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