exhausted all other means of
acquiring necessary goods and
services.

“To reduce and understand

corruption, we need to move
away from this idea that state
institutions and culture pro-
pel people — ordinary citizens
— into corrupt exchanges, and
instead consider their decision-
making processes and the alter-
natives that are available to
them,” she said.

The central Asian republics

of
Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan

and Uzbekistan served as ideal
case studies to support her
thesis, McMann said. She con-
ducted 266 interviews, numer-
ous surveys and lived with nine
households between 1994 and
2009 in the three republics. All
three countries share a com-
mon history under Soviet rule,
and engaged in varying levels
of market reforms following the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
The collapse greatly reduced
the role of the government in

their respective economies and
accordingly saw an explosion in
corruption.

McMann said the increase

in corruption was fueled by the
drawdown of centrally allocated
resources under the old socialist
system did not smoothly allow
for a healthy private sector to
emerge and replace the state-
centralized economy in these
countries. Thus, these hollowed-
out governments would remain
the biggest potential parties
for citizens to receive credit or
other resources.

“When you have a situation

of a legacy of significant state
economic intervention, and you
introduce market reform but
don’t create effective market-
building institutions, you end
up with a situation of resource-
poor non-state actors,” she said.

McMann also emphasized

that even though this corruption
is generally viewed as “business
as usual” in these societies, it is
still considered unethical and
therefore typically engaged in as
a last resort.

Based on her interviews and

research, McMann described a

typical Kyrgyz farmer looking to
expand their subsistence farm
through credit. According to
McMann, the farmer wouldn’t
have enough collateral to secure
a loan from a private bank,
would find that their local reli-
gious institutions and extended
family don’t have the resources
to extend them informal credit
and discover the local govern-
ment credit program has a long
waiting list. Only when there
are no other options, McMann
said, would that farmer then
choose to bribe a local official to
get ahead of the waiting list for a
government-sponsored loan.

McMann argued that her

findings have important impli-
cations
for
anti-corruption

efforts around the world, saying,
“What my findings suggest is
that it’s not sufficient just to tin-
ker with state institutions; you
can’t just increase government
officials’ income, for example,
or create more sanctions for
bad behavior, you also need to
ask whether there are alterna-
tives so that citizens don’t have
to engage in corruption to deal
with economic challenges.”

tinued misuse of a prescription
medication throughout their
college years.

Richard Miech, professor at

the University’s Institute for
Social Research and the study’s
lead author, said some of the
students participating in the
study had a lot of experience
with drugs, and reported they
had used marijuana. Others
reported by 12th grade, they
had had no experience at all
with drugs.

“The surprising finding to

come out of the study, is this
effect that I found overall was
concentrated among the drug-
naïve adolescents, the ones that
had very little experience with
drugs,” he said.

However, drug-naïve stu-

dents are about three times
more likely to misuse drugs
than those who have experi-
ence with other drugs. Accord-
ing to Miech, there is no effect
among adolescents who had
already had experience with
drugs by 12th grade.

“What we speculate, is that

the
drug-naïve
adolescents,

when they’re taking a prescrip-
tion opioid, it’s really something
quite different than they’ve
ever
experienced
before,”

Miech said. “It’s a safe expe-
rience, because it’s under the
doctor’s guidance … For those
adolescents, the pain reliev-
ers are really quite powerful
and pleasurable. Whereas the
adolescents who get a doctor’s
prescription for an opioid who
already have other drug experi-
ence, the whole opioid experi-
ence, relatively speaking, will
not produce a big thrill.”

Miech said when a celeb-

rity dies from prescription
drug overdose, the media often
claims those individuals turned
to harder drugs after using pre-
scription
drugs
legitimately

prescribed by a doctor.

“They make it sound like pre-

scription drugs are a gateway
to harder drugs like heroin,”
he said. “What my findings
show is that there are people
that use prescription drugs and
then go on to use heroin, but I
don’t think their introduction
to heroin was through prescrip-
tion drugs. They were already
using all kinds of other drugs …
I don’t think that was the cause
of harder drug use.”

