THE DAILY COUGAR Food for thought: campus offers culinary experience /FEATURES Issue 80, Volume 74
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TODAY’S WEATHER
Mine games: UH looks to defeat UTEP at home /sports
3-day forecast, Page 2
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
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Houston not immune to losses By James Rincon The Daily Cougar Recent reports in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times show that college endowments suffered an aggregate investment loss of $94 billion, an average loss of between 23 and 24 percent, and Houston universities are no exception. In his State of the state address on Tuesday, Governor Rick Perry said the Texas economy is “still in better shape than most other states,” but administrators at
UH Systems and Texas Southern University both say endowments have diminished at least 25 percent. “That (number) changes almost daily because of the mark values, but if you see the market’s down by, let’s say it’s down by 30 percent, we’re doing a little better, but we’re all in the same range,” Carl Carlucci, vice chancellor for administration and finance for UH and UH Systems, said. “Even the big schools with the really impressive managers have seen decline, because the whole market goes down, there’s no way to
protect your portfolio from that.” Carlucci’s comments are backed by reports that said even schools with endowments of over $1 billion show an average loss of more than 20 percent. David Bradley, vice president of administration and finance for UHDowntown, said that endowment losses stem from heavy dependence on equities. “It’s because of what’s happened in the stock market. The endowments are invested mostly see ENDOW, page 3
Endowments mimic Dow The Dow Jones Industrial average is down 29 percent since Sept. 1, 2008. UH systems endowment losses are slightly less. Source: Google finance
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Radical asthma therapy upheld Previously contraindicated beta-blockers shown more effective in chonic treatment By Marc Anderson The Daily Cougar
photo courtesy of The Honors College.
John Updike, who died on Tuesday after battling lung cancer, helped bring prominence to UH creative writing program’s Inprint series. .
Updike wrote of fallibility, grace By Jasmine Harrison The Daily Cougar John Updike visited the University of Houston campus two days after celebrating his 53rd birthday in March 1985, as part of the University’s Writers in Society series, and again in February 2006 as an Inprint participant at age 73. Updike died of lung cancer Tuesday at the age of 76. Ted Estess, dean emeritus and English professor in The Honors College, remembers Updike’s last visit well. “He was brought here by the creative writing program,” Estess said. “It was a year in which the program was being celebrated. He appeared in the Honors commons and gave a talk on ‘Seven Observations about the Process of Writing’, and spoke to a packed room.” After his time at the podium, Updike did not hesitate to spare time
to interact with students and faculty despite his star status, Estees said. “John Updike was a man of impeccable manners. He was immensely gracious. He was patient with questions; he was patient in signing books. He was a person of good cheer,” he said. Updike brought impressive status to the readings and star-struck those who were there to witness the Pulitzer Prize winner speak, Estess said. “Every time you could be in the presence of John Updike you were excited,” Estess said. “He was one of our celebrity writers in America, and since he spoke intelligently, people were deeply impressed. This was true of the creative writing students and the general public.” Updike achieved fame through his four-part “Rabbit” series of novels, which narrated the small-town life of Harry Armstrong. “In those books Updike is commenting on life in America,”
Estess said. “He certainly was interested in and enjoyed human fallibility or the way in which we fail. He was not moralistic at all. He wrote about human beings as we are.” Updike was born March 18, 1932 in Shilling, Pa. and attended Harvard University on full scholarship and worked as president of the humor magazine The Harvard Lampoon before graduating summa cum laude in 1954. Updike would go on to write more than 30 novels and win numerous awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes. “He was our Charles Dickens,” Estess said. “If you want to know about England (in) the 19th century, a good place to start is Charles Dickens. If you want to know about America in the second half of the 20th century then you read John Updike.” Updike is survived by his children and his second wife, Martha. news@thedailycougar.com
A new study conducted at the College of Pharmacy calls into question a widely-used medical treatment for asthma and coincides with the Food and Drug Administration’s critical review of existing asthma treatments. Richard A. Bond, professor of pharmacology at the College of Pharmacy, has recently published work suggesting that using a class of drugs known as beta-blockers would be more effective in treating chronic asthma than the standard treatment of using drugs known as beta-agonists. In his newest findings, published in this month’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bond’s lab looked at mice lacking the beta-2 receptor. These mice could not be induced to develop asthma, a finding that suggests stimulation of the beta-2 receptor plays a role in causing asthma. “Whether we block the receptor chemically (with beta-blockers) or the receptor just isn’t there, the results are the same,” Dr. Bond said. Asthma is a chronic respiratory disease that is characterized by constriction and inflammation of the airways in the lungs and causes difficulties in breathing, ranging from moderate to severe. One biological molecule that regulates the constriction of the airways is the beta-2 receptor. When activated, the receptor causes airways to dilate, making breathing easier. For over 40 years, the standard treatment for asthma has been to use beta-agonist drugs that activate these receptors. They immediately make breathing easier, but Bond said his research calls their long-term
effectiveness into question. He found that by blocking these receptors instead of activating them, airways relaxed, and the results appeared to be beneficial in chronic asthma. His earlier work with mice suggested beta-blockers are better suited for long-term management of asthma. When beta-blockers were given over a 28-day period, the mice showed less constriction of the airways, indicating a reduction of asthma symptoms. “The older drugs worked in the sense that people immediately felt better, but in the long term they had more complications,” Dr. Bond said. “Beta-agonists are wonderful drugs when used acutely. The problem is that asthma is a chronic disease.” His view was recently supported in a study released by the FDA in December that showed increased risk of hospitalization and of breathing related deaths in asthma patients treated solely with beta-agonists. His suggestion that asthma be treated with drugs that do exactly the opposite of current therapies was initially met with skepticism, Bond said. “I remember I gave a talk to the European Respiratory Society and I was first met with open laughter. After I showed the data there wasn’t any more laughing,” Bond said. Bond hopes his findings will help the medical community establish practices that offer the best treatment for both acute and chronic phases of asthma. “There is a potential for reconciliation between using both beta-agonists and beta-blockers together. Each is suited to address a particular aspect of the disease,” Bond said. news@thedailycougar.com