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Oct. 24, 2005Carolina in the News
Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina
people and programs cited recently in the media:International Coverage
"Staged" biopsy helps plan breast cancer surgery
Reuters
Performing sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) one week before mastectomy, known as a "staged" operation, can facilitate surgical planning for breast cancer patients who are considering immediate breast reconstruction, according to a report in The American Journal of Surgery. ...In the present study, Dr. Nancy Klauber-DeMore and colleagues, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, looked at the effect staged SLNB had on subsequent cancer and reconstructive operations.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct05/masectomy101005.htmAmerica debates evolution: Why now?
Reuters
Americans are bone-deep into a fight over evolution thanks in large part to a new script that has defined the issue in a way not seen since the "monkey trial" in rural Tennessee 80 years ago, academic and other experts say. ...Redefining the debate along intelligent design lines is an attempt by those who want creation taught in schools to find a "silver bullet" that will get them past adverse court rulings, according to Michael Lienesch, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina.
National Coverage
Why the squeeze in college costs?
Bloomberg News
The College Board just released its annual report on “Trends in College Pricing.” ...Why can’t you use them to take student loans out of the financial aid equation? Indeed, a very small handful of colleges have managed to find funds to do just that — including Princeton and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/sept04/covenant092904.html
Carolina Covenant Web site: http://www.unc.edu/carolinacovenant/When Illness Packs a Financial Punch
The New York Times
When it comes to protection from medical bills, most people do not know where they are vulnerable until it is too late, said Elizabeth Jetton, chairwoman of the Financial Planning Association. ...Healthy people should also consider long-term and disability insurance, said Melissa Jacoby, an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. When medical bills arrive, she said, "try to work out a payment plan with the provider" rather than running up credit card debt.
Gulf Coast Rebuilding Creates Its Own Storm
The Los Angeles Times
Hurricane Katrina's trail of ruin hasn't dampened the appetite for hazardous real estate on the Gulf Coast, where local communities are talking of rebuilding bigger than ever along the shore despite the warnings of experts that it is time to pull back and curtail federal subsidies that promote beach development. ..."The politics are very, very difficult in the sense that you've got extremely valuable property," said David Owens, a University of North Carolina professor of public law and government who helped prepare the academy report. "Folks who own that … tend to have a great deal of political influence."
Pollution not cause of red tide in Gulf
The Tallahassee Democrat
The summer of 2005 wasn't a good one for Debbie Bachman and Bonnie Stephenson's beach experience. ...Once the algae has moved inshore by winds or ocean currents, then nutrients can contribute to the spread of the organisms, Heil said. Hans Paerl, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, agrees. "I think to say humans cause red tide is very risky," Paerl said. "I don't think there is evidence to support that. Once blooms are caused and move in closer to shore then the issue of nutrient input into coastal waters plays an important role. I think that is true both in Florida and some of the blooms that extend as far north as North Carolina."
Katrina's harsh land-use lesson (Editorial column)
The Seattle Times
Well, we've been yawning too long. A significant chunk of the $200-billion-plus bill from the Katrina-Rita hurricanes might have been avoided if there'd been tough, realistic plans to deter development in exposed coastal areas through buffer zones, wetlands protection, tough building codes and relocating settlements to higher land. ...At a minimum, suggests Raymond Burby, a University of North Carolina-based analyst of natural-disaster planning efforts, state governments should enact meaningful building codes and oblige local governments to draw up comprehensive plans.
UNC Tip Sheet: http://www.unc.edu/news/newstips/2005/hurricane090205.htmEdwards takes anti-poverty movement to Dartmouth
The Boston Globe
Former Sen. John Edwards on Friday urged students at Dartmouth College to rise up and face the challenge of poverty. ...Edwards has embraced the fight against poverty in recent months, starting an academic center at University of North Carolina's law school that is devoted to study and discussion of the problem.News Corp. Shareholders Express Dissent
The Associated Press (National)
In a show of dissent against Rupert Murdoch, shareholders of News Corp. withheld as much as 15 percent of their vote to re-elect four directors Friday to protest the company's failure to consult them on a takeover defense measure. ...Robert Bushman, a forensic accounting professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, noted that since many votes to re-elect directors have withhold rates of close to zero, "clearly there is a group of unhappy people."
