Experts at the UNC School of Government have developed tools to highlight the long-term consequences that can accompany a criminal conviction.
Led by John Rubin, professor of public law and government at the UNC School of Government, and Daryl Atkinson, senior staff attorney at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, have developed the C-Cat, or the Collateral Consequences Assessment Tool, which is an online, searchable database outlining the consequences of a criminal conviction.
C-Cat allows an individual to search crime characteristics such a “misdemeanor” or “substance abuse”, in order to accurately understand consequences that remain even after jail time, such as suspension of license or difficulty applying for federal financial aid.
Rubin also developed “Relief from a Criminal Conviction”, an online guide that explains the principal mechanisms available in North Carolina for obtaining relief from a criminal conviction.
The online guide explains available methods of relieving a crime, such as getting an expunction — having the conviction permanently deleted from your record, or “terminating the restrictions” the conviction places you on.
The relief guide defines a Certificate of Relief, which is available for request by an offender if one year after receiving a conviction, they haven’t committed any other crimes.
Both tools are available on the UNC School of Government website.
Bringing the outside inside
The North Carolina Botanical Garden program manager Katie Stoudemire partnered with Bresslergroup to build the WonderSphere — a clear dome that allows children with compromised immune systems at the UNC Children’s Hospital to experience nature.
The dome, which includes three portals with teal, built-in gloves — two for the child and one for a parent or sibling — allows children to handle Venus fly traps, caterpillars and make flower arrangements.
Stoudemire received two $25,000 grants — one from the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation and another from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to develop the WonderSphere.
The sphere was awarded the Core77 Design’s Social Impact Award in May. The award is given annually to projects that benefit social, humanitarian, community or environmental cases.
The next form of the WonderSphere is Hippoie Creek, a miniature creek exhibit available to children in the UNC Children’s Hospital atop a mobile hospital cart.
The reproduction will prevent bacteria growth with a layer of epoxy and uses recirculated water filtered to the hospital’s epidemiology department. Children will be able to play with rocks within the creek and replicas of aquatic insects, all while learning about water ecosystems.
Low choline and brain structure
Researchers at the UNC-Chapel Hill Nutrition Research Institute are studying the role of choline as a nutrient for development on the cerebral cortex.
After NRI’s director Steven Zeisel, discovered choline is an essential nutrient needed by pregnant women to ensure proper fetal development, Natalia Surzenko, a NRI research scientist, is continuning the research on choline by looking for structural changes in the brain caused by a low-choline diet.
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Surzenko and her colleagues recently published a study using a mouse model to observe the impact of a low-choline diet on neural progenitor cells through stimulation of a protein called epidermal growth factor receptor.
Neural progenitor cells are meant to become part of the brain or central nervous system. Surzeko’s study demonstrated that a maternal low diet in choline can lead to less proliferative progenitor cells in the cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain’s neural tissue.
Her study also found choline deficiency can lead to a reduced number of neural progenitor cells, a reduction in brain size and major defects in cortical layering.
After Surzenko and the NRI’s study showing the effect of a low-choline diet during pregnancy in mice, the team plans to further examine if the choline deficiency could lead to behavioral differences in animals with abnormal cortex structure after birth and later in life.
Surzenko will then make her research translatable to human pregnancies.
California drought doesn't affect agricultural productivity
The question of how California is able to continue producing high levels of farm-grown food, despite years of drought, will be answered by a UNC-led research team.
The study, funded by a nearly $3 million National Science Foundation, will be led by Gregory Characklis, professor of environmental sciences and engineering at UNC’s Gillings School of Public Health.
The new study will focus on the interdependency of the systems in California that supply food, energy and water.
During drought periods in California, farmers are forced to irrigate their fields from pumped ground water, causing farmers’ electrical demands to increase. Electric utilities must then increase reliance on more expensive power generating fuels, such as natural gas, which makes for potential economic distress for farms and higher food prices for consumers.
The grant is part of NSF’s “Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems” and will span three years.
The study will include work by two UNC faculty members — Jordan Kern, research assistant professor at the UNC Institute for the Environment and Tamlin Pavelsky, professor of geology. Scientists from the University of California-Davis and Cornell University are also part of Characklis’ research team.
Characklis led a team in 2014 that was awarded a $2.2 million grant from the joint NSF and U.S. Department of Agriculture program, “Water Sustainability and Climate.” The program focused on developing strategies for meeting future water demands in North Carolina through sustainable actions.
