Alabama students filming comedy about zombie chasers
Anchorage Daily News – Dec. 11
The Super Skate on McFarland Boulevard turned into a dispatch center for a ragtag team of zombie chasers last week as production students from the University of Alabama Telecommunication and Film Department shot a pilot for their television show titled “Zom-Com.” The show follows a team of people who go on various jobs chasing zombies to collect data about them. “In the pilot, they botch one of their jobs and bring back incomplete data, so they don’t get paid as much,” Adam Schwartz, assistant professor in the TCF department, said. “To try to make up for that, they accept what is known throughout the zombie-chaser community as a suicide mission. The pilot follows them on that mission.” Schwartz is teaching the advanced television production class this semester and is making the pilot in collaboration with the students in Matt Payne’s seminar class called “Zombies in Culture.”
mHealth13: Technology knowledge key to telehealth deployment
FierceHealthIT – Dec. 12
Telehealth isn’t only about knowing the patient and the treatment–knowing the technology is equally important, Leigh Ann Chandler Poole, M.D., a nurse practitioner at the University of Alabama, said Tuesday at the 2013 mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C. To that end, the University of Alabama’s nursing program has an extensive telehealth training program, according to Poole, in which students are assigned to work with a patient in a rural area throughout an academic year. Poole serves as coordinator of the nurse practitioner concentration, and recently received three-year funding to continue to use telehealth. “In academia, we have a bad habit of trying to teach our students what we know and how we learned it,” Poole said. “That’s not good enough for today.”
County preserves land record books to digital format
Clanton Advertiser – Dec. 12
More than 100 years of land records listed in plat and assessment books from Chilton County were recently converted to digital format. Land records spanning as far back as 1872 were transferred to PDF and tiff formats from 13 plat books and 46 assessment books through funds provided by the Chilton County Commission to the Tax Assessor’s budget equaling $25,000. Chilton County Tax Assessor Chief Clerk Kim Gillespie said the project meant a lot to her to see pieces of history from the county preserved…The project started in September 2012 when University of Alabama cartography professor Craig Remington stopped by the Chilton County Courthouse to see if any old records needed to be digitally converted…One year later, Gillespie learned that funds were added to the Tax Assessor’s budget for the project. “I contacted Mr. Remington and told him we would like to have our records preserved and he started in September working on the books we had stored at the courthouse,” Gillespie said…Many of the books dating back to the 1800s had brittle pages that easily cracked or ripped if handled. Remington took each book apart and scanned every page to be stored on an external hard drive with the page and date listed electronically.
Eagle Scout leads plan for new Long Valley playground
Observer Tribune (N.J.) – Dec. 13
Drew Townsend has played soccer for many years but he was concerned there was no place for the younger children who did not want to play soccer. Townsend, a member of Boy Scout Troop 36 in Long Valley, developed his idea as part of the requirement for receiving the Eagle Award, Scouting’s highest rank…One requirement to reach the Eagle Rank is to plan, develop and give leadership in a service project in the community. Townsend has been a member of the Long Valley Recreation Soccer Association for 13 years. While playing at the soccer fields, he came up with the idea to develop a children’s playground at Califon Field in Long Valley. Townsend is a freshman at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, majoring in business.
University of Alabama Alumni Association charter buses to take fans to Sugar Bowl
Tuscaloosa News – Dec. 13
The Tuscaloosa County chapter of the University of Alabama Alumni Association will charter two buses to take fans to the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 2 at the Superdome in New Orleans. The cost is $75 per person, which includes water, soft drinks, snacks and a gift bag. Game tickets are not included. Two buses will leave from the Coleman Coliseum parking lot on the UA campus at 8 a.m. and return immediately after the game. Arrangements have been made to leave personal vehicles at the coliseum lot for the day. Parking permits are not required. The deadline for reservations is Dec. 27. Mail check payable to Tuscaloosa County Alumni Chapter, P.O. Box 020773, Tuscaloosa, AL 35402. For information, call Carol Wright at 205-454-8622 or email cwwright4@comcast.net. Proceeds will help the alumni scholarship fund for Tuscaloosa County students attending UA.