Jason Shining

For some reason, when I think of spring, I think of serial killers. Everyone knows one of those sweet, secret-but-slightly-scary make-out point. I guess I just have a lot of them so they’re on my mind. Here are the top three serial killer movies you probably haven’t seen.

Elephant: This crazy movie shot from the different points of view of a bunch of high school students. There are a lot of single-scene shots and it came out around the columbine era. It’s a tastefully done film examining not only the psyche of the killers but the people whose lives they affect. Personal and shocking, this is one of my favourites.

The Talented Mr.Ripley: An all-star line up with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Matt Damon, Jude Law, and the ever elegant Gwyneth Paltrow. The movie is about Tom Ripley (Mat Damon) and his adventures in Italy right around the 1940s. It’s a great take on identity theft and the power that an impression can make. The scenery is gorgeous, and it’s a unique look at the perils money can lead to.

Polytechnique: A black and white French subtitled flick about the Ecole Polytechnique shooting in Montreal. Raw and shocking, this film chronicles the motivation behind the shooter, painting a frigid and authentic feel of Montreal in the dead of winter. This is not for the faint of heart and, although none of the movies are especially gory, this film definitely left me shook.

Pretty Ugly

The Argus

There’s been a lot of hype about this cat Dam Funk. He’s part of the Stones Throw label out in LA and run by Peanut Butter Wolf. If you’re unfamiliar with Stones Throw, it’s a major label run like an indie one. It seems the artists are left to their own devices, and the result is often so left field – in a good way.

Dam Funk has been dropping some funky singles for a year or so. Now he’s compiled, shortened, and arranged 24 songs for his album toeachizown. It’s a crazy blend of 80s synth sound, but a lot more spacey and funky. It can be Kid Cudi-esque, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he collaborated with Ratatat and MGMT at some point.

And as simple as his music is, you cannot deny the unbelievable danceability Dam Funk sets up. The power of groove seems to unhinge any loose joints!

Study: students at risk for cardiovascular disease and cancer

Stacey Goyan

News Editor

According to a study done by two fourth-year Lakehead Kinesiology students, Thunder Bay post-secondary students don’t love their fruits and vegetables.

Kelsey Dool and Reid Matheson, both Kinesiology students, surveyed students to find out how many fruits and vegetables they consumed on a daily basis.

The study included 101 Lakehead University and Confederation College students in all years of post-secondary education.

Dool and Matheson found that on average only 14.8% of students were getting the recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables suggested by Canada’s food guide. Almost 10% more women met the recommendations than men did.

While men and women seemed to eat roughly the same amount of fruits and vegetables, the Canadian Food Guide recommends men eat more fruits and vegetables than men.

The data found that men ate less than half of recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, while women ate closer to two thirds.

On average, students are consuming 3-4 fruits and vegetables per day, in comparison to the recommended 7-8 servings for women and 8-10 servings for men.

The students found that all students at least consumed some amount of fruits and vegetables, the lowest amount being 0.63 servings and the highest consuming 10.63 servings.

Dool said that it’s not a surprise students are not eating enough fruits and vegetables.

“Basically it’s a food desert [at Lakehead]. There [are] no grocery stores here.” Dool argued that cafeteria pricing encourages unhealthy food consumption by making food like pizza cheap and salads expensive.

Matheson recalled that while living in residence he ate very little fruits and vegetables. Despite this, he warns that the health implications of an unhealthy diet are serious.

“You don’t notice the effects now,” notes Matheson. “[When students reach] forty, when cardiovascular rates increase, it will be very noticeable.”

Dool and Matheson noted that insufficient intake of fruits and vegetables increase risk cardiovascular disease and cancer, two of the leading causes of death in Canada.

“Studies have found that fruits and vegetables can decrease your risk of these conditions,” said Dool.

The students hope to create awareness of these trends through a poster display on Monday. Posters from various student projects will be on display in the CJ Sanders Fieldhouse during the afternoon.

Michelle Poshtar

Even anime characters are shown making unhealthy food choices. Despite the food shown in many of the series, the characters all look fit and trim. They can run, jump, and most important of all, battle their opponents with speed and accuracy. The unrealistic shapes of many of the young girls; Sailor Moon looks similar to the dazzling Barbie, eats like a pig and does not gain a pound.

In the Sailor Moon English Dub, Lita offers Serena some homemade muffins. The muffins were actually rice balls edited with some sprinkles and coloured darker while Serena exclaims they have chocolate chips on them. So why not keep the original, healthy Japanese selection?

The erasure of the Japanese culture in the English dubbed versions of anime bring in Western types of food – sandwiches, donuts, muffins, crackers, ice-cream sandwiches, chocolate cakes etc. The majority of the shows have a children-based audience in which the companies decide to lure them in with fatty foods.

Western children would not identify with the traditional Japanese foods and would experience a cultural shock if they would see something different. Instead to educate their children-based audience and keep the traditional foods, the companies lure them in with unhealthy food options in selected episodes.

In Tokyo Mew Mew (another magical-girl series similar to Sailor Moon), the four main girl protagonists pack bento (boxed lunches), which have a variety of Japanese foods.