Though
the study did not go

into the developmental effects
that accompany prescription
pain medication abuse, Miech
said at the ages of the students
that were studied, the brain
is still developing, making it
more sensitive to these external
drugs that enter the system.

Kennon Heard, professor of

emergency medicine at the Uni-
versity of Colorado School of
Medicine, also provided clini-
cal interpretation of the data for
the study.

“We see many (Emergency

Department) visits related to
opioid abuse,” Heard wrote
in an e-mail to The Michigan
Daily. “The most common med-
ications are oxycodone, hydro-
codone and morphine. We also

often see heroin use by patients
who started abusing prescrip-
tion opioids and then moved to
heroin because it is cheaper.”

Heard said the most common

effects of opioid use are seda-
tion and respiratory depression.

“There is research suggest-

ing that early exposure to addic-
tive drugs increases the risk of
abuse as an adult,” he added.

The research studied high

school
seniors
until
they

reached age 23, which Heard
said is an age where drug
abuse tends to start. The rates
of prescription drug abuse are
higher in older adolescent age
groups. However, he said the
most extreme cases that result
in needing medical attention in
the emergency room are older
than the age range considered
in the study.

Though opioids are such a

common concern because of
abuse that can occur as a result,
Heard said the medical field
does not have alternatives to
these medications.

“At this time opioids are the

most effective pain medications
we have,” Heard said. “Unfor-
tunately there are not great
alternatives with less addic-
tive potential. Safe use requires
thoughtful prescribing and con-
tinual reassessment for efficacy
and safety.”

LSA junior Erin Dunne,

co-director of the Student for
Sensible Drug Policy organiza-
tion on campus, said the main
goal of the organization is to
promote harm reduction and
inform the campus dialogue.
She said members are ultimate-
ly interested in what is best for
individuals, families and com-
munities.

Earlier this fall, SSPD hosted

an event focused on opioids.
The organization met with a
Detroit emergency room phy-
sician who presented various
concerns with opioid use in the
United States. He also talked
about methods to deal with
opioid overdose, and ways peo-
ple can become hooked on the
drugs.

Dunne pointed to a lack of

specialized
pain
counseling

in the United States, causing
people to take painkillers when
they do not necessarily need
them and end up staying on
them longer than they should.

Dunne mentioned a drug

called Naloxone — commonly
referred to as Narcan — which
counteracts the effect of opioid
overdose by blocking receptors
in the body that opioids bind to
and instigate an overdose.

The organization also sup-

ports proposals to extend medi-
cal amnesty policies to those
suffering
from
prescription

drug overdose.

“There’s still a lot of stigma

on drug use and there is still
a lot of fear around going to
authorities and having to deal
with someone who is suffering
from overdose, especially if the
other people around were using
drugs themselves,” Dunne said.
“We as an organization find
this to be incredibly alarm-
ing. We want people to be able
to seek the help they need for
themselves and for their friends
without these barriers.”

LSA junior Emily Liu, who

worked on the project with
Chiang, said a challenge of the
research was targeting the can-
cerous signals of Notch without
harming its other functions. She
added that discovering the Zmiz1
protein may be the key to ridding
Notch of its cancer functions.

“My
project
focused
on

attempting to inhibit the coacti-
vator, Zmiz1, and to see the
effects it has on physiology with
mouse models,” she said. “We
looked at the impact and toxic-
ity there. What we found was
there was no significant effect
on the intestinal toxicity when
we inhibited the coactivator,
suggesting that it is selective for
the cancer signals of Notch.”

Chiang said making a drug

applicable to humans is the most
important next step. He plans to
do so by creating a three-dimen-
sional image that will show how
Zmiz1 sticks to Notch. This way,
Chiang can discover how to sep-
arate the protein from the gene
in humans.

