● tuesday, february 4, 2014 ● serving texas a&m since 1893 ● first paper free – additional copies $1 ● © 2014 student media

thebattalion

At the surface, Jinhoon Lee was a soft-spoken man with a spark of curiosity behind his eyes.

But beyond the first impression, Lee’s life story is, to the very end, a story of passion, bravery, hope and above all, love.

Lee was a member of the Korean Catholic com-munity and took Glycerius as his confirmation name. He was a devoted husband, a caring friend, a dedicated Catholic and a faithful family member.

But for those who knew him best, this list can-not hold a candle to the memory of his genuine smile or his appetite for life.

When Changjoo Nam, computer science grad-uate student, met Lee at a meeting for their Korean

Catholic community, a friendship was born. In the course of this friendship — which spanned both of their presidencies of the Korean Catholic Associa-tion — Nam said most of his favorite memories

Aimee Breaux The Battalion

A&M researchers make strides in bipedal robotics

FIRST STEPS

COURTESY

Silver Taps to honor Jinhoon Lee

Jinhoon Lee (right), an architecture graduate student who had a passion for research in sustainable data structure, stands with his wife Ji Hyun Kim. See Silver Taps on page 2

Graduate student personified personal bravery, passion

Photos by Jenna Rabel — THE BATTALION

Rolling, flying and swimming, robots today are capable of

many physical actions. How-ever, there is one simple movement that continues to elude the robots and their designers — walk-ing.

It is an action confined to fiction today, but researchers at Texas A&M University are on track to teach robots to mimic

their creators for the first time. A walking robot would open the

doors to improved prosthesis and space exploration technology — if

it can keep from falling over. “Walking is controlled fall-

ing,” said Aaron Ames, assistant

professor in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M. “When we walk, we’re never statically stable, and if you try to walk so that at any point in time you can stop, you basically walk like a robot.”

Ames is head of the A&M Biped-al Experimental Robotics Lab. The AMBER Lab has built two robots on its own, AMBER 1 and AMBER 2, that can walk with guiding tethers. AMBER Lab researchers have also collaborated with NASA and other universities on several projects, in-cluding NASA’s Valkyrie robot that competed in December’s DARPA robotics challenge.

Three to four undergraduates work

John Rangel The Battalion

What is the most di� cult

part of writing Silver Taps Letters?

Q:thebattalionasks

insidelifestyles | 3Brother Jed back at A&MConfrontational evangelists Jed Smock, commonly referred to as Brother Jed, and his wife, Cindy Smock, made their annual visit to College Station Wednesday.

sports | 4Tennis wins MondayA&M men’s and woman’s tennis look to remain undefeated heading into this week’s competition.

page 2

Facebook blows the candle on 10th anniversarysocial media

Every month for Silver Taps, students are en-couraged to participate in a tradition that began

when Sul Ross died — writing letters to the griev-ing families, assuring them the Aggie family grieves as well.

Traditions Council facilitates the tradition today and there are places on campus where students can write letters in remembrance of deceased students, said Ryan Johnson, junior mechanical engineering major and campus relations sub-committee chair for Traditions Council.

Last semester, Traditions Council collected about 330 letters in September and 856 in November, Johnson said.

“I cannot begin to explain how much these letters mean to the families,” Johnson said. “To show that we as the Aggie family are there for them and sup-port them through such a tragic time in their lives brings a little bit of comfort. It is a way to show that the Aggie family will always be there for the families and it shows that we truly are a family, not just a student body.”

The process is not limited to those who person-ally knew the student. Cindi Kepic, sophomore eco-logical restoration major, knew a student who passed away in May. She said it is almost better if letters come from students who did not know the fallen personally because the grief is fresh during Silver Taps week.

