0 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 3A

* The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 3A

NEWS BRIEFS
LANSING, Mich.
Schuete outraises
Leyton in Michigan
Attorney Gen. race
Republican Bill Schuette has
raised nearly three times as much
money as Democrat David Ley-
ton in the campaign for Michigan
attorney general.
Finance reports show Schuette
raised more than $1.1 million,
including more than $61,000 from
the Michigan Republican Party
and $34,000 each from political
action committees related to the
Michigan Chamber of Commerce
and Grand Rapids-based retailer
Meijer Inc.
The former Court of Appeals
judge spent more than $714,000
and has about $426,000 on hand.
Leyton raised nearly $403,000,
including $17,000 from the Michi-
gan Education Association's politi-
cal action committee. The Genesee
County prosecutor has spent more
than $143,000 and has more than
$259,000 on hand.
WASHINGTON
European terror
plot uncovered, U.S.
fires drone-missiles
Some missile strikes in a recent
surge of attacks by unmanned U.S.
drones in Pakistan were aimed at
disrupting suspected terrorist plots
aimed at Europe, a Western coun-
terterrorism official said.
The official said the targeted
strikes were aimed at al-Qaida and
other militant groups arrayed in
Pakistan's tribal region near the
Afghanistan border. The official
spoke on condition of anonymity
because the details of the terror
plot remain sensitive.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris was
briefly evacuated yesterday, the
second time in the past week
because of an unspecified threat.
The Obama administration has
intensified the use of drone-fired
missiles in Pakistan's border area
but this month there have been at
least 21 attacks, more than double
the highest number fired in any
other single month.
DETROIT
City approves union
contract, wage cut
The Detroit City Council has
approved Mayor Dave Bing's plan to
impose a contract on the city's larg-
est union.
The Detroit News and Detroit
Free Press report the council's
5-3 vote yesterday allows Bing to
impose a 10 percent wage cut on
the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees.
AFSCME represents 3,250 of the
city's 13,000 employees.
The union's lead negotiator Cath-
erine Phillips tells the Free Press
she plans to sue the city to overturn
the decision.
Most of the city's bargain-
ing units have agreed to the cuts
achieved through 26 furlough days.
The contentious talks between

the city and AFSCME have lasted
about a year. An independent fact-
finder released a report that largely
sided with the city.
BOGOTA, Colombia
No survivors in
Colombia landslide
Colombian rescue officials
said yesterday it will take at
least a week to unearth about
30 people who were buried by a
landslide as many changed from
one bus to another on a mountain
road blocked by a previous slide.
"There are no survivors, that's
for sure," the regional disaster
relief chief, John Freddy Rendon,
told The Associated Press.
President Juan Manuel San-
tos visited the scene Tuesday
between the towns of Giraldo
and Canasgordas in Antioquia
state northwest of Bogota.
"The situation is very diffi-
cult," he told reporters as rescue
teams with sniffer dogs probed
the tons of earth under which
Rendon said were buried victims
that included children, pregnant
women and the inhabitants of
five houses.
Witnesses described a roar as
first rocks and then earth swept
over the road Monday afternoon.
Amateur video shows the slide
bearing down and scouring away
the houses.
Heavy rains in recent weeks
across Colombia have triggered
flooding that has claimed at least
74 lives.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports.

