Brown and White Vol. 131 no. 7

              The Brown and White Vol. 131 No. 7
Friday, September 30, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
By REBECCA WILKIN
Deputy News Editor
Kate Morrell/B&W Staff
Jonathan Fura, ’17G, prepares a solution to go into the rotary evaporator in professor Marco Pires’ lab on Sept. 23 at the Seeley G. Mudd
Building. Fura is one of four graduate students working in Pires’ lab, along with four undergraduate students from Lehigh.
Professor, students developing superbug treatment
University, Lehigh reflects on presidential debate
students push
to move parties
on campus
In May, a Pennsylvania woman
walked into a clinic with a simple
urinary tract infection, only to find
she was the first U.S. citizen to con-tract
a strain of bacteria resistant to
all antibiotics.
The woman had contracted a
superbug.
Superbugs are estimated to cause
700,000 deaths around the globe each
year, but by the year 2050, superbugs
could kill up to 10 million people
per year worldwide, according to a
report commissioned by the British
government in 2014. That amounts
to more than those killed by cancer
every year. Researchers are looking
for new methods to fight these deadly
superbugs.
Marco Pires, an assistant chem-istry
professor at Lehigh, may have
found an answer. Pires and his team
of student researchers are working
on a method that would allow the
immune system to trick and attack
the resistant bacteria. Similar immu-notherapy
approaches have been
effective in fighting cancer.
“The hope is that we have at least
a fraction of the success (researchers
are) having on the cancer side,” Pires
said.
Julia Nelson, ’18, who has worked
in Pires’ lab for two years, explained
how superbugs become resistant to
antibiotics.
Antibiotics are designed to kill
certain strains of bacteria, Nelson
said. Though the drugs are typically
efficient in killing these bacteria, a
few mutated microbes will often sur-vive
the effects of the antibiotic. The
mutated bacteria will then reproduce
and the antibiotic will lose its effec-tiveness
over time.
The overuse of antibiotics is
enhancing these drug-resistant bugs.
“We’ve reached a point where there
are some bacteria that are just resis-tant
to all known antibiotics,” Nelson
said.
By CHRISTOPHER GAETANO
B&W Staff
Candidates Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump clashed during
Monday night’s first presidential
debate of the 2016 election.
Before the debate, Lehigh’s
departments of political science and
international relations hosted an
event in Maginnes Hall to inform
students about the election and pos-sible
implications of the policies of
each candidate.
“We thought it would be a good
opportunity to get our faculty and
students together outside of the
classroom to talk about issues that
are germane to what we teach in
class, (and also) germane to being a
good citizen,” said Saladin Ambar,
the chair and associate professor
of the political science department,
who hosted the event.
A panel of political science and
international relations professors
informed both domestic and inter-national
students about the elector-al
system.
“The goals of the panel are to pro-vide
the students with interest, and
what to watch (for) in the debate,”
said Dinissa Duvanova, an assistant
professor of international relations.
A main focus of the event was to
bring students and faculty together
so students could share their opin-ions
and professors could provide
insight in their areas of expertise.
A question-and-answer session took
place after the panel to promote stu-dent
involvement.
Prior to the screening, Ambar
informed students about the elector-al
system and how voting works in
See SUPERBUG Page 3
Ashley Quidolit/B&W Staff
From left: Department chair Saladin Ambar, professor Anthony
DiMaggio, professor Dinissa Duvanova, professor Arman Grigoryan
and professor Vera Fennell sit on a panel hosted by the political
science and international relations departments Monday in
Maginnes Hall. The panel focused on the presidential debate and
provided further insight on the candidates.
By KATIE MORRIS
B&W Staff
This semester, fraternities are
hosting “epic party weekends” on the
Hill in an effort to draw more atten-tion
to on-campus parties.
“Epic party weekends” consist of
registered parties, which are parties
approved by the Lehigh administra-tion.
Event staff are present at the
registered parties to monitor stu-dents’
behavior and alcohol consump-tion.
On Sept. 17, Kappa Alpha, Alpha
Tau Omega and Theta Chi fraterni-ties
hosted registered parties, and
over 1,400 combined students attend-ed
the parties, said Interfraternity
See PARTIES Page 3 See DEBATE Page 4