“I think before, I sort of assumed that writing was more for people that knew the person, and after Tra-vis I realized that it’s so much harder to write it when you knew the person,” Keptic said. “It’s almost like

Jennifer Reiley The Battalion

William Guerra — THE BATTALION

Facebook users will have one more happy birthday wish to send on Tuesday as the so-

cial media site celebrates its 10th anniversary.There was an average of 757 million daily ac-

tive users during December 2013, according to a 2013 fourth quarter report published by Face-book. There may be some debate as to whether the site has waned in popularity, but as Facebook amasses millions of users, the company still con-tinues to change and adapt to maintain its pres-ence in many people’s lives.

“I’d like to pretend I was clairvoyant and could understand, but I really didn’t know it would grow to what it’d become, or the power of it,” said Greg Ormes, communication profes-sor. “I think I always thought it was going to be more superficial and have less capacity to really change the world.”

Ormes said as an undergraduate in college, he remembered hearing a “buzz” surrounding the topic of Facebook as it began to gradually expand beyond its exclusive membership among partic-ular universities. Ormes said he made a profile around 2005 or 2006.

“Back then, there weren’t status updates, there

weren’t places to put pictures or video or things like that, and if I’m not mistaken, there wasn’t even the live feed of home information,” Ormes said. “You would have to go to various people’s pages to get their information.”

Ormes said Facebook is more than just a platform for communication but a “multimedia experience.”

Brooke Halsey, senior telecommunication and media studies major, said she didn’t expect Facebook to last as long as it has, but attributed its longevity to the important role it plays in the

Allison Rubenak The Battalion

Students reflect on impact of Silver Taps lettersTraditions Council works to comfort grieving families

David Cohen — THE BATTALION

Cindi Kepic, sophomore ecological restoration major, has written a Silver Taps letter each month since the death of her friend and fellow student in May.

Aaron Ames (left) and Aakar Mehra, mechanical engineering graduate student, prepare AMBER 2 for a walking demonstration. (Far left) Nao Robots were used to demonstrate AMBER’s software capabilities.

A&M researchers make strides in bipedal robotics

Rmany physical actions. How-

It is an action confined to fiction today, but researchers at Texas A&M University are on track to teach robots to mimic

their creators for the first time. A walking robot would open the

doors to improved prosthesis and space exploration technology — if

it can keep from falling over. “Walking is controlled fall-

ing,” said Aaron Ames, assistant

John RangelThe Battalion

See Robots on page 2

See Letters on page 2

See Facebook on page 3

An honor guard from Ross Volunteer Company will march to Academic Plaza, where its members will fi re three rifl e volleys. Buglers from the Aggie Band will play a special arrangement of “Taps.” The tolling of the Albritton Tower bells will signal the end of the ceremony.

when10:30 p.m. Tuesdaywhere Academic Plaza

silvertaps

William Guerra — THE BATTALION

BAT_02-04-14_A1.indd 1 2/3/14 11:06 PM

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Jake Walker, Editor in ChiefMark Doré, Managing EditorAimee Breaux, City EditorJennifer Reiley, City EditorJohn Rangel, City Asst. Lindsey Gawlik, City Asst.Clay Koepke, Sports EditorTyler Stafford, Sports Asst.

thebattalion The IndependenT STudenT VoIce of TexaS a&M SInce 1893

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center around the laughter shared over din-ners between Nam and Lee’s family.

Nam said he recalls the November day when he and Lee went crabbing in Galves-ton. With too few devices, not enough warm clothing and no luck finding a good crabbing spot, the trip was a textbook exam-ple of a failed adventure and the group came back empty-handed. Despite this, Nam said he cherished this memory with Lee, for Lee had a way of bringing cheerfulness with him everywhere.

To Nam, this characteristic was a mark of bravery. Whether facing a failed trip or the skin cancer that caused his death, Lee seemed to have an infinite supply of hope.

“After several months, I heard that his cancer recurred in April,” Nam said. “He had a stiff upper lip even in the difficult situ-ation. He was always joyful and energetic even with his serious health condition.”

Nam said he never saw Lee angry. There was always a smile.

“He was a devoted and passionate person for everything,” Nam said. “He really loved his wife. He spared no efforts for our com-munity.”

