Vol. 16, No. 37	July 24, 1997

A selection of items in the national and local media about the University-its faculty, staff and students:

The News Journal, May 29. Body parts travel to Tower Hill: Doc offers real anatomy lesson. "When Dr. Robert E Neeves says he comes with heart in hands, he means business. A professor in the College of Health and Nursing Sciences at the University of Delaware, Neeves is one of only a handful of scientists in the nation skilled in plastination, an advanced method of preserving biological specimens.... Sharing some of his work with seniors in human anatomy and Advanced Placement biology classes, Neeves carted a cache of specimens, including several hearts, a brain, a couple of lungs and a foot. After viewing a slide presentation detailing the plastination procedure, students rolled up their sleeves. 'Can I have a brain?' asked Kara Hoopes"

Delaware State News, May 9. Examine entire system on behalf of the child. "Certainly individual employees in the Division of Family Services should be held responsible if an incident happens as a result of their negligence, gross misjudgment of inappropriate handling of a case. Unfortunately, most cases of child abuse and neglect are complex....The case loads of Division of Family Services workers are well above the national average and higher than workers can safely handle. If a worker has a case load of 30 to 40 clients, it's extremely difficult to give an individual case the attention it needs." By Liane M. Sorenson {women's affairs, state senator}.

The News Journal, June 10. Parents in transition face another challenge: When adults move off of welfare and into jobs, many need to find care for their children. Their options are limited. "If we move welfare recipients into jobs and don't at the same time provide their children with growth-promoting child care, we'll have another whole generation of kids not able to get jobs." By Marilou Hyson, chairperson, individual and family studies.

The News Journal, June 10. UD professor to head reading association. "University of Delaware education professor John J. Pikulski has been named president of the 95,000-member International Reading Association, based in Newark."

The News Journal, June 7. Myth may be artifact: Lolita Haniver's family heirloom has landed in the spotlight as Delaware's first meteor-maybe. "The existence of Delaware's only meteorite, long the object of yarns and speculation, may finally have been proven. Delaware is one of the few states that has never had an officially documented meteorite, according to Billy P. Glass, chairman of the University of Delaware's geology department."

The Houston Chronicle, Feb. 23. Language of Itza Maya Moves Close to Extinction, Centuries-Old Culture Resisted Spain, Retained Independence, But Now Faces Loss of Identity; also in The Times-Picayune and The Ottawa Citizen. "Reginaldo Chayax may be among the last of a dying breed. At 58, he is one of the youngest men alive who speaks the language of the Itza Maya, a people who have scratched a living near Lake Peten Itza in the rain forest of northern Guatemala for centuries. 'The Itza have felt for some time that the destruction of the forest is an attack on their culture,' says Norman Schwartz, a professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware. 'So if the forest is lost, the culture may be lost too,' he says."

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Feb. 16. Sunday Brunch. "Will your spouse stray? If either of you is a 'sensation seeker,' you may get the urge to cheat. That's what an expert says in the February issue of Shape magazine. Marvin Zuckerman, a professor of psychology at the University of Delaware, says sensation seekers are those who become bored easily, have an especially strong sexual desire, a willingness to take great risks and a tendency to take great risks and a tendency to act impulsively. Zuckerman, who has studied that personality dynamic for more than 30 years, says it may have a genetic component."

Gannett News Service, Feb. 13. If sea levels continue to rise, Delaware won't be able to restore its beaches. "Rising sea levels along the East Coast are costing taxpayers millions, threatening to wash away Delaware's beaches and drowning islands in the Chesapeake Bay, said scientists, waterman and environmentalists Thursday. 'It's happening,' said John C. 'Chris' Kraft, a geology professor at the University of Delaware's Graduate College of Marine Studies in Lewes. 'The world's oceans are rising, no question about it.'"

