uncnews.unc.edu

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

International Coverage

British scientist in Argentine prison on drugs charges blames honey trap
The Telegraph
Oxford University graduate Paul Frampton has been held in prison since January after being stopped at an airport in Buenos Aires as he tried to board a plane to Peru with two kilograms of cocaine in his suitcase.

National Coverage

HIV cure gets a bit closer
CNN
A patient whose HIV seemingly disappeared gives researchers hope for an eventual cure. UNC Dr. David Margolis discusses the possibility of curing HIV.

Can “Pop-Up” Grocery Stores Solve the Problem of Food Deserts?
Time
..."Just because you build it, doesn’t mean you will change people’s behavior,” says study author Barry Popkin, a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Price, quality, accessibility, incentives, they matter too. Every community is different, but new efforts or supplementing existing infrastructure works if they’re accompanied with affordable prices, education, promotion or community collaboration.”

HIV prevention done right (Opinion)
The Los Angeles Times
This week, tens of thousands of delegates are meeting in Washington for the biennial International AIDS Conference, striving to advance an agenda for an AIDS-free generation. Achieving such an ambitious goal will require multiple strategies, but virtually all agree that male circumcision — which provides powerful protection against HIV infection as well as other health benefits for men and women — must be a core element.(Daniel Halperin is an HIV prevention and public health researcher based at the University of North Carolina and is the coauthor, with Craig Timberg, of "How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It.")

An Academic Auto-da-Fé
The Chronicle of Higher Education
...Regnerus was trained in one of the best graduate programs in the country and was a postdoctoral fellow under an internationally renowned scholar of family, Glen Elder, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Regional Coverage

Technology negatively affecting our health, study shows
The Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI)
...The study, by University of North Carolina Chapel Hill researchers and published in Obesity Reviews, forecasts physical activity to be around 142 MET hours per week by 2020, using linear trends based on 2003-2009. In 2030, it's even lower - 126 MET hours per week due to declining work-related, domestic and travel physical activity.

State and Local Coverage

Adversity no obstacle for these three scholars
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
...She graduated last year from Durham Technical Community College. She’s now pursuing a sociology degree at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and ministers in prisons. Someday, Small said, she’d like to return to places like Belhaven and help set up new programs like TROSA that can help people who struggled the way she did.

New Horizons Band lets musicians reconnect with their lost love
The Fayetteville Observer
For more than 50 years, Marx Nathan was separated from his first love: a sleek stunning figure in glittering gold. He had held her tight at those dances when he was a basketball hotshot at UNC-Chapel Hill, thinking maybe they'd be together forever.

The limits of political debate (Opinion)
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Whatever one’s position on “offshore outsourcing,” there is no doubt that the controversial business practice is a mouthful to pronounce. Just try saying it five times fast. Similarly, “demagogic” is a tough word to spell, but I’m using it here because there’s no better way to describe the character and quality of the “debate” regarding offshore outsourcing that the Obama campaign team has been orchestrating over the past few weeks. (Peter A. Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and director of the Global Research Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill.)

Stepping it up (Editorial)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
The alleged academic fraud in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill – a fraud whose main beneficiary appears to have been the football program and to some extent the basketball program as well –hangs over the campus like a dark cloud on a Southern summer afternoon.

Degrees cheapened (Letter to the Editor)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
I graduated from NCSU and UNC. I agree with the July 21 letter-writer that Chancellor Holden Thorp should be fired for his failures to uncover problems and efforts to cover up and whitewash the athletic scandals at UNC.

Issues and Trends

Global AIDS conference rally calls for cheaper medicines, more funding
The Washington Post
The first International AIDS Conference to be held in the United States in more than two decades opened Sunday with repeated assertions that the 31-year-old epidemic can be realistically brought to an end with more money and attention, strategically applied.