NCSU gets grant to develop protective firefighting suit
North Carolina State University has received $830,000 to develop a bio- and chemical-hazard suit that would protect firefighters from weapons such as sarin, mustard gas and anthrax.

N.C. comes up short when it comes to defense contracts
Despite being home to one of the largest concentrations of military personnel in the nation, North Carolina's share of federal defense contracts falls below 25 other states.

Vigil for violators
Rick Dove pointed his camera out the window of a single-engine airplane and took picture after picture of the hog farm below.

Passion drives river watchdog
The name Rick Dove's wife picked for his boat couldn't have been more appropriate.

Black River a symbol for both sides
When environmental groups start talking about the perceived problems associated with swine farms, the hog industry points to the Black River.

McNeal Named N.C.'s Nominee For National Superintendent Of Year
Bill McNeal Jr., superintendent of Wake County Public Schools, has been named one of four finalists for the National Superintendent of the Year award.

Report: Fowler candidate for Georgia AD job
N.C. State athletics director Lee Fowler apparently has emerged as a candidate for the position of athletics director at the University of Georgia.

Ticket sales weak
N.C. State has sold less than half of its 12,500 tickets for the Tangerine Bowl. Kansas is doing even worse

Wolfpack Gears Up For Tangerine Bowl
N.C. State Makes Fourth Consecutive Bowl Trip

Thompson's life comes full circle
David Thompson once made a dramatic return to Reynolds Coliseum after a frightening fall that left the high-flying N.C. State star lying motionless on the court.

RIGHT HERE, WRITE NOW
Kitty Klein, psychology

READY FOR TAKEOFF
Re-Creating The Story Of The Wright Brothers 100 Years Later

High-tech way to cut wood could save money, trees
Sandy Mullin gestured at the machine his saw company makes and said he ought to paint it green.

UGA search committee pares AD finalists to three
Lee Fowler, athletics

Poplar trees may be new draw for pig farms
Frank Humenik, animal waste management

Molecular Memory Startup Snags Ex-Intel Exec Les Vadasz
ZettaCore was founded in 1999 by scientists at the University of California Riverside and North Carolina State University.

NCSU gets grant to develop protective firefighting suit

Dec. 16, 2003
Associated Press; Winston-Salem (NC) Journal; Wilmington (NC) Star-News; Durham Herald-Sun; The Dispatch (Lexington); WRAL.com; WXii 12.com, NC; WCNC, NC; News 14 Carolina; WVEC.com, VA; Sarasota (FL) Herald Tribune; AP Regional Wires
By AP staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. - North Carolina State University has received $830,000 to develop a bio- and chemical-hazard suit that would protect firefighters from weapons such as sarin, mustard gas and anthrax.

Charles E. McQueary, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, announced the grant for NCSU's College of Textiles at a news conference Monday.

Researcher Roger Barker said the college will work with several companies to make new suits that repel chemical and biological agents.

At the same time, the new suits should be redesigned to be more comfortable and breathable in hot environments, said Barker, who is director of the college's Center for Research on Textile Protection and Comfort.

The center has long worked on textiles for emergency responders, but this is the first prototype for an entire suit, Barker said.

Donald Thompson, the center's associate director, said the prototype should give municipal firefighters the same protection that military men and women receive with their specialized gear.

The first prototype is due out for a firefighters' trade show in August, he said. Eventually, the suits will be sent to a military base to test against sarin, mustard gas and aerosol biological agents, he said.

The suits will be tested locally and with firefighting units in Fairfax, Va., and La Mesa, Calif. Both departments have an interest in fire suit technology, Thompson said.

The final prototype is expected to be sent to the federal government in fall 2005.

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N.C. comes up short when it comes to defense contracts

Dec. 17, 2003
Triangle Business Journal
By Kim Nilsen, staff writer
© Copyright 2003

JACKSONVILLE - Despite being home to one of the largest concentrations of military personnel in the nation, North Carolina's share of federal defense contracts falls below 25 other states.

North Carolina hosts the third largest active-duty military population in the United States and is home to five military bases.

Yet when prime military contracts are doled out, the state is demoted to 26th, where it falls in behind Minnesota and Oklahoma.

North Carolina took in $1.52 billion in defense prime contracts in fiscal year 2002. Front-runner California landed $23.82 billion worth of contracts.

"The South has not gotten big-dollar-valued defense contracts because we've traditionally not been home to the large industrial firms manufacturing the high-priced hardware," says Michael Walden, an economist at North Carolina State University.

Tank and vehicle contracts typically go to companies in the Midwest, and aircraft are West Coast fare. Virginia, which ranked second in prime contracts, has a corner on the shipping business.

"At best, the South has received some relatively small contracts for ammunition and military clothing," Walden says.

Major military suppliers have failed to grow up around North Carolina's Marine, Army and Air Force facilities. In Wayne County, which hosts Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, the top private-sector employers include a pickle company and a poultry business - Mount Olive Pickle Co. and Case Farms.

Cumberland County, where the Fort Bragg Army post and Pope Air Force Base are located, counts apparel company M.J. Soffe among its largest employers.

But the nation's defense establishment has other ways besides contracts of delivering economic goodies to the states.

Because of pay raises, hazard pay for duty in global "hot spots" and the activation of National Guard and Reserve forces, the U.S. military payroll in North Carolina was up by 13.9 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to 2002. That compares with a non-military wage increase of 6.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

That tells Global Insight analyst Phil Hopkins that the state's bases are creating their own economic ripples. " ... additional military personnel may be stationed there, new civilian employees are hired, and the base purchases more goods and services from the local economy," Hopkins says.

The ripples are being felt at businesses well removed from the military communities. Hal Drane, president and co-owner of Raleigh-based Southeastern Sight and Sound, says 25 percent of his company's revenue over the past year has come from retooling conference and briefing facilities at Pope Air Force Base and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro.

The business, says Drane, came at a time when corporate demand was sluggish. "It kind of filled a gap for us," he says. "It enabled us to stay the course, so to speak."

The military this fall placed a $500,000 order with Law Enforcement Associates Corp., a surveillance and security technology company based in the Franklin County community of Youngsville.

LEA makes under-vehicle inspection devices that search for explosives and other hazards.

"War is like a two-edged sword," says Paul Feldman, LEA's president. "Our business has actually seen an upturn."

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Vigil for violators

Dec. 17, 2003
Fayetteville Observer
By Greg Barnes, staff writer
© Copyright 2003

Rick Dove pointed his camera out the window of a single-engine airplane and took picture after picture of the hog farm below.

Some of those farmers decided to get rid of the excess waste illegally. Dove, who works for the environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance, wanted to catch them in the act.

He estimates that he logged 80 hours of flight time over hog country between February and June. Along the way, he took hundreds of pictures and digital videos. He also made computer-generated maps to document the exact locations of suspected polluters.

Many of the pictures appear to show farmers spraying waste directly into ditches that run off their farms. They appear to show waste illegally pooling in fields. More than one appears to show waste being piped directly into ditches or wetlands.

Some of the farms that Dove flew over belonged to Smithfield Foods, which owns 275 in the state. Some belonged to farmers raising pigs under contract to Smithfield - another 1,200 of them. The rest were likely to ship hogs to Smithfield's slaughterhouse in Bladen County.

Smithfield didn't start hog farming in North Carolina, but the number of hogs quadrupled shortly after the company announced it would open the world's largest slaughtering plant in 1990.

And while pork industry officials and farmers say the plant has contributed to the economic survival of a whole region, detractors say the slaughterhouse has magnified the actual and potential environmental problems created by 9.6 million hogs.

Undetected

Dove and other environmental activists say too many of those environmental problems are going undetected or unpunished.

In the spring, Dove processed his pictures of hog farms after every flight and sent them to the state Division of Water Quality, hoping inspectors would react the next day.

State officials credit his work with alerting them to violations on six farms. In all, the division took enforcement action against 48 farms and levied $257,537 in fines from January through September. Most of the fines were for illegal discharges of waste off the farms.

Dove thinks many more farms could have been cited.

But there is a shortage of state inspectors to look at farms, in part because of cuts in the state budget the past couple of years. Officials say they can't get to the state's 2,400 hog farms as often as they should.

The Division of Water Quality's Fayetteville office is supposed to have three inspectors to oversee 751 livestock farms in its 11-county region. State regulations require the division to inspect the farms once a year.

As of Sept. 30, the Fayetteville office - at times operating with just one inspector - had inspected 254 of the 751 farms, or slightly more than a third. That was far better than the Wilmington office, which had inspected only 52 of 679 farms. Statewide, fewer than half of all permitted farms had been inspected.

Dove and other environmental activists think a fraction of the farmers who operated illegally during the wet spring actually got caught. They say the lack of enforcement makes it easy for hog farmers to skirt or disregard laws designed to protect the environment.

The General Assembly may recognize the problems, they say, but it lacks the political will to make significant and lasting changes.

''The agricultural industry is treated with kid gloves,'' said Michelle Nowlin, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. ''I think they are coddled. I think ... a lot of the very serious problems that they create tend to go ignored.''

Hog industry officials and farmers counter that they are operating farms in a manner that has been approved and heavily regulated by the state and that they are being unfairly singled out.

Dennis Treacy, Smithfield's vice president of environmental, community and government affairs, said the hog industry has essentially been demonized because hogs are seen as dirty animals and the waste they produce stinks. The truth, he and others contend, is that the content of that waste is not essentially different from the fertilizers row crop farmers use on their fields.

Industry officials point to the Black River, which runs through Sampson County - the heart of hog country. The state says the river is an Outstanding Resource Water, a designation given to rivers with superior water quality.

Scientific studies

People involved with the hog industry also point to scientific studies that indicate the industry is not damaging the environment. Farmers and others in the industry say that 99 percent of farms complied with environmental regulations last year, according to Smithfield officials.

''We have tried very hard to educate a wide variety of people that we are serious about this, that we are operating under standards that were established for us,'' said Rann Carpenter, director of the N.C. Pork Council. The council promotes and lobbies for the hog industry. ''The vast, vast majority of our people are operating their systems in compliance with the standards and permits that were adopted for us.''

Carpenter and others in the industry dismiss the criticisms of some environmental activists who they believe have an anti-hog agenda. Carpenter puts Dove at the top of that list.

''Many people consider Rick to have rather extreme views on these issues and not as realistic a view as should be the case for somebody who is really committed to trying to improve the environment,'' Carpenter said.

But it's harder for the industry to dismiss the findings of the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Among those findings:

Studies show that rivers, streams and estuaries can be contaminated by discharges from hog lagoons and runoff from spray fields.

Groundwater can be contaminated either through leaking lagoons or leaching of waste from spray fields. A study by N.C. State University showed that waste from 38 percent of older, unlined lagoons leaked nitrogen into the groundwater at ''strong'' or ''very strong'' levels, while preliminary department estimates indicate that 25 percent of lined lagoons may leak to contaminate groundwater.

Studies have shown that odors from lagoons, spray fields or swine houses have the potential to cause health problems and losses in property values.

A state study estimates that hog farms produce 20 percent of the state's airborne nitrogen compounds that combine with other elements and fall to the ground, adding nutrients to waterways. In eastern North Carolina, 53 percent of the state's total comes from hog operations.

A nutrient imbalance exists because farmers are importing feed from other states. In Iowa, the country's leading hog producer, most feed is raised in the state. Hog waste is used as fertilizer on the fields where the feed is grown, creating a cycle of nutrients. But in North Carolina, the feed is imported and the hog waste is spread on fields of grass that cannot be used to feed livestock. Often, the coastal Bermuda grass grown is given away. Some farmers simply roll it up and leave it to rot at the edge of their fields.

North Carolina has set rates at which hog waste can be sprayed on fields. The rates were established by N.C. State University and adopted by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Mary Combs, director of the Natural Resources Conservation Service of North Carolina, said she believes farmers are applying waste to their fields at the proper rates to ensure that nutrients are absorbed by crops rather than getting into surface or ground water. So do officials with the state and the hog industry.

Some scientists question that contention.

''You can't import huge quantities of new nutrients, dump them on the ground in the wet, rainy Coastal Plain and not expect water quality impacts," said Larry Cahoon, a biological sciences professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. "To argue otherwise is simply stupid.''

Most researchers agree that the biggest threat posed by hog farms is excessive nutrients, chiefly in the form of nitrogen or phosphorous. That threat is no Love Canal, no dump site containing cancer-causing chemicals or other evils. But environmental activists say it is a serious threat, nonetheless.

Studies show that excessive nutrients can lead to rapid aquatic vegetative growth that robs waterways of oxygen and produces fish kills. The state estimates that in 1998, 188,000 fish died in the Neuse River and 300,000 in the New River on two separate occasions. Many of the fish were found to have sores, a signal that a microscopic organism called Pfiesteria may have led to their deaths. JoAnn Burkholder and other researchers at N.C. State University said they believe Pfiesteria release flesh-eating toxins when the water becomes overloaded with nutrients. Other scientists have questioned those findings.

In August, 1.3 million fish died on one stretch of the Neuse River. High water temperature, an algae bloom and a wind shift that stirred up low-oxygenated water at the bottom of the river led to what was then the state's biggest fish kill in about seven years, according to the Division of Water Quality.

A month later, an estimated 1.8 million fish died in the Neuse after another wind shift, the division reported. Low-oxygenated water in rivers can occur naturally, but scientists say nitrates in the water exacerbate the problem.

No one can say that hog waste led to any of the fish kills, which were common in the Neuse River long before corporate hog farming. The river, which has been designated ''nutrient sensitive'' since the 1980s, is also the outlet for 41 municipal sewer treatment plants.

But a study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that 50 percent of the nitrogen and 75 percent of the phosphorous in the Neuse and three other river basins comes from livestock waste and fertilizer.

High levels of nutrients can also cause disease in humans, especially infants, studies show. Drinking water containing nitrates has been known to cause methemoglobinemia - or blue baby syndrome - a disease in which there is insufficient oxygen carried to cells and tissues.

Cahoon has done studies showing that phosphorous is also running off farm fields. Until recently, researchers thought phosphorous bonded to soil particles and didn't escape from the fields unless the farm had a significant erosion problem, Cahoon said.

Although it is difficult to quantify, Cahoon said, he believes a lot of the phosphorous comes from hog farms.

The federal and state governments recognize the potential problems of excessive phosphorous. In 2001, most states adopted standards from the Natural Resources Conservation Service requiring plans for animal waste management to include consideration of potential phosphorus loss.

North Carolina adopted the standards in August but is working on a system that will allow it to assess each farm's ability to comply. In some cases, that could require more land for waste disposal.

Drinking water

One of the chief battlefields in the conflict over hog farms is drinking water. Some scientists and state officials say that waste from hog farms is leaching into groundwater and contaminating wells with unhealthy levels of nitrates.

The state has identified 17 hog farms that have contaminated groundwater, most with nitrates. A few of the farms have closed. Investigations began recently at 15 other farms where groundwater problems are suspected, according to Division of Water Quality records.

The first farm linked to groundwater contamination was in Robeson County. In 1995, the state found that excessive levels of nitrates had flowed off R.E. Parnell's farm near Parkton and contaminated eight nearby wells. A judge ordered that the farm be closed in 1998.

The problems discovered at the Parnell farm kicked off a program in which people living near large-scale animal farms were encouraged to get their wells tested.

Using those tests, state toxicologist Ken Rudo reported that 10 percent of 1,600 wells sampled exceeded the state standard of 10 parts per million for nitrates. More than a third of the wells had higher than normal levels of nitrates.

Rudo thinks some of the wells were polluted by hog waste.

''Lagoons and spray fields are a formula for contaminating groundwater,'' he said. ''It's happening and it's probably going to continue to happen.''

But Rudo's research did not seek to show where the nitrates came from, and the hog industry does not think hogs are to blame.

In 1996, the Pork Council hired a Raleigh research firm to conduct tests on 30 wells with high nitrates near the Keener community in Sampson County.

The firm, with help from Bill Showers, a researcher at N.C. State, concluded that the nitrates in 24 of the 30 wells came largely from sources other than hogs. It could not say with certainty about the other six.

The Pork Council still uses the firm's research to help defend its position that hog farms are not major polluters of shallow wells.

Showers, however, questions the firm's findings. He said his work was inconclusive because it did not include research that could better evaluate the source of the nitrates. Rudo reached the same conclusion in a memo dated June 27, 1997, to former state health Director Ronald Levine.

Don Butler, a spokesman for Smithfield Foods' hog-producing subsidiary Murphy-Brown, pointed to the Pork Council's study last month after being presented state records showing the 17 hog farms that have contaminated groundwater.

Butler said he had not seen the records previously and asked whether the contaminated wells were shallow and properly constructed. The records didn't indicate, and Butler said he wasn't convinced that nitrates came from the hog farms. He said a properly constructed and managed hog farm should not pollute.

''I don't think that it's a fair conclusion to say that if nitrates in a water sample are high that it's attributable to a hog farm,'' Butler said.

Four years after the Pork Council's study came out, the U.S. Environmental Production Agency and the state Division of Water Quality conducted their own testing of wells in Keener, which has a high concentration of hog and poultry farms. This time, monitoring wells were drilled near a hog farm and the flow of groundwater was studied.

The EPA and the state concluded that a farm had contaminated the wells used by several families. Showers said the farm was not among those he had studied.

The contaminated wells in Keener have pitted relative against relative, neighbor against neighbor.

Kenneth Bradshaw, who owns the hog farm and an adjoining poultry farm, received a notice that his well was contaminated. He declined to comment. Ricky Bradshaw, his cousin, also received a notice, as did other neighbors.

Ricky Bradshaw has been buying bottled water for his family of five since being notified of the contamination in 2001.

His parents, Grady and Loreen Bradshaw, got a similar notice. They live down the street, in a duplex with another family. Notices were also given to Brandon and Michelle Bradshaw, who is Ricky Bradshaw's niece.

The county ran a public water line to the homes this year, and Kenneth Bradshaw was ordered to pay to hook his neighbors up. But at least some residents have refused to go along because they would have to pay monthly water bills.

''I don't feel like I should have to pay for their problems,'' Ricky Bradshaw said. ''They are the ones who screwed it up.''

When his cousin sprays hog waste on his fields, Bradshaw said, the mist often hits the back of his sister's home, which is directly behind his own. Bradshaw said the odors are almost unbearable.

Some state officials say problems like the one with Ricky Bradshaw's well are unusual. Among them is Bill Shannahan, the Division of Water Quality's hydrotechnological technician in Fayetteville.

Shannahan said the state created his position three years ago because of the perception that hog farms were polluting groundwater.

It's now his job to inspect wells surrounding hog farms across the region. Shannahan said he still has a long way to go, but so far he has found that ''a lot less'' than 5 percent of the wells he has sampled have been contaminated by hog farms.

''We know they are polluting. Every one of them. But it's on their own property,'' Shannahan said. ''They are so remote that they are not harming anybody.''

Shannahan praised the hog industry for the concern it has shown for the environment.

''They are not really polluting nearly as badly as everybody was thinking at one point ... which says a lot for the hog industry,'' he said in August.

In September, a complaint led Shannahan to an area near Roseboro where he found that wells at 10 homes exceeded safe nitrate levels. Hog and poultry farms dot the area off Feed Mill Road. Shannahan said he thinks the poultry farms and at least one hog farm are responsible for the pollution, but more testing and monitoring will be required to be sure.

Odor problems

For many people who live near hog farms, the issue is less about water and more about air. The odors from the hog waste disposal are making them miserable, they say. Some scientists say the odors are also a risk to their health.

Julian Savage, who lives near a hog farm south of Elizabethtown, said he and his son were clearing woods one day when his son just quit. Living next to the hog farm had worn him down.

''He walked up, put his arm around me and said, 'Daddy, I'm through,''' Savage said.

Since that day, Anthony Savage has suffered from depression, his father said.

Julian Savage said nothing has been the same since the farm opened next door about eight years ago.

The Savages stopped having family gatherings at a lodge on the edge of their property. They used to swim and fish in a creek where a dam had formed a 50-acre pond. The lodge is run-down now from years of neglect.

Savage said the farm dumped hog waste into the creek, killing the fish in his pond and making it unsafe to swim.

He said the farm, off Bladen Springs Road, used to spray waste eight hours a day, five days a week. Sometimes, he said, the waste would pool up under his carport.

But that wasn't the worst part, he said. The odors and the particulates coming off the farm were so bad that the 74-year-old asthmatic said he could hardly venture outside without getting sick. He wears a ski mask for protection every time the farm sprays its waste.

''I ain't lying, this is the worst thing I have ever heard of or seen,'' Savage said.

Savage has lived in his home for 55 years. He has no intention of moving.

''It's not right to lose what I got for them to make a living,'' Savage said. ''I'm not crazy, but those people have no morals. Those people have no sympathy for you.''

The farm was cited for overapplying waste in 1996 and 2000, according to Division of Water Quality records. It was cited for discharging waste off the property in 1997, 1999 and 2000.

Paul Rawls, director of the division's Fayetteville office, said the farm has been monitored closely.

The Fayetteville Observer hired an independent laboratory to test Savage's pond and his well water for nitrates. The pond showed no serious contamination. The well water contained nitrates of 8.9 parts per million, slightly below the 10 parts per million level the EPA considers unsafe for drinking.

No one has demonstrated that the hog farm is causing mental or physical harm to Savage and his family. But studies at N.C. State University and Duke University draw links between hog farms and illnesses.

A 1995 study by Dr. Susan Schiffman at Duke University Medical Center found that people living near the farms suffered more tension, depression, anger, fatigue and confusion and less overall vigor than others.

In 1999, a study led by Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at N.C. State's School of Public Health, concluded that people living near hog farms have a significantly higher incidence of respiratory and gastrointestinal problems - coughing, runny noses, diarrhea, burning eyes and sore throats.

Demand for records

Shortly before Wing was to make his findings public, the N.C. Pork Council notified him that it was looking into whether the industry had been defamed. Under the state's open meetings law, Wing said, the council's lawyer demanded copies of all records pertaining to his study.

''It was intimidation,'' Wing said. ''I don't know what else you could call it.''

Wing said his main motivation for not wanting to share his work was that he promised confidentiality to the people from three communities involved in the study.

Dennis McBride, then the state's health director, said he knew that people involved in the study felt threatened by the Pork Council's demand for Wing to turn over the research.

Carpenter, the Pork Council's director, said the organization sought Wing's research because it wanted to verify its accuracy, nothing more. Carpenter was not the Pork Council's director at that time.

''Dr. Wing was making some pretty dramatic statements about what he had found from his research,'' said Beth Anne Mumford, the council's spokeswoman. ''In our view he had merely interviewed people to recall their symptoms and from that made some conclusions about the hog industry, and we were trying to gather some more information that he had available that made him reach those conclusions.''

Wing said he stands by his findings - that odors and airborne particles coming off hog farms can make nearby residents sick. He said research on the issue continues.

A few other scientists from major North Carolina universities say the hog industry also tried to intimidate them after learning that their research reflected poorly on hog farming. Most asked not to be named. The Pork Council says it doesn't intimidate researchers.

The consensus among scientists is that more work needs to be done to assess the effects of hog farms on health and the environment. But some worry that the state isn't interested in funding the research.

McBride, now in public health in Milford, Conn., said getting adequate funding to study health risks was impossible when he was in North Carolina. He stopped being health director in 2001.

''I don't think there was much political will into doing deep inquiries into the long-term health effects of waste disposal and the impacts of this industry in North Carolina,'' McBride said.

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Passion drives river watchdog

Dec. 17, 2003
Fayetteville Observer
By Greg Barnes, staff writer
© Copyright 2003

The name Rick Dove's wife picked for his boat couldn't have been more appropriate.

''When I told her I was going to name the boat after her, she said to call it the 'Lonesome Dove' because that described her to perfection,'' Dove said.

The name fits him as well. The environmentalist's relentless pursuit of farmers who violate the state's hog rules hasn't won him any friends in the industry.

Some hog industry officials question his credibility and his accuracy. Others think of him as overzealous and misguided. None seem to like him much.

Dove doesn't really care.

''If they weren't complaining about me, I wouldn't be doing my job,'' he said. ''My job is to protect these waters. They are doing terrible things to these waters, and my voice is one that tells the story factually and accurately and credibly.

''I can back it up with the photographs and the evidence that I have collected over the years. If they don't like it, they can very easily change it by stopping these pollution practices and taking care of the natural resources that are so valuable and important to the economic future of the state of North Carolina.''

Passionate? Yes, the man is passionate. Some would say consumed. These days, most of his time is spent as the southeastern representative of Waterkeeper Alliance, a New York-based environmental group headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy hasn't endeared himself to the hog industry, either. Last year, he called the industry a bigger threat to America than Osama bin Laden. Kennedy has said he wants to shut down Smithfield Foods' farm operations.

Around 2001, Kennedy amassed a group of 19 lawyers who filed lawsuits against the hog industry contending that waste lagoons and spray fields are destroying the environment.

Dove, a former Marine Corps lawyer and judge, has helped prepare some of those lawsuits, which haven't amounted to much so far.

Last year, a federal judge in Florida dismissed a Waterkeeper suit against Smithfield Foods, calling it frivolous and demanding that the environmental group pay all of Smithfield's legal fees.

But the alliance has kept up its attacks. Four lawsuits are pending, two against Smithfield subsidiary Murphy-Brown, one against North Carolina and one against the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

''We only have to win one,'' Dove said. ''They have to win them all.''

Unlike Kennedy, Dove says he doesn't want to run the hog industry out of North Carolina. He just wants it to stop polluting. Dove acknowledges that his decade-long fight is personal. He blames the hog industry for pushing him off his beloved Neuse River.

Childhood dream

Shortly after retiring as a lawyer in the Marine Corps, Dove pursued his childhood dream of earning a living off the Neuse. He has lived along the river for more than 25 years in New Bern.

In 1987, Dove and his son, Todd, started a commercial fishing operation with three boats and a seafood outlet store. Together, father and son worked gill nets and more than 600 crab pots.

The business proved successful in its first two years. But then, Dove said, he started noticing that some of the fish he caught had developed sores. As time went on, more and more fish were developing the lesions, and so were Dove and his son.

By 1990, Dove said, the situation had gotten so bad that he gave up fishing and returned to practicing law. The following year, low-oxygenated water led to the biggest fish kill in the Neuse in the state's history. Most of the dead fish had lesions.

Not content with a law practice, Dove returned to the river as the Neuse Riverkeeper. Along with about 300 volunteers, he began patrolling the river by air, boat and foot.

Two years later, millions of fish again died in the Neuse, most having the same lesions as before. By then, research by N.C. State scientist JoAnn Burkholder was contending that the sores were caused by Pfiesteria, a single-cell organism that releases flesh-eating toxins and thrives in nutrient-enriched waters.

Dove and other environmentalists blame hog farms - as well as sewer treatment plants and other large sources of nitrates - with causing the fish kills.

Dove thinks Pfiesteria may have also caused him to get sick. The organism has been linked to memory loss, migraines and vision and respiratory problems, all symptoms that Dove said caused him to quit his job as the Neuse Riverkeeper in July 2000.

Dove wasn't out of work long. In January 2001, Waterkeeper Alliance hired him on a full-time basis.

Polluters in minority

Dove has little use for hog farmers who flagrantly pollute the state's waterways and wetlands. But he acknowledges they are in the minority.

Most hog farmers, he said, try to follow the state's rules. Dove has concern for them.

He worries that Smithfield Foods will never agree to stop using the system of waste lagoons and spray fields because any improved technology to replace it might cut significantly into profits. Dove said he believes Smithfield would simply leave the state, possibly going overseas where labor costs are cheaper.

''You have good citizens who have mortgaged their farms and in some cases are heavily in debt,'' Dove said. ''Who is going to end up holding the bag? I can tell you it's these poor farmers who have been talked into doing this and the banks that hold these mortgages.

''What in the world does a bank do if it has to foreclose on a factory farm and ends up having to own a lagoon and spray-field system when no animals can be raised? What's the value of that?''

Smithfield spokesman Jerry Hostetter said the company has no intention of leaving the state.

''We are an integral part of the process to find this technology and are committed to see it through,'' Hostetter said. ''Smithfield has a huge investment in North Carolina. Leaving would be the last resort.''

Uniform worn proudly

Dove can almost always be found wearing his Waterkeeper Alliance clothes - cap and tan shirt with the group's name embroidered in red on the front.

It's his uniform now, worn as proudly as the Marine Corps garb of years past. In a lot of ways, it defines him and his beliefs.

''I clearly believe in what I say and I am genuinely committed to doing what needs to be done to take care of the waters of North Carolina,'' Dove said. ''I'm willing to make any sacrifice I have to make to do that.''

Some might think that sounds obsessive. Even fanatical.

Not Bob Epting. Epting, a former member of the state Environmental Management Commission, and Dove are close friends.

''It's not hogs that drive him,'' Epting said. ''It's his respect for the fundamentals of life, the importance of air and water and what the river symbolizes about life.''

Dove has a simpler reason for fighting to preserve the Neuse and other rivers. He wants to ensure their health for future generations.

''The river belongs to all the people of the state,'' he said. ''It belongs to the children that are going to inherit that river, and we all have the responsibility to make sure that these children inherit that river in a state that is appropriate; it's healthy and it can sustain them and their children on into time.''

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Black River a symbol for both sides

Dec. 17, 2003
Fayetteville Observer
By Greg Barnes, staff writer
© Copyright 2003

When environmental groups start talking about the perceived problems associated with swine farms, the hog industry points to the Black River.

The Black is a relatively swift-moving river fed by deep underground aquifers that flows through a heavy concentration of hog farms in Sampson County. Few industries or municipal treatment plants are along it.

Since 1994, the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources has designated the Black River an Outstanding Resource Water - meaning it has excellent water quality.

If hog farming is so bad, farmers and industry officials ask, how does the Black River stay so clean?

Environmentalists and researchers don't dispute the river's excellent water quality. But they say the headwaters of the Black River and some of its tributaries concern them. And they worry about the future of the river.

This fall, Mike Mallin, a researcher with UNC-Wilmington, presented his annual environmental assessment of the Lower Cape Fear River system.

Mallin said water quality in Great Coharie Creek, Six Runs Creek and the South River has declined in the past year. His study rated Great Coharie Creek and the South River as ''poor quality'' for dissolved oxygen concentrations. Great Coharie Creek also had high nutrient loading, especially phosphorous, according to the study.

Mallin didn't try to identify the sources of the pollution, but he indicated that some of it could be coming from what are called concentrated animal feeding operations - or CAFOs - in this case the nearby hog farms.

''What you have are all these CAFOs scattered around there, some of which may be operating well, some of which may have nutrients flowing through the groundwater into there whenever it rains, or going overland.

''So whenever you have a high peak of nutrients in an area like this, the only thing you can say is yeah, 'There are a lot of CAFOs in that area upstream,' but you can't specifically explain why unless you do a study like Bill Showers did.''

Showers is a researcher at N.C. State University who has concluded that hog waste is seeping into groundwater and ending up in the Black River. He has been able to isolate an isotope of nitrogen common only to animal waste and follow its path.

In one study, he used monitoring wells to study groundwater under two hog farms separated by a stream that enters Stewart's Creek, which flows into the Black River. The farm fields had been receiving hog waste for at least 20 years, but no artificial fertilizer for at least 10.

Showers found that nitrate concentrations from hog waste increased 1.5 times to 10 times downstream from the farms.

''To say they are not exporting nitrogen is hydrologically impossible,'' Showers said. ''The question is how much exporting, and I don't think we have a really good handle on that at all.''

One perspective

Hog industry officials, meanwhile, point to a study of the Black and North East Cape Fear river basins by Alex Avery, director of research and education at the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues.

Using state environmental studies of those watersheds since the 1980s, Avery concludes that environmental harm caused by corporate hog farms may be no greater than the effects of traditional agriculture and the fertilizers used in it. Avery also concludes that municipal treatment plants, industry and other sources of pollution have caused more harm than agriculture.

Showers said the dominant source of nutrients in the Black River is from traditional row-crop fertilizers. But he said that is only because it takes as many as 30 to 50 years for nitrates to move through the groundwater to the rivers.

''We certainly are going to see a change. Whether we will be in real trouble remains to be seen,'' Showers said. ''It is going to take several decades before we realize the full impact of that (hog) industry on the environment.''

The Black River is in good shape now partly because it's fed by deep underground aquifers, Showers said. Mallin added that the stream moves fast enough to flush nutrients out.

Larry Cahoon, a researcher at UNC-Wilmington, thinks the effect of nutrients is already being felt. Cahoon said he has seen dense aquatic weeds in the tributaries of the Black River, an indication of excessive nutrients.

''Where do the nutrients come from that support the weeds in those creeks?'' Cahoon asked. ''One can argue that row-crop agriculture has been there all along and that commercial fertilizers are getting into these creeks. That must certainly be true. But it is simply irrational to claim that hog waste spread on the ground is not getting into these creeks if fertilizer spread on the ground is getting in.''

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Ticket sales weak

Dec. 17, 2003
The News & Observer
By Lorenzo Perez, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

The N.C. State and Kansas convoys to Orlando, Fla., will be awfully light for Monday's Tangerine Bowl unless ticket sales spike at the last minute.

Tangerine Bowl officials were hoping to sell as many as 40,000 tickets for Monday's game at Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium, but Wolfpack and Jayhawks fans have bought less than a quarter of that amount through their universities' ticket offices.

N.C. State has sold about 5,000 of its allotted 12,500 tickets. Kansas has sold about 2,000 of its 12,000 tickets. Both schools are responsible for selling the tickets.

Also, more than 12,500 tickets have been sold locally in Orlando, Tangerine Bowl officials reported.

"Kansas is a little farther away, so we didn't expect the Big 12 side to do as well," said Tom Mickle, the executive director of Florida Citrus Sports, which operates the bowl. "We're just trying to understand. We need to figure out the lack of interest. ... We thought N.C. State would do better."

Kansas was offering free bowl-game tickets to its students. But its Student Union Activities group canceled a chartered bus for the trip after only 12 students signed up for the ride, The Lawrence-Journal-World reported. The bowl game also will be played a day after the Kansas basketball team's trip to Reno, Nev., for the Dec. 21 Wolf Pack Holiday Classic game against Nevada.

N.C. State sold more than 26,500 tickets for its Jan. 1 Gator Bowl win over Notre Dame. Estimates for N.C. State fans who attended that sold-out game in Jacksonville, Fla., climbed as high as 40,000.

But holding a bowl game three days before Christmas has its drawbacks, Mickle acknowledged.

Tangerine Bowl officials were hoping just to fill their stadium's lower bowl, but that would take about 48,000 fans, Mickle said.

N.C. State athletics director Lee Fowler said of slow ticket sales: "It's timing as much as anything, and I hate it for the bowl. With school letting out Friday, I thought it would help. But apparently with many of our fans, there's so much going on before Christmas."

Two years ago, about 8,200 N.C. State fans traveled to Orlando for the Wolfpack's 34-19 Tangerine Bowl loss to Pittsburgh on Dec. 20, 2001.

Wolfpack fan Lewis A. Saintsing, 60, of Thomasville said he and his family made the Tangerine trip two years ago. After a season that began with Bowl Championship Series aspirations but ended with a 7-5 record, Saintsing said he wasn't ready to make a return trip.

"I was just a little too disappointed to think about going again," Saintsing said.

The Tangerine Bowl payout is $812,000 per team. N.C. State associate athletics director Diane B. Moose said that the university could end up using as much as $125,000 from its share to cover the cost of unsold tickets in its allotment.

The ACC would help cover the cost of those unsold tickets as well, however.

Tuesday, Vance Holt and a trickle of N.C. State fans showed up at the Wolfpack Club to pick up Tangerine Bowl tickets they had purchased.

A 1975 graduate of N.C. State, Holt said that he and his wife were flying to Orlando with their children for the game. Unlike N.C. State's last bowl trip, the Fuquay-Varina resident said that not too many of their friends were joining them in Orlando.

"Probably the biggest difference is the competition," Holt said. "Notre Dame is a big draw, anytime."

Staff writer Lorenzo Perez can be reached at 829-4643.

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Thompson's life comes full circle

Dec. 17, 2003
The News & Observer
By Ned Barnett, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

RALEIGH -- David Thompson once made a dramatic return to Reynolds Coliseum after a frightening fall that left the high-flying N.C. State star lying motionless on the court.

Today, in a way, he'll do it again.

Thompson won't return as he did in 1974 with a bandaged head after being taken to the hospital. But he will come back to show how he has recovered from years that saw him fall from NBA All-Star to addict, from great wealth to great debt, from the greatest ACC basketball player to a pro best remembered for what he might have been.

Almost 30 years after he led N.C. State to its first national basketball championship, Thompson will graduate today. He'll receive a degree in sociology this morning and then be honored at halftime of State's 7 p.m. women's basketball game.

Thompson, 49, came back for his degree to fulfill a promise to his mother, Ida. He also wanted to stay ahead of his daughter, Erika, who also will graduate from State today.

"This kind of completes my four years at N.C. State," Thompson said. "My goal when I came to N.C. State was to possibly win a national championship and get a degree."

Reaching that second goal almost three decades later also brings Thompson's life full circle. He is back where he started, beginning again. But this time he sets out with the knowledge of how easily a life can detour from its goals.

Today's ceremonies come at a time of reflection and nostalgia for the man from Cleveland County who led N.C. State to a 27-0 season in 1973 and the national championship in 1974.

Norm Sloan, Thompson's coach at State and his friend throughout his adult years, died last week. A memorial service brought a somber reunion of the players and coaches from the championship team.

Last weekend, Thompson appeared at three Triangle bookstores signing his new autobiography, "Skywalker." Hundreds of fans waited in lines to get his signature and share stories of those great days at State.

Thompson, who wrote the book with Sean Stormes and Marshall Terrill, talked about the life between its covers during a book signing Saturday afternoon in North Raleigh.

Sloan had helped Thompson with the book and had planned to attend his graduation. Instead, as Thompson signed books, Sloan's blazer hung in tribute on the back of an empty courtside chair at Reynolds while the State men played their annual "heritage game" against Hartford.

Thompson wanted to be at the game, but the signing schedule conflicted. So he sat in the bookstore with a black N.C. State cap and a red warmup suit and signed until a line of some 400 people came to an end.

Thompson, who lives in Charlotte and gives motivational speeches, said he was grateful that Sloan saw him reach the milestones of earning his degree and publishing his book. It was a way of paying back the man who never stopped coaching him.

"Coach Sloan was always supportive of me," Thompson said. "He loved me regardless. He never held anything against me."

Thompson wasn't always easy to support, as his book makes clear. Despite becoming a four-time NBA All-Star with the Denver Nuggets and Seattle SuperSonics, he slipped into alcohol and drug abuse. That and injuries eroded his skills. He coasted on his talent, hurt those who loved him, vowed to reform and relapsed. Along the way, hangers on, financial managers and foolish investments took away his fortune.

"All the areas of your life are falling part, and if you have a substance abuse problem all that does is fuel your addiction," he said. "It becomes a vicious cycle, and that's what it was for me."

Thompson's faltering career ended in March 1984 as he struggled with a bouncer at New York's Studio 54. He fell down a staircase and ripped ligaments in his knee. Waived by the SuperSonics, he tried a comeback with the Indiana Pacers, but the Pacers let him go after a barroom dispute led to his arrest for public intoxication.

Today, Thompson is recovering from his addictions. He's interested in working in the athletics department at State, or maybe with the new NBA team, the Bobcats, in Charlotte. Meanwhile, he's selling his book.

"The book has been real good. It's given a lot a people an understanding of what happened," Thompson said. "A lot of people think I just blew all my money. I had a lot of help. You get the real picture of what happened."

Along with the great memories, Thompson has a lot he might want to forget. But he values the good and the bad. All of it brought him back to where he was, to the man he is.

"I certainly don't want to make some of the same mistakes I made in the past, but I don't regret the past because it took all that to bring me to where I am now," he said. "I think right now I'm a better person than I've ever been."

Thompson's aging legs no longer have the spring that gave him a 44-inch vertical leap. But the man who fell at Reynolds and in life will return today to show he can still get up.

Columnist Ned Barnett can be reached at 829-4555.

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Report: Fowler candidate for Georgia AD job

Dec. 17, 2003
The News & Observer
By Chip Alexander, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

N.C. State athletics director Lee Fowler apparently has emerged as a candidate for the position of athletics director at the University of Georgia.

Fowler, contacted Tuesday, said he would not comment on a published report that he was a finalist for the job. Asked if he had interviewed for the position, he said, "Again, all I can say is no comment."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has identified five candidates, which it said were recently interviewed in Atlanta by the search committee: Fowler; Damon Evans, senior associate athletics director for internal affairs at Georgia; Mark Lewis, a former Georgia football player and vice president for Olympic sponsorships with General Electric; Greg McGarity, an associate AD at Florida and a Georgia graduate; and Eric Hyman, Texas Christian's athletics director. The newspaper did not cite sources in its report.

Fowler's contract with N.C. State runs through Sept. 30, 2005, with a salary of $211,770 a year.

Former Georgia football coach Vince Dooley has been the school's athletics director since 1979. Dooley had asked for an extension of his contract, which runs through June 30, 2004, but his request was denied by school president Michael Adams.

Adams has said he wanted to have a new athletics director hired by January, but an announcement could come sooner. Adams said he wants the new AD to work with Dooley for six months.

Jere Morehead, Georgia's faculty athletics representative, is heading the search committee. Morehead could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

Fowler has been at NCSU since September 2000. Visible and accessible, he often is outspoken on most issues but was unusually tight-lipped on the situation at Georgia.

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McNeal Named N.C.'s Nominee For National Superintendent Of Year

Dec. 16, 2003
WRAL-TV
By staff writer
© Copyright 2003

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Bill McNeal Jr., superintendent of Wake County Public Schools, has been named one of four finalists for the National Superintendent of the Year award.

McNeal was named the North Carolina Association of School Administrators' 2004 Superintendent of the Year in October. Tuesday, he became North Carolina's only nominee for the national honor, coordinated by the American Association of School Administrators.

"NCASA selected Bill McNeal as our national nominee and state winner because of the leadership he has provided in a large, urban school district," said Katherine W. Joyce, NCASA interim executive director. "Bill has worked to promote academic growth and respect for diversity, while managing issues related to rapid growth and building community support.

"These leadership qualities personify the National Superintendent of the Year and make Bill the ideal candidate to win that award."

A 29-year veteran educator, McNeal has spent his entire educational career with the Wake County Public School System. During that time, he served as a teacher, assistant principal, principal and associate superintendent. He was named superintendent of Wake County Public Schools in 2000.

McNeal holds bachelor's and master's degrees from North Carolina Central University. He is in doctoral studies at North Carolina State University.

"I am surprised and thrilled to be given this additional honor," McNeal said. "However, in reality, this is a recognition of the outstanding work that our students, teachers and staff are doing every day in classrooms across Wake County.

"I am thankful for their effort and constant support. To be recognized by one's peers across the state is indeed an honor; to be considered on a national level is a highlight of my career."

McNeal and the other finalists will go to Washington, D.C., in early January for two days with the judging committee and others who will make the choice for this honor.

The 2004 Superintendent of the Year will be presented at the AASA Conference in February in San Francisco.

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Wolfpack Gears Up For Tangerine Bowl

Dec. 16, 2003
WRAL.com
By staff report
© Copyright 2003 WRAL.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The North Carolina State University football team is gearing up for its fourth consecutive bowl-game appearance.

The Wolfpack leaves this week for Orlando, Fla., where it will play in the Tangerine Bowl against Kansas Dec. 22.

N.C. State will be making its second appearance at the Tangerine Bowl in three seasons. In 2001, the Pack lost to Pittsburgh, 34-19.

Coach Chuck Amato said fans should not be disappointed with the bowl they are going to. He said the football program is on the right track.

"This is the first time that this university has been to four straight bowls," Amato said. "That's exciting in its own right."

Amato said running back T.A. McLendon will play in the game.

There had been speculation that potential legal problems could keep McLendon off the field.

According to court records, McLendon was pulled over in Orange County Oct. 25 and charged with speeding. The 19-year-old also faces charges of driving with alcohol in his system, although he did not receive a DWI.

McLendon has played since the incident. Amato said McLendon will be punished.

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RIGHT HERE, WRITE NOW

Nov/Dec 2001
Psychology Today
By Perry, Susan K
© Copyright 2003

BABETTE WILLIAMS ALWAYS KNEW SHE'D write her life story someday. But her life kept getting in the way. She sold real estate and bred show horses, married four times and raised three daughters. At 71, Williams finally started writing short stories and a memoir, interspersing her works with animal tales and wry vignettes about married life. She has a natural flair for clear writing. "I'm having a blast," she says.

Williams isn't alone. Many people want to write, and the funny secret is, anyone can write. We all have the ability. But people often put off setting pen to paper because it can seem just too Intimidating. Writing takes time and work, and it's often hard to find hours for writing in a normal, busy schedule.

The rewards are so great, however, that you should not wait until you retire to express yourself. Writing provides a host of emotional and physical benefits that can enrich your life. And it is never too late--or too early--to begin.

it's long been known that writing can have a huge effect on one's sense of well-being. Writing has certainly helped me. When I knew my youngest son would be leaving for college, I began an empty nest journal. By recording and reflecting on my emotional state, I was better able to cope with the actual event when it occurred. People who write fiction convert their life experiences, no matter how painful, into stories that can help the writers make sense of them.

Writing is also a good way to leave behind a more accurate record of your life. A student of mine recently told me the poignant reason she felt an urge to write about her life now, not later. When her mother died, she ransacked the house seeking some kind of message, something in writing that would offer her one last bit of connection. There was nothing.

Often writing can help provide a purpose in difficult experiences. The process allows you to reach out and share those experiences with others. For example, the parents' of Lo Detrich were devastated when Lo was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as an infant. By the time she was 15, however, her parents had learned so much about the illness that they wrote a book, The Spirit of Lo. The parents hoped that people dealing with the same types of issues could benefit from the shared experiences.

Writing about important life matters may even make it easier for you to access your memories. Kitty Klein, Ph.D., a researcher at North Carolina State University, led a study demonstrating that writing frees up working memory. She reports in the Journal of Experimental Psychology that people who were asked to write expressively about stressful events experience significant gains in their working memories when compared with subjects who were told to write about trivial events.

Researchers once believed that the main benefits of writing were purely psychological. But there is new evidence of the health value of forming coherent stories out of the chaotic elements of your personal history. In the Journal of Clinical Psychology, James Pennebaker, Ph.D., and Janet Seagal, Ph.D., of the University of Texas at Austin, report that people who write about personal details are healthier than those who don't.

In one of their studies, Pennebaker and Seagal asked groups of students to write about an assigned topic for 15 minutes on four consecutive days. Later in the year, the students were asked about their health: the students who had written about emotional topics had far fewer doctors' visits. "Having a narrative is similar to completing a job, allowing one to essentially forget the event," Pennebaker concludes. Once you take your most pressing memories and put them into story format, "the mind doesn't have to work as hard to bring meaning to them."

Other physiological benefits have been documented. Researchers led by Joshua M. Smyth, Ph.D., studied 112 patients suffering from either asthma or rheumatoid arthritis and who wrote in a journal every day. In 1999 Smyth and his colleagues reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that writing about stressful life experiences had a beneficial effect on symptoms.

GO WITH THE FLOW

One way to increase these health benefits is to learn how to write more fluidly and with less angst and frustration. When you're engaged with what you're doing, the rest of the world recedes. The poet David St. John describes this experience: "When I'm working, I don't know how much time has elapsed. It really is becoming part of some pulse, other than yourself."

This altered state is known as flow. Psychologist Mihaly M. Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D., of the Peter Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University has studied the phenomenon for more than two decades and has even written several books on the subject. In one of his earliest studies, Csikszentmihalyi provided teens with beepers and diaries to record how engaged they felt in a variety of activities. Some individuals, he found, are good at learning to tap into flow regardless of what they're doing. With practice you may learn to control your ability to enter such a flame of mind.

And if you write more often, you may raise the odds of producing a masterpiece. Research by psychologist Dean Simonton, Ph.D., shows that the more works an artist produces over a lifetime, the more likely it is that great works are created.

Of course, not everyone can turn out a book every year. Many people struggle half a lifetime to finish a single short story. Why do some people have a hard time writing? Figuring out how to put your thoughts into written words may be one constraint, but you might also be concerned with other fears. What if someone gets upset with you for writing this? What if you don't know enough about this subject?

THE WRITE RITUAL

Such constraints and fears may add up to what is called writer's block. It can happen to anyone, but successful writers have learned not to panic. Here are some suggestions that may help you reframe your nonwriting periods and figure out what you need to do before continue writing:

o Set reasonable goals. Giving yourself a daunting task, such as "I will write the story of my life and appear on Oprah," is antithetical to the writing process. It is better to trivialize the task and realize that no single writing session really matters.

o Increase your knowledge of your subject. Search the Internet or go to the library to look for more details you can add to your story.

o Take risks. When Suzanne Greenberg, an assistant professor at California State University at Long Beach, researched risk-taking in creative writing, she found that many people are afraid of the repercussions of saying something honest. "It's an emotional stretch to really look at life and see all its gray areas," she says. Remember: Even though writing can sometimes feel risky, you're not really risking anything in the writing. Take a chance.

o Visualize your ideal reader. Don't picture an old boyfriend saying, "Who'd want to read that stuff?" Instead, imagine a writing buddy or a good friend who appreciates the efforts you make and never puts you down.

o Find a ritual or routine to help you through the process. Sometimes the hardest part of writing is deciding if it's worth the effort this time. But if you simply follow a pattern, it becomes automatic. As mystery author Sue Grafton explains, "I think part of the issue is presenting yourself for the task. So I show up at my desk at 9 o'clock every morning. I think your internal process needs to be geared to the fact that you will show up for work at a certain time every day."

o Remain focused on what's important and filter out irrelevant things. "The feeling that people have of being overwhelmed is verifiable in the lab," says Ronald Kellogg, Ph.D., of the University of Missouri at Rolla and author of The Psychology of Writing and Cognitive Psychology. To eliminate the confusion, Kellogg recommends outlining and prioritizing your ideas.

o Organize your thoughts. If you find yourself struggling to get words down, you might try an informal organizing device such as clustering, where you splatter information about your topic on a large sheet of paper.

o Change something about what you're doing. If you're stuck, try to write something else, perhaps in a different genre. Or find an anecdote that makes you laugh. Putting this down on paper may revive your interest in the subject.

So go ahead, you have nothing to lose and a happier, healthier life to gain.

Here are a Few more techniques to get words into type:

o Play a particular album whenever you're working on a specific project.

o Take a break in the middle of writing dialogue. Your subconscious will continue the conversation for you.

o Write first thing in the morning, before your internal critic wakes up and begins carping.

o Write totally out of order, beginning with any scene or description that comes to you.

o Print out what you wrote last time, and edit it in pencil.

o Take a long walk before writing.

o Pull a book off the shelf and read a little to inspire you.

READ MORE ABOUT IT: Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D. (Basic Books, 1998)

Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. (F&W Publications, 2001, paperback.)

Everyday Creative Writing Michael C. Smith, Suzanne Greenberg (NTC Publishing, 2000, paperback)

Social psychologist and author Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., shows us the benefits of writing and how it can fulfill our need for expressing creativity.

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READY FOR TAKEOFF

Dec. 17, 2003
Hartford Courant
By PAUL MARKS, staff report
© Copyright 2003 Hartford Courant

By mid-December 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright weren't smug, just increasingly self-assured. Exactly a century later, the same can be said of Ken Hyde.

In the anxious days leading up to this morning's planned re-enactment of the Wrights' historic flight over the wind-carved sands near Kitty Hawk, N.C., Hyde has seen some satisfying parallels.

The inventors of the first successful airplane and their present-day emulators both suffered a minor crash in the days leading up to ultimate triumph. For both, public attention was something to be avoided until the last.

In this centennial year for aviation, Hyde is determined to save some excitement for the exact historical moment, which arrives today at 10:35 a.m. It will be exactly 100 years after Orville Wright lifted off in the first of the brothers' four successful flights.

Tens of thousands are expected to mob the coastal Outer Banks to witness the re-enactment. But the fact is, the reproduction Wright Flyer built by Hyde's Virginia-based Wright Experience organization has already proved it can fly. As for today's launch, even years of careful design, wind tunnel testing and pilot preparation offer no guarantee of how well the plane will perform.

"It is the basis of all our planes," Hyde said, "and yet it's a very difficult animal to fly."

In the 605-pound biplane's first trial flight Nov. 20, it covered 97 feet. Winds of 15 mph to 18 mph made for near-perfect conditions in a secluded part of the beachfront dunes known as Kill Devil Hills. About 100 observers, including a class of local schoolchildren, witnessed the flight.

Five days later, a second trial was not so lucky. The craft rose a few feet, but within seconds, a crosswind drove it sharply off course and into a hard landing. Part of the vertical control mechanism was damaged.

As with everything he's done as the head of the Wright Experience, Hyde, a 64-year-old retired airline pilot from Warrenton, Va., learned a bit more about what it took for Wilbur and Orville Wright to put a motorized aircraft aloft and exert the necessary control over the three axes of pitch, roll and yaw.

"There's a very narrow operational envelope for this machine, and there's about 5 mph difference between stalling and going too fast," he explained. "She came off the rail too fast and she was probably getting 30 mph. That was at about the upper limit of what this plane should be flying."

Fortunately, the pilot, Terry Queijo, emerged uninjured. Within a day the plane was patched up and flight-ready again. Queijo and Kevin Kochersberger, who made the initial flight, began trials with the motorized plane only last month, after several months of training on a replica of a glider built in 1902 by the Wrights, which closely resembled the Flyer.

Kochersberger's second flight on Dec. 3 covered 115 feet. This time, too, the landing broke some supporting ribs on the left wing and ripped the fabric covering. By then, the plane's airworthiness was assured. Rather than risk serious damage, Hyde ruled out further testing.

"I feel confident now that we're ready," he said then.

This morning, the flip of a coin will determine which pilot goes first - an echo of the coin toss that Orville Wright won 100 years ago.

The Wrights had their setbacks, too.

On Dec. 14, 1903, their first attempt to take the Flyer aloft with its 12-horsepower engine and some newly repaired propeller shafts produced a 3-second downhill hop, a hard landing and a broken front elevator. Nevertheless, they reached a positive conclusion.

"The power is ample," Wilbur Wright wrote in a journal, "and but for a trifling error due to lack of experience ... the machine would undoubtedly have flown beautifully. There is now no question of final success."

The brothers knew how to keep a secret from competing would-be aviators, but trusted their family in Dayton, Ohio, with frank updates. The next day, mindful of an eager, rambunctious press, they telegraphed their father a report that concluded: "Success assured. Keep quiet."

Two days later, when weather conditions were right, they made the flights that made history - the longest spanning 852 feet. Years later, Orville Wright reflected that it took youthful audacity to rise into a 25-mph wind in a plane that flew "like a cross between a bucking bronco and a roller coaster."

Such is the challenge the Wright Experience has carefully reconstructed.

Weather will be a significant factor in today's attempted flight near the Wright Brothers National Memorial, where a 60-foot-tall granite monument stands engraved with the names of the flying bicycle mechanics from Ohio. Thirty-five thousand tickets for the event have been sold at $10 each, and most of the buyers are expected to be present despite the chill December winds. It was those steady ocean breezes - most often from the north or northwest - that drew the Wright brothers to Kitty Hawk where they spent five years experimenting.

Under contract with the Experimental Aircraft Association, with sponsorship by Ford Motor Co., Northrop Grumman Corp., Alcoa and Microsoft, the Wright Experience spent more than three years and more than $1 million painstakingly crafting a reproduction that matches the original Flyer as closely as possible.

The task was complicated because the restored 1903 aircraft, on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum since 1948, is not completely original.

The triumphant flights of Dec. 17, 1903, were halted after a sudden gust of wind caught the Flyer and sent it cartwheeling across the sand. Reduced to a heap of broken wood and torn muslin, it was shipped home in boxes. Back in Dayton, the Wrights cannibalized some parts for use in their next generation of aircraft and the remnants were stored in a basement. In 1913, those parts were damaged in a flood. Not until a few years later was the Flyer reassembled for public display. Because the Wrights made no formal drawings, details of its design were a mystery.

The nonprofit Wright Experience group, which employs about a dozen full- and part-time engineers and craftsmen, analyzed hundreds of grainy black-and-white photographs taken by the Wrights and others. Hyde said he went to great lengths to replicate the materials used in the original Flyer. He borrowed a rare piece of the original "Pride of the West" brand muslin cloth used for covering the wings from a descendant of the Wrights and had the scrap analyzed by the Institute of Textile Technology at North Carolina State University. Then Hyde persuaded a North Carolina textile mill, Alice Manufacturing Co., to retool its looms long enough to produce some of the loosely woven cloth.

"Grown men aren't supposed to beg, but we did," Hyde said with a laugh. "It was two years getting that made."

The West Virginia silver spruce used by the Wrights for the plane's spars and other wooden assemblies has become so rare that a compromise was made. That wood was used in the more visible parts - such as the footrests and hip cradles for the pilot, who lies prone on the lower wing while using one hand to move the elevator, which projects to the front of the craft. Less visible parts were made of Sitka spruce from Alaska and Canada.

Part of the genius of the Wright brothers was manifest in the twin 8½-foot spruce propellers they made for the Flyer. To carve the replicas and coat them with powdered aluminum, as the Wrights did, Hyde picked Larry Parks, a computer systems engineer with BAE Systems, an aerospace company, and an expert on the use of 19th-century hand-carving tools. Parks kept a journal and documented each step of the process for future study, something the Wrights neglected.

To train its two prime pilots and two backup pilots, including Hyde, the Wright Experience hired legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield, who half a century ago became the first to fly at twice the speed of sound. Towing the 1902 glider replica with its 22-foot wingspan down a grass landing strip near Hyde's Virginia home, the group made about 200 practice flights. Pilots working the elevator by hand and shifting their hips to activate the Wrights' cable-controlled "wing-warping" system found the craft sensitive and hard to keep in equilibrium.

Modeled after the changes the Wrights observed in a soaring vulture's wings, wing warping changes the shape of both wings to control the plane's roll, or sideways tilting. Ailerons on the wings of modern planes work on the same principle.

"The controls are awkward, and it takes a fair amount of training to figure out what works," said Kochersberger, who ordinarily flies a four-seat Piper Aero. He said the glider's response to commands was "sluggish," but the powered Flyer has "very effective roll control" needed for turns.

"These were short flights, but they're proving what we need to prove," Kochersberger said earlier this month. "Now I know with great confidence that Dec. 17 will be a very special moment."

The First Flight Centennial Foundation, National Park Service and state of North Carolina have spent years preparing. Actor John Travolta, who is a pilot, will serve as master of ceremonies. Harry B. Combs, a noted pilot, author and former president of Gates Learjet Corp., will donate a full-scale, non-flying reproduction of the 1903 Wright Flyer to the National Park Service.

Barring severe weather, Hyde said, the crowds gathered at Kill Devil Hills will not be disappointed. The only thing that could stop the show, he said, would be winds in excess of 22 mph.

"Even if we do not get any more [practice] flights," he said earlier this month, "I feel we are ready."

A discussion of this story with Courant Staff Writer Paul Marks is scheduled on New England Cable News each half-hour today between 9 a.m. and noon.

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High-tech way to cut wood could save money, trees

Dec. 17, 2003
Albuquerque Tribune
By JONATHAN B. COX, News & Observer
© Copyright 2003

- Sandy Mullin gestured at the machine his saw company makes and said he ought to paint it green.

That's because the tool, with its lasers and computer software, can help keep trees in the forest - and money in the pockets of furniture, flooring, cabinetry and other manufacturers.

The machine, called Cellscan, lets companies make more efficient cuts of the lumber they buy to build the products they sell. By examining the microscopic cells in wood, it can find the best way to remove imperfections such as knots, leaving less waste, improving productivity and reducing labor costs.

Barr-Mullin's latest invention might get little notice from consumers, who seldom think about the technology behind the products they purchase. But it could be a savior to furniture makers and other companies competing with cheaper imports.

"This is sort of like the holy grail of woodcutting," said Mullin, co-founder and president of Barr-Mullin in Raleigh, N.C. "You can get more out of the lumber. That doesn't mean you're a tree-hugging conservationist. It's an economic decision."

For 30 years, Mullin's 20-employee company has used computers, software and other high-tech solutions to engineer cutting systems that let companies create products faster and more cheaply. Barr-Mullin is an anomaly, Mullin says, because there hasn't been "a lot of super-engineering" in the wood industry.

The company was recognized for its work this summer, receiving a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Barr-Mullin will use the money to develop software that enhances the scanning system in grading and cutting lumber, Mullin said. It must report progress to the NSF every six months of the two-year grant.

Mullin, 64, began the company in 1973 with Jim Barr, who went on to help start SAS Institute, the Cary software developer. Mullin was teaching at North Carolina State University when he and Barr invented their first machine that used a computer system to optimize wood cut from boards.

Since then, the company has developed several products aimed at improving productivity in the wood industry. These include a saw that can make precise cuts at 1,000 linear feet per minute and a computer program that allows managers to oversee all cutting equipment in a plant.

The company boasts that it has saved more trees than the Sierra Club, an organization of 700,000 dedicated to preserving the Earth's natural resources.

Barr-Mullin's most promising tool so far for advancing the goal of bigger and cheaper yields could be the Cellscan.

The company started developing it 10 years ago and can now manufacture the machines for customers. About a dozen Cellscans, which range in price from $500,000 to $1 million, depending on configuration, have been installed from Russia to Chile. Some of those were for test customers, Mullin said.

The machine's value is in evaluating wood. Traditionally, that task has been done by humans. They stand on the end of a line in a factory and critique lumber for a few seconds before feeding it into the business end of a saw.

In that short time, they look for defects that must be cut out for the boards to be usable in a final product. Workers, in recent times, anyway, mark the imperfections with fluorescent crayons, which the saw reads and cuts.

The problem with that arrangement is humans can't consider all four sides of a board in the allotted time. And when they mark knots and other defects, they often leave in a large buffer, which translates into wasted wood.

Barr-Mullin's scanning machine is designed to overcome that obstacle with lasers that look at the makeup of wood on all sides simultaneously. It can detect knots, for example, because the cells are perpendicular to the surrounding area. But it's not misled by dirt, as similar systems that use cameras might be.

The machine feeds readings into computer software linked to the saw, which determines the optimal cutting pattern. The system can be modified for various industries, which have different guidelines for acceptable boards, and processes wood fast. A common configuration for the scanner can process 80,000 linear feet in an 8-hour shift, compared with an average 20,000 linear feet by a human being.

"This technology has a lot of promise," said Rich Christianson, editorial director of Wood and Wood Products, a magazine. "Optimization is a very critical part of the industry now."

Of the household furniture sold in the United States last year, 39 percent was manufactured somewhere else, up from 22 percent in 1994, according to figures from Mann, Armistead & Epperson, a Richmond, Va., investment bank.

Cheaper imports from countries such as China are coming to the U.S. market, hurting traditional manufacturers. The only way to fight back, experts say, is for companies to reduce costs.

Using a scanner like that made by Barr-Mullin lets companies buy lower-grade boards and extract more usable material, reducing expenses. And it lessens the work force needed to accomplish the same tasks.

Although automation typically leads to some layoffs, it's better than closing a plant.

Mullin said that's what his company, helped by the NSF grant, is doing. Within 20 years, he predicts scanning technology will transform the industry, from the sawmill to product manufacturers. It might even make the most critical part of the cutting process become insignificant.

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UGA search committee pares AD finalists to three

Dec. 16, 2003
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By MARK SCHLABACH and TONY BARNHART
© Copyright 2003

Athens -- The final cuts have been made in Georgia's search for its next athletics director.

Georgia officials on Tuesday informed candidates whether they'd made the final cut. The search committee charged with finding Vince Dooley's successor will present the list of three finalists this week to UGA President Michael Adams, who will then decide who is hired. Adams has said he hopes to have a new athletics director in place by the end of this month.

On Tuesday night, it appeared the three finalists were N.C. State athletics director Lee Fowler, Texas Christian University athletics director Eric Hyman and Georgia associate athletics director Damon Evans, several people close to the search process said.

The finalists were three of at least five candidates interviewed Sunday and Monday at the Atlanta Airport Hilton Hotel. Florida associate athletics director Greg McGarity was told on Tuesday that he was no longer under consideration for the job. Before becoming Florida athletics director Jeremy Foley's top assistant in 1992, McGarity worked 16 years in Georgia's athletics department.

It was unclear whether Mark Lewis, a former Georgia football player and vice president for Olympic sponsorships with General Electric, was still being considered. Lewis is the son of former Georgia assistant and Georgia Tech coach Bill Lewis.

Dooley, 71, will retire on June 30 after working the past 40 years in Georgia's athletics department. He has been the Bulldogs' athletics director since 1979.

Hyman, 52, has been the athletics director at TCU the past six years, overseeing the Horned Frogs' move from the Western Athletic Conference to Conference USA two years ago. He hired football coaches Dennis Franchione and Gary Patterson.

Hyman, a former North Carolina football player, was a candidate to replace Tennessee athletics director Doug Dickey last year.

Hyman declined to comment when reached at his office on Tuesday. Jere Morehead, chairman of the UGA search committee, couldn't be reached for comment.

Earlier this month, Hyman declined an invitation for TCU to play in Thursday night's GMAC Bowl in Detroit, citing the game falling in the middle of the school's final exams. The Horned Frogs will instead play Boise State in their own stadium in the Fort Worth Bowl on Dec. 23.

THE CANDIDATES

Damon Evans

Age: 34

Hometown: Gainesville

Current job: Senior associate A.D., Georgia

Education: B.A., M. Ed., Georgia

Athletics background: Oversees the Georgia Athletic Association's finances, development, human resources, sports medicine, gymnastics and men's and women's basketball. . . . Ranked No. 100 in the 101 most influential minorities in sports this year by Sports Illustrated. . . . Was SEC assistant commissioner for eligibility and compliance services from 1997-98. . . . Played wide receiver at Georgia from 1988-92.

Lee Fowler

Age: 50

Hometown: Columbia, Tenn.

Current job: Athletics director, N.C. State

Education: B.A., Vanderbilt; M.S., Memphis

Athletics background: Has been Wolfpack's A.D. since September 2000 and is credited with upgrading the school's athletics facilities and football program. . . . A.D. at Middle Tennessee State from 1994 to 2000, overseeing the Blue Raiders' jump from Division I-AA to Division I. . . . Member of NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament committee and was chairman in 2002. . . . Associate A.D. at Memphis from 1986-94. . . . Assistant basketball coach at Memphis from 1979-86 and at Vanderbilt from 1975-79.

Eric Hyman

Age: 52

Hometown: Alexandria, Va.

Current job: Athletics director, Texas Christian

Education: B.A., North Carolina-Chapel Hill; M. Ed., Furman

Athletics background: Has been AD at TCU for the past six years. The Horned Frogs won four Conference USA championships last year in football, women's basketball, men's golf and men's outdoor track and field. . . . Prior to working at TCU, Hyman was AD at Miami (Ohio) from 1995-97. During his tenure, Miami's student-athletes had the fifth-highest graduation rate among all Division I schools. . . . Worked as associate AD at N.C. State, A.D. at Virginia Military Institute and associate AD at Furman. . . . He coached football for nine years at Furman and women's basketball at North Greenville College. . . . Played football at North Carolina and earned All-ACC honors as defensive tackle.

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Poplar trees may be new draw for pig farms

Dec. 16, 2003
Environmental News Network
By Estes Thompson
© Copyright 2003 Environmental News Network.

WHITAKERS, N.C. — After years of struggling with the dirty disposal problem of sludge from hog waste lagoons, researchers have come up with a possible green solution: poplar trees that suck up the waste like soda straws.

If the procedure works well enough to be approved by state water quality officials, it could more than cut in half the cost of closing a waste lagoon, currently done with bulldozers and dump trunks.

"It is a simple method," said Frank Humenik, coordinator of the animal waste management program at North Carolina State University.

Humenik has been working with Oregon researchers who have been experimenting the past few years with technology that relies on groves of fast-growing hybrid poplars to suck up waste.

Studies have found the trees can absorb nearly 3,000 gallons of effluent per acre per day, ridding the ground ammonia and nitrogen by safely metabolizing the compounds in their woody tissue.

Oregon State University water quality researcher Ron Minor said it could take 10 years before the trees clean the land well enough that it can be used again.

"Over time, the trees take up the nutrients and it is natural purification," Humenik said. "With the trees, you have a harvestable product."

The current method approved by the state of North Carolina to clean up hog lagoons is complex. First, the liquid is drained from the top of the lagoon onto existing sprayfields of grass at the farm. Then the farmer pays to have the sludge scooped out and trucked away to be spread thinly on acres of fields.

"We don't like to haul that stuff around," Humenik said.

Humenik said the sludge usually isn't welcomed by neighbors of the fields. The cost and politics of cleanup may be the reason only 20 lagoons were closed last year in the state, he said.

There are 1,700 inactive lagoons in North Carolina waiting cleanup and 4,500 more lagoons in use. North Carolina ranks second in hog production at 9.6 million animals, behind Iowa at 15 million head.

National Pork Board figures show one animal produces between 8,000 pounds and 64,000 pounds of waste a year, depending on its development.

Cleaning out a typical lagoon could cost as much as $40,000 an acre, not counting the cost of land on which to spread the sludge. The sludge can't fertilize crops for human consumption. Humenik said the typical lagoon cleanup using the poplars would cost between $15,000 and $20,000 for a lagoon that is two to three acres.

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Molecular Memory Startup Snags Ex-Intel Exec Les Vadasz

Dec. 16, 2003
EE Times Online; TechWeb
By R. Colin Johnson, EE Times
© Copyright 2003

Portland, Ore. - Molecular memory chip startup, ZettaCore Inc. will announce Wednesday (Dec. 17) the appointment of Intel co-founder Les Vadasz to its board of directors.
Vadasz was a part of Intel's founding team in 1968 and subsequently managed the design teams for the world's first DRAM, EPR