Nam said he spent a lot of his time study-ing and researching and traveled when he could with his wife, who is in South Korea and could not be reached for comment.

Julian Kang, associate construction sci-ence professor and advisor to Lee, said he was impressed with Lee from the first time he met him at a conference in Japan.

“I attended a conference and he happened to attend the conference with his professor, when he was working on his master’s degree in South Korea,” Kang said. “That was the first time I met him and I was impressed at the level of curiosity and want to know what was going on.”

Lee’s curiosity manifested itself in his work with data structure, Kang said.

“He was very ambitious with things he was interested in,” Kang said. “He was very

curious about how technology is going to change, the way we make decisions and also, at the same time, he was interested in how we are going to sustain our data.”

Kang said Lee was working on his doc-toral degree and hoped to one day move back to South Korea and achieve a faculty position at a Korean university.

“He investigated many of the current movements going on in terms of using soft-ware independence structure to maintain the data so that no matter what is happening to those applications down the road, we will still be able to keep the data for the entire life cycle,” Kang said.

Kang said Lee never considered his death due to cancer a possibility and was driven by his passion for the subject, remembering when Lee presented his paper at a confer-ence in Canada with only months to live.

“He could barely walk,” Kang said. “He still had a burning desire grow as a future scholar in our area. I was very impressed by his strong will to give a presentation. He gave two presentations, which is not common to see from any graduate-level student.”

This characteristic remained true to the end, Kang said. Knowing that Lee was go-ing to fly back to South Korea for medical care and that he had one last chance to visit, Kang traveled to M.D. Anderson in Hous-ton where Lee was staying before the flight back.

“The discussion I exchanged with him was how he would communicate with me over email once he went back to Korea and things he would maybe do next month,” Kang said. “We never talked about how he was going to cure the cancer, he never ex-pected that he was going to die. Instead, he was coming to Korea for a better treatment, then he was coming back to the United States with better health conditions.”

Hong-Hoe Kim, computer science grad-uate student and a friend from the Korean Catholic Association, said Lee carried his re-ligion with him until the end.

“He was a very religious person,” Kim said. “Even though he had pain, he didn’t lose hope that God will save him.”

Silver TapsContinued from page 1

you knew the person,” Kepic said. “It’s al-most like you would rather they get letters from people who didn’t know them be-cause it hurts you so much to write it. The people who are closer to him I know didn’t write letters because they couldn’t put their thoughts down on paper.”

Jon Bumann, sophomore political science major and member of Traditions Council, writes a letter every month Silver Taps takes place.

“Whether we personally know them or not, I feel it’s important that we are there for every part of our family and that means giving all the comfort we can give to their families in a time when they really need it,” Bumann said.

Johnson said there are few limitations on what students can include in their letters. The purpose is to let the families know the Aggies are thinking about them.

Johnson said a father of a deceased Aggie came to the Silver Taps table once and wrote

a letter. He told Johnson how comforted he was to receive letters from Aggies.

“That put it all in perspective for me,” Johnson said. “We really do make a differ-ence. Writing these letters really does impact these families.”

Since her friend passed last May, Kepic said she has written a letter every Silver Taps. She said the letters are one way A&M sets itself apart from other schools. That A&M has so many letters from students who knew or didn’t know the deceased really comforts the family and friends, she said.

“I think it’s important because after you lose someone, one of the things that you re-ally want is for everyone to realize what the world is missing without them,” Kepic said.

Once the letters are collected by Tradi-tions Council, they are passed on to Student Assistance Services, which then passes the letters to the families. Tables are set up from 9:30 a.m. through 3:30 p.m. at Sbisa Hall, MSC 12th Man Hall, the Quad and Rudder Plaza. There will also be a drop box placed in the Student Activities office in Koldus where students can drop letters through the week.

LettersContinued from page 1

Jenna Rabel & Jayavel Arumugam — THE BATTALION

“Finding the right words to use. It’s not easy to relate to

such a tragedy.”Micah Stahlman, freshman animal

science major

What is the most di� cult part of writing Silver Taps letters?

