Latest news with #TheUniversityofTexas
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Without first-class public universities, Texas cannot be a first-class state
According to recent reports, Texas now boasts 16 top-tier universities, more than any other state. The majority are public institutions, including the University of Texas flagship here in Austin. Our state's commitment to state-supported higher education goes all the way back to the Texas Constitution in 1876. Article 7 directs the Legislature to 'provide for the maintenance, support and direction of a University of the first class' to be called 'The University of Texas.' The very first responsibility of this university is 'the promotion of literature.' Senate Bill 37, under consideration in the Texas Legislature, would change our public universities so radically that they would no longer be first-class. Without first-class public universities, Texas cannot be a first-class state. While the state Constitution affirms the connection between studying literature and a thriving citizenry, the members of the 89th Legislature apparently feel differently. Under SB 37, hiring for faculty positions in liberal arts, communication, education and social work — but no other fields — become the responsibility of a state governing board whose members would not necessarily have either disciplinary expertise in the relevant academic subjects or training in college-level teaching and learning. Why does this matter to anyone besides a few professors? To put the question another way, what do we actually do in the liberal arts? 'Liberal' arts does not mean 'liberal' as distinct from 'conservative.' In this context, 'liberal' derives from the Latin word liber, 'free.' Liberal arts are the subjects which befit free people to study, and which enable us to flourish as a free society. The core of the liberal arts is learning to ask good questions and to respond to those questions effectively. Students in liberal arts often explore enduring human issues that can never be resolved once and for all, but that we all wrestle with as members of a pluralistic society. How do I balance my obligations to myself and my family with my responsibilities to larger groups, such as my town, my workplace, and my country? How do I work with people different from me to achieve goals that benefit us all? How do I live my own deeply held values in a way that acknowledges that other people have different values that they believe in equally deeply? None of these questions has one 'right' answer. Yet all of us ask them, often repeatedly, throughout our lives. Students in the liberal arts explore these questions through the subject-area expertise of their professors and by engaging with the variety of perspectives among their fellow students about human experiences that are brought to life in the art and literature of different times and places. Such experiences not only characterize a successful college experience, but effective workplaces. Public universities hobbled by SB 37 would not simply violate Article 7 of the Texas Constitution. They would also endanger the Texas economy, to which public universities contribute billions of dollars annually. Knowing how to ask a good question has never been more important than it is now, because of the increasing presence of AI in our lives. The information we get out of AI is only as good as the prompts we give it. Anyone who has used AI knows that it takes time, effort and know-how to create a good question. Fostering transformative learning experiences for the young people of Texas is the most challenging and the most rewarding thing I have ever done. Combining deep subject area expertise with teaching experience in order to grapple with crucial human questions for the benefit of individuals and society is the work of a lifetime. That is what makes a university first-class. Not faculty hired by political appointees, and certainly not SB 37. Deborah Beck is the Christie and Stanley E. Adams, Jr. Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts and professor of classics at the University of Texas. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: State lawmakers want to strangle liberal arts in Texas | Opinion
Daily Mail
29-04-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
College student, 22, brushed off 2 common symptoms as a sinus infection before being diagnosed with CANCER
A Texas college student has revealed how a headache and pressure in her nose led her to discover she was suffering from an acute form of blood cancer. In September 2024, Breeze Hunter, 22, a student at Texas A&M University, felt like she was having a 'rubber band' pulling at her head and was rapidly losing weight. However, she kept dismissing her changing body and constant pain as a persistent sinus infection, something she was prone to. The young student recalled: 'I had a lot of fluid in my ears, which was causing the headaches. I went to a clinic a few times and they pretty much said it was a sinus infection.' But a month later, she decided to visit the doctor's office on her campus after finding herself too weak to walk up a flight of stairs or even go to classes - where she underwent a blood test. Realizing that Hunter was severely anemic - where the body lacks enough healthy red blood cells - doctors at the clinic urged her to go to an emergency room. She then tried going to an ER close to her campus but since they were full, Hunter decided to visit The University of Texas Medical Branch Hospital in her hometown League City, Texas. After multiple blood tests, Hunter and her family were finally told that she was suffering from high risk acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer and was admitted to MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. She told 'I told them that the headaches are still here. I'm very weak and had fatigue. They recommended doing a blood test.' 'I had many people coming in and saying, 'It's looking like a sign of leukemia, but we'll keep testing because it could be a bunch of other things'. 