VOLUME 48, ISSUE 27
MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 2015
WWW.UCSDGUARDIAN.ORG
THRIFTY THURSDAY
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ALL THE RIGHT NOTES
Researchers Find New Asthma Trigger
Certain type of white blood cells were demonstrated to be an important component of allergy-induced asthma.
PHOTO BY ALWIN SZETO /GUARDIAN
STEP INTO THE LIVES OF UCSD’S OWN STUDENT PERFORMERS AS THEY PREPARE FOR THE BIG STAGE IN UPCOMING COMPETITIONS AND CONCERTS. LEADERS SHARE STORIES. FEATURES, PAGE 6
SORORITY PARTIES
The Future Of Greek Life? opinion, Page 4
STOPPING AT SIX basketball win streak ends sports, Page 12
FORECAST
MONDAY H 70 L 48
TUESDAY H 70 L 46
WEDNESDAY THURSDAY H 70 L 50
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H 73 L 52
VERBATIM
When embarking on the path to a successful paper, it’s important to have your priorities straight. Life is short, there is no guarantee you will have access to Netflix later on.”
How-To Guru OPINION, PAGE 4
INSIDE LIGHTS AND SIRENS.........3 QUICK TAKES................... 4 STUDENT PERFORMERS.. 6 CROSSWORD................. 10 WOMEN’S BASKETBALL.12
BY Teiko Yakobson
Features Editor
The event also featured live bands Wasted Days and Odakota, based out of UCSD student-run radio station KSDT. Refreshments were provided by Peet’s Coffee and Tea. Associated Vice President of Environmental and Social Justice Affairs Sierra Donaldson, a junior from Revelle College majoring in environmental systems, hopes that Thrifty Thursday will promote a culture of sustainability among UCSD students. “Buying new clothes uses a lot of materials, energy and water, which we don’t have a lot of right now,”
A new biological mechanism related to an immune response that triggers asthma was discovered by UCSD researchers in collaboration with scientists from Korea University and the University of Aberdeen. This mechanism, if selectively controlled, could be a focus for future treatments that would reduce asthma and other allergic diseases. In a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers demonstrated that dendritic cells, a type of white blood cell, are a significant player in the overall biochemical pathway leading to asthma as an allergic response. The concentration of a molecule called cyclic adenosine monophosphate in these cells was found to control the response. When levels of cAMP in DC reach an extreme, a class of immune cells called T-helper 2 cells is signaled in such a way that they induce allergic asthma. The relationship between DC and T-helper cells is of particular interest to researchers. While asthma is one type of disease that is specifically linked to T-h2, there are a number of other allergic diseases induced by other T-helper cells, which are signaled to act as a result of cAMP levels in DC. Understanding this relationship in depth would then open the door to developing treatments that could maintain an appropriate level of cAMP in DC and prevent allergic diseases, either through drugs or therapy. Dr. Paul Insel, co-author and professor of pharmacology and medicine at UCSD, told the UCSD Guardian that developing a drug to control cAMP levels in DC would be the next step in asthma research. “There aren’t any drugs [currently] that can control the levels of cyclic AMP, and those drugs would be a logical approach for treating the dendritic cells and raising the cyclic AMP levels so that we wouldn’t see [the development of asthma],” Insel said. “And we’re testing that in experiments now. The kinds of drugs that [control cAMP levels] are widely used, but we don’t know which ones to use in the dendritic cells.” Another significant feature of this study was that the genetics of the mice used, which led to a missing protein that was speculated to regulate the cAMP levels, did in fact result in the mice contracting asthma spontaneously, much like humans do. Dr. Eyal Raz, principal investigator and professor of medicine, told the Guardian that this was a major advantage of this study. “One problem that the scientific community has [with asthma research]
See THRIFTY, page 3
See ASTHMA, page 2
Wasted Days and Odakota, based out of UCSD student-run radio station KSDT, perform at the first Thrifty Thursday. Photo taken by Siddharth Atre/UCSD Guardian.
UC SYSTEM
Regents Table Tuition Increase For March Meeting By zev hurwitz Senior
staff writer // Jacky to staff writer
The future of tuition increases remains uncertain after a University of California Regent proposed a repeal of the controversial annual 5-percent hikes. Former Assembly Speaker John Perez, who was appointed to the UC Board of Regents in 2014, moved to put the regents’ proposed tuition plan, which could increase student fees by 28 percent by 2019, on the agenda for the March meeting of the governing body. Perez explained Wednesday that a budget gap between the UC system’s projected spending and the governor’s proposed budget could only get worse with tuition increases. Raising tuition on the over 240,000 students who attend UC schools would only generate $100 million, though California Gov. Jerry Brown has promised to increase funding levels by $120 million on the condition that tuition does not go up. Therefore, says Perez, the problem is only exacerbated. “We would be worse off,” Perez said Wednesday at the UC Regents meeting at UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus. The two-day meeting did not yield any major changes in spending or systemwide policy, though a proposal from UC President Janet Napolitano to tie athletic coaches’ salaries to academic performance of their athletes was shot
down in a full session of the regents. Napolitano’s plan would have prevented athletic directors and coaches from receiving bonuses from teams that perform well in tournaments and playoffs while those teams maintain poor enrollment and classroom evaluations of student-athletes. The policy, as the San Francisco Gate described in a Thursday article posted online, would review athletic programs on a four-year basis with the criteria of athletes’ academic eligibility and opting to stay in school. Faculty would have been evaluated using the Academic Progress Rate, which assigns each student a score less than or equal to 1,000 based on their academic eligibility for their team and whether they stay in school. To be deemed ineligible for bonus pay, a coach’s team would need a four-year average APR below 930. Additionally, the policy also allows each campus to offer its coaches and athletic directors financial incentives based on the overall six-year graduation rates of their student-athletes. Prior to this policy, which would have applied only to athletics staff whose contracts were new or recently renewed, bonuses were only attached to athletic performance. Therefore, coaches had no financial incentive to
See REGENTS, page 3
CAMPUS
Thrifty Thursday Promotes Green Shopping Council worked with student vendors and local thrift shops to encourage sustainability. BY Brynna Bolt
Staff writer This year’s first Thrifty Thursday, an event series meant to encourage sustainability on campus through thrift shopping, was held on Jan. 22 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Price Center Plaza and featured thrift shopping and live music. The event, which was held by the Associated Students Office of Environmental Justice Affairs, is estimated to have attracted between 75 and 100 students to the function. Thrifty Thursday began last year in Fall Quarter 2013 and at first
consisted of sellers from local San Diego thrift stores. The event later changed to feature student vendors for the 2014 Winter and Spring Quarters, and those students who have since participated have been able to keep the funds that they themselves raised. This year’s first Thrifty Thursday was similarly student oriented. The event was largely advertised by a Facebook page created by Thurgood Marshall College sophomore Moon Thevada, who is majoring in environmental engineering, and was available to any students willing to fill out a vendor form and manage a table.