What do a tormented child, an ordinary superhero, an alien invasion, a mysterious sea nymph, an isolated community, an environmental outbreak and the worst motion picture of 2010 have in common?

They all describe films made by the once-revered Indian-born American filmmaker and screenwriter M. Night Shyamalan.

Known for making contemporary movies about the supernatural, Shyamalan started out with a bang with the release of his groundbreaking “The Sixth Sense” (1999).

I still remember feeling chills down my spine after hearing the haunted youth Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) utter the now-famous line “I see dead people.”

It was the eerie work of a master craftsman with a penetrating insight into aspects of rooted human emotions, psychology, alienation, death and loss.

Many critics hailed him as a “modern Hitchcock.” However, Shyamalan’s recent work lacks the intellect, emotional complexity and narrative cohesion he became known for.

The insufferable Nickelodeon adaptation “The Last Airbender” (2010) serves as the eclipse of his failures and a major contribution to his dwindling stardom.

What happened to the ambitious director that breathed new life into a dying genre?

It seems Shyamalan has exchanged his meticulous focus and strong visual sense for cheap thrills and sloppy direction.

His consecutive misfires have even inspired a spirited online charity movement initiated by joblo.com to send him “back to film school.”

For the sake of what’s left of Shyamalan’s career, fans hope his current project, a sci-fi epic starring superstar Will Smith and his son Jaden — currently in production and tentatively titled “One Thousand A.E.,” — will remove him from Hollywood’s hit list.

Shyamalan’s best work demonstrated humanity’s need for connection and society’s detachment from the spiritual and natural world.

They presented vivid characters that drew audiences into the dark depths of the human experience and allowed them to empathize with their situations. His affinity for “twist endings” became a signature technique audiences came to anticipate.

It wasn’t until Shyamalan’s futile treatment of this technique in the second-rate thriller “The Village” (2004) that viewers witnessed his departure from form.

Shyamalan’s latest films are devoid of even an iota of the craftsmanship, emotional depth and steady pacing of his first impressive major release.

He is no longer drawing caliber performances from his actors as he used to. The actors, like his unfocused direction, have become lost amidst a world of warmed over themes, tired clichés and overtly violent and religious sensibilities.

However, in all fairness, the success of the “The Sixth Sense” continues to be the standard by which all his other work has been judged. Talk about pressure. It’s not that he has huge shoes to fill, but rather he’s misplaced his own.

We’ve all seen what the man is capable of and, while his fan base is gradually depleting, it’s hard to imagine the Smith’s signing on to a project that wouldn’t appeal to a mass audience.

The film, set a thousand years in the future, follows a young boy on his journey to reunite with his father across a post-apocalyptic landscape. Original? Not quite.

If the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air can’t save his career than nobody can. Where there’s a “Will” there’s a way.

In spite of recent disappointments, it should be noted that Shyamalan has at least three exceptional films to his credit. It’s only a matter of time before he reconnects with his artistic side.

A brief lesson in “Film School 101” is definitely in order.

Rebecca Black isn’t going anywhere.

The 13-year-old told USAToday that she’s recording an album.

“Most of my new stuff is about past things that I’ve dealt with, so they’re all relatable. They’re not about days of the week,” she said in the article.

Hopefully, we’ll still get some “Friday” references in the album. Or at least an acoustic remix of her hit song.

Until the cd release, get your fill of the tween sensation by watching some “Friday” Funnyordie.com videos and reading a rhetorical analysis of the lyrics.

Or, you can always just watch the original video on YouTube and wake up early every Friday to post a “Friday” status. Don’t worry, no one else is going to have that same exact status.

And that’s your Tuesday fill on the “Friday” singer. Will you continue to follow her career?

Sunday football is as American as apple pie, reality TV and outdoor music festivals all put together.

For football fans, it’s a weekly holiday that makes hugging bartenders and high-fiving strangers acceptable — even if only for a few hours.

But an NFL lockout would put the kibosh on more than just bar lines and fantasy league invitations — it would be a direct shot to restaurants, cable and dish providers, advertisers and, of course, the city of Las Vegas.

