| |
|
Researchers Find Way To Speed Tree Growth
Scientists say they have found a way to boost tree growth but so far there they haven't found a practical use for the fast-growing plants.
Bankruptcy
filings rank Person No. 2 in N. C.
Among North Carolina’s 100 counties, Person County currently ranks second
to only one other county in the number of bankruptcy cases filed. Nearby Vance
County holds the dubious number one spot.
Public
speaking scares most people
Ask people what they fear most and you're likely to receive an array of answers:
snakes, enclosed spaces, death, flying, failure and such.
World
AIDS Day brings staggering numbers
At a candle light vigil at Shaw University students are praying and remembering
the millions worldwide battling HIV/AIDS.
HIV/AIDS
on the rise in North Carolina
HIV/AIDS doesn't care about race, sex, or age, it kills all the same.
Bowl date
troubles Pack fans
'Horrible time to have any bowl'
Wildcats
are spoiling for a fight in underdog role
White, Manning, Rivers named O'Brien finalists
White,
Manning, Rivers named O'Brien finalists
White, Manning, Rivers named O'Brien finalists
Choice
is easy: Rivers
N.C. State QB is unanimous pick for ACC player of the year
The
uses of imperfection -- Scientists are 'harnessing inhomogeneities' in an
effort to integrate nanoscale electronics devices with traditional silicon
lithography
Chris Gorman, chemistry
Rugged
Molecules that Remember
Jonathan S. Lindsey, chemistry
North
Carolina Pest Control Association Awards Scholarships
cites Patrick Rivenbark, Agriculture Insititute
New
look at layered material lends insight to silicon
cites Sergei Lopatin and Gerd Duscher, materials science and engineering
Researchers Find Way To Speed Tree Growth
Dec. 1, 2003
Associated Press; WRAL-TV; News 14 Carolina; The Durham Herald-Sun; WTOP-Radio 1500 AM (Washington, DC); WCNC-TV Channel 6 (Charlotte, NC); Omaha (NE) World-Herald; KTAR-Radio 620 AM (Phoenix, AZ); KCRG-TV Channel 16 (Des Moines, IA); Go2Net (Seattle, WA); Findlaw Legal News (Palo Alto, CA); Excite.com (CA); Austin (TX) American-Statesman; Atlanta (GA) Journal-Constitution; Kenai (AK) Peninsula Clarion; Las Vegas (NV) Sun
By staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Associated Press
REIDSVILLE, N.C. -- Scientists say they have found a way to boost tree growth but so far there they haven't found a practical use for the fast-growing plants.
A tree species at N.C. State's Upper Piedmont Research Station in Reidsville grew up to 20 feet in a single year, about double its usual rate. A typical tree in the area grows about 18 inches in a good year.
The experiment uses paulownias, a naturally rapid-growing tree from China whose thin stalks are covered in purple blossoms during the spring.
Researchers bred seven varieties of the trees, the quickest of which can grow about 18 to 20 feet in a year, said Ben Bergmann, who was in charge of the project. Bergmann now is the head of the Tropical Research Studies Department at Duke University.
The unusual growth was discovered during experiments to lessen animal waste in groundwater and soil, he said. Because of the trees' rapid growth, their roots absorb nutrients and prevent ground and surface water contamination.
So far, researchers have no immediate plans for the paulownias.
"It's a catch-22. There's no demand so people don't grow them," Bergmann said. "And there won't be any demand until people start growing them."
The trees produce a light weight wood that can be used for furniture and musical instruments, Bergmann said.
Gene Stewart, the arborist at New Garden Landscaping and Nursery in Greensboro, said it's hard to believe a tree can grow that fast.
"If they managed to do that, every wholesale nursery in the country would like to know about it," Stewart said. "It would be huge."
Public speaking scares most people
Nov. 30, 2003
The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer
By Mike Boyd, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer.
Ask people what they fear most and you're likely to receive an array of answers: snakes, enclosed spaces, death, flying, failure and such.
But the response that continues to top survey after survey is public speaking.
Standing in front of a crowd and talking, it appears, terrifies the average Joe and Jane.
In the business world, however, most people at one time or another are going to have to give a speech, conduct a presentation or lead a meeting.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10 PRESENTATION TIPS
1. Practice, practice, practice!
2. Realize it’s not just what you say, but how you say it. And how is what makes the difference between the great and the boring.
3. Do not (under penalty of death) read your entire presentation to the audience.
4. Do not (also under penalty of death) run long.
5. Remember that the audience wants you to succeed (no one wants to endure the discomfort of someone dying on the platform - they are cheering for you).
6. Realize the audience has no idea what you are going to say. If you forget something, they will never know.
7. There are as many ways to give a presentation as there are presenters. Be yourself.
8. Arrive early, give yourself plenty of time for room set up, technical set up and to mingle with the audience.
9. Forget the whole "imagine everyone naked" thing and looking at a spot in the back of the room. Make eye contact with individuals.
10. Have fun!! If you’re having a good time, the audience will too (and they will love you for it.)
Source: Denise Ryan, Firestar
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deanna Dannels, a professor of communication at N.C. State University,
says communication apprehension or anxiety is generally linked to anticipation
of a negative outcome.
The fear can manifest itself in people who have the necessary communication skills as well as those who don't.
"Think about a basketball player who can make about 90 percent of his free throws in practice, but in the game he chokes and makes only 50 percent," Dannels said. "That's someone who has the skills to perform, but they just have such fear associated with the event that their skills deteriorate."
Conversely, she said a player who makes 50 percent of his free throws during practice and 50 percent during a game might not be nervous, but still could suffer from fear because he knows he doesn't have the skills to perform better.
Dannels said the key to overcoming the fear is teaching people to perceive a gain rather than a loss.
She said the reason public speaking is cited by so many people as their greatest fear might be because the others, such as a fear of death, are less tangible.
