| |
|
N.C. State warning dog owners
Schenck ForestECU honors veterans in Founders Week ceremony
Chancellor OblingerLocal jobs survive with alliance’s foreign focus
Moon W. Suh, textile technology and managementBeware ‘buzzard’ eyes on buyout bucks, Person County leaf interests warned
Celvia Stovall, family and consumer sciencesTanzania first lady shares gift
Madame Anna Mkapa, the first lady of the United Republic of Tanzania, will be the keynote speaker at the fourth annual Peter H. Martorella Colloquium.First lady of Tanzania speaks at N.C. Central
Madame Anna Mkapa, the first lady of the United Republic of Tanzania, will be the keynote speaker at the fourth annual Peter H. Martorella Colloquium.
Bill
aims at campus liberalism
Supporters say the measure would protect students from bias
Rain
slows progress on tech center
Rainy days have caused delays in the construction of a new technology center
on N.C. Wesleyan's campus, another obstacle for the building project since
its groundbreaking last year.
Driver
who fled avoids jail
N.C. State student gets plea deal in collision that killed man on I-40
Is
Jurassic Park Possible?
Mary H. Schweitzer, marine, earth and atmospheric sciences
Scientists
Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Bone
Mary H. Schweitzer, marine, earth and atmospheric sciences
US
soybeans menaced by fungus
Stephen Koenning, plant pathology
Opinion:
Leading With Our Hearts or Our Heads
Michael Walden, agricultural and resource economics
Muscle-Targeted
Gene Therapy Reverses Rare Muscular Dystrophy in Mice
Talmage Brown, populationa health and pathobiology
Flag
Foes Justify Day in Court
Libraries
Tanzania first lady shares gift
March 31, 2005
News & Observer
By NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES
© Copyright 2005
DURHAM -- With no swarm of bodyguards to bulwark her, the first lady of the United Republic of Tanzania stood in the hallway of a downtown hotel Wednesday, a diminutive smile on her face as well-wishers from across the Triangle -- many, transplants from African nations -- rushed to grab her hand and a moment of her time.
Patiently working her way through the throng, the woman known in the East African nation as "Mama" Anna Mkapa exuded none of the airs associated with presidential power.
Mkapa, wife of President Benjamin Mkapa, had traveled more than 16 hours across three continents to meet the folks from Durham for the first time. Durham is sister city to her hometown of Arusha, near the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. As often happens in family relationships, Mkapa is asking her wealthier sibling for help.
AIDS has decimated Mkapa's country. About 2 million of the 37 million Tanzanians are HIV-positive, compared with about 900,000 U.S. residents. Already one of the world's poorest nations, Tanzania is becoming a land of orphans, with nearly half the population under 14 and the average life expectancy 44 years.
Mkapa, whose three sons are now adults, said the plight of women and children particularly pains her. In 1997, two years after her husband was elected president, she started the Equal Opportunity for All Trust Fund, a nongovernmental organization that provides for women AIDS counseling, job skills, credit and small-business help. It also provides health care and financial support for poor children to go to school.
Wednesday morning, Mkapa mingled with residents of her sister city, hoping to raise funds for an orphanage village project.
While some of Durham's movers and shakers finished their eggs, hash browns and Danish pastries, Mkapa strode to the microphone in the Civic Center banquet hall. A petite woman with closely cropped hair, she could barely be seen above the lectern even though she stood on a pedestal. Her soft yet forceful voice vied with the clattering of dishes and tapping of forks.
But as Mkapa began to describe the plight of youth in her country, the room hushed.
"Tanzania is one of the most affected countries as far as HIV/AIDS is concerned. At least 500,000 ... have full-blown AIDS but, because of poverty, cannot access the [anti-retroviral] treatment necessary to keep them alive," Mkapa said. "As a result, many die after having exhausted family savings in medical bills, leaving behind destitute children. There are increasingly many households headed by children."
Left to fend for themselves, those children often become street children, Mkapa explained. The girls turn to prostitution and the boys to picking pockets, robbery or other illegal activity.
Helping find a home
The orphans need a home, an education and access to medical care, Mkapa said. The Kibaha Village Orphanage she is working to construct will provide those basics for about 100 children. Her vision is for the community to be noninstitutional, so that the youth "can get a life they would have gotten with their parents." For instance, each home will house one or two adults and eight children. Mkapa hopes to build such villages across Tanzania.
"These children need a caring home, but they also need a good education as the only route out of poverty," Mkapa said. "So, this is what brought me here. I need your support. Your contribution can make the difference between a life of total deprivation and misery on one hand and a life of ... self-actualization and esteem on the other hand."
She ended with a Kiswahili proverb: "Charity is not a matter of wealth, but of the heart." Almost instantly, members of the audience, some with tears in their eyes, began to scribble checks for $25, $50, $100.
A hundred dollars can feed, clothe, shelter and provide school clothes for two students for a year, Mkapa said after the banquet.
The first lady said she was grateful for and overwhelmed by Durham's generosity, but she said the cross-cultural exchange of ideas and information has been "a gift," showing that the communities are intertwined despite their distance.
Later in the day, Mkapa shared that gift as she discussed the AIDS pandemic and women's empowerment at N.C. Central University.
Beverly Washington Jones, interim provost at NCCU, pointed out that African and African-American women face a similar challenge and that she hoped Arusha's and Durham's relationship would lead to a joint effort to address the "global challenges of HIV/AIDS and poverty."
In 2003, African-Americans accounted for 67 percent of women diagnosed with AIDS, though African-Americans are only 12 percent of the U.S. population. That same year in North Carolina, African-Americans were only 22 percent of the population but 71 percent of the state's HIV/AIDS caseload.
Today Mkapa will speak at N.C. State University. She'll be in North Carolina through April 5 and said she's likely to come back.
"It is a wonderful place," Mkapa said after the banquet. "The people are so warm and so friendly, I feel like home."
March 31, 2005
News & Observer
By TIM SIMMONS
© Copyright 2005
Quiet down and take a seat, people. The topic for today's class is whether liberal professors at North Carolina's universities are stifling conservative viewpoints.
The text for this debate is provided by Sen. Andrew Brock, a Republican from Davie County, who has introduced a bill in the General Assembly titled the "Academic Bill of Rights." It has been referred to the Senate's education committee.
Brock's bill is patterned after a similar document being pushed nationally by David Horowitz, a conservative activist who is president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles. The North Carolina version states that students "shall not be discriminated against on the basis of their political, ideological or religious beliefs."
Brock realizes most professors don't think this bill is needed. But he simply doesn't believe them when they say they are already doing an adequate job of policing their own classroom teaching.
