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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

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E D I T O R I A L L Y

Issue 16 I N D E P E N D E N T

PUBLISHED SINCE 1906

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http://dailybeacon.utk.edu

Vol. 114 S T U D E N T

N E W S P A P E R

O F

T H E

U N I V E R S I T Y

O F

T E N N E S S E E

UT dining makes changes for upcoming year Expanded meal equivalency, extended hours of operation highlight new offerings use it,” she said.

Robby O’Daniel

Editor-in-Chief Students do not want more dining dollars. They would like to use their meal plans everywhere on campus. UT dining marketing director Mary Leslie Patterson said this was what students said in their feedback to UT dining. And UT dining listened. Now meal equivalency is available at all the national brands — places like the Rocky Top Cafe restaurants — for dinner meal equivalency. Previously meal equivalency was only available at Sbarro in Rocky Top. Now one can go to all the locations — Sbarro, Petro’s, Chickfil-A and Subway — and use his or her $4.55 meal equivalency in any way. It essentially makes the unlimited meal plan the same as 20 meal equivalencies a week on campus — breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, except for Saturday dinner. Though the Rocky Top locations’ meal equivalency is only for dinner, Patterson said several national brands have meal equivalency at other times. Among those, IHOP has it for breakfast, and KFC Express and Quiznos have it for lunch. In addition, students can eat dinner later than the previous semester. Locations on campus like Quiznos at Andy’s Pantry and Vol Hall, KFC Express, Starbucks and Subway have meal equivalency for dinner now until 8 p.m., instead of the previous 7:30 p.m. Rocky Top Cafe still closes at 7 p.m. because the University Center, which houses Rocky Top, closes at 7 p.m. Guest meals Campus meal plans will also now offer five free guest meals, so students can bring a guest to eat and pay for them five times per semester. Patterson said it was largely a response to, again, what students wanted. Previously some students would swipe twice in order to pay for a companion, but while she said this was not a problem, this should not be happening. “A student should only use their meal plan for themselves and not feeding their buddies,” she said. “Other campuses have guest meals, and the students requested it. They wanted to be able to bring a friend.” The five free guest meals is available on all residential and apartment meal plans except the Varsity Inn plan, and students who do not wish to use the guest meals can use them for themselves. “On the Any Ten plan, if you wanted to use one of the extra meals that week, you could

Meal plan costs Meal plans themselves have gone up at a rate of 3-percent this year. The most expensive residential plan — the Vol Block plan — costs $1,658 per semester now. Meanwhile, the apartment meal plans cost $1,034 per semester. She said the raises in price were comparable to recent years. In 2007, there was no increase from one year to the next, and last year, Patterson said the change was also right around three percent. “We look at the SEC schools and compare our meal plan prices,” she said. In that comparison, she said UT looks favorable. “UT meal plans fall in the bottom half as far as expense,” she said. “When you look at some other schools — some are even smaller than we are and are still more expensive. So we’ve been able to offer a lot and still keep them inexpensive.” Popularity of meal plans Patterson said UT dining constantly looks at which plans are most popular with which students. She said, in terms of popularity, the unlimited meal plan was the most popular. It was followed by Any Ten, Unlimited Plus and Any Eight in that order. Freshmen males prefer the unlimited plans. “The access to Presidential (Court) is right there on the unlimited plan,” she said. “What we find with freshmen is that they tend to eat together in large groups. ... With the unlimited plan, they can come in and snack, come in and eat.” She said it was also popular for the same reason with people in Morrill Hall because of the learning communities. However Patterson said a lot of females shifted to the Any Eight residential meal plan in their second semester. And with sophomores, juniors and seniors, the Any Five Apartment Meal Plan and the Any Eight Apartment Meal Plan are neck and neck, followed by the Apartment Dining Dollar Plan. “What students are telling us about the apartment plans is they find themselves saving more money with the meal plan rather than just running the debit card over and over, especially residents on campus because they don’t have to pay sales tax,” she said. Other changes A new fraternity meal plan will become

Ian Harmon • The Daily Beacon

In UT dining facilities, such as Rocky Top Cafe located in the UC, extended meal equivalency is just one of the new options thanks to changes in the meal plan system. available this year. Patterson said the Interfraternity Council president talked to UT dining, saying fraternities were interested in a specially made meal plan. “So if you’re a student living in Fraternity Park, then the meal plan available to them (is) $350 per semester, four meals per week, and you can add dining dollars to it,” Patterson said. In addition, a new coupon book is being made for UT dining, which Patterson estimates will have about 20 to 30 coupons in it. And the book will have discounts on the national brands on campus, not just dining halls. Patterson said the book, which is free when a student buys the commuter meal plan, was designed to get more commuters to eat on campus. Other changes include making the Tortilla Fresca — the most popular part of the Smokey’s food court — two-sided, due to high demand. So now two different lines will process student orders. Another thing students asked for that is

Moon water has similar properties to Earth Staff Reports Researchers at UT are once again turning what scientists thought they knew about the moon on its head. Thin slice of lunar basalt with a petrographic (geologic) microscope in plane-polarized light. Last fall, researchers, including Larry Taylor, a distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, discovered “lunar dew” on the moon’s surface — absorbed “water” in the uppermost layers of lunar soil. This discovery of water debunked beliefs held since the return of the first Apollo rocks that the moon was bone-dry. Now, scientists, including Taylor and Yang Liu, research assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, have discovered that water on the moon is more widespread — on the outside and inside of the moon — with some similarities to water in volcanic systems on Earth. Their research will be featured in the article, “Lunar Apatite with Terrestrial Volatile Abundances” in the July 22 edition of the scientific journal, Nature. Unlike lunar dew which is believed to come from an outside source such as solar wind which brings hydrogen into contact with the Moon’s oxygen, the water discovered by Taylor and Liu is internal, arising from an entirely different origin. How it got there is not yet known. The water may have been added by impacting comets, which contain ice, during or after the formation of the moon and Earth.

