Winston-Salem Journal
When Hugh Morton died of cancer last June at 85, he left behind a legacy in more than 4,000 acres of conservation easements that will forever protect Grandfather Mountain from development.

While many family businesses are ruined by disagreements after the death of a strong central figure, the Mortons say they are united in a vision for the future of Grandfather Mountain.

Among the changes, Crae Morton plans a research center at the base of the mountain. It would be independently operated by at least two well-known scientific organizations. An announcement naming the organizations is expected in the near future.

The park has also hired experts from ASU to evaluate how Grandfather Mountain can use cleaner sources of energy. That’s why Morton drives a hybrid electric-gasoline car, and is looking at other ways of making the park more energy efficient.   Read full story

White Rocks full of plants and lichen connected to Ice Age

Knoxville News Sentinel
A cliff ecology study in Cumberland Gap National Historical Park has uncovered an assemblage of plants and lichens that echo back to the Ice Age.

Samples collected by Appalachian State University include a group of lichens normally found in the Artic and boreal regions of Canada, as well as a lichen species never before documented in southeastern North America.   Read full story

Huffington Post
The French have a saying, “bien dans sa peau.” It means, literally, to feel good in one’s skin. We have no equivalent saying; the very notion of feeling good about oneself is, well, Greek to us. “…self-consciousness about our abs or butts or faces isn’t just an individual preoccupation, it’s almost a social dictate,” to quote Huffington Post’s very owen Arianna. Actually, it is a social dictate, according to a study in the June issue of the journal Body Image–a mandatory ritual known as “fat talk,” as one of the study’s authors, Denise Martz of Appalachian State University, explained: “We have found in our research that both male and female college students know the norm of fat talk–that females are supposed to say negative things about their bodies….Females like to support one another and fat talk elicits support. An example would be one saying, ‘It’s like, I’m so fat today,’ and another would respond, ‘No, you are not fat, you look great in those pants.’”                 Read full story

Wilmington Star News

Campuses in the University of North Carolina system must reduce textbook costs for their students under a plan approved Friday by the Board of Governors.

By January, students in large introductory courses will either be able to sell their books back to the schools at the end of the year or rent books for the course.

Textbook costs at UNC schools usually add $800 to $1,200 to students’ bills each year. And textbook costs nationally have nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004, according to a study by the federal Government Accountability Office. The UNC system for the past year has experimented with ways of keeping textbook prices down. At some campuses, bookstores formed a buyback consortium that resulted in more available used books and a better return for students selling their books.

At Fayetteville State University, some professors ordered older textbook editions or let students choose between a new and older version.

Appalachian State, Elizabeth City State and Western Carolina universities already have book rental programs, which are rare around the country. Read full story

Asheville Citizen-Times

The Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University has received a $500,000 gift, given in honor of a retiring history professor who serves as the center’s advisory board chairman.

The unrestricted gift, given by two alumni who asked the university not to release their names, is made in honor of Dr. Peter Petschauer.

“I am extremely grateful and humbled by this gift,” he said. “The funds are a tremendous boost to the Turchin Center, in that this gift affirms all the previous gifts and allows us to enhance our already widely acclaimed programming. Read full story

Inside Higher Education
Responding to student concerns and in some cases legislative mandates, a growing number of colleges are adopting book rental or buyback programs and urging professors to order books on time so their students have a chance to scour the market for the best deal.

The University of North Carolina is considering going a step further by adopting a plan that would require all its campuses to create a guaranteed rental or buyback program for large, lower-division courses. Faculty members who teach those courses would also be responsible for ordering their textbooks well in advance and agreeing to use the same title for two or three years.

Several colleges in the system, such as Appalachian State University, already have longstanding rental programs.   Read full story

Santa Barbara Independent

New Sun Nutrition announced its official sponsorship of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, formerly led by world champion Lance Armstrong. The Carpinteria-based company will supply the team with its FRS health drink, whose primary active ingredient is quercetin, a bioflavonoid found in red onions, grapes, and berries. One of the factors that persuaded the team to accept New Sun’s sponsorship was a study at Appalachian State University last year that concluded that quercetin reduced the incidence of viral illness and sustained mental performance in physically stressed test subjects.   Read full story

Tahlequah Daily Press (Okla.)

It may seem a little odd that a male is actually writing this story. But really, who else could be objective about what may be the most popular topic of discussion for women?

