Check out the recent media mention of sustainability-related programs, practices, and people at UNC:
Book raises issues about eating meat
The News and Observer (Raleigh)
How often do you think deeply about what you are eating? ...Students at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University are wrestling with some of those challenging questions. As participants in the two schools' joint summer reading program this year, incoming freshmen and transfer students are reading "Eating Animals," by Jonathan Safran Foer. (Suzanne Havala Hobbs is a registered dietitian and a clinical associate professor in the department of health policy and administration in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill.)
The Rugged Altruists (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The New York Times
...Rye Barcott was a student at the University of North Carolina who spent a summer sharing a 10-by-10 shack in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. ...Over the next several years, Barcott served as an officer in the Marines in places like Iraq and created an inspiring organization called Carolina for Kibera, which offers health services and serves as a sort of boys and girls club for children in the slum.
Inside the List (Book Review)
The New York Times
Required Reading: Can a peaceable literary vegetarian from Brooklyn bring together what a bloody Southern basketball rivalry has torn asunder? That was surely the hope of administrators at Duke and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, when they chose Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” as the joint summer reading for this fall’s incoming freshmen.
Reforming the Carnivores
Inside Higher Ed
...In trying to get grass-fed beef into the dining halls at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the student group Fair Local Organic (FLO) realized just how difficult it is to find such a product. North Carolina contracts with the food service provider Aramark, which has a number of safety, equipment and process regulations that producers must meet in order to supply for the company. But those regulations often aren’t feasible for the smaller producers that raise their animals humanely, students said.
Triangle Universities Studying Soft Matter
WUNC-FM (Chapel Hill)
The Triangle's four major universities are collaborating on a multi-year study of "soft matter." The National Science Foundation awarded a 6-year grant worth nearly 14-million dollars to researchers at Duke, UNC, NC State, and NC Central Universities.
UNC Using GPS To "Take A Bike Out Of Crime"
WCHL 1360-AM (Chapel Hill)
Every new school year brings a spike in on-campus crime, and few crimes are more common on campus than bicycle theft. But this year, UNC’s Department of Public Safety is employing GPS technology—to “take a bike out of crime.” "We became aware of a program to (create) a bait bicycle," says Public Safety spokesperson Randy Young.
Universities to study soft matter
The News and Observer (Raleigh)
A six-year, $13.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation will establish a multiuniversity research center dedicated to the study of soft matter. ...The Triangle Materials Research Science and Engineering Center will involve researchers from Duke University, N.C. Central University, N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill.
In Ancient Pines, a Startling Shift in Tree Rings (Blog)
The New York Times
Nearly 50 years have passed since a glaciologist by the name of Donald R. Currey got his tree-borer stuck in a remote Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) about 10,750 feet up in the little-visited Humboldt National Forest of eastern Nevada. ...Dr. Currey carried a slab of the tree back to his lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and counted 4,844 rings. In a report published in Ecology a year later, in 1965, he conservatively estimated the tree’s age at death to have been 4,900 years old.
Local researchers collaborate
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Researchers from Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill, N.C. Central University and N.C. State University will focus their collective expertise on facets of soft matter research, a branch of materials science with almost limitless practical applications, from organic solar cells to tissue implants to new classes of drugs. The National Science Foundation has provided a six-year, $13.6 million grant to establish a multi-university center to investigate aspects of this promising area of scientific endeavor.
Thanks to UNC News Services for finding this great story AND compiling the summary! You can find more UNC media coverage and stories online at
http://uncnews.unc.edu/.