Q:thebattalionasks

“Knowing that an A&M student has passed away,

and while we’re still going to school their friends and their

family are going through a really hard time.”

Matthew Krebs, senior mechanical engineering major

“I think most of the time you may not actually have contact with that student so you may not directly know them, but in the same way they’re still

all part of the Aggie family, so you still have to fi nd that way

to connect it.”Emily Peter, junior business

administration major

with 15 graduate students alongside Ames at any one time to research human locomotion and apply their findings to ro-botics.

“[AMBER 1] was the first robot that we built,” Ames said. “[It] has been a very good test bed for doing our algorithms because of the fact that it has point feet. The one thing that is difficult about human loco-motion is achieving this sort of constantly falling forward phe-nomenon. Most robots today don’t really utilize that to the degree that they should.”

Point feet are important to achieving humanlike motion because it more accurately re-flects the human form’s dimen-sions. Ames said while robots today are able to move on two feet, they do not walk as hu-

mans do because either the feet are disproportionally large or the legs are artificially bent.

AMBER 2 built on AM-BER 1’s success. It resembles the human form from the waist down and has independently walked more than a kilometer.

Ames and his students plan to build two more robots. AMBER 2.5 is hoped to have the ability to run and walk up stairs, and Proxi is a collabora-tion between Texas A&M, the research company SRI Interna-tional and several other univer-sities. Proxi will be assembled at Texas A&M before competing in the December 2014 DARPA robotics challenge.

In addition to robots, Ames and the AMBER lab develops next generation prosthesis from the understanding of human locomotion derived from their research.

“One thing that sets us apart is the human inspired design, as

well as the human inspired con-trol,” said Jonathan Horn, first year graduate student in me-chanical engineering and mem-ber of the AMBER lab. “An-other thing is the cost. We’re looking to help somebody, that’s our main goal. It’s trans-lating from AMBER 2 straight to someone else.”

Horn said taking ideas devel-oped from robotics research and applying it to prosthesis poses its own unique challenges.

“The hardest thing to do is to go from something that is good for a robot and make it good for a human in that there’s a lot more limitations in terms of size, weight, functionality and safety,” Horn said.

Ames said the work in pros-thesis technology produced in the lab answers the question that many skeptics ask when wondering what advantage a walking robot would have over conventional technology.

“A lot of people ask, ‘Why bipedal robots? Why do you want them to walk humanlike?’ And the answer is ultimately those technologies where you understand how humans walk can go on to building devices to help humans walk better — es-pecially humans who can’t walk very well,” Ames said.

Eric Cousineau, second year graduate student in mechanical engineering and member of the AMBER lab, echoed Ames’ sentiments on the importance of researching human locomotion on such a fundamental level.

“The main importance is being able to develop platforms that can help people complete the tasks that they need done,” Cousineau said. “Whether that is something mundane such as a Roomba vacuuming the floor, or something more intense such as emergency response and po-tentially saving lives.”

RobotsContinued from page 1

BAT_02-04-14_A2.indd 1 2/3/14 10:21 PM

campus as a part of a three and a half month mission across the Sunbelt, Cindy Smock said.

Freshman finance major Kathleen Seun-som said she found the Smocks’ delivery and message uncomfortable.

“I understand freedom of speech and re-ligion, but everyone’s different and when they yell out at a whole group of diversified people, it’s not okay,” Seunsom said. “I think it’s okay if it’s a club, but when they preach at hundreds of student’s walking by and they don’t know their story, I just don’t think that’s right.”

Cindy Smock said she and Jed use “con-frontational evangelism” to challenge stu-dents with sins such as “fornication, mari-juana smoking [and] the party lifestyle.”

“We’re calling out their sins and com-manding them to turn from them,” Cindy Smock said.

Cindy Smock said they use a direct ap-proach when preaching to students because they believe that Jesus was confrontational in his ministry. There was a lot of heckling and laughing from the crowd, she said, but they expect that response from students.

“We’re pushing their buttons,” Cindy Smock said. “We’re provoking them a little bit, and the good part of that is often stu-dents get provoked into reading the Bible and searching further. Some of our worst heck-lers end up turning to Christ and becom-ing believers. So we’re not discouraged by the heckling.”

Jed Smock said his team enjoys the A&M campus because he believed there was a high percentage of Christians on campus. He said it was important to preach to them as well.

Cindy Smock said many students were un-comfortable with their messages because she and the campus ministries team were there to “violate” taboos.

“You know anything goes on the col-lege campus and whatever you want to do is fine,” Cindy Smock said. “We’re politically incorrect, we’re judging them according to the Bible. In the eyes of the students we’re breaking the rules.”

Seunsom said the large group of students who stayed and listened for hours just wanted a show.

“I think the people who stayed there for hours had nothing to do,” Seunsom said. “You either have class or you don’t. When someone is passionately yelling at you about something you don’t hear every day, you ei-ther want to see how ridiculous it is or how it affects their beliefs.”

Ybarra said her beliefs weren’t swayed by what was preached, but it did give her in-sight on how she would talk to people from now on.

“It made me take into consideration how I talk to people,” Ybarra said. “It makes me think about how I approach things, because I could see the reactions from the people in the crowd and how it wasn’t a positive reaction.”

Students congregated around Jed Smock, the traveling evangelist commonly

known as “Brother Jed,” and his companions on Monday.

Jed Smock crosses the country to preach at universities. Students such as senior history major Gabby Ybarra stopped to hear what Jed Smock and the representatives of The Cam-pus Ministries USA had to say.

“I stopped because I was curious about what he says,” Ybarra said. “I’ve heard of him, so I’ve known about him for the past three years so I was just curious about what message he was preaching.”

Ybarra said the words spoken by Smock were very condemning.

“Just the way he preached his message came off as unloving, and as a Christian we’re supposed to be loving and caring when we present the gospel, so it was shocking,” Ybarra said.

Cindy Smock, Jed Smock’s wife who is commonly referred to as Sister Cindy, said she and Jed were traditional, inter-denom-inational Christians. Jed Smock has been preaching on college campuses for about

thirty years and has visited A&M for almost a decade, she said.

“We preach that [Jesus] is the way of sal-vation and that he commanded us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,” Cindy Smock said. “So we’re here to preach the gospel and call the students to a life of righteous faith in Christ.”

This year, Jed, Cindy and three oth-er team members traveled to the A&M

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daily life of many, including herself. “I have the app on my phone so if

I’m bored I’ll scroll through my news feed to see what’s new,” Halsey said. “I follow like news sites and clothing stores so it keeps me updated on a lot different stuff, not just my friends.”

Jose Contreras, senior engi-neering technology major, said he expected Facebook to remain a strong medium because of its constant adaptations.

“They bought Instagram — they bought all these things, they kept

it really controlled compared to MySpace, and MySpace was like, ‘What do the users want?’” Contre-ras said. “Facebook is more about, ‘What can we show them what they like and they’ll use?’”

Despite Facebook’s contin-ued popularity, some people make do without a profile, citing con-cerns on how it affects the spread of information.

Brian Altenhofen, communica-tion technology professor, recently deleted his Facebook because he saw it as a distraction. He said the shar-ing of content on Facebook was a “double-edged sword.”

“On one hand, you are exposed to

digital kind of content and different kinds of people, but on the other side it shows you content from people who you already agree with,” Altenhofen said. “We tend to like and agree and share stories that we agree with and find interesting, therefore the algo-rithms are going to make those more popular on our news feed. It doesn’t necessarily help with the diversity of information.”

John O’Hearne, senior telecom-munication media studies major, said although he checks his Facebook four or five times a day, he would prefer not to use it as much. He said Facebook has become an integral part of his social life and that there

was a general expectation to maintain a profile.

