University of Alabama, Shelton State team up in lunar robot contest
Tuscaloosa News – May 14
A team of University of Alabama and Shelton State Community College students is hard at work in a competition that could assist NASA in installing a manned outpost on the moon. The team, named Alabama Lunabotics, is tasked with designing and building a remote controlled lunar soil excavator called a lunabot. The team is readying its lunabot for the NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition that runs from May 21-27 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Alabama Lunabotics will be up against 66 teams from around the world at the competition, which started in 2010. The Alabama team has participated in the previous competitions, securing a sixth-place finish in 2010 in a field of 60 and fourth-place finish last year in a field of 72. Kenneth Ricks, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, said the competition is one of the more difficult with which UA engineering students are involved. And it should be, Ricks said, the team’s faculty adviser, because the competition was set up by NASA to help the space agency gather ideas about how to navigate and mine the odd lunar soil. “It’s just a very difficult material to work in, and a lot of the robots get stuck because that first layer of the soil, the first few inches, is very light and fluffy, almost like baby powder,” Ricks said.
Alabama class exploring Shakespeare, YouTube
Tuscaloosa News – May 12
What if William Shakespeare lived long enough to see the advent of YouTube? Long enough to see the audience members at his performances head home to make their versions of his classic plays? “I think Shakespeare would have enjoyed it,” said Sharon O’Dair, a University of Alabama professor and director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies. “I think he would have embraced new media,” she said. In a new class symbolic of the remix culture, O’Dair is instructing students as they produce their own take on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” O’Dair said she has been toying with the idea of the class for a few years, inspired by the Bard’s long-lasting reach even into digital mediums like YouTube.
Gadsden Times – May 12
National Elementary Schools Press Association finds new home at UA
Al.com – May 11
The University of Alabama’s department of journalism officially became the new home of the National Elementary Schools Press Association on Tuesday. The department and NESPA officials held a news conference in the Tuscaloosa Magnet School library to announce the official move of the 18-year-old national association from Asheville, N.C., to Tuscaloosa. Notepads and cameras in-hand, elementary school journalism class students covered the news conference for the school’s newspaper, The Magnet Express. NESPA, which has more than 750 member schools, helps elementary and middle schools start and improve scholastic media. The organization needed a new home when director Mark Levin retired. UA was already home to the Alabama Scholastic Press Association and the Multicultural Journalism Program.
University of Alabama students shrink families’ tax bills
Tuscaloosa News – May 12
This tax season, a group of University of Alabama students worked at free tax preparation sites across the state to secure $5.8 million in tax refunds, saving working families nearly $1 million in commercial tax preparation fees. More than 60 students participated in the initiative, which prepared more than 3,200 Alabama returns. The students were enrolled in a service-learning course on poverty taught by Stephen Black, director of the UA Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility. The center reports that it is the largest campus-based volunteer income tax assistance initiative in the country. Black’s class combined academic coursework with a requirement that the students serve at SaveFirst sites. SaveFirst is a nonprofit tax preparation and financial literacy initiative sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility and Impact Alabama. It’s a collaborative effort among universities and community-based organizations throughout the state.
Pro/con: Should Congress tax obesity-producing foods?
Duluth Times (Minn.) – May 12
Proponents of an American Nanny State have a plan to improve your health: Tax sugar and “junk” food so you will eat less of it. Subsidies for broccoli and beets are close behind. These plans for bureaucrats and politicians to remake your diet are bad news for four reasons. First, it is no one’s business but yours what you eat. The freedom to eat a slice of apple pie might not sound quite as stirring as freedom of speech, but the ability to choose how to live our lives is the most fundamental freedom. What you eat is no one’s business but yours. Second, even if the government has a role to play in guiding our dietary choices, efforts at restructuring Americans’ lives via the tax code are fundamentally flawed. This strategy has given us a tax system of unimaginable complexity. Taxes need to be simple and easy to administer. As tax laws get fatter, they clog our economic arteries and stifle economic growth … (Andrew Morriss is a professor of law and business at the University of Alabama. He can be reached at amorriss@ law.ua.edu.)
Savannah Now (Ga.) – May 12
Denver Post – May 12
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp present update of ‘Dark Shadows’
Gadsden Times – May 12
The first “Dark Shadows” was a daytime soap opera, a sort of gothic romantic drama, but taking flight with the introduction of ancient vampire Barnabas Collins, who Depp plays in the film. It began the same year as the original “Star Trek,” but outlasted that series by a couple of years, set in the town of Collinswood, Maine, a hell’s mouth if ever there were one, filled with werewolves, zombies, Frankensteinian monsters, witches and warlocks. Oh, and time travel and a parallel universe. “It was pretty ground-breaking,” said Jeremy Butler, a professor in the Department of Telecommunication and Film at the University of Alabama, and author of books including “Television Style” and “Television: Critical Methods and Applications.” “When it started, there was really no precedent for it.”
Tuscaloosa firefighters get rare opportunity
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – May 12
A rare opportunity for Tuscaloosa firefighters today, a unique situation allowed firefighters to train in a dormitory on the University of Alabama campus. There’s smoke…but there’s no fire, this time. The Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue Departments are using the fourteen story Rose Towers dorm to train their crews. Fire Training Chief Chris Williamson said, “In Tuscaloosa we just don’t have many high rises, but we have enough of them that we have to very skilled a confident if we do have a fire in one of them. Having the opportunity to train in this building and particularly to have the access to four floors of it at one time for three days running is really a once in a career opportunity.” The sugar based smoke simulator, with less than a foot of visibility, is what the teams must fight through in order to find a 175 lbs. Dummy, and then bring him all the way to the bottom floor. The training is considered high rise training. The definition is anything beyond what the equipment can handle, and in this circumstance it is anything taller than ten stories.
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – May 12
CBS 42 (Birmingham) – May 12