In 2008 we ran a grassroots campaign powered by hardworking Kansans. Many of you helped us knock on doors, put up signs, and talk to your neighbors about the need for fiscal responsibility in Washington. Well, we’re doing the same thing again this year and I wanted to be the first to invite you to the opening of our campaign headquarters in Topeka! (more…)
Authorities say the boyish-looking 22-year-old posed as a 16-year-old sophomore phenom to lead the Permian High School basketball team to the state playoffs. He was jailed on fraud charges, and the rabidly competitive West Texas high school that inspired the movie “Friday Night Lights” may have to forfeit its season.
(Reuters) – HTC Corp fired back on Wednesday in its legal battle with Apple Inc, asking the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban sales of iPhones, iPads and iPods in the United States.
(Reuters) – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives will meet with employees to discuss privacy practices of the world’s largest social networking website on Thursday, as criticism grows about the way it treats its 400 million users’ personal information.
(CNSNews.com) – The Food and Drug Administration finds it necessary to warn the American public that swallowing an over-the-counter medication meant to be rubbed on the skin can have harmful effects.
The FDA says it has received reports of serious side effects — including unconsciousness, hallucinations, and confusion — in people who “mistakenly” swallowed Benadryl Extra Strength Itch Stopping Gel.
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Mozilla yesterday launched a tool that lets users of rival browsers, including Internet Explorer (IE), Chrome, Safari and Opera, determine whether important add-ons may be vulnerable to attack.
The Web-based tool — an extension of plug-in checking that Mozilla began adding to Firefox 3 last year — was originally slated for a late March debut, but Mozilla delayed its release in order to beef up the list of plug-ins the service scans.
Contact: Mary Jane Dunlap, University Relations, (785) 864-8853, mjdunlap@ku.edu
Hometown: Meriden
Graduation stories: Rare cancer won’t stop Jessica Roark from earning two degrees
http://www.news.ku.edu/2010/may/13/roark.shtml
LAWRENCE – Time creeps by at a petty pace for some graduates – waiting to hear about a job application or graduate school.
Not so for Jessica Roark, who was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer during her sophomore year at the University of Kansas. On Sunday, May 16, Roark will complete a second degree at KU. She plans to enter graduate school in ecological sciences and engineering at Purdue University next fall.
Time moves at warp speed for the young scientist from Meriden. In 2006, Roark was whisked into the nonsensical, unforgiving world of cancer and has been freefalling ever since.
The swelling around her right eye didn’t make sense.
The diagnosis of adenoid cystic carcinoma didn’t make sense.
The onslaught of medical terms didn’t make sense.
The incredible treatment options didn’t make sense.
What made sense was taking action.
Roark, who had been living independently since graduating from Jefferson West High School, has used her wits to find options to halt a rare and aggressive cancer and move on. Her dream is to be a scientist who gathers information to help maintain a safe and clean environment to protect human health.
In spring 2007, surgeons removed a tumor and her right eye.
Since then, Roark has constantly juggled course work with chemotherapy and radiation treatments and checkups.
Adenoid cystic carcinoma typically occurs in salivary glands but can occur anywhere in the body and has a high propensity for recurrence. Little research is focused on this cancer. Science has not found any strong genetic or environmental risk factors for adenoid cystic carcinoma.
In fall 2007, Roark returned to campus, adjusting to single-eye vision and forging ahead to maintain her scholarships and graduate with degrees in environmental studies and civil engineering. She also worked part-time in KU’s Office of Environment, Health and Safety. In summer 2008, she completed an internship with a Kansas City-area engineering consulting firm and then traveled to China for a semester abroad.
Last spring, Roark finished a degree in environmental studies while undergoing a second round of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. She set aside her plans to work with the restoration of Potter Lake on campus. Instead, she focused on completing as much course work as possible by computer while at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She spent the summer working on a river restoration project as a recipient of $3,500 stipend from the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.
