briefs

(U-WIRE) SAN DIEGO – On Monday, the city of San Diego was met with the Witch wildfire,… (U-WIRE) SAN DIEGO – On Monday, the city of San Diego was met with the Witch wildfire, which raged in Ramona and parts of Rancho Bernardo and Poway. It followed the same path as the 2003 Cedar Fire. Hundreds of structures were destroyed before it merged with another fire near the Wild Animal Park.

Residents in the affected areas were evacuated because of these fires. By Monday morning, there were a total of eight fires burning across the county. Strong Santa Ana winds have both fueled the fires and kept firefighters from launching air support to halt the flames.

The high winds have also wreaked havoc on the firefighters, causing the flames to shift in unpredictable directions. This has made it difficult to organize evacuation centers. As the flames progressed, many residents have had to move from their original shelter site to another location.

George Biagi, deputy press secretary for the mayor’s office, said that during the Cedar fire, Qualcomm Stadium stayed open for three days while evacuees waited to return to their homes. It became an evacuation center at 6:30 a.m. Monday.

As of Monday afternoon, there were 10,000 evacuees at Qualcomm Stadium and approximately 250,000 San Diego County residents have evacuated their homes.

Due to the rapid movement of the flames, information about acres and property loss has been constantly changing. As of Monday afternoon, there was one fatality reported in the Harris Fire, located in Southeastern San Diego, which burned at least 20,000 acres. Fire officials said the fire was five percent contained.

The Witch fire has burned 10,000 acres and is zero percent contained.

In total, San Diego County has lost over 100,000 acres to the current wildfires. – Alanna Berman ‘ Jessica Napier, The Daily Aztec (San Diego State U.)

(U-WIRE) UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Nathaniel Sheetz doesn’t care if you notice the empty gun holster strapped to his right hip this week.

That’s the point, he said.

“People who carry concealed weapons go about their daily lives just like anyone else would,” Sheetz, a Penn State student, said. “We are trying to show people that just because we might be carrying weapons, that wouldn’t impact how we go about our business.”

This week, college students throughout America organized under Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, will attend classes wearing empty holsters, protesting campus policies that contradict legally, state-issued concealed weapon permits.

“I don’t think it’s fair for me to have to disarm on campus when I am allowed to carry a weapon in the grocery store, the movie theater, the shopping mall,” said Sheetz, one of more than 500,000 Pennsylvanians registered to carry a concealed weapon. “I’d be violating a university policy and I could get suspended or expelled.”

State-permitted students caught carrying weapons on campus are evaluated by Judicial Affairs, while students without state-issued permits risk arrest and criminal charges, said Tyrone Parham, assistant director of Penn State Police.

Penn State’s university-wide SY12 policy prohibits students, faculty and visitors from wielding “instruments or implements, which are capable of inflicting serious bodily injury.” – Lauren Boyer, Daily Collegian (Penn State U.)

(U-WIRE) AMES, Iowa – Have you ever had your phone vibrate, reached deep in your pocket, pulled it out and then realized there was never a call in the first place?

If this is all too common, don’t be alarmed -it happens to millions of people and it’s called Phantom Vibration Syndrome, also known as “Vibranxiety.”

PVS has recently been studied by experts and its cause is unknown. Some believe they are just anticipatory vibrations caused by the expectation of an important incoming call.

People tend to set filters in the brain to detect rings and vibrations under noisy conditions and they become part of the body’s perceptual learning process. Random sensations trip the filter and are interpreted as a real signal when they are truly just false alarms.

“Neurological connections that have been used or formed by the sensation of vibrating are easily activated,” said Jeffrey Janata, director of the behavioral medicine program at University Hospitals in Cleveland, in USA Today article.

It seems PVS is directly linked to the brain’s neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to form new connections in response to changes in the environment.

“It is plastic to the extent that you can raise and lower your threshold for a certain sensation,” said Eric Cooper, associate professor of psychology at Iowa State University. “They lower their threshold for that vibration, and then they do not need quite as much input for the neurons to fire and cross that threshold.” – Tyler Coenen, Iowa State Daily