11-3-15

The Pitt News T h e in de p e n d e n t st ude nt ne w spap e r of t he University of Pittsburgh

Fuku Tea offers authentic cuisine Page 8 November 3, 2015 | Issue 55 | Volume 106

Addiction research hits home

Page 6

Graffiti source of conversation within the community

Shumeng Yang Staff Writer

Yan Dong’s research on illicit drugs’ movement through the brain has been a work in progress since 2006. Now, he is learning how to use that movement to reverse the negative effects of addiction.

Dong , an associate professor of neuroscience at Pitt and head of a neuroscience lab in Crawford Hall, conducts studies on drug addiction pathways in the brain, searching for a way to reverse relapse during recovery. Dong’s research focuses on three main points, development of neural circuits, cue induced cravings and reversing the effects of drug use on the brain. Dong said his own personal interest drives his work in motivated behavior and a concern for the effect of substance abuse in society. In early October, the Society for Neuroscience recognized Dong’s work on drugs and neurological pathways.

“I have always been very interested in motivated behavior,” Dong said. “And drugs are the best models to study this since they make you motivated to work for the drug, and nothing else. The mechanisms underlying such strong motivated behavior give us insight on how our brains regulate motivation.”

Elaina Zachos | Staff Writer

Birders flock to Audubon’s art Cristina McCormack For The Pitt News

When John J. Audubon, the famous, late wildlife artist, came to Pittsburgh nearly 200 years ago, he paid specific attention to the passenger pigeon.

Audubon, however, was more concerned See Dong on page 2

in 1917 with the aesthetically pleasing aspects of the brown, blue and red, sleek birds than the scientific accuracies of their feeding patterns.

“He did it pretty wrong in that painting.

It’s a beautiful painting, I actually have a print of in my house. But in that, he shows the female feeding a male and the male is in a beg-

ging position,” Chris Kubiak, the director of education at The Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania said. “We now know that is false.

It would’ve been the female begging, it’s a sort of mating ritual.”

Audubon’s work — noted not for his sciSee Audubon on page 2

News

Audubon, pg. 1

John J. Audubon’s “Snowy Owl.” Courtesy of the Darlington Digital Library

Dong, pg. 1 According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the prevalence of many drugs — including alcohol, cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine — has steadily increased from 2012 to 2014 in people ages 12 and older. Tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs cost more than $700 billion annually in crime, lost work productivity and health care related costs.

Paul Phillips, an associate professor and researcher at the University of Washington who has worked with Dong in the past, also focuses on brain changes that occur with substance abuse. He said the severity of the substance abuse problem in the country is not just an issue that affects people who have addictions.

“To put [the financial cost of substance abuse] in perspective, it costs more than five times what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost, around $120 billion annually,” Phillips said.

The Society for Neuroscience awarded

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entific renderings, but rather his artistic ones — will be on display in Hillman Library on Friday, Nov. 6 in honor of the fifth annual Audubon Day. In the late 1800s, George Bird Grinnell named the National Audubon Society after the artist because of his contributions to the study of birds and their habitats. The University initially created Audubon Day in 2011 and other later institutions followed suit in celebrating the artist who focused on wildlife in the United States.

The University is one of a few institutions — including the Carnegie Library — in the world to own a complete set of Audubon’s “Birds of America” prints. “Birds of America” is one of the largest records of bird species found in the United States during the early nineteenth century.

Anthony Bledsoe, a lecturer on or-

Dong the Jacob P. Waletzky Award on Oct. 9 to honor his accomplishments in the area of substance abuse, the brain and the nervous system.

The Jacob P. Waletzky Family Fund awards a $25,000 prize, established in honor of Waletzky, who died in 2001 of a cocaine-induced cardiac arrhythmia at the age of 29.

“This award is the culmination of almost a decade of work,” Dong said. “I started the first steps of the research— identifying the neural pathways involved in addiction— in 2006 and have been continuing ever since.”

Dong analyzed how motivation works in the brain using drug-addicted rat models that he taught to self-administer cocaine. He mapped out the neural pathways, which are sequences of neurons that fire signals, associated with addiction and prolonged use of drugs. He found that the brain’s major reward and motivation centers — the amygdala and nucleus accumbens — communicate differently as a result of drug use.

nithology at Pitt, said Audubon’s style of presenting the birds was ahead of his time.

“Audubon used what we like to call today as the barrel-of-the-shotgun method,” Bledsoe said. “After he killed the birds, he would use a complex system of wires and strings to position the birds. Previous artists would draw the birds in a stiff position, but Audubon was different. He drew the birds in dynamic ways, by positioning them how he would observe them in the field.”

Birders, historians and artists revere the prints for their hand-painted and printed artistic finesse.

