SQ Insider Spring 2014

SQ insider

OP-ED

University of California, San Diego

Spring 2014

Does the current smoking ban at UC San Diego effectively help everyone?

Central goals for the smoking ban are to protect non-smokers from the deleterious effects of secondhand smoke, reduce litter on campus, and encourage smokers to quit their tobacco habits. However, recent evaluations by the Moores Cancer Center suggest that the cessation policy may not meet its goal of encouraging smokers to quit without further publicizing campus resources that help smokers successfully stop their smoking habit.

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Cover by Bianca Chong and Jonathan Gao

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Saltman Quarterly Insider | Spring 2014

Re-evaluating the Smoking Ban

By Jennifer Park | UTS Staff Writer Illustration by Justine Liang

In the past, groups of cigarette smokers were commonly seen walking out of Geisel library to gather around the staircases and library walk. But this year the groups of smokers have transformed into white smoking cessation signs.

Beginning this school year, UC San Diego, along with the rest of the UC system, has strictly prohibited the use of tobacco and nicotine products on campus. A meta-analysis led by Dr. John Pierce at UCSD’s Moores Cancer Center is calling attention to a major discrepancy between scientific evidence and the school policy on smoking cessation: a campus wide suspension of smoking discourages students from successfully quitting if effective solutions to help smokers quit are not included with the ban. While UCSD does provide assistance for smokers to quit, these programs need to have more exposure in order to be effective.

“I think banning smoking on campus is a positive enforcement at UCSD. It reduces the rate of smoking among undergraduate students and reduces litter (cigarette butts) on campus” said sophomore Amaris Tang.

The smoking ban was created to protect non-smokers from the harm of secondhand smoke, a carcinogen known to increase the likelihood of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer, and to encourage smokers to quit their tobacco habits by banning their recreational use on campus. Increased exposure to cigarette smoking on campus also encourages non-smokers to try smoking for the first time.

Therefore, the ban could have positive consequences for non-smokers and would-be future smokers. The health and wellness of students being a major concern for the UC campuses, the motivation for the ban was clear.

The ban specifically forbids the use of cigarettes, vaporizers, hookahs, e-cigarettes and cigars in outdoor spaces, parking lots and residential areas. After the smoking ban was proposed in early 2012, researchers at the Moores Cancer Center published a review discussing different methods for helping smokers quit and their effectiveness.

“I like the new smoking policy but I feel like smokers at UCSD are being discriminated against,” said senior Jeffrey Syang.

A large part of understanding how people are able to quit involves a discussion about how the brain breaks behavioral habits. Habitual tasks are mediated by habit circuitry in the brain. When a habit is disrupted— for instance skipping a cup of coffee in the morning for someone with a caffeine addiction— a part of the brain called the frontal cortex located just below the forehead becomes involved. In order to break habits such as a nicotine addiction, the frontal cortex must repeatedly mediate a new behavior.

Usually, self-motivation is imperative to break the signaling between the frontal cortex and habit circuitry.

One of the studies under review was a longitudinal study on approximately 2,300 smokers. These smokers utilized three effective, yet different, paths towards quitting. In the first path, telephone addiction helplines (quitlines) are used to provide long term coaching to smokers on how to end their addiction. A second path, coined as Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT), involves the use of products like nicotine patches, which

replicate the effects of smoking without the deleterious effects to health. And finally, the third path is cessation of smoking without any assistance.

When banning cigarette use, the research study suggests that a smoking ban must have a support structure in place to help smokers quit. Otherwise the ban is counterproductive when it comes to helping smokers quit.

Researchers found that cessation rates were more successful in groups that proactively decided to contact quitlines, as opposed to those that had assistance forced upon them. There is a trend that people respond much better to quitting when they make an internal choice to quit; not when they are forced to. The paper found that smokers that utilized the quitlines were 83% more successful at achieving long term cessation compared to those that underwent NRT or those that were not assisted.

