The Daily Northwestern Wednesday, November 14, 2018
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Community notified after new incidents Lewis sends email alert after two reported incidents By ALAN PEREZ
daily senior staffer @_perezalan_
Northwestern University is warning the Evanston campus community of two reported incidents that occured Tuesday night. The first incident occurred just before 5 p.m. in the 1900 block of Sheridan Road, according to an email sent by University Police Chief Bruce Lewis. Two female individuals reported that two white men approached them and “made a rude comment to them.” One of the men was reported to be wearing a gray jacket, while the other one wore a red jacket. Both had “distinctive European accents.” The two “made a disparaging comment” and walked away after the two female individuals did not respond to the original comment that was made. The incident was reported to UP at 6:50 p.m. and is under investigation.
The second reported incident, the University said, occurred at 5:10 p.m. near 1700 Chicago Avenue. A female individual was walking southbound when two white men made a comment to her and then grabbed her arm. The woman ran south and the two men — in their mid20s to early 30s — proceeded north. The incident was reported to the Evanston Police Department at 9:08 p.m. and is under investigation by the department. NU alerted the community last week to three different reports of men grabbing women from behind at night. UP increased its patrol in response. In one incident, two men approached a female student in the 1800 block of Hinman Avenue Thursday at 5:30 p.m. and grabbed the top handle of her backpack. The student was able to run away from the two men, who fled away from campus. University and Evanston police patrolled the area, Lewis said in a different email, but were unable to » See EMAILS, page 6
Alison Albelda/Daily Senior Staffer
Comedian Vanessa Bayer at Hillel’s Annual Speaker Event on Tuesday. Bayer discussed her work on SNL and growing up Jewish.
Bayer speaks at NU Hillel event Former SNL cast member discusses career in comedy, Judaism By CAMERON COOK
the daily northwestern @cam_e_cook
To be successful in comedy, one should be nice, be relatable and be “out in the world,” said actress and comedian Vanessa Bayer Tuesday at the
Northwestern Hillel Annual Speaker Event. Bayer, a seven season Saturday Night Live veteran, addressed her quick rise to fame, her experience working on SNL and how her experience growing up Jewish shaped her comedy. One of Bayer’s most famous
sketch roles, “Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy,” is based on the memories of the Bar Mitzvahs for 13-year-old boys with whom she grew up. “Seventh grade is too young for a boy to be normal,” Bayer said to a laughing audience. “They haven’t figured out where to put their hands. They don’t
know what to do. So I was sort of impersonating those boys.” Beyond “Jacob,” Bayer’s Jewish heritage helped define her career at SNL. Though there was always what she described as “a Jewish sense around the place,” she found herself the » See BAYER, page 6
Research funding grows
NU receives over $700 million, the highest ever Northwestern continued its trend of sponsored research funding growth last fiscal year after receiving $702.1 million, the highest amount granted to the school ever. Federal government awards grew 12.8 percent to $519.5 million total, according to data from the Office of Research. Awards from industry shrank more 26.6 percent to $83.7 million, while other nonfederal awards declined three percent to $98.9 million. The trend can be attributed to the school’s “culture of excellence” and a decision to invest in research
infrastructure during the Great Recession, said Jay Walsh, vice president for research. Andrew Ott, director of Core Facilities, said in an email that Northwestern’s research infrastructure is unique because of its emphasis on collaboration and its financial resources. “ We have a culture of collaboration and resource sharing that allow faculty to undertake massive interdisciplinary projects,” he said. “We have the physical infrastructure and cutting-edge equipment readily available to complete projects that would be difficult or impossible to complete elsewhere.” With a research office that guides faculty through
complicated procedures for securing funding, researchers can focus on working on their topics instead of bureaucratic technicalities, Walsh said. Faculty requested more than $3 billion of grant money through the Office of Sponsored Research last fiscal year, which concluded at the end of August. Feinberg Prof. Marcus Peter said he was “very privileged and happy” to have received a grant from the Natural Cancer Institute last year. With the funding, he and his research team recently discovered that nature’s answer to cancer — a sequence of toxic nucleotides in RNA — exists in every cell, which could revolutionize
“critical genes” of a cancer cell, so the cancer cell could never survive. “The results of most anticancer therapies is always the same: Cancers respond initially, then become resistant and kill the patient,” Peter said. The research follows a study from October 2017 where Peter and his team found that introducing specific types of small
RNAs — microRNAs — into cancer cells would kill them. The researchers then tested sequences of six nucleotide bases in the microRNAs to find what would kill cancer cells most effectively. They plan to develop artificial microRNAs that would be even more toxic than the naturally found ones by using the most toxic nucleotides. The researchers now seek to
find investors who can finance the concept and eventually bring it to cancer patients. “What we’re looking for is a better chemotherapy,” Peter said. “We believe we found this way to treat cancer by bypassing all the effects of chemotherapy. It’s a different form of therapy without being toxic.”
By DANNY VESURAI
the daily northwestern @dvesurai
Graphic by Roxanne Panas
Northwestern’s sponsored research funding increase in the past decade can be attributed to the school’s “culture of excellence” and a decision to invest in research infrastructure during the Great Recession.
NU professor finds potential cancer treatment
Northwestern researchers believe they’ve found nature’s answer to cancer — kill codes that exist in every cell in the body. The research could lead to a more effective form of cancer
treatment than chemotherapy because the kill codes aren’t resistant and don’t have malignant side effects, said lead author and Feinberg School of Medicine Prof. Marcus Peter. “We’re very successful as a species, so cancer on a global scale, on a species scale, isn’t a problem for us” he said. “So there’s gotta be a mechanism that’s very powerful, there must
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be something that attacks the cancer at the most fundamental level.” Chemotherapy can lead to harmful side effects like damaging DNA and causing different types of cancers to occur later in patients, Peter said. Cancers also develop resistance to chemotherapy, but the new potential treatment is anti-resistant because it simultaneously attacks all the
» See 700, page 6
— Danny Vesurai
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