Multimedia Reporting (Fred-Musser)

As flu season begins, KU students should start thinking about protecting themselves because the campus brings together thousands of students from all over the world, and group housing creates an even greater chance of getting sick.

Watkins Memorial Health Center reported that Lawrence typically sees its first cases of influenza in December, after students have returned from Thanksgiving Break. The season reaches its peak in February, after students have returned from Winter Break and had a chance to spread germs around.

The influenza virus is spread through the air by droplets created when a person who has the flu coughs or sneezes and can also be transmitted through saliva. The best way to prevent getting the flu would be for a student to be completely isolated from anyone who might be sick. Unfortunately, that is not a possibility on campus. Patty Quinlan, supervisor of nursing at Watkins, said the single best way to protect against the flu if a student does come into contact with a sick person is to get a flu vaccination. Two types of the flu vaccine are offered at Watkins at discounted rates.

But some students like Jacob Dysart aren’t planning to be vaccinated.

“I’m think it’s pretty hyped up,” Dysart, Overland Park senior, said. “I haven’t been sick in years and I’ve never had a flu shot.”

Quinlan said that being part of a healthy, young age group can give students a false sense of security.

“It’s a Russian roulette situation,” she said. “Students might not get sick, but if they do they can miss five to seven days of class. You have to ask yourself if it’s worth it.”

Quinlan also said that students could still play host to the influenza virus and pass it on to others, even if they had no physical symptoms.

According to the Center for Disease Control, flu symptoms include fever, headache, dry cough, sore throat, muscle and body aches, runny or stuffy nose and extreme tiredness.

“Usually the flu without the flu vaccine will put you on your back for three to five days,” Quinlan said. “The body aches can be so severe that you can’t make it to class.”

Amanda Mai, Hutchinson senior, changed her mind about the flu shot after she was so sick that she missed three days of school last year.

“I felt like I was going to die,” she said. “And there was nothing I could do except take Tylenol and wait.”

The flu is caused by the influenza virus, so antibiotics are not effective. Quinlan said all students could do is take acetaminophen to reduce fever, drink plenty of fluids and let the virus run its course.

Antiviral medications, such as Tamiflu, are also an option if taken within the first 48 hours of the onset of flu symptoms. Tamiflu is a relatively new medication that attacks the influenza virus rather than treating its symptoms. It is available in both pill and liquid form, but a doctor’s prescription is required, Quinlan said.

Mai said she planned to get a vaccination this year so that she doesn’t get sick again.

Each year, a new vaccine recipe is created to counteract the strains of the influenza virus that is predicted to be the most contagious. About 1,000 Kansans die from the flu or flu-related complications every year, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Watkins offers students two types of influenza vaccination: the flu shot and the nasal-spray flu vaccine.

The flu shot costs $15 and contains inactive strains of the influenza virus so the shot can’t cause people to get the flu, Quinlan said. It is delivered through a shot to the arm. It is an inter-muscular shot, so a possible side-effect is tenderness of the arm for a few days. It can be administered to people 9-years-old or older.

The nasal spray costs $28 contains a live but weakened strains of the influenza virus. It can be given to people ages 5 to 49-years-old. Quinlan said this vaccine is slightly more effective but is not approved for everyone, so students should check with a medical professional before getting the spray.

Both options are available by appointment. It takes about two weeks for the antibodies the vaccine creates to fight the virus to develop in the body.

The vaccines are 70 to 90 percent effective at preventing the flu depending on how closely the strain of virus in the vaccine matched the strain that is circulating, according to the CDC. It is impossible to get the flu from the flu shot or the LAIV.

“Even if you get the flu and had the vaccine, it’s a milder form and you will miss less class,” Quinlan said.

Other measures students can take to protect themselves include careful hand washing and not sharing food or drink or kissing a person who has influenza. Students with healthy eating, sleeping and exercise habits are also less likely to get the flu because the body is better prepared to fight the virus.

Quinlan also said Watkins has an emergency plan in place in case there is an outbreak of an exotic strain of flu.

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The owners of Free State Glass, a longtime Lawrence business, are combining their desires to be creative with their desires to turn a profit in a competitive, low-earning industry by designing and creating custom lighting and chandeliers. In addition to selling $50 paperweights, they’re designing light fixtures that cost up to $20,000.

Dick Rector and Jim Slough met in a glassblowing class in the design department at the University of Kansas. In the summer of 1984, Slough found a property the two could rent for $150 per month to practice their craft, and what was supposed to be just a summer hobby turned into a business that’s been open for 21 years.

“It’s been a long summer,” Rector said.

He and Slough do most of the glass blowing themselves with help from the various assistants they’ve had over the years.

But things have changed since the pair first went into business.

The 2004 edition of the “Encyclopedia of American Industries” reported that the pressed and blown glass industry experienced low profit margins and high competition in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and profits in the industry are expected to continue to decline according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Rector said there has definitely been in increase in the number of artisans selling hand-blown glass. When they first went into business, Rector and Slough used to go to art shows all over the country. Today the pair rarely travels because they say there are too many vendors offering similar pieces.

“There aren’t a lot of glassblowers in Kansas, but there are a lot in other parts of the country now,” Zoe Beach, who represents artists at the Phoenix Gallery, said.

Slough and Rector have been able to keep their shop open for so long because they have other sources of income. Both own several rental properties in the Lawrence area.

