News Briefs

Dr. Michael King will share images from NASA’s Electronic Theater and discuss global environmental changes during a free Sunday (June 12) presentation at the UNC Morehead Planetarium and Science Center’s Star Theater.

Seating is limited for the 1 p.m. talk.

King’s presentation includes dramatic scenes: fly-by views of landscapes in southern Africa, satellite photos of major wildfires in the western United States, and visualizations of hurricanes and dust storms from a global perspective. NASA satellites that orbit about 500 miles above the Earth’s surface – including Aqua, Landsat 7 and Terra – captured the images.

King is senior project scientist with NASA’s Earth Observing System, which conducts long-term global observations of land surface, biosphere, solid Earth, atmosphere and oceans.

The presentation will focus on how the Earth’s surface temperature is changing, how sea ice is decreasing and how glaciers have retreated worldwide in a response to global conditions.

King’s presentation is co-sponsored by Orange Global Warming Coalition, Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and UNC’s Morehead Center.

"Extinction!", the Morehead Center’s new multimedia Star Theater production, will follow King’s presentation, at 2:30 p.m. and at 3:30 p.m. Sunday’s regular 1:30 p.m. Star Theater show has been canceled.

Admission to "Extinction!" is $4.75 for adults; and $3.75 for seniors, students and children. Morehead Center members receive free admission.

For more information, visit www.moreheadplanetarium.org.

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UNC’s Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders recently awarded two Seed Grants to researchers within the areas of irritable bowel syndrome and recurrent abdominal pain.

Dr. Yehuda Ringel, assistant professor of medicine in UNC’s Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, received a one-year grant of $37,471 in direct costs for his project, a study addressing an important aspect of the etiology-pathophysiology of irritable bowel syndrome. Research has shown that IBS occurs in up to 30 percent of patients recovering from bacterial gastroenteritis.

A second grant in a similar amount was awarded to Dr. Denesh Chitkara, an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School-Children’s Hospital Boston, for his project evaluating early environmental influences on functional abdominal complaints from childhood to adulthood.

Recurrent abdominal pain is a frequent complaint of children, and a proportion of adults who have IBS symptoms report having had abdominal symptoms as a child.

Chitkara will join the UNC pediatrics faculty in August.

The Seed Grant Program is funded through a five-year, $4.3 million National Institutes of Health grant to the UNC center. The grant has enabled the creation of a Gastrointestinal Biopsychosocial Research Program within the center.

The purpose of the Seed Grant Program is to fund the pilot projects of young investigators – those who have not yet received an NIH research grant – with the expectation of follow-on funding through a successful NIH grant application.

Dr. Douglas A. Drossman and Dr. William E. Whitehead co-direct the Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders, which is within the School of Medicine’s Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

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News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu