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World Trade Center North Carolina announces new leaders
The Raleigh-based World Trade Center North Carolina on Monday announced that it has named a new executive director and chair of the board.
UNC targets
teacher scarcity
Training may net campus rewards
Man arrested
for shooting outside Raleigh movie theater
U.S. Marshals have arrested a man suspected of murdering another man outside
a Raleigh multiplex theater on Saturday night.
Letter
to the Editor: That dangerous?
I read your Dec. 6 story ("Arrest justified, feds say") about John
Candler's arrest and impending deportation with great interest.
Letter
to the Editor: Nothing untoward
In response to articles concerning John Candler, the former N.C. State University
diving coach, I would like to present a side other than the description of
Candler as a sexual "predator."
On the
trail of robo-crabs
Thomas G. Wolcott, marine, earth and atmospheric sciences
UNC-Chapel
Hill Selling $128M New Money Revenue Bond Deal
The highly rated University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is selling about
$128 million of revenue bonds today as it funds a massive $1.3 billion construction
program.
Where
most see worms, Ikenberry sees a million dollars
Rhonda Sherman, biological and agricultural engineering
Genetic
Info Of Cloned Pigs May Help Babies Before Birth
Jorge Piedrahita, veterinary medicine
Local
benefits
Michael Walden, agricutural and resource economics
Video
game players get their say
Imagine buying the latest Lord of the Rings DVD and discovering that the cameras,
lights, special effects and editing tools used in its making had been included
at no extra charge.
States
battle for biotech business: North Carolina the latest to try to lure firms
from Mass.
They're as different as clam chowder and barbecue, but Massachusetts and North
Carolina have a showcase rivalry going in the state-by-state battle for biotechnology
business.
RightNow
Significantly Reduces Departmental Staff's Phone and Email Workloads
RightNow Technologies, a provider of hosted customer service and support solutions,
announced Fordham University has successfully implemented RightNow's award-winning
technology to give students immediate answers to their most common administrative
questions 24/7 via a web-based knowledge base.
Has
public policy become too public?
Even if a billion people embrace a foolish idea, it is still a foolish idea
World Trade Center North Carolina announces new leaders
Dec. 8, 2003
Triangle Business Journal
By staff writer
© Copyright 2003 American City Business Journals Inc.
The Raleigh-based World Trade Center North Carolina on Monday announced that it has named a new executive director and chair of the board.
The board hired Lawrence Lytle as executive director. Lytle most recently was president and chief executive officer of GlobeNet Technologies in Scottsdale, Ariz. He previously held senior marketing and business development positions with Nortel Networks, AT&T, and Hewlett-Packard.
Carol Conway, deputy director of the Southern Growth Policies Board, was appointed chair of the WTCNC. She takes over from Raleigh attorney William D. Harazin, who will serve as immediate past chair.
The not-for-profit WTCNC helps North Carolina companies reach new markets and customers around the world. The WTCNC, headquartered on North Carolina State University's Centennial Campus, is part of a worldwide network of more than 300 World Trade Centers affiliated with the New York City-based World Trade Centers Association.
"Exports currently account for about 8 percent of North Carolina's gross state product and roughly 300,000 export-related jobs" said Conway. "Southern Growth Policy Board research indicates that if North Carolina exported at the U.S. average rate, it would likely see $5.7 billion more in exports, and over 88,000 more good-paying jobs.
"The WTCNC plays an essential role realizing that untapped potential."
Dec. 9, 2003
The News & Observer
By Jane Stancill, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
CHAPEL HILL -- North Carolina needs nearly 12,000 new teachers every year, and UNC leaders want their campuses to produce more of them.
To do that, they're considering creating new targets for the 15 UNC system campuses that have education programs. They also may offer financial incentives to campuses that graduate more trained teachers.
These are a few possibilities under review by a UNC Board of Governors task force on teacher supply and demand. The group was formed several months ago to come up with solutions to the state's severe teacher shortage.
Expecting UNC campuses to produce a certain number of teachers each year would be a new approach, but task force members say it would ensure that teacher training is high on university agendas. Schools of education often suffer from lack of attention and money while universities focus on science initiatives or other areas, said Hannah Gage, a board member from Wilmington.
"Until we send out a message this has moved up the ladder," she said Monday, "it's not going to happen."
Each year, North Carolina needs 11,600 new teachers because of heavy teacher turnover, population increases and efforts to reduce class sizes. The state's teacher education programs produce 3,300 graduates annually -- 2,300 from the UNC system and about 1,000 from private colleges. Another 3,100 people from other professions go into teaching through lateral-entry programs at the universities.
But the gap is worse than the numbers indicate because some new graduates never get a teaching license, leave the state or go into nonteaching careers. And many beginning teachers don't stick with their jobs beyond the first two years.
During the state's teacher shortage, campuses that churn out more education graduates should be rewarded financially, Gage said. The UNC system could seek additional state funding for such an initiative, she said, and campus leaders also could reallocate money from other programs.
"The chancellors, provosts and deans have the flexibility to allocate the resources to make a lot of this happen," Gage said.
The task force is expected to send its recommendations to the full Board of Governors in February or March.
So far, about 25 proposals are under discussion. Among them: developing a statewide teacher recruiting campaign; marketing education programs and scholarships on the College Foundation of North Carolina Web site; providing high school guidance counselors with teacher scholarship information; expanding transfer programs between community colleges and universities; requiring campuses to have mentoring programs for teachers who are recent graduates; and recommending that the legislature allow retired teachers to return to the classroom for the short term for additional salary and benefits.
UNC leaders also are likely to encourage deans to make sure the entry requirements for teacher education programs aren't too stringent. Some campuses require students to have at least a 2.75 or 3.0 grade point average to enroll in education degree programs.
"There are standards and then there are barriers," said Richard Thompson, the UNC system's vice president for university-school programs.
Staff writer Jane Stancill can be reached at 956-2464.
Man arrested for shooting outside Raleigh movie theater
Dec. 8, 2003
Associated Press; News 14 Carolina; WSOCtv.com, NC
By AP staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Associated Press
U.S. Marshals have arrested a man suspected of murdering another man outside a Raleigh multiplex theater on Saturday night.
Marshals from the Fugitive Task Force captured Nathaniel Reed Mabry, 25, in South Hill, Virginia early Sunday morning. He allegedly shot and killed Charlie Greene, Jr., 36, in the parking lot of the Blue Ridge 14 Cinema.
The theater shows second-run movies and is a favorite among students at nearby N.C. State University.
Police haven't yet disclosed possible motives.
Letter to the Editor: That dangerous?
Dec. 9, 2003
The News & Observer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
I read your Dec. 6 story ("Arrest justified, feds say") about John Candler's arrest and impending deportation with great interest. I would like to know the actual facts of the two acts he is allegedly guilty of so I can compare his negative impact on society with terrorists, drug dealers, prostitutes, criminals and others, some of whom are in our country illegally.
Regardless of the fact that he spent his life teaching aquatic sports and helping our youth, I am assuredly safer now that the federal government has him in custody facing deportation. I am also happy to know that when he is put on the plane, he does not have to worry about the airport cleaning crews.
Dale Whitfield
Wake Forest
Letter to the Editor: Nothing untoward
Dec. 9, 2003
The News & Observer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
In response to articles concerning John Candler, the former N.C. State University diving coach, I would like to present a side other than the description of Candler as a sexual "predator."
My son was on Candler's USA Diving team from 1991-1995. Many young girls and boys were on that team, spending many hours each week all year long together. At no time did Candler demonstrate any deviant tendencies that would ever cause one to question his behavior toward young people.
In all those years, there was never any encounter that we or our son witnessed. Whatever Candler did regarding the incidents for which he was charged, I do not have any knowledge, other than that the one from 1985 was not kept secret from us. I am not writing in defense of the two particular cases, but rather in defense of him as being labeled a threat to the community and a predator. He does not deserve that.
Jeannie Zuburg
Raleigh
I.B.M. Set to Unveil Chip-Making Advance
Dec. 8, 2003
New York (NY) Times
By BARNABY J. FEDER, staff report
© Copyright 2003
I.B.M. plans today to describe successful efforts to create silicon memory chips using a new nanoscale manufacturing technique.
The technique uses a template provided by a plastic polymer that organizes itself naturally. The approach has enabled I.B.M. researchers to create chips with memory cells just 20 nanometers in diameter and 40 nanometers apart. A nanometer, one-billionth of a meter, is the scale by which individual molecules are measured.
I.B.M. has shown that one application of the technology could be to design flash memory chips with cells roughly 1/100th the size of the cells currently required to store a piece of data. That could allow, for example, each element of a data entry to be duplicated 100 times, without enlarging the overall memory device, which would make data more secure, I.B.M. said.
Flash memory devices retain data when the power is activated. But as memory devices have shrunk, it has become a challenge to keep the electrical charges that represent stored data from leaking away.
More broadly, I.B.M. said, the successful research suggests that polymer-based "self-assembly" techniques could be used to build other kinds of microchips in the future, when more features shrink to such small scales that current production techniques become impractical. Many of the tools to manipulate the polymers are already widely used in the chip-making industry.
The report by I.B.M. is one of many advances scheduled to be discussed at the annual meeting sponsored by the Electron Devices Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which runs from today through Wednesday in Washington. The meeting is a leading venue for reporting research that is expected to have a commercial impact in the next three to 10 years.
New memory chip designs and materials will be a major focus of this year's meeting, according to Gary Dagastine, a spokesman for the conference. In addition to I.B.M.'s paper focusing on ways to improve traditional memory technology, Motorola is set to report progress in shrinking magnetoresistive random access memory - or MRAM, which is a particularly energy-efficient memory design that, like flash memory, preserves data when power is turned off.
Intel and Macronix plan to report on progress in memory devices based on chalcogenide, an inexpensive inorganic compound used in CD's and DVD's that can be rewritten. North Carolina State University researchers are expected to describe a hybrid organic/inorganic memory.
Methods for stretching silicon crystals to improve microprocessor performance and the integration of sensing and communications capabilities with computer processing are, as in past years, hot topics. And germanium, which is more expensive than silicon but better suited for making high-speed transistors, is gaining more attention this year, Mr. Dagastine said.
Dec. 8, 2003
Ft. Lauderdale (FL) Sun-Sentinel; Baltimore (MD) Sun
By Howard Libit
© Copyright 2003 Baltimore Sun
What do you call an adult female crustacean with a tiny computer strapped to its back?
Robo-crab.
Scientists hope the backpack-toting animals will provide crucial insights into the life cycle of the Chesapeake Bay's female blue crabs and a boost to a population struggling to rebound after decades of overharvesting.
Specifically, the robo-crabs are answering what seem like two simple questions: After female crabs mate in the upper Chesapeake Bay, when do they start heading south? And how do they travel?
Finding that information - which could lead to adjustments in fishing sanctuaries for spawning females - has required more than a bit of creativity: The live, adult females are transformed into robo-crabs by strapping miniature computers to their backs. The 4-centimeter devices, built in a lab at North Carolina State University, contain instruments that record such data as water temperature, salinity and depth.
That's what happens every six minutes as the females make the long journey from the mating waters of Maryland to the spawning grounds of Virginia.
"With just $30 of parts, we can collect a wealth of information," said Thomas G. Wolcott, a professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State. "We can take the data and basically re-create the path they take as they migrate down the bay."
The robo-crabs - a term Wolcott disavows but was coined by other scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration - represent something of a technical compromise between the two most common methods of tracking animals.
Most of the time, scientists fix simple identifying tags to hundreds of animals, and the tags are returned when the animals are caught. Scientists rely on fishermen to record where they tags were recovered, and usually offer a few bucks for each tag to make it worthwhile for the fishermen. It's a low-cost, low-tech way to track population movement and size with three pieces of information: where the animal was released, where it was caught and how long it was loose.
For minute-by-minute records of animal activities, scientists use radio tracking devices, a process known as biotelemetry. But the gadgets are expensive, and for small marine animals, scientists often have to stay nearby on boats to keep a running log of data. Larger, more powerful transmitters that send data through satellites aren't feasible for most crab experiments.
Enter Wolcott, who fancies himself a "gadgeteer" and studies animal behavior and interaction with his wife, Donna, also a professor at North Carolina State. He decided to invent something between those extremes specifically for blue crabs.
"It's call the focal animal approach," Wolcott said. "We got lots of information from a few individuals to find out what they're actually doing."
Scientists knew that after reaching maturity, crabs typically mate in the upper bay. Then the females travel south into the spawning grounds along Virginia. Having only one partner, they store the sperm and use it over and over to produce batches of fertilized eggs, sometimes for three years or more.
But researchers wanted to know more about the migration. Do the crabs make the journey all in one year, or stop to "winter" in the bay by burying themselves in the mud? How do crabs travel - by crawling along the bottom or rising up during ebb tides to catch an easy, floating ride toward the mouth of the bay?
And, perhaps most significantly, what path do the crabs tend to follow? Advances in technology during the past two decades have enabled watermen to target more females in deeper waters. Knowing where the crabs travel is crucial infomration for establishing sanctuaries to protect the migrating females from harvest just as they're about to reproduce.
About 150 mature female crabs were collected each year. Walcott's devices - which he calls dataloggers - were then attached to the crabs' backs. Last year, Wolcott used wire to bind the dataloggers to the crabs' lateral spines, but he switched to nylon cable ties this year because they were easier to manipulate. The crabs were then released along the east and west sides of the bay near Annapolis.
While it's under water, the datalogger - which has a real-time clock - takes a reading every six minutes. First, it determines whether the water is warm enough for the crab to be active - at least 10 degrees Celsius, or about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Whenever the temperature is right, the datalogger polls its other measuring devices. For salinity, it relies on a small circuit to check electrical conductivity - water with higher salinity conducts more easily. Depth is checked by testing water pressure.
Because global satellite positioning equipment doesn't work underwater, Wolcott says, he uses the other data as a rough substitute to track a crab's path.
Higher salinity means a crab has traveled down the bay toward the ocean, while shifts in depth and temperature correlate with different areas of the bay. Federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey, regularly record data from buoys and trawls through the bay, which allows scientists to map shifting conditions to the data recorded by a crab's computer.
When a crab is caught, its bright pink backpack provides the waterman with information for sending it back to the scientists, who pay $25 for each device.
"We had about 30 percent come back in the first year, which is a really high number for a tagging experiment," said Derek M. Orner, a fishery biologist at the NOAA's Chesapeake Bay Office. "A reward of $25 and a hat makes a difference."
Early data suggest that the crabs simply walk down the bay, spending the vast majority of their time along the bottom in the deepest channel, Wolcott said.
But there are still many crabs to be accounted far. All of the captured crabs have been returned within a few weeks of release, and Walcott is hoping that watermen will find some that have been released for six months or more and reached Virginia waters. The datalogger batteries can last at least a year, and there's enough memory to save more than 16,000 readings.
This spring, Walcott says he hopes to expand the experiment to Virginia waters .
"Females used to be relatively immune to the fishery, but now, when you have things like hydraulic pot pullers that can help capture crabs at 70 feet or more, they're being targeted," Wolcott said. "If we want to maintain a sustainable fishery, we really need to learn more about how the females live and how they migrate."
UNC-Chapel Hill Selling $128M New Money Revenue Bond Deal
Dec. 9, 2003
The Bond Buyer
By Tedra DeSue, staff reporter
© Copyright 2003 Thomson Media
The highly rated University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is selling about $128 million of revenue bonds today as it funds a massive $1.3 billion construction program.
The bonds will be sold through a negotiated offering with Banc of America Securities as book-runner and Prager, Sealy & Co. as financial adviser. The deal has been rated AA-plus by Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's, and Aa1 by Moody's Investors Service. All three agencies carry a stable outlook on the credit.
The deal is structured as fixed-rate with level amortization. It has serials maturing in 20 years and term bonds for the years 2028 and 2033. Proceeds will be used to fund several construction projects and take out about $39 million of outstanding commercial paper notes sold in 2002. Those notes were sold as part of a unique offering that teamed the UNC at Chapel Hill with North Carolina State University. For that deal, UNC basically lent its liquidity support to N.C. State to help that school better access the capital markets. Issuing commercial paper allows both schools to cover their bridge financing needs with lower-cost, short-term bonds instead of with individual bond issues or bank loans. Keeping borrowing costs to a minimum is important for Chapel Hill, as it is in the midst of a 10-year capital improvement program. To fund it, roughly $665 million of debt could be issued, with the next sizable long- term issue hitting the market in 2005. At that time, about $250 million of bonds could be sold. Between now and then, university officials are also considering selling more commercial paper.
Standard & Poor's analyst Joanne Ferryman said the university's credit strengths include its lead position in the state's funding hierarchy for higher education and its historically strong levels of state support. Fitch analyst Pam Clayton pointed out that state funding also presents a credit concern, because the state is holding off on releasing 2% of its appropriations to the school as it tries to maintain budget balance. State appropriations represent 24% of Chapel Hill's revenues.
Clayton added that whatever funding does not come through from the state might have to be made up by tapping reserves, holding fundraisers, and issuing more debt. Also, some of the planned construction projects might have to be eliminated.
Moody's analyst Elizabeth Veasey added that UNC's ability to draw on a variety of revenue sources is a positive credit factor because it makes the university less vulnerable to sudden reductions from any one source. To that end, she said preserving credit quality hinges on the school maintaining growth in its financial resource base, which should continue to provide a solid foundation for its debt burden.
Where most see worms, Ikenberry sees a million dollars
Dec. 8, 2003
Kansas City (MO) Star; St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press; Biloxi Sun Herald, MS; Centre Daily Times, PA
By Shera Dalin, staff report
© Copyright 2003 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS, Mo. - Doug Ikenberry believes he has buckets and buckets of black gold stacked away in a Valmeyer cave.
