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St. Aug's explores reparations issue
U.S. debt to slaves' descendants argued
Cutting
back on unrelated roomies
Public might have its say in January
NCSU-area
plan heads to council
A City Council committee unanimously endorsed a plan Wednesday to build student
housing, a parking deck and shops along Hillsborough Street near N.C. State
University.
Local
leaders want more authority, money from state
Local government and college leaders agreed Wednesday during a series of meetings
hosted by the Guilford County commissioners that they want more from the state
-- more money, principally, but also influence and authority.
Raleigh
discusses mixed-use area
Raleigh's planning committee met to tackle a number of pending projects on
Wednesday.
Briefs:
NCSU vet student charged with fraud
A student at N.C. State University's Veterinary School was arrested Tuesday
and charged with obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.
Not
Quite a Fingerprint
quotes Robert Rodman, computer science
A mosquito
repellent from tomatoes--the alternative to DEET?
quotes Michael Roe, entomology
St. Aug's explores reparations issue
Nov. 14, 2002
The News & Observer
By Cindy George, staff writer
© Copyright 2002 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
RALEIGH -- Does America owe the descendants of slaves a debt for the free labor of their ancestors?
Panelists debated the issue of reparations for African-Americans during a symposium Wednesday at St. Augustine's College.
Reparations means an apology, cash payment and land to Fred Muhammad, a St. Aug's sociologist and member of the Nation of Islam. He said reparations finds its basis in the Bible and the Quran.
"Justice demands the damage be repaired," he said. "America would not be what it is if not for the labor that was stolen from us and the land from the original people."
While not particularly averse to reparations, panelist William Burton of the New Internal Reparations Society argued that blacks should work to repair and restore themselves.
"When money is involved, truth is usually the first casualty," he said.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, has unsuccessfully introduced a bill for a federal study of the issue in every Congress since 1989.
But reparations has gained steam at the grass roots and in the courts. Thousands attended a rally at the nation's capital in August. Four federal lawsuits filed in September seek billions from corporations that plaintiffs allege profited from slavery. One names North Carolina-based R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc. for the work of slaves who cultivated and cured company tobacco. About a dozen other suits are pending in state courts.
But Delindus Brown, a St. Aug's communication professor, said he has "an almost neutral" position because the issue should be better organized and studied as a movement.
Reparations should address the gap between blacks and whites in education, housing and health care, said Iyailu Moses, an N.C. State University professor, who added that the first step is acknowledging a wrong.
"An apology, that's good, but it doesn't help much," she said.
Agreeing with Burton, Moses said reparations won't likely change blacks who she said "don't understand it's important to come into South Raleigh and spend a dollar."
Studies show most blacks favor reparations in the form of apologies, cash payments and education grants, but whites are overwhelmingly opposed.
That divisive effect turns Robinson Everett, a Duke University law professor, against the idea.
"I simply feel that in the long run, there would be more harm than good," he said.
Cutting back on unrelated roomies
Nov. 14, 2002
The News & Observer
By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall, staff writer
© Copyright 2002 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
RALEIGH -- A City Council committee will likely hold three public meetings in
January to let the public talk about a proposal to restrict the number of unrelated
people who can live in single-family homes and duplexes from four to two.
The Comprehensive Planning Committee on Wednesday left it up to city staffers to schedule the meetings, which are expected to be set before a public hearing Jan. 21 to discuss a draft ordinance.
Staffers proposed holding three two-hour evening meetings in southwest Raleigh, Southeast Raleigh and North Raleigh.
"There is a great deal of education on this that needs to be made across the board," committee member Benson Kirkman said.
Right now, the city code lets up to four unrelated people live together.
But residents across the city have said their single-family neighborhoods are turning into rental communities as investors buy homes and lease them to multiple roommates, especially to college students and transient workers.
The draft ordinance reduces the number of unrelated residents allowed in a single-family home or duplex to two.
It also requires property owners who currently rent a single-family home or duplex to more than two unrelated people to register with the city and give the city a list of all residents twice a year.
City staffers say they need to complete an economic assessment before the city can require property owners who are currently renting to more than two unrelated people to comply with the reduction.
Nancy Joyner-Kay, who lives near N.C. State University, told the committee the city should give landlords one year to comply. She said some rental properties have been turned into "de facto mini rooming houses," and property owners aren't complying with the spirit of the law.
