Alabama students monitor Isaac’s landfall
Tuscaloosa News – Aug. 29
Two University of Alabama students, Brantley French and Patrick Alan Reilly, tracked and streamed live videos of Hurricane Isaac on Wednesday in New Orleans and Gulfport, Miss. Brantley French, a senior at UA and director of the storm chasing division for the university’s Meteorological Society, arrived in Waveland, Miss., with Patrick Reilly on Tuesday to watch the storm roll in. Reilly also attends UA and is the founder and president of the meteorological society. The students arrived in New Orleans at 9 a.m. Wednesday and tracked the storm for two hours, recording live video and streaming it online. French said he saw a lot of flooding, fallen limbs, and that the city was experiencing a power outage. “This is nothing compared to [Hurricane] Katrina, but it’s definitely dangerous,” French said. While in New Orleans, he said they were unable to reach the levees because of the amount of water on the roads but that the flood gates were holding.
Al.com – Aug. 29
Bloomberg – Aug. 29
Crimson White – Aug. 30
Budget cuts leave community colleges struggling to train workers
Chronicle of Higher Education – Aug. 30
Job-training programs are prized by policy makers and business leaders alike, but community colleges are struggling to run them as the loss of local and state funds has resulted in deep cuts to the colleges’ operating budgets, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Those cuts have made it difficult for community colleges to maintain academic programs that cost the most to operate, in fields such as engineering and nursing, the report says. Instead, the institutions are pressured to channel their scarce resources into short-term certificate programs, to train many unemployed workers. That priority draws funds away from not only the high-cost programs but also the longer-term academic programs, which require an investment of time and resources for community colleges to be able to adequately train the nation’s work force, says the report. The report, “Workforce Training in a Recovering Economy,” is based on responses to a survey this summer of members of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges. Collecting data from recent studies, the report focuses on the severity of the financial stress that has befallen community colleges, and higher education in general.
Community College Times – Aug. 30
News Blaze – Aug. 30
Alabama astronomer’s online comic hails discovery
Associated Press – Aug. 29
Thousands of citizen scientists have helped astronomers in recent years survey a vast expanse of sky, finding rare objects and space oddities. Those discoveries will again be highlighted in a unique form on Sunday during DragonCon, an annual Atlanta event that has been dubbed the world’s largest fantasy-science fiction convention. Two years ago, University of Alabama astronomy professor William Keel, Southern Illinois University assistant research professor Pamela Gay and others collaborated on an astronomy-based comic book. The comic book highlighted a 2007 discovery and analysis of an unusual space object found by a Dutch school teacher looking through space photographs on Galaxy Zoo. Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Keel later found that the object, a glowing, green cloud of gas, was an afterglow from a quasar that had since faded. The discovery led to a new project where volunteers were asked to look at about 18,000 galaxies appearing to create black holes and vote on whether the images also contained oddly colored clouds. “That at least enabled us to narrow down where the needle in the haystack was,” Keel said. Keel’s team narrowed down the search to 50 galaxies, based on the public’s feedback. Then, using telescopes in Arizona and California, the team found 19 galaxies with glowing clouds that extended thousands of light-years from their galaxies’ core. The team is now using the Hubble to observe seven of those galaxies. Quasars are light beacons powered by black holes. It is known that quasars can flicker on and off, but scientists did not know how fast the changes occurred, Keel said. “We can look straight at the galaxy and nothing is happening, but we look at this cloud of gas and see a huge amount of excitement that happened 60,000 years ago,” he said. “We are directly watching a piece of history.”
Alabama Public Radio wins national award
Crimson White – Aug. 29
Pat Duggins, news director of Alabama Public Radio, has won the Public Radio News Directors Incorporated award for best news series for his work covering the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “Oil and Water: Recovering from the Spill,” is a five-part radio series that examines the long-term effects on Alabama from the Deepwater Horizon spill. “The big guys, NBC, CNN and Fox, were always coming back with the same stories. It would be something about how a governor wanted money, a fisherman wanted his life back and a BP executive wanted to say sorry,” Duggins said. “After a while I said ‘the networks aren’t getting the story.’ I wanted to spend a year on the topic and look at case studies like Prince William Sound in Alaska after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.” Duggins delved deeper into the topic, examining issues like the effect on mental health or crime and domestic violence trends. This is not Duggins’ first experience working with disaster. Working with NPR in Orlando, he covered the 1986 Challenger explosion, the 1989 wildfire crisis and the disastrous 2003 Columbia shuttle re-entry failure. He said it was Hurricane Charlie in 2004 that best prepared him for the April 27, 2011 tornado. The award comes in the wake of several won by the APR news team, including a Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists for their tornado coverage. They were also named the “The Most Outstanding News Operation” of 2011 by the Associated Press.
Oppressive or secure? Police, barricades, helicopters throng Tampa with GOP convention in town
Associated Press – Aug. 29
They seem to be on every street corner. Police officers riding bicycles, horses and golf carts that look like baby Humvees. Metal barricades surround all of Tampa’s government buildings. State police, FBI, the Secret Service – some in riot gear – throng the city’s streets surrounding the Republican National Convention. Some, from visitors to downtown business owners, wonder if the convention security is all a little too much…City officials maintain the massive show of force – more than 3,000 officers – is needed to ward off possibly violent protests, pointing to several clashes with police at the 2008 Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn…Ron Krotoszynski, a professor of law at the University of Alabama, said that security at conventions has grown since 1988, when more than 300 anti-abortion protesters were arrested after blocking clinics during the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta that year. Since 9/11, “measures have become even more draconian,” he said. “Organized dissent has been banished from downtown areas.”
Chicago Daily Herald – Aug. 29
The Globe and Mail (Canada) – Aug. 29
ABC News – Aug. 29
UA nursing professor on National Hispanic Nursing Board
Crimson White – Aug. 30
UA nursing professor Norma Cuellar, one of just 250 doctorally-prepared Hispanic nurses in the country, can now add the title of boardmember of the National Hispanic Nursing Board to her resume. “The president [of the National Hispanic Nursing Board] contacted me and asked me to serve on the board,” Cuellar said. “He knew of my work. I’ve previously received two awards from them for service and education.” Cuellar believed that most Hispanics, as well as many minorities, were not encouraged to pursue higher education. “It’s a feeder system,” Cuellar said. “You have to advance.” Nursing students have to begin as undergraduates and complete graduate school to earn a doctorate in the science of nursing. Cuellar received her undergraduate degree in nursing from University of Southern Mississippi, her masters degree in nursing from Louisiana State University, and her doctorate from The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Cuellar said many nursing students stop advancing their education after earning an associates degree. “A lot of time they become registered nurses, and they don’t want to go back to school,” Cuellar said. “Education wasn’t a priority so much as getting a good job.”
ABXY hosts 1st game night of fall semester
Crimson White – Aug. 29
As a part of Week of Welcome, ABXY, UA’s video gaming club, will give students a chance to unwind with video games tonight at their first official game night of the semester from 7 to 10 p.m. in the Ferguson Center TV lounge. In an effort to attract a diverse group of students, ABXY will cater to a variety of gaming interests and by offering a variety of games from “Dance Central” to sports games. With the pressure of classes and professional development clubs, AXBY is meant to be an organization where students can relax and focus on doing what they enjoy. “It gives students a chance to meet people with similar interests and have some time to wind down from the constant classes, classes, classes all week,” Lauren Liebe, a UA graduate student and ABXY member, said.