The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Monday, December 2, 2013 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
LIVONIA, Mich.
Michigan med
tech faces sentence
in New Hampshire
Victims of an ex-hospital
technician from Michigan who
infected patients with hepatitis C
are getting a chance to face him,
and some are traveling from Kan-
sas to New Hampshire to do it.
David Kwiatkowski has admit-
ted stealing painkillers and
replacing them with saline-filled
syringes tainted with his blood.
He's being sentenced Monday in
New Hampshire.
He pleaded guilty in August to
16 federal drug charges under an
agreementcthat gives him 30 to 40
years in prison.
Thirty-four-year-old Kwiat-
kowski worked in i9 hospitals. He
was hired at New Hampshire's
Exeter Hospital in 2011.
NEW YORK
Record crowds
over weekend, but
spending declined
Did retailers shoot themselves
in the foot?
U.S. retailers offered holiday
discounts in early November
and opened stores on Thanks-
giving Day to attract more shop-
pers. Those tactics drew bigger
crowds, but they didn't motivate
Americans to spend.
A record 248 million people
are expected to shop in stores
and online over the four-day
Thanksgiving weekend that ends
Sunday, up from last year's 247
million, according to the Nation-
al Retail Federation.
But total spending is expected
to fall for the first time ever since
the retail group started track-
ing it in 2006. Over the four-day
weekend, spending is estimated
to reach $57.4 billion, down 2.9
percent from last year.
SAN FRANCISCO
American detained
in North Korea in
good health
The family of an elderly U.S.
tourist detained for more than a
month in North Korea said Sat-
urday the Swedish ambassador
has seen the man and found him
to be in good health.
Merrill Newman's family in
California said in a statement
that the State Department told
them that the Swedish ambas-
sador to North Korea had visited
the 85-year-old at a Pyongyang
hotel.
"We were very pleased to
hear that the Ambassador was
allowed to pay this first visit to
Merrill," the statement said. "As
a result of the visit, we know
that Merrill is in good health....
Merrill reports that he is being
O well treated and that the food is
good."
An Obama administration
official called for his release,
urging North Korea to consider
his age and health conditions.
BEIRUT
Syrian aircraft
kill 50 in northern
rebel town
Syrian government helicopters
dropped barrels full of explosives
on a rebel-held town near the
northern city of Aleppo, killing
at least 50 people in two separate
attacks over the weekend, activ-
lsts said Sunday.
The shelling Sunday hit near
a bakery in the town of al-Bab,
located east of Aleppo, killing at
least 24 people, said Rami Abdur-
rahman of the British-based
S Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights and Akram al-Halabi, a
rebel spokesman based in nearby
in Aleppo.
The Observatory obtains its
information from a network of
activists on the ground. Syr-
* ian state media said government
forces killed "terrorists," which
is how they describe armed rebels
fighting against President Bashar
Assad's rule.
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports
BLOOD
From Page 1A
"There was a real improve-
ment this year," Weiss said. "We
procured incentives that ben-
efited the blood drive like prom-
ising (donors) Chipotle. We also
had the added benefit of know-
ing that we lost last year, so that
was used to recruit as well."
According to the Univer-
sity Health Service, more
than 38,000 blood donations
are needed every day to meet
national demand, and someone
needs blood every two seconds.
Volunteer blood donations are
the only way hospitals can
acquire blood. One blood dona-
tion has the potential to save
three lives, according to the
American Red Cross.
"Utilizing the rivalry is a
way to recruit lifetime donors,"
Weiss said. "Blood does have a
shelf life. Donatingonce isgreat,
but every eight weeks you can
continue to donate blood. The
Blood Battle hopefully encour-
ages a mindset of giving."
While the competitionis over,
Blood Drives United and UHS
encourage anyone still inter-
ested in donating blood to visit
the Red Cross donation website.
UHS also encourages those who
are interested in becoming an
organ or bone marrow donor to
join the registries at Gift of Life
for organ donations and Be the
Match to be placed on the mar-
row registry.
4-
CRAIG RUTTLE/AP
Viewed from Manhattan, first responders and others work at the scene of a derailed Metro North passenger train in the
Bronx borough of New York. The train derailed on a curved sectionof track in the Bronx early Sunday.
NYC train derailment kills
four, injures more than 60
AIDS
From Page 1A
Quad at 7 p.m. The movie fol-
lows an Egyptian woman with
HIV as she struggles to obtain
treatment.
"I'm excited for the movie
because you get to hear from
perspectives that don't neces-
sarily get a chance to speak,"
Uduma said. "Being a woman
of color and being HIV posi-
tive is not a narrative that gets a
chance to get a spotlight often."
While many of this year's
events are new, the staple event
of the week is BSU's formal
AIDS in the Arts event Thurs-
day in the University of Michi-
gan Museum of Art at 7 p.m.
Collier said the event involves
artistic performance includes
dances, songs and instrumental
music that tell stories of those
affected by HIV/AIDS.
"It is basically supposed to
bring awareness to artists who
have been infected or affected
by HIV/AIDS and have created
art telling the story of HIV/
AIDS," Uduma said. "It creates
other methods of dialogue to
talk about HIV/AIDS."
BSU and EnspiRED, a stu-
dent organization aimed at pro-
moting the arts on campus, will
collaboratively run AIDS in the
Arts. While BSU is organizing
the event, EnspiRED is provid-
ing many of the student artists
and performers.
The week concludes Friday
with a community dinner host-
ed by BSU, South Asian Aware-
ness Network and the Sigma
Lambda Gamma multicultural
national sorority at the Trotter
Multicultural Center at 6 p.m.
