March 30, 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

Overfishing of sharks makes scallops vanish: study
Reuters
Overfishing of big sharks in the Atlantic has cut stocks by 99 percent, dooming North Carolina's bay scallop fishery and threatening other species including shrimp and crabs, researchers reported on Thursday. ...Now that the ravenous rays and skates have feasted on bay scallops, they are likely to look for food in protected areas along the coast where other fish and shellfish shelter in their early months of life, said co-author Charles "Pete" Peterson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Related link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/30/content_5916621.htm
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/petersonshark032807.html

Death of a predator: big sharks are disappearing - and world's fisheries are suffering as a result
The Guardian Unlimited (United Kingdom)
The rapid decline of great sharks in the world's oceans is disrupting the marine ecosystem by allowing more lowly fish to thrive, scientists warn today. ...Charles Peterson, a researcher on the paper and marine biologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, said the study highlighted the importance of maintaining populations of the ocean's top predators.
Related links: http://www.firstscience.com/home/news/agriculture/
overfishing-large-sharks-impacts-entire-marine-ecosystem-shrinks-shellfish-supply_18036.html
http://caribjournal.com/2007/03/29/overfishing-of-predatory-sharks-threatens-us-shellfish-market/

The lone shark effect has its price
The Canadian Press
The near extinction of several species of sharks is causing a dangerous ripple effect through the marine food chain, according to a new study that links their virtual disappearance to depletions of other sea life. ..."This ecological event is having a large impact on local communities that depend so much on healthy fisheries," said Charles Peterson, a professor of marine sciences and biology at the University of North Carolina and co-author of the report.
Related links: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1133
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=
12880cc0-46db-4265-b4fa-4a64d0b9fcb8&k=92732

Schizophrenia gene clue found
United Press International
Schizophrenics have lower levels of a key RNA that helps brain cells "talk" and respond to the environment, U.S. doctors said this week. In a pilot study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, researchers compared the prefrontal brain cortexes of people with schizophrenia to those of healthy subjects, and saw significant differences in the levels of a type of RNA called "microRNAs."
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/perkins032807.html

U.S. News and World Report

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill appears on numerous lists of newly ranked programs and specialty areas produced by U.S. News and World Report magazine for its 2006 edition of "America's Best Graduate Schools."
U.S. News & World Report: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/rankindex_brief.php
UNC News Fact Sheet: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/usnewsgrad032907.html

Related Coverage:

Acting Like You Mean It
U.S. News & World Report
The last place mechanical engineer Andrew Wilkinson ever expected to find himself was on stage. ...Sustainable Enterprise. Global warming got you down? Schools including Kenan-Flagler at UNC-Chapel Hill have programs to help business execs balance profitability, ecological integrity, and social equity.

The Sciences: Greening The World
U.S. News & World Report
For graduate students, it's getting ever easier to be green, thanks to an interdisciplinary newcomer called sustainability science by some and sustainable development by others. ...They join established programs, often multidisciplinary, in ecology or environmental science at the University of California-Davis, the University of North Carolina, and elsewhere, including at several prestigious European universities.

Magazine rates graduate schools
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
...The guide contains the magazine's rankings of graduate schools in categories such as business, education, engineering, law and medicine. ...UNC-Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler School of Business (tied for 18th)...

National Coverage

Study Finds Shark Overfishing May Lower Scallop Population
The New York Times
For years, conservationists have warned about overfishing of large sharks in the northwestern Atlantic, as the demand for meat and fins, coupled with slow growth and reproduction rates of many species, has caused sharp declines in populations of hammerheads, duskies and other sharks. ...Pete Peterson, a marine biologist at the University of North Carolina and an author of the paper, said the work had its origins in a discussion he and Dr. Myers had at a conference several years ago.
Related link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,262486,00.html
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/petersonshark032807.html

Shark decline takes bite out of Eastern fisheries
The Washington Post
A sharp decline in the number of big sharks along the Eastern seaboard has prompted a boom in other marine species that is devastating valuable commercial fisheries, researchers are reporting today in the journal Science. ...Charles Peterson, a professor of marine sciences biology and ecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who helped write the paper, said he and his colleagues calculated that from 1970 to 2005, the number of scalloped hammerhead and tiger sharks may have declined by more than 97 percent along the East Coast, and bull, dusky and smooth hammerhead sharks have dropped by more than 99 percent.
Related link: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/315/5820/1846

