UA’s all-girls rocket team wants to inspire young girls to go into engineering
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – May 6
Fewer than one in 1,000 women are aerospace engineers. An all-girls rocket team at the University of Alabama is working to change that fact. They’re called the “Rocket Girls”. Focus@4’s Candace Sweat joins me now. Candace, the Rocket Girls have only been around for three years and already they’ve made a mark in college engineering. “Pam, the rocket girls are the only ‘all female’ rocket team to compete in the annual student launch initiative a competition managed by NASA. Last year, they placed sixth out of 50 teams. Not only do they want to propel their own careers but the team wants to recruit and inspire more female students for engineering. For that to happen, the imaginations of young girls must be captured sooner rather than later.”
Sequestration could make the U.S. sicker, fatter
US News – May 6
We already know that sequestration may harm the nation’s economy and trim job growth. But scientists say it could also have an adverse effect on the nation’s health in the not-too-distant future. Sequestration is slated to cut $1.6 billion from the National Institutes of Health’s $30 billion budget this year. The cuts will force labs to cut research positions and, as President Barack Obama and NIH Director Francis Collins have warned, potentially hinder U.S. innovation. But those cuts could have lasting health effects, as a slowdown in funding leads to slowdowns in medical advancements. The frustration is intense within the medical research community, which has been bracing itself for whatever sequestration has in store, even as it has watched Congress rush to keep air traffic controllers and meat inspectors on the job … “They’re looking for short-term fixes to short-term annoyances, but they’re not looking out for the health and well-being of the American people,” says Laura Reed, assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Alabama.
How the OPEC Cartel Undermines American Consumers and Business Operations
Spectator – May 6
If oil prices across the globe don’t seem to square with what one would expect in a free market system, there’s a reason for that. The OPEC cartel, according to a new published by Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE): [H]as at times been effective in forcing up the price of oil and, thereby, allowing the export nations to obtain a significant premium captured by national oil companies on behalf of their sovereigns. At times this means a transfer of wealth from oil-consuming nations to oil-producing nations totaling hundreds of billions of dollars more than what the competitive-market price of oil would suggest. From here, it only gets worse as OPEC’s market manipulations have serious ramifications for American taxpayers, consumers, and businesses, authors Andrew Morriss and Roger Meiners conclude. Morriss is the D. Paul Jones Jr. & Charlene A. Jones Chairholder in Law and Professor of Business, University of Alabama, and Smith is the Cary M. Maguire Chair in Oil and Gas Management, Southern Methodist University. They joined with Frederick W. Smith, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, FedEx Corporation, to discuss their findings at a forum hosted by the CATO Institute.