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January 26, 2005
Carolina in the News
Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina
people and programs cited recently in the media:International Coverage
No day at the beach
Independent-Bangladesh (Bangladesh)
Our planet's beleaguered oceans have been making headlines all year, with gloomy reports on collapsing fisheries, invasive species, plastic pollution and more...."It's a flawed system," observes Mark Sobsey, an environmental microbiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
National Coverage
Ruling may signal end for other states' antiquated laws
CNN.com
In June 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the United States Supreme Court struck down Texas' ban on same-sex sodomy, holding that such a law is an unconstitutional infringement upon an individual's right to privacy....Joanna Grossman, a FindLaw columnist, is an associate professor of law at Hofstra University, currently visiting at the University of North Carolina School of Law.
Chill, blogophiles; you're not the first to do what you're doing (Commentary)
USA Today
Thomas Paine was basically a blogger - in 1776...."There has been a long drift away from mass media to more specialized media," says Phil Meyer, a University of North Carolina journalism professor and author of The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age.
Debate Over Doctors' Pay Hits a Nerve With Readers
The Wall Street Journal
Over the past decade, the U.S. medical system has been buffeted by massive structural changes, including the advent of managed care and tussles between doctors and insurers over control of patient care....The Sept. 22, 2003, issue of BusinessWeek reported that 1992 graduates of the University of North Carolina M.B.A. program (my medical alma mater) made an average (including bonuses) of $255,000 in 2002.
Subscription required.Study:Predatory Lending Tactics In US Up Foreclosure Risk
Dow Jones Newswires
Predatory lending tactics, such as prepayment penalties and balloon payments, sharply raise foreclosure risk in the burgeoning market for subprime home mortgages, according to a study released Tuesday....With subprime loan originations soaring to $332 billion in 2003 from $35 billion nine years earlier, foreclosure risk has become central to public policy debate, according to the report, by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Community Capitalism.
Subscription required.Vista balks at removing a crosswalk
Union-Tribune (San Diego)
The idea of removing crosswalks to improve pedestrian safety at a busy Vista intersection stalled before the City Council yesterday, despite national studies that show erasing the little white lines can make sense....The Federal Highway Administration hired a group from the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center to scrutinize about 2,000 intersections in 30 cities nationwide.
Approaching American history from the Pacific
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Some historians are approaching American history from a new direction -- from the West, via the Pacific Ocean....Such figures were relatively obscure for too long, but they are now starting to get their due, says Peter A. Coclanis, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in an essay.
Subscription required.
Related link: http://www.common-place.org/vol-05/no-02/coclanis/index.shtmlState & Local Note
Dennis Orthner, associate director of the Jordan Institute, was interviewed by WUNC-FM in a story that aired this morning on UNC's Citizen-Soldier Initiative and this week's training of staff to work with guard and reserve soldiers and their families..
State & Local Coverage
Traveling science lab stops at a school
News 14 (Time Warner, Raleigh)
Science education hits the highway and Raleigh students hop on board....UNC-Chapel Hill's traveling science labs stopped at Broughton High School Monday.
Note: Other coverage of Destiny's Tuesday visit to Raleigh included WTVD-11 (ABC, Durham) and WB 22.Loans that entrap unwary
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Mortgage borrowers sucked into predatory loans are significantly more likely than other borrowers to lose their homes, a national study released Tuesday by the Center for Community Capitalism at UNC-Chapel Hill found.
Roses & raspberries, Jan. 26
The Chapel Hill News
Roses to Maha Alattar for going to the trouble to vote....She and her family fled Saddam Hussein's brutality in 1983, but the associate professor of neurology at UNC School of Medicine has not given up on her country, and she finds great hope in the opportunity to vote for its leader.
County board sets equal funding goal
The Chapel Hill News
Orange County commissioners agreed Saturday to set a goal to equalize funding between the county's two schools systems....Madeleine Grumet, a UNC-Chapel Hill education professor, updated the board on the progress her group of graduate students and university staffers have made in comparing the resources of the two systems.
Everything for the patient
The Chapel Hill News
At the Carrboro Health Center on Monday morning, children with winter hats tottered around adults who sat in pink waiting-room chairs....Toomey is already formulating plans to work with UNC's School of Public Health and Dental School to expand offerings at the health centers.
Issues & Trends
Failure by degrees (Editorial)
News & Record
A popular administrator at UNC-Chapel Hill used to ask each student at freshman orientation to take a good, hard look at the classmate on his left. And another good, hard look at the classmate on his right....In fact, among the state's 16 public university campuses, only two -- UNC-Chapel Hill at nearly 83 percent and N.C. State at 63.4 percent -- have achieved greater six-year graduation rates than the national average of 63 percent.
Leaf-blower law likely to center on noise ordinance
The Chapel Hill News
If you can whistle louder than 50 decibels, you risk being written up for violating the town's noise ordinance....Linda Convissor, the university's director of local relations, said leaf blowers allowed groundskeepers to keep walkways clear of debris for the thousands of students that traverse them "virtually every hour on the hour."
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/newsserv/clipsindex.htm.
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