Witnesses report
train traveling at
high rate of speed
prior to accident
NEW YORK (AP) - A New
York City commuter train round-
ing a riverside curve derailed
Sunday, killing four people and
injuring more than 60 ina crash
that threw passengers from the
toppling cars and left a snaking
chain of twisted wreckage just
inches from the water.
Some of the roughly 150 pas-
sengers on the early morning
Metro-North train from Pough-
keepsie to Manhattan were jolt-
ed from sleep around 7:20 a.m. to
screams and the frighteningsen-
sation of their compartment roll-
ing over on a bend in the Bronx
where the Hudson and Harlem
rivers meet. When the motion
stopped, four or five of the seven
cars had lurched off the rails. It
was the latest accident in a trou-
bled year for the nation's sec-
ond-biggest commuter railroad,
which had never experienced a
passenger death in an accident
in its 31-year-history.
"Four people lost their lives
today in the holiday season,
right after Thanksgiving,"
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a
news conference. Eleven of the
injured were believed to be criti-
cally injured and another six
seriously hurt, according to the
Fire Department.
The train operator was among
the injured, Cuomo said.
The governor said the track
did not appear to be faulty, leav-
ing speed as a possible culprit
for the crash. But he noted that
the National Transportation
Safety Board would determine
what happened. The Federal
Railroad Administration was
also sending 10 investigators to
the scene.
Metropolitan Transportation
Authority Chairman Thomas F.
Prendergast said investigators
would look at numerous factors,
including the train, the track
and signal system, the operators
and speed.
The speed limit on the curve is
30 mph, compared with 70 mph
in the area approaching it, MTA
spokeswoman Marjorie Anders
said. The train's data recorders
should be able to tell how fast it
was traveling, she said.
One passenger, Frank Tatulli,
told WABC-TV that the train
appeared to be going "a lot fast-
er" than usual as it approached
the sharp curve near the Spuy-
ten Duyvil station, which takes
its name from a Dutch word for
a local waterway, sometimes
translated as "Devil's whirl-
pool."
The train was about half full
at the time of the crash, rail offi-
cials said, with some passengers
likely heading to the city for hol-
iday shopping.
Joel Zaritsky was dozing as he
traveled to a dental convention.
"I woke up when the car
started rolling several times.
Then I saw the gravel coming at
me, and I heard people scream-
ing," he told The Associated
Press, holding his bloody right
hand. "There was smoke every-
where and debris. People were
thrown to the other side of the
train."
Nearby residents awoke to a
building-shaking boom. Angel
Gonzalez was in bed in his high-
rise apartment overlooking the
rail curve when he heard the
roar.
"I thought it was a plane that
crashed," he said.
EMISSION
From Page 1A
boringstars to suggest this limit
maybe exceeded in some cases.
"I think this is a first salvo
in this field," Bregman said. "It
shows that you can get the data
together to figure out the orbital
properties."
The findings at the Gemini
Observatory served as the final
step in a series of global stud-
ies conducted with the hope of
determining the mass of a single
black hole in the Pinwheel Gal-
axy, located approximately 21
million light-years from earth.
Once the mass was determined,
the scientists realized light
emissions from the region were
much higher than they should
appear under the Eddington
limit.
"This is a very tidy result
but it's not all-encompassing,"
Bregman said. "But maybe not
all ultra-luminous sources are
the same. What you want to do
now is do it for other systems."
Black holes are regions of
space so dense that even light
cannot escape the pull of their
gravity beyond a boundary
called the event horizon. When
they are observed from earth-
based telescopes, their center
appears black.
Contrary to their namesake,
black holes are actually some
of the brightest objects in the
universe. As matter is pulled
toward the event horizon, it
gains speed and collides with
other similar objects. This cre-
ates friction as objects closer to
the horizon move faster than
objects farther away.
"That friction gets turned
into heat which gets turned into
light, which is why black holes
are so bright," Bregman said.
Larger black holes, known as
intermediate or supermassive,
can range from a few hundred
to a billion times larger than the
sun. The black hole observed in
the study, designated as ULX-1,
is known as a stellar mass black
hole. Although it is much small-
er than other types, it is still
many times larger than the sun.
Given the emission level
from ULX-1, scientists knew it
was either a stellar mass black
hole emitting too much light
or an intermediate black hole
emitting a small portion of its
potential. Using the Gemini
telescope, the researchers were
able to determine the velocity,
period and mass of surrounding
stars, allowing them to calcu-
late the mass of the black hole.
"It's a crazy field in that
every time you get 10 pieces of
information, five say it's a stel-
lar mass black hole and five say
it's an intermediate black hole,"
Bregman said.
At such vast distances, the
researchers were observing pri-
marily x-ray light, which is not
visible to the naked eye. The
Gemini telescope, as well as sev-
eral others used on the project,
was equipped with instruments
capable of detecting the various
forms of light emitted from the
region.
"They're very faint, so it's
very hard to do," Bregman said.
"The techniques that you would
use in the Milky Way just don't
work."
Of all scientific phenomena,
Bregman said the people he
interacts with are intrinsically
and rightfully drawn to black
holes. The observatories used
in the study are not only major
research centers, but also tour-
ist attractions for individuals
wishing to explore the universe.
"They are the most exotic
objects in the universe," he
said. "They are a place where
the actual fabric of space-time
breaks down. You might care
about anything because either
it's going to make you a better
piece of toast in the morning
or it's just really interesting -
black holes are just really inter-
esting."
WHO'S EXCITED
ABOUT ALL THE
WORK THEY PUT OFF
WHILE THEY WERE
CRAMMING MASHED
POTATOES DOWN
THEIR THROATS?
We'll distract you.
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