ARMSTRONG
From Page 1A
speak to the assembly last night to
confirm his resolution to disregard
these types of criticisms levied
against him.
"I think it was important for me
to say what I said to the assembly
this evening, because I think it's
important for them to figure what
my mental state is and what I'm
going forward with," Armstrong
said.
Armstrong had declined to pub-
licly comment on the criticism he
has received from Shirvell since
taking office before last night.
MSA Vice President Jason Ray-
mond also voiced his support for
Armstrong in a statement to the
assembly last night.
"Over the past six months, obvi-
ously, members of this assembly
have been under attack by an indi-
vidual who was here at our first
meeting, Chris in particular, and
I'd just like to thank him and to
thank you for holding your heads
high and maintainingthe integrity
BED BUGS
From Page 1A
have been bugs in more than just
those apartments.
Bed bugs get their name because
they typically reside in box springs
and the baseboard of beds, coming
out to feed on human blood only
in the dark. They don't do much
damage beyond biting their hosts
- allergic reactions are typically
the worstconsequence. But getting
rid of bed bugs can be costly, time-
consuming and become a recurring
problem if not caught early or prop-
erly treated.
Two residents of Corner House
Apartments who were in one of
the treated units, who requested
their names be withheld due to the
stigma associated with having bed
bugs, said the management han-
dled it well, but it has stillibeen aslot
of trouble. The residents said they
have had to put every piece of laun-
dry in the dryer under high heat.
"Both ofour parents had to come
and help. We've had to vacuum and
Lysol all the furniture multiple
times," one of the residents said.
"We have to keep all of our clothes
in plastic tubs right now where the
bugs won't get in."
The four infested apartments
have been fumigated between
two and three times, and will be
inspected again today, Khan said.
After they are cleared, CMB will
replace the bed frames and mat-
tresses in every infected apart-
ment.
The residents said they real-
ized they had bedbugs when one
of them went to University Health
Services with several welts on her
arm.Afteradoctortheresaiditwas
probably bed bugs, the residents
called their landlord and found out
bugs had been found down the hall.
Both Khan and the residents
could only speculate about the
possible sources of the bugs, say-
ing they could have been brought
back on luggage when the residents
moved in or from furniture that
was already in place in the apart-

of this body," Raymond said.
At the assembly's first meeting
of the fall 2010 semester, Shirvell
made a public comment to the
Assembly, calling for Armstrong's
resignation due to his involvement
in Order of Angell, a senior honor
society. The society has been criti-
cized for using Native American
artifacts in its meetings and ritu-
als in the past. In 2007, the group
- formerly known as Michiguama
- changed its name and beganpub-
lishing a list of its members to the
public in an effort to be more trans-
parent.
"No MSA president and no
assembly in history has had to deal
with the kind of criticism we've
had to deal with over the past six
months," Raymond said.
Armstrong told the assembly
that criticism would not stop him
from continuing to work to improve
campus life.
"I will continue to fight like hell
for the students of this university
and to better this campus," Arm-
strong told the assembly. "I believe
in this assembly, and I believe in
this government."
ments.
Bed bugs have recently been in
the news after shops, theaters and
health clubs across New York City
were shut down after identifying
insect infestations. Detroit was
ranked as the third most bed bug-
infested city in America, according
to an August report by pest control
company Terminix.
The nationwide infestation
sparked the BedBug University's
North American Summit in Chi-
cago, Ill. last week, which dis-
cussed possible action plans for the
problem, according to Pest Control
Technology, one of the pest control
industry's primary news resource
centers.
PCT reported that the summit
discussed the spread of bed bugs
from bedrooms to office buildings
and in retail establishments.
Despite this recent surge, Uni-
versity Housing spokesman Peter
Logan said he isn't concerned about
a bed bug outbreak in the residence
halls because workers have been
keeping them clean.
"Over the past five years (Uni-
versity Housing) has had all of two
confirmed cases of bed bugs in our
residence halls. That's all," Logan
said. "By virtue of how we maintain
our facilities, we don't envision a
widespread outbreak of bed bugs."
Logan said in each case, the bugs
didn'tcspread to other rooms, as bed
bugs are infamous for doing. If bed
bugs were to become a problem in
residential housing, Logan said a
student evacuation would be very
unlikely.
"We'd confirm it was bed bugs,
we'd advise the residents how to
properly wash bed linens and cloth-
ing, then we'd monitor the situa-
tion," Logan said, adding, "there
wouldn't be a widespread outbreak."
For now, the Corner House
Apartments residents said they
hope their apartment will be
declared bug-free soon, and have
even started joking about the
ordeal.
"Now when we go to bed we say,
'Don't letthe bed bugs bite!"' one of
the residents said.