Fans of the NFL would be forced to take a hiatus from a cavalcade of stars like Brady and Manning.

Granted, all of this is hypothetical, as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and his cronies still have plenty of time to negotiate new terms for a collective bargaining agreement with the players.

But it can’t hurt to entertain the potential of such a void — just ask Pac-10 Commissioner Larry Scott.

In an interview last month with Yahoo! Sports’ Rivals.com, Scott suggested the conference had thought about playing Sundays, though obviously it is a vision predicated on many other plans.

“We certainly are monitoring the situation,” Scott said in the interview. “We have no plans in place at this time, but you want to be prepared and consider all options.”

He might call it being prepared, but I call it being quietly innovative.

The Pac-10 needs to shake things up, more than just adding two schools and changing a few logos. I’m talking the kind of move that makes people notice you, whether they want to or not.

What better way to make the most of an unfortunate situation than for the conference to seize control of a day already synonymous with watching football?

Who needs Rodgers and Brees when you have pro-prospects like Luck and Barkley willing to play for free each week?

I realize this would involve more than just some simple maneuvering by the NCAA, the Pac-10 and the networks that regularly broadcast Sunday games (CBS, FOX and ESPN).

But if ignorance can be bliss for a few moments, why shouldn’t Scott think long and hard about making this work if the chips fall his way?

The SEC and Big 12 have their own networks. The ACC broadcasts a majority of its games on ESPN. Even schools like TCU and Boise State, which hail from outside the major conferences, get more national exposure than any Pac-10 school.

At a time in the collegiate landscape when East Coast and Southeast biases have clouded perception of what the Pac-10 has to offer, isn’t this a chance to flip the script?

When approached about this same topic, Arizona Athletic Director Greg Byrne noted this wouldn’t even be the first time the conference has been asked to adapt to playing on different days of the week.

“Thursday night football hasn’t been around forever, and we adjusted to that,” Byrne said. “Sunday is a day a lot of people look to watch football. You would get good exposure.”

I come from the school of thought that any kind of publicity is good publicity.

That might seem moronic, but do you really want to root for a school that plays in the least-televised conference of any of the major six?

I don’t.

Sure, USC, Oregon and even Stanford get on ABC or ESPN from time to time. But imagine that every Sunday for three whole months.

It will never compare to the quality of play that exists at the professional level, but it will allow your school the opportunity to get more than an occasional showcase.

Call me a dreamer, but if things can’t be resolved in the NFL, this looks like a chance for the Pac-10 to make lemonade.

Jamie Oliver has a mission: to create a healthier, better−fed world. He’s been successful across the globe, and his next destination is Los Angeles. “This is not reality TV: This is a campaign,” Oliver says as he speaks to concerned parents about the food their children are being served — and the audience believes it.

Last season, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” focused its efforts in Huntington, W. Va., which has been cited as one of the unhealthiest cities in the country. Oliver butted heads with the cafeteria workers in the city’s schools, but his endeavors garnered the program the Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Program in 2010 and the Television Academy Honors for embodying “television with a conscience.”

This season, Oliver is back with a vengeance as he moves his food revolution to LA. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second−largest school district in the United States, banned Oliver from filming in the district for fear of bad publicity surrounding its food service practices. But now he’s hell−bent on getting through to the children in the schools, one way or another. All he wants to do is help — what could be wrong with that?

With this huge impediment, from a governmental institution no less, Oliver rallies support from local parents in any way he can. He appears on co−producer Ryan Seacrest’s radio show to communicate with parents on a mass level and gets hundreds of responses.

He then opens his kitchen in LA and invites concerned parents of the LAUSD to stop by and listen to his sell. Their children bring their school lunches to Oliver, who takes each lunch and castigates the school’s food program for serving students “airplane food.”

It doesn’t take long for Oliver, the parents and even the audience to become enraged with the food administration: How can it let elementary−school children eat garbage and pass it off for lunch?