"These investors are operating outside the intent of this ordinance and hence should be subject to a cease and desist order," Joyner-Kay said.
Others asked the committee if the city could beef up enforcement in the short term and find out how other communities have handled the issue and avoided unintended consequences, such as hurting the city's affordable-housing stock.
"There is a huge lack of knowledge about what this is all about," said Jesse Sorrell of Rhyne Associates, a local property management firm.
"My concern is the hundreds of investors who own duplexes that are made up of two-bedroom and three-bedroom units," he said. "They are all over the city.
"There are many, many situations of three or four residents" who are trying to make it, he added.
Staff writer Sarah Lindenfeld Hall can be reached at 829-8983.
NCSU-area plan heads to council
Nov. 14, 2002
The News & Observer
By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall, staff writer
© Copyright 2002 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
RALEIGH -- A City Council committee unanimously endorsed a plan Wednesday to
build student housing, a parking deck and shops along Hillsborough Street near
N.C. State University.
But the recommendation to the full City Council to approve Stanhope Center comes with some reservations. The full council will consider the plan at its meeting Tuesday.
"I like the concept here," said Benson Kirkman, a member of the Comprehensive Planning Committee. "I like the details. I don't think there's any way to force the details."
Developer M.E. "Val" Valentine Jr. wants to build housing, shops, offices and a parking deck on seven acres on the south side of Hillsborough Street between Concord Street and Friendly Drive. His plan calls for a private student dormitory with up to 350 units close to nearby railroad tracks. Toward the middle of the property, he plans to first build an 896-space, eight-level parking deck and later wrap three sides of it with 140 more condominiums or apartments and up to 4,000 square feet of shops or offices.
A third section isn't expected to be built for years. It includes 35,000 square feet of shops and offices along Hillsborough Street. Up to 40 more apartments are proposed above the shops.
Neighbors are troubled by the height of the parking deck and Valentine's construction schedule. They worry that he won't build the stores and apartments around the parking deck.
Committee members shared that concern. Cowell said making sure the next phase of the development is built is the "whole crux of this."
Valentine and Tony Morris, the lead architect, both argued that there are plenty of incentives to build the additional condominiums and shops around the deck. Valentine has agreed to maintain a grassy, open area where the wrap-around building is planned, so he can't use the property to provide surface parking there.
Valentine said he wants to turn the area into a better place to work, live and play.
"I want to revitalize it," he said.
Staff writer Sarah Lindenfeld Hall can be reached at 829-8983.
Local leaders want more authority, money from state
Nov. 14, 2002
The Greensboro News & Record
By Alex Wayne, staff writer
© Copyright 2002 News & Record.
JAMESTOWN -- Local government and college leaders agreed Wednesday during a series of meetings hosted by the Guilford County commissioners that they want more from the state -- more money, principally, but also influence and authority.
The meetings, at GTCC's campus, were held with an eye toward next spring's session of the General Assembly. Mike Barber, the commissioners' chairman, plans to draft a list of requests -- based on Wednesday's discussions -- for local legislators to take to Raleigh.
No votes were taken Wednesday and no decisions were made. But out of four separate meetings the commissioners held with the school board, local municipal leaders, state legislators and college leaders, a slate of concerns common to all the groups emerged:
The schoolboard should have
the power to levy property taxes. Currently, the commissioners levy taxes and
appropriate money for the schools. That situation, some members of both boards
say, leads to tension between them and makes the school board less accountable
for taxpayers' dollars.
State Rep. Alma Adams, D-Greensboro, said she thinks it would be possible to
pass a bill giving the school board the power to tax. Neither the school board
nor the commissioners have ever voted on the idea, but in general, a majority
of both boards seem to be in support.
However, Commissioner Billy Yow, a Republican, said he would vote against the idea because he believes state legislators would take the opportunity to shift more of the burden for paying for schools to local taxpayers. And school board member Alan Duncan warned that the nonpartisan school board might become more political if it had taxing power.
No school board in North Carolina has that power. But the state is one of only five, school board members said, that doesn't let its school boards levy taxes.
The commissioners and the school board also discussed expanding year-round school to more schools and a new bond issue. It's not clear how big the new bond will be, but Superintendent Tery Grier said the district has up to $700 million in construction needs.
