Study: Excess nutrients affect stream’s ecosystem
Tuscaloosa News – March 5
A study published in the journal Science co-authored by a University of Alabama associate professor reports that nutrient pollution accelerates the breakdown of forest detritus in streams, affecting the food webs in the ecosystems. “The significance is … what we are seeing in our experiments is what we are seeing over large parts of the world because of human pollution,” said co-author Jonathan Benstead, an associate professor of biological sciences at UA. The paper, based on nine years of work between two experiments in forest streams in North Carolina, was published in today’s edition of Science. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and led by researchers at the University of Georgia. Forest leaf litter in many streams and rivers is the most important source of energy, Benstead said. Many of the streams are well-shaded by the forest canopy above, limiting photosynthesis and algae growth, another major energy source in streams.
Al.com – March 5
Winston Salem Journal (N.C.) – March 5
The Telegraph (Ga.) – March 5
Daily Journal (Franklin, Ind.) – March 5
Science Daily – March 5
National Science Foundation – March 5
Newnan Times Herald (Ga.) – March 5
New director takes the helm at Alabama Museum of Natural History
Tuscaloosa News – March 5
John Friel began work Monday as the new director of the Alabama Museum of Natural History at the University of Alabama. “Alabama’s incredible biodiversity over the ages is the primary story that we strive to tell at the Alabama Museum of Natural History,” said William Bomar, executive director of University Museums. “Friel’s background makes him the right person to lead the staff in telling this story.” Friel previously was the senior research associate in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University and served as the curator of fishes, amphibians and reptiles at Cornell’s Museum of Vertebrates.
On Selma’s 50th anniversary, Obama will look to the future
Los Angeles Times – March 5
President Obama will mark the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march in Selma, Ala., on Saturday, but he will be focused less on the past than on the future, particularly the agenda he hopes to carry out beyond his time in office. Obama is laying out plans for a post-presidential period that his friends envision as a busy third act of his life, using his public prominence to try to address socioeconomic challenges in the world. Economic empowerment for the disadvantaged, expanded opportunities for girls and the programs that help young men in the project that he calls “becoming a man” all are likely to figure in the agenda of the last two years of his presidency and afterward, according to people close to him … “Sadly, the next stage of the civil rights movement is on us. The ‘black lives matter’ movement is the current civil rights movement,” said Joshua Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Alabama and the director of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South … “The school-to-prison pipeline, police brutality, sentencing — every single one of those has racial bias built into them structurally,” Rothman said. “Those things have blown up in the aftermath of Ferguson, but all of those issues were there before.… It really does seem, in the last five to 10 years, that we’re going backwards.”
Who was Edmund Pettis?
National Public Radio – March 5
When you talk about Civil Rights, it’s always the Edmund Pettis bridge; not the Selma bridge or the Highway 80 bridge, but the Edmund Pettis Bridge. It arches up in the middle so as you walk across it, you can’t see what’s on the other side. But you can’t miss the name in black upper-case letters overhead. About 100 steps in you can see brown rust stains dripping down from those letters like tears. But the man for whom this bridge is named would not have cried over what happened here fifty years ago. John Giggie teaches history at The University of Alabama. He says, “Pettis was the head of the most notorious white terrorist group in Alabama, probably up until the Civil Rights Movement.” That’s right. Aside from being a two-term U.S. Senator and Confederate General, Edmund Pettis was a Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan…
“Deja vu from the 1960s”: Alabama not budging on same-sex marriage
CBS News – March 5
The Alabama Supreme Court has made itself an outlier in the judicial march legalizing same-sex marriages in the United States, drawing rebukes from gay rights advocates and evoking comparisons to Alabama’s defiance of federal authorities during the civil rights movement. The court set up a showdown with a Mobile, Alabama, federal judge this week when it ordered officials in the state to stop issuing same-sex marriage licenses pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision later this year on whether gays and lesbians have a fundamental right to marry … University of Alabama law professor Ronald Krotoszynski said the Alabama justices are technically correct in asserting their authority in the case. The U.S. Constitution actually doesn’t say whether state courts must adhere to federal court rulings. It simply created U.S. Supreme Court and authorized Congress to create other federal courts as necessary.