Oliver seems hopeful that he will save the kids of LA from the monstrous tyrant of inorganic packaged food. The parents are with him, and he has reason, facts and motivation, not to mention a tad bit of sass, on his side. But when he ventures to a school lunch convention, he is appalled to find that it condones and promotes unhealthy eating habits that have been proven to lead to obesity and diabetes. Oliver appeals once again to the superintendent of the LAUSD to let him enter its schools, but his efforts prove unsuccessful, as he is mired down in the district bureaucracy and cannot get a meeting with the food administration director.

Although it is a reality show, almost nowhere in “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” is there an impression of the scripted “reality” found in such programs as “The Amazing Race” or “The Real World.” This is a genuine attempt to revolutionize the way the children of America eat.

“Revolution” succeeds in shocking some sensibility back into the American viewership and the people Oliver encounters along the way. It’s frightening to think that the food consumed by the majority of Americans is what is making us sick and diseased and that there is little support from our local or federal governments to stop it in its track. The fact that LAUSD is seemingly reluctant to work with Oliver and consider a change is infuriating and disheartening.

Jamie Oliver, partially through sarcasm and comic lines, plainly informs us that young America is on a one−way track to health problems, and it won’t change unless there’s a food revolution. For those who lead hectic daily lives, healthy eating generally go to the wayside, but Oliver makes it immensely clear that our priorities need to change.

Scholars and students gathered to discuss the problems associated with women’s education and economic involvement in the Middle East at a panel discussion last night, noting that female education rates in Iraq are the lowest they have been in a decade.

While macro-economic stability and food security have improved in Iraq during recent years, civil unrest is high, according to panelist Shoubo R. Jalal, who is a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

“We are talking about a country in conflict, she said. “We still have violence, political instability, and mass demonstrations,” Jalal said.

Tensions have proven to be devastating for the state of women’s education. Between 1990 and 2002, there was a radical decline in the number of women enrolled in Iraqi schools, according to Jalal. At the same time, increasing costs and a lower value of education severely handicapped efforts to expand female education, she said.

While rising tuition costs have made it more difficult for all children to have access to education, families tend to prioritize the education of males over females, leading to a large gender gap in enrollment. In 2006, roughly 800,000 children were not attending primary school—and 74 percent of them were girls, according to Jalal.

In Afghanistan a country plagued by the world’s second highest maternal mortality rate and where over half of all young women are married by the age of 18, “education is the key to [female] empowerment,” said panelist Catherine A. Rielly. Rielly is president of Rubia, Inc., an organization dedicated to empowering women in Afghanistan by allowing them the opportunity to embroider clothing and trade their goods to the West for profit.

“Especially as they get older, there is a great social stigma for girls attending school due to the importance of early marriage,” Rielly said. Furthermore, women’s confinement to the domestic sphere can make attending school and finishing required housework altogether impossible, she added.

Rielly noted that women are not only excluded from education, but also often isolated from the nation’s economy.

But Rielly said that organizations like her own, which supports cottage industry, can help women become more economically independent.

“The activities are based at home and they are not required to change their lifestyles,” Rielly explained.

“Their husbands don’t feel threatened,” she added.

By allowing men to play an active role in the production and distribution of the embroidery, Rubia is gradually making the economic inclusion of Afghani women more readily accepted within these predominately patriarchal communities, Rielly said.

“We’ve helped them have access to markets in the West for the first time,” she said. “Many women have money in their pocket and are respected by their communities.”

Greg Mortensen, author of “Three Cups of Tea” — a memoir that has comfortably remained on The New York Timesbest-sellers list for the past 219 weeks — might be a philanthropic phony.

Last Sunday, “60 Minutes” ran an exposé on Mortensen, blowing the whistle on his charity, his book and sullying his veracious reputation. “60 Minutes” revealed that Mortensen’s charity, the Central Asia Institute, “spends more money domestically promoting the importance of building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan than it does actually constructing and funding them overseas.” When visiting 30 of the 141 schools built under the auspices of Mortensen, “60 Minutes” found that half functioned reasonably well, but the other half were either poorly constructed, used as storage facilities, or even nonexistent.

The very plot of Mortensen’s book is dubious. Mortensen claimed that he was held for eight days by the Taliban; “60 Minutes” was able to track down a few of his supposed captors who revealed that they were not kidnappers, rather they were his hosts and they were never part of the Taliban. One of his alleged captors is actually the director of a research tank in Pakistan. Clad in western business attire he refuted Mortensen’s assertion saying, “This is totally false, and he is lying.”

