June 18, 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

Study: Crystal meth use more common than previously thought
Reuters
U.S. users of crystal methamphetamine tend to be young, poor, white men often with an incarcerated father, according to a study suggesting that its use may be more common than previously estimated. …The study was conducted by researchers at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Operation Reinhard first systematic killing operation of the Holocaust
The Ottawa Citizen (Canada)
The Stermers were among an estimated 2.2 million Polish Jews targeted by Operation Reinhard, the secretive Nazi plan to enslave, rob and slaughter the country's Jewish population. ...By October 1941, a policy of extermination of Jews under German control was being discussed among the highest ranks of the Nazi regime, according to leading Holocaust scholar Christopher Browning, a historian at the University of NorthCarolina.

National Coverage

The Woes of the Pros
U.S. News & World Report
Busted knees. Wrecked backs. Memory loss and depression. Heart attacks. ..."We're beginning to piece together the puzzle," says Kevin Guskiewicz, who led the recent study and is director of the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Hard Choice for Moms: Work or Stay Home?
WebMD
Mothers with the financial means have long had the choice to go back to work or stay home after the birth of their children. Today, however, more moms in all economic levels appear to be considering the stay home option - at least that's what some experts suspect when they point to recent population surveys, which show all female employment numbers declining after decades of sustained growth. …"The employment decline is apparent among all income groups, roughly equally," says Philip Cohen, PhD, associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Regional Coverage

Update on Concussions & the NFL: Medicine fast framing theories with hard data
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In the wake of Andre Waters' suicide, Ted Johnson's depression plus early-onset Alzheimer's and new league-wide measures announced one month ago, the NFL will gather together administrators, medical committee members, team doctors and trainers along with invited lecturers for a summit in Chicago Tuesday on the controversial subject of concussions. ...Meanwhile, the University of North Carolina's Center for Study of Retired Athletes -- a research sponsored in part by the NFL Players Association -- concluded that retirees who sustained in their playing days three or more concussions were: three times more likely to have memory problems, five times more likely to develop Alzheimer's and three times more likely to develop clinical depression, that last study being published just 19 days ago.
Related link: http://www.startribune.com/vikings/story/1249490.html

More postpartum depression screening
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Pa.)
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill want doctors to routinely screen women for postpartum depression rather than waiting for symptoms. …"We believe that it is very important that physicians work some type of depression screening into postpartum visits," said Betsy Sleath, one of the researchers.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/may07/sleath_postpartumdepression053107.html

Dawn of the dad
The Boston Globe
Mothers tend to coo to their babies. ...But because a father's vocabulary is so different from a mother's, it stretches a child's language development, says Vernon-Feagans, a professor at the University of North Carolina who specializes in children's language acquisition.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct06/fpgfatherslanguage103006.htm

Familiar face may return to Dist. 158
The Chicago Daily Herald
Huntley School District 158 officials likely will hire the services of an old associate this fall to help them project enrollment numbers at each of the district’s eight schools in the next few years. ...Kasarda, who is a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, has led similar projects at several other districts in the state.

Upward Bound's Funding Tumbles
The Tampa Tribune (Fla.)
The U.S. Department of Education recently killed funding for the university's mentoring program, which guides low-income, mostly minority high school students from the Tampa area into college. …He was accepted into all his favored colleges: Duke University, Morehouse College in Atlanta, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Central Florida.

Is it a phony danger?
Home News Tribune (East Brunswick, N.J.)
State lawmakers are considering a new law to crack down on motorists who drive while talking on hand-held phones, but statistics backing the measure are murky. ...But an analysis of data from 16 states by the nonpartisan National Conference on State Legislatures found that cell-phone use correlated with less than 1 percent of car accidents, and a May 2001 study by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center put cell phones eighth among distractions that cause crashes.

Brown taking S.C. State to court
The State (Columbia, S.C.)
It began with an anonymous tip called in to a trustee. It morphed into a sexual harassment investigation based on no official claim. ...Citing a somewhat similar, pending Title IX case in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals — Jennings v. University of North Carolina — the school’s attorneys became convinced that the resulting anguish was a sufficient violation of the woman’s Title IX rights to force Brown’s termination.

Historian completes a labor of love -- 'The Big Red Songbook'
The San Francisco Chronicle
John Neuhaus was a strapping Mission District machinist who joined the Industrial Workers of the World -- the radical unionists called the Wobblies -- in San Francisco in 1930. ...After Neuhaus' death, Green -- who later made copies of his friend's little red songbooks and gave the originals to the folklore archive at the University of North Carolina, where Green once taught -- nurtured the collection.

Hollis man creates identification e-book
Nashua Telegraph (N.H.)
A walk in the woods is not just a simple stroll for Martin Michener, it is an act of constant observation. ...Reviewer John T. Kartesz, director of the Biota of North America Program at the University of North Carolina, wrote: “In making effective use of tools of technology, Michener has skillfully produced a masterpiece, which is likely to set a new standard in digital publication of elements in our natural environment.

