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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

Living on lava: replicating life on Mars USF student spends four months on Hawaiian volcano for NASA simulation study. n

By Wesley Higgins N E W S

E D I T O R

While spending time in Hawaii may seem like a vacation for some, one USF student has spent the last three months there far from comfort, isolated on the planet’s largest active volcano, Mauna Loa. On this red terrain, chemical engineering doctoral student Anne Caraccio simulates living on Mars with others chosen by Hawaii Space Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS), a University of Hawaii organization funded by NASA. “Of course most people would not want to isolate themselves in a dome inside

a habitat on the slopes of a volcano,” Caraccio said in a video transmission to The Oracle. “But if you are passionate enough about the space program … then of course a mission like this is for you.”

Kim Binsted, HI-SEAS’s principal investigator, said NASA wants to study the stress of crewmembers living together in confinement. Especially since an actual mission to Mars could possibly launch within two decades.

“A crew to Mars would be together for two and a half years, so of course we want to make sure they can work well together,” Binsted said.

Throughout the day, the crew fills out surveys and diaries. They also wear armbands that collect physiological data and badges that record pattern in conversation, such as tone of voice.

“It gets a good idea of how we are behaving around each other,” Caraccio said.

To stay true to life on another planet, ground control sometimes creates unpredictable complications. Caraccio, for example, once removed all the waste from a broken, waterless toilet — a memorable experience, she said.

“We’ve had a couple of nights where we lost power, there were a couple days where we didn’t have Internet,” she said. “I’m actually hoping with the last third of the mission that we’ll have some intense scenarios.”

Though the focus of the mission is to study crew psychology, crewmembers can do their own research, such as growing vegetables for astronauts to eat on long space missions.

Caraccio’s personal research is called Trash-to-Gas and aims to recycle garbage, which crewmembers sort, into an energy source for oxygen and water production.

“When astronauts are currently on station, they take

trash and compress it into footballs … it’s then burned up in earth’s atmosphere,” she said. “We can’t do that in long duration missions.”

Every crewmember also studies the volcano’s geology.

While 8,000 feet above sea level is a bit closer than 140 million miles from Earth, the volcano’s soil is basalt, the rock of the volcanoes on Mars.

Binsted said the absence of life and “visual isolation” of Mauna Loa also sets a proper Martian setting.

“Living on the slopes of the volcano is very quiet,” Caraccio said. “The view is spectacular.”

The landscape of cooled lava can be seen from a single window in the dining area of the 1,000-square-foot dome that houses the five crewmembers.

The compact dome is crowded with research equipment and essentials. On the

n See MARS on PAGE 3

STEM summer academy to inspire young science community

By Katie French

C O R R E S P O N D E N T

Only 16 percent of high school seniors are interested in pursuing a career in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), according to the U.S. Department of Education.

As the nation falls out of the top 20 rankings in math and science among industrialized nations, STEM careers are estimated to be in most demand with a workforce that is projected to increase by 14 percent in all occupations and as much as 62 percent for biomedical engineers.

Last month, USF was awarded $1.2 million by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to develop a summer program to cultivate a passion for STEM fields in first-year students.

Scott Lewis, member of

the STEM Academy and USF research professor, said the academy would excite incoming students when it opens next year by offering a taste of what the fields of science have to offer.

“I see hundreds of students engaged and talking about science,” Lewis said. “It’s really rewarding after putting in all the planning and foresight into it.”

The academy will eventually serve 480 students split into 20 groups led by seniors and graduate students.

Richard Pollenz, director of the STEM Academy and associate dean of undergraduate studies, said a focus on mentorships and connecting fellow students would foster a STEM community on campus.

“If you think about it, there are roughly 1,100 students

coming into biology, biomedical majors,” Pollenz said. “Some of our information says they feel lost and don’t feel connected.

This is going to be a way to hopefully help them feel connected early.”

Students will have the option to live on the same floor of a residence hall with others who attend the summer academy as well.

Along with encouraging community, Pollenz said hands-on experience would also create incentive retention, as students will receive more personalized training and tutoring in the SMART Lab. “Some of the data suggests that when you give students a dry run of how some of the learning happens that they do much better when they get into it for real,” he said.

Lewis said letting students

learn research methods to explore topics of interest would prepare them for upper level college courses.