The New York Times, Feb. 22. Real Culprits in Education So Far Avoid Notice. "Re your Feb. 18 editorial, President Clinton seems to have concluded that we must provide an opportunity of at least two years of college for every student. This really means introducing grades 13 and 14, since our schools are obviously failing to do their jobs in grades K-12. The real culprits in our education system are many, but surely teachers' unions and the colleges of education stand out as the most egregious institutions. We should reform contracts for teachers to introduce merit pay and to eliminate lifetime employment because of tenure. We also need to change the mind-set of the teachers' colleges from how to teach 'self-esteem' and 'self-discovery' to basic processes like reading, writing and computing." Letter to the editor by Norman F. Ness, president of the Bartol Research Institute at the University of Delaware.

Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13. U. of Delaware Library Uses the Web to Provide Articles from Journals It No Longer Receives. "As more college libraries cut back on expensive journal subscriptions, library administrators hear bitter complaints from scholars who depend on the journals to stay curent in their disciplines. But when the University of Delaware prepared to cancel 500 journal subscriptions this year, it found a way to offer faculty members a convenient alternative. Its librarians developed a system in which professors can use the World-Wide Web to order articles from journals the library no longer receives. The articles arrive within 24 hours. The system, called Current Contents/T.O.C., uses Current Contents, a data base of abstracts from more than 7,000 academic journals. Delaware librarians and computer programmers adapted the material to create hyperlinked tables of contents (hence 'T.O.C.') and Web-based order forms."

New Technology Week, Feb. 18. DOD Looks to Consortia as Industry Outlays Dive. "The Department of Defense is moving an increasing share of its science and technology budget into 'federated laboratories.' consortia of prime contractors, top national universities, historically black universities and government labs. Bandwidth limits on the Army's Tactical Internet are the focus of another group. It includes researchers from Army Research Lab, the University of Delaware, and Sanders, a division of Lockheed Martin, who are trying to find ways to reduce the number of messages soldiers send during battle."

Plastics News, Feb. 17. Consortium to Research Bridges. "An industrial consortium will design, manufacture and field-test prototype civil bridges of polymer matrix composites in California and Delaware and further develop an Army assault bridge under a two-year Defense Department technology reinvestment project. ...The University of Delaware in Newark will provide technical support and testing."

Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16. Theory May Get at Root of Water Quality Science: Health of streams could be improved by returning trees to their banks, researchers believe, 3-year study will be conducted in northeast. "Part of the project includes work by social scientists at Penn State University and the University of Delaware. They will conduct surveys and focus groups to learn what issues are important to landowners and what would be needed to get them to voluntarily convert stream-side lawns or pastures to forest."

Monitor (American Psychological Association), June 1997. Teach Your Children Well: Researchers identify the right and wrong ways to reward children for a job well done. "For more than 25 years, researchers have decried the effects of rewards on children's 'natural' interests and creativity. But research suggests that it is typically people's misuse of the reward-and not the reward itself-that caused the problem. When used correctly, rewards do increase children's motivation and creativity, says psychologist Robert Eisenberger [psychology]."

Austin American-Statesman, May 4. Women underrepresented in films, TV, survey finds; also in The New York Times and The Daily News of Los-Angeles. "Across a range of media-in films, in television, including commercials, and in magazine for teen-agers-women are more likely to be shown preoccupied with romance and personal appearance than they are having jobs or going to school, according to a new study released by Children Now, a children's advocacy group based in Oakland, Calif. The study conducted by Nancy Signorelli [commmunication] of the University of Delaware for Children Now and the Kaiser Family Foundation, also showed that despite the fact that women make up a majority of the population, most characters-63 percent in movies and 55 percent in television-were men. In music videos, 78 percent of performers were men."