As an admirer inspired by Mortensen’s dogged commitment to children’s education in Afghanistan and Pakistan, hearing “60 Minutes” besmirch his character and his work was wholly disheartening. But this disillusionment of an exemplary philanthropist is both necessary and imperative.

Philanthropy is not all peaches. All people, Samaritans or not, have their own interests. The degree of this self-interest needs to measured.

Fortunately, a few websites perform this measurement. Charity Navigator “works to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace” by analyzing the “financial health” of more than 5,000 American charities. It does this by sharing data on the expense breakdown for the charity, rating its organizational efficiency, even disclosing the charity’s total revenue and the salary of the head director. Similarly, The American Institute of Philanthropy, a charity watchdog, ranks organizations based on their financial performance determining how generous a charity truly is.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on charity scams involving the crisis in Japan. Fraudulent charities using heart-rending language spammed the emails of benevolent souls. Donors took the bait and thousands of dollars went in the pockets of the unscrupulous miscreants, not to victims in dire need. Scams like this are completely avoidable. Donations are desired in a multitude of the world’s problem areas — a simple check can prevent the profits of charlatans and maximize the utility of each dollar by donating to only the most efficient and altruistic charities.

Mortensen, whether the “60 Minutes” investigation rings true, has done a good deed — he has helped many children in Afghanistan and Pakistan obtain an education they otherwise would not receive. However, the extent of his good work has been enormously inflated. Shattering the sacrosanct image of charities does not mean losing hope and faith in philanthropy. One must replace blind-giving with a realistic perspective. Reconsider where you give, don’t reconsider giving. Simply, remember Reagan’s catchphrase, “trust, but verify.”

Even though the University was an all-male institution at its opening in 1825, young Cavaliers interacted with local and visiting women often at weekend social functions. Although fraternity parties were chaperoned and women were allowed only on the first floor, this was the way to make intimate connections. Now, as societal dating expectations evolve and the very definition of “dating” fluctuates, the notion of a dominating “hook-up culture” threatens to undermine traditional courting.

Fan Mai, a graduate student in the department of sociology, explained that a hook-up culture involves physical contact as the primary means of interaction.

“‘Introduction to Sociology’ compares hook up culture to dating,” Mai said. “Sex used to be very institutionalized — we had sex only in the confines of marriage — but now it’s acceptable in dating. We’re moving away to a totally individual approach: you make your own decisions because it’s your body.”

As a teaching assistant for “Sociology of the Family” in 2008, Mai assigned her students a project in which they initiated a survey of University students to gauge hook-up behavior and opinions.

“We were looking at intimate relationships and questioned whether the hook-up culture damages the caring culture,” Mai said. “We asked: ‘Is there a detachment of intimate feeling from physical intimacy? Is there less caring or does hooking up mean freedom, expression, and is it just a college thing?’ There’s a big question mark.”

The question mark leads to a greater debate within academia.

“There are people saying hooking up is empowerment of women, and it used to be that only bad girls could express themselves; now, it’s more socially acceptable for anyone to be able to please themselves,” Mai said. “The other side says, ‘Wait a minute: there’s a gender double-standard. Both sexes can hook up, but if girls do it too much it can damage reputations. For girls it’s a walk of shame, but for guys it’s a walk of pride.”

Mai said college is the environment associated with hook-up culture because this behavior depends on surroundings.

“There’s a peer pressure out there, and generally people feel that their peers and friends are doing more hooking up than they do,” she said. “So, people think, ‘I should be more open to this. I’m out of place. Maybe I’m not using all of my college time?’ Everyone thinks college is the perfect time and place for sexual experiment.”

After college, however, Mai said those who embrace the hook-up culture still will move on to more committed relationships.

First-year College student Kristie Jones said she observes this type of hook-up culture at the University, where a skewed female-to-male ratio means “a lot of great catches are really willing to just hook up with boys and not expect a date out of it.” As a result, boys do not have to ask girls on dates because they get what they want regardless, she said.

