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Oct. 5, 2006
Carolina in the News
Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina people and programs cited recently in the media:
International Coverage
DNA sequencing tech funding announced
United Press International
The National Human Genome Research Institute Wednesday awarded more than $13 million to speed the development of DNA sequencing technology...The investigators to be funded in the latest round of awards are: John Nelson of General Electric Global Research, J. Michael Ramsey of the University of North Carolina...
Study Favors One Type of Drug-Coated Stent
Canadian Broadcast Corporation
A new Italian study appears to pick a winner from two widely used, expensive drug-coated stents that are used to prop open ailing arteries...Another expert, Dr. Sidney Smith, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, concurred that more study is necessary to settle the issue. "What is really needed is a head-to-head study that is randomized. Another thing I'd like to see is follow-up beyond one year," he said.
National Coverage
N.C. lauds presidential history of Polk, A. Johnson
USA Today
American history is being preserved at the North Carolina birthplaces of two of the nation's early presidents, James Polk (1845-49) and Andrew Johnson (1865-69)...His family sold the farm when Polk was 11 and they moved to Tennessee to join relatives. Polk returned to the state to attend college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then went back to Tennessee, where he studied law and established a practice.
Health Studies of '59 Rocketdyne Nuclear Accident to Be Released
The Los Angeles Times
After decades of questioning over the long-term health effects of a nuclear accident at an energy research lab near Simi Valley, a team of scientists today will release the results of several studies that promise some answers...Panel members include Steven Wing, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Sheldon Plotkin, a safety engineering expert with the Southern California Federation of Scientists...
A Micro-Step Toward Reef Restoration
The Los Angeles Times
Alina Szmant, a University of North Carolina biology professor and pioneer in the nascent art of coral breeding, is at work on a coral-settlement-mortality study in Puerto Rico with a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. She attributes the previous failures to cultivate coral at least in part to the rising temperature of ocean waters.
Study Favors One Type of Drug-Coated Stent
Health Day News
A new Italian study appears to pick a winner from two widely used, expensive drug-coated stents that are used to prop open ailing arteries...Another expert, Dr. Sidney Smith, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, concurred that more study is necessary to settle the issue. "What is really needed is a head-to-head study that is randomized. Another thing I'd like to see is follow-up beyond one year," he said.
Hitting The Books
Business Week
The Kauffman Foundation has been giving grants to help establish entrepreneurship programs and initiatives in engineering schools, medical schools, and even liberal arts colleges. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, has established a minor in entrepreneurship for students in its College of Arts and Sciences. Even without Kauffman prodding, plenty of schools are expanding the reach of entrepreneurship education.
Nature Or Nurture
Business Week
There is even evidence that some traits important to entrepreneurs, such as likability and risk tolerance, appear to be inherited or at least influenced by an individual's surroundings at an early age, says Howard Aldrich, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Genetics appear to play some role in entrepreneurial behavior," he says. "But it's not clear just how much."
Regional Coverage
Paul A. Hanle: War against evolution could deeply harm future of U.S. science
The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis, Minn.)
The opposition to evolution discourages the development of entire high-school classes of future scientific talent. "It seems like a raw deal for the 14-year-old girl in Topeka who might have gone on to find a cure for resistant infections if only she had been taught evolution in high school," H. Holden Thorp, chairman of the Chemistry Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote in the New York Times last spring.
Cell phones one of many distractions
The East Valley Tribune (Phoenix, Ariz.)
A few years ago, a University of North Carolina survey for the American Automobile Association found that of the top 10 accident-causing distractions, cell phone use placed eighth. No. 1 was looking too long at something outside.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar03/stutts032603.htmlState and Lcoal Coverage
Students learn about sickle cell disease
The Wilkes-Journal Patriot
Students in Marian Marley's second period chemistry II class discovered the molecular basis of sickle cell disease in an experiment conducted at Wilkes Central High School during one of the stops by Destiny, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's traveling science laboratory.
Note: This article is not available online.
UNC Media Advisory: http://www.unc.edu/news/media/2006/destinywest092506.htmLand deal could be salvaged
The Winston-Salem Journal
The government agency that operates water and sewer service in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County failed to comply with state law when it bought land in Stokes County last month for a proposed demolition landfill, city officials acknowledged yesterday...As city officials try to figure out what to do next about the land deal, Fleming Bell, a professor at the University of North Carolina's Institute of Government, said that one way to properly file the deed to the property would be to get the consent of the Stokes commissioners.Critics find unsung memorial unworthy
The Herald-Sun (Durham) / The Chapel Hill Herald
UNC's Unsung Founders Memorial does an inadequate job honoring the slaves and free black people who helped build Carolina, some professors and community members said at a panel discussion of the monument Wednesday.
Development halt talk stirring up opposition
The Chapel Hill Herald
The town is talking development moratorium, and that's got the community, especially developers, talking as well...The board voted to refer the moratorium proposal to the two groups, as well as to the town of Chapel Hill, the Orange County Board of Commissioners and UNC, before reassessing the issue.
