4 - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.cam 4 - uesaySeptmbe 25 201 Th Mihiga Daly micigadaiyco Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard SE. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com 1 0100 ' 140 NA R5 I @Facebook Thanks for causing mass hyseteria and scaring half the population to death. #Messagesareprivate forareason #SlightlyFreakingOut -@michdailyoped The manufacturingillusion I 4 TIMOTHY RABB JOSEPH LICHTERMAN and ADRIENNE ROBERTS EDITOR IN CHIEF. EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS ANDREW WEINER MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. FRMTHEDALY Internet opens education Take advantage of free online courses The University, along with 32 other leading colleges around the world, is bringing college-level courses to millions of interested individuals for free. Using Coursera as a plat- form to host nearly 200 interactive massive open online courses, the institution are opening up higher education and making world-class instruction accessible to more than one million students across 196 countries. The University's initiative to participate in this program is commendable, and more universities should follow suit and offer open access to educational resources. Coursera is a social entrepreneurship com- pany founded in April by two computer sci- ence professors at Stanford University hoping to revolutionize the educational landscape through an online network of freely acces- sible college courses. These courses range from thearts and humanities to engineering and the hard sciences. The online accessibil- ity of higher education has become a signifi- cant focal point for institutions and students, as they are accessible to all and serve as a complement to traditional university courses. As a nation that emphasizes higher edu- cation and a globally competitive workforce, the need for affordable and accessible higher educationis more important thanever. Unfor- tunately, college is becoming more expensive, with a growing number of students unable to keep up with rising tuition costs. Now with Coursera and a working Internet connection, anyone can freely take classes from ten of these topuniversities. The program offers not only high-caliber education to the public, but it's also intended to complement the course- work of college students by working with partnering institutions to establish accred- ited certification programs for to incentivize students to complete courses The certification program is one of two key factors that make Coursera unique amongst other similar programs. The second is Cours- era's focus on student interaction with the information through corresponding assign- ments. This underlying pedagogical phi- losophy of retrieving, reconstructing and rewarding what has been taught is thought to foster long-term retention and spur fur- ther learning. In this way, Coursera is able to bridge the current gap between high-qual- ity education and easy access that has only served to frustrate universities to this point. With every increased tuition dollar, more and more students are kept from receiv- ing a higher education. Universities should continue to use resources like Coursera to break down such barriers and make higher education a reality for more people around the world. Both parties are making an economic promise they most likely won't be able to keep. Since the 2012 presidential campaign really started gettiwg going almost a" year ago, we've heard candi- dates from each side of the ticket JAMES make their case BRENNAN to solve our economy's cur- rent woes. Democrats argue for government investment in infra- structure, education and new ener- gy. Republicans, as expected, take the opposite position, hoping to end the country's fiscal and employment problems with sweeping tax cuts and deregulation. However, there is a common thread between these two opposing arguments - manu- facturing jobs. Since pulling ourselves out of the Great Depression while simultane- ously winning the Second World War, America has prided itself on the ,creation ofconsumergoods. But with the advent of globalization, free trade and a new world economy, manufac- turing has fallen off a cliff. In 1978, more than 19 million people in the U.S. were employed in manufactur- ing, specifically. In 2010, that num- ber dropped to 11.7 million. The auto industry has been hit just as hard, as the United States now only produces approximately five percent of the world's automobiles. Candidates have taken full politi- cal advantage of the situation. Man- ufacturing plays an integral role in the campaigns of both President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Romney gave a speech-turned-commercial before last year's State of the Union address inside a factory in Tampa, Florida. Earlier in the summer, the Obama team produced an ad in, which a worker described how Bain Capital shut down his factory under Romney's direction. Manufacturing is a soft spotfor Americans, especially for so many middle-income people who fear being laid off. These people - who work low-skill jobs for a moder- ate income - are the people really depending on the outcome of this election. They are the undecided voters who will ultimately make the difference in who our next president will be; voting for who they believe will "bring back manufacturing jobs." Sadly, both candidates are sell- ing a fake product. Take a look at China, the United States' biggest economic competitor. In terms of labor, China is essentially the opposite of what we as a country have attempted to be over the last 70 years. Chinese labor laws and safety regulations are virtually non-exis- tent. Furthermore, they've slapped foreign products with unreasonable tariffs, so while they take jobs from the United States, they also deter their 1.3 billion person population from buying American goods. Here's the hard truth: the manu- facturing jobs that have left the United States are likely never com- ing back. We would all love to see the abandoned factories that poli- ticians speak in front of once again hum with workers and the produc- tion of goods that are now exclu- sively labeled "Made in China." Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen. The vast majority of goods produced in the world take mini- mal skill to create, and to a busi- ness owner, a worker in China is the same as a worker in America. The difference is that the Chinese worker will cost.pennies on the dol- coming back without change of policy. Barring a Chinese revolution and the immediate overhaulof labor laws and regulations, goods will continue to be far less expensive to produce overseas. Lowering taxes on busi- nesses may help slightly, but our rates are already among the lowest in the world. Tariffs of our own could help to break even with Chinese costs, but starting a trade war with the people lending us money to make our society livable is not exactly an ideal diplomatic situation. If either party would like to offer a real solu- tion to our current economic crisis, they should look elsewhere. The increased necessity for energy-effi- cient products of all shapes and sizes could be the next economic boom - a sector requiring high-paying jobs and some good old American inge- nuity. In reality, clean energy could likely be what the dot com explosion was of the 1990s. That is, if govern- ment and private industries play their cards right. But if America keeps bluffing on this idea of con- sumer manufacturing jobs coming back as our big winner China will be the one to hit the jackpot while we go poor playing the penny slots. - James Brennan can be reached at jmbthree@umich.edu. lar in a less safe (and less expensive) factory. Sure, shipping will go up, but the cost of production will be a minute fraction of what it was. The jobs aren't 4 EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Kaan Avdan, Sharik Bashir, Eli Cahan, Nirbhay Jain, Jesse Klein, Melanie Kruvelis, Patrick Maillet, Harsha Nahata, Timothy Rabb, Adrienne Roberts, Vanessa Rychlinski, Sarah Skaluba, Michael Spaeth, Gus Turner NIRBHAY JAIN |IEPI Unto stories, major impact KEVIN MERSOL-BARG, YONAH LIEBERMAN, LUZ MEZA, SANJAY JOLLY ,EWPOINT Lead by example, President Coleman 4 How do we know what we do about the structure of the cell? Many people take this knowledge for granted, because it's diffi- cult to understand how this was discovered. In doing so, the general public has ignored the great men whose work made these dis- coveries possible. Too often the public -has embraced a monumental discovery such as the structure of the cell, but neglected to embrace the people behind the magic. Their stories deserve to be told. One such magician is Jacob Schaefer, a doctor and professor at the Washington Uni- versity in St. Louis. Schaefer is considered a frontrunner for the Nobel Prize and visited the University this Friday for a Biophysics Seminar series. Schaefer is a champion of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy -I'm sure organic chemistry students just shuddered. NMR, despite its unwieldy nature, is probably the single most powerful tool available to any chemical-based research field, including all forms of chemistry, bio- physics and biochemistry. In fact, the same technology that powers NMR also powers the more familiar Magnetic Resonance Imag- ing.machines used by physicians worldwide to diagnose diseases. NMR gives research- ers unparalleled access into the structure of even the smallest biomolecules. And Schaefer made it even easier to see into the microcosm. His work is indispensable to modern chemis- try and biophysics, akin to developing a magi- cal tool to look into the cell. In 1976, he paired together two tech- niques to revolutionize the way NMR works. Cross-polarization magic angle spinning is essential to many fields of biochemistry. This rare technique can be applied to solids, including native tissue samples. It is used in protein determination and other structural discoveries of key biomolecules. Metabo- lomical studies, which is the analysis of small molecules in order to profile cells and determine disease diagnosis and prognosis and, incidentally, the field of research I am in with the Ramamoorthy group - is also dependent on CP-MAS. By focusing on the sensitivity of low gamma nuclei, which takes much longer to detect, and increas- ing the resolution of the spectra by spinning samples at the magic angle of 54.7° - the angle of the Cube behind the Michigan Union - radical new insights into the struc- ture of the human body at a molecular level have been reached. The increase in clarity of a molecule is equivalent to a jump from analog transmission to a 1080p HD feed. Schaefer looked into the abyss of molecular geometry and saw a way out. Schaefer also devised a second technique to enhance solid-state NMR. In 1989, he invented rotational-echo double resonance. With this technique, the distance between nuclei can be measured to within a couple of angstrom, which is much more accurate than the X-ray diffraction technique used in DNA. This technique has wide-reaching applica- tions in biology and in material sciences. Dr. Schaefer himself used this technique to dia- gram distances between complex molecules and other intact substances - including a structural definition of bacterial cell walls - such as the peptidoglycan outer wall, pro- tein-DNA complexes, intact bacteriophages, which include viruses that can be used as antibiotics against diseases such as leprosy and cholera. It can even