'I freaked out. I had no idea what leukemia was. I was like am I going to survive this? Or is it treatable?' Acute myeloid leukemia affects the myeloid cells in the bone marrow which are responsible for maturing into red and white blood cells in the bloodstream. Once turned cancerous, these cells move from the bone marrow into the blood and spread the disease to other parts of the body, including the lymph nodes, liver, spleen, brain and spinal cord. When it affects the brain and spinal cord, it can cause symptoms like headaches and weakness in the body. Unlike other cancers, there are no numbered stages of AML and it can progress in rapid speeds. Some symptoms of AML include fatigue, feeling cold, dizziness, pale skin, shortness of breath, easy bruising and bleeding with no clear cause. The exact causes are unclear, however, smoking, being overweight, radiation exposure and previous chemotherapy can increase risks of developing AML. But many patients, like Breeze Hunter, don't fall into any of those categories. In 2024, over 20,00 Americans were diagnosed with AML and about 11,200 people died from the condition. Possible treatments often include chemotherapy, targeted therapy and at times stem cell transplantation (a medical procedure that replaces diseased or damaged blood-forming stem cells with healthy ones from a donor). Within days of being diagnosed, Hunter underwent a bone marrow aspiration (a sample of the liquid part of bone marrow taken for testing) and a spinal tap (a sample of cerebrospinal fluid taken from the lower part of the spine). The doctors at the MD Anderson Cancer Center also kept her in the hospital and placed her seven days of chemotherapy infusions along with an experimental cancer-fighting pill, which was part of a clinical trial. Much to their surprise, doctors tested Hunter's bone marrow after 21 days of starting chemotherapy to see if the treatment worked and saw improvement. She was then placed on a second seven-day round of the treatment and showed significant improvement. 'I was supposed to get at least six rounds,' Hunter said. 'The chemo worked so well I only had to do two.' According to her now-viral TikTok page, the college student was on a six-month chemotherapy plan that ended earlier this year. After undergoing 11 rounds of radiation to kill any possible lingering cancer cells in her brain and spine plus an new intense round of chemotherapy, she received a stem cell transplant from her 21-year-old brother, Roy. A stem cell transplant, also known as a bone marrow transplant, replaces damaged or diseased bone marrow with healthy stem cells that can develop into different types of blood cells. It is done to treat various conditions, including certain cancers, blood disorders, and autoimmune diseases. 'I got a radiation/chemo burn all over my body, which was very very painful and I was pretty much burnt all over,' she said. The chemotherapy regimen 'was harder than the leukemia one.' Following the transplant, she has remained in the hospital for to make sure everything went well and protect her from potential infection from her weakened immune system. 'Probably towards the end I was over it. I was like, 'I can't do this. This is too much,' Hunter recalled. 'It was very hard at times but God's watching me. So, I knew I was going to be OK.' Since the end of her intense treatment, Hunter is now in remission and claims to feel better as well as stronger and intends to walk in her college graduation soon.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
March Bio Starts Phase 2 Trial for Rare Blood Cancer
By Karen Roman March Biosciences said it started Phase 2 trial for MB-105, its CAR-T therapy for patients with relapsed or refractory CD5+ T-cell lymphoma. The test will take place at leading cancer centers across the country, with the first patient dosed at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the company stated. The MB-105 program was granted FDA orphan drug designation in January 2025 and is also in development for other CD5+ cancers, it said. 'This represents a significant milestone in advancing MB-105 as a potential treatment option for patients with T-cell lymphoma who currently face extremely limited therapeutic choices,' said Sarah Hein, March Biosciences co-founder and CEO. Contact: Exec Edge Editor@
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
North America is 'dripping' down into Earth's mantle, scientists discover
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An ancient slab of Earth's crust buried deep beneath the Midwest is sucking huge swatches of present-day's North American crust down into the mantle, researchers say. The slab's pull has created giant "drips" that hang from the underside of the continent down to about 400 miles (640 kilometers) deep inside the mantle, according to a new study. These drips are located beneath an area spanning from Michigan to Nebraska and Alabama, but their presence appears to be impacting the entire continent. The dripping area looks like a large funnel, with rocks from across North America being pulled toward it horizontally before getting sucked down. As a result, large parts of North America are losing material from the underside of their crust, the researchers said. "A very broad range is experiencing some thinning," study lead author Junlin Hua, a geoscientist who conducted the research during a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin, said in a statement. "Luckily, we also got the new idea about what drives this thinning," said Hua, now a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China. The researchers found that the drips result from the downward dragging force of a chunk of oceanic crust that broke off from an ancient tectonic plate called the Farallon plate. The Farallon plate and the North American plate once formed a subduction zone along the continent's west coast, with the former sliding beneath the latter and recycling its material into the mantle. The Farallon plate splintered due to the advance of the Pacific plate roughly 20 million years ago, and remnant slabs subducted beneath the North American plate slowly drifted off. One of these slabs currently straddles the boundary between the mantle transition zone and the lower mantle roughly 410 miles (660 km) beneath the Midwest. Dubbed the "Farallon slab" and first imaged in the 1990s, this piece of oceanic crust is responsible for a process known as "cratonic thinning," according to the new study, which was published March 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience. Cratonic thinning refers to the wearing away of cratons, which are regions of Earth's continental crust and upper mantle that have mostly remained intact for billions of years. Despite their stability, cratons can undergo changes, but this has never been observed in action