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Auburn University

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Good morning! Here's today's summary of news coverage of Auburn University.
NOTE: Any errors in text are due to formatting by the publication.

Total Clips: 3

Headline		Date	Outlet
	Gameday changes get good marks from AU officials	09/06/2006	Opelika-Auburn News
	Not an Urban Legend	09/06/2006	Advance for Imaging and Radiation Therapy Professionals
	New Exhibit Brings AU's Rural Studio Home	09/06/2006	WRBL-TV


Gameday changes get good marks from AU officials 09/06/2006 Opelika-Auburn News Amy Weaver		Return to Top
Changes made by Auburn University to improve the gameday experience passed their first test Saturday. Although some fans feared installing safety measures to Tiger Walk would ruin the annual pre-game tradition, Executive Associate Athletic Director Tim Jackson said the metal barricades placed along Donahue Drive did not bother fans or athletes. "I think it worked out good for everybody," he said. "Some fans liked it better." The barricades separate fans from players, but it also creates a definitive path for fans to line and the team to walk along. "I think it was a great success," Jackson said. No incidents or accidents were reported by the athletic department or Tiger Transit, but the Auburn Police Division logged seven arrests for public drunkenness and eight DUI arrests throughout the holiday weekend. There were even two shoplifting incidents where steaks and beer were taken. Transit Dave George, director of parking and transit services, would give Tiger Transit an "A" for its ability to transport nearly 16,000 passengers to and from Jordan-Hare Saturday. Getting people to the stadium is always easier because buses are transporting people for four hours before kickoff. Getting them back to their cars afterward poses a challenge as thousands of fans want to ride the buses at once. George noted that if Tiger Transit were to transport 8,000 people right away it would take 187 buses. With 35 buses in operation, he reported the stadium was nearly cleared about 70 minutes after the game. "That's pretty good," he said. During the week, Tiger Transit operates 38 buses and can attract 12,000 to 15,000 students each day. "We ran everything we could run," he said Traffic on Samford Avenue made it difficult for buses to leave campus, but overall, for the first football game of the season, the system ran smooth, George said. "The key (for passengers) is to be patient," he said. "Delays are expected when you are trying to move that many people from there." "We did the best we could with what we had." Traffic Jeff Steele, the associate athletic director for facilities and operations, wouldn't give the new traffic plan an "A" this week. However, he will after some minor adjustments are made prior to the next home game, Sept. 16, so traffic flow will be even smoother. Sixty directional arrow signs and 350 cones helped guide drivers around campus without much delay. Changes to some routes were "dramatically improved," according to Steele, while others need more adjustment. The intersection of Samford and Wire Road was the main trouble spot Saturday due to a breakdown in communication with officers patrolling the area. "We went through it for the first time, during the worst time (a night game)," he said. "It can only get better from here." A little more than two hours lapsed between the end of the game and when cones were removed from roadways. "We think that was a big plus," he said.
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Not an Urban Legend 09/06/2006 Advance for Imaging and Radiation Therapy Professionals Jill Hoffman		Return to Top
John Hathcock of AU's College of Veterinary Medicine is a source for this story. They may not admit it, but some physicians around the country are asking veterinary facilities to image their morbidly obese patients. They are inquiring about airlifting out-of-state patients and even transferring them directly to animal hospitals with emergency personnel. Some hotly dismiss such scenarios as myths, but William Blevins, DVM, MS, knows otherwise. The professor of diagnostic imaging at Purdue University's Veterinary Teaching Hospital in West Lafayette, Ind., received a call a few years ago from a local hospital alerting him that a patient was on the way for imaging. "Yes, already in the ambulance and on the way," says Dr. Blevins, who promptly sent the patient back. He says the legal ramifications of imaging people at vet centers "are so complicated that we simply cannot become involved." Desperately seeking imaging Dr. Blevins isn't alone. ADVANCE found 15 veterinary doctors around the country who get between a few calls a year to three a month to image morbidly obese people. (Sixty-six percent of adults are overweight or obese, and 6 million adults are morbidly obese—100 pounds overweight, according to the 2003 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and American Society for Bariatric Surgery.) "They are wanting to do the very best for their patients and are desperate to image these large patients," says John Hathcock, DVM, MS, DACVR, radiology section head of Auburn University's College of Veterinary Medicine in Auburn, Ala. However, although some veterinary facilities have imaging tables that support 2,500-pound animals, their gantry bores may not exceed 70 cm—similar in size to those in hospitals. And unlike imaging equipment for people, veterinary imaging devices do not require U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. Alexia McKnight, DVM, DACVR, and veterinary radiologist at University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center for large animals in Kennett Square, Pa., hears growing frustration and even anger in the medical community as it struggles to provide imaging services for a physically larger patient population. "I remember specifically this one ornery physician was insisting that we've [imaged patients] in the past and that we need to do this for his patient," she says. While Dr. McKnight's requests are generally from regional clinicians, Mauricio Solano, MV, DACVR, assistant professor of radiology at Tufts University's Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Mass., has received inquiries from hospital physicians in Maryland and Ohio asking to airlift their patients to his New England veterinary school. It's uncertain who these referring doctors are. Those making the calls are not revealing much about themselves, and the rest of the medical community seems out of the loop or understandably skeptical. Indeed, 10 physicians and health care professionals on ADVANCE's editorial board had never heard of patients being referred to veterinary facilities. Several suspected the notion was urban