Laura Treanor Found Dead

Sophomore Laura Treanor, 19, was found dead in her room in Ivory Tower Friday morning, according to University and police officials.

University officials say Laura Treanor, a junior from Yorktown Heights, N.Y., was found dead Friday. The GW Hatchet newspaper reports the 19-year-old was an editor for the student-run publication and a member of the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority.

Treanor, a native of Yorktown Heights, N.Y., was born in 1989 and living in a quad in the 23rd Street residence hall. A roommate reported the death to authorities after finding her at 8:30 a.m., about an hour before an Alert DC message was sent out. Treanor was declared dead by a Medical Examiner representative at about 10 a.m.

Roommates found Treanor about 8:30 a.m. in her room at the Ivory Tower residence hall and called 911.

A Metropolitan Police Department statement Friday afternoon said there was no apparent trauma to the body. University spokeswoman Tracy Schario said at 6 p.m. that it “appears Laura died of natural causes,” which she said effectively rules out homicide pending a complete autopsy.

A University statement released earlier in the day at 1:15 p.m. explained that “Because the cause of death has not yet been determined, MPD has technically classified this as a ’suspicious death.’”

A spokesman for MPD, Sgt. Kenny Bryson, said that officers responded to a report of an unconscious person Friday morning, and later requested a squad that investigates natural death. Bryson added that the death is likely not a homicide or suicide.

Treanor, who was Catholic, was a lector at The Newman Center last semester. The center is holding a memorial mass on Tuesday at 5 p.m. in The Newman Center chapel on 22nd and F streets.

In an interview, University President Steven Knapp said the University has been speaking with the family and does not know a cause of death.

“It just tells you once again how important it is for us to keep an eye out for each other and stick together as a community,Tragic things will always happen but we try to do everything we can to prevent them and to understand what people in the community are experiencing.” Knapp said.

Treanor is the first current student to die on campus in about four years.

The university says Treanor's room will be closed during the investigation. The campus remains open and operating on a normal schedule.

Study Shows Coffee Drinkers Hallucinate More

LONDON - A study had found,a people who drink more than seven cups of coffee a day tend to hallucinate more than less caffeine-driven colleagues.

Those with a high caffeine intake are three times more likely to have heard a non-existent person's voice than those who drink one cup a day, said the research by psychologists at Durham University.

"This is a first step towards looking at the wider factors associated with hallucinations,Previous research has highlighted a number of important factors, such as childhood trauma. Many such factors are thought to be linked to hallucinations, in part because of their impact on the body's reaction to stress" said Simon Jones, the PhD student who led the study.

"One interpretation may be that those students who were more prone to hallucinations used caffeine to help cope with their experiences,More work is needed to establish whether caffeine consumption, and nutrition in general, has an impact on those kinds of hallucination that cause distress" he said.

However, the study noted that the tendency to hear voices or have other hallucinations may not be caused by caffeine, but simply reflect the kind of people who drink lots of coffee.

The researchers now plan to study the impact of other forms of food and drink on hallucinations.

The study appears in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Scientists Found New Planet

PARIS – Two different teams of astronomy scientists reported on Wednesday the first ever detection from Earth of the atmosphere of planets outside our solar system.

Around 300 exoplanets,some of the planets may have conditions similar to life on Earth have been identified so far, though astronomers assume that far more are waiting to be discovered.

Up to now, virtually everything known about the atmosphere of exoplanets has come from data collected by the space-based Spitzer infrared telescope.However,Spitzer soon will run out of the cryogens that is needed to keep its instruments cool.

One team spotted a massive planet many times the size of Earth named OGLE-TR-56b, they called it as "hot Jupiter."

Two observations of OGLE-TR-56b were made last summer, one using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, and the other using Carnegie's own Magellan-Baade telescope, both in Chile.

In addition, it must be a clear and calm night on Earth in order accurately measure the differences in thermal emissions when the exoplanet is eclipsed as it goes behind the star.

Hot Jupiters are massive planets,many times the size of Earth , that orbit very close to their stars.

"The successful recipe is a planet that emits a lot of heat and has little-to-no wind in its atmosphere,the eclipse allows us to separate the emissions of the planet from those of the star," said co-author Mercedes Lozez-Morales of the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C.