"All the other things that people are afraid of might not seem as real or as in front of them as public speaking," Dannels said. "Because they might be asked to do it, they might perceive more ego related negative outcomes from public speaking."
And while there isn't any instant panacea or magic pill that one can take to overcome the fear of public speaking, there are some things that can be done to ease the butterflies.
"We can deal with public speak anxiety or apprehension by using behavior alteration techniques," Dannels said. "Those techniques really help students reframe the way they think about a public speaking event. If I think, OK, the people are going to laugh at me or I'm not going to be prepared or I'm going to make a mistake, we need to go back and reframe those thoughts."
All in a day's work
Framing thoughts is all in a day's work for Denise Ryan, the owner of FireStar. She makes her living talking in front of groups, large and small.
Ryan said that one thing novice speakers should remember is that there is no one right way to give a presentation.
"Some people read parts of it," she said. "Some people sing. Some people are funny. Some people do gymnastics. So, there's 8 billion different ways to do a speech."
And there are likely as many topics of discussion, something that the fearful should keep in mind when venturing up to the podium.
"They have no idea what you're going to say. The audience has no clue," Ryan said. "So if you're thinking, 'Oh my God, I was going to tell that XYZ joke and I can't remember it,' they're not sitting there going, 'OK, here comes the XYZ joke.' They don't know what you're going to say. They're not going to know that you messed up."
She also said it helps to remember that an audience generally wants a speaker to succeed.
"They're so glad they're not up there, they don't want you to fail, so they're cheering for you," Ryan said. "They want you to do well. Plus, it's painfully embarrassing to watch somebody fail. It makes everybody so uncomfortable."
Ryan said preparation is one of the keys to overcoming the fear of public speaking.
"Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse," she said. "Because the better you know it, the less scary it is."
And remember that communication involves more than just phrases and sentences.
"It's not the words, it's how you say it," Ryan said. "When you give a presentation, it's a show, and that's what most people don't know."
She said that when someone grasps the meaning of a speaker's presentation, only 7 percent is because of the words. Fifty-five percent is attributable to body language and 38 percent derives from tone.
"This is where business people mess up," Ryan said. "They spend all their time focusing on words - what am I going to say. That isn't what matters. It's more how you say it.
"Any time you're talking to somebody, if you're just focusing on the words you're saying and not your body language and making eye contact, it's going to have less impact."
Sonia Vega-Pelican is president of the Cape Fear Club chapter of Toastmasters International, an organization whose mission is "making effective oral communication a worldwide reality."
She, like Ryan, said one of the keys to controlling the nervousness that accompanies the fear of public speaking to take the time to properly prepare.
"You've got to learn how to prepare," she said. "How to prepare for any time that you have to address a group."
In addition to helping people learn to prepare, her organization also provides a supportive environment to make and learn from mistakes.
"What Toastmasters offers is a way to get the feedback, a way to improve," Vega-Pelican said. "We make the mistakes here. And when we go to our workplaces, when we go to our communities, when we go to church ... we become better. We don't have to make those mistakes there."
And making mistakes happens, even to people who talk for a living.
"I remember, I did one (a speech) and I actually did ... I went blank and forgot," Ryan said. "It was the most horrible one second of my life."
But just like anything else, she said, the more times someone gives a speech or a presentation the easier it gets.
And Ryan offers one other piece of advice to ensure a memorable performance.
"People will forgive you if you finish short," she said. "They will never forgive you if you go long - no matter how good you are."
Business editor Mike Boyd can be reached at 486-3557.
World AIDS Day brings staggering numbers
Dec. 1, 2003
News 14 Carolina
By Brett Tackett, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 TWEAN Newschannel of Raleigh, L.L.C. dba News 14 Carolina
At a candle light vigil at Shaw University students are praying and remembering the millions worldwide battling HIV/AIDS.
There are more than 18,000 people in North Carolina with HIV/AIDS. The more alarming number is two thirds of those are African American.
"It's defiantly something I worry about,” said Larry Simpson. Larry Simpson is a student at Shaw University. He says while he practices safe sex many of his friends don't.
"It would be so much of a problem if were taking the proper cautions,” said Simpson. “Obviously we're not."
Unprotected sex is just one reason HIV/AIDS experts say the virus is on the raise in more than just the African American community.
"We know that one of the reasons is that there is a drug problem,” said Linda Bryan, Shaw University Associate Dean. “But it's gradually moved into the 20 to 25 year range and even younger."
This problem is something health officials at NC State have decided to fight through education.
"We try to get the word out about safer sex techniques,” Marianne Turnbull, NCSU Student Health Services.
State is now offering students free condoms and also takes time out of freshman orientation to warn in coming students about the danger.
"It just really important for student to know their status and to not be shy about getting the AIDS test,” said Turnbull.
A study by North Carolina University estimates there are 60 new college students in the Tar Heel State with HIV/AIDS.
HIV/AIDS on the rise in North Carolina
Dec. 1, 2003
News 14 Carolina
By Brett Tackett, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 News 14 Carolina.
HIV/AIDS doesn't care about race, sex, or age, it kills all the same. But infections are not spreading evenly. New numbers show the rates of college students and African-Americans becoming infected are on the rise.
At a candlelight vigil at Shaw University, students prayed and remembered the millions worldwide battling HIV/AIDS.
There are more than 18,000 people in North Carolina with HIV/AIDS. The more alarming number is two thirds of those are African-American.
"It's definitely something I worry about,” said Shaw University student Larry Simpson. He says while he practices safe sex, many of his friends don't.
"It would be so much less of a problem if we're taking the proper cautions,” said Simpson. “Obviously we're not."
Unprotected sex is just one reason HIV/AIDS experts say the virus is on the raise in more than just the African-American community.
