DAILY LOBO new mexico
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October 2, 2012
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
UNM partners with UT on nanoscience
AKI MATSURI
by Megan Underwood news@dailylobo.com
An $18.5 million grant will fund UNM student efforts to make cellphone parts in larger quantities and at a lower cost. The National Science Foundation grant created the Nanomanufacturing Systems for Mobile Computing and Mobile Energy Technologies at the University of Texas at Austin. UNM professor Olga Lavrova said UT subcontracted UNM and the University of California, Berkeley to work on the project. UNM Center for High Technology Materials director Steven Brueck will lead UNM’s participation in the program. Brueck said the focus of the project is manufacturing parts for cellphone computing, such as memory and processing chips, more efficiently and that the task is difficult because the pieces are very small. He said the parts and materials the group will work with will be as small as 20 nanometers, which he said is the equivalent of 40 atoms; just a fraction of a cross-section of a single hair. “We will have more computing capability,” he said. “But they are getting harder and harder to manufacture.” Brueck said students will work to perfect
Adria Malcolm / Daily Lobo Two-year-old Jen Janert dances a traditional Japanese dance during Aki Matsuri, an annual Japanese Fall Festival held at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Sunday. See the full photo column on Page 2.
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Frank looks to students for vision UNM gets grant to
UNM president to outline plan for University in 2020 by Svetlana Ozden news@dailylobo.com
UNM President Robert Frank soon will seek student input as part of an exercise to envision the future of the University. At a GPSA Council meeting Saturday, Frank said his UNM 2020 plan is a tentative vision for the University in the year 2020. He said the exercise, which will allow the University to form a realistic vision for a better University, began with the administration, but he will seek the student voice in the next four to six weeks. Frank said students will be able to provide feedback for the plan on a UNM 2020 website. “Don’t tell us so much what’s wrong, but tell us how you imagine the University,” he said. “And once we get that vision, we can come back and ask what we have to do to get there. What do we have to do by 2015 to get there in 2020?” Frank said that by 2013, the University should be able to understand what the vision may entail and discuss which aspects are financially realistic and which are not. He said the plan will allow the University to understand which steps are necessary in order to achieve the University’s goals for the future.
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Daily Lobo volume 117
issue 32
“You have to say ‘If that’s your goal then you have to do that,’” he said. “Then you have to go back when you get all of these things and say ‘Here are all these challenges’ and you can’t do all of them, so you decide what are the highest challenges to achieve that goal.”
Center of campus life Frank said discussions among members of the administration, ASUNM and GPSA have begun for a recreational center on campus. He said the University is in dire need of a “center of campus life” to ensure students are more involved with the University. “We don’t have a center of campus life; campuses that have a center of campus life have beautiful rec centers and we’ve got an OK rec center, if you stretch the word ‘OK,’” he said. “We’d all have to come together, faculty, staff and students, and build something where people can go in between classes for physical activity or just to sit and enjoy life and it’s really critical that we create a place that serves our students.” Frank said that although Johnson Gym is available for student use, the gym is only half of what he envisions the proposed center to be. He said the proposed center of campus life would be a wellness center for students that would include Johnson Gym, the health and wellness center and a recreational center.
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In fall 2011, the Board of Regents approved the University’s Consolidated Master Plan, a 10to 15-year development plan that aims to help accommodate a projected 10-year state population growth of more than 1 million people. The plan includes a proposed recreation center and increased on-campus housing for undergraduate and graduate students. In spring 2011, 67 percent of students voted against an ASUNM ballot amendment that would have funded a recreation center by increasing student fees by more than $100 per semester. At Saturday’s meeting GPSA Council members asked Frank how the University would fund the recreation center and expressed concern that student fees would increase. Frank said the center is only a proposal that he believes will benefit the University, but that the administration will seek student input before making any decisions. He said that the University could seek funding from resources other than student fees, such as a onetime allocation from the state.
Prioritizing costs Council members asked how the administration plans to prioritize future costs, such as the possibility of building a new recreational center, and costs the
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fight renal disease by Michelle Durham news@dailylobo.com
A $6 million donation will help fund a University kidney research institute that will focus on endstage renal disease, a health risk associated with diabetes and high blood pressure. According to 2009 data from the New Mexico Department of Health, 10.6 percent of adults in New Mexico had diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes and about 30 percent of adults in New Mexico had high blood pressure. According to the Centers for Disease Control, about one in three adults in the U.S. has high blood pressure and according to the American Diabetes Association, about 8 percent of adults in the U.S. are diabetic. The donation was awarded to the Department of Internal Medicine of the UNM Health Sciences Center by a nonprofit dialysis firm, Dialysis Clinic, Inc. The donation will help build the UNM Kidney Research Institute, which will focus on prevention and treatment strategies in end-stage renal disease. The DCI operates 11 dialysis clinics in New Mexico. According to the End Stage Renal Disease Network, more than 2,700 New Mexicans with end stage renal disease were living on dialysis in 2010. Dialysis artificially removes waste from the blood, when the kidneys cannot. According to the network, about 403,000 people with end-stage renal disease are living on dialysis in the U.S.
Health Science Center Department of Internal Medicine chair Pope Moseley that the institute will allow researchers to better understand how to treat or prevent end-stage renal disease for New Mexicans. He said the New Mexico population is unique in terms of health risks associated with diet or genetics, and that the institute will allow for research that specializes in helping New Mexicans. According to the New Mexico Department of Health, Hispanics, African Americans and Native Americans are at a higher risk for kidney failure due to a genetic risk for diabetes, which is one of the leading causes of chronic kidney disease. About 70 percent of chronic kidney disease is driven by diabetes or high blood pressure according to the Alabama Department of Public Health. “The hope is that we can find strategies that are focused on New Mexico’s unique populations to prevent the onset of kidney disease. We know that strategies that work in Boston don’t necessarily work in New Mexico,” Moseley said. “What we’re trying to do is develop a program that can really focus on the detection and prevention of kidney disease to avoid some of the long-term complications.” Moseley said that focusing on end-stage renal disease is appropriate for New Mexico and that within the next month, UNM will launch a nationwide search for a prominent researcher in kidney disease to direct the institute.
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