First-year College student Jon Torre offered a similar assessment and said he feels no pressure to ask girls out.

“Asking girls out on physical dates is more rare here than I thought, and it’s because a lot of people seem centered only on hooking up,” Torre said. “There’s even a thought here that you can have an emotional connection and sexual connection, but never actually have to be in a relationship because there’s an area between just hook up buddies and dating — friends with benefits.”

Fourth-year College student Devin Underhill said he thinks of the hook-up culture as a loud minority.

“You can find a hook-up culture here if you want, and it’s very easy to do so, and I think people emphasize the existence of a hook-up culture because we don’t have a strong singles culture or relationship culture,” Underhill said. “It’s the absence of others that kind of put this emphasis on hooking up, but I think all three groups do exist.”

For Torre and Jones, both first years, this hook-up culture extends throughout the University but thrives in dorms and on fraternity dance floors.

“It’s definitely more convenient that there are 100 girls living in the same building as 100 guys, and it definitely leads to more sexual activity than probably would occur otherwise,” Torre said.
Jones’s personal version of a hook-up is “the dance floor makeout.”

“I can definitely see this being more prevalent in Greek life or just Greek parties in general where you aren’t necessarily Greek,” she said.

Ultimately, however, the results of the Mai’s study, which heavily rely on first-year female respondents, cite the discrepancy between conceptions and reality as the perpetuating force of the hook up culture.

According to the survey, 58 percent of students believe peers had three to six hook-ups last semester, but only 22.5 percent actually demonstrated this behavior. Mai believes these findings reveal the peer pressure that leads students to hook up as an attempt to equal their peers.

The survey also shows that students not only overplay the hook up culture, but also prefer relationships to it. Indeed, about 83 percent of participants prefer serious relationships to random hook-ups.

Jones corroborates this finding, admitting she is disappointed by the University’s dating practices.

“Coming into college I heard all the rumors about ‘sexiling,’ so I did expect that, but I also thought there would be way more relationships going on,” she said. “Now I just see that first and second years are really just hooking up.”

The hook-up culture stunts the actual point of relationships and merely gives an outlet for people where they think there are no consequences, Jones said.

“I was talking to my friend about this the other day, and we realized we’re just not made like that,” she said. “You have so many emotions and when you’re just hooking up with somebody, especially for girls, that’s not really all you’re doing because you do make such an emotional connection.”

Mai contends that this gendered nature of hooking up has dangerous implications.

“Young women can be really manipulated by the belief [that sex is empowerment and way to express themselves], but hook-up culture is actually better for men and mostly not good for women,” Mai said. “Not so many relationships come out of hooking up, even though people think it’s an efficient, low-cost way to meet new people.”

Torre hopes that for this reason, his peers recognize the benefits of serious relationships.

“It’s not necessarily always good to be afraid of legitimate commitment, and once we leave this place it’s going to be considerably more difficult to find your match, so people should at some point begin to take relationships more seriously,” he said.

Underhill is in a relationship and believes students do think more critically about relationships as upperclassmen.

“When I came here I had really high expectations, since both my parents met the first night of college; I thought I was going to find the person I was going to be with for the rest of my life,” Underhill said. “When I realized that wasn’t necessarily going to play out, I decided I’m going to have as much fun as I can until I figure out what I really want.”

Throughout his first year, Underhill still was questioning his sexuality; so, he hooked up with both men and women until he decided he was not getting much out of that behavior. By his second year, Underhill was openly gay.

“The summer before my third year was when I got comfortable with myself, and that’s when I met my current boyfriend,” Underhill said.

While Underhill distanced himself from the hook-up culture after committing to his boyfriend, he observes that the end of third year is a time for decision making: either go the relationship route or realize there is only “a little bit of time left here, and then go more toward crazy hook ups that don’t mean that much,” he said. “The majority of people I know go the relationship route toward the end.”

Overall, Underhill thinks hooking up is only really a problem when people settle for a hook up even though they really want a relationship.

To combat the issue of hook up culture destroying healthy relationships, fourth-year College student Maria Pluta founded a contracted independent organization called Off the Hook.