"You saw what they did in Chapel Hill," said Brock, referring to an incident last year in which a UNC-CH student was accused by his teacher of promoting hate speech because of comments he made opposing homosexuality. "They basically ran that guy into the gutter. It was uncalled-for."
Judith Wegner, faculty chairwoman at UNC-CH, has heard people use this example before -- many times. She thinks it is cited often because the problem isn't common enough to yield a lot of other examples.
"Our job is to challenge students, to get them to think critically and to see as many sides of an issue as they can," Wegner said. "That means we are sometimes going to talk about things that are uncomfortable. It means students and teachers will push each other on emotional issues. Yes, sometimes people screw up and make mistakes, but the idea that students are graded based on politics just isn't true."
The ability to separate a professor's politics from his or her teachings is particularly important in light of a new study, cited in The Washington Post on Wednesday, that shows 72 percent of the faculty teaching at American universities describe themselves as liberal and 15 percent conservative. It also shows that Democratic faculty members outnumber Republicans by almost 5 to 1.
"I can guarantee you that N.C. State University does not have that kind of political spread," said Bob Bruck, chairman of the Faculty Senate's Academic Policy Committee. He suspects that the campus has a mix of Republicans and Democrats.
"But the essence of the issue is this: So what? What difference does it make what the numbers are?" Bruck asked. "I am not entitled to go barking my political leanings to my classes. That is not my job, and I know of no one who has been accused of this."
Bruck said professors are routinely held accountable through evaluations that students complete anonymously at the end of every course. The results of those evaluations are regularly reviewed by deans and department heads.
Tony Caravano, NCSU student body president, said the evaluations appear to make a difference to professors.
"Most are cautious about what they say," Caravano said. "I think some are too cautious."
Tripp Costas, a junior who is a political science major at UNC-CH, said most professors work to achieve some balance in class.
"But there are some who just have no tolerance for other views," Costas said. "I think a bill like this would give students a voice -- some justification -- for approaching a professor when they want to challenge a grade they think was influenced by their political beliefs."
Costas is one of three students who expects to attend a news conference Brock is holding today. All three would like to see the bill approved, but they also see benefits simply from bringing attention to the issue.
And a little attention is all the bill might muster this year.
With no Democrats as sponsors and no companion bill in the House, the "Academic Bill of Rights" is headed to a committee where two of its three co-chairmen are Democrats. It is not scheduled for a hearing.
"We already have more than 50 bills to consider," said Sen. A.B. Swindell, a Democrat from Nashville. "Some we have to handle because they deal with the actual operations of the classrooms.
"Others are 'just because' bills, and I'm not sure we will get to every bill just because some people don't agree with the way things are run."
March 31, 2005
News & Observer
By JOSH SHAFFER
© Copyright 2005
RALEIGH -- Dan Robison's patience began to crack about three years ago when a Great Dane galloped up in the middle of Schenck Forest and barked in his face. It cracked even deeper when the dog's owner waddled up afterward and scolded Robison for startling her precious.
Now N.C. State University's patience is hanging by a splinter. Dog owners have one month to shape up or their animals will be banned from Schenck's popular trails -- leash or no leash.
Forest managers plan to monitor dogs by video camera and keep a tally throughout April, said Joe Cox, NCSU's forest manager.
Too many forestry professors like Robison have had beasts butt into their classes, he said. About a week ago, a Doberman charged a group of graduate students working in the woods.
"It only failed to attack because it couldn't choose who to attack," said Tilla Fearn, spokeswoman for the College of Natural Resources.
The West Raleigh forest, which is owned by the university for forestry research, draws hundreds of dog walkers a week; and by most anyone's description, a canine mob breaks out on weekends.
It is common to see unleashed dogs splashing in streams, though the leash requirement is posted in at least a half-dozen places.
On Wednesday, a pit-bull mix trotted up the Frances L. Liles Trail by itself, no owner in sight. It wandered to the parking area and waited, alone, for 30 minutes.
"Is this your dog?" one woman asked, just as a minivan pulled up and let two golden retrievers and a beagle jump out the side door.
Feces tend to pile up along the trail, and soil gets pressed down or scratched away by paws chasing after sticks.
Bird watchers and forestry students have long complained of disruptions.
"Sometimes the owner comes into the assembled class to fish around and find the dog," Robison said. "About half the time, as they click the dog on the leash, they'll sneer at me."
For the next month, NCSU will hand out a letter explaining that Schenck is not a dog park, but a laboratory.
The letter says faculty members worry that the Schenck Oak, among the oldest and thickest in the forest, is already in decline. The constant march of paws around the tree is compacting the soil, and grass no longer grows under it.
A Raleigh group called People for Unleashed Parks, or PUP, has long lobbied for more fenced areas for dogs to run free.
Its members and its Web site urge dog walkers to use leashes in Schenck, to clean up after their pets, and to use the bags the group supplies at the beginning of the Liles trail.
But Cox said cooperation with groups such as PUP hasn't worked so far. "It gets better for a while, then it gets worse," he said.
A decision on closing Schenck Forest to dogs will be made at the end of April.
"It would take a major turnaround" to head off a ban, said Sgt. Jon Barnwell of NCSU police.
If dogs are banned, first-time violators will receive a form warning them about trespassing. The second time, they will be arrested.
ECU honors veterans in Founders Week ceremony
March 30, 2005
Greenville Daily Reflector
By staff report
© Copyright 2005
ECU officials honored military personnel Tuesday with a ceremony in front of the university's Victory Bell, a 382-pound brass bell with a military history dating back to 1855. The second annual service honored faculty, staff and students who are serving or who have served in the military. It was part of East Carolina University's Founders Week celebration.
“This moment provides a way for us to pause in the hectic world we live in and say thank you,” Bill Shelton, ECU vice chancellor for university advancement, said.
Cast in Philadelphia in 1855, the bell was used on the USS Broome, a 1,190-ton Clemson class destroyer built in Philadelphia and christened in 1919. During World War II, the ship escorted convoys across the Atlantic. The Broome was decommissioned and scrapped after the war, and the bell was a gift to the college from the Department of the Navy. Located next to Christenbury Memorial Gym, it was dedicated on campus in 1953 and was traditionally rung to celebrate an athletic victory.
Here are some upcoming events during Founders Week celebrations at ECU:
TODAY
5 p.m. – University officials will announce a major gift, with Chancellor Steve
Ballard and the donors in attendance. The announcement will be in the BB&T
Center for Leadership Development in Room 1100 of the Bate Building.
8 p.m. – There will be an iron pour at the south side of Jenkins Fine Arts Center. For more information, contact Carl Billingsley, School of Art, 328-6270.
THURSDAY
10 p.m. – Founders Week convocation and installation of Chancellor Ballard,
Wright Auditorium.
12:30 p.m. – Lunch on the mall.