Jon Darlington was an attorney from Pittsburgh in the late 1880s who had a keen interest in American history.

His vast collection of maps, lithographs and works of art included the entire set of Audubon’s “Birds of America,” prints that date back between 1827 and 1839.

The Darlington family donated the prints as part of The Darlington Memo-

Dong also studied cue-induced relapse, which is a relapse following a stimulus associated with the drug. When the rats self-administered cocaine, a light would flash, serving as a stimulus. After recovery, exposure to this stimulus could induce relapse, and Dong found the nucleus accumbens — a structure in the brain responsible for processing rewarding stimuli — were responsible for cue-induced relapse.

Finally, deep brain stimulation, which electrically shocks specific areas in the brain to prevent them from firing, reversed the neural pathways that developed from drug exposure.

In this case, Dong would shock the amygdala and the nucleus accumbens, which achieved some anti-relapse effects in rats.

In 2010, Phillips collaborated on a study with Dong to research the effect that behavioral adaptations from repeated drug use had on the type of pathway the drug used. He said Dong’s work is instrumental in the study of addiction and recovery.

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rial Library in 1918 and 1925.

Eight years later, the Darlington Digital Library — a digital collection of Pitt’s special collection that includes the earliest books, manuscripts and maps in Western Pennsylvania — displays a series of 25 prints from Audubon’s “Birds of America” collection once a year. The collection includes 435 original prints.

Pitt has one of the 120 complete sets that exist today in its Darlington Memorial Library.

The Audubon celebration at Pitt on Nov. 6 will feature guest speaker Allan Stypeck, owner of Second Story Books in Washington, D.C., and an appraiser of Pitt’s Darlington Library Collection at 10 a.m. in room G-47 of Hillman Library.

According to Stypeck, most first edition collections of Audubon’s “Birds of America” separated over time and are now sold as singular prints. Full collections like Pitt’s are rarely for sale on the See Audubon on page 3

“I’ve known Dong for a long time, and he is very respected in the research community,” Phillips said. “His integrity, and the robustness and direction of his research allow us to understand the brain further and provide help to addicts.”

Masago Ishikawa, an assistant professor of pharmacology and systems therapeutics, worked with Dong in 2013 on research about the effect of cocaine on the nucleus accumbens, a major reward center in the brain.

“We collaborated on the basis for his current work,” Ishikawa said. “We were working on addiction research, specifically cocaine addiction, and we developed a few specific neural pathways in cocaine addiction.”

For Dong, focusing on the combination of different aspects of addiction in terms of treatments, parts of the brain and types of addiction is the key to finding a cure.

“The best way to win a battle is to better understand your enemies,” Dong said.

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Audubon, pg. 2 artistic market.

Stypeck said a “fair insurance value” for a collection in good condition would be around $11 million for replacement value.

“If the items are very difficult to obtain, like the subscription issues and the first complete folio editions of the ‘Birds of America,’” Stypeck said, “the value will increase based on the market interest.”

Jeanann Croft Haas, the head of the special collections department at Pitt, described the long process Audubon undertook to complete each print.

“When Audubon set out to do this in the nineteenth century it was such a huge endeavor,” Croft Haas said. “He basically hunted the birds, posed them, painted them and then he had to hire an engraver and a team of colorists to then color the engravings.”

After immigrating to the United States from France in 1803, Audubon dedicated his life’s work to observing and cataloguing natural life in the United States. He spent the next 20 years traveling the country, documenting and captur-

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ing the birds of the nation.

Kubiak, the guest speaker at last year’s Audubon Day in the Amy E. Knapp room in the Hillman Library on Nov. 21, remarked that Audubon would not necessarily be considered an ornithologist — someone who studies birds — by today’s standards.

“One of the things he gets criticized for is that he really wasn’t a scientist. He was an artist first and foremost,” Kubiak said. “Back then he would have been considered, for lack of a better term, they were called ‘gentleman scientists.’

Again, someone who didn’t really have formal scientific training.”

Audubon’s depictions of birds in the early twentieth century are one of the only visual records ornithologists have today of the bird species that inhabited the United States during that time.

For Haas, Audubon’s work can not be confined as either artistic or educational because it encompasses both.

“It’s significant from an artist’s perspective, and it’s significant from an ornithologist’s perspective,” Haas said. “I think it’s one of those works that transcends boundaries. It’s an interest to almost everyone for a different reason.”

The PItt News wins Pacemaker awards Lauren Rosenblatt Assistant News Editor

Five Pitt News staff members received awards from the Associated Collegiate Press national journalism competition this weekend.