Thin slice of lunar basalt with a petrographic (geologic) microscope. This is the same view with crossed polarizers, revealing the complicated chemistry of the lunar minerals. The existence of volcanoes on the moon more than four billion years ago gave the researchers a clue that water might exist inside the body, since the dynamics of volcanoes on Earth are mostly driven by water. Therefore, the scientists made their novel discovery by examining a lunar basalt brought back from the 1971 Apollo 14 mission. Using secondary ion mass spectrometry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., scientists determined volatile elements in a calcium phosphate mineral are very similar in the same mineral found on Earth. The scientists said this provides “robust evidence for the presence of water in the interior of the moon from where some lunar rocks were derived. This demonstrates a closer chemical and geologic relationship between the Earth and moon than previously known. We must now re-evaluate the volatile inventories of the moon, relative to the Earth.” The finding of volatiles on the moon has deep implications for how it, and the Earth, formed. It is generally believed that the moon was created when the early Earth was hit by a Mars-sized proto-planet called Theia, melting and vaporizing itself and a large chunk of the Earth. The cloud of particles created by the impact later congealed to form the moon, which supposedly was devoid of

highly volatile elements such as hydrogen and chlorine. However, the researchers’ discovery of these volatiles challenges this theory. “If water in the Moon was residue water kept during the giant impact, it is surprising that water survived the impact at all because less volatile elements, such as sodium and potassium, are strongly depleted. The details of the impact theory need to be re-examined,” Liu said. The discovery of abundant and ubiquitous water on the moon could mean a human settlement on the moon is not so far-fetched. Currently the endeavour would be very expensive. For example, it costs $25,000 to take one pint of water to the moon. However, if scientists devise processes to easily recover this water from the lunar rocks for drinking water and fuel, a human settlement is not out of reach. “Now we have ready sources of water that can be consumed by plants and humans but also electrolyzed into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to develop rocket fuel,” Taylor said. “Until the recent discovery of water in and on the moon, it was going to be a very energyintensive endeavor to separate these elements from the lunar rocks and soil.” Taylor and Liu collaborated with George Rossman, Yunbin Guan, John Eiler and Edward Stolper at CalTech, as well as Jeremy Boyce at CalTech and UCLA. Their research was funded by NASA Cosmochemistry, the National Science Foundation and the Moore Foundation for Support of the Caltech Microanalysis Center.

coming to UT dining this fall is soft-serve ice cream at Presidential Court and milkshakes at Chick-fil-A. Plus catering will be available at the national brands on campus, so students, faculty and staff can order trays of food to cater their events or gatherings. Patterson said students, faculty and staff had demanded catering. “They’ve been using Quiznos a lot in the past, and McAllister’s, but now we can move forward with Subway and Chick-fil-A,” she said. Student health Patterson said one resource that not many know about, yet is used widely, is Student Nutrition Educator Brittany Ellis. Ellis works in conjunction with the Student Health Center, and the center refers students with dietary restrictions to her. “We always have that position, and it’s a great resource,” she said. “ See DINING on Page 2

Baker center interim director promoted to full-time position Staff Reports Carl Pierce, interim director of the Baker Center at UT since June 1 of last year, has been named the center’s director. “I’m pleased Carl has accepted this position,” Chancellor Jimmy Cheek said. “We’re privileged to have the Baker Center as part of our campus. As it continues to grow and evolve, the center will help put UT on the map as a leader in public policy thinking. “I look forward to working with Carl to develop a strategic mission for the Baker Center.” Pierce will report to the UT chancellor and lead the Baker Center as it works closely with Sen. Baker, UT deans and faculty and with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “I’m pleased to continue leading the Baker Center as we further define its mission and develop a plan for achieving that mission,” Pierce said. “The Baker Center — just like Sen. Baker himself — is an incredible asset to the university, our local community, our state, our nation and, indeed, to the world.” College of Business Administration Dean Jan Williams chaired the committee that conducted the director search. Pierce has a bachelor’s degree and law degree from Yale University. He has been teaching in UT’s College of Law since 1972. He also has served the college as assistant dean from 1972 to 1974 and as director of the Clayton Center for Entrepreneurial Law from 1997 to 2000. Now the W. Allen Separk Distinguished Professor of Law, his special interests are corporate law, regulation of the legal profession and American legal history. The Baker Center, which opened at UT in 2003, is a public policy institute integrating research, education, public programming and archives. It develops programs and promotes research to further the public’s knowledge of our system of governance and to highlight the critical importance of public service, a hallmark of Baker’s career. The center opened its new facility in October 2008. The center includes the Modern Political Archives, which hold more than 100 collections of political papers from prominent Tennessee leaders.


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