“The way research works, it’s not something that happens very quickly as far as your investment in it, it takes a long time to mature,” he said. “I think that the earlier you can do research the more meaningful it’s going to be.”

Most of the opportunities will focus on biology and biomedical research, which are the most popular fields for first-year students.

Pollenz said 60 percent of biology students, who make up the majority of STEM freshmen, switch out of their major.

“We know the statistics of what is happening, we don’t know why,” he said. “Are they leaving because they aren’t feeling inspired? If we can see a 10

or 20 percent difference, that is huge.”

In the larger picture, the deficit of STEM graduates shrinks the supply of qualified workers. According to the Council of Foreign Relations, 60 percent of U.S. employees cannot find qualified workers — a statistic Pollenz said USF’s STEM program aims to change.

USF was one of 37 research universities HHMI selected in a $60 million effort to improve U.S. competitiveness in science.

The $1.2 million grant money is projected to end in 2019, but Lewis said USF would pay for the academy afterward.

“There are so many career opportunities in science and math and the more we can get the word out that there are those opportunities and very good careers, the better,” Lewis said.

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MARS

Continued from PAGE 1

first floor, the treadmill is a few feet away from the laptops of the common workplace.

Upstairs are the crew’s living quarters. Caraccio lives in a room with one shelf, a computer and a bed with posters above it.

“To be honest, my room is just a bit smaller than my freshman dorm,” she said.

There, Caraccio said she emails family and friends every day, though communications are delayed 40 minutes for the sake of realism.

“It’s really cool to get a nice email or a video or a picture of things that are happening back home,” she said. “It’s incredibly special when you’re in isolation.”

Aside from communication with “Earth,” Caraccio said she keeps morale high by reading, researching, exercising and eating healthy — even if all the food comes dehydrated.

“Half of it is your mind being engaged,” she said. “If your mind is engaged, you can do wonders.”

Caraccio will also install the same color changing LED lights used on the International Space Station before she leaves, she said, to increase crew alertness by regulating sleep patterns.

“Remember, we don’t see the sun too much, so light can be very important to a crew,” she said.

When the crew does go out into the sun, bulky space suits fitted with liquid cooling and air supply are worn.

They must also compress and decompress for five minutes when entering and leaving the dome.

Considering the lengths the simulation goes to, Caraccio said the only unrealistic aspect was the crew not knowing each other until the bus drive over. A NASA crew typically trains together for years.

“We were all strangers when we first got here,” she said. “We didn’t know how we would respond to situations.”

Caraccio said the team has gotten along fine nonetheless, and their mission will come to an end July 28.

This will leave Caraccio a

few weeks before starting her Ph.D. in chemical engineering in the fall. She said she hopes to continue research in deep space technology.

“I fell in love with the thought of developing technology that was benefiting space travel,” she said. “It’s just exploring the unknown and being able to be a part of a program that reaches new places that we have yet to go and yet to discover.”

Opinion

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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

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EDITORIAL

College admissions lottery worsens selectivity problem

To solve the overwhelming problem of selectivity in college admissions, a writer for The Atlantic proposed the future of college applicants ought to be handled like numbered balls in a Bingo drawing.

Today, many admissions officers and top universities that accept less than 10 percent of their applicants confessed that a majority of rejected students are not much different from those accepted. So, a writer for The Atlantic suggested schools simply accept the idea of chance in their admissions processes through a lottery.

Instead of the way admissions are currently handled, the writer said colleges should double their acceptance rates and enter all accepted students in a lottery for actual admission.

According to a recent New York Times article, college selectivity, or low acceptance rates, can be caused by a number of factors, including an increased number of competitive college applicants, students submitting more applications and slow growth in the number of seats available at top universities.

This year, Stanford rejected 95 percent of its applicants.

The admission rates of Stanford, Duke and Cornell, among other

the Oracle

universities, are half of what they were 10 years ago, according to the New York Times.

In theory, a lottery would give more students the chance of admission in light of low acceptance rates across top schools such as Yale, Stanford and Duke. The author even argued it can minimize the consequences of selectivity, which he said simply fosters the ability to promote oneself with a college application.

However, it only means all of one’s academic effort up to that point will be ignored during actual selection. Even if a student creates the best college application yet, he could still be overlooked.

With high school graduates being mindful about the reality of selectivity, it is no surprise they are driven to create the best applications and make themselves more attractive than the thousands of other students applying.

