Special to the View

Last year alone, approximately 2 million students graduated from high school and headed to college. Many were ill-equipped on the subject of financial literacy.

According to a 2007 survey by Charles Schwab, fewer than half of teens considered themselves knowledgeable on how to budget money (41 percent), how to pay bills (34 percent), or how credit card interest and fees work (26 percent).

The Better Business Bureau recommends that before parents wave goodbye to their college bound students, they sit down and discuss four key rules for managing personal finances:

— Be responsible with credit cards. According to a U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) survey, two out of three college students report having a credit card, of which about two-thirds are responsible for paying their monthly bill. Overall, freshmen responsible for their own cards had average credit card balances of $1,301.

— Start saving money now, even if it's just a small amount every month. Developing good saving habits early on will help a college student reap the benefits throughout his or her life.

— ­Pay your bills on time. U.S. PIRG found that more that 40 percent of college students who managed their own credit cards had paid bills late or paid at least one over-the-limit fee.

Credit card companies often charge late fees as high as $40. Add to that any accruing interest, which can be upwards of 30 percent, and college students will quickly see how much can be lost by not paying a bill on time and in full.

Aside from the immediate benefits of paying bills on time – specifically, reducing needless spending on fees and interest charges – it is an important way for college students to begin building a healthy credit report.

— Guard your personal information. When comparing the age demographics of ID theft victims in the U.S., young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 were the second highest age group at risk for fraud according to an annual survey by Javelin Strategy and Research.

The University of Texas at San Antonio Minority Basic Research Support for Continuous Research Excellence (MBRS/SCORE) program has been awarded a five-year, $9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The funding will support 10 faculty research projects in a variety of disciplines.

MBRS/SCORE was established to increase the participation of individuals from minority or underrepresented groups in scientific research. UTSA’s involvement in the MBRS/SCORE program began in 1981 and has grown over the years as more faculty members pursue biomedical research projects.

“This grant will help serve as another building block in UTSA’s efforts to achieve premier public research university status,” said Robert Gracy, UTSA vice president of research. “It also reinforces UTSA’s reputation as a national leader in educating underrepresented minorities in the sciences and in the recruitment and promotion of UTSA faculty researchers.”

UTSA’s MBRS/SCORE newly funded projects include researching how the brain understands and comprehends languages spoken by bilingual individuals, developing effective means to prevent the transmission of Lyme disease and using cutting-edge computational biology databases to predict genetic systems in malaria carrying parasites.

Janakarim Seshu, assistant professor of biology, was awarded $1.4 million to identify how Borrelia burgdorferis, the cause of Lyme disease, interacts with mammalian hosts cells.

Yufeng Wang, assistant professor of biology, will receive $1.2 million to use a computational biology approach to predict dynamics in systems of genes working in malaria parasites. Malaria is a global problem that claims two million lives annually and affects 500 million people worldwide.

The MBRS/SCORE program develops the biomedical research capability of faculty to increase the number of minorities actively engaged in biomedical research.

The National Institutes of Health support to UTSA College of Sciences faculty members involved with the MBRS/SCORE program has increased to more than $32 million over the years.

Special to the Hill Country View

On Oct. 7, neighborhoods throughout Kendall County are being invited to join forces with thousands of communities statewide for the 25th Annual National Night Out (NNO) crime and drug prevention event.

National Night Out, which is sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch (NATW) and co-sponsored locally by the Kendall County Sheriff’s Office, will involve communities from all over the state of Texas.

National Night Out is designed to: Heighten drug prevention awareness; generate support for, and participation in, local anticrime efforts; strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships; and send a message to criminals letting them know neighborhoods are organized and fighting back.

From 6 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 7, residents in neighborhoods throughout Kendall County and across the nation are asked to unlock their doors, turn on outside lights and spend the evening outside with neighbors and police.

Many neighborhoods throughout Kendall County will be hosting a variety of special events, such as block parties, cookouts, parades, visits from the Sheriff’s Office, flashlight walks, youth activities and anticrime rallies.

Kendall County Sheriff Roger Duncan said, “This is a night for Kendall County to stand together to promote awareness, safety and neighborhood unity. National Night Out showcases the vital importance of police-community partnerships and citizen involvement in our fight to build a safer county.”

For more information on National Night Out or plans your community may have for National Night Out, contact Deputy Mike Colwell, at (830) 249-9721.

Dr. Susan Diamond shows the inner structure of a human kidney. Photos by Joni Simon

Sometimes you can have a ticking time bomb medical condition, like chronic kidney disease, and not even know it.

During the 2nd annual Tour DaVita bicycle ride, cyclists, including Jeff Boroczky, San Antonio DaVita regional operations director, and Dr. Susan Diamond will be on the lookout for those who are at risk for CKD, a deadly disease that can result in kidney failure.

Diamond, a nephrologist and medical director of the Northwest DaVita Dialysis Center, participated in last year‘s cycling marathon. She said she does it as a way of giving back.

“It’s a way to increase awareness of kidney disease,” she said. “Kidney disease is a very lonely, kind of sad disease. What I noticed last year, when we were riding to the different clinics, was that people really appreciated seeing us coming from all over the country to their little clinic to help in any way we could.”

Cycling is exercise and exercise helps ward off disease, so it’s an excellent way of putting the two together, Diamond added.

When asked how he’s going to prepare for the cycling marathon, Boroczky leans back in his chair at the Boerne DaVita Dialysis Center and grins. He’s not a cyclist and he’s not going to do any sort of training, he said, even though he admitted that last year‘s tour through Alabama and Tennessee, wasn’t easy.

“The first thing I learned was a new meaning to the word ‘courage.‘ And that was getting on the bike the second day,” he said, “That took every ounce of courage.“

He added that during the journey, he discovered what the people, who work in his field, are really made of.

“You don’t know that until you see them in this environment. I saw things such as advanced cyclists putting their hand on the back of another cyclist, who was struggling up a hill and they rode together,” Boroczky said. “It gives me goose bumps just to think about it. I saw cyclists in general encouraging others to make it through the day.”

Boroczky described his fellow cyclists as people of all shapes and sizes and athletic ability. Even so, there was no differentiation.

“Everybody worked toward the common goal of doing just the best that you can. Kent Thiry, the CEO of DaVita, put it so beautifully when he said, ‘At the end of the day, guys, it isn’t about winning. It isn’t about who finished first. It is about the spirit of the ride,’” Boroczky related. “That was so eloquent and so clear that, I can say for half of us, it was a breath of fresh air and relief and for the other half, it clarified why we were doing it.”

He said he expects that it’s going to be a gentler terrain this year on Wisconsin‘s rolling dells, where the cyclists plan to stop in several cities to educate people at risk for CKD, such as those who have diabetes or hypertension.

Approximately 300 cyclists from across the country will participate in the three and one-half day, 260-mile bike ride from Green Bay to Sturgeon, Wisc., that kicks off Sept. 15.

“On our journey, we will be visiting dialysis centers, celebrating in cities as an attempt to raise awareness,” Boroczky said, adding the cyclists won’t have time to conduct health fairs or training. “But we’ll be making a lot of noise to raise awareness.”

According to Boroczky, the cyclists pay their own way. Thus, all the proceeds are deposited into a kidney trust.