due to the huge geologic time scales involved, according to the study. Now, for the first time, researchers have documented cratonic thinning as it occurs. The discovery was possible thanks to a wider project led by Hua to map what lies beneath North America using a high-resolution seismic imaging technique called "full-waveform inversion." This technique uses different types of seismic waves to extract all the available information about physical parameters underground. RELATED STORIES: — Earth's layers: Exploring our planet inside and out — Scientists accidentally discover Earth's inner core is less solid than expected — Scientists discover 'sunken worlds' hidden deep within Earth's mantle that shouldn't be there "This sort of thing is important if we want to understand how a planet has evolved over a long time," study co-author Thorsten Becker, a distinguished chair in geophysics at UT Austin, said in the statement. "Because of the use of this full-waveform method, we have a better representation of that important zone between the deep mantle and the shallower lithosphere [crust and upper mantle]." To test their results, the researchers simulated the impact of the Farallon slab on the craton above using a computer model. A dripping area formed when the slab was present, but it disappeared when the slab was absent, confirming that — theoretically, at least — a sunken slab can drag rocks across a large area down into Earth's interior. Dripping beneath the Midwest won't lead to changes at the surface anytime soon, the researchers said, adding that it may even stop as the Farallon slab sinks deeper into the lower mantle and its influence over the craton wanes. The findings could help researchers piece together the enormous puzzle of how Earth came to look the way it does today. "It helps us understand how do you make continents, how do you break them, and how do you recycle them," Becker said. Originally published on
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A lost chunk of ancient continent is sucking bits of North America into Earth's mantle
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An ancient slab of Earth's crust buried deep beneath the Midwest is sucking huge swatches of present-day's North American crust down into the mantle, researchers say. The slab's pull has created giant "drips" that hang from the underside of the continent down to about 400 miles (640 kilometers) deep inside the mantle, according to a new study. These drips are located beneath an area spanning from Michigan to Nebraska and Alabama, but their presence appears to be impacting the entire continent. The dripping area looks like a large funnel, with rocks from across North America being pulled toward it horizontally before getting sucked down. As a result, large parts of North America are losing material from the underside of their crust, the researchers said. "A very broad range is experiencing some thinning," study lead author Junlin Hua, a geoscientist who conducted the research during a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin, said in a statement. "Luckily, we also got the new idea about what drives this thinning," said Hua, now a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China. Related: Earth's crust is peeling away under California The researchers found that the drips result from the downward dragging force of a chunk of oceanic crust that broke off from an ancient tectonic plate called the Farallon plate. The Farallon plate and the North American plate once formed a subduction zone along the continent's west coast, with the former sliding beneath the latter and recycling its material into the mantle. The Farallon plate splintered due to the advance of the Pacific plate roughly 20 million years ago, and remnant slabs subducted beneath the North American plate slowly drifted off. One of these slabs currently straddles the boundary between the mantle transition zone and the lower mantle roughly 410 miles (660 km) beneath the Midwest. Dubbed the "Farallon slab" and first imaged in the 1990s, this piece of oceanic crust is responsible for a process known as "cratonic thinning," according to the new study, which was published March 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience. Cratonic thinning refers to the wearing away of cratons, which are regions of Earth's continental crust and upper mantle that have mostly remained intact for billions of years. Despite their stability, cratons can undergo changes, but this has never been observed in action due to the huge geologic time scales involved, according to the study. Now, for the first time, researchers have documented cratonic thinning as it occurs. The discovery was possible thanks to a wider project led by Hua to map what lies beneath North America using a high-resolution seismic imaging technique called "full-waveform inversion." This technique uses different types of seismic waves to extract all the available information about physical parameters underground. "This sort of thing is important if we want to understand how a planet has evolved over a long time," study co-author Thorsten Becker, a distinguished chair in geophysics at UT Austin, said in the statement. "Because of the use of this full-waveform method, we have a better representation of that important zone between the deep mantle and the shallower lithosphere [crust and upper mantle]." RELATED STORIES —Scientists discover 'sunken worlds' hidden deep within Earth's mantle that shouldn't be there —Earth's crust may be building mountains by dripping into the mantle —Gargantuan waves in Earth's mantle may make continents rise, new study finds To test their results, the researchers simulated the impact of the Farallon slab on the craton above using a computer model. A dripping area formed when the slab was present, but it disappeared when the slab was absent, confirming that — theoretically, at least — a sunken slab can drag rocks across a large area down into Earth's interior. Dripping beneath the Midwest won't lead to changes at the surface anytime soon, the researchers said, adding that it may even stop as the Farallon slab sinks deeper into the lower mantle and its influence over the craton wanes. The findings could help researchers piece together the enormous puzzle of how Earth came to look the way it does today. "It helps us understand how do you make continents, how do you break them, and how do you recycle them," Becker said.
