uncnews.unc.edu

Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina people and programs cited recently in the media:

National Coverage

Stocks mixed on last day of strong year for market
The Associated Press
Stocks ended a gut-wrenching 2010 quietly Friday. The major indexes were little changed and trading volume was at one of its lowest levels of the year as many traders took the day off. ... "The flash crash made retail investors take a step back and say, 'Is this really just a legalized gambling arena?''', said Scott Rostan, a financial consultant for investment banks and an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

French Model Isabelle Caro's Death Highlights Tough Personal Battles Against Anorexia
ABC News
... "I think it is so important that a high-profile death remind us of all of the less high-profile people who are struggling and dying," said Cynthia Bulik, director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Bulik and other experts say anorexia and other eating disorders are physically and mentally devastating. Treatment can be very intense and very difficult, and part of the challenge is that little is known about what causes the distorted body image that is characteristic of these disorders.

Scientists Test 'Trust Hormone' For Autism Fight
National Public Radio
...Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks and a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says there's a pressing need for rigorous scientific studies of the hormone. "Some physicians are already administering oxytocin to children sometimes as young as 2 years of age," she says. "So it's very important that we good science behind that. Is it really effective? Which children is it most effective for? And importantly, are there any adverse effects?"

Why Scientists Think Salvia Could Lead To Medical Treatments
National Public Radio
...Even though causing hallucinations is a drawback for Salvinorin A as a therapeutic, Bryan Roth sees it as a potential boon for neuroscientists. He's a pharmacology professor at the University of North Carolina. "One of the things that's interesting about drugs that are hallucinogens is they alter the way we see reality," he says. Studying how Salvinorin A affects brain circuits may provide clues about how the brain makes sense of the world. That's a question worth pursuing, in Roth's opinion. "What could be more important than how we view reality?"

State and Local Coverage

Your body is thwarting your weight-loss efforts
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
First of five parts. It seems so simple: Too much food and too little activity make people fat. But the actual processes that create and perpetuate that imbalance are proving to be astoundingly complex. ... Adding to the biological evidence, a team of scientists that included UNC-Chapel Hill researchers reported in 2009 that they had found a gene, NRXN3, associated with obesity in some people. The same gene previously was identified as playing a role in substance abuse. Keri Monda, an epidemiologist at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and one of the study's authors, said the finding draws a strong inherited link between overeating and drug addiction - problems characterized by difficulties limiting enjoyable experiences.

Counting calories will soon get easier when eating out
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Diners in North Carolina soon will see what customers in Philadelphia, Albany, N.Y., and Seattle know just by looking at restaurant menus - that Olive Garden's eggplant parmigiana has 1,220 calories, a Krispy Kreme glazed has 200, and Hardee's Six Dollar Thickburger has 930. ... Just as companies decided to change their recipes when the FDA required transfat labels, calorie labels could spur restaurants to change the way they prepare food to lower calories counts, said Alice Ammerman, professor in the nutrition department at UNC-Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Gluten-free not always way to be
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
If you love traditional bread sticks, cake or cookies, you may find the recent popularity of the gluten-free diet bewildering. Some bakeries and Italian restaurants now offer gluten-free products. You can find gluten-free pastas and breads in the aisles of many grocery stores. In fact, U.S. retail sales in gluten-free food increased 74 percent from 2004 through 2009, according to the Nielsen Co.... "Anecdotally, there are lots and lots of patients who say that they have a gluten sensitivity," said Maya Jerath, the director of the Allergy and Immunology Clinic at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

Law has taken effect smoothly
The Winston-Salem Journal
Has it really only been one year since the start of North Carolina's ban on smoking in restaurants? The clean air has been so refreshing that it seems like much longer. As of Sunday, North Carolina will have gone a year under the new ban and, by all appearances, it's a big success. The public likes it, public-health officials say it is a healthy change and the restaurant and bar industry is pleased that customers are happy. ... The restaurant industry is pleased, too. The owners and employees like the law in large part because the public likes it. A public-health survey conducted at UNC-Chapel Hill found that 42 percent of North Carolinians say they dine out more now because they enjoy the smoke-free air.