“Once we have this three-

dimensional image we can fig-
ure out ways to design a drug

that could slip in between the
two proteins and break the bind-
ing apart,” Chiang said. “That’s
one of the major things we’re
trying to figure out — how to get
a three-dimensional image to
help us make drugs to actually
break this interaction.”

Though
this
research
is

primarily focused on Notch-
involved cancers, Chiang said
it could have implications for
treating other cancers as well
and said he hopes to investi-
gate whether or not Zmiz1 plays
a role in cancers that aren’t
impacted by the Notch gene.

“We’ve been really focused

on Notch-dependent tumors,
but you also have a lot of Notch-
independent cancers,” Chiang
said. “We’re actually looking
into that — to see whether or not
our protein may be important
for other non-Notch functions.
That’s a good area of investiga-
tion right now.”

Liu said she believes the

research will have a significant
impact on cancer treatment in
the future.

“There’s a lot of implications

for therapy and using our pro-
tein or other proteins in that
pathway as targets for drugs,”
she said.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Thursday, October 29, 2015 — 3A

U-M economics
professor awarded
$2.1M grant for
data project

Martha J. Bailey, an associate

professor of economics, received
a $2.1 million grant from the
National
Science
Foundation

to go toward the creation of the
Longitudinal
Intergenerational

Family Electronic Micro-Database.

The project, referred to as

LIFE-M, will compile millions
of records from U.S. citizens
to show how individuals and
families have changed since the
beginning of the 20th century.
The database will include health,
family, demographic and economic
information from an individual’s
entire life, and will span across at
least four generations.

The sample size of Bailey’s

database will be unprecedented,
as will her study of minorities,
including immigrants and women.

The project will receive funding

from the NSF until August 2019.

Uber delivering
kittens for
Thursday event

According to the Detroit Free

Press, Uber will deliver kittens in
more than 50 cities across North
America, including Detroit, this
Thursday.

To participate in the event,

customers just need to log in
to their Uber app between the
hours of 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.
and
choose
the
“KITTENS”

option. Once the delivery arrives,
customers can play with the cats
for a maximum of 15 minutes. The
service costs $30.

Local
animal
shelters
are

partnering with Uber, giving them
access to the kittens for a portion
of the company’s profitwwws in
return. As a result of previous
Uber Kittens events, the ride-
share
company
helped
find

permanent homes for more than
30 kittens.

College applications
in UK to remove
applicant’s name

U.K. Prime Minister David

Cameron announced that names
will be removed from all 2017
applications submitted through
the Universities and Colleges
Admissions Service, a charity that
facilitates the application process
for nearly all British universities.

According to The Conversation,

Cameron said the country’s main
goal is to combat ethnic inequali-
ties. His made the announcement
after a report was published that
showed British ethinc minorities
are less likely to be accepted to
selective universities than white
applicants.

While he said the reason behind

this disparity is “complex,” Cam-
eron noted that unconscious bias
may play a role in lower minority
acceptence rates.

To determine if “name-blind”

applications
actually
decrease

ethnic inequalities, UCAS has
agreed to share application data
with applicant permission.

Nanotechnology
could create new
heart treatment

University researchers devel-

oped a new nanoparticle that
could be the key to a new therapy
for people suffering from cardiac
arrhythmia.

The
treatment
uses
nano-

technology to target and destroy
cells within the heart that cause
cardiac arrhythmia. In stud-
ies they conducted on sheep and
rodents, the researchers found
that the technology kills the car-
diac
arrhythmia-causing
cells,

but leaves the surrounding, non-
harmful cells untouched.

Today in the United States, car-

diac arrhythmia affects 4 million
Americans, killing 130,000 and
hospitalizing more than 750,000
people every year.

–LEA GIOTTO

PAINKILLERS
From Page 1A

NEWS BRIEFS

CANCER
From Page 1A

MARINA ROSS/Daily

Kelly McMann, a University alum and political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, speaks about
corruption in the Central Asian market in the School of Social Work Building on Wednesday.

CORRUPTION
From Page 1A

2-News