"We know that one of the reasons is that there is a drug problem,” said Shaw University Associate Dean Linda Bryan. “But it's gradually moved into the 20 to 25 year range and even younger."
This problem is something health officials at NC State have decided to fight through education.
"We try to get the word out about safer sex techniques,” said Marianne Turnbull of NCSU Student Health Services.
State is now offering students free condoms and also takes time out of freshman orientation to warn incoming students about the danger.
"It just really important for student to know their status and to not be shy about getting the AIDS test,” said Turnbull.
A study by UNC-Chapel Hill estimates there are 60 new college students in the Tar Heel State with HIV/AIDS.
Dec. 2, 2003
The News & Observer
By Rachel Carter, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
Ask yourself this: At 5:30
p.m. Dec. 22, would you be thinking more about: a) leaving the office, or b)
being at the Tangerine Bowl?
Yeah, thought so.
N.C. State's Tangerine Bowl matchup against Kansas in Orlando, Fla., does not ooze "instant classic" and is not generating anything like the buzz that preceded State's meeting with Notre Dame in last season's Gator Bowl.
N.C. State sold 29,000 tickets through its ticket office for that game and estimated that 35,000 Wolfpack fans attended the bowl in Jacksonville, Fla.
This year, the school has 12,500 Tangerine tickets. Associate athletics director Charlie Cobb said he expects to sell most of those, and he's more worried about the date than the matchup.
Shawn Evans, 24, a first-year season ticket-holder and NCSU alumnus, said he'd go to the game if not for his holiday travel plans.
"It's a horrible time to have any bowl game, I don't care if it's the Gator Bowl or the Sugar or the Tangerine," said Evans, who attended the Gator Bowl.
Although he'd like to go to the Tangerine, Evans said, most of his friends would not.
"Not really, unfortunately," Evans said. "They're interested in the game but not traveling. Everyone expected us to travel for New Year's. Everyone."
The Pack, which was ranked 16th nationally heading into this football season, finished 7-5 after consecutive losses to Florida State and Maryland. Kansas is 6-6.
Debbie Matthews and Barbara Murray, both of Raleigh, said they have three Peach Bowls under their belts and were hoping that the Pack would sneak into the Atlanta bowl game on Jan. 2.
Maryland will face West Virginia in the Gator on Jan. 1, and Clemson will meet an SEC team the next day in the Peach.
"That's our problem," said Murray, a retired state government worker. "If it was after Christmas, we would be more likely to go."
Some fans, like NCSU sophomore Mark Mzyk, do not really care about the quality of the bowl.
"I want to see the Wolfpack play again, especially to see Philip Rivers' last game," Mzyk said. "It would be nice to go to a bigger bowl. I still think the Tangerine is a great bowl. I'll be happy to be there."
NCAA women's soccer
There are still a few tickets left for the NCAA semifinals and final Friday and Sunday at SAS Stadium in Cary.
In the semifinals Friday, Florida State will face Connecticut at noon and top-ranked North Carolina will meet second-ranked UCLA at 2:30 p.m. The winners will meet for the title at 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are available through the N.C. State ticket office at 865-1510 or (800) 310-7225. Tickets -- $30 for adults and $24 for children -- are good for all three games.
Staff writer Rachel Carter can be reached at 829-8953.
Sooners run at No. 1 now a record feat
Dec. 1-2, 2003
Associated Press; Myrtle Beach (SC) Sun News; Los Angeles (CA) Times; Daily News Los Angeles (CA)
By staff report
© Copyright 2003 Associated Press
Oklahoma is now No. 1 at being No. 1.
The Sooners tied Notre Dame for the most No. 1 rankings in The Associated Press college football poll, earning their 95th Sunday.
The Sooners (12-0) remained the unanimous pick for the top spot in the rankings after an off week as they prepare for the Big 12 championship game.
The Sooners, who have been atop each of the 15 polls this season, received all 65 first-place votes in balloting by the panel of sports writers and broadcasters. They are hoping to join Florida State's 1999 team as the only schools to go wire-to-wire since the preseason poll began in 1950.
There were no changes in the Top 10 this week.
Mississippi State
STARKVILLE, Miss. Green Bay Packers assistant coach Sylvester Croom has an offer
to become the next football coach at Mississippi State, athletic director Larry
Templeton said Sunday.
If Croom takes the job, he'll become the first black head football coach in Southeastern Conference history.
Croom visited the campus and met with Templeton for about five hours Sunday.
Templeton said he expected to hear back from Croom by Sunday night or this morning.
Bowl bids
ATLANTA The Humanitarian Bowl selected Georgia Tech on Sunday, a day after the Yellow Jackets completed their regular season with a loss to Georgia.
It's the seventh straight year they've gone to a bowl, the longest streak in school history.
An official announcement is scheduled for today at Georgia Tech (6-6).
Western Athletic Conference champ Boise State, the expected opponent for Georgia Tech, postponed its decision on a bowl after clinching the title Saturday.
Virginia also accepted a bid to play in its second Continental Tire Bowl, this time against Pittsburgh. The Cavaliers (7-5) won the inaugural Tire Bowl last season, beating West Virginia in Charlotte.
Nevada
RENO, Nev. Nevada football coach Chris Tormey was fired Sunday after failing
to guide his team to a winning record in four seasons.
The Wolf Pack went 1-4 down the stretch to finish 6-6 overall and 4-4 in the Western Athletic Conference.
Nevada athletic director Chris Ault cited Tormey's overall record of 16-31 and failure to beat in-state rival UNLV as factors in his decision.
Ault expects to name a new coach in December in time for the upcoming recruiting period.
Awards
RALEIGH, N.C.
North Carolina State quarterback Philip Rivers was named the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year Sunday by The Associated Press.
This season, he completed 311 of 438 for a remarkable 71 percent, throwing for 4,016 yards and 29 TDs.
Florida State defensive lineman Darnell Dockett was named the top defensive player.
