DCAF to feature bands, artists, kids’ activities
Tuscaloosa News – March 23
For the third year in a row, Tuscaloosa’s Druid City Arts Festival will showcase musicians from around the city and across the Southeast in a free concert 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday at Government Plaza downtown…Creative Campus, a University of Alabama student-led program that aims to build collaborative relationships among students, faculty and the community by turning creative ideas into action, created DCAF. Each year, the team of interns at Creative Campus forms ideas and creates projects that highlight the arts in Tuscaloosa. “At Creative Campus, we have around forty student interns that have all contributed to the event’s planning process,” said intern Hunter Holt, a junior majoring in English. “We have found it best to have each intern oversee specific tasks. Each intern is responsible for their part of the festival, and when we all come together and combine what we have worked on with each other, it turns into something special.”
National championship trophy goes on display at Bryant Museum
Tuscaloosa News – March 23
Ken Gaddy, director of the Paul W. Bryant Museum, slid a pair of soft, white gloves on his hands, reached down into a large, black, padded box on wheels and removed a gleaming crystal football…Even in a building with more trophies than it knows what to do with, the 2011 Coaches’ Trophy, won in a 21-0 trampling over LSU deep in the enemy territory of New Orleans, is a special addition. Gaddy and museum curator Taylor Watson said the museum received the trophy, awarded each year to the BCS National Champion, on Wednesday. At 9 a.m. Thursday, Watson removed the 2009 Coaches’ Trophy and Gaddy put the 2011 trophy in its place. “It’s a fun job being able to handle the national championship trophy,” Gaddy said. “This is the third Coaches’ Trophy we’ve placed here since I’ve been here, and it’s been a lot of fun to put them out and let fans get up close and personal with them.” Gaddy said that fans lucky enough to be present at the museum when staff are cleaning the exhibits actually get a chance to hold the crystal football.
UA engineering students build concrete canoe
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – March 22
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – March 22
From our Tuscaloosa newsroom, some University of Alabama engineering students are competing in a canoe race this weekend, and expectations are high. They face a weighty challenge to win, and pay tribute to the heroes and those lost on April 27. Fox 6 news video journalist Neal Posey has the story. “Sometimes they go down but we’re hoping for the best this year, and we’re hoping for a top five is our goal.”
An Insider Trading Loophole Congress Didn’t Close
Smartmoney.com – March 22
U.S. lawmakers will soon face the same explicit ban on profiting from inside information as other investors. The Senate on Thursday sent a bill saying as much to President Obama, and the president has said he will sign it. That closes a loophole, but securities laws hold others … Anup Agrawal of the University of Alabama and Tareque Nasser of Kansas State University studied 3,700 takeovers announced between 1988 and 2006. They compared trading in the year before takeover announcements (the “informed period”) with the year before that (the “control period”). The two found that insiders tended to reduce their buying during the informed period, but they reduced their selling even more. The result was an increase in net buying. Over the six months prior to deal announcements, the dollar amount of net purchases for officers and directors at target firms rose 50% relative to ordinary net purchase levels.
Puzzles of evolution: Are other hominins alive today?
Newscientist.com – March 22
Legends of human-like creatures, such as Bigfoot, the Yeti and the Yowie have entranced people for centuries. They make for good stories, but could there be any truth in them? It seems unlikely. Recently, Jeff Lozier at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa examined the location of all Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, sightings. He found that these “haunts” are identical to those of the black bear, suggesting it could simply be a case of mistaken identity.
Opinion: Studying violence in video games
Craveonline.com – March 22
…The piece details a study which indicates that participants, having recently played a violent video game (Call of Duty, Hitman, Killzone, and Grand Theft Auto) for 25 minutes, displayed desensitization to violence and heightened aggression. When asked about the study and the related CBS News post, Rosanna Guadango, PhD. and Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama (Roll Tide!) had this to say: “While the study was interesting, I felt both the news article and the journal article itself left out an important control group: an aggressive game that is framed as a cooperative behavior… She continues by explaining that a recent study at Harvard Medical School found that playing video games amongst young adults is now considered typical behavior. Consequently, it is a sign of potential socialization problems if you do not play video games.
With a few simple changes, you can find more unhurried time together
Parenting.com – March 23
With five kids, Laurie Segal could easily find her home turning into a madhouse each morning. Instead, Segal, a family therapist from Williston Park, NY, keeps mayhem at bay by getting organized the night before…Ringing phones, video games, and endless chores can keep you from focusing on — and relishing — one another’s company at home. The easiest way to combat such distractions: Escape from them a few times a week, if only for 15 or 20 minutes at a stretch. You might take the dog for a walk together, build a snowman in the backyard, or ride bikes on weekends. “When our sons were little, we started walking to a nearby creek to listen for beavers hitting their tails against the water,” says Nick Stinnett, Ph.D., a professor of human development at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and coauthor of Fantastic Families: 6 Proven Steps to Building a Strong Family. “We still do it, years later, and we all look forward to it.”
The secrets of joyful parenting
Parenting.com – March 22
None of us has kids so that we can spend our days putting them in time-outs, breaking up arguments between siblings, or fighting about bedtime, although we all realize, inevitably, that this is part of the deal. Beyond these moments, we want parenting to be about joyful shared family experiences as often as possible. In other words, we want to have fun. But how do you get from the hustle and bustle of maintaining a household and meeting basic needs to finding those relaxed moments together? Family fun doesn’t just happen. “Happy families follow principles that increase the joy in their relationships,” says Nick Stinnett, Ph.D., professor of human development and family studies at the University of Alabama and lead researcher of a 25-year study of 14,000 strong families.