This fall, Roark returned to campus to finish a second degree in civil engineering. In December, through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, she attended the American Geophysical Union annual conference in San Francisco.
As the spring 2010 semester began in January, she was making plans to undergo a radical surgery for a new tumor along the right side of her jaw. The surgery was Feb. 11 in Houston.
“I spent Valentine’s Day in the hospital,” she said.
To remove the tumor, nerve endings in her facial muscles were snipped, reducing her full smile to half. Muscle tissue from a leg was transplanted to her face to restore the nerve endings with therapy.
In April, she elected to undergo yet another round of radiation treatments, this time at the University of Iowa.
When surgery prevented her from participating in a group project in a waste water treatment class her civil engineering degree this semester, Roark worked with Edward Peltier, assistant professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, to write a research paper.
She chose to look at the research on the use of nanomaterials to disinfect or filter water. Roark plans to make nanomaterials the focus of her graduate research.
She has applied for an NSF fellowship, and her career plans keep her going but the freefall is rougher.
“Mentally it’s been more difficult,” she says comparing this third recurrence to the first and second rounds of surgeries and treatments she has endured in the past three years.
“I think about the prognosis, about death. I’m always thinking about my future. Everyday is a struggle.”
On the worst days, she gets out of bed and keeps appointments for treatment.
“I might not be too productive, but I at least shower and eat, no matter how much I want to stay in bed.”
On better days, Roark gets through each day “thinking I have a purpose.”
She is the daughter of John and Lori Roark of Meriden and Charlena Eckert of North Kansas City, Mo.
To learn more about the Adenoid Cycstic Carcinoma Research Foundation, visit www.accrf.org.
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The U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire looks largely the same way it has for months, with two of the three top Republican candidates holding double-digit leads over Democratic hopeful Paul Hodes.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in New Hampshire shows former state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte at 50% for the second month in a row, with Hodes earning 38% support. Three percent (3%) favor some other candidate, and nine percent(9%) are undecided.
Businessman Bill Binnie chalks up 49% support, same as in April, versus 37% for Hodes, a U.S. congressman since 2007. Six percent (6%) like another candidate, while eight percent (8%) are undecided.
Prior to last month, support for Ayotte, long viewed as the front-runner on the GOP side, has remained in the narrow range of 46% to 49% in surveys stretching back to last September. In match-ups with her in that time period, Hodes has been unable to break out of the 30s.
But 47% oppose so-called “open carry” laws that would allow citizens to openly wear their guns in public. Forty-one percent (41%) favor laws. Several states are currently wrestling with this issue.
In households with a gun owner, support for “open carry” laws rises to 57%. In households where no gun is present, 62% oppose them. Similarly, 55% of those in non-gun-owning households are concerned about their safety around those who have legal permits to carry concealed weapons. Just 27% of those who have a gun owner in their household express similar concern.
But this is America. So the fearless leader willing to be honest with voters, to part with what cannot be paid for, is actually not dashing, nor is he eloquent. He is an overweight Bruce Springsteen devotee, a former prosecutor with a remaining trace of a Turnpike accent who is intent on rescuing New Jersey. If he succeeds, Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) could become a major political force in the years to come, whether he likes it or not.
Or that’s how it is beginning to feel two months after Jackson – which has 1,700 people, no village, no grocery store or place to buy gasoline, no church, no school, two restaurants and maybe a few Spanish-speaking farm workers – decided it needed a law requiring that all town business be conducted in English.
WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John Kerry ratcheted up the fight to pass legislation to combat global warming on Wednesday, unveiling a bill as the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster complicates the measure’s already difficult prospects this year.
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“That means women earned 40 percent more than men in 2009,” says Alexis Leondis of Bloomberg.
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FATIMA, Portugal (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday called abortion and same-sex marriage some of the most “insidious and dangerous” threats facing the world today, asserting key church teachings as he tried to move beyond the clerical abuse scandal.