Study seen as breakthrough
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Aziz Sancar, the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the UNC School of Medicine, and his colleagues have taken an important step in understanding the underlying molecular signals that influence a broad array of biological processes ranging from the sleep-wake cycle to cancer growth and development.

Scientists Understand Circadian Rhythm Better
WCHL 1360-AM (Chapel Hill)
A group of UNC scientists have pinpointed a link between circadian rhythms and light signals. Scientists identified the genes that direct circadian rhythms in several living organisms, including people. The circadian rhythm describes the changes an organism undergoes during earth’s 24-hour cycle. The recent study takes a big leap to uncovering more about how the cycle works.

Brevard students learn about cells
The Asheville Citizen-Times
The Destiny Traveling Science Learning Program visited Brevard High School in November. The program, based out of UNC Chapel Hill's Planetarium and Science Center, is an educational outreach serving teachers and students across the state. Destiny develops and delivers a standard, hands-on curriculum that enriches learning for students beyond the high school classroom environment.
UNC Media Advisory: http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/4000/107/

His brother's keeper
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
... Matthew Pion is on the low end of the autism spectrum, which varies from low-functioning to high-functioning. Scott Pion's younger brother Kevin Pion, 18, is a freshman at UNC Chapel Hill. He has high-functioning autism and is entirely self-sufficient. "I think autism has become a much more hot topic over the last decade," said Steve Reznick, a psychology professor at UNC Chapel Hill. "Americans are aware that it is a problem."
Related Link: http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/10841218/article-The-crystal-ball-of-autism?

New year for life
Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald
At four days old, Emma Flood’s parents were told she wouldn’t survive the weekend due to a rare chromosome anomaly called trisomy 13.
... Emma’s geneticist Dr. Cynthia Powell agrees. She said trisomy 13 is a condition rarer than Down’s Syndrome. Powell is director of the medical genetics residency program at UNC-Chapel Hill. The average survival rate is seven days. She noted one of the oldest surviving trisomy 13 patients is in their 30s. “For Emma, it’s quite rare because less than one in 10 survive,” Powell said. “I told her mom that this is a Christmas miracle.”

Science, tech shone through
The Charlotte Observer
The Charlotte Observer's SciTech section kicked off a year ago this month. We've been overwhelmed by your positive response in phone calls, e-mails and letters. You've told us you send the section to your relatives in other cities, pin it on the bulletin board in your classrooms and look forward to reading it every Monday. And you've made many helpful suggestions on topics we could cover. To celebrate, we pulled a few of our favorite photos that illustrate some of the stories we've brought to you so far. ... A baby loggerhead turtle wears a lightweight harness linked to a tracking system in a pool at UNC Chapel Hill. Behavioral biologists Ken and Cathy Lohmann were researching how the turtles use a magnetic field to navigate the oceans.

Milking Technology
The Triangle Business Journal
... UNC-Chapel Hill lags behind its Triangle competitors, having yet to develop a major product, says Cathy Innes, the university’s technology development director. While UNC’s revenue inched up to $3 million in 2009 from $2.8 million in 2008, the bulk of that comes from licensing fees and not product revenue. “We still don’t have most of our products in the market,” says Innes, adding that most of UNC’s research licenses are for therapeutics that are in the early stages of development. She says it could be seven to 10 years before that work advances to a marketable product and larger dollars start flowing in.

2010: The Year in Review
The Carrboro Citizen
...NASA climate scientist James Hansen, members of the Sierra Club and university students and faculty gather at UNC’s co-generation plant and ask that the school stop burning coal. ...The UNC Men’s Basketball team beats the Rhode Island Rams, 68-67, and advances to the title game in the National Invitational Tournament. ... At a press conference with state officials and representatives of the Sierra Club, Chancellor Holden Thorp announces the university will end its use of coal by 2020. ... UNC trustees approve site plans for a new UNC law school in the area occupied by Horace Williams Airport.