Georgia
ATLANTA Georgia secured its spot in the Southeastern Conference championship game Sunday, setting up a rematch with LSU next weekend.
The fifth-ranked Bulldogs tied for first in the East Division with Tennessee and Florida, bringing in the SEC's tiebreaker system. It's based on a combination of the BCS standings and head-to-head meetings.
The league announced Sunday afternoon that Georgia got the nod for the title game.
No. 3 LSU (11-1) beat Georgia 17-10 back in September.
Wildcats are spoiling for a fight in underdog role
Dec. 2, 2003
Kansas City (MO) Star
By HOWARD RICHMAN, staff report
© Copyright 2003 Kansas City Star
They hear that Oklahoma team just may be the best ever in college football.
The whispers insinuate their chances against this outfit from Norman, Okla., are about as good as a snowball in....July in Manhattan, Kan. They see the betting line, which opened at Oklahoma 12.5, immediately jumped to 13.5. That's a sure sign big bucks are being wagered on the Sooners.
K-State -- the heavy underdog when it plays No. 1 Oklahoma at 7 p.m. Saturday for the Big 12 championship at Arrowhead Stadium -- sounds as if it's growing tired of being dissed (a.k.a., disrespected for all of you who aren't hip).
And, for the record, don't use the "S" word (it's spoil, by the way) around K-State senior defensive end Thomas Houchin.
"We don't feel like we're going to spoil anything. If we do win, and that's something we expect to do, we're going to get a championship," Houchin said Monday, "and we're going to be disappointed if we don't get it."
If the upset materializes, plenty of folks will be there in person to witness it. According to Chiefs senior vice president Dennis Watley, approximately 200 tickets remain from the allotment that was not provided for each university. Oklahoma and K-State each were allotted 8,500 tickets, and the Sooners sold their portion. K-State had fewer than 100 remaining as of noon Monday.
In 2000 when Oklahoma edged K-State 27-24 in the title game at Arrowhead, the attendance was 79,655, still a record for the championship game of the Big 12, which dates back to 1996.
Oklahoma associate director of ticket operations Billie Ray Johnson said Monday he has heard Sooners fans have gobbled up tickets anywhere they can find them.
"I'd say we'll have between 20,000 and 30,000 there," Johnson said. "There should be lots of crimson and cream up there."
So it may not quite be a home game after all for K-State, 10-3 overall, on a six-game winning streak, and ranked 13th in the nation. Actually, unbeaten Oklahoma (12-0) and ranked first in the nation in scoring offense (48.3) and total defense (233.7 yards) is the home team, meaning K-State will wear white.
K-State may not have the best bet to win the Heisman Trophy. Oklahoma gets the nod on that one with senior quarterback Jason White, named Monday one of three finalists (along with Mississippi's Eli Manning and North Carolina State's Philip Rivers) for the Davey O'Brien Award presented to the best quarterback. His top target, wide receiver Mark Clayton, was selected a finalist (along with Pittsburgh's Larry Fitzgerald and USC's Mike Williams) for the Fred Biletnikoff Award that goes to the best receiver.
The Wildcats, though, do have junior Darren Sproles, announced Monday along with Michigan's Chris Perry and Virginia Tech's Kevin Jones as finalists for the Doak Walker Award that is presented annually to the nation's top running back.
"I don't know if there's anyone you can compare him to," Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops said Monday about Sproles. "He's an excellent player."
Wildcats Coach Bill Snyder said Monday he was asked to compare the Sooners to all the teams he has faced at K-State, the issue being whether this Oklahoma squad is the best he has ever had to prepare for. Snyder was at a loss for words. Or schools.
"I can't think off the top of my head one that was better," Snyder said. "I'm hard pressed to come up with one."
Oklahoma junior defensive end Dan Cody sized up K-State as nothing like the Sooners have seen on their schedule in 2003.
The highest ranked team Oklahoma beat was then-No. 11 Texas, 65-13, on Oct. 11 in Dallas. That was a week after the Longhorns rallied past K-State in the fourth quarter at home 24-20.
"This is probably going to be the best team we played all year," Cody said. "Seeing K-State on film, they've just gotten better and better every game. I think everybody understands how much is riding on this game for them and for us."
Stoops said: "They're fundamentally sound in everything they do, always aggressive."
Snyder, who has reviewed past years of Oklahoma video in search of a gadget play or two the Sooners may try to spring on the Wildcats ("We have not run a trick play in about eight weeks. We weren't winning any championships because of trickery," Stoops said), plans to have his team on its toes in all phases. He can't count on one hand how many Oklahoma opponents weren't at their best and paid for it.
"I'm of the strong belief if you prepare well mentally and physically, any team can beat any team in the country," Snyder said. "We feel like we fit in that category."
Snyder continues to chase the elusive championship ring. K-State hasn't won a conference title in football since 1934, while Oklahoma pursues its 39th conference crown. As for the rings he's collected for winning conference and national titles, its' pretty obvious Stoops isn't in the game for the glitter.
"The rings are in a closet," Stoops said. "I'm not much on wearing them."
K-State? It'd love to try one on of its own.
"This is what it's all about," K-State senior tight end Thomas Hill said.
White, Manning, Rivers named O'Brien finalists
Dec. 2, 2003
Telegraph (The) (Dixon, IL); Sports Network (Southampton, PA); WIXT-TV Channel 9 (East Syracuse, NY); Morning Call (Allentown, PA); Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City); Fayetteville (NC) Observer-Times; Newport News (VA) Daily Press; New York (NY) Post; KTUL-TV (Tulsa, OK); Fox Sports (NY); ESPN.com (NY,NY)
By staff report
© Copyright 2003
Fort Worth, TX (Sports Network) - Jason White of top-ranked Oklahoma, Eli Manning of Ole Miss and North Carolina State's Philip Rivers were named finalists Monday for the Davey O'Brien Award as the nation's best quarterback.