“Off the Hook’s main purpose is to educate and to foster a community on Grounds, and its main target is to consider the hook-up culture in more ways than just physical safe sex,” Pluta said. “I get a lot of news about how to make sure we are physically safe in our relationships, but there’s not as much attention to emotional safety.”

The main concern Pluta sees is the inherent instability of hook-up-based relationships.

“The average conversation of girls, whether it’s in a Christian girl’s house, or a sorority house, or on a Friday night on the Corner or in a library, generally is that relationships formed through the hook-up culture are not sustainable and are not practiced in a way that is emotionally supportive,” she said. “Part and parcel with this more critical eye toward the hook-up culture is the consideration of a more stable dating culture, especially one deliberately focused toward marriage.”

Pluta attests that the point of Off the Hook is not to promote marrying as soon as possible; rather, the group wants to ensure a community ethos exists that will support, rather than stifle, familial aspirations. Currently, the CIO wants to form a better idea of its chief purpose and decide whether it will be geared toward member education or community outreach.

“The biggest take-away for this group as an educational group is that especially because the hook-up culture is so close to the heart, its message can’t just be one you pass along from the class room or lecture standpoint,” Pluta said. “We’d never put up flyers saying, “Hook-up culture is bad!’ because that’s not going to affect anyone’s heart or engage them in an important way. The group is trying to prepare people to be in one-on-one conversations where they can engage critically.”

Off the Hook collaborates with the Love and Fidelity Network, a group seeking to identify college groups with similar missions, and the two groups co-hosted a conference this semester. Pluta wrote an article featured on the site in which she details her qualms against the hook-up culture.

Writing about Off the Hook, she said, “We have a vision for the future in which all persons’ actions are oriented toward a sustainable and flourishing good life.”

Whether an active participant in the hook up culture or a proponent of emotionally driven relationships, what’s clear is that students and academics alike are discussing hook-up culture frequently and in a variety of settings.

As Underhill put it, “I’ve been in Sustained Dialogue all four years and the hook up culture has come up at least once every year. Every year I learn a different side to it and see how many different communities have different takes on it.”

Less than five years after it became one of the most popular video cameras in the world, Cisco Systems announced last week it will end production of the Flip Video camcorder.

Cisco, which bought Flip creator Pure Digital Technologies for $590 million in March 2009, announced the move as part of a restructuring of its consumer business. Cisco primarily sells computer-networking equipment, and has struggled in attempts to enter consumer markets.

The Flip, which gained popularity in 2007 due to its portability and ease of use, was the leader in a growing market for small, simplistic video cameras. But that market has increasingly been taken over by smart phones, which often boast all the same features and more.

While the Flip remains widely used, it has lost the unique advantages that first made it successful, said Steven Lysonski, a professor of marketing.

“Their technology was current and useful until smart phones drastically altered this sector,” Lysonski said in an e-mail.

Beyond its portability and ease of use, the Flip touted features like high-definition video and the ability to share video easily. But smart phones, many of which can now record in high definition, made video sharing even easier with the help of wireless networks.

Smart phones also have bigger screens than those found on Flips, and many have built-in editing tools as well.

The prices of the various models also played a role in the Flip’s decline, said Iqbal Ahamed, an associate professor of mathematics, statistics and computer science, in an e-mail.

The Flip, which featured Ultra, Mino and Slide models with storage ranging from 4 GB to 16 GB, cost between $109 and $230. Smart phones are usually priced similarly, but offer many more features besides recording video.

The Flip does offer some advantages over smart phones when it comes to serious video editing, said Ryan Nealon, a freshman in the College of Health Sciences who owns both a Flip and an iPhone.

“They’ve both got great video (quality), and the iPhone is just as clear as the Flip,” Nealon said. “But in terms of creating a video, I prefer the Flip, because you can just download it to any computer and edit it there. With the iPhone, you have to either have a Mac or have a specific program.”

In hindsight, analysts have questioned Cisco’s decision to buy Pure Digital in the first place. Some suggest that Cisco focused too much on improving the Flip’s video quality and not enough on making it easier to share recorded video online.

But Ahamed said the decision may not have been a bad one, just a shortsighted one.