Four Pitt students and one Pitt alumnus won awards in the categories of 2015 Story of the Year, Spot News Photo of the Year, Sports Story of the Year and Multimedia Story of the Year. In addition to The Pitt News, the ACP finalists included student journalists from The Yale Daily News, The Temple News from Temple University and the Indiana Daily Student from Indiana University, among hundreds of other schools. The competition evaluated pieces from the 2014-2015 academic year.

The ACP grants individual awards annually to honor students’ work in collegiate journalism. This weekend, the ACP announced the award at its ACP/CMA National College Me-

November 3, 2015

dia Convention in Austin, Texas.

Former visual editor Theo Schwarz won first place in the spot news photography category for his photo “Not One More” from the Black Lives Matter protest in December on Pitt’s campus. Schwarz is currently a photography intern at Pittsburgh City Paper.

Assistant news editor Elizabeth Lepro won third place in the feature story category for her piece “Home sweet zone: City officials crack down on overcrowding” from March 16, 2015.

Senior staff writer Jasper Wilson won third place in the sports story category for his piece “Pit(t) stop: Former Panther wrestlers find work in NASCAR” from Feb. 18, 2015.

Multimedia senior staff member Mason Lazarcheff and Pitt alum Nate Smith won an honorable mention in the multimedia news category for their “Candle Light Vigil for UNC Muslim Victims” video from Feb. 16, 2015.

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Opinions

column

from the editorial board

Candidates need to answer questions, not make excuses Dr. Ben Carson on his 10-year relationship with the controversial medical supplement company, Mannatech, “That is total propaganda, and this is what happens in our society. Total propaganda.”

Donald Trump on his website’s attack on Mark Zuckerberg for his stance on immigration, “I don’t know, you people write the stuff.”

Sen. Ted Cruz on his opposition to the budget deal finalized in Washington last week, “How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?”

Despite the accuracy of these particular points during last week’s Republican debate, the candidates dismissed the CNBC moderators’ questions as unfair or biased, and therefore, non-issues.

While not all of the moderators’ queries during last week’s debate were legitimate — asking the candidates about the fantasy sports site, DraftKings, was certainly unnecessary — the above points are regarding substantive issues. Immigration, health care and basic economics are constant themes in politics. As president of the United States, the candidates will have to face harsh criticisms, and should be prepared to answer those questions. If elected, the candidates will have to represent both sides, not just those who voted for them.

Crying “media bias” in an effort to skirt around these issues, however, only serves to limit the transparency of candidates’ campaigns and to undermine the process as a whole.

Yet, Republicans continue to insist that the mainstream media is the real problem here.

On Monday, 11 Republican campaigns even sent a joint-letter to television networks

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in an effort to ensure that networks provide “appropriate platforms” for future debates.

The letter listed stipulations for networks to meet in the format of the debates — regarding things like length of questions, “lightning rounds” and potential moderators — as these ground rules will determine whether or not candidates will participate.

The Republicans’ complaints, and the subsequent joint-letter to networks, are responses to what they see as an unfair media environment that is pitted against them.

Like it or not, though, media outlets are always going to be biased, but this bias exists on both sides of the spectrum. Fox News, for instance, frequently tops the charts as the most watched cable news network. When the conservative network aired more than 1,000 evening television segments on the Benghazi attack between the night of the attacks and the formation of the select committee in early May 2014 alone, that was agenda setting.

Nonetheless, this agenda setting helped to eventually force then-Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, to confront the Benghazi issue in a public hearing earlier last month.

This is one of the main roles media plays in our democracy, to make viewers and/or readers aware of the stances, policies and histories of politicians. Whether their viewers are liberal or conservative, most will be relying on the media to provide them with information they will use when deciding who to cast their vote for.

While media outlets may not always do the best job at fulfilling this role, that is no excuse for politicians to avoid the criticisms needed to facilitate public awareness.

biker friendly policies require bike lanes

Pitt News file photo

Alyssa Lieberman Columnist

I’ve had endless conversations with my cyclist friends about the stress of biking through Oakland’s crowded intersections. It’s understandable, considering the reckless nature of the city drivers who rush to and from work.

When I decided not to bring a bike to campus this year, I cited these exchanges as my reason against doing so. If my friends, who were much more experienced bikers than me, felt uncomfortable navigating the main streets of our campus, then how would I fare?

But this fear didn’t fully hit home until last Friday. Susan Hicks, the as-

November 3, 2015

sistant director for academic affairs at Pitt’s Center for Russian and East European Studies, was hit by a car and killed while biking on Forbes Avenue near Bellefield.

To prevent future accidents, the city must work to promote greater security for our bikers, starting with a bike lane on Forbes and Fifth Avenues. More biking on our campus and across our city should be a cause for celebration, not fear.

