uncnews.unc.edu

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

International Coverage

Bond Vigilantes’ Ghana Ambush Proves Default Hex Unbroken
Bloomberg Businessweek
Argentina received a reminder this week that the consequences of reneging on its creditors extend far beyond the bond market. ...The Ghana injunction reflects the intention of holdout creditors to harass Argentina’s government as they try to force it to comply with judgments won in U.S. courts, said Mark Weidemaier, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies international financial contracts.

National Coverage

Harvesting Positivity
Inside Higher Ed
...Barbara Frederickson, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology and principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of Positivity (Crown, 2009), has studied the power of a three to one ratio of positive to negative emotions to improve well-being.

Troubled kids in ER: Psych illness or just unruly? (Blog)
NBC News.com
...The ER, however, is not the best location for pediatric mental health concerns, according to child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Jacqueline Smith at University of North Carolina Hospitals. “The emergency department can be traumatizing for a child,” she says. “Also, appropriate staff may not be readily available for assessments or recommendations, leading to very long waits for these children.”

Amazon Warfare: Stuffing the Customer-Review Box
The Huffington Post
The book, Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It, by Craig Timberg of the Washington Post and Daniel Halperin of the University of North Carolina, was published by Penguin in March, according to the Slate account. The book received a favorable review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review at the end of April, and favorable mentions elsewhere.

Gap Year: The Growing Appeal of Not Going Right to College
Time
...Bob Clagett, the former director of admissions at Middlebury College, says taking a gap year can help students gain a renewed focus on academics. “By stepping off the treadmill, they frequently remind themselves of what their education is all about,” he says. “They kind of reinvent themselves.” He’s done research to back up the claim. At Middlebury, students who took gap years were found to have higher GPA’s than those who didn’t, even when controlling for things like wealth and high school achievement. A study at the University of North Carolina yielded similar results.

Regional Coverage

Pollution will feed lake algae for years
The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
...In 2007, algae in Lake Taihu in China grew so dense that the problem overwhelmed city drinking-water-treatment systems and green-stained water came out of faucets in thousands of homes. Efforts to fight the Lake Taihu algae include tracking the phosphorus to its sources — sewage plants and farms — and a new forecasting system to warn cities when a new bloom might form, said Hans Paerl, a University of North Carolina professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences.

State and Local Coverage

Standing up for freedom of speech (Editorial)
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
This is a big week for the free expression of thoughts and ideas. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill celebrated First Amendment Day on Tuesday, the fourth annual series of events sponsored by the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy. The Chapel Hill campus played host to a debate on street art, a reading from banned books, musical performances, a discussion on Twitter bans for student-athletes, and more.

Car-pedestrian crashes targeted
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
...The UNC Highway Safety Research Center analyzed pedestrian accident records to help police focus their efforts on streets with lots of pedestrians and histories of accidents. In campaigns starting this week in Raleigh and next week in Durham, the target areas include busy spots downtown and near campuses and transit centers.

Taking the lead on the environment at UNC-CH
The Triangle Business Journal
In September, the Institute for the Environment at UNC-Chapel Hill received a 10-year pledge of $285,000 from the parents of a recent graduate, now doing graduate work in Florida on turtles, who credits the institute with changing her life. Formed in 1998 as the Carolina Environmental Program, the institute is counting on its impact in experiential field programs for students, support for students and teachers in the North Carolina public schools, and environmental research to help raise its profile as part of a longer-term fundraising effort it has been planning.

The Writing Revolution
"The State of Things" WUNC-FM
An article in October’s issue of The Atlantic details a struggling Staten Island high school that turned itself around by implementing an intensive focus on analytic writing in subjects across the board. How did they accomplish that, and what are the implications for the rest of our nation’s struggling writing students? Host Frank Stasio will discuss the power of writing in education with ...Julie Ellison Justice, assistant professor of literacy education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; ...and Dr. Terrence Holt, clinical assistant professor in the department of Geriatric Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill, research assistant professor in the department of Social Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill and author of the book “In the Valley of the Kings” (W.W. Norton/ 2009).