University awaits NCAA action
The Chapel Hill News
Chancellor Holden Thorp offered his strongest support for football coach Butch Davis and athletic director Dick Baddour in November, telling the board of trustees the pair will keep their jobs for next year. Thorp praised Davis and Baddour for their handling of the continuing NCAA investigation into the university's football program, and later told reporters that the university had no plans to impose self-sanctions as it awaits word from college athletics' governing body.

Frat standards (Opinion)
The Greensboro News-Record
UNC-Chapel Hill is revisiting its standards for students who choose to pledge fraternities and sororities there. The new standards would involve a higher grade-point average, satisfactory progress toward graduation and requirements as well for social behavior. Fraternities and sororities that fail to meet those standards would not receive official university recognition, which would jeopardize their standing with their national chapters.

Let's focus on the land (Guest Column)
The Chapel Hill News
I read with interest Tammy Grubb's article about the proposal to pave a greenway along Bolin Creek north of Estes Drive (CHN Dec. 12), and was very pleased that it did not focus exclusively on the nonsensical suggestion that it would provide a major non-motor transportation link for our area. UNC is the focus of most in-town traffic, and the most logical bike routes to it from areas northwest of Martin Luther King Boulevard lie along the Seawell School Road route that UNC will construct as part of Carolina North.

Issues and Trends

Rev the scientific engine (Opinion)
The Washington Post
New Republican legislators should come down Capitol Hill to the National Museum of American History, which displays a device that in 1849 was granted U.S. patent 6469. It enabled a boat's "draught of water to be readily lessened" so it could "pass over bars, or through shallow water." The patentee was from Sangamon County, Ill. Across Constitution Avenue, over the Commerce Department's north entrance, are some words of the patentee, Abraham Lincoln:

Colleges to Confront Deep Cutbacks
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The budget situation in Nevada is so dire that lawmakers there could cut more than twice the amount they spent on higher education last year and still not fill the state's projected $1.2-billion shortfall. Despite the gap, which equals nearly a third of the state's spending, the incoming governor, Brian E. Sandoval, a Republican, has pledged that he will not raise taxes to put the state's budget back into the black.

Stop the tax deduction for major college sports programs (Opinion)
The Washington Post
For big-time college sports, late December is more than the season of holiday basketball tournaments and the start of myriad football bowl games. It's also the time for making tax-deductible gifts to the booster club of your favorite college team. ... These "donations" are made possible when frenzied demand meets fixed supply. While this profitable coincidence applies to basketball for the likes of Duke and the University of North Carolina, it is football that drives contributions at schools such as Ohio State and Florida.

Intense UNC chief Bowles gives reins to genial Ross
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
t's a tired joke, but Erskine Bowles can't help it. Asked repeatedly in recent months whether he'll really slow down in retirement, Bowles has invariably responded: "My wife [Crandall] tells me I'll be fine on Monday. But she's really worried about Tuesday." It's funny because it's true. Bowles' tenure at UNC was a rigorous, fast-moving, work-to-the-bone five-year term during which public universities slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from their budgets, eliminated thousands of positions and laid off hundreds of workers.

Let's make it 'Thank You, Erskine Bowles' Day
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
But this year, North Carolinians should celebrate Jan. 1 as "Thank You, Erskine Bowles" Day. Bowles's effective service as president of the University of North Carolina system would be grounds enough to merit a special day of thanks. His steady hand, political skills, 18-hours-a-day work schedule and devotion to his state and to the institution he served helped produce stronger, more responsive and focused higher education. Thanks to his efforts and example, the state universities better serve their hundreds of thousands of students and the millions of North Carolinians whose well-being is affected by how the universities perform.

Leader of NC State Health Plan announces retirement next month; plan faces huge budget hole
The Assocated Press
The man who has led the North Carolina State Health Plan for nearly two years plans to retire next month. The News & Observer of Raleigh reports Jack Walker plans to step aside Feb. 4, but will consider staying through budget negotiations if the Republicans taking over the Legislature ask him to stay a little longer.