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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, January 25, 2017 — 3A
government and the president
is one of those threads, and that
there are so many other threads
that hold that advancement on
sustainability, that there are
many parties that contribute
to that,” Rubin said. “Many of
them have been mentioned here,
but especially the states, and
a lot of our states have already
been taking leadership on issues
of climate, and energy, and
transportation,
wetlands
and
water.”
The panelists agreed, stating
strong leadership from local and
state levels will be crucial in the
upcoming years. The University
of
Michigan
has
already
begun making solid ground on
these
environmental
issues,
according to Rosina Bierbaum,
professor of natural sciences
and environmental policy, and
in turn has helped contribute to
overall goals on both state and
national levels.
“I think we should be very
proud of things that are taking
place here at Michigan,” she
said. “I’m very proud that
sustainability is a big issue on
this campus now, I’m very proud
that President Schlissel has
taken the national science and
policy engagement committee’s
report to identify ways that
faculty can get more involved
in government in Washington,
and I’m very proud that the
University of Michigan is part
of the national data refuge
project.”
After
opening
the
floor
to audience and moderator
questions,
the
panelists
discussed
the
issues
some
students looking to find careers
in the environmental sciences
might see in the coming years.
Dan Brown, interim dean of
the School of Natural Resources
and the Environment, asked
about the recent announcement
of the federal hiring freeze, and
asked panelists to explain how
students can respond to this
possible shift in their career
planning. The New York Times
reported that the hiring freeze
was announced on Monday.
Trump signed an order calling
for a halt on all public service
jobs outside of those in national
security, public safety and the
military.
Molly Watters, a natural
resources
and
environment
graduate student, attended the
panel with questions about a
possible lack of opportunities
after school.
“I think we’re all struggling
to, you know, make sense of
everything that’s going on,” she
said. “I wanted to work for a
federal land management agency
after graduating and don’t know
if that’s going to pan out … (I
wanted) to hear what all of these
smart academics have to say
about it instead of whatever real
or fake news I might find on my
own.”
Erb Institute director Joe
Arvai,
professor
of
natural
resources and environment and
business, explained that, while
federal government jobs may
not be available, smaller, local
positions could be beneficial.
“I think cities, states are going
to be key, NGOs are going to be
key, but also, throw business
in the mix in a very diverse
way, I don’t just mean the big
multinationals, I mean any kind
of business,”
Arvai said. “If you go to the most
unconventional places where you
don’t think sustainability is at the
cutting edge and try and make
your impact there, everything
you do will be huge.”
By the end of the discussion,
panelists
brought
forth
the
importance
of
creating
meaningful
discussion
about
environmental
concerns
and
having conversations with others
to promote a more well-educated
scope of activists.
Rackham
student
Leah
Gerber agreed with the panelists
providing information about the
environment.
“At the end when they talked
about engaging, he said, ‘engage,
engage, engage,’ I think we really
are going to have to change our
daily lives,” she said. “You can’t
just retreat you into your daily
routine; we have to actively seek
out and encourage each other to
engage.”
Rackham student Alana Tucker
said she believes environmental
policies should not be a partisan
issue.
“I think that communication
of environmental sustainability
and relaying that message as
not a partisan issue is so, so
critical coming from a very,
very conservative state,” Tucker
said. “I think just becoming
more literate in learning how to
communicate these topics is very
important. … So not just thinking
about engaging, but also thinking
about who you’re engaging with
is also really important.”
ENVIRONMENT
From Page 1A
new combination of medical
organizations and reflect a new
purpose.
According to Runge, this
new mission of the hospital
emphasizes
patient
care,
medical education and health
care research.
“We remain committed to
extraordinary
patient
care,
world-class medical education,
being an employer of choice for
faculty and staff, and moving
groundbreaking research from
bench to bedside in order to
save and improve lives,” Runge
said in an article from Michigan
Medicine.