Early Treatment of Schizophrenia Makes Difference
Forbes
Early treatment of schizophrenia can improve patients' long-term outcomes, says a study led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For years, experts have debated whether early intervention following a schizophrenia patient's first psychotic episode could affect outcome. The prevailing view has been that "it just doesn't matter when you treat a person because their clinical outcome is predetermined," study author Dr. Diana O. Perkins said in a prepared statement.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct05/schizophrenia100305.htmMedical hope in umbilical cord blood
The Chicago Tribune
When 5-year-old Gina Rugari started kindergarten in Cincinnati this fall she brought her own crayons, pencils, glue sticks and pink backpack, but the blood flowing through her arteries was not her own. ...Gina was one of 11 infants with Krabbe disease who were given cord blood transplants early. All survived and many of them run and hop and don't have any residual problems, said Dr. Maria Escolar, a University of North Carolina neurologist who assessed the children.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/may05/krabbes051605.html
Hallmarks in artistry
The Miami Herald
Edward Weston famously photographed a green pepper so that it gleamed with the sensual curves of a nude. ...This is Apocalypse Then: Images of Destruction, Prophecy and Judgment from Dürer to the Twentieth Century, organized and circulated by the Ackland Art Museum, of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
State & Local Coverage
Exhibit sheds light on slave history
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Many antebellum Southern institutions have ties to slavery that can haunt them like sleepless specters. UNC-Chapel Hill wrestles occasionally with how to fit its oppressive past into the telling of the school's 212-year history. Some of the early university trustees and faculty were slaveholders. ..."I think it's really critical that we're honest about our past," UNC Chancellor James Moeser said. "Southern institutions have often glossed over this part of history. ... I think it puts the current events in a very historical context."
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct05/slavery100705.htmUNC group hailed for work in Kenya (Question-answer)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Carolina for Kibera, an organization started by students at UNC-Chapel Hill, provides health care, sports programs and support for youths in the largest slum in Africa, a place called Kibera on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, where 700,000 to 1 million people live.
Footnotes
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
No link available.
The 108-member UNC Symphony Orchestra and a 200-voice campus and community choir will perform Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 at 8 p.m. Friday in Memorial Hall on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct05/symphchoir101905.htmUNC-Chapel Hill health scientists have won eight grants from the National Institutes of Health's competitive Roadmap program -- more than any other university. They also have new funding for a center to combat cancer through the latest in basic science technology.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct05/waldrop101305.htmTriangle university students raised more than $18,000 for victims of this month's earthquake in Pakistan. The Muslim student associations from Duke, N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill co-hosted a fund-raising dinner, and the funds will go to Islamic Relief, an international aid agency.
Deck's demise poses parking puzzle
The Herald-Sun (Durham)/The Chapel Hill Herald
The scrapping of a plan to build an underground parking deck on the northwest corner of the UNC campus has left university planners with a dilemma: Where should they put the 280 or so cars they'd hoped to park in that structure? ...They must now find a new location for either a surface lot or, perhaps more likely, an above-ground parking structure of some sort in the same general area, said Bruce Runberg, associate vice chancellor for planning and construction. "We are looking at some potentially viable options," said Runberg, declining to name sites under consideration. "We do need to have that number of parking spaces up around that spot -- as many as we could get in there."
UNC taps bonds' rainy day fund
The Chapel Hill Herald
With its $2.5 billion construction program now entering the final stretch, the UNC system is distributing the money it had saved for cost overruns to its 16 campuses. ...At UNC Chapel Hill, the extra funding amounted to about $5.2 million, a small yet important extra source of income, said Bruce Runberg, associate vice chancellor for planning and construction.
Keep tabs on UNC expansion
The Chapel Hill Herald
CHH: Why should voters put a 21-year-old UNC student on the council? ...I'm a member of an environmental purchasing work group, under student government. It started out wanting to make sure all the paper products sold in the Student Stores were recycled, and that sort of thing. We decided we could take this a lot further if we look at some of the upcoming development the university is doing, and down the road at Carolina North.
Dealing with junk history in `Da Vinci Code' (Editorial column)
The Charlotte Observer
How much responsibility do writers of historical novels have to accurately depict history? Dr. Ehrman, who chairs the religion department at UNC Chapel Hill, is a prolific and highly regarded writer on the history of early Christianity. He was in town to give two public lectures and conduct a half-day seminar on early Christianity at my church, Myers Park Baptist. Ehrman debunked the historical accuracy of a series of Brown's assertions -- that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus, that all Jewish men of Jesus' era were married, that followers of Jesus didn't consider him divine until centuries after his death, that the Dead Sea Scrolls were Christian documents and so on.