2 p.m. – Chancellor's installation forum titled "The Future of the Public University: Serving our Society" will take place in Mendenhall Student Center room 244. Moderating will be former N.C. Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. Panelists include Molly C. Broad, president of the University of North Carolina system; Charles Middleton, president of Roosevelt University; and James L. Oblinger, chancellor of N.C. State University.
4 p.m. – Topping Out ceremony for the Nursing, Allied Health and Laupus Library Building at the Health Sciences Campus, parking in Warren lot.
FRIDAY
6:30 p.m. – Installation gala at Rock Springs Center. Tickets are $50 per person.
Contact Special Events, 328-6447 for more information.
7 p.m. – Handel's Israel in Egypt: Chamber Singers and Early Music Ensemble at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Admission is $5 for students, $8 for ECU faculty and staff, and $10 general public. Contact 1-800-ECU-ARTS for more information.
SATURDAY
10 a.m.- 2 p.m. – Youth Arts Festival, ECU Mall. The event will bring in more
than 100 visual and performing artists. Children will have an opportunity
to create their own artwork. Performing groups will include the Ballet Folklorico
Mexicano Azteca, the ECU Jazz Ensemble and the ECU Gospel Choir. Contact
Richard Tichich at 328-5481 or visit: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-admin/foundersday/youthartsfest.cfm
First lady of Tanzania speaks at N.C. Central
March 31, 2005
Durham Herald-Sun
By PAUL BONNER and MINDY B. HAGEN
© Copyright 2005
DURHAM -- Women are participating in East African politics in greater numbers despite ingrained cultural barriers, the Tanzanian first lady told an N.C. Central University audience on Wednesday.
Anna Mkapa, wife of Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, addressed a forum attended by about 100 people at NCCU, one stop in her weeklong trek through the Triangle. The visit is hosted by the African Resource Center in Raleigh and Durham's Sister Cities organization, which maintains a relationship with the Tanzanian city of Arusha.
Mkapa also is raising funds for an orphanage in Tanzania, in response to that country's epidemic of AIDS. Tanzania, with one-eighth of the U.S. population, has had 11 times as many deaths from the disease.
Women in East Africa haven't made as much headway in politics as in many other places in the world, Mkapa said at NCCU, mostly because of voter sentiment.
"A good proportion of both men and women would say that women candidates are unsuitable for high political office," she said.
Those attitudes are reflected in the general status of females, who often are discriminated against in their own homes.
"In some parts of Africa, women are still seen as a source of bride wealth for their parents," she said.
Education is "universally acknowledged as the liberator of women" but often is denied them, in many cases by families unable to afford fees for public secondary schools in Tanzania. The Mkapa administration has reduced the fees by half, she said. Still, female literacy trails males' by 15 percentage points.
Tanzania is among the world's poorest countries, with a per capita gross domestic product only 1.6 percent of that in the United States. Mkapa emphasized financial security for women as a first step toward political involvement.
Partly because of commitments by her husband's administration, gender profiles of Tanzania's government are changing, she said.
In elections this October, women must make up 30 percent of Tanzania's parliament, up from 20 percent last year and 15 percent in 2000. Women head nearly 15 percent of President Mkapa's cabinet, up from 11 percent in 1995, when he won his first five-year term. Other East African nations of Uganda, Mozambique and Kenya also have made gains in female representation, she said. And a Tanzanian woman, Gertrude Mongella, is president of the African Union Parliament, Mkapa noted.
Women often bear the brunt of the HIV epidemic, as girls orphaned by the disease turn to prostitution, she said.
"So the HIV still spreads," she said.
Earlier Wednesday, Mkapa was serenaded by Durham Academy first-graders, who performed a traditional African folk song.
The students asked about everything from Mkapa's favorite foods to whether Tanzania is peaceful.
"There is peace in my country," she told the students. "You are welcome to come visit us. You'll be safe."
Mkapa also told the students about Tanzania's wildlife and geography. The country, home to elephants, giraffes, zebras and other wild animals, also features Mount Kilimanjaro, the largest peak in Africa.
First-graders Jack Mishra and Grant Shadduck said they'd be eager to travel to Africa after hearing Mkapa speak.
"There's a lot of fun animals there," Grant said.
"It would be so nice to go someplace so different from our world," Jack said.
Mkapa also is scheduled to visit other area colleges and universities -- Duke, N.C. State and Durham Tech -- as well as Research Triangle Institute and Central Children's Home in Oxford.
Local jobs survive with alliance’s foreign focus
March 31, 2005
Asheville Citizen-Times
By Dale Neal
© Copyright 2005
ARDEN — Textile manufacturing may be going overseas, chasing cheaper labor to make the clothes Americans wear, but John Crook is staying put.
“We want to sell overseas, but we want to keep our companies, our families and our workers in North Carolina,” said Crook, founder of PASCO Inc., which makes the parts that once kept fiber mills humming across the country and now around the world.
Crook admits he’s no chemist. He can’t cook up the formulas for nylon or polyester or the new non-woven fabrics, but he can deliver the machines that make those fibers.
For 15 years, he worked as a project engineer in nylon production for the old American Enka. In 1986, he founded Parts and Systems Co., or PASCO Inc., based in the Buck Shoals Industrial Park between Arden and Fletcher.
Now, PASCO has joined forces with two other North Carolina manufacturers to form the Fiber Production Alliance to market their equipment overseas.
PASCO engineers and assembles godets, or heated rollers, which spin out synthetic fibers at a precise speed and temperature. For years, Crook has worked closely with DM&E Corp. of Shelby, which produces cutters and crimpers, and J.J. Jenkins Inc. of Matthews, which specializes in equipment to make monofilament.
International marketing strategist Bob Collins, who recently moved to Asheville from Singapore, is helping the alliance identify new markets. He believes they can outbid their larger Swiss and German competitors by offering one-stop shopping for mill owners in Asia and Russia.
The alliance is a “salesman’s dream,” according to Collins, a partner with Channel Management Partners. “They have a better product with better performance, faster service and a low price,” he said. “As more sales go offshore, we don’t have to lose our highly technical workforce.”
Keeping N.C. jobs safe
Working as an alliance, Crook says the three companies can keep about 250 jobs
safe in North Carolina. PASCO itself has about 10 workers on staff. Crook
estimates another 50 workers stay busy at area machine shops to supply parts
for PASCO.
Neal Carter, manager of engineering and manufacturing at PASCO, says he’s been concerned about the losses in the American textile industry for the past 10 years, but he’s optimistic the alliance can keep equipment manufacturing jobs safe in the United States.
“The labor-intensive work is gone, all the clothes makers, but it’s been different for the synthetic fiber extrusion industry,” Carter said. “The people who are still here are the ones who are going to stay.”