White has anchored the nation's No. 1 ranked scoring offense to a perfect 12-0 record this season and a berth in the Big 12 Championship game against Kansas State. Oklahoma, which is currently the top-rated team in the BCS standings, will likely play in the Sugar Bowl for the national championship on January 4. For the season, White has completed 238-of-364 passes for 3,446 yards with a school record 40 touchdown passes and just six interceptions. Manning helped lead the 17th-ranked Rebels to a 9-3 mark this season and a 7-1 record in the Southeastern Conference. The senior completed 253 of his 410 attempts for 3,341 yards, while throwing 27 touchdowns and nine interceptions. Rivers completed 311-of-438 passes, throwing for 4,016 yards and 29 touchdowns for the Wolfpack this season. The senior was recently named the ACC Football Player of the year and will guide North Carolina State in the Tangerine Bowl against Kansas. The 27th O'Brien Award winner will be announced on Thursday, December 11.
Dec. 1, 2003
Associated Press; Daily Times (Salisbury, MD)
By David Droschak, AP staff reporter
© Copyright 2003
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Kids run out of church early seeking autographs. And he can't eat his favorite junk food at the mall without being approached by fans.
Around this city, North Carolina State quarterback Philip Rivers has become the sports version of pop artist Clay Aiken.
"You see young kids and people who are excited and look up to you and that means a lot to me," said Rivers, who was named the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year Sunday by The Associated Press.
"I sometimes don't realize when I go sit at the food court people notice me and want to speak to me. It's something I've gradually gotten used to and something I appreciate. I don't see myself any differently, but I guess on the outside people think I'm neat."
In teen terms, the senior has been 'cool' in the pocket for four years for the Wolfpack, throwing for more than 13,000 yards and 90 touchdowns -- both ACC records.
"He has brought the name of N.C. State to the forefront nationally," N.C. State coach Chuck Amato said. "He will be a special, special name in the history of N.C. State football forever and ever. He needs to be put up there as one of the best quarterbacks who has ever played."
This season, he completed 311 of 438 for a remarkable 71 percent, throwing for 4,016 yards and 29 TDs with the Tangerine Bowl still on the schedule.
The 6-foot-5, 240-pound QB from Alabama was a unanimous pick in 68 votes cast by the Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association, becoming the fourth quarterback in the last five seasons to win the ACC's top individual honor.
Since 1974, the only N.C. State winners of the award were wide receiver Torry Holt in 1998 and quarerback Erik Kramer in 1986.
Meanwhile, Florida State defensive lineman Darnell Dockett was named the ACC's top defensive player, edging Georgia Tech linebacker Keyaron Fox.
"The quarterback gets a lot of the recognition, but you've got to have so much help in order for you to have any statistics or any success at all," said Rivers, who thanked his teammates and coaching staff in a telephone interview Sunday.
Rivers had the top four passing games in the ACC this season, throwing for a season-high 423 yards against North Carolina and 422 against Florida State.
"Mid-to-late in the year I was really starting to see everything so quickly and was able to make quick decisions," Rivers said. "I played pretty well down the stretch."
Rivers' only two regrets are a 7-5 senior season and a home loss to Maryland on the day he his No. 17 jersey was retired.
"It wasn't a perfect career, but I guess it exceeded expectations in the sense of awards, numbers and statistics," Rivers said. "If I could do it all over again I would change a few losses, but I've been blessed with a fun four years."
The 6-4, 280-pound Dockett, expected to be a first-round NFL draft pick, received 18 votes to 14 for Fox.
Dockett, of Burtonsville, Md., had 16 1/2 tackles for loss in 12 games and 16 QB hurries for one of the nation's best defenses.
For his career, the senior defensive tackle had a school-record 64 1/2 tackles behind the line for scrimmage.
The uses of imperfection -- Scientists are 'harnessing inhomogeneities' in an effort to integrate nanoscale electronics devices with traditional silicon lithography
Dec. 1, 2003
Electronic Engineering Times
By staff report
© Copyright 2003
Forget the doomsayers' prediction of legions of nanobots wreaking havoc when it comes time for fabrication. Researchers in the nano trenches insist that molecular-scale devices will remain tethered tightly to existing silicon lithography for the foreseeable future.
Researchers nationwide participating in the current $850 million U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (and the upcoming $3.7 billion U.S. 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act) are studying all angles of nanoscale electronics and other nanobot "precursors" such as nanoelectromechanical devices. However, only the deepest research basements are attempting to reinvent silicon-manufacturing techniques and assemble nanoscale electronic devices from scratch. Scientists are looking for a meeting point between bottom-up nanoscale self-assembly steps and top-down silicon lithography steps.
One thing everyone agrees on is that achieving perfection at the nanoscale level is never going to happen. Approaches to dealing with the inherent imperfection of the nano-to-micro interface fall into two camps: render imperfection transparent through redundancy and error correction, or embrace-even harness-imperfection through self- organized maps and exotic materials.
"What Hewlett-Packard Labs and Caltech, for instance, are doing to solve the problem is use a smart demultiplexing scheme to reduce the number of I/O lines to something manageable," said professor James Tour at Rice University (Houston). "Say you only have to address four lines to reach 100 crossings in a crossbar switch- that's pretty good."
Tour posited a situation where "you could have a row of lines coming out at a pitch of 10 nanometers, and not all of them will be good." A solution might be to adopt the tactics used by a hard-disk drive, which "maps around bad blocks on the disk," he said. "There are a lot of smart people in industry thinking about this."
With the semiconductor industry panting over the possibilities inherent in extending the micron-scale chip into the nanoscale realm with smart demultiplexing and error correction, you'd think harebrained ideas about "harnessing inhomogeneities" would be on the back burner. You would be wrong, however. Tour's group at Rice University, for instance, is exploring "nanocells" (see www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20031031S0022) that handle imperfections, even defects, by mapping around them.
