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First Generation to College Reception
When Only Banana Bread Will Do
IN THIS ISSUE
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A recipe that may change your morning routine » PAGE 6
The UCSF Student Newspaper
Thursday, January 9, 2014
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Volume 58, Number 14
NEWS
The Medical Response to the Asiana Flight 214 Plane Crash at SFO Panel presentation on Saturday, January 11 at Cole Hall
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By Alexandra Greer Science Editor
Photo courtesy of NTSB Asiana Flight 214 crashed on final approach to San Francisco International Airport on July 6, 2013. Of the 307 people aboard, two passengers died at the crash scene, a third died in a hospital several days later, 181 others were injured, 12 of them critically.
beginning in the field with Emergency Medical Services (EMS), then to the San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) Emergenc y D ep ar t ment, and f ina lly to the operating room (OR) and intensive care unit (ICU) through to discharge. Dr. John Brown, Associate Clinical Pro-
fessor of Emergency Medicine at SFGH and Medical Director of the San Francisco Emergency Medical Services Agency since 1996, will moderate a panel of presenters, as the audience follows patients through their health care journey immediately following the crash.
ASIANA FLIGHT 214 » PAGE 5
NEWS
A Filipino Dental Student Coalition Is Born By Krizia Garcia Contributing Writer
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new student organization has formed that will focus on the dental needs of the Bay Area Filipino community. The Filipino Dental Student Coalition (FDSC) held its inaugural meeting on November 14, 2013. School of Dentistry Dean John Featherstone welcomed the new registered club (RCO) to campus. More than 30 Filipino students attend the UCSF School of Dentistry, including four incoming students this year. The increasing number of Filipino students at the school prompted dental faculty member Dr. Antonio Ragadio to encourage students to create an organization that will focus on “social, altruistic and other service efforts to benefit the Filipino community.” The new organization plans to work alongside others that serve the under-represented and under-served in The City. The Bay
FILIPINO DENTAL » PAGE 2
Radical Proposal Regarding Postdoc Pay Is doubling salaries the solution to shrinking the number of postdoc positions?
By Theresa Poulos Staff Writer ith the coming of a new year, it is natural to hope for the best, fear the worst and work on resolutions for improvement. While we wish for peace, health and prosperity, it behooves our health care system to be ready for disaster, in whatever form it may take. UCSF’s Emergency Medicine Interest Group is holding a daylong UCSF NorCal Emergency Medicine Symposium this Saturday, January 11, on the topic of Urban Disaster Medicine, with attendees and presenters hailing from across the state. The keynote presentation, from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Cole Hall on Parnassus, is free to the entire UCSF community and will feature UCSF faculty and residents who cared for the victims of the Asiana Flight 214 plane crash at SFO last summer. The three-part presentation will cover the three main phases of disaster response,
NEWS
Photo by EJ Abasolo/D3 Filipino Dental Student Coalition 2013-2014 Officers: Left to right: Alexa Navasero (D3), Krizia Garcia (D3), Kay Rodriguez (D1), EJ Abasolo (D3), Ramon Gutierrez (D3), Randy Rosales (D2), Edward Viloria (D1) and Jade Castro (D3).
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r. Gregory Petsko, Chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) committee on “The Postdoctoral Experience,” has proposed a thought-provoking solution to the problem of job scarcity for academic biomedical scientists and also to postdocs’ low pay — dramatically increase postdoc salaries, thereby decreasing the number of postdoctoral positions available. The biomedical sciences have too many postdoctoral researchers competing for too few academic faculty positions. One way to ease this problem is to limit the availability of postdoctoral fellowships from funding organizations; however, this option is cumbersome and requires significant legislation. Instead of legislating change, Petsko suggests we should use basic economics. “Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that we decide we are training twice as many people as we should. How do we shrink the enterprise by a factor of two? There’s an obvious way of doing that: We double the stipend,” said Petsko, in a recent interview with iBiology. While Petsko’s argument is hypothetical, its assumptions are based on some uncomfortable facts: if we increase postdoctoral pay without radically changing how we fund research laboratories, only a fraction of current postdocs in the biomedical sciences can be employed. Unlike the NIH’s recent recommendation by the Biomedical Workforce Working group, which recommends an increase in minimum postdoctoral pay from just over $39,000 to $42,000, Petsko’s proposal would radically change the face of postdoctoral research. Underlying his plan is a desire to change many students’ primary goal of securing postdoctoral training. “It’s amazing how many postdocs seem to believe that this was an inevitable part of their scientific education,” Petsko said in the iBiology interview. “You become a graduate student, and once you were done, of course, the next step was to
POSTDOC PAY » PAGE 4