The Daily Texan 2014-02-13

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NEWS PAGE 3

SPORTS PAGE 6

LIFE&ARTS PAGE 8

Serving the University of Texas at Austin community since 1900

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Thursday, February 13, 2014

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POLICE

UTPD, homeless clash over cold By Julia Brouillette @juliakbrou

On freezing cold days, University officials deal with slick roads, campus closures and delays, but, on freezing cold nights, it isn’t the students whom officials are

concerned about. Instead, UTPD officers get calls of homeless individuals entering campus buildings in search of warmth. Friday night, a non-UT man was arrested after a custodian found him sleeping in the Engineering-Science Building.

According to the UTPD crime log, this was the man’s ninth arrest for criminal trespassing. UTPD Lt. Gonzalo Gonzalez said the man was looking for a warm place to sleep. Since then, UTPD has reported five additional criminal trespass incidents, four of which

involved individuals sleeping in campus buildings. Terry McMahan, assistant chief of police, said UTPD officers issue criminal trespass warnings — and occasionally arrest — individuals who are not authorized to be on the campus. McMahan

said this policy follows the UT System Board of Regents Rules and Regulations. “If they have no business here, we’re going to ask them to leave,” McMahan said. “If they‘re a student, faculty or

bit.ly/dtvid

THROWBACK

HIV/AIDS still poses threat 30 years later

HOMELESS page 2

CITY

Study presents possible lakefront facelift By Alyssa Mahoney

could be built here,” Holt said. Holt said the high value of property in the area has increased economic redevelopment, but the city wants to manage that redevelopment to

LAKE page 2

HIV page 2

Lauren Ussery / Daily Texan Staff

A man jogs along a trail on the South Central Waterfront of Lady Bird Lake. The area could possibly undergo major renovations to clean the water and increase public accessibility to the waterfront and green spaces.

Waterfront area. Associate architecture professor Dean Almy said the University plan tries to avoid the rail and its right-of-way as a social separating force. “This is something that the Dallas DART is strug-

UNIVERSITY

gling with right now.” Almy said. “How do we turn [the area] into a social place?” Holt said, since the 1800s, area development has been stunted by its location in a flood plain, and, when the Longhorn Dam was

finished in 1960, it removed the area from the floodplain and, for the first time, allowed for redevelopment. “For the first time, [the dam] stabilized the area which meant that, after 1960, things like the Statesman [building]

@kevsharifi

Although a Sept. 11, 1984, Daily Texan article, entitled “AIDS cloned; vaccine possible,” assured readers that a vaccine for the human immunodeficiency virus might have been on the horizon, a successful vaccine has yet to be developed. In 1984, geneticists at biotechnology company Chiron Corp. of Emeryville, Calif., claimed “their successful cloning [of HIV] could lead to a sensitive diagnostic test for AIDS within weeks and an experimental vaccine against the deadly disease within months.” Nearly 30 years later, HIV infects more than 1.1 millions Americans, 15.8 percent of whom are unaware of their infections, while Africa suffers the throes of a debilitating AIDS epidemic. HIV acts by invading the body’s T-helper cells, which exist for the purpose of signaling the activation of the body’s immune response whenever they detect pathogens. The virus then integrates its genetic code — translated from RNA to DNA — into the host cell’s DNA, allowing new viral RNA to be expressed as

@TheAlyssaM

A study conducted by the School of Architecture includes a design that, if implemented, would clean water that flows into Lady Bird Lake, connect area neighborhoods and increase public access to a historically underdeveloped waterfront. The South Central Waterfront spans 97 acres between South First Street and Blunn Creek, with Lady Bird Lake to the north and East Riverside Drive and East Bouldin Creek to the south. According to Alan Holt, principal planner of the City’s urban design division, two studies conducted over the past two years created scenarios which incorporate elements the city determined are important to the public — affordable housing, high standards of water quality, public access to the waterfront and green spaces and parks. One of the studies was conducted by the University’s Texas Futures Lab, which consists of architecture and urban design graduate students. Holt said the University study incorporates the Project Connect urban rail plans. Four of the six potential rail lines go through the South Central