The stretch of road that begins in High Point as Greensboro Road and ends in
Greensboro as Lee Street should be developed and marketed as an "education
corridor" akin to the Research Triangle.
Barber first came up with this idea in the summer. Within three-quarters of
a mile from the road, he noted, are most of the county's colleges and universities,
plus convention centers and the Greensboro Coliseum. The idea seemed to gain
traction with college leaders.
"The degree to which we can create a brand around these assets would benefit us all," N.C. A&T Chancellor James Renick said. "We'd love to participate in that."
But beyond saying that they liked the idea, participants in the meetings didn't offer specifics on how the heavily commercial corridor might be developed.
High Point's International Home Furnishings Market needs more state support.
Local leaders are concerned about transportation and price-gouging problems
at the market. They also worry that a new furniture market being developed in
Las Vegas might hurt High Point's market.
Judy Mendenhall, executive director of the Market Authority, said that for the
first time next year, the market may receive money from the state government.
The figure being bandied about now is $100,000. And she said that the Piedmont
Authority for Regional Transportation plans to get more involved in market transportation
next spring.
"We would love to offer all hotel and airport shuttles free of charge," she said. "Were we to lose this market, it would be disastrous for this whole state."
No specific legislation for the market was discussed.
Guilford County needs to
land one of a handful of "biotechnology training centers" the state
plans to build with money from its share of the tobacco settlement.
The General Assembly passed a bill this year dedicating $45 million to build
a main biotech training center at N.C. State and six regional offshoots
at community college campuses. It hasn't been decided where the regional centers
will be. It's not clear how long it will be before the training centers will
be built.
"I know our friends
in Winston-Salem are working 23 hours a day to get that training center,"
said Don Cameron, president of GTCC. "I think we need to have a plan ready."The
county could use more libraries. Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday complained
Wednesday that although 23 percent of the library's patrons live outside the
city, the county only chips in 5 percent of the library system's costs.
The commissioners discussed their own libraries and opening school libraries
to the public. They decided to try to put together a committee of local library
officials to study the situation. State Rep. Maggie Jeffus, D-Greensboro, offered
to look for state money for local libraries.
The meetings were organized by Marlene Sanford, president of the Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, a lobbying organization for the land development industry. Kavanagh Homes sponsored the meetings.
Sanford estimated that Kavanagh spent about $600 for food, drinks and gifts for the participants. Each government and college leader was offered a canvas tote bag with a coffee thermos, a miniature hard-hat and what appeared to be a CD-ROM. In return, Kavanagh Homes got its logo printed on the meeting agendas.
Contact Alex Wayne at 373-7098.
Raleigh discusses mixed-use area
Nov. 13, 2002
News 14 Carolina
By Tony Jones, staff writer & Web Staff
© Copyright 2002 News 14 Carolina.
Raleigh's planning committee
met to tackle a number of pending projects on Wednesday.
Among the items on the agenda was discussion of a new mixed-use area near N.C.
State.
Developers came before the committee to request to have a parcel of land along Hillsborough Street re-zoned. They want to build a new $50 million mixed-use area. Stanhope Center would include condos, a parking deck for more than 800 cars and retail shops and offices.
Some living nearby fear much of the new housing would go primarily to students.
The project's designer said the new master plan was a collective effort including those living in the neighborhood.
"The adjacent landowners, including the neighbors from the neighborhood, came and we all gave out input and we all designed this together,” Tony Morris from Integrated Design said.
The committee unanimously approved the request to have the area re-zoned with some changes.
The full city council will vote on the request next week.
Briefs: NCSU vet student charged with fraud
Nov. 14, 2002
The News & Observer
By staff and wire reports
© Copyright 2002 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
A student at N.C. State University's Veterinary School was arrested Tuesday and charged with obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.
Petros Voskerchian, 34, of 6220 St. Regis Circle in Raleigh was arrested in connection to six incidents in which he signed out hydromorphone for patients at the vet school. According to his arrest warrant, he then converted the painkiller to "an unauthorized use." Voskerchian was being held at the Wake County jail on $1,000 secured bond.
Dynamics of human speech limit ability to match voices Identifying individuals is no sure thing
Nov. 13, 2002
The San Francisco Chronicle
By Keay Davidson, staff writer
© Copyright 2002 San Francisco Chronicle.
