A Thayer School of Engineering team composed of Alison Stace-Naughton '11, Pauline Schmit '13, Laura Gray '13 and Jennifer Freise Th '12 received a $10,000 grant for a first place finish in the BMEStart biomedical design competition for undergraduate students, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering reported. The group researched a solution to combat Clostridium difficile, an infectious intestinal pathogen that is responsible for many cases of diarrhea. Antibiotics, the current treatment used against the pathogen, leave patients with a 35 percent chance of recurrence and cost up to $3.2 billion in American health care costs each year. Thayer's team hopes to advance another solution, fecal microbiota transplantation, in which a donor provides a stool sample that is homogenized and given to the patient through an enema or a colonoscopy, effectively and naturally battling the pathogen.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill enacted a ban on gender-neutral housing on Friday, The News and Observer reported. A unanimous vote by the Board of Governors, which had a recent election resulting in a strong Republican majority, overturned last year's unanimous Board of Trustees' decision to introduce mixed-gender housing to the Chapel Hill campus. Board of Governors chairman Peter Hans said there are "more practical ways" to promote an inclusive campus atmosphere than creating gender-neutral housing. Scheduled to begin this fall, the program received four applications for 32 available gender-neutral residencies. The initiative would have created mixed-gender common areas and bathrooms, but not bedrooms. Since the decision was made while students were off campus for the summer, some students told The News and Observer that they felt they did not receive sufficient opportunity to contribute to the discussion.
President Barack Obama signed a law lowering student loan interest rates for 11 million college students on Friday, according to U.S. News and World Report. Under the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act, loan interest rates will remain fixed until the loan is paid, though new rates are subject to change as the economy fluctuates. This year, the interest rate will be 3.86 percent for undergraduate federally-subsidized Stafford loans, 5.41 percent for graduate loans and 6.41 percent for PLUS loans for graduate and professional school students. All student loans are now capped at 8.25 percent for undergraduates, 9.5 percent for graduates and 10.5 percent for PLUS loans. Though the issue of student loans has undergone months of debate in Congress, the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act moved quickly through both houses as soon as it was proposed.
