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Powers advocates budget suggestions By Lena Price Daily Texan Staff In response to the recent debate regarding proposed budget reallocations throughout the University, President William Powers encouraged “candid discussion” between faculty, administrators and staff at a Faculty Council meeting Monday. The president said that without
input from University employees and students, the reallocation process could not move forward. This year’s increased tuition and funding from the state legislature offset general cost increases and losses in the University endowment. No major funding increases will bolster the budget for the next three years, leaving it flat.
Powers said the University needs to find the funds to continue recruiting top faculty and issuing merit pay increases if it wants to remain competitive, and the only way to do this is to reallocate money within the University. “The idea here isn’t to make it to the end of the day and then say ‘Great, we balanced the budget,’”
Powers said. “The debate that went on was absolutely essential.” The College of Liberal Arts hosted a forum regarding a potential decrease in the number of required foreign language hours last month and heard an overwhelmingly negative response from faculty. The next day, Dean Randy Diehl took the changes off the table.
The colleges are not the only campus entities forced to cut spending in order to achieve the top priorities of the University, Powers said. The Information Technology Services central office laid off 25 staff members in early October to improve overall efficiency, and the University is not done reallocating funds within ITS, Powers said.
“We hope that this will have a substantial impact on the University budget,” Powers said. “There is still going to be painful discussion, but that is going to be essential as we move forward.” The McCombs School of Business and the Cockrell School of
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FDA to determine safety of caffeine in alcoholic drinks By Lara Berendt Daily Texan Staff A s c a ff e i n a t e d a l c o h o l i c drinks grow increasingly popular among college students, the Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that the agency will examine the safety and legality of the drinks. The agency notified 27 manufacturers, including those that produce Four Loko, Torque and Joose, that it is investigating whether caffeine can legally combine with alcohol, and requested that companies provide their rationale for adding caffeine along with data that supports the claim that the products are safe. The FDA will remove the drinks from the market if they are deemed as unsafe. In a September 21 letter to the FDA, five medical researchers from around the country said there is no consensus among medical and scientific communities that the addition of caffeine to alcoholic drinks is safe. They cited several academic studies that found increases in drunk driving, sexual assault and other dangerous behaviors resulting from consumption of these beverages. “Being able to accurately perceive one’s level of intoxication is important. An inaccurate percep-
tion will, for example, increase the likelihood of driving while intoxicated or alcohol poisoning, or inflicting injury on another person,” the experts wrote to the FDA. Additionally, the experts said research has indicated that the combination of caffeine and alcohol could exacerbate arrhythmias, especially in people predisposed to such heart conditions. Kevin Prince, health education coordinator at University Health Services, said many young people have undiagnosed heart conditions, and that combining alcohol and caffeine over time causes wear and tear that can worsen those conditions. As for healthy individuals, Prince said he believes it is dangerous to become “amped up” with caffeine while also having impaired judgment from alcohol. “You’re taking caffeine, which is a stimulant, and combining it with alcohol, which is a depressant, and that’s never good,” Prince said. On a more practical level, Prince said caffeine and alcohol both act as diuretics, increasing dehydration and worsening hangovers. He said he has seen increased consumption of these beverages
Michael Baldon | Daily Texan Staff
David Carver, the senior operating systems specialist, stands at the edge of the Ranger supercomputer. Ranger will perform more than 200,000 years of computational work over its four-year commission.
Computer reaches milestone By Shabab Siddiqui Daily Texan Staff In the last year and a half, it has tracked hurricanes, forecasted natural disasters and mapped the spread of the H1N1 flu virus. The Ranger supercomputer, operated by the UT-affiliated Texas Ad-
vanced Computing Center, recently celebrated another major milestone as it processed its 1 millionth job late in October. Ranger is the second-largest openscience supercomputer in the country. Located at the University’s J.J. Pickle Research Campus, Ranger allows rep-
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City launches car2go program with compact Smart vehicles
Lauren Gerson | Daily Texan Staff
Smart Cars will be available to drivers for public transportation starting today as part of a new citywide car-sharing program.
By Audrey White Daily Texan Staff Austin will add another transportation option for public employees today with the launch of a new car-sharing program. The city will start a pilot program today called car2go that will provide 200 Smart Cars — compact two-door vehicles — for the city’s 13,000 employees to use. The city will use the pilot to gather data and determine how to integrate carsharing into the community at large. Before participating drivers can begin using the cars, they have to log in using their driver’s license and an identification number. While driving, the car will monitor miles and travel time as well as emissions for each trip. Daimler first launched car2go in Ulm, Germany and chose Austin as its first test city in North America. The initial agreement will last six months. The city will not make any payments to Daimler for the program, said Karla Villalon, Austin Transportation Department spokeswoman. “Car2go told [Austin] we are a young community with a strong environmen-
tal conscience, and that was appealing to them,” Villalon said. “Essentially, it’s a barter agreement. It’s a pilot program, so there’s no revenue exchange. We’re offering some on-street spaces [to the program] in exchange for driving time for employees who want to use the cars for work purposes.” She said the city plans to analyze the habits of drivers who use the cars to determine what the next step of the program might be. “We can collect that data and start to understand driving habits and patterns to determine whether, over the long term, we want to reduce some of our fleet or go to more of a car share program within our departments, whether we buy or lease, whether we want to expand it to the city at large,” Villalon said. “We’re looking to glean a lot of data.” Car-sharing is not new to Austin. A non-profit called Austin CarShare launched in 2006. About 300 subscribers have access to seven vehicles using
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resentatives, primarily from higher education institutions, to perform multifaceted research that an average computer cannot handle. “Ranger has already enabled hundreds of research projects and
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UT police investigate two armed robberies
By Bobby Longoria Daily Texan Staff Two separate robberies Sunday sparked a UT Police Department investigation to clarify if a single suspect committed both crimes. Austin Police Department officers responded to a robbery west of campus early Sunday evening. A separate armed robbery in the Speedway Garage, off of 27th and Speedway streets, targeted a UT student who called UTPD at 11:55 p.m. UTPD spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon said the student was approached by a male between 5-feet-6-inches and 5-feet-9-inches tall. He had a goatee and was wearing jeans, a black shirt and a dark baseball cap. Police could not release a description of the robbery weapon or what was stolen from the student because these details may compromise the investigation, Weldon said.
UTPD dispatch sent out a text alert at 12:05 a.m. Monday alerting students that an armed subject was headed west toward Speedway Street. Later that night, dispatch sent a follow-up message saying that UTPD believed the suspect had left the area. Weldon said the description of the suspect in the first incident west of campus is similar to that of the suspect in the second incident. APD Cpl. Scott Perry said the department is assisting UTPD in their investigation but will not spearhead it. He said the first and second incidents have similarities, but specifics cannot be released at this time. Perry said investigators are still trying to determine if there is a match on the suspect, and full details of the incidents will be
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