Daily Lobo new mexico
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
thursday January 15, 2015 | Volume 119 | Issue 82
NCAA gains Conditions not severe enough for delay new council members By Lauren Marvin
Paul Krebs and Craig Thompson selected to Division I Council
Paul Krebs
UNM felt the social media heat yesterday after community members took to Twitter and Facebook to criticize the school’s decision to not call for a twohour delay – even after both CNM and Albuquerque Public Schools made the call to start later. The decision to issue a two-hour delay for Main campus is a collaborative effort and is usually based on actions taken by Albuquerque Public Schools. UNM Main Campus did not follow APS because the announcement of the delay came 30 minutes after UNM had started, said Lt. Tim Stump, the public information officer for UNM police. However, he said officials would have canceled or delayed classes if conditions worsened during the day.
Stump said the decision to issue a twohour delay or cancellation of school was made by David Harris, executive vicepresident of administration, through the recommendation of police Chief Kevin McCabe. Often, the recommendation from McCabe comes from UNMPD officers, who survey the streets, and the Albuquerque Police Department. “So basically you are getting an estimate from all around you on how bad the road conditions are and how bad the driving conditions are,” Stump said. The decision to cancel or delay is based on judgment, there is no formal rubric in issuing a delay, he said. “The University will not close during periods of inclement weather unless conditions are so severe as to endanger the University community,” according to administrative policy 3435.
Weather updates are provided through Lobo Alerts, emails and social media. The delay for UNM West was not posted to either UNM’s Facebook or Twitter pages. Dianne Anderson, director of communications, said updates were not posted because the normal schedule of UNM was not changed and the delay only affected UNM West. “The directors of each branch campus will determine if their respective campus will close. Weather conditions may be quite different at UNM West than at main campus, so the decision to delay or cancel or close will be made based on information pertinent to that campus,” she said. Wynn Goering, chief executive officer for UNM West, said he makes the decision to issue a delay or cancellation for UNM West.
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Weather page 7
Craig Thompson
By Thomas Romero-Salas Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson and New Mexico Vice President for Athletics Paul Krebs were selected to the newly-formed Division I Council, the NCAA Board of Directors announced Wednesday. Thompson and Krebs will join other commissioners, athletic directors, faculty representatives, senior woman administrators and student-athletes from around the country when the first meeting of the Division I council meets on Friday, along with the 2015 NCAA Convention in Washington, D.C. It will be the first time that student-athletes will be represented on council-level groups. All Division I conferences will be represented by the council, which is made up of 40 individuals. “The next several months will be challenging times in intercollegiate athletics as several initiatives to enhance the studentathlete experience will unfold,” Thompson said in a release. “It will be important to be on the ground level of those discussions.” According to the Mountain West release, the council is charged with conducting the day-to-day business of Division I athletics and will have the final say on shared governance rule-making decisions. In response to the many changes happening in Division I, including the debate about the principles of amateurism, the NCAA developed the council. In the council’s first meeting, it will elect an athletics director to chair the group, identify the subgroups that will assist in developing legislation, administering championships and performing other necessary functions. New rules will be voted upon by the council for the first time during the 2015-16 legislative cycle. “I am honored to serve as a MW representative to the new NCAA Division I Council,” Krebs said in a release. “These are historic times for college athletics as we chart the future of our enterprise. UNM is very fortunate that our own Kendall Spencer will be serving as the first-ever SAAC (StudentAthlete Advisory Committee) representative to the NCAA Division I Board.” Spencer, a former UNM track star, was also selected to the Division I Council. The 2012 NCAA Indoor Track & Field National Champion in long jump became the first student-athlete in the history of the organization to serve on the Division I Board, according to the release. In 2011, Spencer joined UNM’s StudentAthlete Advisory Committee and joined the National SAAC two years later. He became the Division I SAAC Chair in 2014. “I have a lot of fun doing what I’m doing
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NCAA page 7
Sergio Jiménez / Daily Lobo / @SXfoto
Dr. Sara Brant, Senior Collections Manager of the Parasite Division at UNM’s Museum of Southwestern Biology, holds up a tapeworm specimen on a microscope slide on Wednesday. UNM’s Museum of Southwestern Biology Division of Parasites was established in 2011 and contains the third largest parasite collection in the western hemisphere.
Parasite collection a tool for education By Lauren Topper
In the lower levels of UNM’s CERIA building are jars and jars of what at first glance appear to be pasta. There are long egg noodles, balls of twisted up spaghetti, thin vermicelli strands and crispy pieces of chow mein. Except they aren’t noodles — they are part of the third largest parasite collection in the western hemisphere. UNM’s Museum of Southwestern Biology Division of Parasites, curated by Dr. Sam Loker, was only established in 2011, but it has grown quickly. The collection already features parasites from host like species including badgers, otters, caribou, moose, cougars and whales. Dr. Sara Brant, senior collections manager of the Parasite Division, and her colleagues are now concentrating on sorting through the samples and cataloguing them. “These sat in someone’s house for 50 years and no one knew what was in there, and we have just started to capture and preserve the diversity that’s here. Each specimen tells a story about the past,
present and future,” Brant said.“There are a lot of different things that you can do with them. One of the things I want is to turn some of this into education.” Brant said she hopes to display part of the collection and develop a mobile teaching unit. Other advantages of the museum include long-term storage of samples for use by future scientists, and a searchable database called Arctos that can link a particular parasite in the museum to the host species it was collected from, which may be stored upstairs in the MSB. The parasite record can also be linked to any type of data, such as DNA sequences, images and publications. All of this is accessible to the public. “I think that’s the really powerful part about this, that it’s not a dead-end study. These studies can continue over time,” said Dr. Ben Hanelt, research assistant professor of biology. “I think that’s the real service that this museum provides.” Hanelt has donated many of his samples to the museum. He studies particularly
creepy critters known as nematomorphs, or horsehair worms. The bugs have gained recent attention for their “zombie”-like behavior, as they are able to take over their host’s brain and manipulate its behavior. Nematomorphs infect bugs, such as crickets, and live in the cricket for anywhere from 30 days to 18 months depending on the species of worm. During this time the parasite develops from a larva into a fully grown adult, consuming much of the internal components of the cricket — while still keeping it alive and functioning. When it is time to leave its host, the nematomorph steers the cricket to water and emerges out the back end, killing the cricket at the last second. Ideally the water is a stream, though it can be any freshwater source such as toilets and pet water bowls. Clearly, this has potential to freak people out – which ultimately leads to Google searches that direct them to Hanelt, who said he receives around 10 emails a week from people who
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Parasites page 7