April 5, 2004

Carolina in the News

Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina
people and programs cited recently in the media:

International Coverage

All-Terrain Vehicles Dangerous to Children-Study
Reuters international wire service (United Kingdom)
Children under age 16 should not be allowed to ride all-terrain vehicles because the vehicles can be deadly for youngsters even when riders are required to wear helmets, researchers said on Monday...."Helmets may offer insufficient protection, because the ATVs are heavy and can attain relatively high speeds," study author Heather Keenan of the University of North Carolina wrote in the journal Pediatrics.

National Coverage

Education notes
Dallas Morning News
The best value in a college can be found at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to the Princeton Review.

AIDS Fears Grow for Black Women
The New York Times
Once a week, the five friends, all members of the Abundant Life Cathedral here, get together to eat sushi, sip wine and talk.,,,"What we learned from the research we did with college men here is the potential for H.I.V. to enter the mainstream population of the black community," said Dr. Peter Leone, medical director of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services H.I.V. prevention unit and a co-author of a study of the 84 men...."A high prevalence of infection in the pool of potential partners can spread sexually transmitted infections rapidly within the ethnic group and keep it there," said Dr. Adaora A. Adimora, an infectious disease physician and associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill.
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A Heretical View of File Sharing
The New York Times
The music industry says it repeatedly, with passion and conviction: downloading hurts sales...."Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates," write its authors, Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School and Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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As Bush Brags on Tax Cuts, Some See Oversell
Los Angeles Times
When President Bush talks about the U.S. economy, he presents his tax cuts as a kind of cure-all.....Three business school professors, Jana Smith Raedy and Douglas A. Shackelford of the University of North Carolina and Jennifer Blouin of the University of Pennsylvania, analyzed 1,202 companies in the first quarter after the dividend tax cut passed.

International Group Sues File Traders
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, comprising record-industry groups around the world, has filed its first legal salvo against music pirates, suing 247 people it accuses of illegally trading copyrighted music.... But a paper released last week by business professors at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argues that the effect of music piracy on album sales is "indistinguishable from zero.
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And the Thin Envelope Went to...
The Wall Street Journal
This week, top colleges and universities are sending out thick envelopes with letters of acceptance -- as well as the dreaded thin envelopes containing rejection letters....Russell Banks, author and professor emeritus, Princeton....The Payoff: Chapel Hill was warm to "alternative students"....So he picked the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- a large, integrated public school -- and says the community he found there changed his life. "It was only by happenstance" that he ended up there, but Mr. Banks says he fed off the political energy of the South, which was "exploding with the anti-war movement."
Subscription required.

On spring break, some break from the norm
The Boston Globe
The nightclubs and hotels in Cancun and Key West have lost out on a bit of their spring-break income recently, as some college students have begun trading hangovers and suntans for public service tours and projects.....The black church restoration program was initiated independently seven years ago by Tim McCarthy, formerly a lecturer at Harvard and now a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of the American South at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Apocalyptic president?
The Boston Globe
As the presidential election draws closer, some people are asking, in ominous tones, a question: What impact does President Bush's evangelical Christianity have on his administration's policies?...And the sociologist Christian Smith, in his recent book "Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want," reports that among those evangelicals he interviewed there was significant doubt about the possibility, and (more important) even the desirability, of America's becoming a "Christian nation."

State & Local Coverage

Listening Post (Speech excerpts)
The News & Observer
Among students and faculty we are seeing increased interest regarding expressions reflecting a diversity of viewpoints in our daily campus life. This is a phenomenon that by no means is unique to Carolina. It is a phenomenon we are seeing all across this nation....From remarks by UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser to the Faculty Council in support of a resolution on intellectual integrity and independence.

State ponies up for UNC repairs
The Herald-Sun
It looks like Howell Hall will finally be able to get that sweet new metal roof administrators have had their eyes on...."It's wonderful. It's spectacular," said Carolina Provost Robert Shelton.

Lessons from Donald Trump
The Charlotte Observer
He's polished, confident and credentialed, with prestigious Wall Street experience, a UNC Chapel Hill degree and Harvard MBA under his belt....And Charlotte's Kwame Jackson, whose star is rising on the hit NBC show "The Apprentice," has been learning business lessons from Donald Trump in front of 20 million viewers each week.

