FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 I SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 I ©2014 STUDENT MEDIA I ©THEBATTONLINE
I >
THE
The softball
team warms up
Softball hits ground
running in Cali series
Tanner G_arzo_—JH^.g^XTAUON
1 THE GUYS
Transfers Jones, House waste no
time in making Reed their own
By Carter Karels
â– â–  JH idway through the SEC slate, the Aggie
HV mU offense lives and dies on a pair of juniors,
â–  â– â– H both of whom wore different colors last
I al â–  season.
And it’s working just fine.
A six-game win streak — snapped Wednesday
by Ole Miss — vaulted A&M into a tie for second
in the SEC. In those wins, transfers Danuel House
and Jalen Jones combined to average 33 points. In
the loss, they mustered 14.
The juniors each played two seasons elsewhere
— House at Houston, Jones at SMU — before head
coach Billy Kennedy scooped them up.
“Well when we found out that they were leav
ing, we got after them right away,” Kennedy said.
Anxiety loomed within the program once the
Aggies saw their leading scorer last season, Jamal
Jones, depart the team after being eliminated by Il
linois State from the CBI to finish 18-16. When
House, a guard, and Jalen Jones, a forward, came
into the picture, excitement began to spread.
“I was really excited to get Danuel in here be
cause I know him a little from high school and I
played with him,” junior guard Alex Caruso said.
“I had some familiarity with him, so I was really
excited to get him in here because he’s a big time
athlete and scorer.”
Jones shined in his first couple years with SMU,
and in his sophomore year, he was tied for first in
scoring (14 points per game) and grabbed the most
rebounds (7.7 per game) for the Mustangs. Jones
said he and the new coaching staff weren’t on the
same page, so he decided to leave and start anew.
“I wanted to stay close to home,” Jones said. “My
dad was going overseas to Iraq for the war and I
wanted to stay close to my mom and my sister. For
me, coming to A&M, I kind of wanted to stay in the
Texas area and coach Kennedy and his staff showed
me a lot of love when I was transferring. I came out
DUO ONPG. 4
Softball is back — even if
it’s a few states away from
College Station.
The No. 24 Texas A&M
softball team will get its sea
son underway this weekend
at the SoCal Collegiate Clas
sic in Los Angeles.
The Aggies will begin the
classic with a doubleheader
Friday against the Utah Utes
and tire No. 7 UCLA Bruins.
On Saturday, the Aggies will
face the Bruins again along
with the San Diego State Az
tecs, and will conclude the
classic against Purdue.
The opener against the
SOCAL CLASSIC
what
Tournament to open the
Aggie softball season
where
Los Angeles
Utes will mean a little more
for head coach Jo Evans. She
not only was the former head
coach at Utah before com
ing to Texas A&M, she will
be coaching against her alma
mater.
Evans said she looks for
ward to seeing her club get
SOFTBALL ON PG. 4
BUSINESS
Prospective Mays
dean to visit Friday
By Sam King
^ Mays Business School
^ will welcome its sole can
didate for dean, Eli Jones, to
campus Friday.
Jones, Class of 1982, who
is dean of the Sam Wal
ton College of Business and
Leadership at the University
of Arkansas, will kick off his
two-week visit with a lecture
entitled “Respecting the Past:
Writing the Future,” which
is open to the public. Cady
Auckerman, chief of staff in
the College of Agriculture
Eli Jones
and Life Sciences, said this is
Jones’ opportunity to intro
duce himself and talk about
his ideas for Mays.
“Traditionally what the
JONES ON PG. 3
FCC to vote
on broad net
neutrality
protection
By Lindsey Gawlik
^ The Internet’s future lies in net neu-
^ trality secured by robust government
regulation, if Federal Communications
Chairman Tom Wheeler is able to put
his latest plan into action.
Wheeler announced Wednesday
through a WIRED op-ed a proposal for
a strong open Internet rule by reclassi
fying broadband Internet access service
— 1 which is any service users get from
cable, phone and wireless providers — as
a public utility rather than as an informa
tion service.
The FCC — the government agency
in charge of regulating communications by
radio, television, wire, satellite and cable —
will vote on the proposal Feb. 26.
In the proposal, Wheeler states plans
to switch the Internet’s classification away
from Title I of the Communications Act
NET NEUTRALITY ON PG. 3
Q&A: Aggie-built robots mimic human movement
iwii
m l**'*Z. Wi
Shelby Knowles — THE BATTALION
AMBER 3 was designed by professor Aaron Ames
(left) at A&M to mimic human movement.
Connor Paetzotd, SciTech reporter,
sits down with Aaron Ames,
mechanical engineering professor
and head of the A&M Bipedal
Experimental Robotics Lab, to
discuss his work with robots that
mimic human movement and
prosthetic legs.
THE BATTALION: Why did
you get into robotics; what
interested you about it?
AMES: It's just cool. Take
locomotion — it's a simple thing
we do all the time, but that
simplicity shrouds an immense
amount of complexity. So if we
can understand this really complex
problem and then realize this really
simple, fluid behavior, there's a
beauty to that. That simplicity on
the far side of all that complexity is
what has always appealed to me,
there's a concrete answer that is
beautiful if you're smart enough to
figure it out.
THE BATTALION: What is
AMBER Lab currently working
on?
AMES: AMBER 3 is our current
bipedal robot, it was built from
scratch here at A&M. AMBER 3
is the third robot in the AMBER
series. Every time we make it
better, bigger, faster, stronger and
we're currently able to test really
advanced control methodologies.
We also have AM PRO, a custom
prosthetic device that is powered
which means it has actuators at
the knee and ankle. It has onboard
processing and power so it is self-
contained.
THE BATTALION: Besides
prosthetics, how is bipedal
walking more useful than other
forms of robotic movement such
as wheels or four legs?
AMES: Think of a disaster
scenario — there's an earthquake
and there's rubble everywhere
and wheeled robots just cannot
navigate this uneven terrain. So
the idea is to improve mobility in
these unstructured environments.
Four legs in some senses is easier
AMES ON PG. 3