The smoking ban continues to be controversial among students and faculty as more universities across the nation begin implementing their own smoking bans. The smoking ban promotes clear air, healthy practices, and reduces cleaning costs by eliminating cigarette litter on campus.

But cessation policies nationwide should consider using additional methods, even as simple as posters and flyers for cessation resources to support one of the main goals of the policy: helping smokers quit.

UCSD provides free programs to those who want to quit smoking. For more information visit the Smoke Free UCSD website at smokefree.ucsd.edu.

To further evaluate the study, read: Quitlines and Nicotine Replacement for Smoking Cessation: Do We Need to Change Policy?

Available at sqonline.ucsd.edu

Saltman Quarterly Insider | Spring 2014

SIMPHONY:

Hitting High Notes for Sharp Young Minds Researchers from the Center of Human Development here at UC San Diego are looking at the relationship between learning music and brain development. Investigator Dr. John Iversen aims to unravel this relationship through their 5-year longitudinal study named SIMPHONY (Studying the Impact Music Practice Has On Neurodevelopment in Youth). The SIMPHONY study, which recently earned support from the Grammy Foundation, is unique because it peers into the impact of musical training on brain development.

Dr. Iversen and his team uses Magnetic Resonance Imaging to analyze changes that occur in young children’s brain throughout the course of their 5-year music training.

Their research hopes to answer the question: are people

By Anna Alvarado | UTS Staff Writer Illustration by Wenpei Li

naturally inclined to play music or is their musical training the reason for their strong aptitude in music?

“We look at the area and thickness of different regions of the cortex,” Dr. Iversen states. “We also look to see if different areas of the brain are growing faster or slower than others.”

Cortical thickness as well as the rate and number of neural connections made can indicate where and how musical training impacts the child’s brain growth.

Exploring the impact of extracurricular activities on the brain shows the importance of interdisciplinary education on the development of young minds.

For the full-length article, go to sqonline.ucsd.edu

Curing Crohn’s

By Safwan Haque | UTS Staff Writer Illustration by Wenpei Li

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory autoimmune disease of the bowel. The areas affected by Crohn’s are usually in the intestines but may be anywhere between the mouth and the anus. According to the National Medical Library of the United States, Crohn’s is believed to have no cure.

The exact causes for Crohn’s is still unknown but it happens when the body’s defense mistakenly attacks and destroys healthy body tissues. Genes, family history, one’s environment, smoking and the body’s tendency to overreact to gut bacteria seem to play a role in Crohn’s disease. There are several symptoms including fever and weight loss. The symptoms can be reduced through taking a multitude of pain medications and having a good, healthy diet plan with fiber supplements. In extreme cases, damaged portions of the gut may need to be removed.

Dr. Sanborn’s involvement with Crohn’s disease started more than 10 years ago. He was involved with a drug called Natalizumab which was not used due to its associations with JC polyoma virus and Progressive Multifocal

Leukoencephalopathy. Recently, Vedolizumab, a new drug found by Dr. Sandborn and his team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has offered hope for treating Crohn’s disease.

Vedolizumab is a human monoclonal antibody that binds to specific integrins. Integrins are cell membrane receptors that create the attachments between cells to form tissues such as the lining of our stomach and our skin.Vedolizumab only acts on the digestive tract and suppresses immune system cells that release proteins called cytokines.

These cytokines cause inflammation in parts of the digestive tract. A comparative drug study was performed with Vedolizumab and a placebo drug in which Vedolizumab caused complete healing of the bowel.

For the full-length article, go to sqonline.ucsd.edu

ROBOT ROCK

By Vaishali Talwar | SQ Staff Writer Photo by Yaamini Venkataraman

A few years ago, Lauren Mejia, a first-year biochemistry student, participated in the FTC (First Robotics Challenge) Championships in Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas.

Her team was the first from her high school to participate in the robotics challenge of this competition.