It’s not clothes that PASCO’s customers generally produce. If you floss your teeth with Oral-B dental floss, odds are those filaments were stretched on a PASCO part, Crook said. From medical sutures to disposable hospital gowns, to carpet yarns or the cloth headliners that go into cars or carbon fibers that reinforce concrete block, fibers weave their way through the conveniences of everyday life.
Medical fibers have become a new opportunity for PASCO, which manufactures tabletop-sized machines that roll out expensive fibers to make medical sutures or filters for kidney dialysis.
Much of PASCO’s business comes from service, Carter said. “These godets can cost $5,000 to $30,000,” he said. “It’s much more economical for the mill owners to get them serviced.”
In 2000, Crook had 20 on staff, and he hopes to reach that level again as the industry comes out of recession and mill owners need to start upgrading equipment.
PASCO has been trading abroad for a number of years, particularly in Mexico, where it has a selling agent, Crook said. He also has customers in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Pakistan, Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Indonesia, Argentina and Taiwan.
With a quicker turnaround and better customer service, PASCO has been able to steal repair service from its Swiss and German competitors, even on the parts they originally made. Collins said Americans will “jump through the hoop for a customer, and they seem to enjoy doing it that way,” in contrast to Europeans who stick to longer schedules for repairs.
The alliance’s marketing strategy might be successful if they can reach niche markets in Asia that are too small for China, the world’s top fiber maker, said a N.C. State University expert.
“The Chinese like to say, ‘There is nothing we cannot make, except maybe a human being,’’’ said Moon W. Suh, a professor of textile technology and management at N.C. State. “If marketing is the issue, then the alliance is a strategy that makes sense.”
George Thomas, an international trade specialist with the U.S. Department of Commerce in Charlotte, applauded the Fiber Production Alliance as a “forward-thinking” idea.
“If we can pull together more of these smaller supporting companies, whether it’s in textiles or woodworking, this may be a model that other businesses can use to continue to survive as manufacturers move overseas or other countries grow their markets,” Thomas said.
Thomas has arranged for the Fiber Production Alliance to meet with Scott Pozil, a senior commercial officer with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Singapore office. The alliance plans to attend next fall’s International Textile Manufacturer Association Asia’s massive trade show. They will make their international debut at the Techtextil exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany, in June.
Rain slows progress on tech center
March 30, 2005
Rocky Mount Telegram
By Natalie Jordan
© Copyright 2005
Rainy days have caused delays in the construction of a new technology center on N.C. Wesleyan's campus, another obstacle for the building project since its groundbreaking last year.
"We'd be doing a lot better if it would quit raining," said Kent Curtis, superintendent of Turn-Key Contractors. "It's coming along, but the weather is holding us up a bit."
Curtis said the rain has kept workers from pouring cement into certain areas until they dry.
"We've suffered some delays because of the weather," said Thomas Betts, chairman of the Carolinas Gateway Partnership. "But I've been assured by the contractor that as soon as they can get in there, they can make up for the lost time. We haven't encountered any major surprises, and things are going surprisingly well."
A joint venture between area community colleges, N.C. State University, East Carolina University, state elected officials, the Rocky Mount-based Golden LEAF Foundation and the Carolinas Gateway Partnership is bringing the Gateway Technology Center to 3.65 acres of land on the campus. The building will serve students interested in pursuing engineering and business careers.
The idea for the building grew out of a need for highly qualified professionals in areas of industrial engineering, which will benefit companies like Honeywell and RBC Centura, said John Gessaman, president of the Carolinas Gateway Partnership.
Gessaman said the building should be completed by the end of the year. He also said he's happy with the progress of the venture.
"It's an asset to the area, not just to the city," he said. "To bring an educational structure that doesn't exist in our region is a fabulous opportunity for the area to increase the level of education and ability of highly educated individuals ... And the effort that shows this is the construction of (the technology center)."
Through the collaboration with the universities, Gessaman said the initial concept for the technology center is taking shape. The center will function as a place not only to train engineers, but as a facility where N.C. State and East Carolina University can bring professors to teach, giving students courses of the "same caliber" taught on the campuses in Raleigh or Greenville, Betts said.
"We're working hard with State and ECU to tailor programs that will fit our needs," Gessaman said. "And shortly, there will be an individual hired by the universities to spearhead that, and will be located here."
Betts said interest in the technology center is greater than expected.
"We hope to have that person hired in 30 days," he said. "The urgency in having that hiring take place is because the interest is so great we have to have someone to manage those inquires."
The building project will cost about $4 million to construct, with $2.5 million from Carolinas Gateway Partnership and $1.5 million from the Golden LEAF Foundation. Three million dollars of the funding will go to construction, while $1 million will go to providing the technology — such as computers and labs — for the building, with a completion date of late 2005 or early 2006.
"(The center) should be completed by November of this year," Betts said. "The contractor has assured us that anything short of an earthquake will not stop construction, and that building will be done on time. Once completed, this (center) will be a beehive of activity. It will be the only one of its kind east of Raleigh and perhaps in the state."
Beware ‘buzzard’ eyes on buyout bucks, Person County leaf interests warned
March 30, 2005
Roxboro Courier Times
By PHYLISS BOATWRIGHT
© Copyright 2005
Person County tobacco growers and quota holders who expect to avail themselves of the tobacco buyout program need to be on guard against potential scams.
According to N.C. State University and the Person County Extension office, scams and fraudulent claims from disreputable businesses and individuals concerning tobacco transition payments are possible.
A meeting is set for April 26 to provide growers and quota holders advice regarding the handling of their payments.
“Everybody knows that anybody who has anything to do with tobacco” is about to come into money, “and some will come into a lot of money shortly,” said Derek Day, director of the Person County Cooperative Extension office.
Day said Tuesday that given the tobacco transition payments are about to begin, “The buzzards are circling” to try to scam folks out of their money.
The best thing to do, said Day, is to remember there is no reason to rush a decision.
Day said his office gets calls “every day from financial institutions we’ve never heard of and from individuals we’ve never heard of.” And all want to make a fast buck at the expense of tobacco growers and quota holders.
The $9.6 billion buyout is intended to help growers and quota holders transition from growing tobacco into a new line of work or into retirement.
Under the buyout program terms, producers will be paid $3 per pound on their 2002 allotment, and quota holders will receive $7 per pound on the quota they owned in 2002. Payments will be made over the next 10 years, but growers who wish to do so may request a lump sum payment at a reduced rate, Day explained.
Day said buyout participants could be approached by individuals claiming to be financial advisers or by less than reputable financial institutions that offer all sorts of fraudulent reasons why they should handle the funds.
So, what’s his advice for growers and quota holders here?
“Number one, there is no big hurry on making a decision” about what to do with the tobacco payments, Day reiterated. “And number two, always do business with people you know and trust.”
