Competitor Magazine
Researchers at Appalachian State University have proven that a natural antioxidant derived from plants is able to reduce illness and maintain mental performance in physically stressed test subjects. Read full story

Collegiate Newswire
Today at Digital Music Forum East, Ruckus Network, Inc., the provider of the premier college-only multimedia service, released data that demonstrates the rapid and significant proliferation of its free and legal music downloading service, Ruckus(R), on colleges and university campuses across the United States, where both administrators and students are realizing the many benefits the service provides.

The Ruckus community now comprises several hundred thousand members and has grown by more than 33 percent in the past six weeks alone. The Ruckus service also continues to expand, giving Ruckus members easy and immediate access to the library of more than 2.5 million high fidelity, virus-free music tracks from every major label, as well as an impressive and expansive list of independent labels. An analysis of current member activity reveals that in the last thirty days, 22.7 million tracks have been legally downloaded through Ruckus.

At Appalachian State University, 7,100 students have become Ruckus members and have legally downloaded more than 2.3 million songs. Read full story

Chronicle of Higher Education
Poor Narcissus: He could only gaze into a pool. Today’s college students can watch themselves endlessly on Flickr, MySpace, and YouTube on their 27-inch, flat-screen LCD monitors.

But does that make them narcissists?

Jean M. Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, says gadgets and online social-networking sites have stoked the self-loving tendencies of modern students, known as “Millennials.” On Tuesday, Ms. Twenge unveiled her findings from a new study that describes this wired and coddled generation as the most narcissistic in recent history.

David P. Haney, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at Appalachian State University, believes that students are not as easily defined as Ms. Twenge’s study suggests.

“There are a lot more opportunities for students to display their narcissism publicly, but that doesn’t mean they’re more narcissistic,” Mr. Haney says. “Technology’s not all that they’re doing: They go and do their homework, they have friends, they play sports.”

He describes the current generation, like its Baby Boomer parents, as a bundle of contradictions. Read full story

Asheville Citizen-Times

Appalachian State University will offer a degree in actuarial sciences beginning in August. The bachelor of science degree will be based in the Department of Mathematical Sciences.

In addition to courses offered in the math department, students also will take courses from the Department of Finance, Banking and Insurance.

“We have built this major from the ground up, following guidelines of the Society of Actuaries,” said Mark Ginn, chairman of Appalachian’s Department of Mathematical Sciences. “Currently, it’s the only one of its kind at any of the UNC system schools. Several have what we had in the past, where students who wanted to be actuaries majored in math and took business electives.” Read full story

Drug Newswire
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ — A study funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and recently released by researchers at Appalachian State University showed that the natural, plant-based flavonoid antioxidant quercetin reduced illness and helped maintain mental performance in physically-stressed test subjects. The clinical study was double-blind and placebo-controlled, and involved 40 test subjects who were subjected to extreme physical stress situations during a five week period.   Read full story

MedIndia

Couples who laugh together and intentionally reminisce about that shared experience are likely more satisfied with their relationship than couples who don’t have that reservoir of experience to draw on, according to research by an Appalachian State University psychology professor.

The study, conducted by Doris G. Bazzini and three of her former students, appears in the January 2007 issue of the journal Motivation and Emotion.

Bazzini, a social psychologist, used observations about her own family as the impetus for her latest research. Read full story

Asheville Citizen Times
Moonshining’s colorful past entrenched in mountain psyche

The moonshiner, said Thomas McGowan, an English professor at Appalachian State University and former editor of the N.C. Folklore Journal, remains a prominent figure in modern folklore because of his image as a man of independence and self-sufficiency. Read full story

dBusiness News
Researchers at Appalachian State University have proven that a natural antioxidant derived from plants is able to reduce illness and maintain mental performance in physically stressed test subjects. Quercetin, a naturally occurring, powerful anti-oxidant found in red grapes, red wine, red apples, green tea and broccoli, is the first plant compound proven in a controlled clinical trial to reduce susceptibility to viral illnesses. “These are ground-breaking results, because this is the first clinical, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study that has found a natural plant compound to prevent viral illness,” said Dr. David Nieman, a professor in Appalachian’s Department of Health, Leisure and Exercise Science.   Read full story

New anemometer starts recording wind speeds on the mile-high bridge

Winston-Salem Journal
A new anemometer started recording data yesterday on top of the Mile High Swinging Bridge on Grandfather Mountain. The minitower was installed Monday, and workers have been testing the unit this week. Staff from the State Climate Office and such experts as Baker Perry, a climatologist at Appalachian State University, helped set it up. Read full story