Or, at least, one of their most popular topics of discussion. It seems almost mandatory that when several females congregate, they will eventually start saying things like, “Oh, I’ve just got to lose 15 pounds before summer,” or “I’m going to fit into those jeans one way or another!” or “I’m three sizes bigger than I was before I had kids,” or – to cut right to the chase – “I am soooo FAT!” It’s a phenomenon so common. A study has been conducted at North Carolina’s Appalachian State University to learn more about “fat talk.” According to the study, women actually feel pressured to talk the fat talk in order to “normalize their own body dissatisfaction with one another,” according to study co-author Denise Martz. “We have found in our research that both male and female college students know the norm of fat talk – that females are supposed to say negative things about their bodies in a group of females engaging in fat talk,” Martz told LiveScience.   Read full story

Charlotte Observer

N.C. author Joseph Bathanti won the 2006 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction for his collection of stories, “The High Heart.”

Bathanti’s collection was selected from more than 500 entries.

Bathanti teaches creative writing and co-directs the Visiting Writers Series at Appalachian State University in Boone. His work includes four books of poetry and two novels. Read full story

MSNBC.com/

Kvetching about cellulite may help women forge friendships  

It’s almost inevitable: When women get together, the chatter eventually turns to whose skinny jeans don’t fit anymore and who weighs in heavier on the scale. And participation is socially mandatory, a new study finds.

Researchers call this “fat talk,” a term coined to describe a behavior common in middle school-aged Caucasian females. But the phenomenon seems to occur in older females as well.

“We have found in our research that both male and female college students know the norm of fat talk – that females are supposed to say negative things about their bodies in a group of females engaging in fat talk,” said study co-author Denise Martz of Appalachian State University.
Read full story

Also posted in the The Times of India

Mmgi (Botswana independent newspaper)

Botswana nutritionist Boitshepo Giyose has won the Distinguished Alumni Award from her alma mater, the Appalachian State University, Boone in North Carolina, United States. She will receive the award on April 21. Giyose is the first African to get the award from the university.   Read full story

Washington Post

Unlike many college students who spend their spring break partying, about a dozen students from Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., are going to seize the “chance to give back to the community,” according to a news release from the D.C.-based National Center for Children and Families.

The center said the students, supported by Appalachian State’s Alternative Spring Break program, will leave their school, in the heart of the Appalachian mountains, to volunteer their services to “one of our nation’s most economically distressed areas.”

And where, you may ask, might that be? Why, precious reader, the Appalachian State collegians are coming to us.

Their spring break excursion will take them to Southeast Washington — specifically to J.C. Nalle Elementary School in the Marshall Heights community of Ward 7. Once there on Monday, the students are expected to work through the week with children in kindergarten through fifth grade, as well as on various projects around Nalle.   Read full story

Winston-Salem Journal

Colleges offering volunteer opportunities as spring-break options

Kendra Johnson’s friends probably think that she’s a little crazy.

They’re going to Florida for spring break, while Johnson, a sophomore from Mocksville, will be sleeping on the floor of a church in Washington. She and other student volunteers from Appalachian State University will have to be up and out by 6:30 a.m. to make room for the people who use the building as a shelter during the day.

When you’re in college, spring break is a week of freedom between the winter doldrums and the last push of exams and papers. Spring break means cutting loose and getting away, and in the fantastical tradition of MTV’s Cancun beach house, well-oiled, buff bodies gyrating to music under the hot sun.

But for some, spring break has also come to mean working at a soup kitchen in Nashville or volunteering at an organic farm in Georgia. Some local colleges say they are seeing more interest in school-sponsored alternatives to the spring-break scene.   Read full story

Raleigh News and Observer

NCSU gets $1.5 million for test plant

Researchers at N.C. State University already know they can make ethanol from sweet potatoes and switchgrass. They don’t know if they can do it day after day in quantities more meaningful than a lab beaker. A $1.5 million grant, announced Wednesday by the Golden LEAF Foundation, could help them figure it out. Other alternative fuels will also compete for investments. A second grant of $750,000 from Golden LEAF was given to Appalachian State University to build and operate a biodiesel testing facility.   Read full story

KCBS-San Francisco

When a group of American women get together, the conversation will inevitably turn to complaints about their bodies, according to researchers at Appalachian State University.

The phenomenon is called “fat talk”.

“Our research showed that college students – males and females – know that when women are in a group of other women who are fat talking, that they are supposed to join in to say negative things about their bodies,” said Denise Martz, psychology professor at Appalachian State. “And there is pressure to do so.”

Her research also found that women are more inclined to like a woman who participates in fat talk than a woman who doesn’t join the discussion, said Martz.   Read full story

Greensboro News-Record
If you want the planet to stop getting warmer, you’ve got to pay for it.

That’s a key theme from a set of recommendations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that the General Assembly is expected to chew on this year.

The time for action is now, said Dennis Grady, the director of Appalachian State University’s energy center and a member of the group that made the recommendations.

“We need to stop talking about whether there is global warming and talk about what we need to do to address it,” he said. “If we don’t start cutting back on what we’re doing right now, we’re making it much more of a challenge for our grandchildren.”   Read full story