Tobacco buyout participants began signing up for transition payments on March 14 at local U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Services Agency offices. The sign-up will continue through June 17. The first payment in the 10-year program won’t come, however, until this fall.
The buyout ends a tobacco price support program begun in the 1930s.
According to N.C. State University, “It will funnel millions of dollars to thousands of North Carolinians over the next decade. That money will likely be a powerful lure for crooks and scam artists.”
Families receiving tobacco buyout monies should be aware that opportunities such as this often give rise to frauds and scams, said Dr. Celvia Stovall, Extension specialist and associate professor of Family and Consumer Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State.
Stovall said farm program payments, including those under the tobacco quota buyout, are public records. Those records will identify who is receiving tobacco buyout money.
Stovall advises participants to protect their money by watching out for the following:
• Callers offering to manage your money for a fee. If you are in need of a money manager, you should be the one contacting managers; they should not be contacting you.
• Calls or letters with information threatening the loss of your money if specific advance payments are not made immediately. Any offer requiring little or no decision-making time is a problem. Financial decisions should not be made in a hurry. Demand time to review and discuss documents with a trusted advisor before making a decision.
Person Extension Director Day also advises growers and quota holders, “ There are lots of local institutions that have the same products these out of town folks have.”
Day said, for example, that some institutions might offer a lump sum payment deal at 60 cents on the dollar whereas a local bank would do the same thing while charging a much lower fee to handle the transactions.
NCSU’s Stovall also said to watch out for requests for personal financial account information or account PIN numbers. Providing such information to strangers can be the beginning of a financial nightmare, she said.
“Never give out personal information without knowing exactly who the person is that will be receiving it and why it is needed.”
Those receiving buyout payments should also be wary of promises to increase their money by someone who wants to establish and manage an investment account for them.
“There are no get rich quick investments. Do your homework. Always request information in writing,” Stovall advised.
Stovall recommended checking with the Better Business Bureau and the state Attorney General’s office to see if a financial management company is reputable and its products are legal before allowing it to handle investments.
Other good consumer practices to follow include never conducting financial business with strangers over the telephone. Stovall said to always ask callers to send information in writing and “never allow callers to rush you to make a decision.”
Consult with a lawyer, trusted family member or friend before making financial decisions, she said, and never give personal information such as Social Security number, bank account number or investment information to strangers.
Never access financial institutions by clicking on a link sent via e-mail, Stovall cautioned. Such links are often fraudulent.
“Always ask questions and keep asking them until the information is clear,” she said.
She also said to never forget to ask for the credentials of those claiming to be public officials, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents or investigators requesting personal financial information. Verify their credentials by using numbers obtained from the telephone book or other reliable sources, and never verify their credentials with numbers they provide.
“If you get calls or letters about your money that make you uncomfortable or that appear to be illegal, immediately contact the Attorney General’s Office,” said Stovall, at 919-716-6000, the Secretary of State’s Office at 919- 733-3924, the Better Business Bureau, local police or the North Carolina Cooperative Extension county center.
Helpful information on decisions related to the tobacco buyout can be found on the Internet at www.tobaccobuyout.cals.ncsu.edu, a Web site created by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at N.C. State.
Other on-line resources in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences include: www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/agecon/tobacco_econ/Buyout.html
www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/agecon/tobacco_econ/Buyout.html; www.agecon.ncsu.edu/extension.html; and www.ag-econ.ncsu.
March 31, 2005
News & Observer
By KAYCE T. ATAIYERO
© Copyright 2005
HILLSBOROUGH -- An N.C. State University student who drove an SUV that hit and killed a reporter for the Tar Heel Sports Network received a one-month suspended jail sentence Wednesday after pleading guilty to failing to report the accident.
Emily Elizabeth Caveness, 21, was driving a Cadillac Escalade on Oct. 4, 2003, when it slammed into Stephen Gates, 27, who was changing his tire along Interstate 40 near Hillsborough.
Caveness pulled over and Rabah Samara, 27, got into the driver's seat and drove the SUV to Raleigh, according to court testimony. She was originally charged with both felony and misdemeanor hit and run. She made a deal with prosecutors that let her plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to report an accident in exchange for testifying at Samara's trial. An Orange County jury acquitted him of a hit-and-run charge in November. The two other passengers were not charged.
On Wednesday, Caveness' attorney, Ann Petersen, said her client has been emotionally scarred by the accident. "Emily has felt that empathy, sympathy and sorrow. She will suffer for the rest of her life," Petersen said. "She and Stephen Gates were at the wrong place at the wrong time. It is no one's fault."
'Left our son to die'
George Gates, Stephen Gates' father, told the court that the accident has devastated the family and the pain has been compounded because "no one has been held accountable for Stephen's death." As he spoke, his wife, Pat, wept softly into a tissue.
"Yes, Ms. Caveness did accept a plea bargain, failure to report an accident, as if she had dented a fender in a parking lot and left no note," he said, his voice cracking. "Emily Caveness made a choice that night. By failing to report an accident, she and her companions left our son to die on the highway."
Before she was sentenced, Caveness turned toward Gates' parents. "I'm deeply sorry for your loss. I think about you every day and I think about Stephen," she said, her voice quavering.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Wade Barber then sentenced Caveness to a 30-day suspended jail term, 18 months of probation and 200 hours of community service. The sentence was the maximum the judge could impose under the law.
He recommended that Caveness volunteer with young people as part of her community service.
Afterward, Pat Gates said the sentence Caveness received was what she and her husband expected, given the charge. George Gates had asked the judge to have Caveness perform her community service at Central Prison in Raleigh "where she can see how fortunate she is" in not receiving jail time.
Pat Gates said she was disappointed that Caveness did not apologize for hitting her son. "Everybody is sorry for our loss. We always hoped she would be sorry for her actions," she said.
Parents seek new law
Since their son's death, the Gateses have worked to change the state's hit-and-run laws. A bill dubbed Stephen's Law would amend the law to charge anyone in a car at the time of an accident with felony hit-and-run if someone drives away from the scene.
In the Gates case, the person driving the car when Gates was struck was not the person who drove away from the scene.
The law would prohibit anyone -- driver and passengers -- in a vehicle involved in an accident from leaving the scene, except to call for medical or law enforcement assistance. It also would bar the original driver of the vehicle from allowing the car to leave the scene.
This month, the bill passed the House by a vote of 112-4. It is being considered by the Senate.
Under current state law, to be charged with hit-and-run, a person has to drive the vehicle that hit someone, have knowledge or reason to think that someone was hit, and be the person who drove away from the scene.