UNC grad points to the path to excellence (Editor's Desk)
The Chapel Hill News
In the years when I was finishing school, some of my most pleasurable times came on warm summer evenings at an outdoor theater and farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley....So imagine my surprise and delight when the Collins' son appeared at the UNC campus a week ago, delivering the Frank Porter Graham Lecture on Excellence at the 100th anniversary of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the most prestigious honor society on campus. Frances Collins, like his parents, brims full with life.

UNC offers early look at plans
The Chapel Hill News
The clock is ticking....The second round of changes to the university's development plan was presented to the council Thursday night, just days after town planners received and approved the application.

UNC-CH studies suicide prevention
The News & Observer
One year ago Sunday, the Cody family hiked to a meadow near Chimney Rock....UNC-CH is expanding its counseling services and exploring new suicide-prevention programs after Erin's suicide and three others in a four-month period last school year.

Class project profiles state's Asian population (Question and Answer)
The News & Observer
UNC-Chapel Hill students who take the class "Asia in North Carolina" do more than just sit with their eyes on a chalkboard while a professor lectures about this or that.

Cone partners with UNC med school to open Hep. C treatment center
Triad Business Journal
Moses Cone Health System has joined with the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine to open Medical Specialty Services in Greensboro, the only facility in the Triad designed to treat patients with Hepatitis C.

Solutes, solvation and biophysics
The Chapel Hill News
It's the rare undergraduate who lands a research grant, let alone publishes the resulting work in the most prestigious journal in the field....But Joseph Batchelor, a UNC senior with an affinity for biophysics, is the lead author of a paper published in March in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

No sale: UNC's shops stop selling smokes
The Herald-Sun
At the end of many workdays, Marc Lange stops by the Circus Room, the small snack shop near his parking lot at UNC....Just a few satellite stores, such as the Circus Room and the snack shop at the Campus Y, sell cigarettes. They will stop doing so once their current supplies run out.

Author knows woes of schizophrenia
Salisbury Post
It's a strange notion, author Virginia Holman said. "Mental illness is still hidden, it's still thought of as separate from physical illness ... as if our heads were not attached to our bodies."...To deal with her bizarre childhood, Holman, who now teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote a memoir.

Young and restless
The Chapel Hill News
Scattered throughout the UNC Student Union lobby, about 30 good-looking people gripped soap-opera scripts in one hand, leaving the other hand free for dramatic gestures.

We don't even allow dogs to die this way
The News & Observer
David R. Work is executive director of the N.C. Pharmacy Board. Executions occur in Raleigh with a drug-induced heart attack and suffocation....At a recent medical continuing-education session, Dr. Fred Spielman, vice chairman of the anesthesiology department at UNC-Chapel Hill, presented an illustrated history of pain. I was surprised to learn of a patient who could recall in detail what had occurred while she was under anesthesia.

Is lethal injection humane?
The News & Observation
Lethal injection became the favored way to execute criminals in the United States because it looks peaceful and clinical -- and, if done right, it's painless.....In a pending lawsuit filed by North Carolina death row inmate George Franklin Page, Dr. Philip Boysen, chairman of anesthesiology at UNC-Chapel Hill's medical school, said in an affidavit that North Carolina's lethal-injection procedure invites disaster.

Issues and Trends

Taking the Liberalism Out of Liberal Arts
The New York Times
City halls where gay marriage vows are uttered, the Superbowl half-time show and movie theaters showing "The Passion of the Christ" would seem to be prime battlegrounds in the latest culture wars. But to conservative crusaders like David Horowitz, the main action is still on college campuses, which he insists have been colonized by "tenured leftists" and turned into "their political base."
Registration required.

Fox to leave N.C. State
The News & Observer
Marye Anne Fox, who came to N.C. State University six years ago vowing to launch "a straightforward quest for excellence," is leaving its helm....Fox, 56, is to begin her new job July 1. The deal still must be approved by the University of California Board of Regents, which meets April 12.

Crying Foul Over Fans' Boorish Behavior
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The final buzzer sounded at the National Collegiate Athletic Association men's basketball championship this week, ending a season in which student spectators cheered, jeered, and hurled four-letter words.
Subscription required.

Note: If you have any questions about Carolina in the News, please call Russell Campbell at News Services, (919) 962-2091, russell_campbell@unc.edu, or Mike McFarland in University Communications, mike_mcfarland@unc.edu

Note: Web links on this page are time-sensitive, so stories might not be available after the day they first appeared.