legend, while one health care administrator called the question "weird." Recently, the media has grabbed onto the story. In a January article on the growing need for specialized care for obese patients, The Washington Post mentioned a family practitioner in Northern Virginia who called veterinary schools earlier in his career to help an obese man.1 And an infamous New York Post story in May 2005 tells of a woman who claims a Brooklyn hospital physician referred her to a local zoo for an MRI.2 Even primetime television is in on the action. The NBC comedy Scrubs aired an episode in April in which physicians referred Herbie, a morbidly obese patient, to the zoo for imaging because he didn't fit in the hospital's MRI machine. Imaging examples Though most animal facilities will not image people because of liability, some have done so. At Auburn University's College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Hathcock recalls three patients who were imaged on the school's MR and computed tomography (CT) machines: a 320-pound football player with a bad back, a 500-pound patient experiencing pelvic pain, and a geriatric power-lifter with back pain. The patient with pelvic problems was referred by an emergency room physician on Christmas day. Dr. Hathcock suspects radiologic technologists at the hospital where he was imaged were not well-trained or lacked experience with large patients. "Our techs are accustomed to big body parts—and were able to get some images," says Dr. Hathcock. "I do not know if they were good enough for him, as [the physician] never called back one way or another. So much for a Merry Christmas." Years ago, Oklahoma State University's Center for Veterinary Health Sciences in Stillwater imaged a patient suffering from chronic biliary obstruction on a now-defunct piece of equipment. "I thought the image looked awful, but the MD said he was satisfied with the results, thanked us and left," says Robert Bahr, DVM, DACVR, associate professor of veterinary radiology at the center. The Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg, Va., has imaged human cadavers for researchers. Ohio State University's animal hospital director in Columbus is open to human imaging if liability waivers are signed and a medical team performs the procedure. Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine in Fort Collins, Colo., is seeking approval for human MRIs for research, although administrators are proceeding cautiously, says Susan Kraft, DVM, PhD, DACVR, associate professor of radiology at the college. Withstanding legal ramifications, some veterinary doctors are philosophically opposed to using their equipment for people. "I think it is degrading to ask a human to lie on a horse table, not to mention any liability issues," says Sue Newell, DVM, MS, DACVR, veterinary radiologist at Ocean State Veterinary Specialists in East Greenwich, R.I. One patient's experience Lynn McAfee, director of the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination advocacy group in Mt. Marion, N.Y., dropped from 520 pounds to under 400 over the last several years. The Stowe, Pa., resident, who sees a doctor monthly for everything from pulmonary hypertension to sleep apnea to arthritis and a tumor in her heart, says she now fits into one local CT machine. But that wasn't always the case. In the late 1990s, she was referred to a local veterinary hospital for imaging because she could not fit into the equipment at nearby hospitals. Though the animal facility would not image her, she says a surgeon at a hospital agreed to operate on her "blind" because physicians had diagnosed her abdominal problem as cellulites, a life-threatening bacterial infection. It turns out McAfee only had a hernia and was left with massive scarring and Grade 3 lymphedema, a deforming skin condition known as elephantiasis, she says. Now she advocates for obese people's medical rights and offers tips to improve their clinical experiences. For instance, McAfee suggests they schedule separate appointments to see if they fit into imaging equipment, and encourages them to call imaging manufacturers to verify actual weight limits, since some vendors post lower limits for warranty reasons. "We are people who have different needs," McAfee says. "Many times, people are let go because there's nothing that can be doneI think doctors who grasp at this vet thing just want to tell people something [can be done to help them]."
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New Exhibit Brings AU's Rural Studio Home 09/06/2006 WRBL-TV Jaime Lakin		Return to Top
The usually quiet galleries of the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University reflect the heart of the art world in a local setting. But the heart beat of a new exhibit sounds like a saw. Students began work last week to install an exhibit at Auburn's fine art museum that showcases the work and ideals of the College of Architecture's Rural Studio program. The installation was as much a part of the exhibit as the works themselves. It's that hands-on experience that sets not only the exhibit, but the program apart from the norm. For more than 14 years, the program has taken students out of the classroom and into a community charged with finding solutions to architectural problems. The program is known world wide, but for the next few the exhibit will bring the work closer to home. "There's not a program like this anywhere in the world -- literally -- Where ever I go and speak from London, to Berlin to Barcelona they want -- they're desperate for more information about it," said Andres Freear, do-director of the Rural Studio. From its carpet temple, photographs and scale models to featured works by one of the programs founders, the exhibit is just a snapshot of the heart and soul of a life's work. "Nine years ago, I saw Samuel Mockbee lecture at the Graham Foundation in Chicago," Freear said, "and the way he talked and how eloquent and the level of passion that he showed about this program and the work that he was doing really blew me away." The rural studio was founded by Dennis K. Ruth and the late Samuel Mockbee. Since Mockbee's passing in 2001, his vision has been carried on by others -- learning from the past to build in the present. "We don't have a great library of books at the rural studio, but what we do have is 100 -- 150 projects that have been built over 14 years," Freear said. Most people will never get to Hale County to see the structures themselves, but organizers hope the exhibit will let them see the spirit behind the work. The exhibit opens Sept. 5. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Visit the museum online at www.jcsm.auburn.edu. For more information about the Rural Studio visit www.ruralstudio.com.
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