For nurses, however, this
new name change appears to be
exclusionary and unsupportive
of all the work that nurses and
other hospital workers perform
daily.
“The term ‘medicine’ is almost
exclusively
associated
with
physicians, yet so many other
professionals contribute to the
treatments and breakthroughs
here,” Katie Oppenheim, chair
of the University’s Professional
Nurse Council, said in an article
published
by
the
Michigan
Nurses
Association.
“We
are concerned that time and
resources are being squandered
on
a
marketing
ploy
that
ultimately
diminishes
the
contributions of a diverse and
dedicated staff.”
A petition hosted by UMPNC
was created in response to the
new Michigan Medicine title
and currently has more than
1,200 signatures.
Armelagos agreed, worried
the financial aspect of the name
change could have been better
applied to patient care.
“This is already a done deal;
they’re spending I don’t know
how much money on this
venture, we don’t believe it’s
money well spent,” Armelagos
said.
Despite
the
contentious
decision, nurses at Michigan
Medicine are still committed to
patient-centered care.
“The nurses and UMPNC are
going to continue to advocate
for our profession, our patients
and
will
continue
to
act
collaboratively with all other
disciplines for the betterment
of patient care,” Armelagos
said. “But the employers’ poor
decision to rebrand the health
system does not serve anyone
well.”
NURSES
From Page 1A
Quality for the study — which
is slated to cost $2 million
— the team will work with
Wayne State University and
the Detroit Medical Center to
conduct the experiment in two
hospitals.
Kaye discussed the gravity of
the presence of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria in hospital environments.
“We always think of hand-
washing and how germs can be
moved by the hands of health
care workers,” he said. “But the
environment the patients are in,
whether it’s the bedrails or the
telephone, also have organisms
contaminating
their
surfaces
pretty frequently and living for
long periods of time.”
Hospital cleaning has always
been
a
crucial
process
in
preventing health care-associated
infections,
Kaye
said.
When
a patient is discharged from
a hospital, a form of intensive
cleaning called terminal cleaning
is done to accommodate the next
patient.
Terminal
cleaning,
while
effective,
has
its
limits
in
preventing
antibiotic-resistant
organisms
from
causing
infections. C. difficile, for example,
is a bacterium that causes swelling
and
irritation
in
the
colon.
Terminal cleaning cannot kill this
bacterium because of its resistance
to antibiotics.
“In a scenario where a patient
in a hospital has C. diff and is
then discharged from a room,
the next patient to go to that
room has a much higher risk
of getting C. diff than someone
admitted into a different patient
room,” Kaye said. “So, even
with good cleaning, there’s a
question of whether adding
more intensive disinfection for
standard cleaning would reduce
the risk of patients developing
infections in the hospital.”
Kaye
explained
that
the
robots
will
be
used
with
terminal cleaning in hospital
rooms
to
determine
their
effectiveness
against
the
infections.
The robots emit UV light,
which can be harmful to human
eyes, skin and immune systems.
However, they will have a
function that disables these
harmful lights in the presence
of humans.
“The robots will have motion
sensor that will turn it off if it
detects motion in the room,”
Kaye said. “So they are pretty
much fail-proof.”
Germ-zapping robots have
been used in other hospitals to
counter the spread of antibiotic-
resistant bacteria.
Oryan Henig, a research
fellow who worked on the study
under the mentorship of Kaye,
said the uniqueness of this
study came from its controlled
design.
“It’s a different epidemiology
of patients and microbiology,
and a strong setting of infection
control system that is required
to make such a study feasible,”
Henig said.
The study, which will span
over two years, will use the
actual germ-zapping in one
of the two Detroit hospitals
and a placebo in the other to
overcome bias and to evaluate
the effect of the robots.
“We’ll
essentially
be
comparing terminal cleaning
to terminal cleaning with the
germ-zapping
robots,”
Kaye
said.
