| U of M Alumni Association | U of M Twin Cities |
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9/8/2003
When the University's Regis Center for Art opened in late spring, it completed the West Bank Arts Quarter (WBAQ). The academic and administrative vision for the arts quarter was to create a space for collaboration across visual and performing arts. According to Nikki Schultz, a theater arts senior, it's working. "Art is the exchange of ideas on an ongoing basis," she says. "It's going to be an artistic free-for-all, I hope." That free-for-all actually started two years ago in the Arts Quarter Collective, which grew out of graduate student efforts to press for funding for the art building. "They wanted to create and sustain artistic relationships that last longer than your formal education," explains Schultz, who is organizing the collective's Fall Festival, one of the many events scheduled for the West Bank Arts Quarter grand opening October 10 through 13. The festival, set for the evening of Friday, October 10, will include iron-pour performance art, a composition for dance and bassoon, improvisational jazz music and dance, and "Genesis/Exodus," an installation and performance piece constructed entirely of post-consumer waste, mostly plastic packaging that graduate sculptor David Hamlow has been saving over the past 10 years for just such an opportunity. The WBAQ, located in the southeast corner of the U's West Bank, includes the Center for Art, Rarig Center (theater), Ferguson Hall (music), Barbara Barker Center for Dance, and the Ted Mann Concert Hall. An anticipated 160,000 audience members will enjoy more than 250 events there this school year. West Bank Arts Quarter Opening Events • Arts Quarter Collective Fall Festival, multidisciplinary performances and exhibits by undergrad and graduate students, throughout the arts quarter. October 10, 4:30-7:30 p.m. • Opening Reception for Art Moves: Department of Art Faculty Exhibition, in the new Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Art Building, 405 21st Ave. S., Minneapolis. October 11, 8 p.m. • Public Open House, including performances, tours, and kid-friendly activities, throughout the arts quarter. October 12, noon-3 p.m. For more information on opening events, visit www.cla.umn.edu/wbaq. The Passing of Three Stars • Dr. Robert Good (M.D. '47), who performed the world's first successful bone marrow transplant at the University Hospital in 1968, died June 13. He was 81. "Robert Good was a friend and an inspiration to me and to literally thousands of physicians and scientists who are trying to save children from complex disease," says Dr. John Curran, pediatrician and vice dean of the University of South Florida College of Medicine. "He taught us to look further than we could see at the time, to reach for new horizons of ideas we hadn't yet imagined." Good went on to help found marrow donor registries and programs and to become one of the world's most prolific authors of scholarly medical research. • Retired University astronomy professor Karlis Kaufmanis, whose "Star of Bethlehem" lecture was a holiday favorite in the Twin Cities and for alumni groups around the United States, died June 20. He was 93. Kaufmanis also taught introductory astronomy to more than 26,000 U of M students and authored several astronomy texts. "He routinely received applause from the students after his lectures," says University astronomy professor Roberta Humphreys. "His lectures were almost like a polished theatrical performance." • Herb Brooks (B.A. '62) died August 11 in a single-car accident near Forest Lake, Minnesota. Brooks coached the Gopher men's hockey team to three NCAA titles (1974, 1976, 1979). He is known nationwide for taking a team of collegians and other amateurs, including 10 Gopher players, to the pinnacle of sports: the 1980 Olympic gold medal. That upset has since been called the "Miracle on Ice" and ranks as one of this country's most electric sports moments. "He made an impact like no one else," said Glen Sonmor, a former coach of the North Stars and Gophers. "He was a person of conviction and character who wasn't afraid to take an unpopular stand and stick up for what he believed in. He was one of a kind." Help for the Heart Last December, University freshman Megan Ivers lay near death as a viral inflammation attacked her heart. Instead of readying her for transplant, University doctors, in one of the first procedures of its kind, used a "ventricle assist device" to do the work of her heart's main chamber, allowing the heart to heal itself. For almost three months, Ivers wore the two-and-a-half-pound device, the bulk of it hanging outside her chest. When it was turned off in March, her heart resumed normal function. "I think she should have a full, normal life expectancy with no restrictions," University cardiologist Andrew Boyle said in a New York Times story June 10. Overheard on Campus "Diversity challenges our stereotypes and, in doing so, helps us grow individually and collectively. It strengthens our community—on campus and beyond—by teaching us to appreciate each person's contributions to our academic community and society at large. . . . Diversity is critical to making our system of higher education in the United States the strongest—and most sought after—in the world." —University President Bob Bruininks on the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that race can be used as a factor by universities making