Time to go smoke-free (Editorial)
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
The medical centers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina are rightly recognized as leaders nationally and internationally in research and treatment. It is good that they now join a growing list of hospitals and medical centers in being uncompromising in their banning of smoking and tobacco products, thus making a stron statement against one of the major causes of the diseases they spend so much of their effort healing.
Note: This article is not available online.Hospitals put out 'no smoking' sign (Editorial)
The Chapel Hill Herald
First, says the physician's Hippocratic Oath, do no harm. Perhaps the oath should add countenance no harm either. Anyone who has been to UNC Hospitals or any of its affiliated facilities knows that entering or leaving one of the buildings can be like running a hazy gauntlet. Gathered along Manning Drive and seemingly at every entrance are smokers -- those who have been prevented from smoking inside the facilities since 1889. Before they go in, or right after they come out, they light up.
GOP leaders mishandled Foley situation, N.C. delegates say
The Winston-Salem Journal
Rep Howard Coble, R-6th, said yesterday that Republican leaders mishandled the sex scandal involving a former congressman and congressional pages by not sharing the initial allegations with other members of the committee that oversees the page program...Ferrell Guillory, the director of the Program on Southern Politics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that Republicans can't be seen as trying to cover up the issue and warned that "after Iraq, this is a double blow" to the party's prospects, even at the state level.Professor will address UNC grads
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Holden Thorp, a UNC-Chapel Hill chemistry professor with a passion for music and a history of service, will deliver the Dec. 17 commencement address at the Dean E. Smith Center. Thorp, who plays jazz bass and keyboard, is the Kenan professor of chemistry and chairman of the Chemistry Department in the College of Arts and Sciences.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct06/commencethorp100406.htmAsk NC Now
“NC Now” UNC-TV
Linda Cronenwett, dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, was featured on UNC-TV’s “North Carolina Now” discussing the new report from the Institute of Medicine, which concludes that medication errors are among the most common medical errors. Cronenwett chaired the IOM committee that issued the report.
IOM Release: http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11623
Note: No link available.
Speaker outlines effect of pornography at UNC session
The Chapel Hill Herald
Pornography isn't evil, but it can ruin relationships, make a man visually rape every women he sees and make a woman become obsessed with looking desirable, according to Michael Leahy in his presentation Wednesday night of "Porn Nation -- The Naked Truth," on the UNC campus.
The tar baby I wrote about recently will not me let loose.
Up & Coming Magazine (Fayetteville)
"So what do we do about the tar baby?" I asked UNC-Chapel Hill professor Randall Kenan, author of Walking on Water, an exploration of what it means to be black in America. "We have to use it as an opportunity to talk," Kenan told me. Joel Chandler Harris, creator of Uncle Remus and the tar baby story lived in racist times.
Issues and Trends
Has Bowles committed Tar Heel heresy? (Opinion)
The Charlotte Observer
Hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians have a story to tell about their college. Odds are that college is one of the state's 16 public universities. Odds are, that story -- like mine -- is about the Tar Heel version of success: how getting an undergraduate degree led to making a decent living doing something you enjoy (most days) and living a better life than your parents...That's why the issue of setting tuition is the most explosive policy Erskine Bowles owns as president of the 16-campus University of North Carolina system.
Low-Tuition Leader (Editorial)
The Winston-Salem Journal
With the release of his plan to hold tuition increases to 6.5 percent or less over four years, University of North Carolina President Erskine Bowles is offering students and their families cost predictability. Now the General Assembly and the individual campuses will decide whether that predictability is real or illusory.
Task force explores options
The Daily Tar Heel
UNC-system President Erskine Bowles announced Monday his long-term tuition plan that would limit increases for resident undergraduates at 6.5 percent. "This is what we expected for the most part," said Provost Bernadette Gray-Little, co-chairwoman of the task force. The student fee advisory subcommittee's also presented its proposal - a fee increase of $56.48.Senator doles out $1 million grant to UNC
The Daily Tar Heel
The University's Department of Computer Science recently received a $1 million grant to continue researching urban combat simulation programs. The grant, announced Monday, was secured by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C, and comes from the past fiscal year's federal budget. The funds were slated to be returned to the U.S. Department of the Treasury before Dole secured the dollars for research at UNC, said Amy Auth, Dole's deputy press secretary.
UNC begins scrutiny of Wesleyan
The Rocky Mount Telegram
Preliminary steps to study the prospect of UNC-Rocky Mount have begun. The N.C. General Assembly passed legislation this summer requiring the University of North Carolina system to study the possibility of making N.C. Wesleyan College its 17th campus. And UNC officials are laying the groundwork.Duke to take meds from 'bench to bedside'
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
A $52.7 million federal grant is going to help Duke University Medical Center more rapidly convert discoveries made in the laboratory into new treatments that'll improve one's health, officials said...Duke's new institute will coordinate efforts in translational medicine at the North Carolina Research Campus being developed in Kannapolis by Duke, UNC and Dole Food Co. There'll also be coordination with the recently established Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School in Singapore.Hokies Reaches Deal with Nike
The Associated Press (National)
Nike also will pay the department an undisclosed amount each year. Weaver wouldn't reveal the amount because the contract hadn't been signed. The University of Virginia athletic department earns $50,000 annually from its contract with Nike. The University of North Carolina's department received $200,000 a year.
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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