Brand Counsel: Thinking from the inside out
TechJournal South
The first thing a startup founder should do to create a successful brand is “put solving the problem first, not the money.” So says Jeff Gregory, founder of Brand Counsel LLC, which is moving from Charlotte to the RTP in September. ...He says the area also has the resources Brand Counsel needs, such as linguistics expertise at UNC-Chapel Hill and other academic and professional experts.

Whiz kid turns big biz kid
The Brandenton Herald (Fla.)
Ryan Allis was only 11 when he launched his first business, teaching senior citizens on Anna Maria Island how to use their personal computers. ...Allis is the chairman of the Carolina Entrepreneurship Club at UNC-Chapel Hill and founder of The Entrepreneurs' Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching entrepreneurship in developing nations.

State & Local Coverage

UNC gets high marks for diversity
The Chapel Hill Herald
UNC has more black faculty members than any other major university, says a new survey by The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. ..."We're pleased with the progress [in hiring black faculty]," said UNC Executive Associate Provost Steve Allred. "We're not satisfied, but we're pleased."

Concussion expert's warning gets NFL's ear
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
When you're recognized as a national authority on sports-related concussions, you're more than a dad on the sidelines of a Pop Warner football game in Orange County. ...Guskiewicz handles those queries the same way he has handled skepticism from National Football League circles about his concussions research as director for the Sports Medicine Research Laboratory and the Center for Retired Athletes in the UNC Department of Exercise and Sport Science.

Your Q (Question-answer)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
The N&O asked Douglas J. Crawford-Brown, director of the Institute for the Environment at UNC-Chapel Hill, to answer your questions about climate change.

Three UNC buildings still seeing lead contamination
The Chapel Hill Herald
While one building's water supply has been cleared for drinking, three out of the four UNC buildings with water supplies that recently tested positive for lead contamination are still under watch. Four buildings on campus -- Chapman Hall, Caudill Labs, Information Technology Services Manning and the Campus Y -- were identified in March and April as having drinking water with lead amounts exceeding the acceptable limit dictated by the Environmental Protection Agency, said Ray Hackney, interim director of Environmental Health and Safety at UNC.
Note: No link available.

Uncle Leo's Medals
"The State of Things," WUNC-FM
UNC-Chapel Hill Law Professor Eric Muller has spent the past five years researching the life and death of his great uncle Leo, who was killed in a Nazi concentration camp. Along the way he’s learned a lot about the ways in which governments use the law to justify denying the rights of their declared enemies. Eric Muller joins host Frank Stasio in the studio to share his personal odyssey and how it’s helped him better understand his family and his profession.

Report: Mentally ill put pressure on jails
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
The care and treatment of people with mental illness is increasingly being handled at county jails that are ill-equipped to deal with such inmates, according to a new study funded by a statewide disability advocacy group. … "You've got the intersection of two systems that are really stretched past the max," said Anna Scheyett, a professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work and one of the authors of the study.

Governor's history gets favorable edit
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Most politicians would love a chance to edit their page in the history books. ...Harry Watson, a history professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and an Easley appointee on an advisory commission for the Cultural Resources department, said he was disappointed by the tone of the governor's entry.
Related link: http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/
MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173351673536

An aero-what?
Winston-Salem Journal
John Kasarda, an aviation expert and professor at UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, laid out his grand plan for a Triad aerotropolis before local leaders last week.

When should teens be tried as adults?
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Pamela Senecal knows what can happen to a teenager who makes a rash decision that lands him in trouble with the law. ..."In juvenile court, they're followed much more closely than they would be in the adult courts for the same offense," said Tamar Birckhead, a UNC-Chapel Hill law professor and one of two faculty supervisors of the UNC Juvenile Justice Clinic, which handles about 100 cases a year.

Making Room for Art
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
It has been a few years since Richard Florida, author of "The Rise of the Creative Class," declared this area a hotbed for creative types such as Norval. …A team at UNC-Chapel Hill applied traditional indicators, such as education, manufacturing, service and proprietorship, to 280 metro areas. …The UNC study found very little evidence that being overrepresented in creative class workers results in better economic development, said Emil Malizia, professor and chairman of the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill, who co-wrote the report.

Just call it 'a nice, peaceful place'
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Many know Franklin Street's secluded lunch hangout, but nobody seems to know its name. ..."I call it the front door, because it's where you go through to get into the building," said Joe Ward, a computer operations manager for the UNC-Chapel Hill Information Technology Services office building, to which the grassy area technically belongs.

Soaking up rays now can lead to problems down road
The Chapel Hill Herald
The desire to look healthy and tanned is setting up many young people for the risk of skin cancer later in life, and that desire is dangerous, say doctors. "Image is going to play a big part in skin cancer because people want to be tan," said Lowell Goldsmith, a UNC professor of dermatology.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/may07/skincancer053007.html

Hispanic population inspires nurse to travel
Burlington Times News
Teresa Wiley learned plenty on her first trip outside the United States. …The trip was arranged by UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Nursing for health care professionals. Wiley and the others stayed in Antigua, a tourist town of about 35,000, and visited different villages to see a bigger variety of life in Guatemala.