"What we are doing with our nanocell is at the other extreme from perfection," Tour said. "We expect there to be inhomogeneities. What we are saying is that we are going to have a plethora of nanoscale devices on-chip, and we are not going to worry about where they are or how they work; instead, we will just use voltage pulses to program them to do what we want them to do." Tour said that "there are a lot of different ways to get around inhomogeneity. Our nanocell can handle a ton of it. Hewlett-Packard's crossbar can deal with about 3 percent faults, but 4 percent is much harder."
Whether you are for or against perfection at the nanoscale, you will find yourself in good company.
"Both sides have their advocates, but we really don't have enough data to really make a declaration as to what degree of perfection we are dealing with yet," said professor Chris Gorman, one of 11 nanotechnology researchers at North Carolina State University. "We don't even yet know how reliably a single-molecule device will work, even if it is perfectly synthesized and assembled. We may have to use small collections of molecules, but it's too early to tell."
And that is the crux of the problem: A nanometer is the size of a molecule-about four or five atoms. Hence, at the extreme small end of the nanoscale, individual molecules are proposed as the information carriers. But how can molecules store information? In the imagined world of runaway nanobots, the solutions to such problems are simple and obvious-molecules represent ones and zeroes by simply changing state electrically, magnetically or even by altering shape. In the real world of silicon lithography, however, single molecules may not prove reliable enough to be trusted with our bank balances-at least not without transparent error correction.
'Unsolved issues' To gauge how much trust to impart to individual molecules, Gorman's three-year study for the National Science Foundation's National Interdisciplinary Research Team program will attempt to connect microscale devices to individual molecules, right down to the holy grail-a three-terminal, single-molecule transistor. Characterizing the reliability and switching capabilities of molecular devices in general is Gorman's goal, rather than proving the concept, which researchers have already done many times. In short, Gorman's task for NSF is to characterize molecular devices well enough so that industrial researchers can determine how best to pick up the baton.
As the National Science Foundation points out: "This type of research will ultimately be performed by corporate research and development, but at NSF we believe that there are fundamental, unsolved issues that must be addressed before such entities can assume the risk of such research."
What this means to electrical engineers today is that researchers don't yet even know if molecular-size devices are best-suited for encoding information in digital, analog or some other form, like the "qubits" used by quantum dots. Many different molecules are capable of switching digitally, but Gorman at North Carolina State plans to characterize their reliability as well as measure the analog capabilities of single molecules-such as amplification. "We want to demonstrate gain, and we are hoping to change the charge state of a molecule in order to achieve amplification," Gorman said.
Funded to the tune of $1.3 million, his three-year study, "Hierarchical Assembly of Interconnects for Molecular Electronics," will approach the nanoscale-to-microscale interface by attempting a "perfect," albeit self-assembled, array of nanoscale transistors on an otherwise lithographically patterned silicon wafer. The process is called orthogonal self-assembly.
"The orthogonal self-assembly principle has been out there as an idea for quite a while, but it's never been tested in this sort of way," Gorman said. "We want to test how robustly orthogonal self- assembly can allow us to put a molecule in the right place, in the right orientation."
The main idea that Gorman professes to be testing is no less than whether orthogonal self-assembly, as a fusion of top-down and bottom- up fabrication approaches, will solve the nano-to-micro interface problem.
"Self-assembly represents the bottom-up approach, and the conventional silicon and metal lithography represents the top-down approach. We are going to try and figure out what proportion of each seems to be a good first solution, and if we can establish some rules, then that will open up a lot of ground for optimization," Gorman said.
Quantum dots Meanwhile, other researchers think engineers must give up traditional digital-vs.-analog thinking altogether, and instead embrace the inherent quantum nature of the nanoscale. By confining information carriers to less than the scale of a molecule, the inherent quantum-mechanical quantities dominate its behavior, for instance, the qubits of quantum dots. The extremely small size of quantum dots-typically 1 to 10 nanometers-plus their floating-gate architecture make them a natural for fabricating in selected areas of pre-patterned silicon wafers. One such project, also funded by the National Science Foundation at $1.2 million for three years, is in progress at the University of Texas (Austin).
"To bridge the gap between traditional lithography and quantum dots will take a little bit of everything," said professor Sanjee Banerjee at the University of Texas. "One approach we are trying is not to use lithography to form the quantum dot, but instead to use spatially ordered self-assembly." The group, Banerjee said, is developing "a novel lithography technique, called imprint lithography, using a glass template-wherever there are dimples on the template, that's where holes on the wafer will form, hopefully allowing quantum dots to nucleate more uniformly in terms of size and spatial location."
'Get what we want' Banerjee's NSF research project, "Spatially Ordered Self- Assembled Quantum-Dot Gate Low-Voltage/Power, High-Speed Nanoscale Flash Memories," will attempt to pre-pattern wafers with lithography, while leaving areas for later fabrication of quantum dots. "There is still a kind of randomness to the size and placement of the quantum dots, so what we do is make sure that there is enough room for many, perhaps hundreds or thousands, of dots. We still don't know exactly where they are, but on average we can get what we want," Banerjee said.
Schemes attempting to assign molecular-size devices to designated areas of a chip, perhaps using thousands of molecules to represent a single bit, are called "CMOS with afterburners."
"I think something called 'CMOS with afterburners' will bridge the gap to the nanoscale first," said Rice University's Tour. "That's the idea that you use molecules to store your states, because it has already been demonstrated that you can store molecular states for as long as 15 minutes or longer without refreshing-making it competitive with flash."
Rugged Molecules that Remember
Dec. 1, 2003
Chemical and Engineering News
By Louisa Dalton, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Chemical and Engineering News.