Shark deaths endanger scallop population
The Associated Press (National)
Overfishing of powerful sharks - a top predator in the ocean - may endanger bay scallops, a gourmet delicacy. ...Ecologists have known that reducing key species on land can affect an entire ecosystem, but this study provides hard data for the same thing in the ocean, said lead author Charles H. Peterson of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina.
Related link: http://www.newsday.com/features/food/ny-hsshark305151442mar30,0,4412765.story

Sharks dwindle, shellfish suffer
"Science Friday," National Public Radio
The sea is running out of sharks and that's bad news for shellfish. An annual shark survey conducted off of North Carolina shows the sandbar shark population dropped 87 percent since 1972; tiger sharks dropped 97 percent; while scalloped hammerhead, bull, dusky and smooth hammerhead shark populations all dropped by 98 percent or more. ...“The decline of the sharks is not a huge shock,” says Charles Peterson, a researcher at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences and co-author on the study.
Related links: http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0329-sharks.html

Valeant to pull Parkinson's drug on evidence of heart-valve injury
The Wall Street Journal
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International will withdraw a drug once widely used for Parkinson's disease, after two recent studies added to evidence linking it to heart-valve damage. ...U.S. sales of the two drugs have fallen as newer products have largely replaced them, but they are still prescribed more widely in Europe, largely because they can be less expensive, said Bryan Roth, a University of North Carolina professor who wrote a New England Journal commentary that accompanied the two studies.

Why Elizabeth Edwards has reason for hope
Cox News Services
Elizabeth Edwards' breast cancer has spread to her bones and is "incurable but treatable." ...Edwards' physician, Dr. Lisa Carey, said at the Edwardses' news conference last week that cancer has spread to one or more of Elizabeth's ribs and possibly to other bones and her lungs. But the disease is "low volume," meaning that there is not much cancer present, Carey said.
Note: Carey is an oncologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Resistance Is Futile
ScienceNOW Daily News
Antibiotics have saved countless lives since Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1927. But in recent years, microbes have responded by developing resistance to many of the most powerful antibiotics, threatening to undermine one of modern medicine's greatest achievements. ...The new work is "provocative," says Scott Singleton, a medicinal chemist at the University of North Carolina.

Unique Genetics for Schizophrenia
PsychCentral.com
Scientists may have discovered evidence of a hard-wired genetic link to schizophrenia. Researchers report the identification of unique molecular mechanism that creates an imbalance of proteins implicated in development of the disorder. ...In studying the postmortem brain tissue of adults who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, researchers from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine found that levels of certain gene-regulating molecules called microRNAs were lower among schizophrenia patients than in persons who were free of psychiatric illness.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/perkins032807.html

Regional Coverage

Big Atlantic sharks disappearing, study warns
The Miami Herald
Humans, mainly those in countries with a craving for shark-fin soup, have devoured so many of the oceans' top predators that it has rattled the length of the marine food chain, according to a study to be published today in the prestigious journal Science. ...For its part the research team, which includes five biologists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Dalhousie in Nova Scotia, argues that federal managers rely too much on counting what winds up on the hooks of commercial skippers, who have grown increasingly efficient at tracking a dwindling quarry with satellite navigation and sonar fish-finders.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/petersonshark032807.html

Memphis plan takes wing to lead 'aerotroplis' boom
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.)
Tom Schmitt, president-elect of the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce, will lead the effort to turn Memphis into the nation's first aerotropolis with help from the University of North Carolina professor who dreamed up the concept. ...The first task is working out a consulting contract with John Kasarda, business professor at UNC, whose concept of the aerotropolis is gaining traction around the world.

Single minded
The Sacramento Bee
Album sales are in a seven-year decline as the computer has replaced the brick-and-mortar store as the gateway to record shopping. But don't count the long-playing album out. Its meaning has only changed in this iTunes age. ..."Popular music did not take advantage of the LP for quite a while," says (Mark) Katz, who is also an assistant professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

State and Local Coverage

Sharks that ate rays are fewer; scallops suffer
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Diners who no longer find fresh bay scallops at their favorite restaurant should blame the overfishing of sharks, a UNC-Chapel Hill scientist says. Too many sharks have been killed, so they're no longer devouring a voracious predator that feasts on bay scallops, marine researcher Charles "Pete" Peterson concludes.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/petersonshark032807.html

UNC offers graduate program in health communication
The Triangle Business Journal
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill plans to begin offering a new graduate program in interdisciplinary health communication. The new program, which could be launched as early as the fall semester, is designed to improve communication of health issues and is tailored for use in applied practice, academic and research settings.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/ihcprogram032907.html