There's no quick, surefire way to determine whether the voice on an audiotape broadcast Tuesday belongs to Osama bin Laden or an impostor, experts say.
Because of the extraordinary complexity of human voices, long-held hopes of developing "voice identification" devices as precise and trustworthy as fingerprints, DNA or other forensic tools have never fully panned out, they add.
An individual's voice varies minute by minute depending on his or her state of mind, degree of tiredness, whether they're talking to an adult or child, and other factors.
Some businesses use computerized tools for verifying a person's voice, such as having them utter a simple prearranged word. Also, a growing number of computer users can dictate to a personal computer, which is specifically programmed to recognize their pronunciation.
But those techniques aren't adequate for identifying a speaker in routine conversation, at least without risking an unacceptable error rate.
Comparing voices on different tapes "doesn't sound like it would be that hard, but it is," said Robert Rodman, a computer scientist at North Carolina State University, who was co-author of the 1995 book "Voice Recognition" and has a doctorate in linguistics from UCLA.
"One reason is that a person's voice changes over time -- and not only over long periods of time, like when you're (aged) 10 or 80," he said. "Rather, your voice literally changes from minute to minute . . . (because) you're flesh and blood. You're not a very tightly machined electronic device."
Those voice changes might not be noticeable to you or other humans. But they are readily apparent to devices that create sound-wave "spectrograms" (sometimes called sound prints) of voices. Spectrograms resemble smudgy finger paintings by artistically untalented children.
"The human voice has enormous variability," said Tito Poza, a voice- identification consultant in Menlo Park. He noted that our pitch and pronunciation can vary markedly according to whether we're talking to friends or business associates, whether we're angry or exhausted, whether we're describing a personal experience or explaining a difficult concept.
However, experts are by no means totally pessimistic about analyzing the bin Laden tape. Perhaps the best hope for identifying the al Qaeda leader's voice on the tape is, first, to look for recurrent, typically bin Ladenish phrases such as "Allah be praised" or "God wills it," they said.
Next, investigators should electronically compare the auditory "signature" of those words with recordings of known instances when bin Laden did utter such words -- for example, in his highly publicized videotapes before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.
Even then, distinguishing bin Laden's voice from an impostor's could be as tough as John Travolta's task in the old Brian de Palma thriller "Blow Out." Travolta played a sound engineer who struggled to convince police that an explosive sound on an audiotape was the sound of a gunshot, not of a bursting automobile tire.
One problem: The bin Laden interview was made on a tape recorder, a device that screens out certain sound frequencies. By contrast, a videotape recorder may screen out very different sound frequencies.
Hence, comparing the sounds of bin Laden's voice from an audiotape player and videotape recorder may be like "comparing apples and oranges," Rodman said.
Three decades ago, Poza worked at SRI (formerly Stanford Research Institute), the Menlo Park think tank. He tried to develop devices that could identify individual voices based on characteristic variations in their sound waves.
Although some progress was made, the technique did not become nearly as reliable as other science-fictionish means of identifying people, such as retinal scans, says Poza, who has a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and now runs a voice- identification firm, Poza Consulting Services.
He often testifies for the defense in court cases, arguing that the alleged voice of someone on a tape is really someone else. Typically, he bases his opinion on his subjective judgment, because of the uncertainty of more automated procedures.
Voice-identification analysis is sometimes difficult to sell to skeptical judges and jurors, Rodman notes.
He recalled being called as a witness in an Indiana case where police had surreptitiously recorded a drug deal and prosecuted the alleged dealer. In the case, which Rodman recently described in an article for the journal Forensic Linguistics, the defendant was convicted although the voice on the tape "was obviously not the same voice as the guy they had arrested. . . . It's an absolute miscarriage of justice."
Nov. 14, 2002
Newsday
By staff report
© Copyright 2002 Newsday.
Washington - Identifying a voice on a tape recording remains an inexact science that lacks the accuracy of fingerprint or DNA analysis, experts said yesterday.
But analysts can use standard methods to try to determine with some confidence if the voice on a new tape is that of Osama bin Laden. They include acoustic analysis of the sound waves produced by speech as well as close attention to a person's linguistic and phonetic peculiarities.
