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UNL in the national news: February 2014
National media outlets featured and cited UNL sources on a number of occasions through out the month of February.
The Feb. 2 Columbus Dispatch featured the new sea anemone species discovered by scientists and engineers with the Antarctic Geological Drilling (ANDRILL) program’s Coulman High project. After spotting the anemones burrowed in the underside of the Ross Ice Shelf, ANDRILL director Frank Rack called in an Ohio State University sea anemone specialist to help identify the creature.
An Asbury Park Press reporter, covering the shutdown of a Shrewsbury, N.J., meat-processing plant in a Feb. 2 story, sought Donald Beermann, interim director of UNL’s School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences for his insight into the USDA’s slaughterhouse inspection system.
LiveBig’s “Nebraska episode,” featuring UNL photojournalism students and the Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior, premiered Feb. 12 on BTN.
Kate Brooks, livestock production and agricultural marketing, was quoted in a Feb. 25 AP article reporting that Nebraska had surpassed Texas as the state with the most cattle being fattened for slaughter.
Wheeler Winston Dixon, film studies, was featured Feb. 12 in a Canada.com live chat about the life and legacy of Shirley Temple.
Media across the country drew upon the U.S. Drought Monitor and the National Drought Mitigation Center at UNL to explain the California drought and other climate conditions. Between Feb. 4 and Feb. 15, climatologists Brian Fuchs and Mark Svoboda were interviewed by CBS News, Al Jazeera America, MSNBC, CNBC and the Associated Press. On Feb. 4, the Washington Post used U.S. Drought Monitor maps to illustrate how drought spread over 10 years into the western U.S.
Yahoo Finance reported Feb. 7 that Global Food Security, a quarterly academic journal edited by Kenneth Cassman, agronomy and horticulture, received honorary mention as one of the best new science journals at the 2013 PROSE Awards in Washington D.C.
Prairie Schooner editor Kwame Dawes, English, published a daily poem about the Sochi Winter Olympics in the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. The series, which began Feb. 6, depicted the agony and joy of athletic competition.
Bloomberg Business Week cited leadership research by Peter Harms, management, in a Feb. 6 review of a new book by so-called “Tiger Mother” Amy Chua, a Yale law professor who made headlines with her 2011 book about Asian mothers pressuring their offspring to succeed academically.
An international study involving Johannes M.H. Knops, biological sciences, was reported by U.S. News & World Report Feb. 16, among numerous other outlets worldwide. Conducted at 41 sites on five continents, the study demonstrated that overusing fertilizer destabilizes grasslands.
Observations by Ari Kohen, political science, about stand-your-ground self-defense laws and the English philosopher John Locke were discussed in a Feb. 7 post on the Volokh Conspiracy, a Washington Post blog.
Bloomberg Businessweek quoted James LeSueur, history, in a Feb. 18 article discussing the health of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Algeria’s upcoming presidential elections on April 17.
USA Today, Reuters and CNN led the way as more than 100 outlets across the country and around the world carried reports about a childhood obesity study by graduate student Alyssa Lundahl and Assistant Professor Tim Nelson, psychology. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, showed that many parents don’t recognize when their child is overweight. USA Today published its story on Feb. 3, with scores of stories following.
Several Texas newspapers mentioned UNL’s role in a new railway safety transportation center announced Feb. 9. The federally funded center will be based at the University of Texas-Pan American, but UNL and Texas A&M will be partners in the new research effort to improve railroad safety and performance.
Science 360, the National Science Foundation news service, featured video Feb. 20 about Anita Sarma, computer science and engineering, and her Cassandra project to develop a software debugging tool.
Mario Scalora, psychology, was interviewed about threat assessment for an article in the February issue of the Monitor on Psychology, the magazine of the American Psychological Association.
The Orlando Sentinel ran a question-and-answer opinion piece Feb. 11 with Matthew Schaefer, law, director of the University of Nebraska space law program.
Iowa Public Radio’s Talk of Iowa program interviewed Timothy Schaffert, English, Feb. 17 about his new novel, “The Swan Gondola. ” Schaffert is project director of UNL’s digital archive on the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition. The novel is set at that 1898 event, also known as the Omaha World’s Fair. Released in early February, “The Swan Gondola” was reviewed in several national publications in late January and early February, including Publishers Weekly, Good Housekeeping, Oprah.com and American Way, the in-flight magazine for American Airlines.
Kevin Smith, political science, was interviewed by the Christian Science Monitor Feb. 20 in an article discussing the potential political fall-out from a state court decision involving the Keystone XL pipeline route. http://go.unl.edu/t3x0
WKRC-CBS in Cincinnati was among outlets reporting the February opening of the Titanoboa exhibit at the Nebraska State Museum. Titanoboa is a nearly 50-foot-long snake that lived nearly 60 million years ago. Jason Head, earth and atmospheric sciences, was involved in discovering and identifying its fossils.
Andrew Suyker, natural resources, was mentioned in a Feb. 9 Toledo Blade article highlighting an evaporation study of the Great Lakes in winter. Suyker is a co-author of the study.
Matt Waite, drone journalism lab director, was quoted in many outlets across the country after a Connecticut incident in which a TV news free-lancer flew a camera-equipped drone over a fatal traffic accident. In a story that appeared Feb. 7 in the Hartford Courant, Waite discussed the regulatory landscape for using drones in journalism. The Associated Press quoted Waite in a Feb. 10 article about the same incident that was carried by more than 30 outlets. Fast Company gave a nod to the UNL drone journalism lab in a Feb. 10 story about an El Salvadoran newspapers’ use of drones to cover its presidential election.
NPR’s Science Friday interviewed Timothy Wei, dean of the College of Engineering, Feb. 14 about his work with Olympic skeleton racers to trim seconds off their times.
New research by Xiao Cheng Zeng, chemistry, was featured on Phys.Org Feb. 27. Zeng’s team identified the structure of new material, silicon carbonate. A solid somewhere between dry ice and quartz, the material has implications for carbon dioxide storage, planetary science and solid lubrication.
Faculty, administration, student and staff appearances in the national media are logged at http://newsroom.unl.edu/inthenews/ . If you have additions to this list or suggestions for national news stories, contact Leslie Reed at lreed5@unl.edu or 402-472-2059.