Of course, in the English dubbed version, the rice balls are easily replaceable with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sandwiches also make their appearance within Pokémon as well.

In one episode, of course in the Japanese version, there is a huge rice ball that rolls down a hill; however, in the English dub the rice ball is edited out to replace a giant rolling sandwich, resembling a hamburger much more than a regular sandwich. In addition, the character Brock loves to cook, and as a result there is an on-going joke with Pokémon fans when Brock refers to rice balls as “jelly-filled donuts.”

Anime fans develop an amusing game for the replacement of the rice balls, most likely thinking, “Oh jeez, what will the rice balls be this time?” There are many other hilarious examples of edited rice balls and foods on YouTube.

“I can understand it, but it’s not necessary. The kids will get confused when they see an edited rice ball as a ‘jelly-filled donut,’” says first-year student, and anime fan, Cory VanTeeffelen.

“A lot of the time it’s bad editing that looks really out of place. The companies should leave a subtitle about what a rice ball really is at the bottom, or put more healthy food choices if they do choose to edit it.”

Drop in Saturdays from 4-8pm in room UC 1017 for LUM to view purely traditional and non-North American edited anime. Come check out these anime series for some more (undubbed) food for thought!

Vitamin D crucial to activating immune defences

Anthony Marrelli

Argus

The human immune system is a mysterious and important focus in medical science. When death occurs, the immune system along with everything else shuts down. In a matter of hours, the body is invaded by all sorts of germs that normally have little effect when the immune system is working properly.

In just a short time these organisms completely dismantle the body and eat away at it until nothing remains. The immune system is doing something amazing to keep all of that dismantling from happening when a person is alive.

Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have discovered that Vitamin D is crucial to activating the human immune defences and that without sufficient intake of the vitamin, the killer cells of the immune system, T cells, will not be able to react to and fight off serious infections in the body.

For T cells to detect and kill foreign pathogens such as clumps of bacteria or viruses, the cells must first be triggered into action and transform from inactive and harmless immune cells into killer cells that are primed to seek out and destroy all traces of a foreign pathogen.

The researchers found that the T cells rely on vitamin D in order to activate and they would remain dormant, naive to the possibility of threat if vitamin D is lacking in the blood.

In order for the specialized immune cells (T cells) to protect the body from dangerous viruses or bacteria, the T cells must first be exposed to traces of the foreign pathogen.

This occurs when they are presented by other immune cells in the body, known as macrophages, with suspicious cell fragments or traces of the pathogen.

The T cells then bind to the fragment and divide and multiply into hundreds of identical cells that are all focused on the same pathogen type.

The sequence of chemical changes that the T cells undergo enables them to both be sensitized to and able to deliver a targeted immune response.

Professor Carsten Geisler from the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology explains that “when a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signalling device or antenna known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D.

This means that the T cell must have vitamin D or activation of the cell will cease. If the T cells cannot find enough vitamin D in the blood, they won’t even begin to mobilize.”

T cells that are successfully activated transform into one of two types of immune cell. They either become killer cells that will attack and destroy all cells carrying traces of a foreign pathogen or they become helper cells that assist the immune system in acquiring a metaphorical memory.

The helper cells send messages to the immune system, passing on knowledge about the pathogen so that the immune system can recognize and remember it at their next encounter.

T cells form part of the adaptive immune system, which means that they function by teaching the immune system to recognize and adapt to constantly changing threats.

Vitamin D is important for calcium absorption and the vitamin has also been implicated in diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis, and now it is known to be crucial to activating the immune system.

Most Vitamin D is produced as a natural by-product of the skin’s exposure to sunlight. It can also be found in fish liver oil, eggs and fatty fish such as salmon, herring and mackerel or taken as a dietary supplement.

No definitive studies have been carried out for the optimal daily dosage of vitamin D but as a large proportion of the population have very low concentrations of vitamin D in the blood, a number of experts recommend between 25-50 micrograms per day.

Pretty Ugly

Argus

Props to all of the wild attire that turned out. Out of the four Tokyo Pop Shocks this was my first. I was expecting a lot of sailor moons and samurai pizza cats but the crowd had a much more gothic style. A lot of black, a lot of red and a lot of underwear on the outside, myself included.

Kilroy’s was pretty cool. I went and saw Rock Truck and it was heavy metal party music. But Despite the drug soaked riffs and powerful vocals of the “dreaded” lead singer the crowd just was not giving it up. So I went to BPP.

Forever Dead and the Auditor General both had wild sets with new material and the crowd was a little more engaged than at Kilroy’s. There was even a quick whirlwind of a mosh pit. It felt as if a brief tornado of people swarmed around, spun out of control for a bit, then settled down.

All in all an awesome night and my only regret was the lackluster dancing, but I love to boogie so it might be biased. Towards the beginning of the morning there was a super hero show down judged by the crowd and it came down to a robot from a 40s sci fi flick that looked like a dishwasher with legs. I can’t remember which won, but I hope it was the robot. Home appliances can be super heros too!