GPAs, standardized test scores and essays only show so much about how devoted or intellectually driven a student is, but the college application is the evidence students have to show their achievements in years of schooling.

College selectivity already makes it harder for applicants to know if their future at a particular school is certain. It tells students it

doesn’t matter how qualified they are, they could still be denied. A lottery would simply reinforce this idea, but with twice the amount of students on the line.

Of course, selectivity doesn’t mean it is harder to get into college today. Another article by the Atlantic addresses how it could be more difficult for students to just get into their first choice.

This is, perhaps, why students apply to more schools than in the past.

In 2011, 29 percent of college applicants applied to seven or more schools, a leap from the nine percent in 1990, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

A lottery wouldn’t change college selectivity. It would just provide more students with the chance for selection. However, putting applicants in a pool of randomly selected names is a more careless way of choosing students in the face of sweeping rejection.

College selectivity is a complicated issue and isn’t likely to change unless universities offer more seats or fewer students apply, solutions which are too simple. Playing on the idea of chance introduces unfairness that certainly doesn’t belong in an already seemingly random decision-making process.

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Formerly incarcerated shouldn’t have harder time finding jobs Amber Carles Klee COLU M N I ST

A 10-year-old marijuana conviction should not keep one from getting a job, but a simple question can cost thousands of people an employment opportunity.

It is a problem faced by an estimated 650,000 people released from prison each year, thanks to one question on a job application asking, “Have you ever been convicted by a court?”

This question can take away money from their pockets, food to feed their children and even a place to live.

Even though a felony charge does not mean a person is violent or in any way a threat to those around him, there is a stigma and assumption made by the employer that this person can be a hazard simply by checking the “Yes” box.

This blacklists applicants without proper introduction. Their foot never even gets through the door.

Grassroots organization All of Us or None, which fights for the incarcerated and their families, came up with the simple idea of taking this question off job applications to alleviate those obstacles faced by the formerly incarcerated. So far, “Ban the Box” legislation has been passed in 60 cities and 12 states.

It makes sense that employers would be more likely to hire people if they have seen their face and heard their story, and Ban the Box legislation allows these people a chance to get a face-to-face interview.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 2013 bulletin, there were 196,574 sentenced prisoners. Of these, 99,426 had a drug offense and only 11,688 had violent offenses.

That is almost 100,000 people being denied employment for nonviolent crimes easily deemed as mistakes or circumstance. This includes, of course, marijuana.

Ban the Box does not, however, require the employer to hire these applicants. A back-

ground check can still be done to give employers the opportunity to see the conviction and decide for themselves whether or not it is something that will actually affect their ability to perform the job.

This does not, and should not, apply to jobs considered sensitive, such as those working with children.

The unfortunate stigma especially affects minorities.

African Americans are imprisoned at almost 10 times the rate of Caucasians for drug crimes even though the latter uses illegal drugs at a rate five times higher, according to the NAACP. Additionally, there is a correlation between lack of opportunities after release and reoffense. According to a study by the National Institute of Justice, having a conviction of any kind reduces one’s interview opportunities by 50 percent.

No one should leave prison and not be allowed the ability to earn a living wage to survive, and there is no sense in denying a nonviolent person a job. Ban the Box would allow those who have been convicted of a crime a possible second chance.

A convicted felon does not equate to a bad person. It equates to a lack of resources or lack of education, or, quite likely, being young and stupid.

In January, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn approved a Ban the Box ordinance for city employees and advocates are attempting to include city contractors.

Spreading this movement through all cities in the U.S. will help the economy and keep those who have a felony conviction from re-offending due to circumstance.

Perfectly good workers should not fall to the wayside because of society’s ignorance of the flawed hiring system.

Amber Carles Klee is a junior majoring in communications and sociology.

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Football

Strength coach aims to turn Bulls into champs

By Vinnie Portell S P O R T S

E D I T O R

Irele Oderinde played defensive line for the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers in 2002 when the school won the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) by defeating the McNeese State Cowboys 34-14.

That win is a moment Oderinde will never forget.

“It was one of the best experiences of my life,” Oderinde said. “Not everyone gets to win a national championship, so I feel blessed to be a part of that.”

Twelve years later, Oderinde is trying to instill that championship mentality into the USF football team as the new Director of Athletic Performance.