April 1, 2005
Chronicle of Higher Education
By RICHARD MONASTERSKY
© Copyright 2005
Paleontologists have taken a rare look inside the bones of several Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons and found soft, rubbery material that is not fossilized and that appears to be intact blood vessels and blood cells, which have never before been seen in dinosaur fossils. The findings suggest that many more fossils might contain remnants of such tissues, opening a new window for scientists to investigate ancient animals.
"Finding these tissues in dinosaurs changes the way we think about fossilization because our theories about how fossils form don't allow for this," says Mary H. Schweitzer, an assistant professor of marine, earth, and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University and author of a paper that appeared in the journal Science last week.
"It's clearly very exciting and certainly spectacular," says Derek Briggs, a professor of paleontology at Yale University, who studies the way animal remains are fossilized. He did not participate in the new work.
Paleontologists normally treat the bones of T. rex specimens like a Michelangelo statue. They would sooner break one of their graduate students' limbs than cut into such ancient bones. But when researchers at Montana State University at Bozeman were excavating an exceptionally well-preserved, 70-million-year-old T. rex recently, they ran into problems and ended up breaking one thighbone, exposing some of its interior. John R. Horner, curator of paleontology at the university's Museum of the Rockies, took care to save those exposed pieces for Ms. Schweitzer, a former student of his who specializes in studying molecular remains and other unusual aspects of dinosaur specimens.
Dino Blood
When she dissolved away the mineral portions of the bone, Ms. Schweitzer found transparent, hollow blood vessels that hold reddish circles, which look much like red blood cells. The vessels were still rubbery and closely resembled blood vessels found in the bones of living ostriches, she and her colleagues report.
The scientists have since found similar tissues in two other T. rex specimens, as well as in the bones of a duck-billed dinosaur, suggesting that many other fossils may contain such paleontological trophies. They are testing the tissues in an attempt to isolate molecules such as proteins or DNA from the material. If found, the sequences of those molecules could help determine how different dinosaurs were related to each other and to modern-day animals, like birds. Most paleontologists subscribe to the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but some researchers contend that birds arose from a more ancient line of reptiles and are not close relatives of dinosaurs at all.
Data from preserved tissue could also help scientists learn about the physiology of dinosaurs, says Ms. Schweitzer. Scientists debate whether dinosaurs were more like warm-blooded mammals or cold-blooded reptiles.
Mr. Briggs says it is unlikely that any molecules found in the dinosaur specimens would be original. In studies of 25-million-year old fossilized beetles, he has found that the insects' original carbon-rich molecules had recombined to form longer, more durable polymers that retain the shape of the original tissues but not the same molecular information.
March 31, 2005
Guerrilla News Network
By Thomas Blythe
© Copyright 2005
Until now, the study of dinosaurs was limited to analyzing the hypothesized protein structure of fossilized bones. A report made Friday by a paleontologist researcher from North Carolina State University could open up new doors to this subject. It might even add a touch of credibility to the fictional account of recreating dinosaurs as Spielberg had done in his film Jurassic Park.
The researcher unearthed what appears to be the fossilized bone of a T-Rex (Tyrannosaurus Rex). Upon closer examination, they found what appears to a soft tissue inside the bone, with what appears to be blood vessels and cells. It appears similar to a stretchy bone matrix.
The fossilized bone was dated back some 70 million years ago. The scientific community is excited by the discovery and “it just might change our methods of collecting and study,’’ a senior researcher said.
So far the tissue, placed under a microscope’s eye, has revealed organic components that somewhat resemble cells and fine blood vessels. The discovery was quite an unexpected one. The leader of the research team Mary Schweitzer had routinely tried dissolving pieces of the bone to understand its mineral composition, when she found something unusual: a transparent filament that closely resembled blood vessels. She even found traces of what appear to be red blood cells, osteocytes (bone-building cells). Schweitzer did not however feel immediately sure and said “Although the structures do look like cells, we will have to do more testing to see if any dino DNA have survived.
The lead researcher speculated “It is possible that the outer parts of the leg fossilized while the vessels were trapped within mineralized bone and remained intact all these millennia.”
Meanwhile, every science enthusiast is asking questions whether organic molecules can survive for so long. Normally what happens when an animal dies is its soft fleshy parts get eaten up by maggots and bugs. Then the bone material gets gradually covered with mud; over time it gets crushed and turns to stone, i.e. it returns to its mineral state.
Scientists insist that organic molecules cannot survive beyond 1,00,000 years.
A paleontologist from another university said “If the lab tests prove them to be indeed cells, then it just might opens new doors for studying the protein structures of living creatures from our ancient past through their fossilized remains.”
The discovery was reported in the Science journal.
Opinion: Leading With Our Hearts or Our Heads
March 31, 2005
The Conservative Voice
By Mike Walden
© Copyright 2005
Recently, a proposal was made to require North Carolina Medicaid recipients to pay $50 every time they are admitted to a hospital. Currently, Medicaid recipients pay nothing upon going to a hospital. Opponents of the proposal argue it is unfair because Medicaid recipients are typically very low-income households, and even a modest fee of $50 would be a burden on their resources. Supporters say that without a fee, users will place a low value on the medical services and be motivated to overuse hospital facilities.
These kinds of arguments are replayed frequently in discussions over public funding. Recent examples are college tuition, assistance for buying prescription drugs, and public transportation. Battle lines are drawn between those wanting more governmental help and those watching the budgetary bottom line. Arguments between the two sides can often become heated.
In economics, these countering positions are not new; in fact, they are expected. They’re called the conflict between equity and efficiency. In more common terms, I call them the conflict between our heart and our head.
The equity, or heart, position is about compassion. We see a person living in poverty or with very limited financial resources, and our heart says to help them. Many of us help with our time or monetary contributions to charity. Or, we willingly pay taxes to fund government programs, such as Medicaid, Food Stamps, and the earned-income tax credit, to assist these people and households.
The efficiency, or head, position is about possible negative consequences of this compassion. These consequences can come in three forms—to those funding the programs (taxpayers), for those receiving the assistance, and on those providing the assistance.
For taxpayers, the negative consequence of funding public-assistance programs is that taxes reduce the reward earned from working. Studies find that people cut back on their work effort when taxes are taken from their income. This appears to particularly be the case when the tax revenues aren’t used to fund something the taxpayer directly uses, such as a road near their home or a school for their children.
For those receiving the assistance, the concern is what such assistance does to their motivation to self-improve so that further assistance isn’t needed. Of course, for some recipients, especially those who are disabled or elderly, self- sufficiency may not be an option. But for others, assistance that is open-ended or very generous can reduce the incentive to invest in their personal capabilities.
Last, those providing the assistance, such as hospitals and physicians in the case of Medicaid, can suffer the negative consequence of overuse. When a service, such as medical care, is made to be very cheap or perhaps free to recipients of public assistance, a natural reaction is for recipients to use more of the service. This is straightforward economics—the price goes down and use goes up. This may then put a strain on the service providers and increase the need for further public funding and higher taxes.
