Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina people and programs cited recently in the media:
International Coverage
Health costs fuel rise in bankruptcy among elderly
Reuters (Wire Service)
…Medical bankruptcy filings usually result from high out-of-pocket expense, along with the cost of financing those expenses, according to Melissa Jacoby (pictured right), a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in bankruptcy issues. “Chronic conditions, drug costs and nursing home costs are a big area of concern,” she says. “And when people put those expenses on a high-interest rate credit card, the financial burden of those costs escalate.”
Tai Chi reduces arthritis pain
The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
The Chinese exercise regimen Tai Chi helps reduce fatigue and arthritis pain, a new study has found. "Our study shows that there are significant benefits of the Tai Chi course for individuals with all types of arthritis, including fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis," said Leigh Callahan, the study's lead author and associate professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.
UNC Release:
http://news.unchealthcare.org/news/2010/November/unc-study-tai-chi-relieves-
arthritis-pain-improves-reach-balance-and-well-being?utm_source=r
elease&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=tai-chi
Most doctors don't know the cost of the tests they order
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
…A recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine had an article by University of North Carolina medical geneticist Prof. James Evans and colleagues who stated that medical professionals “must ensure that rapidly evolving and multiplying genomic technologies are responsibly harnessed, and that their promise is not oversold to the public.” They argued that “a primary role of health-care professionals in the future may be to interpret their patients’ DTC genetic test results and advise them about appropriate follow-up.”
National Coverage
Professor Tracks Injuries With Aim of Prevention
The New York Times
The man with perhaps the most gruesome job in sports was unenviably busy. While other football fans spent the last weekend of October watching games, the 74-year-old retiree prepared still more formal inquiries into events that occupy him more than anyone would prefer — two high school football tragedies. …Fred Mueller has almost singlehandedly run the National Center for Catastrophic Injury Research at the University of North Carolina for 30 years, logging and analyzing more than 1,000 fatal, paralytic or otherwise ghastly injuries in sports from peewees to the pros. His work has repeatedly improved safety for young athletes by identifying patterns that lead to changes in rules, field dimensions and more.
Safer Football, Taught From Inside the Helmet
The New York Times
…But at the University of North Carolina, researchers and athletic trainers are using innovative tools to identify and alert players who deliver too many blows with the top of their heads. …Several colleges and high schools have players in helmets equipped with accelerometers, known as the Head Impact Telemetry (HIT) system. But North Carolina may be alone in using it to identify dangerous techniques — which most everyone in football agrees are rampant at every level — and to teach safer play.
MD Group Says Specialist Should Review Concussions
The Associated Press
Athletes of all ages who are suspected of suffering a concussion should be evaluated by a specialist before they return to sports, a major doctors group said Monday in the latest sign of concern over potential lasting damage from head injuries. …Certified athletic trainers now work at about 40 percent of the nation's high schools and are rarely provided for athletes in younger grades, said Kevin Guskiewicz of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Can Science Shape Human Values? And Should It?
"Talk of the Nation" National Public Radio
Ira Flatow talks with scientists and philosophers about the origins of human values, and the influence of modern scientific thought on human values. Even if science can shape human morals, should it? Or does science bring its own set of preconceptions and prejudices to moral questions? …Simon Blackburn is a research professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in England.
Study: Breast-Feeding Moms Get Just as Much (or Little) Rest as Formula-Feeders
Time
…Miriam Labbok, director of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill calls the results a “helpful finding for the field.” “The perception is that the breast-feeding mom is up day and night, always breast-feeding,” says Labbok. “But when you're bottle-feeding, you're up day and night always bottle-feeding, too.”
Shining Light on the Cost of Solar Energy
National Geographic
…Converting light into electricity with no moving parts is a profoundly different enterprise than turning a turbine to make power—the technology that is at work in coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydropower plants and, most visibly to the public, at wind farms. “Wind power is the same technology as it’s been for 1,000 years,” said Tom Meyer, a professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “There’s nothing to invent. It just needs to be improved.” The makers of wind turbines have made huge cost reductions in recent decades with relatively small tweaks to an otherwise familiar system.