RANKINGS
From Page 1A
when only 79 percent of the Univer-
sity's Ph.D. programs ranked in the
top 25 percent nationwide.
Due to the variance of the new
range system used by the NRC,
today's figures found that anywhere
from an astounding 95 percent to a
dismal 20 percent of the Univer-
sity's Ph.D. programs ranked in the
top 25 percent nationally.
In an exclusive interview with
The Michigan Daily before the
rankings became publicly avail-
able, Rackham Dean Janet Weiss
discounted the emphasis often
placed on program rankings.
"It is what it is," Weiss said of the
NRC's rankings of University Ph.D.
programs. "It's a product of a par-
ticular methodological approach.
The methodological approach has
its advantages and the method-
ological approach has its disadvan-
tages."
"I think the message the NRC is
intending to convey and certainly
the message that I come away with
is that this doesn'ttell us very much
about how our programs rank in a
sense of any very close analysis
of how we compare to our peer
institutions," Weiss later added.
"It really is most valuable for tell-
ing us something about how these
individual data elements compare
to other institutions."
For instance, Weiss said Uni-
versity officials could examine the
raw data for criteria like the time to
degree completion among peer pro-
grams to determine whether the
University's program was on par
with its colleagues across the coun-
try. Then, officials could determine
what action, if any, needs to be
taken to improve in the areas that
the University values most.
"I think what most of what we
glean from (the survey and rank-
ings), in very broad strokes you
can see which of our programs are
very strongnationally and which of
them are more toward the middle,"
Weiss said. "We don't have any pro-
grams, fortunately, down toward
the bottom of the distribution."
And while it's true that the Uni-
versity is extremely competitive on
virtually all fronts, there are some

programs that could have signifi-
cant room for improvement.
Astronomy and astrophysics,
was ranked between the 13th and
32nd best in the country, though
only 33 programs exist nationally.
The University's interdisciplinary
program in cell and developmen-
tal biology also received less than
ideal marks, being placed between
the 74th percentile and the 14th
percentile nationally.
Other programs, like the Uni-
versity's Ph.D. program in public
policy can't easily be classified as
doing well or poorly, being placed
between the 9th percentile and the
89th percentile nationally.
In the interview last week,
Weiss remarked that she believed
the University's Ph.D. program
in statistics had made clear
improvements, while its Ph.D.
programs in anthropology and
classical studies had seemed to
drop in the rankings. But in an
e-mail interview this morning,
Weiss said she's not interested in
the rankings because of limita-
tions surrounding the data.
She pointed out in the inter-
view last week that the rankings
released by the NRC today could
arguably already be out of date
since the data used to generate
the rankings was drawn from the
2005-2006 academic year. Since
that time, many schools have seen
significant turnover in faculty -
which could alter both the raw data
collected for the rankings and the
perception of how important each
criteria is to faculty members in a
particular field.
"If you did this over again today,
you would get different results
because a lot of this is based on the
individual faculty members," Weiss
explained. "The thing that is going.
to be very useful for us is not the
rankings ... it's the data."
While the methodology consists
of complex statistical analysis and
different weighting systems that
produce separate ranges of rank-
ings for each Ph.D. program at each
school, the analysis can be boiled
down to two different general pro-
cesses.
The first, which generates what
the NRC calls its S statistic, uses a'
survey of all faculty members at all
universities within a specific Ph.D.

field to measure how important
the faculty believe each of the 20
criteria evaluated is to the overall
success of a Ph.D. program in that
field.
Those weights are then used to
generate 500 different rankings
with random variation for each
program. The NRC then elimi-
nates the top 5 percent and bottom
5 percent of the resulting range of
rankings for each school's program
in that field to determine the indi-
vidual program's ranking.
By eliminating the top 5 percent
and bottom 5 percent, the NRC
was able to eliminate outliers in
the range of possible ranges for
each program while still ensuring
a 90-percent confidence in the fig-
ures released, Weiss explained.
However, to eliminate potential
bias in what faculty members say
they value against what they actu-
ally value in the quality of Ph.D.
programs, the NRC also used a sec-
ond method of evaluation to gener-
ate an alternative set of rankings.
In this process, which generated
what the NRC called its Rrankings,
faculty across the country ranked
the quality of peer programs using
a one to six scale. The data was
then analyzed through a regression
analysis to determine how strong-
ly related each of the 20 criteria
evaluated were to the perception of
quality in the eyes of fellow faculty
members.
Those correlations determined
the weight awarded to each vari-
able and the results were combined
so that half of the responses were
included randomly to generate 500
results for each program. The NRC
again eliminated the top 5 percent
and bottom5 percent of the results
to generate a range of potential
rankings for each university's pro-
grams inthe field with a 90-percent
confidence rating.
NRC officials had originally pro-
posed eliminating the top 25 per-
cent and bottom 25 percent of the
results from both the R and S rank-
ings to generate a smaller range for
each program's ranking. However,
doing so could have resulted in
less accurate rankings because the
ranges would have only represent-
ed a 50 percent confidence rating
and ultimately the NRC decided to
broaden the ranges published.