At times, policy makers have tried to address these consequences by putting time limits on receipt of some public help, or by directing more public funding to programs which promote self-sufficiency. But many public-assistance programs are without limits and have continued to grow in size.
The conflict between the heart and the head in public-assistance programs will likely never be resolved. Some citizens will emphasize one side while others will stress the opposite position, and conflicts will ensue. Perhaps the best outcome is that both sides be recognized and carefully weighed and considered in policy discussions. And let’s also keep the discussions civil!
Michael L. Walden is a William Neal Reynolds distinguished professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University and an adjunct scholar with the John Locke Foundation.
Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Bone
March 30, 2005
ObviousNews.com, Canada
By staff report
© Copyright 2005
A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
Paleontologists forced to break the creature‘s massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock.
When they got it into a lab and chemically removed the hard minerals, they found what looked like blood vessels, bone cells and perhaps even blood cells.
"They are transparent, they are flexible," said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University, who conducted the study.
She said the vessels were flexible and in some cases their contents could be squeezed out.
"The microstructures that look like cells are preserved in every way," added Schweitzer, whose findings were published in the journal Science.
"Preservation of this extent, where you still have this flexibility and transparency, has never been seen in a dinosaur before." Feathers, hair and fossilized egg contents yes, but not truly soft tissue.
Studying the soft tissues may help answer many questions about dinosaurs. Were they cold-blooded like reptiles, warm-blooded like mammals, or somewhere in-between? How are they related to living animals?
JURASSIC PARK?
"If we can isolate certain proteins, then perhaps we can address the issue of the physiology of the dinosaur," Schweitzer said.
Of course, the big question is whether it will be possible to see dinosaur DNA. "We don‘t know yet. We are doing a lot in the lab now that looks promising," Schweitzer said.
To make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, Schweitzer, a biologist by training, compared the Tyrannosaur samples with bone taken from a dead ostrich. She chose an ostrich because birds are thought to be the closest living relatives of dinosaurs and ostriches are big birds.
Both the dinosaur and ostrich blood vessels contained small, reddish brown dots that could be the nuclei of the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.
Taking the minerals out of both ostrich bone and the Tyrannosaur bone -- a simple experiment that can be duplicated by anyone using a chicken bone, for example, and vinegar -- yielded flexible fibers. Microscopic examination showed what look like bone cells called osteocytes in both.
The finding certainly shows fossilization does not proceed as science had assumed, Schweitzer said. Since the discovery, she has found similar samples of soft tissue in two other Tyrannosaur fossils and a hadrosaur.
The fossil was dug up out of Montana‘s Hell Creek Formation, a rich source of fossils.
Paleontologist Jack Horner said it was encased in 1,000 cubic yards of sandstone. "It‘s a fantastic specimen," he told the briefing.
"The specimen was very far away from road, (so) everything had to be done with a helicopter." The field team used standard procedure as they excavated the bones, wrapping them in plaster jackets before transporting them..
This particular dinosaur fossil was too big to lift and they reluctantly cracked a thighbone.
Usually paleontologists put preservatives on fossils right away, but Schweitzer has been trying to find soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, so this one was left alone.
Horner said he hoped museums around the world would start cracking open bones and looking for soft tissue in their fossils.
"Dinosaurs are relatively rare and we certainly think of Tyrannosaurus rex as being really rare -- although it really isn‘t -- so people tend not to want to cut holes into the bone or cut them in half," he said.
"But to study the cellular and molecular structures of these things you have to do that." The "good stuff," he said, is on the inside.
Flag Foes Justify Day in Court
March 31, 2005
Broadcasting & Cable, NY
By John Eggerton
© Copyright 2005
Public Knowledge, the American Library Association, and other petitioners have made their case for standing in their challenge to the FCC's decision approving the broadcast flag, which would imbed a code in digital broadcasts to prevent them being widely copied and distributed.
The majority of a three-judge panel of the D.C. Appeals Court told the petitioners they had failed to establish their right to bring the court challenge.
To establish standing, they must identify a member of any of their groups whose redistribution of TV content, say a news broadcast for distant-learning purposes, would be demonstrably and directly harmed by the flag. They must also explain how the FCC's decision would produce that harm.
In Tuesday's brief, Public Knowledge et. al. cited abunch of them. including the North Carolina State University Library's Internet distribution of video clips for distance learning as threatened by the flag, as well as American University in Washington, UCLA, and Vanderbilt. All were indentified as parties whose educational video operations would be harmed either by restrictions or by the expense of upgrading to flag-compliant equipment.
Other harmed parties cited included a couple of bloggers who said they would no longer be able to use broadcast clips to annotate their blogs, the marketer of an HDTV tuner card, and a user of the pc-based PVR like device, MythTV, which works in concert with a tuner card.
Studios argue that they need the flag to prevent widespread digital piracy, the threat of which is making content providers reluctant to make their intellectual property available, which in turn is slowing the switch to digital broadcasting.
The flag plugs the so-called "digital hole," preventing peer-to-peer and internet sharing of digital content.
But Public Knowledege and other fair use advocates fear the flag will put undue limitations on copying devices including TiVos, digital VCRs, iPods, tuner cards, MythTV-like PVRs, and cell phones.
“This is a crucial case that will determine how much control the government and Hollywood will have over current and future digital media devices,” Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn has said.
MPAA and the FCC now have 10 days to file their response to the new brief.
March 30, 2005
Financial Times, UK
By Henry Hamman
© Copyright 2005
When the first onset of the plant fungus called soybean rust was discovered in Louisiana last November, government officials feared that the outbreak of the heretofore unseen disease was a bioterrorist attack on American agriculture.
An FBI agent was duly dispatched to investigate, along with a team of agricultural experts.
The bioterror hypothesis was quickly dismissed and another culprit found – the winds of Hurricane Ivan, which were blowing the spores north from Colombia.
Nevertheless, the arrival of the fungus in the United States poses a continuing threat to US soybean production.
It is a factor that could boost prices sharply in this little-watched corner of the commodities world.
The US is the world’s leading grower of soybeans, producing 85.5m tonnes in the 2004-2005 season.
That is about 50 per cent more than Brazil, the second-largest producer, where soybean rust has become endemic since it arrived from Africa in the late 1990s.
As the new US growing season opens, federal and state agriculture officials have put in place a network to monitor for outbreaks of the disease.
Already, one outbreak has been detected in Florida, dashing hopes that last year’s outbreaks in nine states might have been a one-time occurrence.
These, in states across the Southeast and as far north as Missouri and Tennessee, were one of the main triggers for a 50 cent per bushel rise in soybean prices last winter, according to Mark Ash, an agricultural economist with the US Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service.
