Bryant-Denny Stadium updates, drive-thru Starbucks coming to University of Alabama
Al.com – June 13
A new Starbucks and $2.5 million worth of digital signage in Bryant-Denny Stadium are on their way to campus after the University of Alabama Board of Trustees approved construction and finance proposals Friday. The Board approved the purchase of an equipment package consisting of digital signage and a point of sale system for stadium concession stands, including 154 55-inch televisions and 92 42-inch televisions. The board reviewed mock-up renderings of the signage, which includes back-to-back suspended monitors, concession stand monitors and triple suspended monitors. The $2.5 million — $2.2 million for signage and $300,000 for concession stand equipment — will come from the Intercollegiate Athletics Crimson Tide Foundation. … Another new feature is expected to be installed just steps away from the stadium — the board approved a proposed $5.2 million retail facility on Bryant Drive in the vicinity of the former beloved Corner Store. The Corner Store was demolished last June due to severe maintenance issues, according to a UA spokeswoman. The store, established in 1946, was a student staple for decades, operating for 24 hours a day and within walking distance from most major dorms. It also drew large crowds on football game days, as fans picked up snacks or beer within sight of Bryant-Denny Stadium. The new retail center is expected to house a Starbucks and a SupeStore, relocated from nearby Tutwiler Hall.
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – June 13
UA hosts material science camp
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – June 13
The University of Alabama hosted a “material science camp” for teachers to come and learn new experiments for their classrooms. Over 20 teachers were able to make foam smoothies, instant snow, and pinch pots to help inspire students to join the science program called STEM fields. Terri Cole: “We can hopefully get kids to want to go into these science fields – that is our goal. We want them to want to go to school and learn about science and hopefully one day become scientists or go into a field that has science.” Cole says the best part of the week is getting hands-on with experiments they hope their students will like.
CollegeFirst program at UA (gallery)
Tuscaloosa News – June 12
Jennifer Dunnigan, 15, a sophomore at Tuscaloosa County High School, uses an instrument to remove a piece of filter paper as her lab partner, Josh Robertson, 17, a senior at Bryant High School, looks on during an AP Chemistry lab offered through the CollegeFirst summer enrichment program at the University of Alabama’s math, science and engineering facilities in Tuscaloosa, Ala. on Thursday June 12, 2014. The chemistry lab performed an experiment using solutions of calcium chloride and sodium carbonate to filter out the solid components, known as precipitants, of each solution onto pieces of filter.
Field of sports law grows with athletic industry
Tuscaloosa News – June 14
A couple years ago, Gene Marsh had about 30 law school students in his sports law class at the University of Alabama. This past spring semester, Marsh, an emeritus law professor, had 57 students in the elective class. The increased interest in sports law is part of a national trend not only in law schools but also in law firms, more of which are including it as part of their practices. That rising interest occurred partly because of the economic downturn several years ago, Marsh said. Law firms, like most businesses, took a hit during the Great Recession and were looking for more business, so they added more services, he said. The other part of sports law’s growth recognizes sports as a big business that continues to grow and become more complex. Sports law includes a good dose of labor law, but it also covers such things as intellectual property rights, gender equality issues and even liability issues related to injuries, behavior and harassment, said Marsh, an attorney specializing in sports law with the Birmingham office of Jackson Lewis, a national New York-based law firm that specializes in labor and employment law … Marsh, a Tuscaloosa resident, was not one of the early attorneys in sports law. He taught contract law at UA for 20 years and did not get actively involved in sports law until 1996, when he became UA’s faculty athletic representative. That led to his involvement in the Southeastern Conference and NCAA, the national governing body for collegiate athletics. He served on the NCAA’s Committee of Infractions from 1999 to 2008 and is a past chairman of the NCAA Division 1 Committee of Infractions.
Arctic Alaska is a different kind of place
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (A.K.) – June 14
Slicing through the top quarter of the Alaska map, the Arctic Circle marks the boundary of perpetual light. North of the line, the sun won’t set on summer solstice. But somehow the breezy, treeless tundra of Barrow has a more arctic feel than Fort Yukon, also poleward of the line but home to dense spruce forests and Alaska’s all-time high temperature of 100 degrees. A more “ecologically sound” definition of the Arctic is any area with an average July temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit or less. Alex Huryn and John Hobbie wrote this in their book, “Land of Extremes: A Natural History of the Arctic North Slope of Alaska.” While that definition applies to Adak, Shemya, Wales and a few other cool places south of the circle and excludes Umiat (with a long-term July temperature average of 54.7 degrees), it includes most other towns and villages in what most people consider Alaska’s Arctic. When plotted as a line, that temperature standard somewhat marks the northern limit of trees. Huryn, a professor at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and Hobbie, with the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, have spent many hours on Alaska’s North Slope, a Nebraska-size region extending from the backbone of the Brooks Range to the pale salt water of the Arctic Ocean.