2 designers from N.C. show collections at Fashion Week

Charlotte Observer
Bryant Park may be New York’s big stage during Fashion Week, but throughout the city hundreds of collections are shown by up-and-coming designers. Two of them grew up in the Triangle — Swaim Hutson of Durham, who created the menswear line Obedient Sons, and Raleigh’s Tiffany Koury, who has a dress and swimwear line. Hutson took a nontraditional road to become a fashion designer. At Northern High School, he was more into tennis than thinking about design school. He left Durham in 1987, eventually going to Appalachian State University, where he studied graphic arts, before heading west.   Read full story

New York Times
Ever since the gross mistreatment of poor black men in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study came to light three decades ago, the federal government has required ethics panels to protect people from being used as human lab rats in biomedical studies. Yet now, faculty and graduate students across the country increasingly complain that these panels have spun out of control, curtailing academic freedom and interfering with research in history, English and other subjects that poses virtually no danger to anyone.

The panels, known as Institutional Review Boards, are required at all institutions that receive research money from any one of 17 federal agencies and are charged with signing off in advance on almost all studies that involve a living person, whether a former president of the United States or your own grandmother. This results, critics say, in unnecessary and sometimes absurd demands.

Among the incidents cited in recent report by the American Association of University Professors are a review board asking a linguist studying a preliterate tribe to “have the subjects read and sign a consent form,” and a board forbidding a white student studying ethnicity to interview African-American Ph.D. students “because it might be traumatic for them.”

When Robert L. Johnson, the review board administrator for Appalachian State University, talks to students, he said he starts off by asking, “If you were going to participate in a study, what are the things you would like to know?”

Reuters news agency
Regulators have postponed a decision on North Carolina’s first wind farm at least six months to allow a developer time to gather data for an application for the 50-megawatt project. A physician, farmer and former county commissioner, Richard Calhoun has been looking at the possibility of wind development on his farm for about two years, according to Dennis Grady, the director of Appalachian State University’s Energy Center, which studies wind farm issues. Read full story

United Press International
Appalachian State University researchers say quercetin, a naturally occurring, powerful antioxidant found in red grapes, red wine, red apples, green tea and broccoli, is the first plant compound proven in a controlled clinical trial to reduce susceptibility to viral illnesses. Read full story

Winston-Salem Journal
Megan Peeler, a graduate of Appalachian State University, won the 25th annual Colgate Country Showdown in Nashville. She received a check for $100,000 and the title of best new act in country music. Read full story

WXII12.com
There have been strange reports about flying objects in the skies — and some people think they’re UFOs. The National Weather Service said it has seen nothing out of the ordinary on its radar, and the Appalachian State University Observatory said it was probably a bolide — a fireball-like meteor that frequently enters the earth’s atmosphere but is rarely seen. Read full story

Winston-Salem Journal
The elderly population is growing as life expectancy rises. As that happens in Northwest North Carolina, the rugged terrain is a challenge in itself. Residents who have spent their lives living free and proud in remote valleys are suddenly finding they need day-to-day help with necessities such as meals. Often, the volunteers providing that help are elderly themselves, so their days of service are numbered. Some needs are obvious: a continued emphasis on heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s care, for example. But, as a recent report from Appalachian State University makes clear, other needs that will have to be met, such as expanding mental-health care for the elderly, aren’t as obvious. Read full story

Biodiesel Magazine
Thanks to a student-led initiative at Appalachian State University (ASU) in Boone, N.C., the campus’ diesel-burning buses, service vehicles and a garbage truck are now running on B20. Read full article

China Daily
Starting a business is a dream for many young people in China, but they are to face more obstacles than their American and Spanish counterparts on the way to becoming their own bosses, according to a cross-cultural entrepreneurship research project jointly conducted by Appalachian State University in the US and the University of Alicante in Spain. The study, which questioned 1,000 students from a variety of universities in the United States, Spain and China, showed that more than half of Chinese respondents have seriously considered starting their own businesses.   Read full article

Winston-Salem Journal
Slightly more than 1 million North Carolinians were 65 or older last year, according to population estimates. By 2030, that number is expected to more than double, as baby boomers age.

Local and state planners are trying to look ahead, but they also face challenges now.

Ed Rosenberg, a gerontology professor at ASU, says that baby boomers will change perceptions about older people, in part because it’s a generation that has so much disposable income.

But he also recognizes that there are still many poor older people in the mountains and that local governments and health agencies are going to have to plan to meet their needs. Read full article