UA, UCLA partner on addiction treatment to serve four states

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has awarded $550,000 to UCLA's Integrated Substance Abuse Programs and the UA's Community Rehabilitation Division to expand the Pacific Southwest Addiction Technology Transfer Center (PSATTC).

The Pacific Southwest Addiction Technology Transfer Center will serve Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico. This partnership of the ISAP and the UA will create state-of-the-art education and training programs and promote substance abuse treatment practices to local treatment agencies, health care professionals, and state and local government officials.

Drawing on current health services research from such sources as the National Institutes of Health, the Pacific Southwest ATTC will help upgrade standards of professional practice for treatment providers, prepare practitioners to function in managed care settings, and promote the inclusion of addiction treatment training in academic programs.

The UCLA/UA center completes the national network of 14 ATTCs, a program of SAMHSA's Center for Substance Abuse Treatment.

Student Union now accepting reservations for spring events

Student Union Memorial Center is accepting reservations for meeting space in the new center that is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

Union staff is able to schedule and confirm reservations for events taking place Feb. 24, 2003 or later. As the completion date for construction is further solidified, earlier dates may open. Complete information regarding new policies and facility charges will be available online at http://www.union.arizona.edu. Reservations also can be faxed to 621-2545. Room requests will be processed in the order received.

UA biologist offers solution to Īfreeloader's paradox' problem?

Freeloaders, it seems, show up everywhere in nature, not just at the company picnic.

Leticia Avilˇs, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, thinks she has figured out how freeloaders get away with their behavior without permanently spoiling things for everyone else.

Freeloaders ÷ individuals that are eager to join social groups, but once in, tend to avoid pulling their fair share of the chores ÷ have long posed something of a problem for evolutionary biologists. An individual's gregarious and cooperative nature is governed to a high degree, like practically all life traits, by genes. Because freeloaders don't expend the efforts and energy that their more civic-minded neighbors do, they should be able to translate that energy into more offspring, spreading their "slacker genes" and overrunning the world with offspring of similar ilk. But that, Avilˇs assures, should never happen.

Avilˇs contends that the success of freeloaders is inevitably limited by their own social shortcomings. Freeloaders eventually harm the groups to which they belong by making them less productive. In the process, they bring about their own downfall.

Deadline for dropping classes without signature is tomorrow

The deadline for students to drop a class without the instructor's signature is tomorrow.

Starting Monday, a supplementary form as well as an appointment with a Dean is necessary to drop any class. According to policy, all petitions to drop classes that are received after tomorrow will be reviewed only if there is documented, extraordinary evidence for missing the deadline.