Striking While it’s Hot
The Triangle Business Journal
...Ted Zoller, director for the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, says StrikeIron’s business model is highly scalable, given its technology platform. “As a result, I would not expect them to onboard a large staff and would expect them to be highly profitable, especially assuming a high volume of subscriptions,” Zoller says, adding that “StrikeIron is clearly a venture to watch in RTP.”

State paying millions to create, save jobs
The Triangle Business Journal
...To one analyst, JMAC shows the state getting bang for its buck. “I think this shows the effectiveness of a discretionary type of incentive that the state can use when it sees fit,” says UNC-Chapel Hill researcher Brent Lane. “It can also be very useful in the poorer counties.”

Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network envisioned in the longer-term
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
In November, it will be a year from the time the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network got up and running with an executive director to execute a goal of gleaning promising potential business ideas from four Triangle universities. ...(Bob) Creeden said network officials have worked with the Durham-based Council for Entrepreneurial Development and the four universities – Duke, N.C. Central, N.C. State, and UNC-Chapel Hill – to find companies.

Carrboro Citizen publishes final issue
The Chapel Hill News
...“The whole industry is struggling right now, and this is just another symbol of that struggle,” said Chris Roush, a Citizen reader and UNC-Chapel Hill business journalism professor. The newspaper aggressively covered local Carrboro government in a way that no other media outlet did, Roush added.

The Five B's (Blog)
WCHL-FM (Chapel Hill)
...Last Thursday night, Wilson White received the Outstanding Recent Graduate Award from UNC's School of Law. After graduating from the Law School in 2006, Wilson went to work for a US District Court Judge and then for Kilpatrick Stockton in Atlanta. Now he is in California, working for Google, managing their patent litigation.

Internet sweepstakes generate conflicting responses in Statesville, Troutman
The Charlotte Observer
..“It may be years before we know if internet parlors are here to stay,” said Chris McLaughlin, assistant professor of public law and government at University of North Carolina School of Government. “In the meantime, cities can continue to tax these businesses but need to be careful not to levy so heavy a tax as to effectively prohibit them from operating profitably.”

STENCIL pointing students toward graduation
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
UNC alumnus and entrepreneur Julian Wooten is behind a start-up business that’s working to develop software that will use attendance, behavior and other information to gauge whether students are on or off track to graduate.

Construction under way on new Lantern space
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
...Bank of America ATM-only location: Bank of America has closed its Franklin Street branch, but there’s work being done on a property across the street where the bank plans to open an ATM-only location. The building at 144 E. Franklin St. is owned by the Endowment Fund of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It previously housed Schoolkids Records and Toots & Magoo, said Jeff Kidd, director of the UNC Property Office.

Roy Williams' biopsy shows no cancer
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Test results showed the tumor removed from UNC basketball coach Roy Williams' left kidney is not cancerous, the school said Thursday night in a release. Williams had a biopsy Wednesday.
UNC Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/5613/1/

UNC athletes enrolled in classes in Department of Naval Science
The Associated Press
UNC Chapel Hill's Department of Naval Science exists to produce "highly qualified" officers who serve on ships, aircraft and submarines or in the Marine Corps. For the spring semester in 2007, it also taught a half-dozen men's basketball players.
UNC Backgrounder:
http://www.unc.edu/news/12/Naval%20Science%20Background.pdf

Issues and Trends

Group planning for UNC system future draws criticism
WRAL-TV (CBS/Raleigh)
Criticism of a panel tasked with overseeing strategic planning for the University of North Carolina system continues to mount, with faculty members joining a recent call by students for more input. The UNC Advisory Committee on Strategic Directions consists of 10 university leaders, eight business leaders, seven members of the UNC Board of Governors, four state officials, one student and one faculty member.
Related Link:
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20121004/ARTICLES/121009810