“It was a good move at that time,” Ahamed said. “Now, it’s time to use the Flip technology with other products.”

The speed at which the Flip rose and fell may be shocking to some, Lysonski said, but it must be expected in today’s technology industries.

“The Flip was a darling product,” Lysonski said. “How could it crash so quickly, we can ask?”

He said the answer lies in the short life cycles of new technologies, and the inability of Cisco to adapt to a rapidly changing market.

“The adage ‘adapt or die’ clearly applies to Cisco’s experiences with the Flip,” Lysonski said.

Arizona has the lowest cancer rate of any state in the United States, according to new data from a United States Cancer Statistics report.

The current report shows that Arizona has the lowest number of diagnosed cancer cases and the second-lowest mortality rate for cancer of any state. The report takes into account data for 2007, the most recent year of which this data is available.

The rates of lung, breast, colon and rectum, and prostate cancers are all below the national average. These types of cancer are the most commonly found cancers in the United States, according to Yira Bermudez, assistant professor of medicine at the Arizona Cancer Center.

Bermudez said preventing and detecting these cancers is one of the major goals of the Arizona Cancer Center, but also said that prevention of all cancers is a primary focus.

“All cancers can be deadly, especially when found late,” Bermudez said.

Bermudez said that early detection is important, and the primary way to support this is by educating the public on prevention techniques.

One of the main programs the Arizona Cancer Center promotes is “Living in Harmony with the Sun,” which aims to promote educational programs and events to help with the prevention of skin cancer in Arizona.

“These types of programs … educate people and we definitely think they are key to the prevention of cancer,” Bermudez said.

The data released shows an overall downward trend of the amount of people diagnosed and killed by cancer in the United States. Bermudez said that current research contributed by places such as the Arizona Cancer Center, which Bermudez said is a “top ten” cancer research center, has aided to this trend.

David S. Alberts, director of the Arizona Cancer Center, said this new data is “extremely welcome” but warned that this is only one small step in the ongoing battle against cancer.

“Unfortunately, our lowest rates are extremely high, when compared to other continents, and cancer continues to be the leading cause of death for all of us under 65,” Alberts said.

Alberts also offered insight into the possibility that Arizona’s cancer rates may actually increase in the future.

“A major reason why Arizona’s cancer rates are lower relates to our larger Hispanic and Native American populations that have relatively low rates of the common cancers,” Alberts said. “Sadly, because of the acculturation of these populations to the Western lifestyle, Arizona’s cancer rates will rise dramatically in the mid 21st century.”

Despite this possibility, Alberts and Bermudez are optimistic that their dedication to research, education and lowering disparities in the treatment of minorities can help Arizona in the long run.

Alberts said that an overall greater effort toward physical health by the population would facilitate a less cancerous Arizona population.

“There must be a much greater effort into reducing tobacco use and excessive alcohol intake, while improving nutrition and increasing physical activity and following guidelines for vaccination,” Alberts said.

Bermudez agreed that there needs to be an increase in overall nutrition and physical activity, but also added that it is important for the younger generation of Arizonans to realize that all of their actions today will affect them in the future.

“Cancer is more of an old-age disease, but at the same time, it is very important to educate teens and young people,” Bermudez said. “Later in your life, you will see the consequences of the behaviors you had as a young adult.”

Researchers at Princeton’s Equid Research and Conservation laboratory and at the Computational Population Biology laboratory at the University of Illinois have developed a new technology called StripeSpotter that allows biologists to identify and catalog zebras by reading their stripes like barcodes.

The open-source application, which is provided free for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, allows researchers to crop a particularly prominent selection of striping from a normal point-and-shoot camera photo and use it as a thumbprint to identify the individual zebra. Biologists can also link the photo to details of the sighting, such as field notes and GPS coordinates.

If there is already an instance of the specific animal in the system, researchers can pull up details of the previous encounter.

The creators of StripeSpotter, who will present a paper on the new program at the International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval this month, are currently working on assembling a database of Plains zebras and Grevys zebras in Kenya.

The technology likely can work on other animals, such as giraffes or tigers, that can be identified by distinctive striping or spotting patterns, researchers said.