DE Since 1916
Daily Egyptian TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 VOLUME 98 ISSUE 103
Quinn announces emergency response center Tyler Davis Daily Egyptian
Gov. Pat Quinn announced Monday Illinois will invest $4.5 million to further develop the Southern Illinois Airport property, which will include the construction of an emergency response center. The investment comes as part of Quinn’s “Illinois Jobs Now!”, a $31 billion program created to support more than 439,000 Illinois jobs by 2015, according to a press
release from the governor’s office. Emergency services relating to natural disasters, disease outbreaks and more will be housed in the center, which will be located near the airport hangar. It will consolidate Jackson County’s Red Cross and National Guard units as well as Southern Illinois Healthcare’s MASH unit. Quinn said the airport’s position in southern Illinois was instrumental in the approval of the funds. When choosing a
location for the center, Quinn said natural disasters such as the Harrisburg tornado, the 2012 derecho and multiple ice storms were considered. “In all of these occasions in five years there have been serious emergencies that are natural disasters,” he said. “We want to be able to respond to these disasters as quickly, as comprehensively as possible whatever the case might be.” Please see QUINN · 3
New IT site Working to repair Faner Hall promotes web security Austin Miller Daily Egyptian
Although the Internet has created a global society that is always connected, computer hackers exploit that connectivity to steal personal information. The Information Security unit of the Office of Information Technology has created secureit.siu.edu to increase online safety among faculty and students. Scott Bridges, director of Information Security, said the site also provides awareness on secure web browsing. “Awareness is a huge part of security,” he said. “Many incidents come from not knowing the repercussions of clicking on a link.” Bridges said fraudulent emails are a common threat for students. He said these emails look similar to ones sent by the university or a bank. These scams, known as “phishing” are designed to steal financial and personal information, usernames and passwords. Other scams attempt to install malware on computers, Bridges said. SecureIT defines malware as any software that can compromise the security of a computer. Bridges said the email addresses will not have the official siu.edu credentials, but will have something similar to trick students. Holding the cursor over the email’s link will show an address that is different from SIU sites. Bridges said Information Security cleans students’ computers of viruses. He said there is little the university can do if individuals give out information, but it helps victims go through the proper channels to resolve the problem. Bridges said viruses could proliferate across the school network, leaving many at risk. Having up-to-date virus protection can prevent most intrusion attempts. The website also provides tips for creating strong passwords and several free computer security programs, Bridges said. David Crain, chief information officer and associate provost, said higher education was the No. 1 target for phishing scams in 2013 because students often fall for these tricks. Crain said the university uses Microsoft to block intrusions. He said the program is constantly updated to block threats found by other universities and can find computers infected with malware. Crain said hackers are hard to battle because they are always moving and getting better. But once they are noticed, they are blocked. “One day, attacks come from a machine in China, then the next day it’s coming from Russia,” he said. Crain said millions of emails come through the university every day and most of them are spam. IT receives multiple reports a day from students who have seen suspicious emails. Suspect emails should be reported to scam@siu.edu. Please see SECURITY · 3
N athaN h oefert D aily e gyptiaN Rick Martin, left, and Jeff Billingsley, high voltage electricity crewmembers, work Monday to turn switch on the core power unit of C-wing in Faner
Student finishes bat research project Austin Miller Daily Egyptian
One graduate student stood alone in a cornfield, opening and closing giant netting structures for several hours each day for the sake of research. Josiah Maine, a graduate student from Shawnee, Kan. studying zoology, is researching how bats control pests that eat crops, specifically corn. Maine, a member of SIU’s Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory, created his experiment, which is the first of its kind, with help from Justin Boyles, an assistant professor of zoology. Boyles has been researching WhiteNose Syndrome, an illness that affects bats, and how decreased bat populations affect agriculture. The syndrome is a fungal disease that causes bats to starve to death during hibernation. Boyles said there are six common species of bats in southern Illinois. The most common is the evening bat, but there are also big brown, little brown, red, northern long-eared and tri-colored bats. He said there could be
12 species during migrating season. Boyles said the syndrome has been in Illinois for a couple of years, and a decline in the bat population should be expected in the future. He said the disease has a mortality rate of 99 percent in some populations. Boyles said Maine’s findings can create an effort to research the role of bats in farming. “From Josiah’s results, we know that bats do have an effect on insect populations, which in turn has an effect on corn production,” he said. “The goal is to take this research and get funding to do this on a much larger scale, so we can start looking at yield production across the entire United States and the effect of removing a bat population on economics.” Boyles said with his help, Maine secured land at Horseshoe Lake State Fish and Wildlife Area in Granite City to begin his research. The corn at Horseshoe Lake was perfect for Maine’s study because it was not treated with insecticides, and would be flooded for waterfowl hunting, Boyles said. Maine created six nets, 65 feet wide by 65 feet long and 23 feet tall to keep bats away
from the corn. The nets hung from metal framework and cables. He said he got the idea for the nets based on previous bird conservation projects. He also had six control plots that were not covered with nets. Maine said he would take two to three hours to open the nets each morning, so birds and other animals could roam the corn. At night, he would take another two to three hours closing the nets to monitor the amount of pests the bats did not eat. He also set up bat detectors that could pick up the echolocation of bats in the area. The pests in question are corn earworm moths. “It’s a species of moth that lays eggs on the corn, and then the larvae eats the leaves and the kernels themselves,” Maine said. “The thought is, these bats are eating enough of the adult moths to reduce the amount of larvae and damage to the crops.” Every five to seven days, Maine gathered samples of corn stalks to assess the damage done by the moths. Throughout the project he surveyed more than 1,800 stalks. Please see BATS · 3