"O" E-Clips: highlights of media coverage involving the UO and its faculty and staff

UO E-Clips is a daily report prepared by the Office of Communications (http://comm.uoregon.edu) summarizing current news coverage of the University of Oregon.

Media mentions for May 15

What 0% Unemployment Looks Like

CNN: What if every person who wanted a job had one? The entire United States may never be able to reach a 0% unemployment rate. But on a smaller scale, it's not entirely unheard of. Simply put, 0% unemployment can occur when everyone who is looking for a job has one. It can happen in niche markets when there are more openings than there are workers to fill them ... An economy with no unemployment is like a stagnant real estate market, said University of Oregon professor Mark Thoma ... "Suppose every apartment in the country is full, and I wanted to move from New York to Los Angeles," he said. "I would have to find someone in L.A. who wants to move to New York, and we would have to do a trade. It's much more efficient to have some vacancies."

Diet Choices Influenced By Food Combinations And Past History

RedOrbit.com: "You are what you eat." This is a well known phrase that has been mentioned many times in discussions related to health and nutrition. A new report discusses how the combinations of what you eat can affect your consumption, and also how the diet choices you made as a child could affect the diet choices you make as an adult. Two researchers, T. Bettina Cornwell of the University of Oregon (UO) and Anna R. McAlister of Michigan State University (MSU), recently found that water could change the way that people eat. Their research findings were published recently in the journal Appetite. Appetite is an international research journal that focuses on the cultural, sensory, and physiological influences on diet choices as well as the consumption of particular foods and drinks.

Nano-devices need flat surface

Science Alert: There's nothing worse than a shonky pool table with an unseen groove or bump that sends your shot off course: a new study has found that the same goes at the nano-scale, where the "billiard balls" are tiny electrons moving across a "table" made of the semiconductor gallium arsenide ... "We found that we can 'reconfigure' the warping by warming the table up and cooling it down again, with the electron paths changing radically in response," says Professor Richard Taylor from the University of Oregon. "This shows that the warping is much more important than expected."

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Media mentions for May 14

Begin early: Researchers say water with meals may encourage wiser choices

Mecial Xpress: Water could change the way we eat. That's the conclusion of new research by T. Bettina Cornwell of the University of Oregon and Anna R. McAlister of Michigan State University. Their findings appear online this week ahead of regular publication by the journal Appetite ... "Our taste preferences are heavily influenced by repeated exposure to particular foods and drinks," said Cornwell, the Edwin E. & June Woldt Cone Professor of Marketing in the Lundquist College of Business at the UO. "This begins early through exposure to meals served at home and by meal combinations offered by many restaurants. Our simple recommendation is to serve water with all meals. Restaurants easily could use water as their default drink in kids' meal combos and charge extra for other drink alternatives."

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Media mentions for May 13

Future U: The stubborn persistence of textbooks

Ars Technica: Textbooks are a thing of the past, says the common wisdom ... A visit to a college classroom showed me the disconnect between the ecstasy of technophilia and what life actually looks like for students. In Prof. Frances Cogan's freshman and sophomore research methodologies class at the University of Oregon's Clark Honors College, the most prominent tech was the spiral notebook. This was partially due to Cogan's resistance to the distraction of the technology. "If I bring a laptop to class, I tend to get lost in Facebook," admitted Becky Hatch. But that's not the only issue ... "I'm synthesizing a thing when I write it down," she said. "When I type it's like, in one ear, out the fingers."

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Media mentions for May 12

'Rest in peace beautiful Lill'

KVAL: A University of Oregon spokesperson said a UO student died Friday night, and Lane County Public Health confirmed the cause of death as bacterial meningitis. Lillian Pagenstecher was a member of the Chi Omega sorority at UO. Kellie Hays, the adviser for Chi Omega said "Lillian was very involved in community activities" as well as sorority activities. Condolences have spread across Facebook and Twitter for the loss of the 21-year-old Pagenstecher. In a tweet, UO Chi Omega wrote: "Sisters are forever. Thank you everyone for your support. Rest in peace beautiful Lill- your smile and laughter is already missed." Her death is mourned by friends, as well as those who didn't know her.

INLAND: Officials confident despite fewer wildland fire resources

Press-Enterprise: State and federal firefighting agencies had fewer resources this year when they entered a wildfire season marked by drier-than-normal brush ... The U.S. Forest Service will have fewer air tankers available than in past years ...There is some debate about the value of air tankers.Timothy Ingalsbee, a former Forest Service firefighter and co-founder of Oregon-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, said in a phone interview that the large tankers are all too often used as a public relations tool to show politicians that a fire in their area is being taken seriously ... "They call them CNN shots. They make great 'Film at 11,' " said Ingalsbee, a fire science instructor at the University of Oregon.

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Late mentions for May 11

Are Dads the New Moms?

Wall Street Journal: When K.J. Wiemer got married in the 1990s, he didn't think he was becoming a husband ... Once in their 30s, however, and with two children, Mr. Wiemer and his wife realized that their roles had to change ... "Though it is changing, men are still culturally trained to be independent, not needy or attentive to others," says Scott Coltrane, professor of sociology and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. They are stepping up in fatherhood, but "in marriage, men in general have a harder time with sustained intimacy."

UO students reject $100 million student union project

Daily Journal of Commerce: A nearly $100 million construction project in Eugene was put on hold last month when University of Oregon students rejected a proposal for new fees that would provide most of the money for a renovation and expansion of the student union building.The plan to modernize the Erb Memorial Union, which was built in 1950 and then expanded in the 1970s, has been in the works for nearly a decade. University officials say the existing facility is too small to meet current needs, but students have twice rejected requests for additional fees to help cover improvement costs."Overwhelmingly, the students have made it clear that they want a more affordable project," UO student body president Ben Eckstein said.

A Slowdown Would Be Bad for Everyone

New York Times: Mark Thoma is an economics professor at the University of Oregon and blogs at Economist's View. Economic growth in the BRIC countries is slowing, and the chance that the slowdown will be persistent or perhaps even permanent must be taken seriously.A prolonged slowdown in the BRIC countries would be bad news for the world economy. For the U.S. in particular, it would reduce our hopes for an acceleration in the agonizingly slow recovery from the recession.At the present rate of recovery, it will be several years before we return to full employment, and a faster return would require an increase in growth from one or more of the components of G.D.P. -- consumption, business investment, residential investment, government expenditures or net exports.

 Simulator Warns Against Texting and Driving

KEZI: AT&T is working to bring awareness to the deadly habit of texting and driving.And while it's dangerous any day of the year, reports show the days between Memorial Day and Labor Day are the deadliest.College students contribute a big chunk of the nearly $5 billion text massages sent every day, and many of them admit they do it behind the wheel ... So AT&T brought its texting and driving simulator Friday to the University of Oregon campus as part of its It Can Wait Campaign to show students how their driving suffers when they text.

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Late mention for May 6

More college-bound Californians are heading out of state

Sacramento Bee: Fed up with tuition increases and frustrated by rejection at packed California universities, more high school graduates than ever are ditching the state to attend college. Boise State saw its freshmen enrollment from California rise tenfold during the last decade. Arizona State doubled its enrollment of freshmen from California. The University of Oregon has quadrupled it, with freshman enrollment from California growing from 280 in 2000 to 1,100 in 2010. "We are thrilled with the students we get out of California," said Roger Thompson, vice provost at the University of Oregon. "We've seen remarkable growth, predominantly out of Northern California."