Researchers design material that more effectively slows light
Phys.org – Oct. 6
Researchers at The University of Alabama designed and made a material that manipulates the speed of light in a new, more effective way than previous methods, according to findings recently published in Scientific Reports by the Nature Publishing Group. The research by two professors and three grad students in the UA College of Engineering could help in creating next-generation optical networks and sensors that rely on variances in the speed of light. “Slow light will lead to the development of optical buffers and delay lines as essential elements of future ultrafast all optical communication networks that could meet the ever-increasing demands for long-distance communications,” said Dr. Seongsin Margaret Kim, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and principal investigator on the research. “In addition, enhanced interaction of photons with matter by lowering the speed of light gives rise to reduced power consumption in nonlinear optical switching devices and ultra-accurate sensing performance of optical sensors.”
UA professor co-authors bank study
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 5
A University of Alabama economics professor has co-authored a study that found most banks can benefit from mergers, but mergers don’t benefit the nation’s largest banks. Professor Daniel Henderson’s study found that most banks can shed costs as they get larger, making the banks more profitable. “This is consistent with the majority of the literature which has been used to argue in favor of bank mergers,” Henderson said. “In other words, this implies that bank mergers may be beneficial to most banks.” Henderson and his colleagues discovered that this principle does not apply to the largest banks. Those banks have already maxed out their gains in efficiency and are operating at what is known as constant returns-to-scale, he said. That’s important because the prospect of increasing efficiency is often used to argue for bank mergers and in policies limiting bank size.
University of Alabama kicks off week of Homecoming festivities
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 5
Homecoming festivities will kick off Sunday at the University of Alabama, beginning a week of events ahead of the Crimson Tide’s Oct. 10 football game against Arkansas. This year’s theme is “Forever Crimson: Faithful, Loyal, Firm and True.” Kickoff for the homecoming football game against the University of Arkansas will be 6 p.m. Oct. 10 at Bryant-Denny Stadium. The week begins with the annual Roll Tide Run 5K on Sunday and the Crimson Kickoff Powder Puff Football Competition on Monday. Registration and check-in for the race will be at 3 p.m. Sunday at University Boulevard and Colonial Drive. The race will begin at 4:15 p.m. The Powder Puff Football Competition, which benefits the military support organization Caring for Camo, will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday at the recreation fields. Registration fees are $100 per team.
CBS 42 (Birmingham) – Oct. 5
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – Oct. 5
UA Professor discusses mass shootings
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – Oct. 5
Mass shootings like the one in Oregon have a lot of people talking across the country. They’ve become a major focus for a criminal justice professor at The University of Alabama. Adam Lankford says there has been 90 mass shootings in the United States in the past 50 years. He started studying mass shootings and murders more than six years ago. His goal is to better understand how the United States compares to other countries around the world when it comes to mass shootings, and how we can learn to prevent them.
Blood stains on concrete: An American tragedy
Examiner.com – Oct. 5
As President Barack Obama nears the end of his tenure, he has addressed the nation at least eight times regarding mass shootings in America. Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015 marked yet another moment for a solemn President to speak to the American people on another massacre: This one at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. On his NBC News’s televised address, President Obama once again lamented over a society that makes it “…easy for a person who wants to commit harm on someone else to get their hands on a gun.” Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama released a quantitative analysis which surmised that nearly one-third of the world’s mass shootings have occurred in the United States. “Essentially [America] is in a league of its own .”
NBC 12 (Montgomery) – Oct. 5
Australian group wants United States boycotted, Jeb Bush says, ‘Stuff happens.’
Examiner.com – Oct. 5
With the recent mass shootings in Oregon last week and a national election looming, the topic of gun legislation is headlining internationally every day. Many Americans are trying to ignore that problem. Introducing the notion of change on this topic to a country that sleeps soundly under the blanket of their Second Amendment is difficult. But other countries are looking on and saying, “Enough is enough.” The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 3 that the United States leads the world when it comes to the statistics of mass shootings. And nobody was surprised. An Australian group is the first group to get vocal about this and are saying, if you don’t do something we will, according to Think Progress News Oct. 4 … But the mentally ill took the hit. That is ableism, by the way, which is hate speech. Shame on anyone that blames the mentally ill for this problem, when anyone outside the United States can see this is a very American problem. And an associate professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama can prove it. Adam Lankford told the Wall Street Journal that the United States ranks number one in terms of mass shooters per capita. His research shows that in the United States, there are approximately 270 million firearms owned. And remember, these are just the ones that are registered and “legal.” This equates to almost one gun per American, or, as this professor puts it, 89 guns per 100 American residents.
Beat Auburn Beat Hunger kicks off
WLTZ-NBC (Columbus, Ga.) – Oct. 5
This morning marked the beginning of the 22nd annual Beat Auburn Beat Hunger food drive. Nonperishable foods are collected by both the University of Alabama, and Auburn University up until the Iron Bowl on November 28. Whoever collects the most food wins. The drive benefits the West Alabama food bank and also allows Auburn and Alabama fans to use their rivalry for a good cause.
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Oct. 5
Disappointment lingers for South Alabama officials over Alabama’s settlement in BP oil spill case
Al.com – Oct. 5
Disappointment among South Alabama officials continues to persist over a proposed settlement into the federal government’s lawsuit over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and subsequent oil spill. But Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, who publicized more details on the state’s $2 billion portion of the overall settlement with BP, said Monday that it’s up to the Alabama legislature on how to spend the nearly $1 billion going into the General Fund … Those state officials who negotiated the settlement have continued with their plans to provide a windfall to the state’s General Fund despite the concerns raised earlier this summer by concerned citizens and some elected officials when the tentative settlement plans were announced,” University of Alabama law professor Montre Carodine said. “This is an unfortunate development for those truly concerned about restoring the Gulf Coast region.”