Later that week, at the vigil held last Saturday in Hicks’ honor, grief was pervasive, but with it was also a deep sense of rage over this preventable death. Of the more than 200 people who attended , several See Lieberman on page 5

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Lieberman, pg. 4 mourners held signs that read “Not One More,” or T-shirts with the slogan “It Could’ve Been Me.” With a 16 percent increase from 2010 to 2012 in national cyclist fatalities, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association, action to protect all of those on the road has become not only beneficial, but essential. We need to add additional bike lanes in Oakland to change how we drive with cyclists.

The biking community has risen up and demanded that the city of Pittsburgh take greater steps to ensure the safety of its cyclists, with a circulating petition that already has 2,500 signatures. BikePGH, a non-profit that promotes safe biking in the city, will take these signatures to Mayor Bill Peduto and urge him to take action to make Fifth and Forbes safer for cyclists.

While Peduto’s administration has already committed to constructing more bike lanes in Oakland, the city can’t do it alone. In order to get bike lanes in Oakland as quickly as possible, all stakeholders — the University, Port Authority, PennDOT and the city — need to work together. PennDOT actually owns Forbes avenue, while the city owns Fifth.

As Eric Boerer, Bike PGH’s advocacy director, told The Pitt News this past Friday, all parties need to be effectively communicating in order to get bike lanes up soon, and efficiently.

Yet, “There are so many moving parts,” Boerer said. “Nobody is really talking to each other.”

We need the people who operate our roads to start communicating as soon as possible, because cycling continues to increase. According to reports from The League of American Bicyclists, we have experienced an average 46 percent increase in bicycle commuters between 2005 to 2013 nationwide , for instance.

With this increase comes a need for safety.

This trend is especially present in Pittsburgh, as commuting by bicycle has increased by 389 percent since 2000 .

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The number of bikers will only continue to rise as a result of some of the city’s recent bicycle friendly programs.

Take the Pittsburgh Bike Share’s Healthy Ride System, for instance. The program started this summer, and provides a public bike sharing system that allows a rider to pick up a bike at one location and return it at any of its other 50 stations across the city. So far, the system has been successful, with over 10,000 rides in its first month, last June, according to Pittsburgh Bike Share’s website.

Policies that encourage an increase in bikers requires bike lanes to address the resulting safety challenges. Making the lanes a reality, however, requires constant communication and planning between all agents involved in their construction.

These efforts are not just for the sake of bikers, but for the sake of all Pittsburgh residents. In fact, many may not even not realize that an increase in biking has a positive, direct effect on the community as well.

For example, an increase in biking leads to less cars on the road. If we add bike lanes to Forbes and Fifth Avenues, more cyclists would feel comfortable commuting to work, inevitably leading to less traffic. This benefits drivers, not only in saving time they would otherwise spend on the road, but also in the decrease in the demand for gas that accompanies spending less time in traffic.

Those in wheelchairs and emergency vehicles can use bike lanes as well, allowing them both to avoid traffic congestions.

Every time I pass the “ghost bike” commemorating Hicks’ life, it reminds me that our streets need to be safer for cyclists. Even if they wear their helmets, like Hicks did, and learn the necessary hand signals, without a bike lane, bikers are forced to commute while carrying an uneasy awareness of their own lack of safety.

Alyssa primarily writes on social justice and political issues for The Pitt News.

Write to her at aal43@pitt.edu

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November 3, 2015

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Culture tag you’re it

city split over value of graffiti art Elaina Zachos Staff Writer

On the street, Alicia Carberry hunts for fresh paint.

Sporting a bright green shirt stamped “volunteer,” the Bloomfield resident of four years sets out on her second graffiti paint-out with the Southside Community Council’s Graffiti Watch. Toting a wagon filled with paint gallons in six basic colors, rollers and brushes, Carberry and her volunteer partner are determined to relieve the neighborhood of graffiti.

While making their way through the brick fields of Southside’s budding graffiti scene at Carson and 21st Streets, a man approaches them and starts yelling.

“Who gives you license to paint over this? Why would you do that?” he said.

Carberry says nothing. After the fact, she says the man had probably painted graffiti or was standing up for another graffitist.

Steve Root heads the council’s Graffiti

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Watch, where he has led something of a street war for the past eight years.

“Our goal is to remove and prevent graffiti, [but] we don’t expect to eliminate graffiti,” Root said. “We’re talking about vandalism.”

A visual artist himself, Root, 68, said graffiti isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s wrong

Like most urban areas, Pittsburgh has no shortage of graffiti. To name a few cases, a self-proclaimed “Lord Keli” hit the Birmingham Bridge, and a peace sign/smiley face/heart trifecta dotted Dave and Andy’s sign in Oakland earlier this semester. Other markings litter the streets, particularly in South Oakland and off-campus. With

We don’t expect to eliminate graffiti. We’re talking about vandalism.