“Facebook is so much a part of who we are and more of what we’re supposed to be,” O’Hearne said. “I don’t think you can deny just how much, like, if you take photo, that photo better be on Facebook. If you meet somebody, you will become Facebook friends with them. If you join an organization, you’re expected to join that Facebook group. If some-thing new comes out on Facebook — it’s always a part of your social life. You’re going to be connected to it.”

Halsey said Facebook was useful in shaping social interactions. She said she felt like “making your friendship

public” was an aspect of Facebook that was more obvious.

“A lot of the big thing now is posting BuzzFeed posts and posts kind of inside jokes, but make them public, so everyone knows you have inside jokes,” Halsey said.

O’Hearne said, “everything has its time,” but he didn’t feel other social media sites such as Twitter would eclipse Facebook.

“It’s something you do every day — you brush your teeth, you floss, you shower, you get on Facebook,” O’Hearne said. “Whatever is living in the social media world — Face-book definitely has a hold.”

FacebookContinued from page 1

Allison Rubenak & Erum Salam The Battalion

Erum Salam — THE BATTALION

Cindy Smock (right) preaches Monday to gathered students.

BAT_02-04-14_A3.indd 1 2/3/14 11:10 PM

thebattalion

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tuesday 2.4.2014

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On a brisk Monday afternoon, the No. 9 Texas A&M men’s tennis team improved

to 6-0 in spring play with victories over the SMU Mustangs, 4-0, and Nicholls State Colonels, 6-1, at the George P. Mitchell Tennis Center.

The Aggies jumped out to an early advantage in both matches. Against SMU, the Aggies took the first doubles point, 6-2, behind the duo of Harrison Adams and Shane Vinsant. Similarly, the No. 20 pair of Aggies, Jeremy Efferding and Jordan Szabo, started the Nicholls State match by defeating the pair of Evan Karatzas and Ki-eran Cronin, 6-2.

Texas A&M men’s head coach Steve Denton said he was pleased with the overall effort of his players and considers the team’s consistency as an indicator of his squad’s impressive top-to-bottom play in singles and doubles matches.

“I was very pleased with the effort overall,” Denton said. “I felt like, considering the con-ditions, we came out and played with a lot of energy. We played well. We were able to win convincingly, but these were two pretty good teams.”

With the Aggie men ranked No. 9 nation-ally — and the Aggie women coming in at No. 7 — Texas A&M is one of only four schools that have both teams ranked in the nation’s top 10.

The men will next take the court Friday when they travel to Urbana, Ill., to battle Illi-nois, followed by Sunday’s match in Columbus, Ohio, for a top-10 showdown against the Ohio State Buckeyes.

The Texas A&M women, having defeated Mississippi State and Depaul by identical 4-1 scores in the ITA Kick-Off Weekend, will head to Chapel Hill, N.C., Tuesday to challenge the No. 3 North Carolina Tar Heels.

The Aggies will have their hands full as they take on a UNC squad that is 4-0 on its home

court. The Tar Heels sport two of the top five players in the nation in freshman Jamie Loeb and Hayley Carter. Loeb and Carter come in at No. 2 and No. 5, respectively, in the ITA national singles rankings.

“This is definitely a big challenge for our group, but for the first time all year I would say our group in the past seven to 10 days has started to look a little more organized, cohesive and is playing better, so I’m very excited for us to get the opportunity to go at North Carolina and see how we perform,” said Howard Joffe, A&M women’s head coach.

The Aggies are led by senior Cristina Stancu, who enters the week No. 14 in singles play and No. 22 in doubles with Stefania Hristov, sopho-more and fellow Romanian. Stancu is 2-0 in dual singles and 18-4 overall, including an 11-2 ledger against ranked opponents.

A&M knocks off Nicholls State, SMU

tennis

Clay KoepkeThe Battalion

Jenna Rabel — THE BATTALION

Jeremy Efferding competes Monday, which included a doubles win alongside Jordan Szabo.

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