April 3, 2007

Carolina in the News

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

International Coverage

Superconductors inspire quantum test for dark energy
New Scientist (United Kingdom)
Dark energy is so befuddling that it's causing some physicists to do their science backwards. ...Paul Frampton, a cosmologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, thinks Beck and Mackey's reasoning is flawed. "I don't think for a second they'll measure dark energy, but they should certainly try."

Suburban crossings most risky, as drivers 'aren't expecting' pedestrians
The Daily News (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Pedestrians are at high risk of being killed crossing busy suburban streets simply because drivers aren't expecting to see them there, a crosswalk safety expert said yesterday. "The places where we have the biggest problems these days are in suburban areas, where you get the occasional pedestrian crossing," David Harkey, director of the Traffic Safety Institute at the University of North Carolina, told The Daily News.

National Coverage

Colleges reject record numbers
The Wall Street Journal
This year's college-admissions competition is turning out to be more brutal than ever -- and not just for students who applied to elite universities. ...At UNC-Chapel Hill, for instance, recruiters went abroad for the first time this year, making trips to Shanghai and other Asian cities to promote the college. UNC had 736 foreign nationals apply this year, up from 590 last year. The university admitted 167 of them, up from about 125 a year ago.

Florida Nixes Early Decision
Inside Higher Ed
The chain seemed to break in September. That’s when the University of Virginia said it planned to end its binding early decision program – an announcement that followed just weeks after similar pledges at Harvard and Princeton Universities. ...Like Virginia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (which eliminated its early decision program five years ago), Florida is a flagship institution in its state.

Relatives of interned Japanese-Americans side with Muslims
The New York Times
Holly Yasui was far away when a U.S. judge in New York ruled last June that the government had wide latitude to detain noncitizens indefinitely on the basis of race, religion or national origin. ...Prof. Eric Muller, a legal historian at the University of North Carolina School of Law, said he contacted Yasui and the others after reading about the decision by the U.S. judge, John Gleeson.

Study Finds Parents Pass Whooping Cough to Babies
The New York Times
Rates of pertussis, or whooping cough, have been steadily increasing since the 1980s, and a new study reports that infants most often catch the disease from older household members, especially infected parents. ...“Parents play the most important role,” said Dr. Van Rie, who is an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/pertussis032707.html

Antidepros no bipolar help?
Health24.com
Patients with bipolar disorder will gain no treatment benefit by adding an antidepressant to a standard mood stabiliser such as lithium, a new study finds. ..."Treatment needs to be individualised, but, for the vast majority of patients, antidepressants don't offer critical benefit and may carry significant risk," said Dr Richard Weisler, adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Centre in Durham, North Carolina.

Updates on Billion-Dollar Campaigns at 26 Universities
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The 26 American universities that are seeking to raise at least $1-billion collected a total of $488.4-million in gifts and pledges during the last month for which they had data available. The campaigns with the largest gains in the last month were Stanford University, with $76.3-million, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with $73.9-million.

Regional Coverage

Medical tool thefts on rise, local hospitals agree
The Tribune-Review (Pittsburgh)
The FBI is investigating thefts of expensive medical equipment, particularly colonoscopes, from hospitals locally and nationally. ..."Hospitals are just like anywhere else. Things sometimes come up missing. People are trying to start private practices or ship equipment overseas," said Tom Smith, director of police and transportation at University of North Carolina Hospitals and president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, a nonprofit trade association for hospital security executives based in Glendale Heights, Ill.

Could Times-Hearst battle end with P-I strictly online?
The Seattle Times
Visualize a Seattle Post-Intelligencer that exists only online. A paperless newspaper. ..."If I were running Hearst, I'd consider it," said Philip Meyer, a University of North Carolina journalism professor and former Knight Ridder executive.

Take time to find right day care experience (Commentary)
The Chillicothe Gazette (Ohio)
It's a difficult issue for parents. ..."Every parent is worried that they're doing something wrong, something that's hurting their child," said study statistician Margaret Burchinal, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina.