The helicopter drop (Blog)
The Washington Post
A number of economists are concerned that the Federal Reserve can't on its own stimulate demand. I am skeptical here, but with unemployment holding steady at 10 percent I am more than willing to consider alternate strategies. (Karl Smith is an assistant professor of economics and government at the University of North Carolina.)
Related Links:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/11/quantitative_bonuses.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/11/unemployment_rate_on_hold.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/11/how_to_think_about_qe2.html
State and Local Coverage
Name honors a lifetime of building (Tar Heel of the Week)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Two of the new buildings within the new physical sciences complex at UNC-Chapel Hill are named for loyal alums who donated millions to the project. And then there's Murray Hall, named for a man who has given far more. Royce Murray has been called the "heart and soul" of the chemistry department at UNC-CH, an assessment that seems fair, given that he is now in his 50th year as a faculty member there.
Related Link:
http://blogs.newsobserver.com/campusnotes/unc-chemist-is-our-tar-heel-of-the-week
UNC's Breland helps others in cancer fight
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Several weeks ago, the North Carolina women's basketball team visited the UNC Cancer Hospital to spend time with children undergoing treatment in the pediatric oncology clinic. Senior Jessica Breland spoke with a teenage girl from Goldsboro who was receiving chemotherapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma and struggling through the process. …Breland understood her heartache. It hadn't been long since she was in the girl's place, diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in May 2009. She missed the entire 2009-10 basketball season while undergoing treatment.
Shedding light on dark matter
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
For thousands of years, humans have looked to the stars to gain understanding about life on Earth. And since its launch in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has improved significantly on what astronomers can see millions of light years away. Now, another astronomical milestone is within reach. A team led by Sheila Kannappan, assistant professor of astronomy and physics at UNC-Chapel Hill, has started a first-of-its-kind census of two slivers of the universe, home to about 1,500 galaxies that are, on average, 267 million light years away.
UNC team identifies a 'tipsy' gene
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
We've all seen that person who can slam drink after drink yet never appear to get drunk. But it turns out that being able to hold one's liquor may mean you are genetically inclined to develop alcoholism later in life. Kirk Wilhelmsen, a genetics professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, led a team that has identified a gene that could explain why some people feel the effects of alcohol quicker than others.
UNC Release:
http://news.unchealthcare.org/news/2010/October/scientists-find-gene-linked-to-alcoholism
Chapel Hill’s G-Zero gets cancer grant
The Triangle Business Journal
UNC-Chapel Hill startup G-Zero Therapeutics has won a federal grant in the form of tax credits worth more than $240,000, the university said in a written statement. G-Zero is based on discoveries made by Dr. Ned Sharpless, a UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center doctor and associate director for translational research.
UNC Release:
http://cancer.unc.edu/news/2010/release1104_1.asp
UNC ROTC plans full dress ceremony for Veteran's Day
The Chapel Hill Herald
ROTC cadets and midshipmen will assemble in dress uniforms at 11 a.m. Nov. 11 for the annual Veteran's Day ceremony at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The free public ceremony will be outdoors at the Carolina Alumni Memorial in Memory of Those Lost in Military Service, located on Cameron Avenue between Phillips (120 E. Cameron) and Memorial halls. The rain site will be the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building at 325 Pittsboro St.
UNC Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/4059/68/
Not-so-easy money
The Chapel Hill Herald
This fall, some students at UNC Chapel Hill enrolled in Money Saving 101. Don't rush to look this class up in the undergraduate bulletin. UNC doesn't offer it. So how did students end up in this penny-pinching program? They signed themselves up. UNC's academic-year tuition increased $750 over the summer. That amount, combined with the $200 increase passed in February, was enough to break some piggy banks.
Author takes us on a tasty romp filled with Southern secrets (Column)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Talk about backlash: This book, "Bitter in the Mouth," has the South strung up by the thumbs and hammered to the barn door. We ain't what we seem (is any one of us ever?), and neither is Linda Hammerick, now of New York, formerly of Boiling Springs, N.C. (Ruth Moose teaches creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill.)