In order to bolster their capabilities, the team decided to teach themselves. After months of practice, they finally managed to design and engineer a robot, which successfully competed in the FTC challenge in Los Angeles and got them the eighth position in this championship. When they participated in the same contest the year after that, they came in second.

Lauren was one of the few women on this high achieving robotics team. For her

achievements, she was awarded the very prestigious HENAAC NAVSEA/SPAWAR scholarship last year as an incoming freshman at Revelle College.

The NAVSEA/SPAWAR Scholarship is a 4-year renewable $10,000 scholarship, funded by the Navy in partnership with an organization known as Great Minds in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). It is awarded to an incoming freshman attending a Hispanic serving institution and pursuing a major in the STEM field. It also offers an internship program with the Navy, where the students gain important experiences for working in a technical field.

Lauren’s interest in the sciences is what prompted her to participate in the competition in the first place. And it is this interest which spurred her to pursue a career in the sciences.

“I want to be a doctor, like half of this school,” she said laughingly. “But jokes apart, I really want to help people.”

She plans to contribute to the medical sciences by advancing medical treatment through bioengineering or biochemistry.

Lauren credits her parents for being extremely supportive of her participating in the championship and future academic pursuits.

“They just wanted me to try my best. They told me that they were confident that I’d figure out what I wanted to do,” says Lauren.

For the full-length article, go to sqonline.ucsd.edu

GET INVOLVED Undergraduate Research Showcase

Curious about the research that some of your peers are doing right now? At our annual showcase, you’ll get the inside scoop on some of the projects that undergraduates are currently undertaking.

There will be snacks, a best-poster competition, and plenty of biology!

Wednesday, June 4th at 4pm in PC West Ballroom

SQ Online Launch

SQ Online, your very own undergraduate biology community, has officially launched! Brand new compelling stories are published every Thursday and our blogs are uploaded daily. With student opinion pieces, updates on exciting research and insider profiles on faculty and staff, there is something for everyone at SQ Online! Visit sqonline.ucsd.edu.

Q&A: What Does DNA Stand For? And Other Questions

By Edgar Villaruel | UTS Staff Writer SQ recently went on a mission and asked several students who do not study biology some general biology questions.

All jokes aside, it’s quite interesting to see the way non-biology students answered the below questions. But this disconnect goes hand-in-hand with any other subject of study.

For example, if an economics major were to ask a non-economics student to calculate the GDP of a product/service or if a psychology major were to ask a non-psychology student about the concept of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, their answers would probably be just as amusing as the answers below.

Q1: What does DNA stand for?

A: Dialogical Neurotransmitter Amino Acid.

A: Data Neuron Antibody.

A: Deep Nerve Amino Acid

Q2: What is the Golgi Apparatus?

A: “It has a lot of dots. It does a lot of cool things in the cell. It’s brown, isn’t it? Or pink?”

Q3: Explain the Krebs Cycle:

A: “I don’t know. Some type of mitosis with oxygen? Sprinkled with some atoms?”

A: “A crab’s life cycle?”

The next time you have the chance, ask your friend who is not in the same major a general question about your field of study. Then try to answer one of their questions. You might get a kick out of it.

Whatever it is you study however, just remember that the Krebs cycle is not a crab’s life cycle.

Answers: A1: Deoxyribonucleic acid A2: A complex of vesicles and folded membranes within the cytoplasm of most eukaryotic cells, involved in secretion and intracellular transport.

A3:The Krebs cycle is a big part of how living cells convert food into energy. It is a series of chemical reactions that generate a molecule called ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which almost all living things use to power themselves.

Want to be a part of SQ Volume 12?

Application season for SQ staff ‘14-15 will be opening shortly! We will be holding a GBM for all prospective applicants where you can get a better idea of what a position in SQ entails and what the responsibilities are for each member. Stay tuned for an email announcing the details of the GBM. If you have any questions, please contact sq@biomail.ucsd.edu.

For the full-length article, go to sqonline.ucsd.edu