WANT TO WORK IN THIS
OLD-TIMEY BULIDING?
Come to our LAST mass meeting at 420 Maynard Street:
THURSDAY SEPT. 30 @ 7 P.M.


MICROSOFT
From Page 1A
Roger Archbold, education
accounts manager for Microsoft,
said the company's proposal show-
cases "an evolutionary product."
Part of Microsoft's plan, Arch-
bold said, is to create a program
that's geared directly toward
University of Michigan students,
faculty and staff. He added that if
chosen, Microsoft plans to incor-
porate the existing CTools into
their software.
"We want to put (these pro-
grams) in the context of you as a
user," Archbold said.
Tony Franklin, an education
solution strategist for Microsoft,
discussed Windows Live@EDU,
which is a Microsoft program that
consolidates social networking
sites as well as e-mail, university
resources and instant messaging
through one web application.
This program also includes
SkyDrive, which saves documents
onto a web application from the
user's computer. This component
would replace MFile, the Univer-
sity's current integrated file stor-
age system. .
Because the University is such
a large institution, the winning
company stands to gain consider-
able prestige from the account. In
addition, if Google is successful,
the corporation would be able to
claim a portion of Microsoft's cur-
rent 97-percent market penetration
in the IT industry.
"We're Michigan - that's a big
account ... " Johnson said. "And
Google would like to go after that."
Scott Thompson, an education
solution strategist for Microsoft,
said the corporation is the best
choice for the University because of
its commitment to user privacy and
its strong customer service. He also

said the company's software would
be applicable to business software
for students after they graduate.
"We have integration across
technologies that is unmatched in
the industry," Thompson said.
The University Information
Technology Council will ulti-
mately decide which IT system
the University will use. In addi-
tion to the council, there is also an
IT Executive Committee, which
is composed of the University's
Vice President for Research Ste-
phen Forrest, University Provost
Philip Hanlon, Ora Pescovitz, the
University's executive vice presi-
dent for medical affairs, and Tim
Slottow, the University's executive
vice president and chief financial
officer.
In order to also have student
input in the decision, the Univer-
sity will send out a campus-wide
survey through CTools, which will
be made available after both pre-
sentations.
Students who attended the pre-
sentation said the Microsoft rep-
resentatives didn't persuade them.
Many students said they think
Google is still at the forefront of
student programs for information
technology.
LSA sophomore Omar Abdul-
jaber said he doesn't think the sys-
tem Microsoft presented is that
much different from the existing
Universitysoftware.
"I thought we were going to add
a unified system and I don't think
it's going to be different from what
we already have," Abduljaber said.
"Students will go with Google any-
ways, without seeingthe presenta-
tions."
Engineeringfreshman Kyle Mat-
timore also said Google is the popu-
larchoicefor Universitystudents.
"Google has so much positive
hype among students," Mattimore
said.

Martin Seligman
Director, Positive Psychology Center
Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology
University of Pennsylvania

'

Positive Psychology &
Positive Interventions

Thursday, October 7, 2010, 4:00 PM
Rackham Auditorium (ground floor)
Also: Symposium on the Tanner Lecture
Ruut Veenhoven, Erasmus University, Rotterdam
Valerie Tiberius, University ofMinnesota
Kennon Sheldon, University of Missouri
Friday, October 8,2010,9:00 AM - 1: 0 PM
Rackham Amnphitheatre (fourth floor) Lunch follow
All events open to the public without charge (wwwlsa.umich.edu/philosophy)