Luke McKay, right, taking sediment cores aboard a research vessel near the spill site

UNC marine microbiologist Andreas Teske and doctoral student Luke McKay are searching the Gulf for life forms that could shed light on the impact of the oil spill and be helpful in the clean-up.

Using dozens of water and sediment samples taken in the Gulf in the wake of the BP spill, Teske and his team are conducting various experiments, such as identifying which microbes are present and how they are responding to the spill.They are collaborating with colleagues at UNC and elsewhere to propose various novel “rapid response” projects that could play a role in monitoring and tackling the spill disaster.

McKay and several graduate students have been working in the Gulf on research expeditions studying the spill and the surrounding area.  McKay was aboard one of the first research expeditions to visit the site and surrounding waters shortly after the spill began to unfold. He sent several days on the RV Pelican in early May, helping gather water and sediment samples.

See more details and photos in the News and Observer.

Click here for details on what Teske, McKay and other UNC scientists are doing to understand and address the Gulf oil spill.

Libby and Henry are Rhodes Scholars;  all four students had full four-year merit scholarships to UNC.  Click here to learn more and to read the USA Today’s coverage.

Studying humanities can improve your ability to read and write, he argues. “You will have enormous power if you are the person in the office who can write a clear and concise memo.”

Studying humanities exposes you to the “language of emotion,” he says, which is important for taking a technically brilliant innovation to the masses via effective advertising and branding.

Perhaps most important, he argues that studying humanities helps you get in touch with “The Big Shaggy,” i.e. the beast within all of us that tempts us to misbehave (think sex scandals) or be overconfident or arrogant in the face of risk (think oil spill), while at the same time gives us the drive to excel (think Kobe Bryant).

Brooks writes, that “…over the centuries, there have been rare and strange people who possessed the skill of taking the upheavals of thought that emanate from The Big Shaggy and representing them in the form of story, music, myth, painting, liturgy, architecture, sculpture, landscape and speech. [They] developed languages that help us understand these yearnings and also educate and mold them.”

Click here to read the whole column.

Brooks was the Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences in 2008.

• Marine scientists Harvey Seim and Pete Peterson, who conducted research with the assistance of undergraduates, showing that North Carolina could derive 20 percent of its energy from wind power.

• Donna LeFebvre and 20 undergraduates, who traveled to Africa last summer to confront the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda They learned about hope from the survivors.

• Minrose Gwin, a prominent southern literature scholar, whose first novel explores the segregated south of the past. Her book has been compared favorably with To Kill a Mockingbird.

Click here to read online.

These stories and more are available in the Spring 2010 issue of Carolina Arts and Sciences magazine. Our semi-annual publication is mailed to faculty, alumni and friends who have made a gift to the College, and is available to all online.

Branch’s tapes, transcripts and notes are available to researchers through the University Library’s Southern Historical Collection.  He returns to his alma mater this month to talk about it all.

Details: http://bit.ly/9uorti