Critic's picks - Dance
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Carolina Ballet's artistic director Robert Weiss never rests on his laurels, having created new works for each of the company's nine seasons. ...This entrancing production, which also includes choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett's "Picnic on the Grass," is back for an encore presentation Saturday night and Sunday afternoon in the Carolina Performing Arts series at UNC's Memorial Hall.
Related link: http://www.heraldsun.com/orange/10-834380.cfm
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/monetballet031907.html

Venture capital focus of contest
The Chapel Hill Herald
UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School will host the Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition on Friday and Saturday. Student teams from eight schools will play the role of venture capitalists, interacting with and evaluating entrepreneurs currently seeking venture capital funding. MBA students will be challenged to apply venture capital skills to assess real business in financial profitability, environmental integrity and social equity -- the so-called "triple-bottom line."
UNC Event brief: http://www.unc.edu/news/briefs/2007/032607.html

The death of Jason Ray touches us all (Editorial)
The Chapel Hill Herald
We send our children off to college with trepidation. This is, perhaps, the first time they will not be under our jurisdiction, not benefiting from our protection. We send them nevertheless. We have no choice, and hope that they will be all right.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/rayservice032707.html

Friends remember UNC mascot killed by car
The Associated Press (N.C.)
Jason Ray, the 21-year-old who performed as the North Carolina mascot, was remembered Thursday as a young man so full of life that his friends weren't surprised that he was selected to wear the Tar Heel ram costume.
Related links: http://www.independenttribune.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CIT%2FMGArticle
%2FCIT_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173350488186&path=!news
http://www.wsoctv.com/news/11443355/detail.html

Tarnish on our national treasures (Opinion-editorial column)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
'Let's close the National Parks," Bernard DeVoto wrote in Harper's in 1953. Detailing the decay of a park system in crisis as visitation skyrocketed but budgets lagged in the post-World War II years, DeVoto shocked Americans by suggesting that Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon be shuttered until citizens in "a more enlightened future" would demand from Congress the funding that would "save from destruction the most majestic scenery in the United States." ...Anne Mitchell Whisnant is an administrator at UNC-Chapel Hill.

2 Durham men saluted for roles as Tuskegee Airmen
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
C. Clifford Jamison Jr. watched with pride as his 89-year-old father saluted the president after being honored with a Congressional Gold Medal for the time he spent as a Tuskegee Airman. ...UNC Chapel Hill journalism professor emeritus Chuck Stone was also a Tuskegee Airman.
Related link: http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=triangle&id=5165541

Could this be Jesus' tomb?
The Fayetteville Observer
A recent documentary purportedly shattered one of the most important tenets of Christianity, a month before Easter no less, and many Christians didn’t seem to notice. ...Bart Ehrman, a best-selling author and religious-studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says Christians should not be threatened by other versions of the story of Jesus, including the gospel of Judas.

U.S. Supreme Court case creates unlikely allies, putting BofA, Wachovia on the same side
The Charlotte Observer
You don't see this every day: Bank of America Corp. rooting for Wachovia Corp.Bank of America's general counsel Tim Mayopoulos said Thursday he expects a decision soon in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case involving Wachovia and he's hopeful the Charlotte rival will prevail. ..."I have been confident and optimistic that the industry will prevail on this," Mayopoulos said at a UNC Chapel Hill Law School banking conference at Ballantyne Resort.

Events observe women's history
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
The Orange County Commission for Women will celebrate Women's History Month from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday at The Chapel Hill Senior Center, 400 S. Elliott Road. The celebration will include the viewing and discussion of two films, "Killing Us Softly" and "Fly Girls." There will be a presentation by Jane Brown, a James L. Knight Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Issues and Trends

Roberts: Hurrah for new UNC rules on textbooks (Opinion column)
The Greensboro News & Record
Three cheers for President Erskine Bowles and the UNC Board of Governors, who are trying to put the brakes on the obscene cost of college textbooks. Bowles made it a top priority when he became president of the 17-campus university system in 2006, and now we're seeing action.

Leaders say outlook dim for UNC-Rocky Mount
The Rocky Mount Telegram
Key proponents of a UNC-Rocky Mount say they'll take a broader look at the area's education landscape, acknowledging that their original goal is for now likely out of reach.
Related links: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1252203/
http://www.wilsontimes.com/Opinion/Editorials/324030210951766.php
http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/news/content/news/opinion/stories/2007/03/29/betts.html

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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