Northwest Georgia News – March 5
Fairmont Sentinel (Minn.) – March 5
Edge Media Network – March 5
Wisconsin Gazette – March 5
The Republic (Ind.) – March 5
UCLA Engineers Develop WearSens, A Food Diary You Can Wear Around Your Neck
Medical Daily – March 5
Food diaries are a tried and true way experts recommend individuals looking to lose weight maintain, be it actual pen to paper or a popular app, like MyFitnessPal (which tracks food and fitness). But as Popular Science (PS) pointed out, these become hard to keep up with and, in some cases, aren’t always accurate. Engineers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) think they have the answer. WearSens is a smart necklace built with piezoelectric sensors to track the vibrations near an individual’s neck … The engineers involved, however, conceded there’s more research to be done. So far, the technology has only been tested (with a small menu) in 30 people, and some experts are skeptical WearSens will be able to detect the thousands other ingredients and foods individuals eat on a daily basis. “It’s an interesting study, no doubt, but I want to see how it performs in a larger community,” Edward Sazonov, an electrical engineer of the University of Alabama, told PS. If not a diet tracker, WearSens may have potential to track other medical conditions, though these findings are preliminary. One such example is using the necklace to track the vibrations a pill makes, helping wearers keep better track of their medicine schedule.
Selma– “This is something I’ll tell my kids…”
Alabama Public Radio – March 5
This Sunday the city of Selma will remember the fiftieth anniversary of an event that became known as Bloody Sunday. Voting Rights marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 were attacked by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse. History like this may be fresh in the memories of our parents and grandparents. But a group of student journalists from the University of Alabama got to experience the story for themselves. Alabama Public Radio newsroom intern Sarah Sherill was among them, and she files this report … Asking directions in a strange town is never easy. My classmate Katie Shepherd and I aren’t looking for a restaurant or a hotel. We’re in search of history. We’re in Selma and we’re trying to find places like Ebenezer Baptist Church. That’s where long time pastor Dr. Frederick D. Reese first invited Dr. Martin Luther King Junior to come Selma in 1965. But, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Our trip began weeks ago during class at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Volcanoes and Lightning Make Tiny Glass Balls Together
Environment Guru – March 5
Volcanic lightning lashes the eruption cloud over Galunggung, in Indonesia, in this 1984 photo. This discharge of energy creates abundant tiny spheres of melted rock that mix with the ash as it settles earthward and enters the geologic cycle. (USGS) Geologists are familiar with something most of us have never seen—spherules, or microscopic balls of natural glass that hide in sediments all over the world. A new study reports a previously unknown kind of spherule that’s forged during volcanic eruptions as lightning lashes roiling clouds of hot ash. … Knowing this power of lightning, Kimberly Genareau, a volcanologist at the University of Alabama, wondered what happens in eruption clouds of volcanic ash when lightning laces through them. What she learned is the subject of an open-access paper in the journal Geology. She acquired ash from two eruptions known for their spectacular volcanic lightning displays, the 2009 eruption of Redoubt in Alaska and the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland.
Terra Daily – March 5
Broadway superstar set to perform at Alabama sorority house ribbon-cutting
Al.com – March 5
University of Alabama’s Gamma Phi Beta members are no doubt ready to move into their new chapter house this fall, but the new house’s ribbon cutting ceremony might prove to be even more exciting thanks to a famous sister. Kristin Chenoweth, who was a member of Gamma Phi Beta at the University of Oklahoma, announced this week she’ll be performing at the sorority’s ribbon cutting after party on Aug. 1. The 40,000 sq. ft. house is the largest housing project in the sorority’s history, and is one of many new Greek houses in UA’s sorority row extension, part of an expansion plan in which every house is being relocated or expanded. Chenoweth, who received both a bachelor’s and Master’s degree at UO, famously originated the role of Glinda in Broadway’s blockbuster “Wicked” and won a Tony for her work in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”
Work continues at former site of Bryce Hospital
American Towns – March 5
Work continues on the former site of Bryce Hospital at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on Wednesday. The work is part of a campus master plan for the historic hospital grounds, which includes new academic and residential buildings and recreational facilities. UA purchased the Bryce property from the state in 2010, paying nearly $77 million for the 168 acres on the northeast side of campus and agreeing to pay an additional $10 million for environmental cleanup and historic preservation.