Ikenberry, 56, owner of jbs Organic Products at the Rock City Business Complex in Valmeyer, is a worm herder. The St. Louis County man has some 12,000 American night crawlers churning away in buckets turning worm food - a special mixture of peat and grains - into black manure he sells as organic fertilizer.
Ikenberry is growing the worms for their guano, or castings, which is manure. He bags the coffee ground-like castings into Wiggle Worm Soil Builder brand organic fertilizer to wholesale to garden centers.
At the same time, Ikenberry, who's also a financial services salesman, is trying to give retailers all the poop about the benefits of worm castings so they'll carry the product.
"My passion - my goal - is to get the castings or manure out. It is a tremendous product," Ikenberry said. "I'm not a wild tree hugger, but there is no negative environmental impact" from castings.
Ikenberry is projecting that within 18 months he'll have revenue of $1 million from castings and worms.
Although there are worm herders in every state, they are concentrated on the West Coast because of the mild climate and the openness to organic farming, said Rhonda L. Sherman, extension solid waste specialist at North Carolina State University and an admitted "Worm Queen." ("I actually got elevated to Worm Goddess," she joked.) No one knows how big the U.S. vermiculture, or worm growing, market is because there is no industry trade group and growers are a secretive lot, said Sherman.
But experts agree it is an emerging sector. The use of castings is huge overseas, Sherman said.
"I literally hear from people from all over the world: India, Russia, Cuba, Costa Rica, Mexico, Europe, Australia.
"People are using it to treat human sewage or animal manure, and it's a cheap way of having a soil amendment," she said.
Commercial landscapers and organic vegetable growers who don't want to use chemicals to boost their yields also are good potential markets, according to experts.
"We have decades of research to show that the results are startling," said Peter Bogdanov, director of VermiCo of Grants Pass, Ore. The company publishes a newsletter and provides information on vermiculture.
Researchers in Australia have documented a 25 percent increase in yield from cherry trees supplemented with worm castings and a 35 percent boost in yield from grapevines. Plus, the yields remained elevated for two to three years after the castings were applied, Bogdanov said.
Research from Ohio State University shows that greenhouses can coax an extra flowering period plus more blooms out of marigolds augmented with worm manure, he said.
"The bad news is nobody knows about it, and the good news is that those who do will completely take over the supply pipeline," Bogdanov said.
Ikenberry, who started his business in February, said he got into the market because of the castings.
"It's an amazing, amazing thing," he said, adding, "They (the worms) are hard to train."
Ikenberry wasn't laughing when 11,500 night crawlers arrived on his doorstep via UPS earlier this year.
He ordered the wigglers from another worm farmer with two decades of experience who coached him through the startup. Ikenberry had been living in an apartment but bought a house with an unfinished basement in south St. Louis County to launch his operation.
He set up black plastic buckets filled with 250 worms each and the mixture of peat and grains to feed his herd, or squiggle as he calls them. He gets 40 tons of peat at a time trucked in from Wisconsin.
Every two weeks, Ikenberry dumps out the buckets on a three-level screen that separates the worms from the peat and from the castings. He estimates that 250 night crawlers will produce one pound of castings every seven days.
Ikenberry started looking for new digs when his worm farm outgrew his basement. That's how he found the Rock City Business Complex, a former rock quarry converted into an underground industrial park.
Its millions of square feet of available space, low lease prices and - best of all - constant temperature of around 60 degrees, led Ikenberry last month to load up his SUV and move the worm farm to the 4,800-square-foot facility at Rock City.
Worms need a constant temperature of about 70 degrees to be productive - in castings and baby worms. Too cold? They quit moving around and babies and castings are scarce, Ikenberry said.
By setting up crop in a cave, Ikenberry will save about 30 percent on utilities and doesn't have to worry about temperature extremes killing off his herd.
He has hired two high school students part-time to help him harvest the castings and bag them in 4 1/2-, 15- and 30-pound sacks emblazoned with a smiling worm sporting overalls and a hoe.
He harvests about four tons of castings a month; his goal is to reach 40 tons a month.
The hard part is persuading nursery owners to sell Wiggle Worm Soil Builder, Ikenberry said.
"Right now, sales are dear. I'm trying to show that this is different," he said. "Nature has taken a million years to figure this out and it works."
Ikenberry figures his best customers will be organic growers and gardeners.
Worm castings are ideal because they have no smell and aren't toxic to the environment, Ikenberry said.
"You can drink it and it won't hurt you," he said, after gulping down a couple of mouthfuls of castings mixed with bottled water to demonstrate. "Tastes like dirt."
The popularity of vermiculture ebbs and flows every couple of decades, said Sherman.
"Worm farming was big in the '70s. It was a fad" that eventually petered out.
In the mid-'90s, interest surged in vermiculture again. "But it was a pyramid scheme," she said. "It gave worm farming a black eye and the federal government had to shut some of it down."
Several unscrupulous companies offered prospective worm farmers a buy-back plan, she said. The companies would sell farmers starter worms, typically available for $15 a pound, for $100 a pound and then offer to buy back the mature worms to sell to customers such as bait shops. But some companies didn't buy back the worms and some worm farmers went bankrupt.
These days, there is definitely a market for castings and less of one for mature worms, said Gary R. Bachman, an assistant professor of horticulture at Illinois State University in Normal, who is studying the use of worm castings.
"The public may be the important sector in this whole deal. It may be easier to use in the home market," he said. "I can see people going to the market and buying a big bag of worm poop."
U.S. commercial growers are waiting to see more research on castings before they start using it widely, Bachman said.
"If a greenhouse grower has 5,000 poinsettias, you better believe they aren't going to take any chances of that crop failing. They watch every penny - every tenth of a penny," he said.
Genetic Info Of Cloned Pigs May Help Babies Before Birth
Dec. 8, 2003
Science Daily
By staff report
© Copyright 2003
The birth of the first cloned animals in North Carolina may soon lead to advances in animal and human health, particularly the prevention of intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR).
Dr. Jorge Piedrahita and a team of researchers at North Carolina State University's College of Veterinary Medicine have successfully cloned a Duroc pig. The resulting two piglets were recently weaned and are in excellent health. The births themselves are not particularly remarkable for Piedrahita, since he has cloned animals in previous research projects – it's the benefits to animal and human health that are noteworthy.
Piedrahita is investigating instances of damage to genes during cloning, damage that can also occur naturally. "The cloning work we did here with pigs showed us that certain genes were dis-regulated or damaged and it showed us that some of those genes – so called imprinted genes – could be important to fetal development. We looked to see if some of the affected genes were imprinted in humans," Piedrahita said. It turns out that Piedrahita's group discovered two new imprinted genes that have never been reported before.
The implications are far reaching. "What all of this is telling us is that the mechanisms that are dis-regulating genes in the pigs can be translated to what is happening in humans," Piedrahita said. Researchers tested the top 42 genes affected by imprinting in pigs and discovered that all 42 of those genes are also expressed in human placentas.
IUGR is a condition that affects between five and eight percent of all human births in the United States and results in low birth-weight. "These children then have a high predisposition to a host of other illnesses and diseases -- coronary heart diseases, hypertension and diabetes. It's a far-reaching problem and there is really no clear understanding of why this happens," Piedrahita said.
Piedrahita's lab analyzed the genes of the pigs and came up with a list of candidate genes that appeared important to fetal development. "When we looked at the candidate genes, it was obvious looking at the top ten genes that the ones that were coming up were known imprinted genes," Piedrahita.
Piedrahita has established partnerships with Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill to investigate a possible human health connection. Researchers there will provide normal placental material that will be compared to that of genetic material know to have IUGR. That will help determine if the two newly discovered genes are involved in IUGR.
"We're looking for clinical markers. We're going to study these candidate genes very carefully, with the hope that we can identify clinical markers that the doctors can actually use to predict which patients are susceptible to having a baby with IUGR," he said.
"If you happen to know that the woman is susceptible to IUGR, you could intervene early in gestation to try and increase the nutritional level of that fetus. The problem is that IUGR is usually diagnosed later in the pregnancy, and by then your options are limited, so this would allow the patient to know her child is at risk and allow the doctor to intervene very early in the pregnancy – before IUGR would normally be diagnosed." he said.
While Piedrahita's lab will soon have another litter of cloned pigs, he says his aim is not to produce a large number of cloned animals. "Cloning is not just about making an identical animal, it is about generating a tremendous amount genetic information that can aid not only animal medicine but also human medicine," he said.
Dec. 8, 2003
Clarion-Ledger (Jackson,MS)
By staff report
© Copyright 2003
When Congress returns today, it is expected to take up debate on the temporary extended unemployment compensation program that is set to expire Dec. 27.
The federal program --- extended twice from expirations on Dec. 28, 2002, and May 31 --- allows eligible unemployed workers to draw 13 additional weeks of unemployment benefits after the 26 weeks of regular state unemployment benefits.
Laid-off Mississippi workers can apply for benefits at the unemployment insurance offices located in WIN Job Centers throughout the state. For a printable directory of WIN Job Centers, go online to www.mesc.state. ms.us, or call 1-800-222-8035.
When free trade affects the livelihood of U.S. workers, a capitalist government exhibits socialist tendencies. Globalization may cost the United States about 1 million manufacturing jobs each year, but laid-off workers are offered a relative bounty.
Unlike employees who lose jobs because of a slumping economy or bad decisions by executives, workers sacrificed to global bartering typically are eligible for 18 months to 24 months of unemployment pay. They also get tuition and books for education and retraining.
It's payback for being uprooted by trade decisions that benefit society as a whole.
North Carolina State University economics professor Michael Walden estimates that apparel imports save U.S. consumers a minimum of $19 billion annually. In return, Washington provides a benefits package that costs taxpayers about $1.2 billion each year.
In North Carolina's Rowan and Cabarrus counties, where 3,688 residents lost their textile jobs on July 31, laid-off workers were given access to trade schools and community colleges, food banks and YMCAs, job counselors and social workers.
More than 800 former textile workers have signed up for classes at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College. Another 1,200 are expected to enroll within the next year, swelling the student body by 50 percent.
Some ex-workers are getting their GED or learning English as a second language. Others are taking classes in business administration, office technician work, truck driving or child day-care.
Job losses tracked to free trade can make for wonderful opportunities, a "metamorphosis of sorts," according to the gospel-style lecturing of career counselor Johnny Worthy of the Urban League of the Central Carolinas.
"Yes, it is a terrible thing that they are sending our jobs across the water, but you have got to look at what you have to work with --- which is a lot," Worthy recently told a dozen laid-off textile workers in Kannapolis. "Cultivate the potential. This could be the best thing that ever happened to you. ... Take advantage of this situation."
Many of the laid-off workers are making the best of the situation. Herman Fisher lost his $10.25-per-hour job when Pillowtex Corp., a sheet and towel maker bankrupted by imports, closed in July. Today, Fisher is going to college and chasing a dream.
Fisher, 46, is a former Army medic who has long wanted to work as a medical technician. His tuition, books and even his book bag are paid for today by taxpayers.
And as long as he stays in school, he will draw 104 weeks of unemployment pay --- about 78 weeks more than a worker whose job loss can't be blamed on foreign trade.
"I just want to get my foot in the door" of a hospital, Fisher said. "It's been a long time since I worked anywhere that you can advance. Do those jobs still exist?"
Video game players get their say
Dec. 8, 2003
International Herald Tribune; CNNMoney (NY,NY)
By Michel Marriott
© Copyright 2003
Imagine buying the latest Lord of the Rings DVD and discovering that the cameras, lights, special effects and editing tools used in its making had been included at no extra charge. Or finding your favorite CD's crammed with virtual recording studios, along with implicit encouragement from the producer to remix the music, record your own material and post it all on the Internet.
It might seem far-fetched except to computer game developers. For years, players have found ways to hack into the digital DNA, the primary computer code that operates some of their favorite games, and alter its rules. Consequently, weapons can be made more lethal, explosions flashier and more thunderous. And game characters can acquire godlike invulnerability or have their steely-eyed glares swapped for the hapless glaze of, say, a Homer Simpson.
In recent years, players dedicated to modifying store-bought computer games have morphed into an underground movement mod makers, as they often call themselves. Now they are showing signs of breaking into the mainstream as game developers are increasingly willing to give away the very software tools they use to construct the games, including them on the disc with the game itself.
As a result, working alone or in teams, the mod makers are spending hundreds of hours tweaking or completely redrawing popular games to be played on their own terms. The payoff is fun and bragging rights, and just maybe a career in the multibillion-dollar electronic game industry.
Those various motivations drew hundreds of mod makers to a game company's weekend seminar at North Carolina State University on the finer points of animation and building virtual worlds, allowing them to compare notes on poly modeling and the intricacies of static mesh.
I've been wanting to make video games ever since I was 9 years old, said Dan Jones, 23, who drove 17 hours from Siloam Springs, Arkansas, to be at the seminar. He said that when his grade-school classmates were doodling comic-book heroes, he was sketching side- scrolling video-game environments inspired by Nintendo's Mario Brothers.
Jones, a recent graduate of John Brown University in Siloam Springs, where he majored in digital media, is working with two friends to build a medieval third-person action game. His path as a mod maker, Jones said during a lunch break, was inevitable: There are a lot of creative people who have grown up playing video games and stuff. You kind of want to make what you already know.
Another mod maker, Maegan Walling, 26, added, People are taking the tools that someone else made and using them as sort of a paintbrush to define their own canvas. Walling joined friends and classmates from Full Sail Real World Education, a multimedia training center in Winter Park, Florida, for a road trip to Raleigh. They are really, really expressing their own creativity and defining the ideal environment for their own game play, she said. I would go as far to say that it is an art.
Whether mods are art is debatable. But a group of major computer- game makers agree that mods are good for the industry. For one thing, they create a rich secondary market for aging games being bought for raw materials. And some designers say that game makers can inspire loyalty, and sales, by creating games that remain fresh by lending themselves to modification or even serving as the basis for entirely different games.
One company in particular, Epic Games the co-producer of Unreal Tournament, the best-selling first-person-shooter franchise that is a favorite among mod makers is flinging open its doors to modifications and complete game makeovers called conversions.
And some mod makers, like Blake Politeski, are making names for themselves with downloadable hit mods like his Infection, a horror and survival game that was built out of Unreal but evokes both the creepiness of the long-running video-game series Resident Evil and Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio play.
Another mod that has thousands of people frantically mouse- clicking is Red Orchestra, a lavishly rendered game that places players at the Russian front of World War II. Using Unreal's core 3- D graphics program, which is called a game engine, the 50 or so mod makers have meticulously replaced Unreal's futuristic combat elements of particle-beam rifles and space stations with period- perfect rifles and the bombed-out towns of the 1940's.
The ultimate goal of Red Orchestra is to create something unique to the average gamer and, at the same time, something visually delightful and fun, said Jeremy Blum, a 16-year-old from North Castle, New York, who is part of the mod's self-assembled development team.
Web sites like GameSpy's Fileplanet (www.fileplanet.com) and Planet Unreal (www.planetunreal.com) include mod news, message boards and free downloads of homemade games like Infection and Red Orchestra.
Epic was hardly the first game developer to share its digital toolbox with consumers. Id Software of Mesquite, Texas, a pioneer of 3-D game graphics and design, included software to remake or create wholly new environments in which the game could be played in its breakthrough Doom and Quake games of the early 1990's. And Neverwinter Nights, by the Canadian-based BioWare, was initially successful, some players recall, because of the digital tools that it included for reworking the game.
Epic's mod-making tools come on the Unreal Tournament 2003 game disc. But company executives say they plan to go much further when they release the much-awaited 2004 version of the futuristic combat game in February. Mark Rein, Epic's vice president, said that not only would a special-edition version of the new game include the popular Unreal Editor tool package but that an additional DVD would contain hours of step-by-step video instruction on making mods.
To further encourage gamers to do more than simply play games, Epic is co-sponsor of a contest for mod makers in which winners will receive as much as $1 million in cash and prizes, as well as a lucrative licensing agreement to use the Unreal game engine. This would permit winners to actually sell their game mods commercially. Rein said the makers of such high-profile games as Half-Life and Splinter Cell paid as much as $400,000 for the license
Cliff Bleszinski, the 28-year-old lead designer for Epic, said he looked at mod makers as a rich and renewable resource for future computer-game making. When he joined Epic 11 years ago, he was a struggling amateur game maker. Now, part of his job is to search the Web for what he considers great mods that the company can purchase to use in future games. He is also on the lookout, he said, for new talent.
This is one of the very few entertainment mediums in which you see this kind of organic process happen, said Bleszinski, whose highlighted, tousled blond hair gives him a skater-boy aura. I think this industry is really kind of grounded a lot closer to its fans, to its roots, than a lot other businesses.
States battle for biotech business: North Carolina the latest to try to lure firms from Mass.
Dec. 8, 2003
MetroWest Daily News (MA)
By Justin Pope, Associated Press
© Copyright 2003 Associated Press
BOSTON -- They're as different as clam chowder and barbecue, but Massachusetts and North Carolina have a showcase rivalry going in the state-by-state battle for biotechnology business.
Separated by 500 miles and the mutually incomprehensible accents of their citizens, both are biotechnology hot spots. And they are increasingly competing head-on to lure startups and more mature companies planning to expand.
That competition heated up last week when the North Carolina Biosciences Organization, an industry group, ran a full-page ad in a Boston newspaper portraying Massachusetts government as hostile to the industry.
"Come on down, the business climate is fine," taunted the ad, which came on top of a similar letter sent the week before from North Carolina House Speaker Richard Morgan to executives at several Massachusetts biotech companies.
Samuel Taylor, the group's executive director, said the ad was simply an attempt to show Bay State businesses they'll find a friendlier state government in North Carolina.
Janice Bourque, his counterpart at the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, called it a sign of respect. "We're starting to see these different states actively pursue what Massachusetts has," she said.
Massachusetts officials are considering running an ad in response this week.
North Carolina certainly isn't Massachusetts' only biotech rival: Pennsylvania has run a similar ad and Maryland has run radio spots here, the MBC says.
But state officials, including Gov. Mitt Romney, have identified North Carolina as a major competitor, and almost any firm thinking about expanding can expected to be wined and dined by officials from both states.
Industry giant Biogen embodies the rivalry. It is headquartered in Cambridge but does its manufacturing in North Carolina. Both states want to benefit from the company's future growth.
Massachusetts, with the highest concentration of biotech firms in the world, is awash in brainpower thanks to the famous universities strung chockablock along the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge. But a high cost of living, harsh winter weather and the lingering perception of an unfavorable business climate have made it hard for the state to persuade companies to stay here when they're ready to manufacture their creations.
The state lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs in the last three years, and biotech is one of the few areas where it could hope to make up some of those losses. Massachusetts also needs a stronger manufacturing presence to lessen its vulnerability to the fluctuations in venture capital that particularly affect young companies.
North Carolina, meanwhile, is already a biotech manufacturing center thanks to lower labor costs, an established pharmaceutical industry and a state government famed for its skill at luring companies. But it, too, would like to diversify, and to nurture the ideas coming out of the state's Research Triangle area and the three major universities there.
"Massachusetts' traditional strength is that it's a dominant research center and it's a place where companies have gotten started," said Joseph Cortright, a Portland, Ore., economist who has written about the biotech industry's tendency to cluster. "In contrast, when you look at the pharmaceutical industry in North Carolina, it doesn't have any homegrown startups that rival a Biogen, for example."
North Carolina has been working hard to attract biotech for two decades, pouring money into economic incentives, worker training and marketing (one campaign bragged of the state's "Trees, trees and Ph.Ds"). In August, a foundation overseeing the state's tobacco settlement money agreed to spend up to $60 million on biotech training projects at state colleges.
"We have a uniquely visionary group of public leaders who have been systematically pursuing this industry since the 1980s and will continue to do so," said Taylor.
But Massachusetts has slowly been shedding what officials acknowledge was a long-standing aversion to marketing itself. Though future funding is uncertain, the state has launched a $1 million advertising campaign with the slogan "Massachusetts, It's All Here" -- intended to remind companies of the convenience of having all their operations and support in one place.
Bourque says her main job is "myth-busting" about the state's "Taxachusetts" reputation. She says dozens of tax breaks in recent years have made it an ideal environment for young enterprises, and more incentives have been proposed. She cites a number of firms that are expanding here, including Avant Immunotherapeutics Inc., which plans to open a pilot manufacturing facility in Fall River.
Cortright says the rivalry reminds him of the ile industry a half-century ago, when it began to move to the South from New England.
But he emphasized that biotech's tendency to cluster where it is already established means it won't move just anywhere.
"They still need to be in a place where... you can find people familiar with the industry, where you can recruit the technicians, where there are supplier firms," he said. "North Carolina is clearly one of those places."
Scott Sarazen, a former Genzyme Corp. executive hired by quasipublic agency MassDevelopment to head up its life sciences efforts, says the competition is good for the country. Both states lost out to Germany in a recent battle for a new $300 million Merck KgaA plant.
But there is little doubt the aggressive tactics of North Carolina and other states have changed the way Massachusetts plays the game.
"What North Carolina has done, I give them tons of credit," said Sarazen. "A lot of the reason I'm doing what they're doing is they're so good at what they do."
BIOTECH BATTLE: Mass. vs. N.C.
MASSACHUSETTS: Biotech companies: 300
* Employees: 30,000
* Biotech companies receiving venture capital last quarter: 13
* Venture capital invested last quarter: $171.1 million
* National Institutes of Health Funding 2002: $1.87 billion
* Leading research centers: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Boston University, University of Massachusetts, Worcester Polytechnic
* Notable home-grown biotech companies: Biogen Inc., Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Genzyme Corp. (drug development)
* Outside companies with, or developing, major facilities: Novartis AG, Merck
* Annual cost to run a biotech facility in Boston area: $10.6 million *
* Boston's ranking among metro areas for expense of running biotech facility: 4
* Boston area patents in biological sciences 1975-1999: 3,725
NORTH CAROLINA: Biotech companies: 150
* Employees: 18,500
* Biotech companies receiving venture capital last quarter: 4
* Venture capital invested last quarter: $38.6 million
* National Institutes of Health Funding 2002: $780.7 million
* Leading research centers: Duke, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State
* Notable home-grown companies: Trimeris, Inspire Pharmaceuticals (drug development); Embrex (agricultural biotech)
* Outside companies with major facilities: Bayer, Biogen, GlaxoSmithKline, Wyeth Vaccines
* Annual cost to run a biotech facility in Raleigh-Durham: $8.7 million*
* Raleigh-Durham's ranking among metro areas for expense of running biotech facility: 33
* Raleigh-Durham patents in biological sciences 1975-1999: 1,027
* Estimated cost based on 75,000 square feet of office space, 100 employees and other expenses.
RightNow Significantly Reduces Departmental Staff's Phone and Email Workloads
Dec. 8, 2003
CRM2Day (Athens, Greece)
By staff report
© Copyright 2003
RightNow Technologies, a provider of hosted customer service and support solutions, announced Fordham University has successfully implemented RightNow's award-winning technology to give students immediate answers to their most common administrative questions 24/7 via a web-based knowledge base. By this deployment, the University has improved its ability to serve current and prospective students, while simultaneously it reduced the number of phone calls and emails departmental staff has to answer on a daily basis.
Fordham's RightNow-powered system brings together a wide range of information about admissions, registration, financial aid, student employment and other topics in a centralized, easily searchable online knowledge base. Before deployment of this common information system, students would often search for answers by calling various departments, emailing various addresses or browsing various areas of the University's web site. Students can now look in one place for the administrative information they need. Currently there are more than 330 answers online. During the month of October 2003 alone, these knowledge base answers were viewed 21,355 times.
"RightNow provides a very powerful platform for authoring and publishing information in a way that is easy for untrained users to master," Eugene Lingner, Senior Associate Director of Technology for Fordham's Enrollment Group, said. "Plus, RightNow has been extraordinarily helpful in maximizing our technology investment by coming to us with creative ideas to increase the product usage and improve our service processes."
Fordham also uses the RightNow solution to manage students' email inquiries. Inquiries are now tracked and automatically routed based on workflow rules, improving responsiveness and bringing a new level of accountability to the process. The same answers that students can find online are used to answer emails, ensuring that students get consistent, accurate information regardless of the channel they use to seek their answers.
Fordham selected RightNow for its robust functionality, ease of use, and hosted delivery model--which enables Fordham to enjoy the full benefits of the technology without having to purchase, install or maintain the software and associated hardware internally. Because RightNow hosts the system, the University was able to implement it quickly and cost-effectively.
Fordham joins the growing number of universities across the world embracing RightNow as a strategic platform for improving the quality of student service and the efficiency of administrative operations. Those universities include Azusa Pacific University, North Carolina State University, the University of Michigan, the University of Miami and the University of South Florida.
"Despite their complex information management needs, universities often lack effective, centralized systems where students and other university members can quickly and easily find answers to their everyday administrative questions," Sean Forbes, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at RightNow, said. "RightNow has rapidly and undeniably emerged as the solution-of-choice for addressing this problem for higher education institutions, making life easier for students and university staffs all across the country."
Has public policy become too public?
Dec. 8, 2003
Bahrain Tribune
By Henry Miller, Project Syndicate
© Copyright 2003
In 1897, the House of Representatives in the US state of Indiana unanimously passed legislation that redefined the calculation of the value of pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Fortunately, the bill died in the state senate.
That historical anecdote might elicit a sardonic chuckle from those who remember their high-school mathematics, but around the world non-experts are increasingly being called upon to formulate public policy that requires an understanding of subtle and complex scientific and technological phenomena.
"How can you tell whether a whale is a mammal or a fish?" a teacher asks her third-grade class.
"Take a vote?" chirps one pupil. This suggestion may be amusing coming from a child, but there's nothing funny when governments apply it, as they increasingly do, to complex policies that involve science and technology.
Britons had their say during the summer, for example, on whether they want gene-spliced, or genetically modified (GM), products in their fields and food. To gauge public opinion in advance of a decision scheduled for later this year on whether to allow commercial planting of GM crops, the British government sponsored (at great expense) a series of public discussions around the country. Local governments and other organisations held hundreds of additional public meetings.
The head of the British debates' organising committee, Prof. Malcolm Grant, called them a "unique experiment to find out what ordinary people really think once they've heard all the arguments."
But the reality argues otherwise. Mark Henderson, science correspondent for the Times (London), offered this view of the UK's half-million-pound initiative: "The exercise has been farce from start to finish. I'm not sure I want the man in the street to set Britain's science, technology, and agriculture policy. One of the six meetings ... spent much of its time discussing whether the SARS virus might come from GM cotton in China. It's more likely to have come from outer space."
Henderson also observed that the meetings were dominated by anti-technology zealots, the only faction sufficiently organised and inspired about the issue to attend. This is consistent with reports that as many as 79 per cent of the 37,000 questionnaire responses were orchestrated by activists.
The urge to base official policy on public opinion about such issues flourishes across the Atlantic as well. The US National Science Foundation (NSF), whose primary mission is to support laboratory research across many disciplines, is funding a series of "citizens' technology forums," at which average, previously uninformed Americans come together to solve a thorny question of technology policy.
According to the NSF's abstract of the project, being carried out by researchers at North Carolina State University, participants "receive information about that issue from a range of content-area experts, experts on social implications of science and technology, and representatives of special interest groups." This is supposed to enable them to reach consensus "and ultimately generate recommendations."
The project, first funded in 2002 to support two panels, calls for eight more panels this year, each comprised of 15 citizens who are "representative of the local population." Their deliberations will be overseen by a research team "composed of faculty in rhetoric of science, group decision-making, and political science." The team will test both "an innovative measure of democratic deliberation" and also "political science theory, by investigating relationships between gender, ethnicity, lower socioeconomic status, and increases in efficacy and trust in regulators."
This is the scientific equivalent of art for art's sake, but getting policy recommendations on an obscure and complex technical question from groups of citizen non-experts (who are recruited by newspaper ads) is considerably more dangerous. Imagine going from your cardiologist's office to a caf, explaining to the waitress the therapeutic options for your chest pain, and asking her whether you should have the angioplasty or just take medication.
The first of these NSF-funded groups tackled regulatory policy towards agricultural biotechnology, and recommended that the government tighten regulations for growing GM crops, including a new requirement that the foods from these crops be labelled to identify them for consumers. These proposals are unwarranted, inappropriate, and contrary to the recommendations of experts, both within the government and in the scientific community.
To be sure, involvement of the public is critical to their understanding of government policy. But it is less useful in the formulation of policy, particularly when complex issues of science and technology are involved. Science is not democratic. The citizenry do not get to vote on whether a whale is a mammal or a fish, or on the temperature at which water boils. Parliaments cannot repeal laws of nature. Even if a billion people embrace a foolish idea, it is still a foolish idea.
The goal of policy formulation should be to get the right answers. Formulating public policy towards science and technology may be difficult, but if democracy is to take public opinion appropriately into account, good government must discount ignorance and prejudice.
The 18th-century Irish statesman and writer Edmund Burke emphasised the government's responsibility to make such determinations. He observed that in republics, "Your representative owes you, not only his industry, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serves you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."
(Henry Miller is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was an FDA official from 1979 to 1994 and was a member of the OECD Group of National Experts on Biotechnology)