UA Students Join In KONY 2012 Campaign To “Cover The Night”

University of Arkansas — Armed with posters, stickers, tape and sidewalk chalk, about 30 UA students gathered at the fountain in front of the Student Union Friday night to “Cover the Night.”

They were there in response to a video most of us have probably seen: Invisible Children’s KONY 2012, a 30-minute exposé on Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army and the atrocities they have committed — the rape, mutilation and murder of thousands of men, women and children in Uganda and the surrounding countries.

In the video, which has been viewed well more than 100 million times in less than two months, Jason Russell, the co-founder of the Invisible Children organization, calls for (among other things) viewers around the world to meet at sundown on April 20, to “Cover the Night” with posters, stickers and other materials intended to spread Kony’s name and call for justice.

Jaycob Baker, a senior kinesiology major, said he was participating in “Cover the Night” because he had seen the KONY 2012 video and “wanted to jump on this bandwagon.”

Baker is among Invisible Children’s millions of supporters around the globe, but the organization has its critics, too. Some have called attention to how Invisible Children spends the millions of dollars it takes in.

“Eighty-one percent of our money last year went to programs,” Russell said, responding to this criticism in an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon.

—The Traveler
By Eddie Gregg

Economic experts predict growth

California State University — The 2012 Midyear Economic Forecast, presented by Cal State Fullerton’s Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, was held Thursday at the Hyatt Regency in Irvine. The conference was the eighth in the last several years.

The event, sponsored by Commerce West Bank and Capital Pacific Homes, had two CSUF faculty members as the main speakers. Anil Puri and Mira Farka of the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics presented the information gathered by the department.

Puri, who is also the dean of the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, said the forecast this year is different from last year’s because “the national economy is finally moving toward recovery from the Great Recession.”

“But at the same time, this is a very tentative recovery,” Puri said. “Last year it also started out very well and then it sort of petered out in the second half of 2011.”

—The Daily Titan
By John Sollitto

University researchers identify two new white dwarf stars

University of Oklahoma — An upcoming article in a scientific journal will detail an OU professor’s work to identify two new white dwarves considered to be the closest examples of some of the oldest stars in the galaxy.

OU astronomy and physics professor Mukremin Kilic discovered these stars by chance in 2008 and said they offer insight to the age of the galaxy.

“These two stars we found were there since the beginning, formed right after the Big Bang, and have been cooling since then,” Kilic said.

The white dwarf stars originally burned as bright as the sun but shed their outer layers and cooled over time, leaving a core of carbon and oxygen, Kilic said. These two stars lived shorter than the sun because they have more mass, meaning they burned hotter and cooled more quickly.

“It’s just like a cup of coffee or tea that cools down over time,” Kilic said.

—The Oklahoma Daily
By Arianna Pickard