Wednesday, December 2, 1998
Community Briefs
Arrested students
let off with infraction
Several of the students involved in the Days of Defiance protest
last May had their court date put off by a week on Tuesday.
The majority of the 88 students involved in the protests were
let out of court with only an infraction for taking over Royce
Hall.
"It’s the equivalent of running a red light," said Dawn Frafer,
chief of staff for the Academic Affairs Commission. "They said if
we stay out of trouble for the next three months, it will stay off
of our records."
Last year, in a protest of the sharp decline in the number of
underrepresented minorities admitted to UCLA, over 300 students
rallied and took over Royce Hall in May. LAPD officers in full riot
gear showed up later that night and arrested 88 of the remaining
students.
Protesters given an infraction served no jail time and paid no
fees. Convicted protesters with a previous record or infraction
will be dealt with separately by the city attorney.
Children need specific drugs
When it comes to brain disorders, the standard method used to
find a drug for children is upside down, said Dr. Donna Ferriero,
chief of pediatric neurology at Lucile Packard Children’s Health
Services at UCSF. New drug therapies typically are designed for
adults and tested on them. Studies to find out if the drug can be
used for children usually are limited to finding the right,
scaled-down, child-size dose.
It is time that children got their own treatments, Ferriero
writes in an editorial in the December 1998 issue of Current
Opinion in Pediatrics. She said that scientists now have enough
information about young children’s developing brains to start
looking for appropriate therapies specifically targeted at
childhood neurological disorders.
Her editorial introduces five scientific articles on different
brain disorders, bound together by new knowledge about how they
cause brain injury. An international conference slated for Dec. 8
to 9 in Washington, D.C. will focus on interventions that might
work against one of the most common causes of brain damage,
perinatal asphyxia, where a newborn is accidentally deprived of
oxygen and blood flow during birth.
The scientists are spurred partly by the history of adult drugs
used on children – some are ineffective, some have unexpected
results, some even cause the opposite effect that they have in
adults. But Ferriero says the most compelling reason for
child-specific treatment is the growing body of evidence that a
young child’s nervous system is not a miniature version of an
adult’s.
From before birth throughout the first decade of life, the brain
continues to develop and change, as some neurons grow and make
connections and others are pared away. When children’s brains are
damaged by a disease or an accident, the effect can be widespread,
because the injury can alter a whole stage of brain
development.
New technique cleans contamination faster
A new environmental technology developed by Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory is cleaning a heavily contaminated industrial
site in Visalia, Calif., in a few years, not centuries, as would be
required using conventional methods.
This new technique, called "dynamic underground stripping,"
heats soil and groundwater to both remove underground contaminants
and destroy them in place – in a record amount of time.
This new technology was developed with funding from the U.S.
Department of Energy.
"We are exceedingly pleased with the dramatically successful
clean-up results that have been achieved in Visalia with this new
technology," U.S. secretary of energy Bill Richardson said
Tuesday.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.
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