University of Alabama to honor veterans with special Walk of Champions
Al.com – Nov. 5
The University of Alabama will hold commemorative events on campus over the next week to honor student-veterans and other individuals who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces. A Veterans Day ceremony is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 11, on the Quad at 11 a.m. The ceremony will feature retired U.S. Air Force colonel Duane Lamb, a UA assistant vice president, as speaker, according to a UA press release. On Monday night, a special Walk of Champions — a tradition for football fans to cheer on Crimson Tide players as they enter the stadium — will honor the 6,470 fallen veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The event, scheduled for 6:30 p.m., will feature lighted luminaries for each individual veteran in addition to a roll call for all those from Alabama.
The Value Of An Associate’s Degree Today
Yahoo! Education – Nov. 6
When you think about earning a postsecondary degree, what motivates you? The desire for a more stable career path? The hope that you’ll be more attractive to potential employers? The prospect of a better paycheck? All excellent motivations. But with the skyrocketing costs of college tuition and still high unemployment rates, a college degree might feel like a risky gamble. So should you roll the dice or not?…According to the U.S. Department of Labor, those with a bachelor’s degree make $281 more per week on average than those with an associate’s degree. However, there are some careers requiring an associate’s degree that earn more than careers requiring a bachelor’s degree – and this is not a new phenomenon. “That associate’s degree in technical fields can out-earn liberal arts bachelor’s degree holders has been known for forty or fifty years,” says Stephen Katsinas, director of the education policy center at the University of Alabama.
The Secret Web: Drugs, Porn and Murder Live Online
Time – Oct. 31 (Subscription required)
…Technically the Deep Web refers to the collection of all the websites and databases that search engines like Google don’t or can’t index, which in terms of the sheer volume of information is many times larger than the Web as we know it…But the Deep Web is also an ideal venue for doing things that are unlawful…Even leaving aside specialized tools like Tor, there are plenty of mainstream technologies that criminals can use to hide their activities: satellite phones, PIN messaging on Blackberrys and even Apple iMessage, the instant-messaging service on iPhones and iPads. “The DEA got burned in April when it came out that we weren’t able to capture iMessage on a wiretap,” says Diana Summers Dolliver, a professor at the University of Alabama’s department of criminal justice who previously worked at the Drug Enforcement Administration. “So of course all the bad guys went out and got iPhones and encrypted iMessage.
Business interests line up against Tea Party candidate in Alabama
Reuters – Nov. 5
A tight primary election in an Alabama Republican stronghold has pitted a business-backed former state senator against a Tea Party movement favorite in a race highlighting tensions between the party’s pragmatic and ideological wings over the recent government shutdown. Major businesses including Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Home Depot Inc are backing the campaign of former lawmaker Bradley Byrne, saying the 58-year-old attorney better represents their interests than Dean Young, a wealthy real estate developer running a grass-roots campaign…”It is a test of the Tea Party’s strength,” said William Stewart, a political scientist at the University of Alabama. “If Mr. Byrne comes out with a convincing win, it would deal a blow to them. If Dean wins, it would prove their strength.”
Sites teens flock to instead of Facebook
MyJoyOnline – Nov. 5
If your kids are not on facebook, where are they? Try Snapchat. There’s no need to burn after reading: This app’s files self-destruct. The service is designed for savvy teenagers who don’t want to leave an Internet footprint. Released in September 2011, users can send “Snaps” — photos or videos — that last between 1 and 10 seconds, depending on the limit set by the sender. It already has 100 million users and 350 million snaps sent daily, according to a spokeswoman for the app…Twitter launched Vine — a video-sharing app — on iOS in January 2013 and on Android in June 2013. It has already attracted 40 million users, according to a Twitter spokeswoman. Like on the 140-character microblogging site Twitter, on Vine, less is more: Vine videos must be six seconds or less — not exactly in the same league as the director’s cut of “Blade Runner.” Still, visual sites like Instagram and Vine are the new ways teenagers are communicating and sharing, says Kristy Reynolds, professor of marketing at the University of Alabama.