-Steve Root, Graffiti Watch

to deface someone else’s property. Community groups need to have a dialogue with graffitists, he said, but “what’s missing are the [graffiti] taggers.”

miles of concrete canvas to paint, graffitists have left their marks throughout the city, rarely getting caught in the act.

Graffiti is a covert crime that leaves

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overt, lasting marks on bridges, buildings and bypasses in Pittsburgh. Some call it street art, while others see it as vandalism.

Either way, it’s an expensive offense, both for the city and for charged vandals.

Pittsburgh spends $350,000 annually on graffiti clean up. A person found guilty of an offense can receive anything from a $250 fine to a third degree felony for every $5,000 in property damage, depending on severity.

Jeremy Raymer, a Lawrenceville resident and Pitt alum who graduated in 2011 with a degree in electrical engineering, is a graffiti artist who works within the law.

Raymer receives commissions and asks for permission to paint street art on buildings. His portrait of Bill Murray, made of small bursts of spray paint in a technique he calls “graffiti pointillism,” watches over diners inside Stack’d on Forbes Avenue.

He’s also painted a portrait of Nikola Tesla at Voodoo Brewery in Homestead.

See Graffiti on page 7

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The city’s Graffiti Watch removes graffiti from a building. Elaina Zachos STAFF WRITER

Graffiti, pg. 6 On a recent Saturday morning before the restaurant opened, Raymer set up shop inside Stack’d. About $2,000 worth of Montana spray paint cans clutter his makeshift studio, filling up boxes, the floor and his army bag. Raymer nods his head, looking at his work-in-progress of Murray on the wall and at a smaller picture for reference. EDM blasts through his earbuds and he breathes through his surgical mask as fumes fill the space.

Raymer said Pittsburgh is a prime target for graffiti because of its “industrial vibes.”

A constant stream of railroad boxcars tempt taggers looking for an illegal ego boost.

Back on the streets, Lawrenceville, the Strip and Southside are riddled with illegal graffiti. The spray paint remains of graffiti fiends fall on the city’s graffiti clean-up crew.

“I can get a call for a marker on someone’s fence, to the side of a building, to someone’s rental properties,” said Mark Brentley, graffiti foreman of Pittsburgh. “It’s never-ending.”

As graffiti foreman, Brentley leads two other members of the Graffiti Busters, the team that makes up Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Works graffiti removal program. The Busters report to graffiti com-

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plaints from Mayor Peduto’s 311 line that come in from community groups, police officers and volunteer “anti-graffiti activists.” They clean up graffiti on a case-bycase basis, depending on the severity of the damage done.

During the workweek, the Busters load up their public works truck and head out when the sun rises. They use three techniques to clean up brick walls, alleyways and doors. A chemical spray and powerwash work best on smooth surfaces. For highly visible buildings, they coat on chemicals and pressure wash with a hose.

For underpasses, abandoned buildings and places that graffitists have hit before, they paint over the graffiti with four or five primary colors.

In 2006, Pittsburgh had a graffiti task force in the police and public works departments. It handled a total of 125 cases until Mayor Peduto disbanded it in 2013 in order to get police officers out of the office and into the community. But there are rumors of its return, according to police officer Alphonso Sloan, a former detective.

Public Works Director Mike Gable said the city is considering reinstituting the task force because the city’s graffiti scene is escalating beyond the Busters’ reach.

When the task force was active, Sloan and two other officers catalogued pictures of the city’s graffiti and compiled it into a

tracking system. To identify graffitists, the task force compared tags on the street with those in the database. Once they got a match, they would go back to the crime scene to gather more evidence. If the task force found enough proof, it would interview suspects.

“Nine times out of 10, we usually [got] a confession,” Sloan said.

The task force’s criminal repertoire included the 2008 case of graffiti legend Daniel “MFONE” Montano. Over the course of three years, Montano managed to spray graffiti through East End neighborhoods and the South Side. He turned himself into the police two days before his art exhibit opened at the Mattress Factory in North Side. Officials found him guilty of 79 counts of vandalism, which cost the city $713,801 in damage.

Authorities handed Montano a bill for a 2 ½ to 5 year prison sentence, 10 years’ probation, more than $232,000 in restitution and 2,500 hours of community service.

Montano was arrested again in 2012 for an

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unrelated theft while he was on parole.

Montano was a member of graffiti crews Not Strictly Freights and Jive Young Kids.

Sloan estimated Pittsburgh has about 30 tagging crews, which are groups of graffitists who normally don’t engage in other criminal activities. Full-Time Crew and Most Hated Artists are a few other notorious groups. The crews range in size from four people to teams of 30.