“It’s an expensive art and we make enough to cover the bills,” Rector said.

The bills are not small. The shop has two ovens, called glory holes, which must be heated to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours per day and nine months out of the year. A third oven, a furnace used for melting glass, has to be kept even hotter.

“We still get shut-off notices from the utility companies sometimes,” Slough said. “But we’re still here.”

“We’ve made everything in this shop including the equipment,” Rector said. “That helps. You pretty much have to in this business.”

Modern glory holes, which are about half the size of the ones Free State Glass’ owners built, cost thousands of dollars.

Rector said it is difficult to sustain a business by selling paperweights, Christmas tree ornaments, glassware, bowls and vases. All of these items are sold out of their shop at 307 E. 9th St., and selected pieces are shown at the Phoenix Gallery at 919 Massachusetts St. and in galleries in Kansas City and Oregon.

“That’s the kind of stuff people expect you to make,” Rector said. “It’s not really what I’m interested in doing anymore.”

Last year Rector got the chance to try something new. He was commissioned by Rud and Ann Turnbull, who teach in the special education department at KU. The couple had purchased a few small pieces from the Phoenix Gallery and wanted Rector to create lighting for their new space in the Hobbs Taylor Lofts at 750 New Hampshire.

Rector designed three chandeliers for the space. Each has seven bowls of glass that he, Slough and their assistant, Peter “Pedro” Sander, made with specific colors. Rector mounted the bowls onto metal frames that he also made and installed three casings for light bulbs in each chandelier.

The project took more than six months to complete, but the chandeliers were in place when the Turnbulls moved into their new home in December 2005.

“I don’t want to say that these are the talk of the town,” Rud Turnbull said, “but they are. We show them off to everyone.”

Ann Turnbull noted that the chandeliers are more than just nice to look at. “They are a source of inspiration and energy to us in terms of their vibrancy, creativity, and connectivity,” she said.

Rector also designed two pendant lights and four wall sconces for the loft.

Rector said that it depends on the project, but most large-scale lighting pieces cost between $8,000 and $20,000.

This year Rector completed another glass and metal lighting installment for a property in Kansas City and he said he has been contacted by other architects and homeowners.

Sander, who until recently was involved with lampworking, said people’s attitudes about glass blowing are different today.

“It’s changing from a high-end craft into a well-respected art form,” he said.

Rector said he hopes to explore glass sculpture in addition to his lighting projects.

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When Steve Hasiotis visited the Jurassic Morrison Formation at the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming he discovered a rare fossil: skin.

The idea for a research project came to him in 1999, when Hasiotis and his field assistant, Row Manuel, discovered a skin impression inside of a fossilized dinosaur track. Hasiotis said the skin impression was made by a sauropod dinosaur.

Sauropods are large plant-eating dinosaurs like Diplodocus and Apatosaurus, once known as Brontosaurus. Hasiotis said these dinosaurs had small, long skinny necks, large bodies and feet, and long skinny tails.

This fossil, which is of the skin near the dinosaur’s toes, is the second of its kind to ever be discovered in North America. The only other known piece of fossilized dinosaur skin from Utah that is of the bottom of a dinosaur’s foot, Hasiotis said.

“Impressions of skin in general are almost impossible to find,” Hasiotis said. “You need the right conditions to preserve the impression.”

When an animal steps in sediment, there must be the right texture, consistency and moisture to make impressions, he said.

Hasiotis brought the rare fossil with him when he came to teach at the University of Kansas in 2001 and waited for a graduate student to share his discoveries with. That student was Brian Platt.

Platt and Hasiotis studied the polygonal-shaped pattern of the skin and noted that it was similar to the skin of an elephant. Hasiotis said that elephants are the living creatures closest to what sauropods would have behaved like in terms of making tracks. With Hasiotis as his advisor, Platt began a study at the Topeka Zoo.

Platt said that it is almost impossible to determine the properties of a sedimentary rock, but the formation of modern elephant footprints could reveal clues about the ancient world.

He dug a pit in the elephant yard, filled it with sand and hosed it down. Engineers from Topeka measured the density and moisture of the sand before zoo workers lured the elephants through the sand with treats. Platt then measured the depths of the tracks and made plaster casts of them to compare to the dinosaur fossil. He was testing to see the effect of changing the amount of water, but will test other variables in the future.

“If I can find a relationship between the properties then I can use the depths of fossil footprints, especially dinosaur footprints like the ones I studied for my Masters, to calculate the properties of ancient sediments and soils before they turned into rock,” Platt said.

Knowing the properties of ancient sediments and soils would allow scientists to create a groundwater profile, which would be used to reconstruct ancient climates, Hasiotis said.

Hasiotis said that most researchers believe that the ancient climate the dinosaurs lived in was either dry, or that it was wet and tropical. The evidence he has found reveals something different.

“The reality of our research, which focuses not only on footprints, is that the climate was Tropical Wet-Dry like the African Serengeti,” he said. The Tropical Wet-Dry climate has periods of rain and periods of drought that influence animal migration, he said. The Serengeti Plains and savannas of Africa are the best examples of this type of climate.

Hasiotis said it is important to know what ancient climates were like because it helps scientists study climactic change. He said the world’s climate is warming right now and likely to change in the next 50 to 100 years.

“The geological record teaches us how life adapts to or is driven to extinction by climactic change,” he said. “We can learn how and what animals can survive.”

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