Specialists said the validity of any analysis depends on the quality of the tape being studied. Sources say the new putative bin Laden tape may be two or three generations removed from the original recording and was transmitted over telephone lines. That complicates efforts to compare it to previous recordings of bin Laden's voice on other audio and video tapes, they said.
"We are always looking for the best possible recordings," said Bill Hughes, vice president of Voice Identification Inc., of Manville, N.J. "Sometimes when you try to filter out [background noise] you are taking out information that you need."
A person's voice is produced by a complex process that starts in the folds of the vocal chords and ends at the lips. The sound is determined by factors such as the length and tension of the vocal chords; the size of the throat, nasal cavity and mouth; and the configuration of "articulators" such as the teeth, tongue and lips.
A voice also can vary, even from minute to minute, depending on factors such as stress, fatigue, anger, consumption of alcohol or use of drugs. An acoustic analysis of the voice must take such factors into account, experts said.
A spectrograph converts the voice's sound waves into a visual display showing their time, frequency and intensity. A typical printout looks like recordings of earthquake tremors. Comparisons are made between voice samples and, if they look sufficiently alike, the examiner can say they have a probability of originating from the same person.
To make such a judgment, experts said, the analysts want to compare identical words and phrases from the two tapes whenever possible. "You want to have similar or identical words so you are comparing apples to apples," said Herbert Joe, a Dallas-based voice identification specialist.
Joe said it is equally important to listen for cues that do not normally appear in a spectrogram, including an audible release of breath at the end of phrases, marked differences in pitch and hoarseness in vocal tone. "Somebody trained in speech production or perception can easily pick up those differences," Joe said.
The spectrographic and aural analyses can be valuable, experts said, but there are no guarantees. "Even a good combination of both leaves a lot of margin for error," said Robert Rodman, a computer scientist at North Carolina State University and co-author of a book on voice recognition.
Despite advances in voice identification methods, the science remains controversial and many courts still do not accept testimony on voice identification, Joe said.
A mosquito repellent from tomatoes--the alternative to DEET?
Nov. 1, 2002
Journal of Environmental Health
By staff report
© Copyright 2002
Dr. Michael Roe of North Carolina State University has discovered that a substance produced by tomatoes repels mosquitoes and other insects more effectively than DEET-and is safer.
DEET (N, N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the Army in 1946. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) has found that the normal use of DEET does not present a health concern to the general population, the use of products containing DEET has been associated with rashes, swelling, itching, eye irritation, and, less frequently, slurred speech, confusion, and seizures. Products with high concentrations of DEET are considered particularly hazardous to children, and U.S. EPA no longer allows the label of a product containing DEET to claim that the product is safe for children. Recent research at Duke University with rats showed that frequent and prolonged use of DEET caused brain-cell death and behavioral changes in the animals.
Roe discovered the insect-repellent capacity of tomatoes by accident. "I was listening to a scientific presentation about protein mimics as a diet pill for the control of mosquito larvae," he said. He realized that the compounds being discussed were similar to a compound found in wild tomatoes. Years earlier, he and another scientist had studied the compound, which apparently is part of the tomato's natural defenses against insects, to see if it might be used to control worms that eat tomatoes.
Roe revisited the compound and tested it as a mosquito repellent. He found that it repelled not only mosquitoes, but also ticks, fleas, cockroaches, ants, and biting flies, as well as agricultural pests such as aphids and thrips.
The compound is already used to make cosmetics, so its toxicity has been studied. "What this means is that the toxicology has been done, which is a big step toward commercialization," Roe said. "It's found in tomatoes, it's natural, it can be obtained organically, it's safe, and it's at least as effective as DEET, all features that the public would want for a new-generation insect repellent."
With concern rising about West Nile virus and Lyme disease, the discovery of the new insect repellent is timely. The university has licensed the right to produce the substance as an insect repellent to Insect Biotechnology, Inc., a Durham company that specializes in developing and marketing biochemical insecticides. The cost of producing the repellent is expected to be competitive with the production costs of DEET. Insect Biotechnology has applied to U.S. EPA for approval of the insect repellent for use in several products and hopes that the new product, called IBI-246, will win approval by the end of the year. On the scale used by U.S. EPA to gauge toxicity, IBI-246 is considered slightly safer than DEET.