By Kevin Sharifi

CITY

UTeach to expand to Icy weather drains city safety supplies five other universities By Alyssa Mahoney @TheAlyssaM

By Adam Hamze @adamhamz

Five more universities will implement the UTeach program starting in fall 2014 bringing the total number of universities to 40. Founded at UT in 1997, UTeach is a program aimed at increasing the number of science, technology, engineering and math — commonly known as STEM — teachers in the country. It offers students a path to teacher certification without requiring them to change majors or add any time to their four-year degree plans. The program has received national attention, including a shoutout from President Barack Obama in 2010. The National Math and Science Initiative, which administers the program, will be implementing it at the following

universities: University of Alabama at Birmingham; University of Maryland, College Park; Oklahoma State University; Florida International University; and Drexel University. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute issued a $22.5 million grant in March to fund the expansion. Another five universities will be added by fall 2015. Michael Marder, associate dean of the College of Natural Sciences and executive director of the UTeach Science Program, said the program is an efficient way for future STEM teachers to grow. “The whole country has a shortage of math and science teachers,” Marder said. “UTeach was very promising here and received interest from other universities.”

UTEACH page 2

Buried in the heart of the city, surrounded by warehouses, dead-end streets and U.S. Route 183, lies a collection of materials that, together, make up Austin’s emergency preparedness plan. The city has drawn extensively on its stockpiled safety materials in the last few weeks, as icy roads and freezing weather resulted in closures for UT, AISD and other public services. City workers use the carbon-based mineral dolomite on streets and roads during “major ice events” affecting the entire city, according to Gerald Nation, Districts Maintenance division manager in the Public Works Department’s Street and Bridge Operation. Nation said Austin decided to use dolomite exclusively instead of another material, such as salt, out of environmental concerns. “The salt can have an

environmental impact on the vegetation, so we just use the dolomite,” Nation said. Austin city spokeswoman Alicia Dean said the city has 4,000 to 5,000 cubic yards of dolomite at any given time during the winter, resulting in a total cost of anywhere from $64,000 to $80,000. Nation said that because the city stores enough dolomite to handle two days of icy weather, it has had to replenish its stock since the last ice event on Jan. 28, but this cost hasn’t exceeded the amount allowed by the city’s normal operating budget. Dean said city workers used about 1,200 cubic yards of dolomite Jan. 28. “We’re actually still within our budgeted range right now,” Dean said. “We haven’t really gone over our budget, in terms of cost of dolomite.” Marissa Morrison, economics and German senior, said she thinks the salt and sand mixture used in her

Lauren Ussery / Daily Texan Staff

Stockpiles of the mineral dolomite, which is used on roads during ice storms to prevent accidents, were recently replenished because of the inclement weather.

hometown of Sartell, Minn., is safer than the material used in Austin. Morrison said she thinks Austin’s cold weather emergency preparedness does not adequately ensure the safety of motorists and pedestrians. “I think [in Minnesota] they do a better job of dispersing [the road mixture] consistently,” Morrison said. “After the ice is gone, the sand is still there. I’ve seen a

NEWS

OPINION

SPORTS

LIFE&ARTS

ONLINE

Wendy Davis said she supports medical marijuana. PAGE 3

McCombs dean: Shared Services benefits UT. PAGE 4

In Texas’ home opener, UTSA shocks the Horns. PAGE 6

How to avoid Valentine’s Day in Austin. PAGE 8

African international students flock to Texas. PAGE 3

Valentine’s Day vendors overlook LGBTQ buyers. PAGE 4

Women’s basketball beats young Kansas State team. PAGE 6

Praying mantises make human dating look tame. PAGE 8

Check out The Daily Texan’s suggestions for pairing Girl Scout Cookies with craft beer. dailytexanonline.com

lot of people fall, especially on bikes.” Government and Plan II senior Kristin Meeks said she drove on icy roads to and from the Bee Cave area for her job during one of January’s ice incidents. Meeks said although main roads and thoroughfares were treated for icy conditions, neighborhood roads

WEATHER page 3 REASON TO PARTY

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