Author shares personal ties in slavery, civil rights through new book
Crimson White – Nov. 6
A seventh-generation Southerner and descendant of a slave owner, Margaret Wrinkle was born into the “racially charged” year of 1963, just on the cusp of the civil rights movement, and said she feels as though her debut novel “Wash” has therefore been heading for her all her life. “Wash” details the much-debated history and practice of slave breeding in the pre-Civil War South from the perspectives of three different people: a slave owner, a slave midwife and the title character, Wash, who is a slave brought into the trade directly. “It’s a difficult subject. There’s a lot of pretty terrible things that happen in [‘Wash’], a lot of violence, a lot of sexual violence in particular, and yet, to be able to write about that and still tell a story, that’s very moving,” said Josh Rothman, director of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South and a history professor at The University of Alabama. “The language itself has a sort of lyricism to it, but it’s a lot of alternating voices. It’s literary. It’s not the type of book you’re going to pick up at the airport.” Rothman helped organize a reading of “Wash” by Wrinkle at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center downtown Tuesday. The event doubled as the opening of the exhibition “Seeing Across the Divide,” which featured photographs taken by Wrinkle that helped to inspire her novel.
Better, faster, simpler: Depositing graphene directly onto flexible substrates
Phys.org – Nov. 6
The wunderkind material graphene is a one-atom thick layer of graphite (another crystalline form of carbon) in which carbon atoms are arranged in a regular hexagonal pattern. Being very strong, light, nearly transparent, and an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, is finding new applications at a dizzying rate…Currently, there’s little reported activity in transferring graphene onto flexible substrates, and these typically use polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) as an intermediate membrane – the downside being that the membrane must be removed after the transfer. Recently, however, scientists at MIT, University of Alabama and Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais devised a simple, PMMA-free, direct lamination technique for transferring graphene onto various flexible substrates.
Tinker discusses 1st Amendment student rights
Crimson White – Nov. 6
Fifty years after the landmark Supreme Court case that ruled in favor of students’ First Amendment rights, Mary Beth Tinker stopped at The University of Alabama to share her story and speak about the importance of the First Amendment to students. Her visit to campus was part of the “Tinker Tour,” which is sponsored by the Student Press Law Center. Tinker spoke to a large group of middle school, high school and college students Tuesday morning in the Ferguson Center Theater before heading to Birmingham to speak to students at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute that afternoon. In Birmingham, Tinker took the time to answer some questions for The Crimson White.
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – Nov. 5
Financial literacy program to help students manage debt
Crimson White – Nov. 6
College students often leave their families and homes with little knowledge about personal finance, but a new online program is being implemented to help students at The University of Alabama learn how to budget and plan for the future. “Transit” is a new program that focuses on college students’ financial well-being. The program, entering a pilot status at the University, has been effectively implemented at Louisiana State University and Ohio State University. The all-online course takes at most 1 1/2 hours to complete. After successfully completing multiple modules, the student is presented with a certificate of completion 45 days after finishing…Suzanne Henson, assistant director of health promotion and wellness in the College of Community Health Sciences, said she would love to see the program lead to the creation of other financial resources for UA students and faculty in the future. “Ideally, I would like to see UA create a financial wellness center,” Henson said. “You can put in your budget and debt in a program and have an advisor go through it with you.”
Water ski athlete competes with cystic fibrosis
Crimson White – Nov. 6
You can’t tell by looking at her, and she probably won’t tell you, but Ashley Combs is living with cystic fibrosis. She lives her life just as any other college student would, and she doesn’t let her illness stop her from achieving her dreams. “It’s definitely shaped who I am. It’s given me a lot of wisdom beyond my years, and it’s put my family and I through challenges that most people don’t face, so that’s made me extremely goal-oriented and relatively focused,” Combs said. “I have a lot that I’ve realized that I want to accomplish because of what I’ve dealt with.” The Colorado native, a sophomore majoring in psychology, is a member of the water ski team, SkiBama. At the team’s most recent competition, Collegiate Nationals, Combs was SkiBama’s top jumper. Cystic fibrosis is a terminal illness all infants are tested for at birth. It affects the lungs and digestive system and creates thick mucus that clogs the lungs and pancreas.
Not just a diet
Crimson White – Nov. 6
When Julia Whitten walks into the Ferguson Center to eat lunch, she does not join the long line of students waiting for Chick-fil-A or Subway. Instead, she fixes a salad or grabs vegan noodles from the refrigerated section in the food court. Whitten, a sophomore majoring in environmental science and Spanish, is one of 2.5 percent of Americans who are vegan, according to statistics reported by PETA. She has been a vegan for about two years…Veganism, which is refraining from eating or using animals or animal products, is becoming more popular on college campuses as well, according to PETA. Peta2, PETA’s youth division, surveyed more than 2,000 colleges and universities and ranked them on vegan-friendliness. The University of Alabama scored a ‘B,’ one of four schools in the state to do so, out of 24 ranked. The University met six of the 10 requirements.