Porphyrin molecules created for data storage are remarkably hardy, holding up under the high temperatures and trillions of read-write cycles required of current silicon-based technology, says David F. Bocian, chemistry professor at the University of California, Riverside [Science, 302, 1543 (2003)].
Molecular computing, Bocian says, may supplement or replace semiconductor technology that, limited by the physics of silicon, is rapidly reaching its limit in terms of compactness and efficiency.
Bocian collaborated with Jonathan S. Lindsey, a chemist at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, and others to create silicon-tethered porphyrins, both individual and stacked molecules. Porphyrins are proven players in data storage, Bocian says. In nature, cytochrome porphyrins, for example, form -cation radicals at relatively low potentials, allowing multiple stabilized redox states. This ability expedites information flow in and out of the molecule. Porphyrins' potential for multibit information storage and their low power consumption make them attractive candidates for computer memory chips.
But "the first question that anyone in the computer chip fabrication plant will ask you is about stability under high temperatures," Bocian says. So he and Lindsey baked the porphyrins for up to an hour at 400 °C. Most organic molecules fall apart in such heat, but the porphyrins worked just as well as before heating. In addition, the scientists ran the porphyrins through a battery of endurance tests. They cycled the molecules through oxidation states (what would be required for storing and erasing data) up to 1 trillion times with no degradation.
This robustness suggests that porphyrin-based memory chips could be assembled in the same fabrication plants as silicon devices. This is a good "transition technology," Bocian says--one that perhaps could be used in hybrid semiconductor-molecular computer memories.
North Carolina Pest Control Association Awards Scholarships
Dec. 1, 2003
Pest Control Technology
By staff report
© Copyright 2003 Pest Control Technology.
DURHAM, N.C. – The North Carolina Pest Control Association has awarded two $1,500 scholarships to North Carolina State University students pursuing pest management concentrations.
Patricia McKeithan Alder, a master’s degree candidate in entomology, received the financial award to assist with her thesis work in comparative treatment strategies to control Argentine ants. Alder is currently the technical director for Clegg’s Termite and Pest Control. She attended Parkwood High School in Monroe N.C., Central Piedmont Community College and UNC-Charlotte, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in biology.
Patrick Rivenbark, a student at N.C. State’s Agriculture Institute, started his degree by taking classes in turfgrass and animal science, which led to courses in horticulture and pest management. He will graduate in December with majors in Business, Ornamental Plants, Turfgrass, Animal Science degrees in Poultry and Cattle and Urban and Agriculture Pest. Rivenbark plans to work in landscape management, while looking for new opportunities including those in the pest control industry.
New look at layered material lends insight to silicon
Dec. 1, 2003
Innovations Report
By staff report
© Copyright 2003 Innovations Report.
What they have learned may help traditional microelectronics remain vital to industry longer than most experts expect. It may even aid the design of other devices where one material meets another -- including medical implants.
Using computer simulation, the engineers demonstrated for the first time how a previously known means of creating thin films of materials – a process known as “snowplowing” -- actually works. The results suggest that snowplowing could be used in a new way to create high-quality electronics, said Wolfgang Windl, professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State.
They have also viewed -- again, for the first time -- a perfect interface between layers of the common semiconductor materials germanium and silicon dioxide. Known as an “atomically sharp” interface, such a perfect interface could be used to boost the speed of computer chips.
As computer chip makers continue to build more and more circuits onto every chip, traditional silicon electronics are quickly approaching a limit beyond which enhancements in speed and efficiency will no longer be possible, Windl explained.
Engineers across the industry are scrambling to develop new technologies that will be ready to replace silicon before that limit is reached. Windl’s research group is trying to buy them more time.
“Our goal is to keep traditional devices useful for a few more years,” he said. “We want to squeeze all we can out of the technology.”
The engineers combined materials data with computer simulation to gain new insight into atomic-level interactions at the interface between silicon and other materials.
Tao Liang, a doctoral student at Ohio State, presented the results in a poster session December 1 at the Materials Research Society meeting in Boston. Coauthors on the poster include engineers Sergei Lopatin and Gerd Duscher, both of North Carolina State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
This research grew out of a coincidence: Windl and Duscher grew up on the same street in Germany, and they recently ran into each other in the United States.
“We hadn’t seen each other since we were children,” Windl said, smiling. “When we discovered that we were working in similar areas, we knew we had to do something together.”
As a leading electron microscopist, Duscher could view and often identify individual atoms in materials, but he needed someone to interpret his data. Windl could provide that interpretation through his computer simulations, but he lacked the data to show whether his simulations reflected true material behavior.
“It was a match made in heaven,” Windl said.
At Oak Ridge, Duscher recently found 15-year-old materials samples that had been produced by colleague Dariush Fathy and co-workers, containing a layered structure of silicon, germanium and silicon dioxide. Since Windl and Duscher’s new collaboration included studying such samples, Duscher examined the structure with the electron microscope.
After comparing the data to their computer simulations, Windl and Duscher found to their surprise that the interface between the germanium and silicon dioxide was perfect down to the atom -- a condition known as “atomically sharp,” which to Windl’s knowledge had never been seen before in semiconductor devices.
Such an ideal interface is highly desirable, Windl explained, because it increases the speed of computer chips.
“Semiconductor companies have put considerable effort into making the interface as sharp as possible, without ever reaching the ultimate limit -- which unknowingly had existed for 15 years in a sample in a box in the corner of a lab at Oak Ridge,” Windl said.
After they used the data to develop accurate models of how silicon, oxygen, and germanium atoms interact, they also tried something else: they modeled “snowplowing,” a technique for creating a thin film of a material. This technique had been used to create the sample in the study.