ECOVIEWS: Celebrating America’s best-known ecologist
Tuscaloosa News – June 13
Many would declare that the best-known ecologist is E. O. Wilson, who celebrated his 85th birthday on June 10. He has taken many giant steps in a celebrated career that led to fame in the scientific world. He coined the term and concept of biodiversity. And as a student, he discovered the origin and identified the threat of the burgeoning scourge of fire ants, the insidious insect invader from South America. His academic journey took him from Alabama to Harvard. Without knowing it, I first crossed the wake of Edward Osborne Wilson in 1955 when, as a high school student in Tuscaloosa, I met Professor Ralph Chermock. Ed Wilson (as he was called then) was already well on his way to becoming Chermock’s most famous student at the University of Alabama, where he completed his bachelor’s in 1949 and his master’s a year later. Wilson’s classic original research and thesis on fire ants became a yardstick for what could be achieved at the predoctoral level. … Sixty-four years after receiving his master’s degree, Wilson is unquestionably the most famous biologist and arguably the most famous internationally known person to have ever graduated from the University of Alabama.
Aiken Standard (S.C.) – June 15
Google chief Eric Schmidt is personally bankrolling this data-science think tank
Venture Beat – June 14
Obama’s chief Data scientist Rayid Ghani has just summoned 48 socially minded aspiring data scientists to Chicago this summer for a fellowship called Data Science for Social Good (DSSG). Funded by Google chairman Eric Schmidt, this fellowship started last year … This year, projects partners include World Bank Group, City of Memphis, and Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools. Those 48 fellows are selected from a pool of 300 applicants from all around the world. Most of them are students – PhD candidates, Master students and recent undergraduates. … One project this year that can help with the development of such a tool is tackling “text analysis of government spending bills to understand pork spending.” In this project, DSSG mentor Joe Walsh, a political science PhD candidate from University of Alabama, will assist a group of four students in “identifying earmarks using machine learning methods” to figure out where the money has been allocated. Sunlight Foundation provides data sources, and the Harris School of Public Policy at University of Chicago will provide more technical expertise. “There are lots of groups that have armies of people who just read lots and lots of congressional texts and try to identify earmarks that way,” said Walsh.
About 600 attend Tuscaloosa event seeking jobs, other advancement
Tuscaloosa News – June 14
Brenda Collins has been unemployed for three years. She said she has been trying to get by with the help of family members, but it’s not enough. She waited in line Saturday at a job fair hoping for the opportunity to provide for herself and her son. “(I’ve been) trying to make it. Just having stability, and knowing that you’re secure, and knowing where your next meal is going to come from and how you’re going to pay your bills, that’s just peace within itself,” Collins said. Collins was one of approximately 600 people to attend the West Alabama Works GED/Job Fair Saturday at the Tuscaloosa Career & Technology Academy in an effort to obtain a job with Bama Dining at the University of Alabama.Human Resources Manager for Bama Dining Pamela Jones said Bama Dining is hiring about 250 people in preparation for the opening of new dining facilities on campus in the fall. A new two-story Fresh Foods Company, Raising Cane’s Chicken, a convenience market, Wendy’s, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Panda Express will open on campus along with several other restaurants, markets and coffee shops.
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – June 13
Monroe County attracts interest from Chinese textile interests; former Vanity Fair facility among sites scouted
Al.com – June 13
The availability of cotton, land and facilities lured a Chinese textile delegation recently to Monroe County for a tour of potential sites that could support more than 300 insourced jobs. “It really depends on which factory located there,” said Ken Tuck, executive director of SoZo Group, the Hong Kong-based corporate and economic development consulting company that hosted the fact-finding visit. …. The American South is where the majority of these manufacturers want to be,” Tuck said. The Chinese delegation also visited Dothan and toured the University of Alabama’s new engineering research center while hosted by SoZo Group.