Thursday October 13, 2011 year: 132 No. 18 the student voice of
The Ohio State University
www.thelantern.com
thelantern Blackberry outages hit campus
sports
Andi Hendrickson Lantern reporter hendrickson.1085@osu.edu
Hole finds home
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While most BlackBerry users thought the service outages in Europe would never reach the United States, some Ohio State students are already experiencing problems related to the outage. The outages, which started in the Middle East on Monday, have now spread to the U.S. and Canada. According to Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s manufacturer, there are more than 70 million BlackBerry users worldwide. RIM released a statement Wednesday morning saying, “The messaging and browsing delays that some of you are still experiencing were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested.” David Yach, chief technology officer of software
for RIM, said in a conference call that RIM is working to restore service. He also said not all users are affected. “We have global teams working around the clock on this,” Yach said. “It is our top priority to return BlackBerry service to our customers.” Kerianne Ruzicka, a second-year in marketing, said she has started experiencing problems related to the outage. “Today, BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) has completely stopped working,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do, I can’t send or receive messages through BBM whatsoever.” Ruzicka said she is already waiting for her new phone, an Apple iPhone, because her experience with BlackBerry has been so negative. “I don’t think I’ll ever get a BlackBerry ever again. I am getting an upgrade a year early because this phone is so awful,” Ruzicka said. Sam Core, a fourth-year in economics, said he has not experienced any problems related to the outage, but he is also unhappy with his current BlackBerry.
Courtesy of RIM
“I plan on getting an Android phone or the iPhone 5 when it comes out. I’m pretty much done with BlackBerry,” Core said. “They don’t have the applications that the Android marketplace does or
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An OSU women’s volleyball statistical leader, Mari Hole traveled more than 7,000 miles to be where she is today.
arts&life
Cut ‘Footloose’
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A remake of the popular ‘80s film “Footloose,” starring Julianne Hough, is scheduled to hit theaters Friday.
campus
OSU, ESPN suit moves ahead
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Courtesy of MCT
A small aircraft sprays pesticide over a Minnesota cornfield. A new pesticide, developed by researchers at OSU, could potentially save the agricultural business billions of dollars annually.
New pesticide could save billions of dollars Colleen Carey Lantern reporter carey.259@osu.edu A new pesticide could potentially save the agricultural business billions of dollars annually by killing crop-eating pests, said David Denlinger, the lead researcher in the study at Ohio State. Denlinger, a professor of entomology and evolution, ecology and organismal biology at OSU, explained that insects in the midwest only live during the warmer months when there is food for them to eat. In the colder months, crop-eating pests go into a period of dormancy, much like bears or squirrels. This hibernation state is called diapause in insects. “Many insects will spend nine or 10 months of the year in this dormant state,” Denlinger said. Denlinger and his team of researchers, funded
by a U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S.-Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund research grants, have identified the hormone that breaks the insects out of this hibernation. In doing so, they can essentially control the insects’ hibernation, Denlinger said. Through some modifications of the hormone, Denlinger is able to break diapause when he wants and also make diapause last longer. This means that, if injected with this chemical, an insect could wake up in the middle of winter and freeze to death. Or it could sleep through the summer feast and wake up in the fall to harvested fields and starve to death, according to Denlinger. “It would be a form of ecological suicide, if you will,” Denlinger said. The corn earworm was a main target in this research, which is the insect that eats the top of the corn of the cob before a consumer gets a chance to.
“The types of insects that we worked on are major agricultural pests,” Denlinger said. “Currently, heavy insecticide use is directed against them.” Richard McGinnis, a farmer from southwest Morrow county, has about 1,600 acres of land on which he grows corn and soybeans. He is skeptical of using a product for which effects haven’t been thoroughly tested but is interested if it’s profitable. “You just have to think, ‘Is it going to make me more money than it’s costing me?’,” McGinnis said. Though some may be against pesticides in favor of organic produce, McGinnis recognizes that it isn’t realistic for the world. “What the general public doesn’t understand is that if everybody farmed organically, half the world would starve,” McGinnis said. “You just can’t produce the volume (needed) without using the
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OSU dining cooks up allergy-safe food Alli Murphy Lantern reporter murphy.840@osu.edu When eating at various campus dining locations, Ohio State has made an effort to offer options that meet all allergy concerns. Mark Newton, the executive chef at OSU, said he received positive feedback from parents of students with food allergies. “We made it easy, and from what I’m hearing from parents is we’re known as the best university for (food) allergens,” Newton said. “(Parents said) ‘You guys are the only ones that take it to heart and try to do a good job.’” Newton was striving to have the top food allergy program “because we’re OSU and we should have the best,” he said. When incoming freshmen set up their orientation date, they are sent a form where they can list any food allergies. Newton gets the list of the allergens and contacts the family, if they have not already contacted him. “A lot of these families are so proactive, they reach out to me,” Newton said. These students can tell Newton what they typically eat and he will try to incorporate that into their meal plan. He will also tell students what their food options are at dining halls near their classes and dorms, he said.
Sarah Stemen / Oller reporter
Chuck Favors, line cook at Kennedy Commons, serves one of the new gluten-free options offered at Kennedy Commons to Vanessa Burrowes, a 4th-year in biology. Recently, Dining Services has worked on improving the food availability for gluten-free students, Newton said. “Our policies have not changed, we’ve just been able to spend more time focusing on these (gluten-
free) products recently,” said Karri Benishek, marketing manager of University Residences and Dining Services.
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