UA student tries to help families of Oregon shooting
CBS 42 (Birmingham) – Oct. 5
A mission is underway to help support the families of the victims of last week’s community college shootings in Oregon. A University of Alabama freshman, Arianna Hammel, has created a Go Fund Me page to help raise money. She says she doesn’t know any of the victims personally, but that’s not stopping her from wanting to help.
The Hardest Law Schools To Get Into
Business 2 Community – Oct. 5
For pre-law students, the process of applying to law schools is taxing. Cramming for the LSAT provides plenty of stress, and for high-aiming future lawyers, the admissions statistics for the country’s top law schools can be discouraging. To give aspiring lawyers who dare to shoot for the stars a clear picture of the challenges they’ll face, StartClass found the 25 law schools with the lowest acceptance rates. We used data from the American Bar Association Standard 509 reports from 2014, the most recent information available. We also listed each school’s Smart Rank, which combines traditional law school rankings with statistical data to determine an overall indication of a school’s quality … No. 18 University of Alabama School of Law; No. 19 UCLA; USC.
Beloved Community Lecture series continues Thursday
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 5
A Thursday program at Plum Grove Baptist Church will focus on the portrayal of black women in literature. Tuscaloosa native Trudier Harris, a distinguished research professor in the University of Alabama’s English department, will discuss “The Disease Called Strength: Strong Black Women in African-American Literature.” Harris’ speech is part of the Beloved Community Lecture Series, an ongoing effort to educate the Tuscaloosa community about present-day issues. The lecture series is hosted by Haven on Earth Inc., Christians Impacting Christians Inc., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Tuscaloosa, the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama and Aframsouth Inc.
Already rare on some roads, Alabama state troopers will be rarer at big events, too
Al.com – Oct. 6
Alabama state troopers, already a rare sight on many highways, are about to become a rare sight at the major events including Mardi Gras, Talladega and FootWash where they’ve helped provide security for years. “We will continue to help,” Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Secretary Spencer Collier said late last week, “but not at the level they are accustomed to.” … A study released in August said Alabama only has 42 percent of the troopers it needs. According to the University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety, Alabama should have 1,016 troopers based on its size. By comparison, Georgia has 629 troopers, Tennessee has 610 and Louisiana has 543. Mississippi has 375, but they only patrol state and federal highways.
Pamplin Historical Park and National Museum of Civil War Soldier to host 19th annual symposium Oct. 16-18
The Petersburg Progress-Index (Va.) – Oct. 5
Pamplin Historical Park and The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier will host seven experts from across the country for a symposium Oct. 16-18. Participants will interact with these historians throughout the weekend, taking a detailed tour of the Deep Bottom Campaigns and actions North of the James, and enjoying an open forum panel discussion on Sunday. The symposium will feature lectures and discussions on the events surrounding the end of the Civil War in 1865. The line-up of the symposium speakers includes George C. Rable from the University of Alabama, Caroline Janney from Purdue University, Frank Wetta from Kean University, John Coski from the Museum of the Confederacy, Mark Bradley from the Center for Military History, and Paul Quigley from Virginia Tech University, in addition to the Park’s own A. Wilson Greene.
Campus ministers receive disaster relief training
The Alabama Baptist – Oct. 5
Campus ministers from across the state recently gathered for a “train the trainer” session with Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief (DR) personnel. The session’s purpose was to equip and train campus ministers to be ready to train students in the event of a disaster. Nate Young, campus minister at the University of Alabama, said, “[Disaster Relief] is one of the best kept secrets of (Alabama) Baptists. I’m hopeful that equipping and involving collegiates will make it one of the most widely known strengths of (Alabama) Baptists. Involving collegiates in DR will enable collegiates to more effectively serve in times of need and also build bridges between generations.”
PACECAR Program to Reduce Emissions
Crimson White – Oct. 5
Students and faculty at The University of Alabama will have the opportunity to evaluate the size of their carbon footprint this fall with free emissions testing through the PACECAR program. The program is a new collaborative effort between the Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy, or PACE, and the University’s Student Government Association. Lance Brown, executive director of PACE, said the nonprofit organization was searching for ways to get involved on college campuses. “Our point of view is that there’s a lot of potential to get students involved in a positive way with their own vehicles and making sure that everyone is doing their part to drive a vehicle that complies with air emissions standards,” Brown said. The program spans three more dates this fall—Oct. 6, Oct. 21 and Nov. 10. Participants need to sign up online for an appointment time at testfortuition.org and make their way to the University Garage at 1227 14th St. on the selected date.
Civil rights activist and photographer presents exhibit downtown
Crimson White – Oct. 6
Less than one block separates the local YMCA from the Schomburg Center in Harlem. This short path inspired a long journey of civil rights activism for Doris A. Derby, whose documentary photography now adorns the walls of the University of Alabama Gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center. Derby studied tap and ballet as a child, eventually receiving a scholarship to study African dance at the YMCA through the Katherine Dunham workshop series. After learning that the Schomburg – a library with a large collection of African culture and literature – sat just around the corner, Derby would visit before or after every dance class.