reveal the structural distances of human cells and tissues. You maybe wonderingwhyyou should care about someone who has basically made fan- cier ways to look at a molecule. His advances moved NMR from the physical realm to :the biological and chemical realms. His tech- niques are being used in medicinal microim- aging, pushing the realms of a MRI beyond what we have now, thus helping to create a world where we can see into the very atom- ic structure of a person. His techniques are being used in labs at the University of Michi- gan to look at the structure of bone. We can now see what a bone looks like in its native state. We can see the atomic structure of a bone, thanks to Jacob Schaefer. He himself is pushing the bounds of his field. Even at the age of 75, this remarkable man is developing ways to look at the cell, one atom at a time. He's essentially mapping the cell wall. His story was told on Friday. It's now time for us all to listen in. Nirbhay Jain is an LSA sophomore. Dear President Coleman, dents in a powerful demonstration We, the Coalition for Tuition of what could be. We invited you, Equality, call on you to put a stop President Coleman, as well as four to tuition discrimination against other leaders of your administration. undocumented Michiganders. For To our dismay, only Dean of Students too long, the University has made Laura Blake Jones tookup our offer. higher education inaccessible to But your students did. More than a targeted group of young people. one hundred students gathered on These Michiganders come to the the Diag. Leaders, representing eight country at a young age by no accord of the 17 student organizations in the of their own. With their neighbors, Coalition, spoke eloquently about they attend kindergarten, theygrad- why their groups support 'tuition uate from high school, they apply to equality. President Coleman, we the University of Michigan. Theyare wish you could have seen it. in every way a part of their Michigan Standing on the steps of a library communities. However, the Uni- they never got the chance to use, in versity treats them differently than graduation caps and gowns, Julio their neighbors. It forces undocu- Garibaldi and Xochitl Cosselyon, mented students to pay out-of-state who are undocumented, spoke about rates while their neighbors pay in- their dreams for higher education. state tuition. It forces neighbors who Julio had always dreamed of getting grew up together to now see each into Eastern Michigan University other as different. It forces young - and when he received his accep- Americans to forgo their dreams of a tance letter, his father promised to better life through education. paythe out-of-state tuition. Butthen Maria Ibarra is one of these stu- his father's business went under and dents. She is undocumented and he had to pull out of the only school aspired to a University education. he ever wanted to attend. At age 9, she and her mom arrived Julio challenged us to keep fight- in Detroit, and since then Maria has ing for tuition equality because he distinguished herself as the ideal knows how much the other public University student. She graduated universities look up to Michigan's from high school at the top of her flagship campus. He knows, just as class. However, nine digits, or the you know, President Coleman, that lack thereof, prevented her from tuition equality at the University of attending her dream university - Michigan will affect far more stu- this one. Crushed, she persevered dents than just those privileged and graduated as valedictorian from enough tobe accepted into our Uni- the University of Detroit Mercy this versity: He knows it will bolster May. She's undeniably Michigan enrollment of low-income, first-gen- material - among the leaders and i eration students at a time when those best - but may never be a Wolverine. numbers are plunging downward. And Maria isn't alone. This past President Coleman, your actions Tuesday, CTE hosted a graduation have consequences - openly advo- ceremony for undocumented stu- cating for tuition equality will strongly encourage other universi- ties to do the same. As the leader of an institution that firmly stands against discrimination and in favor of diversity, you must take steps to adopt tuition equality or risk run- ning the University into moral ruin. President Coleman, we want to work with you to make the Univer- sity a beacon of possibility, a place accessible to all who merit it and an institution governed by ethical policy. Already, more than a dozen states have adopted tuition equal- ity. We appreciate the effort your administration has made in the working group on tuition equality; however, President Coleman, you must do more. President Coleman, we ask you to express support for tuition equality on the public record - so as to hold you accountable for your words. President Coleman, we ask your administration to make its efforts 4 to address tuition equality, includ- ing our working group, as trans- parent as possible - so as to hold it accountable for its actions. We look forward to the day when the University treats every Michigander fairly, a day when undocumented students in high schools across this great state can say with certainty: a Univer- sity education is more than just a dream - it's areality. Until then, President Coleman, we students will lead on an issue on which you have yet to do so. Kevin Mersol-Barg, Yonah Lieberman, Luz Meza and Sanjay Jolly are representatives for Coalition for Tuition Equality. CONTRIBUTE TO THE COVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and viewpoints. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while viewpoints should be 550-850 words. Send the writer's full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com. A