The Washington Post, April 20. Old-Time Religion. "Though this book will be of principal interest to students of American religion and/or the American South, it has considerable pertinence to a lay readership, especially in Washington, where the so-called religious right is widely misunderstood and at times unfairly vilified. Christine Leigh Heyrman, who teaches history at the University of Delaware, has done a great deal of original research into the origins of the Southern evangelical movement, and has concluded that, like much else in American life, what it is today bears only scant resemblance to what it started out to be." Review of Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt

Los Angeles Times, April 28. Science Watch: The Cutting Edge/Trends: Device That is Ready for Slime Time. "If somebody could just figure out how to build a microelectronic device that would separate and measure components in salty gunk without becoming destroyed, it could open vast new windows on everything from corrosion of offshore oil rigs to fouling on boat hulls to how chemical and biological processes modify the world hidden by the sea. Enter George W. Luther III, an oceanographer with the University of Delaware. Nobody had ever done it before, Luther says, because 'no one was dumb enough to stick these things in the mud.'"

USA Today, April 17, "USA Today asks 'What did postwar America do to deserve Beat poet Allen Ginsberg? Was it too complacent? Too uptight?' The answer: Nothing. We were just lucky ('A life on the edge,' April )." Letter to the editor by Harry Brod, philosophy.

Gannett News Service, May 8. Term papers on line-good or bad? "When it comes to bootleg term papers, the Internet is open for business:... At a recent conference held by the College Conference on Communication and Composition, the issue of how to deal with cheat houses was a frequent topic of conversation, says Marcia Halio, assistant director at the University of Delaware Writing Program. 'The pool (of papers) is huge,' Halio says. 'We're trying to deal with it by getting the word out to students that we know about it and that we might be able to trace it.'"

News & Record, Greensboro, N.C., May 4. Publications. "Laura O'Toole, assistant professor and chairperson of the Sociology/ Anthropology Department at Guilford College, recently had her anthology, Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, released by New York University Press. The anthology is co-edited with Jessica Schiffman, assistant director of the Women's Studies Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Delaware. It consists of eight chapters, each of which includes an original framing essay which reviews significant theoretical and empirical aspects of various forms and contexts of gender violence. Each chapter introduction is followed by a poem and several articles."

Gannett News Service, May 1. Plant found to benefit agricultural, paper industries. "It's brown and dry, kind of ugly, and is used for things like chicken litter. But when H. Don Tilmon beholds the kenaf plant, he sees a thing of beauty. And why not? After 10 years of researching the lowly Hibiscus, the farm management specialist at the University of Delaware is finally seeing his work take root. 'I love it when a plan finally comes together.' said Tilmon, grinning at a successful batch of kenaf paper rolled out of the Curtis Paper Co. mill in Newark, Del."

The Ledger, Lakeland, Fla., April 17, Officials Defend Drug Prevention Programs. "But a study commissioned by the U.S. Congress calls into question whether the lessons learned have any affect. The study, released recently by the University of Delaware, questions the effectiveness of politically popular programs such as boot camps, midnight basketball and DARE-Drug Abuse Resistance and Education. Lawrence W. Sherman, lead author of the University of Delaware report...said putting law enforcement officers in classrooms with children is popular but ineffective. 'It's just not based on sound, theoretical framework,' Sherman said. 'You don't need to get the police officer in the classroom. I think that's what people like about it. It's very visual.'"

Los Angeles Times, April 16, Television: TV Cameras Enter the Jury Room-What's the Verdict? "In any case, the potential for judicial harm from TV in the jury room cannot be discounted. 'It's a risk, and I'd be troubled if this was a regular occurrence,' Valerie Hans, a jury researcher and University of Delaware professor who delivers some sound bites on the CBS program [Enter the Jury Room], said by phone from her home Monday. 'But I think as an occasional matter, well, there's some educating to be done. I've been studying juries since 1973. You have simulation studies, but you always have a sense you don't know what's going on inside. We've never been able to go inside the jury room, but CBS has done that for us.'"

The Times-Picayune, April 27, Communication Help is Available. "The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on AAC at the applied science and engineering laboratories at the University of Delaware has produced the 'Guide to Augmentative and Alternative Communications Devices.' The guide includes descriptions of 'traditional' AAC systems, from single-message voice output devices to computer-based systems supporting spoken and written communication, as well as descriptions for the 'newcomer' categories of speech amplifiers and electronic larynxes."