Four Loko ban considered by state, federal officials
After raising safety concerns nationwide, Four Loko and other alcoholic energy drinks might soon disappear from shelves.
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After raising safety concerns nationwide, Four Loko and other alcoholic energy drinks might soon disappear from shelves.
Students at UNC-Charlotte have recently expressed interest in changing the school’s name to the University of Charlotte.
Since the start of the month, Arshad Hasan, the executive director for Democracy for America, a major political action committee that supports the Democratic Party, has traveled hundreds of miles endorsing 118 candidates nationwide.
The NCAA has once again put UNC’s football program in the spotlight, but not in a way fans have come to expect.As the issue of football-related head injuries on campuses experiences increased focus, the NCAA has highlighted UNC’s policy of testing student athletes for injury as a model for other universities.A bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives would provide grants to states to purchase testing equipment and implement stricter monitoring plans to decrease concussions among athletes. “Concussions are described as a hidden epidemic,” said Kevin Guskiewicz, chairman for the UNC department of exercise and sport science. “It is not an easy injury to see, like the swelling and bruising of an ankle sprain.”The NCAA is using UNC as the suggested model program for designing several new concussion monitoring and return-to-play plans on university campuses.UNC’s data are being used to help create an updated concussion protocol, Guskiewicz said. He said he was part of an NCAA committee on concussions trying to set new guidelines to recognize and manage this injury because the University was one of the first to conduct research on head injuries.UNC’s exercise and sports science department put into place sensor-equipped football helmets in 2004.With each hit, the football helmet sends a transmission to the sideline with data on the force of the impact and location to the brain, Guskiewicz said.The department has 60 helmets equipped with six small acceleration meters that bend and fit inside the padding of the helmet. In real time, the sensors stream data on any impact and measure the force and magnitude, he said.For the past six seasons, the helmets allow the department to see what types of hits impact which parts of the brain, and how this corresponds with the likelihood of a concussion, Guskiewicz said.The sports medicine department also holds educational seminars with coaches to teach them to recognize the symptoms and to realize the dangers of trying to play through it, said Mario Ciocca, director of sports medicine at UNC Campus Health Services.“The NCAA is constantly seeking to protect the health and safety of its student-athletes,” Chris Radford, spokesman for the NCAA, said in an e-mail.“NCAA rules committees oversee the playing rules of each sport and work closely with medical experts to make competitions safer,” he said. “Ultimately, it is the school’s responsibility to protect the health of its student-athletes.”Concussions hit the national spotlight this year after University of Pennsylvania football player Owen Thomas committed suicide in April. Post-mortem it was discovered Thompson was showing signs of progressive brain disease caused by multiple unreported concussions.“It used to be a toughness thing, and you did not want to report it since it seemed a weakness,” Guskiewicz said. “There is now a culture shift and we now realize the dangers of playing through it.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
A national trend shows that students across the country are struggling to pay back college loans, but UNC students are an exception.
Two Durham-based entrepreneurs are still in their twenties, but don’t let their age fool you.
After the smoke from the fireworks has cleared from Kenan Stadium and the crowd has left the seats, the blue-horned Rameses makes his four-mile return trip home to Hogan’s Magnolia View Farm.The beloved UNC mascot has been held at the farm since the ram first became the school’s mascot in 1924. The current Rameses spends most of his time there with his wife, Tulip.“The rams are pretty much like your pets, like cats and dogs,” said Rob Hogan, owner of Hogan’s Magnolia View Farm and the fourth generation family ram keeper.But Rameses, a horned dorset sheep and well-known representative of UNC, is now one of about 170 barn animals on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy’s animal watch list — a list of breeds whose numbers are falling.In 1949, N.C. State University researchers discovered a gene mutation in the dorset to make them hornless, which allows farmers to breed for hornless rams.Horned rams can injure other animals or get caught in fences, Hogan said. Because of this, farmers try not to breed for horned dorsets like Rameses.“After the introduction of the (hornless) dorset in the late ‘40s, the number of horned dorsets has dwindled,” said Jennifer Kendall, the marketing and communications manager for the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.But while his breed may be becoming more rare, Rameses is still going strong for every football game.In the 1920s, Carolina had a powerful running back Jack Merritt, known as the “Battering Ram.” Rameses was suggested as a new mascot because of the sports figure.The first horned dorset was then sent from Texas to Chapel Hill to live on Hogan’s Magnolia View Farm.Hogan preps Rameses by soaking his wool coat and then drying him to create a bright white coat. Then, Hogan applies a first coat of light blue paint to his horns.Hogan puts on the second coat of paint and puts on Rameses’ blanket before heading off to UNC more than two hours before the start of the game. From there, Rameses visits with fans at the General Alumni Association booth before journeying down to the field 20 minutes prior to kickoff.The conservancy is working at spreading awareness of the animals through research, providing seminars on the animals and working closely with various breeding associations.The game day trips used to be a huge shock to Rameses, but the ram has adjusted to the game-day atmosphere.“The fireworks initially startled Rameses at first, but he got used to them during the Citadel game,” Hogan said. “Sixty-five-thousand screaming fans, the fireworks and the marching band is a big switch each Saturday from life on the farm.”Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.