The city also has gang taggers, who, Sloan said, are more serious.

In July 2007, a gang sprayed a rash of graffiti in Stanton Heights. It tagged 30 or so homes, set fire to several buildings and shot up a vacant elementary school after hours.

But not all graffiti is violent.

See Graffiti on page 8

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Graffiti, pg. 7 In the southern borough of Rankin, the Carrie Furnace serves as a legal graffiti sanctuary for compliant graffitists. The former steel-making site is home to the Carrie Furnace Graffiti Project, a program that aims to provide a space for graffiti artists to create sanctioned masterpieces.

“This is our playground,” said Shane Pilster, the liaison for the project. Pilster is also the 33-year-old founder of the graphic and web design brand 82 Concepts. Wooden pallets clutter the cement perimeters of the furnace’s warehouse, and aerosol murals litter the walls at eye level.

Still, graffiti is a fringe crime that can cost the graffitist money, freedom or even his life.

In 2003, authorities charged a graffitist known as Reke with three felonies for spraying graffiti on Penn Avenue with four others. Although he stopped painting graffiti in 2011, Reke did not want real his name used in the story. Authorities charged him with a $10,000 fine for the incident.

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Budding communi-tea in oakland Chang Zuo Staff Writer

Roll it, bowl it and bubble it.

The week before Halloween, Fuku Tea, located on the corner of Oakland and Forbes Avenues, hung its “soft opening” sign in the window and unveiled the bubbling magic brewing inside. If you’re a seasoned foodie in the Oakland area, then you’ll recognize Fuku Tea as the sister company of Sushi Fuku, the beloved sushi restaurant with locations on both Oakland Avenue and Craig Street.

The Fuku brand is taking over the Asian cuisine scene in Oakland. With convenient locations, reasonable prices and speedy orders, Sushi Fuku has built a reputation with students in Oakland as an affordable, quality sushi restaurant. And now they are bringing their authentic “create-your-own” style to tea.

When it comes to bubble tea and authentic Asian cuisine, Oakland is already

equipped with many successful establishments such as Chick’n Bubbly and Rose Tea Cafe. I first stepped foot in Fuku Tea expecting to get a tasty cup of bubble tea and nothing more, but this proved to be a gross miscalculation.

What separates Fuku Tea from its competition is its impressive collection of loose leaf tea, instead of tea packaged in bags as most people are familiar with in the United States. We’re not talking your everyday jasmine, green or oolong tea. Fuku boasts truly authentic loose leaf tea, including names that I — a Chinese student — have never heard of.

Fuku Tea offers seven premium loose leaf tea categories, organic green tea, oolong tea, organic black tea, organic white tea, organic chai tea, organic herbal tea and organic pu-erh tea.

Fuku Tea also serves authentic Japanese matcha tea, which is very rare. Matcha is a type of green tea from Japan that is consid-

November 3, 2015

ered an art form. It is usually in the form of finely ground powder, and it requires years of practice and generations of passed-down traditions to brew and serve. It is still green tea, but it’s a specially prepared form of green tea. With matcha, instead of drinking the water infused with green tea leaves, you’re actually drinking the tea leaves themselves. My barista told me that Fuku’s loose leaf teas are all flown here directly from tea meccas China, Taiwan and Japan.

With its inviting light green facade, Fuku is bringing authentic Asian tea to the Rust Belt.

According to market research firm Euromonitor International, 75.4 percent of Americans prefer coffee to tea, whereas in China and Japan, 98 percent and 62 percent of consumers choose tea, which Medical Daily has shown is the healthier option.

Find the full story online at

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Sports Panthers face tough slate of games pitt Basektball’s toughest games

Joe Rokicki Staff Writer

After a difficult season one year ago, the Pitt men’s basketball team’s road to rebounding won’t get any easier.

With the 2015-16 college basketball season imminent, the Panthers will return to the hardwood trying to improve upon a 19-15 overall finish last season. Pitt will feature several new faces, including transfers Sterling Smith from Coppin State and Alonzo Nelson-Ododa from Richmond, plus freshman Damon Wilson.

The Panthers will begin their season in Okinawa, Japan, as part of the Armed Forces Classic on Friday, Nov. 13, against the No. 10 Gonzaga Bulldogs. Although conference play is a few months away, the ACC is packed with a gauntlet of premiere talent. Here’s a look at the Panthers’ five most dangerous foes this upcoming season.

5) Florida State Seminoles Pitt at Florida State - Jan. 23, 4 p.m.