ROBOTS
From Page 1A
There’s a question
of whether adding
more intensive
disinfection for
standard cleaning
would reduce the
risk
The women at NASA, Shetterly
explained, are often overlooked in
history. Other figures, like Martin
Luther King Jr., were pushed
forward by the accomplishments
of the African-American women
working at NASA.
“Most people in our country
think of the civil rights movement
as something that started in
1954 with the Brown vs. Board
of
Education
decision
and
culminated
with
Dr.
King’s
speech in 1963 at the march on
Washington,” Shetterly said. “Dr.
King stood on the shoulders of
others to reach his mountaintop.”
Shetterly explored why it has
taken so long for the story of these
women to be told. Despite there
being many women working
alongside the main characters of
the story, their contribution has
still been obscured.
“(There) may have been as
many 1,000 women … working
as professional mathematicians,”
Shetterly said. “Why didn’t we
use them as role models?”
Shetterly quickly answered
the question she posed, saying
the women were hired as sub-
professionals,
putting
them
below men at NASA. However,
she added that though this was
true, there were other reasons for
them being forgotten.
“Women of all backgrounds
were separated from the men,”
Shetterly said. “In the beginning,
the Black women went into the
west area computing section and
the white women went into the
east area office.”
The biggest reason, Shetterly
concluded, was that computing
was considered women’s work,
in comparison to engineering,
which was a male-dominated
field.
The
American
dream,
Shetterly said, is something the
women in the story experienced,
making the story of the women
even more important to tell.
“I think the power of the
American dream is that it too is a
story, as much myth as it is reality,
something that we tell ourselves
about how we live and what we
believe and what we think is
possible,” Shetterly said. “This
is a story about including Black
women in the American dream.”
Following the lecture, LSA
sophomore Zi Huang said she
found the story of the lives of the
women in the book inspiring.
“Even in times like the 1950s
there wasn’t even the civil rights
movement yet,” Huang said.
“There were women making this
type of progress and it gives me a
lot of hope.”
Rackham
student
Jasmine
Jones, a computer scientist, was
also encouraged by the story.
“I think it was inspiring to
a lot of people and I think it’s
going to be a good chance for
people everywhere to really
take seriously and thank their
education and opportunities and
to really push forward and not
discount themselves and what
they can contribute to society,”
Jones said.
A Q&A after the lecture
allowed the audience to ask
questions about contemporary
segregation and the process
Shetterly
went
through
in
researching for and writing her
book.
“One of the things is that we
have schools that are segregated
not just by race, but by income
and by opportunity and we are
leaving so much talent on the
table,” Shetterly said.
Hours after the featured event,
Shetterly also gave a “fireside
chat” at Stamps Auditorium. The
450 seats at the venue were again
filled to capacity, and many more
waited outside to be first in line at
the book signing afterward.
Speaking to the appeal of
getting the autograph of an idol,
Shetterly said when she went to
meet Katherine Johnson –– one of
the protagonists of the book and
film
MARGO
From Page 1A
Read more online at
michigandaily.com
be hesitant and unsure for this
organization to go forward and
fund this stuff, because I’m not
sure what kind of message that
sends.”
The resolution was tabled for
later review by the Resolutions
Committee.
The
Student
Organization
Funding
Committee
also
attended the meeting to clarify its
funding process to the assembly,
which was unclear about the
organization’s role.
According to SOFC Chair
Kevin Yang, a Business junior,
the committee is the funding
body of CSG. However, the
group was created to operate
autonomously
from
CSG
because of certain biases that
representatives
might
have.
Various student organizations
apply
to
SOFC
to
receive
funding for student activities
and events on a reimbursement
basis.
It also funds services and
events, such as the night owl
bus route and water bottle refill
stations. For each semester,
SOFC has about $200,000 to
give to student organizations.
A year ago during now-
alum
Cooper
Charlton’s
administration, SOFC played
a critical role when the body
depleted its financial resources
a month before the semester
ended. The former assembly
passed the resolution to provide
the commission the emergency
funds.
CSG
From Page 1A