Community college students study abroad
The Rocky Mount Telegram
As a chaplain in the U.S. Army Reserve, Paul Tolbert was supposed to report to boot camp this summer. ...Both Nash and Edgecombe community colleges work with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's World View program, which was established to help educators anticipate and respond to the interconnected world.

Shift in the Flow: Life is changing in Yadkin County - in ways that are affecting its local economy, culture
The Winston-Salem Journal
It was just six weeks ago that more than 2,500 people took to the streets of this small town and demanded that the Yadkin County Commissioners open their meetings with prayers that recognize Jesus. ...Rural counties once reveled in their isolation, but in the new economy, no one is isolated, said Ferrell Guillory, the director of the program on public life at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center for the Study of the American South.

County mum on closed sessions
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Chatham County officials are withholding minutes from closed-session meetings where commissioners discussed the county's development moratorium on large subdivisions. …But Cathy Packer, who teaches media law at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said the threat of a suit is not a basis for withholding the minutes.

Voters should tell council they’ll make the call on partisan elections
The Asheville Citizen-Times
City Council’s 4-3 decision to make city elections partisan deserves to be called what it is: a power grab by the Democratic Party that went a long way toward disenfranchising the second-largest bloc of city voters — the 15,000 who are registered unaffiliated. ...The latest data available from the University of North Carolina School of Government showed that only nine of 541 municipalities in North Carolina hold partisan elections.

Carolina Beach Planning Commission to Consider Changing Restrictions On Political Signs
The Island Gazette (Carolina Beach, NC)
With the 2007 election season right around the corner, the Carolina Beach Planning and Zoning Commission will discuss possible changes to the Town’s sign ordinance governing political campaign signs at their June 14, meeting at 7PM. …Harrell explained that according to David Owens of the School of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill, “Basically it is apparent that our regulations for political candidate signs are most likely unconstitutional. Any content based signs for either non-commercial (which by case law includes political content signs) or commercial signs must be treated similarly; that is, a local government cannot single out one kind of content in these two broad categories and apply different standards.”

Turkey trouble: Dublin residents seek strict setbacks
The Bladen Journal (Elizabethtown, N.C.)
Citizens made it clear to the Bladen County Board of Health, a proposed turkey farm on Lyon Landing Road near Dublin is not welcome in their neighborhood. …While the board had the nerve to vote for the rule, it may not stand up in court, according to Richard Whisnant, associate professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kill Devil Hills expected to approve budget
The Outer Banks Sentinel
The Kill Devil Hills Board of Commissioners has agreed unanimously not to increase taxes in the next fiscal year, according to a statement issued by Mayor Ray Sturza at their June 11 meeting. ...In other business, the board voted unanimously for a resolution in support of state funding for North Carolina's Coastal Studies Institute. Dare County donated 34.4 acres of land to the University of North Carolina for the institute.

Early N.C. depicted in postcard exhibit
The Chapel Hill Herald
Anonymous cotton pickers toiling in the field. Beach-goers in bathing costumes at Wrightsville Beach, around the beginning of the 20th century. ...These are some of the images in "Greetings from North Carolina: A Century of Postcards from the Durwood Barbour Collection," an exhibit running through Sept. 30 in the North Carolina Collection Gallery of UNC's Wilson Library.

Family, not advisers, should make all crucial decisions (Opinion-editorial Column)
Triangle Business Journal
In a recent column, I made reference to the Bancroft family's turmoil over whether to sell Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal and Barron's, or to retain ownership in the name of family tradition, journalistic integrity and public trust. …Lea is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a family business speaker, author and adviser.

Issues and Trends

UNC tackles teacher shortage (Letter to the editor)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is already responding to the state's shortage of public school teachers, as well as the issue of teacher retention, especially in the subjects of math and science: * School of Education Carolina Online Lateral Entry Program allows teachers who have been hired but are not yet licensed to earn North Carolina licensure in mathematics or science at the middle grades or secondary level while they are teaching.

College laptops are in The Bag
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
How do you get college students to use your laptop bag? Give them one that's specifically made for them -- for free. ...The bags are sold without the Meredith logo for $59 at stores such as Luggage & Leather at Crabtree Valley Mall, Globetrotter at Cameron Village and bookstores at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University.

UNC Charlotte eyes village development
The Associated Press (N.C.)
Leaders at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte are looking to build a small village of shops and amenities to give its campus a college-town feel. …The university is considering using some of its land to build shops, a hotel or a conference center - features with community-wide appeal, similar to Franklin Street at UNC-Chapel Hill.

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.

Please share any questions, comments or suggestions at news@unc.edu.