Metal Or Wood? Depends Who You Ask
The Daily News Record (Harrisburg, Va.)
Buddy Comer was on the ground before he even had time to flinch, the blood already pooling in his mouth from a wound that would take more than 100 stitches to close. ...Steve Marshall, a professor at the University of North Carolina, is two years into a three-year study on batted-ball injuries at the college level, comparing injuries suffered during the regular season – when teams use metal bats – to those incurred in wooden-bat summer leagues.

State and Local Coverage

Environment focus of institute
The Chapel Hill Herald
UNC will create a campuswide institute focused on environmental research, education and engagement. The UNC Institute for the Environment, formed through expansion of the existing Carolina Environmental Program, adds new degree programs, research sites and outreach initiatives throughout North Carolina.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/apr07/institute040207.html

UNC expanding institute
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
UNC-Chapel Hill plans to spend $11 million for a campuswide institute focused on environmental research, education and engagement. ..."We intend for this institute to become the major resource to which the state will turn as it tries to solve problems associated with community design, energy and environment, health and environmental policy," Douglas Crawford-Brown, director of the Carolina Environmental Program and head of the new institute, said in the news release.
Related link: http://www.wchl1360.com/details.html?id=3331
Note: This story also ran on WUNC-FM.

Race And The Environment
"The State of Things," WUNC-FM
Spencer Cowan, senior research associate at the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Urban and Regional Studies, was featured on today's (April 3) edition of "The State of Things" to explore the intersection between environmental and social justice. Do minority communities bear a disproportionate amount of our pollution burden? Scholars are meeting in Chapel Hill this week for a conference to consider the latest research on race and the environment.
Note: "The State of Things" is the statewide public affairs program airing live at noon weekdays and rebroadcast at 9 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays.

UNC study looks at mammorgrams
WCHL-AM (Chapel Hill)
The nightmare scenario for any woman getting a mammogram is the detection of a cancerous breast tumor. ...That’s UNC Health Education professor Noel Brewer, whose study published Tuesday examines data from over three hundred thousand women worldwide.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/apr07/falsepositive032907.html

Obstacles to learning (Editorial)
The Charlotte Observer
A new report by two N.C. advocacy groups shows county by county why some N.C. public students lag others academically. They're not the only reasons these students struggle but they're ones N.C. policymakers can fix. So far they've lacked the will to do so. Maybe Action for Children North Carolina and The University of North Carolina School of Law's Center for Civil Rights can nudge these leaders to do more, and do it more quickly.

Fire-safe cigarettes (Letter to the editor)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Cigarette-related fires are the leading cause of home fire deaths, resulting in approximately 700-900 deaths per year in the United States. Fire-safe cigarettes are a proven, practical and effective way to eliminate the risk from cigarette-ignited fires. Last week Kentucky became the first "tobacco state" to require the sale of fire-safe cigarettes. ...Ernest J. Grant, Nursing Education Clinician Bruce A. Cairns, M.D., Medical Director, N.C. Jaycee Burn Center, UNC Health Care

A recognition of the 'BIG Picture'
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Even if the images were the size of snapshots, the N.C. Museum of Art could make a case for calling its latest exhibition "The BIG Picture." In the art world, photography itself is huge. ...and "Depth of Field" at Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, one of the first museums in the state to fully recognize photography's importance.

Issues and Trends

Bill Would Take Away UNC Tuition Break for N.C. School of Science & Math Students
WRAL-TV (CBS, Raleigh)
Two local state representatives want to repeal a law that gives students at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham free tuition at the University of North Carolina.

Produced by News Services, Carolina in the News is an e-mail sampling of current news media coverage about Carolina people and programs, as well as issues and trends that affect the university. Stories usually will be online and available free for a limited time - often one to two weeks. Expiration dates before stories move to archives vary by media outlet. Some outlets require free user registration or a subscription.

Carolina in the News is also posted daily to the News Services Web page, http://www.unc.edu/news/clips/index.shtml.

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