Defensive guard play was a serious weakness for Pitt last season, highlighted by North Carolina State’s Anthony “Cat” Barber torching of the Panthers for 34 points in the ACC Tournament in March.

The Seminoles will sport a cast of capable guards, including five-star freshman Dwayne Bacon, the only five-star recruit to sign with an ACC team other than Duke, which signed four. Bacon will play opposite sophomore Xavier Rathan-Mayes, who averaged 14.9 points and 3.5

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rebounds per game in his freshman season. Senior Devon Bookert shot 39.3 percent from three-point range last season and could pose as a serious threat behind the arc.

4) Louisville Cardinals Pitt at Louisville – Jan. 14, 9 p.m.

Louisville at Pitt – Feb. 24, 8 p.m.

It’s been a tumultuous offseason for the Louisville Cardinals basketball program, mostly due to the media’s coverage of recruiting allegations. On the court, the Cardinals will look much different in 201516, especially without Terry Rozier, Montrezl Harrell and Wayne Blackshear, now all playing professionally. However, the Cardinals added three four-star recruits in Donovan Mitchell, Deng Adel and Raymond Spalding, plus two transfers in Damion Lee from Drexel and Trey Lewis from Cleveland State.

Lee and Lewis averaged 21.4 and 16.3 points per game at their former schools, respectively, and will provide Louisville with the scoring necessary to replace Rozier and Blackshear. The transfers will join sophomore guard Quentin Snider, sophomore center Chinanu Onuaku and junior forward/center Mangok Mathiang as the Cardinals’ projected starters in 2015-16.

3) Duke Blue Devils Duke at Pitt – Feb. 24, 2 p.m.

Duke enters the season without most of its national championship starting lineup. Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow and Tyus Jones all departed for the NBA, and Quinn Cook graduated. But the Blue Devils replenished with four five-star

recruits, Brandon Ingram, Derryck Thornton, Chase Jeter and Luke Kennard. Sophomore guard Grayson Allen could maintain his role as a sixth man off the bench.

Pitt will have the edge in experience when these two teams tip off in late February, as Duke holds one of the nation’s youngest rosters. At first glance, this match up could come down to guard play and three-point shooting. Sterling Smith could rise as the hero for Pitt if he can nail key shots in this backcourt brawl, a threat that Pitt’s squad didn’t possess a year ago.

2) Virginia Cavaliers Virginia at Pitt – Feb. 6, noon Virginia head coach Tony Bennett is perhaps the most efficient coach in college basketball, as his constricting defense allowed an average of 51.5 points per game last year. The Cavaliers will boast an experienced lineup, even without prolific shooting guard Justin Anderson and last season’s ACC Defensive Player of the Year Darion Atkins. The Cavaliers added Tennessee transfer Darius Thompson, who will serve as a solid reserve player off the bench.

Virginia’s starting five will likely consist of junior guard London Perrantes, senior guard Malcolm Brogdon, sophomore guard Marial Shayok, senior forward Anthony Gill and senior center Mike Tobey.

Perrantes finished twelfth in the nation last season with an assist to turnover ratio of 3.02. Pitt’s James

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University of North Carolina Pitt at North Carolina – Feb. 14, 1 p.m.

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Virginia Cavaliers Virginia at Pitt – Feb. 6, noon

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Duke Blue Devils Duke at Pitt – Feb. 24, 2 p.m.

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Louisville Cardinals Pitt at Louisville – Jan. 14, 9 p.m.

Louisville at Pitt – Feb. 24, 8 p.m.

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Florida State Seminoles Pitt at Florida State - Jan. 23, 4 p.m.

See Basketball on page 10

November 3, 2015

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pitt football notebook: week nine Chris Puzia

Assistant Sports Editor After Pitt’s 26-19 loss to North Carolina on Thursday knocked the then-No. 23 Panthers out of the AP Top 25 ranking, head coach Pat Narduzzi said the team has already moved on to its next contest.

Its schedule doesn’t let up this week, as the Panthers (6-2, 4-1 ACC) host No. 8 Notre Dame (7-1) on Saturday at noon.

“We had our usual Sunday night meeting, gathered the boys together,” Narduzzi said. “We’re ready to move on.”

In his Monday afternoon press conference, the first-year head coach also talked about pressuring the quarterback, starting off games faster and finding roles for veteran players.

Bringing the pressure Narduzzi pointed to the defense’s inability to pressure North Carolina quarterback Marquise Williams as a major setback to the team’s gameplan. He said sacks often come down to executing at the right moments.

“It’s called make a play, M.A.P. It’s one of the things that we talk about all the time,” Narduzzi said. “We’ve had opportunities every week to go and clean it up, we just have to make plays.”

After recording 21 sacks in their first five games of the season, the Panthers have

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managed just one in the past three weeks, which came on Oct. 17 against Georgia Tech.

