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THE NEWS RECORD
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
NEWSRECORD.ORG
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2014
Student Government convenes inside Cincinnati’s City Hall Cincinnati Mayor explains involvement in student government, gives advice
during his third and fourth years. Murray told UC SG members of how she first started in politics in college and the challenges students may face. “Sometimes in politics and in senate — you get this at the college level also — things are beyond your control,” Murray said. Murray encouraged SG members to attend city council meetings to participate in the public forums and to give students a voice. During the City Hall meeting, SG also discussed adding much needed amenities to UC’s Langsam Library. Between Nov. 30 and Dec. 10, Langsam will have a trial period during which the library will remain open 24 hours, according to SG vice president Shivam Shah. “We are working with the libraries to see what amenities we can include, we are trying to subsidize parking very heavily as well as include a food cart for students who plan on staying late,” Shah said. SG members also announced at the
CASSIE MERINO | CHIEF REPORTER
Student Government traveled to new territory Wednesday when it held its weekly meeting at City Hall to discuss plans for a 24-hour library at the University of Cincinnati’s main library. Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley and Cincinnati City Councilmember Amy Murray attended the meeting to give advice and to reminisce about their days being apart of their undergraduate student governments. “I started in student government,” Cranley said. “This is what someone who does student government looks like 20 years later. Dealing with the press and forming coalitions, managing budgets, putting on events. Honestly, those are the lessons I deal with today.” Cranley was involved in student government during his first year at John Carroll University in Cleveland, and went on to become student body president
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MADISON SCHMIDT | PHOTO EDITOR
Student Government president Christina Beer listens to Mayor John Cranley describe his days as president of student government at John Carroll University in Cleveland.
THE POLITICS OF EBOLA
CRIME BLOTTER 11/7 — Robbery in residence hall In a residence hall room in Stratford Heights, between 12:30 and 1 a.m., a victim reported being assaulted by two suspects, one of whom he knew. The suspects — who were visiting the victim — assaulted him and took his money. University of Cincinnati police are investigating this robbery and have not given further description of the suspects. 11/3 — Aggravated bulglary in broad daylight on Flora Around 2:30 p.m. on Flora Street, a UC student reported an aggravated burglary during which two suspects entered his home and took his property. The student fought the suspects. One suspect is described as a short, thin, white male and the other as a black male teenager with short hair. The suspects took a PlayStation video game console. Cincinnati police are investigating. 11/1 Assault on Riddle Between 2 and 2:30 a.m., a UC student reported being assaulted by an unknown suspect on Riddle Road near Martin Luther King Dr. The student reported a suspect struck her on the head and tried to force her into a car. There is no further description on the suspect. Cincinnati police are currently investigating the assault.
MADISON SCHMIDT | PHOTO EDITOR
Shaunak Sastry, assistant professor of communication, describes the media’s position of The United State’s representation of African countires
UC professors examine multiple perspectives of Ebola in the media PATRICK MURPHY | STAFF REPORTER
While concerns of the Ebola virus swirl around media outlets, University of Cincinnati professors examined and debated the portrayal of the illness through the lenses of journalism, political science, communications and African studies. Craig Flournoy, a UC journalism professor, opened the discussion — which was held on Wednesday in the Senate room of the Tangeman University Center
— by detailing the coverage of Ebola in Dallas, Texas, versus its representation nationally. “The Dallas media tends to base their Ebola reporting on what elected officials say,” Flournoy said. “Since virtually all Dallas public officials called for a calm approach, the local news coverage reflected this.” While mainstream media follows the same pattern of reporting through elected officials, the audience hears voices like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s Deputy Chief of Staff Nick Muzin, who blamed Ebola on President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Other controversial voices in the Ebola conversation include radio personality Rush Limbaugh, who, according to Flournoy, recently told his 14 million listeners that Obama refused to ban flights from Ebola-infected countries because he wants white Americans infected with the disease as payback for slavery. Andrew Lewis, an assistant political science professor at UC, stated that comments like these are largely due to a broader political landscape in which the opposite party always dissents from the
11/1 and 11/2 — Seven on-campus thefts According to a crime map on UCPD’s website, seven thefts occurred between Saturday, Nov. 1 and Sunday, Nov. 2 on West Daniels Street near Daniels Hall. The first two theft occurred on Nov. 1 between the hours of 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. The other five thefts occurred on Nov. 2 between 12:30 a.m. and 2 a.m. The News Record will follow up on the incidents. If anyone has information about these crimes, call Crime Stoppers at 513-3523040. Crime Stoppers offers rewards for information leading to the arrest of suspects in crimes, and you can remain anonymous.
Read coverage of UC’s annual Veterans Day Ceremony, which takes place 9 a.m. Monday on McMicken Commons, exclusively online Tuesday at newsrecord.org.
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Researchers create first 3D stomach tissue from human stem cells RUSSEL HAUSFELD | STAFF REPORTER
PROVIDED
Dr. James Wells, a professor of pediatrics, is the principal investigator for the research.
A University of Cincinnati molecular and developmental biology graduate student has become one of the first people able to answer a peculiar, but fascinating, question: What does a homegrown mini stomach look like? “They look like little hollow spheres, and under a low power microscope the surface is folded all over itself,” Kyle McCracken said. McCracken, along with a team of other scientists based in the lab of Dr. James Wells at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, is among the first scientists in history to create 3D stomach tissue from human pluripotent stem cells. Simply put, a human pluripotent stem cell is a cell that has been tricked into becoming a different cell. Wells — the principal investigator for the research who is also a professor at UC’s School of Medicine in the pediatrics department — explains that he could take a person’s skin cell, revert it into a stem cell, and then turn that stem
cell into a gastric cell — the kind of cell found in the stomach — that is identical to the gastric cells in that same person’s body. This process of reverting a cell back to its embryonic state is called “reprogramming,” and Wells likens it to wiping the hard drive of a computer. “You essentially just wipe all the previous information and bring it back to its base state,” Wells said. This process was globally acknowledged in 2012 when scientists Shinya Yamanaka and Sir John B. Gurdon were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their research into this subject. These “mini stomachs,” Wells explained, are about the size and shape of a BB gun pellet. Technically, they are called stomach organoids. The process of a human pluripotent stem cell becoming a 3D stomach organoid takes about five weeks, but being able to actually harness the ability to do this took three years worth of research.
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One glaring problem facing this research was the lack of prior knowledge on turning stem cells into gastric cells. McCracken says they got lucky early on with their hypotheses and were able to render some promising results. The longest part of the research consisted of figuring out how to grow and sustain these stomach organoids in the long term. Now that the study is published, the researchers hope it will be a key tool in modeling stomach development, observing stomach disease, and experimenting with different types of treatment for stomach-related illness. “Now, we can take patients’ cells who have [diseases like cystic fibrosis, diabetes, epilepsy], turn them into stem cells and push [the newly formed stem cell] into lung, or stomach, or intestine cells. Then we can study the disease process as it unfolds,” Wells said. Essentially, you can experiment on a SEE SCIENCE PG 3
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