Snowplowing exploits incompatibility between atoms, in this case between germanium and oxygen. Given a piece of material made of silicon and germanium, engineers add oxygen from the top, which penetrates into the material to form silicon dioxide. Since oxygen repels the germanium atoms, it literally pushes them down into the silicon. A layer of germanium becomes densely packed within the silicon, like a pile of snow ahead of a snowplow. Oxygen in turn cannot penetrate into the germanium pile, and so the separation between oxide and germanium becomes as sharp as possible, without any mixing around the interface.
One unexplained effect of snowplowing is that some germanium atoms escape the snowplow and emerge within the silicon dioxide.
The computer simulation clearly showed how this can happen. When the germanium atoms become too crowded in front of the snowplowing oxide layer, some atoms can’t fit, and they are left behind.
“It’s like they fall over the upper edge of the snow shovel,” Windl said.
The germanium in the oxide is in principle bad for the electronic properties of the material, but Windl suspects that chip manufacturers can now use this knowledge to create high-quality layered materials.
“They could just peel off the silicon dioxide layer, which has some germanium inclusions, and then put on a fresh layer of silicon dioxide that does not contain germanium,” he said.
Windl said engineers can use virtual tools like his models to test out new material “recipes” much more quickly than they could otherwise. From his days of creating computer models for electronics maker Motorola, Inc., Windl knows that a prototype material can take months to create, before testing can even begin. In contrast, a computer model can tell designers what they need to know in days or even hours.
That faster pace for innovation, plus the increased knowledge of material behavior at interfaces, could help electronics manufacturers get all the performance they can out of silicon chips, Windl said.
The same combination of modeling techniques and electron microscopy could also work for many other applications where material interfaces are important. One application would be medical implants, such as the titanium-coated joint replacements that contact bone in the body.
This research was funded by the Semiconductor Research Corp.
Bankruptcy filings rank Person No. 2 in N. C.
Dec. 2, 2003
The Courier Times
By Phyliss Boatwright, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The Courier Times.
Among North Carolina’s 100 counties, Person County currently ranks second to only one other county in the number of bankruptcy cases filed. Nearby Vance County holds the dubious number one spot.
In fact, said Person County Extension Office Family and Consumer Agent Bess Hester Whitt, most counties in the Extension district that includes Person rank in the top 20 for bankruptcy filings.
She said the discovery was made by Celvia Stovall, N.C. State University’s new associate professor of Family Resources Management, when Stovall was preparing to move to North Carolina from Tennessee.
Stovall’s discovery was not surprising, Hester Whitt said , given the unemployment rates and the amount of industry lost in the county within the past six years, coupled with the loss of tobacco acreage. Now, said Hester Whitt, the county is beginning to see a loss in service industry jobs as well.
“We’re really in tough shape,” she said. “I don’t remember the last time I picked up the paper and didn’t see a foreclosure.”
The Extension Service and other agencies that counsel consumers on credit say families should keep three to six months’ salary in savings, Hester Whitt said, but that is just not possible for many in the current economic environment.
Citing the closing of textile plants, suchas Tultex Yarns here, Hester Whitt said, laid-off textile workers “might have had a week’s salary in savings.” The reality, she said, is, “People are living at the verge of their means and not planning far enough ahead.”
And, that is not just Person County reality, she said, “It is typical all over.”
The Extension Service works to help people learn to budget and manage debt better, said Hester Whitt. Whereas six months’ salary in savings is unrealistic for most people, she said, Extension helps clients plan for putting back at least five or six weeks’ salary.
Also, she emphasized, “There are other options before bankruptcy.”
Even with bankruptcy filings, she said, there are ways to file that allow the consumer to pay off debts instead of giving up completely.
According to Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute, there are two types of bankruptcy proceedings. A filing under Chapter 7 of the federal code is called liquidation. It is the most common type of bankruptcy proceeding. Liquidation involves the appointment of a trustee who collects the non-exempt property of the debtor, sells it and distributes the proceeds to the creditors.
Bankruptcy proceedings under Chapters 11, 12, and 13 involve rehabilitation of debtors, allowing them to use future earnings to pay off creditors. Under Chapter 7, 12, 13, and some 11 proceedings, a trustee is appointed to supervise debtor assets.
A bankruptcy proceeding can either be entered into voluntarily by a debtor or initiated by creditors. After a bankruptcy proceeding is filed, creditors, for the most part, may not seek to collect their debts outside of the proceeding. The debtor is not allowed to transfer property that has been declared part of the estate subject to proceedings. Furthermore, certain pre-proceeding transfers of property, secured interests, and liens may be delayed or even invalidated.
The Extension office in Person County holds workshops to help people learn about managing credit and planning for a more secure future.
A “Dollars and Sense” session scheduled for January will feature a basic discussion on credit purchases, said Hester Whitt. She also plans a Financial Literacy Fair at Person High School in March for the entire senior class.
During such seminars offered by Extension, she said, attendees are cautioned to get copies of their tri-merge credit reports in order to make sure that the information the three major credit reporting agencies have on file is correct.
Basic budgeting and setting financial goals are also important, said Hester Whitt. Families need to make sure their goals are achievable without taking on excess debt.
Hester Whitt’s first bit of advice for financial management, she said, is to keep records so that everyone in the family knows where money is being spent. She said the University of Utah has a program, Power Pay, that helps families track their money and learn how to reduce debt. That program is also being used by the Extension Service here.
That program and others like it help families and individuals learn to pay off the highest-interest debts first, then apply that payment to the next highest-interest debt and so forth until debt is reduced.
She said the aim of Extension offices is to “help people before they’re in the panic mode,” so that when they do find themselves laid off or in financial trouble, “it’s not so catastrophic.”
With Christmas coming, Hester Whitt offered some final advice: “There are things you can do for others that don’t cost money, like offering to baby-sit, wash the car or cook dinner.”
She also advised shopping with a list and stick to a budget so as not to “let emotions run away — because when the first of the year gets here and the credit card bills come in, it can be a shock.”