“It’s my job to get them [to the quarterback], it’s [defensive coordinator Josh] Conklin’s job to get them there, but give [Williams] credit for sidestepping them and making them miss.”

Senior Darryl Render said the defensive line is a few minor adjustments away from ensuring that the sack totals return to what they were early in the season.

“It’s just the little things, guys just have to focus on making the little things work,” Render said. “Like we want to look at the difference in an inch or a half-inch that allows us to get there.”

Slow out of the gate Reflecting on the team’s only Thursday night game of the season, Narduzzi said the short week may have contributed to what he said was a lethargic first half Pitt team against UNC. “We had a little more emotion in the second half. I didn’t see much celebrating going on in the first half, but maybe there wasn’t much to celebrate,” Narduzzi said. “I didn’t feel like we had the energy and passion we needed to have in the first half.”

Basketball, pg. 9 Robinson finished sixth with a ratio of 3.11.

Gill poses a serious interior threat, as he led the Cavaliers in rebounds, 6.5 per game, and shooting percentage, 58.2 percent in 2014-15.

1) University of North Carolina Pitt at North Carolina – Feb. 14, 1 p.m.

The Panthers will travel to Chapel Hill for a Valentine’s Day rematch against the Tar Heels. North Carolina will return four of its five starters from last season, as shooting guard J.P. Tokoto entered the NBA Draft.

Senior guard Marcus Paige, sophomore guard Justin Jackson, senior forward Brice Johnson, junior forward Kennedy Meeks and sophomore forward Theo Pinson will likely comprise the Tar Heels’ starting five to begin the season. North Carolina’s strength lies in its McDonald’s All-American bench, as the Tar Heels have a capable reserve at each position. If the names Isaiah Hicks, Joel Berry, Joel James, Kenny Williams and Nate Britt don’t sound familiar just yet, they certainly will come February.

Find the full story online at

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November 3, 2015

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3 & 4 bedroom apartments. Available immediately. Newly remodeled. Air conditioning. Bigelow Blvd, N. Neville St. Call 412-287-5712

**AUGUST 2016: Furnished Studio, 1-2-3-4 Bedroom Apts. No pets.

Non-smokers preferred. 412-621-0457 1-2-3-4-5 Bedroom Houses & Apartments. 376 Meyran, 343 McKee, & Atwood, St. James, Bates St. $1,095-$2,000. Call 412-969-2790 1,2,3,5,6,7, & 8 bedroom houses. August & May 2016.

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2 & 3 bedroom houses, Lawn & Ophelia. Available Now. Please call 412287-5712.

2 nice 3-bedroom houses. Good location. Rent $400/room. Available August 1st, 2016. 412-881-0550 or 724-757-3367.

4 BR townhouse, Semple St., available May 1st & August 1st 2016. Equipped kitchen, full basement. 412-343-4289.

Call after 5:00 pm.

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2-3-4-5-6-7 bedroom apartments and houses available in May and August 2016. Nice, clean, free laundry, includes exterior maintenance, new appliances, spacious, located on Meyran, Semple, Wellsford, Dawson, Juliet. 412-414-9629.

2,3,4,5,6 bedroom houses in South Oakland. Available for rent August 2016.

Very clean with different amenities (dishwasher, laundry, AC, washer and dryer, 1-3 baths, parking, newer appliances & sofas) Contact Ken at 412287-4438.

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Available Nov 1st. $295. Utilities included. Call 412-8776555.

3 & 5 bedroom. May 2016. Sarah St. Large bedroom, new kitchen, air conditioning, washer & dryer, dishwasher, large deck. 412-287-5712.

Undergrads needed to test tutoring system: 18 or older, native English speaker, adequate academic background as determined by a brief questionnaire. 2-5 hrs; $10/hr., possible $20 bonus. Contact rimac@pitt.edu

Services

-EDUCATIONAL -TRAVEL -HEALTH -PARKING -INSURANCE

SMOKERS NEEDED! Researchers at UPMC are looking to enroll healthy adult cigarette smokers ages 18-65. This research is examining the influence of brief uses of FDA-approved nicotine patch or nicotine nasal spray on mood and behavior. The study involves a brief physical exam and five sessions lasting two hours each. Eligible participants who complete all sessions will receive up to $250, or $20 per hour. This is NOT a treatment study. For more information, call 412-2465396 or visit www.SmokingStudies.pitt.edu

Oasis Foods, a social enterprise of Bible Center Church located in the East End, is now hiring for team management and team member positions for Everyday Cafe. On busline.

Contact careers @oasispgh.com or 412-727-6845.

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The Pitt news crossword 11/3/2015

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