wednesday. | Nine Nguyen/The Daily Cougar
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such a way that shrunk the room to just him and the listener. It wasn’t until certain moments, like when a cousin wondered if it was appropriate to wear white shoes before Easter, that the audience reappeared with laughter. “I thought it was absolutely one of the most interesting things I heard in a long time,” said Camden Kirkland,
a chemical engineering freshman. “It’s a nice insight into the life of a professor, to get to know a lot more about him.” Nam-ny Le, an electrical engineering freshman, agreed with Kirkland. “It gives you insight into not just his life, but about the power of storytelling. Just hearing his stories about his life and the power of it, you can take so much from that,” Le said. news@thedailycougar.com
Philanthropy Awareness Day “Philanthropy is not just a passing PhAD, it’s a tradition”
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ts den ni, stu alum ds H U ien H To: m: U nd fr a o Fr nors do
Tuesday, March 29, 2011 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. at the UC Say thanks, and get free food! A rally on Saturday was organized to protest recent bills that would curb abortion. | Courtesy Student Feminist Organization of women and families. “We wanted to outreach to our community (at UH) and educate them about the issue. A lot of people can’t take action on something they aren’t informed about,” Williams said. news@thedailycougar.com
journal in that given year,” Gray said. “The precise calculation takes into account the most recent eight years.” In addition to the publication of legal scholarship, the Houston Law Review, with the support of the Frankel Family, hosts an annual lecture focused on bringing scholars to the Houston legal community. “This lecture provides an opportunity for the exchange of ideas and legal discussion,” Gray said. “Topics vary from year to year, based on the relevant and timely legal issues of the day.” news@thedailycougar.com
UH is an EEO/AA institution.
Miguel Cortina
For more information: alumsupport@uh.edu