admissions decisions "Some of the central values of the country and the central value of sports are being lost in the push for the buck. . . . The priorities are so far out of whack that we don't even know where 'whack' is anymore." —Joe Nathan, senior fellow and director of the University's Center of School Change, on corporate concerns gaining too much influence in the NCAA "Our reaction was one of shock and horror. That was going to be my life for the next year: downloading music and movies." —Jeremy Adkins, incoming freshman at the University, on the Recording Industry Association of America's plans to crack down on downloading music from the Internet "A teenager's biorhythms make them basically incapable of falling asleep before 10 p.m. And biologically, they're in sleep mode until about 8 a.m." —University of Minnesota researcher Kyla Wahlstrom on evidence supporting later start times for high schools "It all comes back to what you think the moral status of the embryo is. If you think it is something with the moral status that you or I have, then [there is] a big problem." —Jeffrey Kahn, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics on the announcement that scientists in Chicago had created mixed gender embryos for research purposes "My husband usually dreads it. . . . The first thing I do is start interrogating the chef or the waiters." —Anne Kapuscinksi, professor of fisheries, wildlife, and conservation biology at the U, on her quest to learn whether seafood she is purchasing is from environmentally unfriendly fish farms or overfished areas "Most therapists are still behind the times. Like generals, they are still fighting the last war—the one that freed individuals to leave unhappy marriages. . . . But that war has been won. Most of us walk away from our marital commitment more easily than from any other." —Professor William Doherty, director of the University's marriage and family therapy program, on marriages harmed by therapy Faculty Research Hold the Vegetables Students who are allowed to pick and choose what to have for school lunch, or who can purchase extra snacks outside the lunch line, eat nearly a full serving less of fruits and vegetables than students without an à la carte option, a University of Minnesota study has found. In surveying almost 600 students at 16 Twin Cities middle schools, researchers found that in schools with the à la carte options, students reported eating 3.4 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, while students at the other schools reported 4.2 servings. (Federal guidelines recommend at least five servings.) The study also concluded that students' average intake of fruit servings declined by 11 percent for each snack vending machine in their school. Researchers also found that schools can improve the sales of more nutritious items by offering discounts on healthful foods or by eliminating the "super size" snack items. The findings were part of a four-year federal study released in June and published in the July issue of the American Journal of Public Health (subscription required). An Aspirin a Day Just a few months after finding a link between aspirin use and lowered risk of colon cancer, University of Minnesota cancer researchers think they have found that aspirin also helps prevent adult leukemia. By combing through records of more than 28,000 post-menopausal women participating in the Iowa Women's Health Study, researchers found that women who developed leukemia took aspirin significantly less often than women who did not develop leukemia. Aspirin appeared to lower the risk by more than 50 percent, while similar nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, had a significantly less potent effect. Earlier studies had found a link between all NSAIDs and lessened leukemia risk, but this was the first to look at aspirin separately. Adult leukemia accounts for nearly 5 percent of all newly diagnosed cancers in the United States. Currently, little is known about what causes leukemia in adults or possible prevention strategies. The findings were published in the June 13 edition of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention (subscription required), a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Stay Out of the Sun A permanent increase in an enzyme activated by sunlight plays a pivotal role in the development of some skin cancers, according to University of Minnesota research. Many human cancers show elevated activity in some form of JNK enzyme. The JNK2 enzyme, activated by sunlight, increases in the skin after just a few minutes in the sun. Unless exposure is for more than a few minutes, the level drops again fairly quickly. With excessive exposure, however, a permanent increase in JNK2 results. (No studies have yet been done on how sunscreen or sunblock affects JNK2 activation.) Zigang Dong, director of the University's Hormel Institute in Austin, Minnesota, worked with mice to evaluate JNK enzymes and the development of tumors. They found that mice lacking JNK2 enzymes had much lower rates of induced skin cancer and in the biochemical activity associated with tumor growth than either control mice and those lacking other enzymes. Dong says the enzyme should be further studied with an eye toward prevention and treatment of skin cancer. The findings were presented July 13 at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Washington, D.C. | |||||||||||||||
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