Literate and healthy (Letter to the Editor)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
I want to thank Harold Sellars for highlighting the critical importance and substantial economic benefit of investing in the early development of children ("The payoff from early education," Oct. 21 Point of View article). As a family physician, I've seen the dramatic difference in student achievement between children who grow up with highly engaged parents and books in their home and those who don't. (Cristy Page, M.D., Associate Residency Director, UNC Family Medicine Center, Chapel Hill)
Blue weight-watchers (Letter to the Editor)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
As a longtime Blue Cross and Blue Shield customer, I find that the BCBS Foundation's recently announced commitment to fighting childhood obesity is an absolutely worthy and important project. It is also a wise investment in BCBS's needed attempts to improve the company's image. In your Oct. 7 edition, I learned that my tax dollars are helping pay for former CEO Bob Greczyn's appointment as a visiting professor at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Public Health. (Sally Moseley, Tarboro)
Wilkes woman is UNC-CH homecoming queen
The Journal-Patriot (Wilkesboro)
A Wilkes County native was this year's "Miss UNC 2010" homecoming queen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Monica Doyle, daughter of David and Brenda Doyle of Wilkesboro, was crowned during halftime of the football game with William & Mary College on Saturday.
100 men and 100 reasons (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The Chapel Hill News
…Based on the opinions of my two friends, and what I have observed, keep him. Not only keep Coach Davis, but keep him until he retires from coaching many years in the future. He has cooperated in every way with the investigation. In the midst of the problems, he has been the ultimate coach: keeping together a group of 100 young men that could very easily have given up on football and themselves before the first snap of the season. (John A. van Aalst is an assistant professor of surgery and the director of Pediatric and Craniofacial Plastic Surgery.)
Issues and Trends
UNC board OKs $2.7 billion budget for 2011-12
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
The UNC system Board of Governors Friday approved a $2.7 billion budget proposal for the 2011-12 year that will be sent to the General Assembly. But given tough economic timse and the state's projected $3 billion deficit, the governors don't expect to get nearly that much money to run the system's 17 campuses. "We've been asked to look at both 5 and 10 percent cuts to our budget," departing system President Erskine Bowles said Friday after the BOG meeting. "We know that no matter what, the budget will be lean."
UNC weighs new policy to tie funding to results
The Associated Press
North Carolina’s university system wants to change the way it funds colleges to reward those campuses that do well rather than simply paying schools for each student they enroll. The change, which was discussed by the UNC system’s Board of Governors on Friday, would tie enrollment growth funding to academic goals such as retention and graduation rates. “We need to make sure people graduate — and graduate with diplomas that mean something,” UNC President Erskine Bowles said.
Related Link:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/11/06/784463/colleges-push-funding-changes.html
2011 budget choice: close UNC campus? (Editorial)
The Charlotte Observer
Even as UNC President Erskine Bowles winds up his tenure as president of the University of North Carolina system, he frames the debate for the next round of significant university and state budget changes by uttering the un-utterable: the possibility of closing a campus in the UNC system.
Related Links:
http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2010/11/06/1045828?sac=Opin
Bowles leaves legacy of efficiency at UNC
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
In 2005, Erskine Bowles showed up for his job interview with UNC system leaders toting a copy of the university's long-range plan. He thrust it in front of his interviewers and asked them what they knew about it. It quickly became apparent he knew more than they did. "His copy was dog-eared, underlined, highlighted," John Davis, a member of the UNC system's Board of Governors who interviewed Bowles that day, recalled Friday.
Related Links:
http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/10184968/article-Bowles–nearing-
end—A-wonderful-journey-?instance=homethirdleft
http://www.wral.com/news/education/story/8576904/
Rock the Vote cranks up the youth turnout (Under the Dome)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan organization that uses music and popular culture to encourage young people to vote, helped increase turnout of younger voters in the Triangle in last week's election. The group targeted youth-dense areas in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida with registration efforts at concerts, festivals and football games. The group reported that at the Country Club precinct near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, there were 569 votes cast last week, compared with 181 votes cast in 2006, the last midterm election.
Color UNC Board Blue
The Triangle Business Journal
The UNC System’s governing body, which represents all 16 of the state’s universities, is dominated by board members who hold an undergraduate degree from UNC in Chapel Hill. Eleven voting members of the UNC System Board of Governors, or UNC BOG, hold undergraduate degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill, with another four having earned law or graduate degrees there.