Police mum on how they acquired Planten's DNA
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
A piece of Drew Planten so small that you can't see it will play a big part in his prosecution -- and perhaps in his defense against the charge that he killed Stephanie Bennett. ...Rich Rosen, a law professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, used DNA evidence to clear a Mebane man who had been convicted and imprisoned for rapes he didn't commit. "DNA evidence is scientific, and if it's done right it's incredibly convincing," Rosen said Friday. "The question is whether it's done right."
Property ruling fuels concern
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing a Connecticut city to seize houses to make way for private development has some Triangle residents worried the same thing could happen to them. ..."At this point, it's not applicable in North Carolina," said David Lawrence, a local government expert at UNC-Chapel Hill's Institute of Government.
Schools' governing councils lose power
The Chapel Hill Herald
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, local school officials buzzed with the idea of site-based management. ... Parent Neil Shipman, who served on Chapel Hill High's SGC for four years, called the situation a "most frustrating experience." He said school officials insisted on a guise of self-governing schools -- a model he never saw exist. Shipman, a former principal and central office administrator, said he was fine with having the SGCs serve a purely advisory role, as long as school officials called them that. "All they really are are sounding boards and advisory committees," said Shipman, who teachers in the UNC School of Education. "There were always token representatives from SGCs on district committees ? but there was never total acceptance of what they had to offer."
Hammers ring, and a Habitat house rises
The Chapel Hill Herald
With mud caked on their shoes, volunteers and future homeowners worked side by side Saturday hammering nails and putting up the walls for a new Habitat for Humanity home for a set of grandparents from China. ...The home is being sponsored by SunTrust Bank, as well as University Presbyterian Church, Church of Reconciliation, New Hope Presbyterian Church and UNC Student Health Action Coalition.
Mountain climbing for HIV/AIDS
The Chapel Hill News
At press time Saturday, AIDS Climb, an organization that involves both UNC and Duke University, was scheduled to scale Mount Mitchell, the tallest mountain in the eastern United States. ...Students for Students International is a UNC student-run charity that helps underprivileged girls attend secondary school in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
'Workforce housing' planned on Rosemary Street
The Chapel Hill News
Citing a growing demand for downtown housing, a Chapel Hill developer has submitted concept plans to the town for 160 condominium-style apartments and retail space on West Rosemary Street. ...Chapel Hill architect Josh Gurlitz, who is designing the building, said these aren’t intended to be “high-end” apartments. He said he envisions a building inhabited by, for example, a school teacher just starting out, a career nurse working at UNC Hospitals or a university employee working in library sciences.
Issues & Trends
Brown University starts $1 billion fundraising campaign
The Boston Globe
Brown University will kick off its largest capital campaign ever on Saturday, aiming to raise more than $1.3 billion for its endowment and to help it compete with other top schools. Brown in 2002 adopted its Plan for Academic Enrichment, which includes adding faculty, buildings and multidisciplinary programs, and improving financial aid and faculty pay. Much of the work is already in progress, adding $55 million to the university's operating budget this year and hundreds of millions of dollars to the capital projects budget.
Florida has many rivals in its quest
The South Florida Business Journal
Like a contagious virus, biotech fever is sweeping across America, leading states and municipalities to spend millions of dollars courting an industry that has never been profitable and is highly concentrated in just a few areas of the country. ...Murdock's deep pockets and real estate experience is "an interesting combination," said Ross DeVol, director of regional economics at the Milken Institute. The University of North Carolina plans to partner with Murdock on the research park, and Murdock's upfront venture capital commitment "could potentially attract top research scientists" as well as "capital-starved" biotech firms, DeVol said.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/sep05/uncnutritioninstitute091205.htm
Franklin Street Blues
The Chapel Hill News
...UNC should open up its lots for free parking on evenings and weekends -- the small amount of profit they are making, after expenses, can't be worth the poor PR in the community.
Dreaming out loud about downtown (Opinion-editorial column)
The Chapel Hill News
When I came to Chapel Hill in 1997, I moved into a loft above the Internationalist Bookstore on West Franklin Street. It was a complete dump, not for the faint hearted. ...No one disputes that UNC is the main show in town, but keeping the circus running means hiring thousands of people, many of whom can’t afford to live near downtown.
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.
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