2014-02-03

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ONE-HUNDRED-TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM Monday, February 3, 2014

Ann Arbor, Michigan

michigandaily.com

TECHNOLOGY

MHacks champions push ahead Winners to launch “WorkFlow” in Apple Store later this month By WILLIAM LANE

PAUL SHERMAN/Daily

Former Gen. David Petraeus discusses using physical activity as a way to adjust to civilian life during a speech at the sixth annual Student Veterans of America dinner at the Union Friday.

Former CIA director talks veteran support, fitness Petraeus inspires Student Veterans of America chapter By MICHAEL SUGERMAN Daily Staff Reporter

Former CIA Director David Petraeus touted physical fitness as an outlet for both physical and mental health Friday at the

fifth annual dinner held by the University’s Student Veterans of America chapter in the Union ballroom. During his speech, Petraeus commended the University for the work it has done to accommodate veterans by providing in-state tuition and preferred registration to all former soldiers. He added that that Michigan maintained a “rich tradition of military service” since the

Civil War, when Michiganders were some of the first to volunteer for the Union army in Virginia. Petraeus said soldiers returning from war feel that they have left their brothers and sisters behind, and that many veterans have both physical and mental wounds from their time in service. Both of these issues, he said, mean veterans have a hard time assimilating back into their

home communities. Petraeus said group fitness can be therapeutic for veterans, as it parallels the pack motivation used in combat. He added that, as a paratrooper, he felt that for individuals to be physically and mentally tough was essential to the pack’s success. “Exercise not only trains the body to be physically resilient, it also helps our hearts, lungs and See CIA, Page 3A

Snyder leads opponent in campaign fundraising By ALLANA AKHTAR Daily Staff Reporter

Campaign finance reports released Friday reveal Republicans have a fundraising edge for the upcoming Michigan guber-

natorial election with higher campaign funds. According to the report, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder currently has four times the amount of campaign money at his disposal than his Democratic challenger, former congressional representative Mark Schauer. Snyder started 2014 with around $4 million in donations, according to the report. Some of these funds went towards an

The winners of MHacks are coming to an app store near you. The overall winners of Mhacks — a 36-hour programming competition hosted in Detroit this month —are preparing to launch “WorkFlow,” an app allowing task automation on the iPad. While iPad users are traditionally confined to working on only one app at a time, WorkFlow aims to make working on multiple apps feasible. The developers have created about 40 actions in the application, including opening a URL, editing a photo, sharing a message or sending a text message. Users have the ability to select actions from a list in the interface and drag them into the workflow. Once the play button is pressed, the app will automatically complete the various actions in order

STROLL OFF

GOVERNMENT

Governor has $3 million more than Schauer in warchest

Daily Staff Reporter

of how they were selected. Veeral Patel, a high school junior from Bergenfield, New Jersey, was a member of the four-man development team that worked on the app. Since the competition, he has been expanding it through the development of a wireless printing option. The team intends for the app to eventually unify other apps and provide more cross-system integration. “We started out at the Hackathon building all of these actions ourselves, but the next step before we launch is to create a way for other apps to make their own specifications,” Patel said. Nick Frey, a high school student from Iowa who also worked on the development team, said the group-was inspired by the ability of computers to manage multiple programs and wanted to bring that functionality to tablets. Ari Weinstein, a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked on the team, said the largest challenge was creating a data model to make each action work. See MHACKS, Page 3A

advertisement during Sunday night’s Super Bowl game, which can cost millions of dollars for a single 30-second slot. Schauer has garnered $1.6 million in contributions since entering the race in June and currently has $1 million in his war chest. His biggest donors were the Service Employees International Union Michigan Council and the Michigan Laborer’s PolitiSee SNYDER, Page 3A RUBY WALLAU/Daily

Members of Phi Beta Sigma perform at the Annual Blue and White Stroll Off hosted by Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority at the Great Lakes Room in Palmer Commons Saturday.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Students and alumni cash in on global bitcoin ‘gold-rush’ Science Learning Center art CAMPUS LIFE

Cryptocurrency craze draws new business growth By ADAM GLANZMAN Daily Staff Reporter

The bitcoin craze is often equated to the Gold Rush of 1849, when hundreds of thousands of fortune-seekers flocked to Cali-

fornia to test their luck and strike gold. Those who actually found riches were the ones selling the gold mining equipment, food and resources the miners needed. At the University, however, bitcoins are the target of the modern gold rush. Bitcoins are a digital currency, or cryptocurrency, that can be traded from person to person. It was invented in 2009 and has since grown in prominence among techies. It’s

now beginning to enter mainstream commercial and financial spheres. However, bitcoins are available exclusively online and are not backed by a central bank like the U.S. Dollar. These qualities have raised speculations about how stable the currency is and many lawmakers are displeased by bitcoins’ history of being used for illegal activities. See BITCOINS, Page 3A

contest merges many disciplines Competition brings in artists to explore multidisciplinarity By ALEX DITOMMASO For the Daily

Left brain, meet right brain. The Science Learning Center hosted the its first ever Sci-

ence As Art Exhibition Friday, giving undergraduate students the chance to through express their creativity through sciencebased art. The contest received 27 submissions from students with backgrounds ranging from neuroscience to biomedical engineering to art to economics, Claire Sandler, director of the Science Learning Center, said.

“Science is in and behind everything, and what we were hoping to do with this contest was encourage students to stop and think about that and consider the science in their own life,” Sandler said. Five judges oversaw the contest. Deirdre Spencer, senior associate librarian at the Fine Art Library, said her academic backSee SCIENCE, Page 3A

Badger beatdown » in overtime Stauskas stymied at » Assembly Hall INSIDE WEATHER TOMORROW

HI: 23 LO: 15

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INDEX

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