NC State in the News

NC State experts are featured every day in some of the top media outlets. Here are some of the top hits in recent weeks:

Pricey Pa. Deli Meat Maker Challenges NC Grocer

NBC17

Aug. 13 – Call this one the deli meats throw down. A high-end deli meat and cheese maker that's been kicked out of a major North Carolina grocery store chain in favor of its main competitor, isn't being quiet about the slight. Instead, Philadelphia-based Dietz & Watson has issued a challenge the competitor, Boar's Head, in the form of a Thursday taste test...A company has to be convinced that it offers a quality product in order to run the sort of campaign that D&W is running, said Jon Bohlmann, an associate professor of marketing at North Carolina State University.

Show Me the Stimulus Money

State of Things

Aug. 12 – In February, the federal government approved a $789.5 billion stimulus package to help turn the faltering economy around. So, where is it? Host Frank Stasio will talk to John Irons, research and policy director of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, about the status of stimulus funding and what the money is intended to do. Then he'll chat with some North Carolinians who are beginning to see the first influxes of stimulus cash....Valerie Brown-Schild, director of the Kenan Fellows Program, will discuss the impact the money will have on teaching in the state.

Friends Don't Give Friends Prescription Drugs

NPR

Aug. 12 – It's long been known that some teenagers raid the family medicine cabinet or a friend's locker for legal drugs that will get them high. But a new survey suggests that's not their only prescription drug problem...Most don't see warning labels or any instructions that come with the shared pills. And about a third of the kids suffer side effects, says Chris Mayhorn, a North Carolina State University psychologist involved in the research.

Health Care Help

State of Things

Aug. 11 – President Obama wants to sign health care legislation into law this fall… but will Americans ever understand the debate? We’ll examine the proposals currently making their way through Congress and try to sort out the rhetoric from the reform with: Jonathan Oberlander, associate professor of social medicine at the UNC School of Medicine and associate professor of Health Policy and Management at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health; Steven Greene, associate professor of Political Science at North Carolina State University...

Taking the Barnyard Out of Your Wine

Wine Spectator

Aug. 7 – The only thing worse than that first whiff of barnyard smell coming from your glass of wine is the realization that the whole case is contaminated. Brettanomyces, aka brett, can be a winemaker's worst enemy..."Contamination is a major problem in the wine industry," said Trevor Phister, an assistant professor of food, bioprocessing and nutrition at North Carolina State University and lead scientist on the project. "The better we understand the metabolism of the organism, the better we can understand how the yeast is surviving, and that will point us in the direction of eradication."

Buy-American vs. safety makes for battle over military uniforms

CNN

Aug. 7 – U.S. troops routinely face the threat of roadside bombs while fighting insurgencies in Afghanistan. They need the most protective clothing the market can bear, and they're getting it - for now...Dr. Roger Barker, who specializes in clothing flammability at the College of Textiles, conducted a demonstration for CNN. Based on his testing, the Army says Defender M resists fire the longest of other fabrics.

40% Of US Teenagers Share Diverse Prescription Drugs

Medical News Today, Science Centric, Newswise, Interest Alert

Aug. 10 – Imagine one teenager who has acne giving some Accutane, a prescription medication, to a friend. The friend is pregnant and does not know it yet. Accutane is linked to birth defects. This kind of scenario among adolescents is much more common than people realize in the USA. A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that 1 in 5 American adolescents lends or borrows prescription drugs, the consequences of which are potentially dangerous, and even fatal. The authors in this study explained that prior research had already found that 40% of US adults do this with prescription drugs....Study co-author Chris Mayhorn, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, North Carolina State University, said "Other researchers have studied people selling prescription drugs, but we looked at people with good intentions, trying, for instance, to help a friend who lacked money or transportation for a doctor's visit."...

Math whiz hopes method will go forth, multiply

The News & Observer

Aug. 10 – On a yellow scratch pad, Albert Clay works out a math problem that can stump a calculator -- and all of the ciphering occurs inside his white-haired head. In seconds, Clay multiplies a pair of five-digit numbers and writes down the answer in a single line. There's none of the sloppy rows of zig-zagging numbers that would normally clutter a page. Such is the beauty of his homemade formula -- titled "How to Multiply Any Number by Any Number in Your Head" -- which is registered as TXu001325432 in the U.S. Copyright Office. "There may not be anybody else in the world who knows how to do this but me," said Clay, 75, a retired pharmacist. "Zip, zip, zap and add 'em together."...Clay's technique may be novel, but there are dozens of tricks for multiplying large numbers without pen or pad, especially in China and Japan, said Moody Chu, math professor at N.C. State University. Chu knows of a competition in East Asia that has schoolchildren racing to spit out the answers to three-digit problems, all figuring done silently and hands-free. "The trick is to have a good memory," he said, "and a trick."...

Scientists devise efficient way of learning about complex corn traits

Bio-Medicine

Aug. 8 – There's no "silver bullet" gene or gene region that controls so-called complex traits in maize, commonly known as corn. Instead, in two research papers published this week in the journal Science, North Carolina State University crop scientists and colleagues show that lots of small changes in a number of gene regions affect complex traits like flowering time or reproductive ability in corn. Finding out more about the mechanisms behind complex traits like flowering time as well as even more difficult-to-map traits like yield or drought tolerance, for example has the potential to help plant breeders build the best traits into tomorrow's corn plants, says Dr. Jim Holland, NC State professor of crop science, research geneticist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agriculture Research Service (USDA-ARS) and one of the lead authors of the Science papers. Holland and Dr. Major Goodman, NC State professor of crop science, joined with researchers from Cornell University, the University of Missouri and other institutions to assemble a set of genetic maize varieties called the maize nested association mapping population. They found a number of chromosomal regions called quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting flowering time in corn....

To manage a fishery, you must know how the fish die

PhysOrg.com

Aug. 10 – Fisheries scientists from NC State have, for the first time, implemented a research strategy that uses both "conventional" tags and ultrasonic telemetry tags (transmitters) to estimate mortality rates. The approach was used in a study on mortality rates of "sub-adult" red drum, which are red drum that are close to adult in size but have not yet begun to reproduce. However, the research methods pioneered in this study could be applied to many other species, including popular fish such as striped bass. Red drum are popular among recreational anglers in many parts of the country, and are also important to commercial fishermen in North Carolina. The conventional tags offer rewards to recreational and commercial fishermen who catch the tagged fish, creating an incentive for them to contact researchers. This approach lets researchers know how many of the tagged fish have been caught and how many of the fish were subsequently released or harvested, explains Dr. Jeff Buckel, an associate professor of biology at NC State and co-author of the study. This approach provides particularly good data on mortality resulting from commercial and recreational fishing, Buckel says....

Campaign aims to relight Color Wall

The News & Observer

Aug. 10 – Back in 1972 when the Color Wall was installed behind huge windows in N.C. State University's D.H. Hill Library it instantly became the brightest and grooviest landmark on Hillsborough Street....Mechanical breakdowns, though, left it dark throughout the 1990s. It has been revived several times, but by last year, the Color Wall was again all wall and no color....The university planned to refurbish the sculpture itself. But the current state budget crisis, which is forcing dozens of layoffs at N.C. State, means spending public money on the wall just wouldn't be the right thing do to, said David Hiscoe, director of communications for the university libraries. That leaves it up to the bloggers and others to raise money Back in 1972, Chancellor John T. Caldwell commissioned Cox, a longtime professor at the School of Design, to create the sculpture to celebrate the opening of the new library tower. The idea was to make a piece of art that would be an integral part of the tower structure and viewable by pedestrians along Hillsborough Street....