Vaccines on horizon for some oral cancers

The researchers delving into the causes of oral and neck cancers have found some tumors are HPV positive. This means that for one group of oral cancer sufferers, the Virus that causes Cervical cancer also causes oral cancer. This is leading researchers to investigate vaccinating young men and women with the new Gardasil vaccine. More research is needed, and oral cancers are still being caused by smoking tobacco, marijuana and drinking alcohol. No vaccine can stop those risk factors.

Read the full article here.

Short week

Well, it has been a short week here on campus. I think a lot of people thought yesterday was the last day of the week. The library has several hour chunks with just a few people here. But Fridays are even more relaxed.

Unless you have an assignment due. Then the stress kicks in and the fact that all the computers were open for our hour yesterday means nothing if you can't get on one right now and where is your pencil and how can I type with this thing on my finger and.......

Are you experiencing this kind of stress?

It may surprise you that not all stress is bad. Stress is what motivates us to get up and do something different. It has kept us alive through many generations and will continue to do so if we use it productively. To start with, read this newsweek article about the benefits of stress. Take a deep breath and get going on your assignment.

Happy Valentine's Day

There are lots of local events this weekends, including the chocolate festival in Brookings.

Several Restaurants are having Valentine's buffets, dinners and so forth.

Plus tomorrow is your last day to get your donuts and cookies from Glen's Bakery which is closing.

If you missed the pool last weekend, maybe you should take your sweetheart swimming this weekend. I hear it is lovely.

Spring 2009 Late Starting Classes

The following are the Spring 2009 Late Starting Classes. You can register for any of them right now on webadvisor. A great way to get a few more credits to make up for that class you couldn't get into.

ART-4-D3353 (023353) Art Appreciation 3.0

starts: 2/17/09

BT-83-D2997 (022997) Internet & E-Mail Skills 0.50

starts: 3/23/09

GUID-47-D3354 (023354) Leadership Development 2.0

starts: 02/17/09

GUID-8-D2528 (022528) Career Planning 2.0

starts: 02/26/09

PE-15-D3164 (023164) Women's Self Defense 1.0

03/27/09-03/29/09

SOC-10-D3357 (023357) Family & Intimate Rltnships Waitlisted 3.0

starts: 02/17/09

Weekend Plans

If you don't have weekend plans yet, the pool is opening this Saturday at noon. The Fred Endert Municipal pool, located downtown, on Front Street, will have adult lap swim in the morning from 8 am to 10am. there will be kids open swim, but remember to get a ticket from a local radio station or from Chetco Federal Credit Union.

2009: International Year of Astronomy

The United Nations Educational arm and the International Astronomical Union have gotten together to declare 2009 the International Year of Astronomy. This comes 400 years after Galileo first used a telescope to get a better view of the night sky.

Astronomers continue to look deeper and more broadly than ever before. To the point that in 2006, Astronomers decided that the baby planet of our solar system: Pluto, is not really a planet. OK, they are calling it a dwarf planet and the decision of astronomers to define planets the way they did has also added about two other dwarf planets to our solar system. All those songs you learned in Elementary school to memorize the planets will now need to be rewritten.

They have discovered Black Holes and anti-black holes (called white holes, bright areas intent on expelling things away instead of attracting them in). Also: what comes first, the black hole or the galaxy associated with it? Recent astronomers think it was the black hole itself. They have found that nearby galaxies are uniformly 700 times as large as the black hole in their center. But of course much of this in based on partially tested theories and much work will still need to be done before the origins of black holes can be fully explained.

What things will be discovered this year?

Freedoms Today and Yesterday

We just received the Inauguration edition of Newsweek Magazine, featuring the perspectives and thoughts of more than 25 historians, writers, thinkers and dreamers about the recent Presidential Inauguration and its affect on the country. John Meacham recalled the words of Frankin D. Roosevelt's 1941 state of the Union Address where he mentioned four of the many freedoms worth fighting for: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Meacham's article also brought up the point that "freedom is fluid" meaning it is always changing and needing redefinition. For instance, the founding fathers did not mention want or fear perhaps in part because there was no expectation of freedom from those things. But by the time of Roosevelt, expectations had changed. Just as now, we could add to that list freedom from discrimination, freedom from interference.

What freedoms do you think are new in our culture and which ones are no longer applicable? What does freedom mean to you?