Sophomore Lauren Hollowell knows to expect traffic down the Outer Banks’ Route 12 at the start of summer, as tourists from across the state and the country pour into the strip of beaches along North Carolina’s coast.“You usually start to notice around Memorial Day that rental prices go up and there is an increase in traffic,” said Hollowell, who has lived in Kitty Hawk her whole life. “It gets to the point that you don’t really go out Saturday and Sundays.”But this typical picture, Hollowell said, was not the case this year. Though the total number of visitors didn’t change much, they came later in the season and spent less money, according to the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau.The Outer Banks, one of the biggest tourism money generators in North Carolina, was hit by the current economic situation. Aaron Tuell, director of public relations for the visitors bureau, said it is the first true test on how the economic strain will affect tourism in the state.So far, many industries throughout the coast have seen losses in revenue.Many places are giving large discounts to travelers, and many tourists are looking for the free attractions the beaches offer, like Jockey’s Ridge State Park or public access beaches.“People have adjusted their budgets to allow for travel if they can afford it,” Tuell said. “They are just looking for more frugal ways to do it.”Beach rentals, which make up 80 percent of the region’s lodging revenue, were especially hard hit. According to the visitors bureau, rental homes on the coast have seen more than a 9 percent revenue drop so far this year. However, the hotel industry, which gives tourists opportunities for shorter and more last-minute vacations, has watched its numbers go up more than 10 percent this year.Another thing that people have cut back is going out to eat. The food industry in the Outer Banks has faced back-to-back years of decreases in total revenue.Hollowell said that the restaurant where she worked had a major drop in its number of customers.“Elizabeth’s Cafe and Winery started offering more wines from the cellar that our proprietor didn’t think we could sell as a bottle. They started offering them by the glass to get rid of them,” Hollowell said.Junior Madison Ambrose also said she noticed the crunch while returning to her home in Kill Devil Hills to look for summer work.“The competition for serving jobs at restaurants was really intense,” she said. “Because of the competition, the restaurants were looking for more experience.” Ambrose ended up settling for a hostess job that paid a smaller salary after struggling to find a serving job.Tuell said the Outer Banks spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on online advertising during the summer to ease economic pressures. They have added new television commercial campaigns, newspaper advertisements and digital advertisements throughout the northeastern part of the U.S. — even reaching the Jumbotron on the New York Times’ building.“We are really trying to market hard,” he said.Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.
Don’t let the smile and the humble demeanor fool you. Behind the big, white-framed glasses and plaid dress shirt lies the spirit of a rising military star.
A study published in Tobacco Control’s August edition shows a large disparity in tobacco use by the gay and lesbian populations. The study shows that 33 percent of gay men and 37 percent of lesbian women smoke, compared to the national averages of 24 and 18 percent men and women smokers, respectively. The research team consisted of Joseph Lee, a social research specialist with the Tobacco Prevention and Evaluation Program in the UNC School of Medicine; Cathy Melvin, research associate professor of maternal and child health at the Gillings School of Global Public Health; and Gabriel Griffin, a medical student at the Duke University School of Medicine. Lee, the lead author of the study, said he became interested in tobacco advertising toward the gay and lesbian community in a marketing scheme called Project SCUM. “Project SCUM was intriguing, and no one had a general idea about the differences between straight and gay and lesbian smoking rates,” Lee said. UNC senior Miguel Lilly, who is gay, said he thinks smoking is not strongly connected to the gay community. “If you go to any bar, people are going to be smoking,” Lilly said. “People smoke; I see no divide based on sexual orientation.” For three years, the researchers collected previous data on tobacco use by sexual minorities from 1987 to 2007. From 42 studies, they were able to get a picture of the smoking disparities. “One of the tools of researching is to gather the many different small surveys and put them together to get the overall big picture,” Lee said. Problems in the study included the surveys’ different definitions when identifying a gay person and what amount of tobacco use qualifies a person as a smoker, Lee said. Despite these inconsistencies, Lee said he is confident in the results. “We still cannot know an exact number, but I can see a consistently higher smoking between gays and lesbians since 1987,” Lee said. “The results have been pretty consistent across both time and geography.” Lilly said members of the gay community may smoke due to stress from outside pressures. However, Lee said he would still like to research the reasons behind the study’s results. “We now know there is a disparity,” he said. “No one wants to conduct research that just sits on the shelf.” Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.