An ERS study of the potential effects of rust on the US crop has estimated a decline in yields of as high as 10 per cent.
It projects that once the disease becomes widely established in the US, losses could run from $240m to $2bn per year.
The projections assume widespread use of fungicides in areas of outbreaks.
Untreated, soybean rust can cut yields by as much as 80 per cent, making the disease “potentially devastating,” according to Dr Stephen Koenning, a plant pathologist at North Carolina State University.
In Brazil, the semitropical, humid climate of the soybean growing areas is ideal for the fungus, which cannot withstand freezing temperatures.
About 90 per cent of Brazil’s soybean growing area is frost-free, while only about 5 to 10 per cent of US production is in frost-free zones.
But winds can easily spread the disease from reservoirs along the US Gulf coast to more temperate growing areas.
Until recently, US scientists had almost no opportunity to study the disease because of a ban on importation of the fungus.
But as the disease spread towards the US, efforts were launched to develop treatment protocols and to license fungicides.
Officials say they have been given assurances by chemical manufacturers of sufficient supplies of fungicides to treat any outbreak.
But only three years ago no fungicides were registered for treating the disease. Scientists concede that they have no idea of what the coming season will bring for US growers.
“Anything from almost a non-starter to pretty disastrous” is the spectrum of possibilities, according to Dr Kent Smith of the USDA’s Office of Pest Management.
A hot, dry growing season would hold down the spread of the fungus, while a wet, mild season could well lead to an epidemic across the entire US farm belt.
Hurricanes could spread the spores hundreds of miles in a few days.
“Now is really the scary time,” said Dr Koenning.
Because last year’s outbreak came so late in the season, its effects were mild, but if the disease appears early, farmers could be forced to apply fungicides several times.
With each application costing about $25 an acre, even one spray cuts 10 per cent into the average earnings of $250 an acre.
And multiple sprayings can quickly make growing soybeans unprofitable.
Indeed, one of the expected outcomes of the arrival of soybean rust in the US is a shift by some southern farmers from soybeans to alternate crops, such as corn and cotton.
Muscle-Targeted Gene Therapy Reverses Rare Muscular Dystrophy in Mice
March 31, 2005
Innovations-Report, Germany
By staff report
© Copyright 2005
Gene therapy methods that specifically target muscle may reverse the symptoms of a rare form of muscular dystrophy, according to new research in mice conducted by medical geneticists at Duke University Medical Center. Infants born with the inherited muscular disorder called Pompe disease usually die before they reach the age of two. The researchers also said their approach of targeting corrective genes to muscles may have application in treating other muscular dystrophies.
Patients with Pompe disease have a defect in a key enzyme that converts glycogen, a stored form of sugar, into glucose, the body’s primary energy source. As a result, glycogen builds up in muscles throughout the body, including the heart, causing muscles to degenerate.
Using genetically altered mice in which the gene for the enzyme had been rendered nonfunctional, the researchers demonstrated they could introduce the functioning gene and correct glycogen buildup in heart and skeletal muscle. The findings suggest that such an approach should be considered as a potential gene therapy strategy for Pompe disease patients, the researchers report in a forthcoming issue of Molecular Therapy (now available online).
"Gene therapy in muscular dystrophies presents a unique challenge, because replacement of deficient, therapeutic proteins invokes an immune response that limits the efficacy of the treatment," said Duke medical geneticist Dwight Koeberl, M.D., senior author of the study. "By restricting the expression of introduced genes to muscle, the immune response can be prevented or attenuated."
The muscle-targeted gene therapy might therefore apply to other forms of muscular dystrophy, they added. Muscular dystrophies include many genetic diseases, all of which are characterized by progressive weakness and degeneration of the skeletal muscles which control movement.
The Muscular Dystrophy Association and Genzyme Corporation supported the research.
Several forms of Pompe disease affect more than 5,000 people in the U.S. If symptoms appear during infancy, the disease is usually fatal. Those for whom symptoms first appear late in childhood live longer, but life expectancy remains greatly decreased. Although Pompe disease is a relatively rare disease, it is but one of a group of related "lysosomal storage diseases," which in total occur in about one in 5,000 births.
The current study is part of a large, collaborative effort at Duke University Medical Center to find an effective treatment for Pompe disease. The Duke team earlier developed enzyme replacement therapy, in which a normal version of the faulty enzyme in those with the disease is infused weekly. In clinical trials of the replacement therapy, the infusions have already prolonged the lives of many babies with Pompe disease, Koeberl said.
"A number of babies have been receiving enzyme replacement therapy for several years," said Koeberl. "They are walking, living longer, and meeting developmental milestones."
Despite the early success of enzyme replacement therapy for some children with Pompe disease, a need for gene therapy remains, he added. In gene therapy, a therapeutic gene is delivered to patient cells, often using a modified virus.
Gene therapy might offer an alternative treatment for those children who fail to respond to enzyme replacement therapy, he said. Even for those that respond well to enzyme infusions, treatment requires weekly injection of a large amount of the enzyme.
"Gene therapy has the potential to reverse the course of the disease with a single treatment," Koeberl said.
The researchers delivered the glycogen-degrading enzyme with an adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector. AAV is not associated with any known human disease. The DNA coding for the enzyme was linked to a specialized DNA "promoter" region that restricted its activity to muscle. The investigators either injected the viral particles into the muscle or injected it intravenously in Pompe disease mice.
Six weeks after muscular injection with the virus containing the muscle-restricted gene, mice exhibited high levels of the enzyme and reduced glycogen content in the injected muscle. The mice also had a reduced immune response to the new enzyme, compared to those in which gene expression was not limited to muscle, they found.
Moreover, intravenous administration of the muscle-targeted gene reduced the glycogen content of heart and skeletal muscle and corrected individual muscle fibers. The effect persisted for 24 weeks post-injection, the team reported.
A second gene therapy strategy, in which the enzyme involved in Pompe disease is inserted into the liver, is also under investigation at Duke, said Koeberl. In the January 2005 issue of Molecular Therapy, the researchers reported that the liver-targeted method also corrected symptoms of Pompe disease in mice.
"The muscle-targeted gene therapy method could circumvent the complications of neutralizing antibodies against introduced enzyme, which currently present obstacles to enzyme replacement therapy and liver-targeted gene therapy in Pompe disease," Koeberl said.
Clinical trials of either the muscle- or liver-targeted gene therapies will likely take several years to launch, Koeberl said.
Collaborators on the gene therapy studies include Baodong Sun, Haoyue Zhang, Luis Franco, Andrew Bird, Ayn Schneider, Sarah Young, Y.T. Chen, and Andy Amalfitano, all of Duke Medical Center, and Talmage Brown, of North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine.