Lab safety: UCLA researcher’s case continues

From Chemical and Engineering News, dated Friday July 27:

“The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office today dropped felony charges against the University of California Regents as part of an agreement involving labor code violations relating to the 2008 death of a chemistry staff research assistant.

“Similar charges against UC Los Angeles chemistry professor Patrick Harran were not dropped. The case against Harran has been postponed until Sept. 5 while the judge reviews a motion filed by his attorney challenging the credibility of a state investigator.”

Advances on biofuels, shelf life of produce featured in video on N.C. A&T research

Two top Aggie researchers are featured in a video produced by North Carolina Farm Bureau Magazine. Dr. Ipek Goktepe of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences talks about her research to extend the shelf life of fresh produce, particularly lettuce and spinach, and Dr. Abolghasem Shahbazi of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design discusses his work using agricultural waste to produce biofuel.

JSNN reaches milestone on state funding

Congratulations to the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering. For the first time, its full state funding request has been included as a recurring item in the budget, The Business Journal reports today (subscription required).

“The final legislative budget converted the $1 million of nonrecurring funds that had previously been passed for the school into $2 million in recurring funds. … The JSNN, which is run in partnership by UNC-Greensboro and N.C. A&T State University, has been receiving $4.9 million in recurring funds from the state, but school officials had to return to the legislature each year for enough nonrecurring funding to fill a budget gap.”

Nothing is absolutely certain until Gov. Bev Perdue signs off on the budget as whole.  She still has some problems with it, but the JSNN funding isn’t reported to be one of them.

Still, the General Assembly has acted, and that’s a big milestone.  The legislators have given the school strong, bipartisan support for several years. That’s something you don’t see every day in Raleigh.

The next time you have a chance, thank a legislator.  In an economy that remains in desperately bad shape, they’ve made a tough decision and done the right thing for us, for our community and our state.

At issue: A new perspective on affirmative action

“As the Supreme Court prepares to hear yet another challenge to the consideration of race or ethnicity in college admissions, civil rights lawyers and educators are sharpening new arguments to defend affirmative action or defuse the issue.”

– The Bay State Banner

Among those educators is Dr. William Harvey, dean of the N.C., A&T School of Education.  He argues that advocates for affirmative action need to take the issue out of the context of compensation for past discrimination and reframe it in a new light.  His comments are included in this column from The Bay State Banner of Boston.

Advaero’s technology from A&T gaining notice

The current issue of Composites Manufacturing magazine includes a report on Advaero Technologies’ “breakthrough” in the manufacture of a new carbon fiber capable of carrying 24,000 pounds in weight.

“Not only would this technology make composites competitive against metals, it could be an entry card for applications in new markets,” the magazine reports.

Advaero licenses its technology from N.C. A&T.  It was developed by Advaero co-founder Dr. Ajit Kelkar, A&T faculty member in the College of Engineering and chair of the Department of Nanoengineering at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering.

A few good long reads for a long weekend

A varied selection of longer pieces from the news media for those interested in spending some Easter weekend time reading:

Disgrace: On Marc Hauser (The Nation): “Scientific misconduct is often difficult to detect. Although grant applications and research papers submitted to prestigious journals are rigorously reviewed, it is very difficult for a reviewer to uncover fabrication or falsification. … Sometimes fraud is detected by a careful examination of published papers revealing multiply published or doctored illustrations; more often it is uncovered by the perpetrator’s students or other members of his laboratory.“

The Two-Year Window (The New Republic): “The new science of babies and brains—and how it could revolutionize the fight against poverty.”

African agriculture: Dirt poor (Nature): “African governments, international donors and scientists all agree that farmers must revitalize their soils. But there is passionate debate about how to do it. Many African governments and agricultural scientists argue that large doses of inorganic fertilizers are the most practical solution. But others, such the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, are pushing for greener, cheaper solutions, such as no-till farming that conserves soil and ‘fertilizer plants’ that boost the soil’s nitrogen content organically. Researchers report that these latter techniques are beginning to raise yields and improve soil fertility. But farmers are slow to adopt such practices, which require significantly more labour.”

The mistrial of LeBron James (ESPN The Magazine):” Ask most anyone who LeBron James is and you’re likely to get a blunt reply delivered with great conviction. Choker. God. Traitor. Hero. Arrogant. Generous. Undisciplined. Underappreciated. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone is in disagreement. And over the course of this afternoon in Miami, they all will be proved right — and therefore all be proved wrong.“

Weekend read: Boom time for Mozambique

A good, long-ish read for the weekend. From The Guardian, “Boom time for Mozambique, once the basket case of Africa”:

“The national currency was the best performing in the world against the dollar. Investment is pouring in on an unprecedented scale; as if to prove that history has a sense of irony, Portuguese feeling Europe’s economic pain are flocking back to the former colony, scenting better prospects than at home. Increasingly this is the rule, not the exception in Africa, which has boasted six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies in the past decade. The first oil discovery in Kenya was confirmed on Monday, while the British firm BG Group announced that one of its gas fields off the Tanzanian coast was bigger than expected and could lead to billions of pounds of investment. Bankers, analysts and politicians have never been so bullish about the continent, which barely 10 years ago was regarded as a basket case.”

On black businesses and entrepreneurship: Buying black in a racially divided economy

A piece of longform audio journalism for the weekend: From Slate.com, “A Year of Buying Black: An interview with Maggie Anderson.”

“In 2009, Maggie Anderson and her family pledged that they would patronize black-owned companies whenever possible, so she scoured the Chicago area for black-owned supermarkets, dry cleaners, gas stations, pharmacies, and clothing stores. Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest To Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy is the story of their experiment in conscious consumerism. Anderson discovered that black businesses lag behind businesses of all other racial and ethnic groups in every measure of success. In the Asian community, a dollar circulates among local shop owners, banks, and business professionals for up to 28 days. In the Jewish community, a dollar circulates for 19 days. In the African-American community, a dollar is gone within six hours. The interview runs about 29 minutes.”

Weekend read: “Neil Tyson: King of the Cosmos”

A good longread for the weekend: a profile of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:

“Tyson graduated from Bronx High School of Science in 1976 and went to Harvard. He wrestled, tutored prisoners in math, and studied astrophysics. In his sophomore year, he was talking with a fellow black student, a senior who was about to start a Rhode scholarship. The senior was appalled to hear Tyson talk about astrophysics. “Blacks in America do not have the luxury of your intellectual talents being wasted on astrophysics,” he declared.

“It was as if Tyson had been stung by a hornet. The stinger buried itself so deep inside him that it took nine years to work its way out. By then, Tyson was finishing his Ph.D. in astrophysics at Columbia. During graduate school, he became the department’s go-to person when reporters called to ask about something weird in the sky. He began answering questions readers sent to StarDate magazine. One day, a satellite recorded explosions on the surface of the sun, and a local television station asked Tyson if he would talk about it on camera. After the filming, he went home and watched himself on television. It was the first time he could recall ever seeing a black scientist speaking as an expert on American television. His college shame fell away.”

WNAA: Whitney & the state of the music industry

Something a little different for a Friday morning: WNAA-FM looks at the death of Whitney Houston and the state of the recording industry through interviews with a record executive and a radio programmer.  The interviewers are Dwayne Wickham, director of the A&T Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies, and Felicia Lawrence, a senior journalism and mass communications major. The 30-minute program will be on the air at 10 a.m. today (Eastern Standard Time). It’s available anytime online through the A&T Register website.