The Bulls are coming off an underwhelming 2-10 season in which USF coach Willie Taggart said his team lacked the strength to execute his rushing attack style of offense.

Oderinde has experienced struggles similar to the 2013 Bulls and come out a national champion. The 2002 Hilltoppers had a losing record after their first five games, and through their turnaround, Oderinde learned how to overcome adversity.

“It’s something that I pull from, some of the pitfalls and experiences we had that year,” Oderinde said. “We started out 2-3 and ended up winning the rest of our games. We struggled at the beginning of the year, but we were able to turn it around and sometimes I pull from those experiences to help our guys understand that it can be done.”

An area USF looks to improve in the offseason is the offensive line. Out of 123 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools, USF ranked 118th in rushing offense and 51st in sacks allowed.

Oderinde admitted this was an area of the team that needed significant improvement, but he believes the group will be ready when the season begins.

“If we have a dominant front, then we will have a good football team,” Oderinde said. “We have to get them stronger, a little leaner and instill that mentality of being a

dominant force.”

Junior offensive lineman Thor Jozwiak said last season the offensive line struggled to finish plays with authority. He said the Bulls need to learn how to follow through with their blocking and Oderinde is already teaching them how to do so.

“One of the biggest things we couldn’t do was finish,” Jozwiak said. “When we’re out running or in the gym lifting, Coach O is always there to enforce the finish. We don’t run to the line, but we run 10 yards past the line. It’s something he has instilled in us and I think everyone is buying into it.”

In the past 10 years since his time at Western Kentucky, Oderinde said strength and conditioning has come a long way and this makes it easier for him to focus on the players.

“It’s changed a lot,” Oderinde said. “At Western Kentucky our strength coach was our defensive coordinator and our linebackers’ coach, so he pretty much wore three hats. Strength and conditioning wasn’t the biggest of the hats.

It was important, but it wasn’t as important as it is now.”

Part of this growing emphasis means Oderinde has more resources at his disposal and can work with the team more efficiently. He believes he can improve the physicality of the entire team simply by employing position-specific workouts.

Jozwiak believes these workouts, something former strength and conditioning coordinator Hans Straub didn’t use, are already helping the team become stronger.

“Coach O does a lot of positionspecific lifting,” Jozwiak said. “For the offensive line, we’re in the trenches so we work on our backs and arms. His position specificworkouts are right on point and they’re already helping tremendously.”

Another way that Oderinde plans to make the Bulls into champions is by maintaining the athletes’ nutrition.

Due to an NCAA rule change, schools are now allowed to feed athletes unlimited meals on cam-

Irele Oderinde won a national championship as a player at Western Kentucky and now, as the Director of Athletic Performance, he’s trying to bring one to the Bulls. ORACLE PHOTO/ADAM MATHIEU pus. Oderinde plans to take advantage of this new rule by connecting USF Athletics with Champion’s Choice to supply the teams with convenient and nutritional meals.

Jozwiak said he thinks the rule change will help improve the team’s fitness right off the bat.

Taggart and company have acknowledged that building a champion takes hard work and time, but Oderinde gets the sense Taggart knows how to win from his The USF football team football powers Alabama days at Western Kentucky, where strengthened its future and LSU were recruiting they spent time on the same team. recruiting classes this week, the defensive back out of “As Coach Taggart was finishing adding two commitments Tallahassee. his career, I was getting to Western and a transfer.

Kentucky sophomore Kentucky, and he was also a coach Brett Kean, rated a two- A.J. Legree announced when I was a player,” Oderinde star player by Rivals.com, is a Wednesday that he will said. “Coach Taggart has always quarterback who committed transfer to USF. Legree been a winner and he’s one heck to the Bulls on Tuesday for recorded 210 yards on 19 of a competitor who knows his the 2015 season. Kean plays catches in two seasons with stuff.” for St. Edward in Lakewood the Wildcats. He will have to After Straub resigned followOhio, which is the No. 7 sit out the 2014 season per ing his controversial tweet about team in the nation according NCAA transfer rules, but the former USF defensive end Aaron to MaxPreps.com. wide receiver still has two Lynch getting drafted by the San Armunz Mathews com- years of eligibility remaining.

Francisco 49ers, the door was mitted to play for the Bulls opened for Oderinde and Taggart for the 2016 season. College — Staff report to reunite at USF in an effort to build a winning program.

USF adds three future players