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Tuesday, March 6, 2007

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	Date	Outlet
Funds for research park to be considered at tonight's Auburn City Council meeting	03/06/2007	Opelika-Auburn News
Richardson won't seek two-year chief job	03/06/2007	Birmingham News
AU students build studio for quilter	03/06/2007	Montgomery Advertiser
Colombia Fish Disaster Highlights Importance of Pond-Raised Aquaculture	03/05/2007	News Blaze


Funds for research park to be considered at tonight's Auburn City Council meeting 03/06/2007 Opelika-Auburn News Lindsay Field		Return to Top
The Auburn City Council will be revisiting three items at tonight's meeting. The council will review a second reading of an appropriation ordinance between the Auburn Industrial Development Board and Auburn University Research and Technology Foundation and zoning ordinance text changes to the College Edge Overlay District (CEOD). The council is also rearranging its order of business for the second time this term. The council denied unanimous consent of an appropriation ordinance between the industrial development board and Auburn Research and Technology Foundation granting at the last meeting. This agreement is the end result of a partnership between the state, the city and Auburn University. The appropriation ordinance would allow the industrial development board to loan the Auburn Research and Technology Foundation funds to pay for the construction of the first building at Auburn Research Park. This loan will be repaid by a State of Alabama grant and operating leases. City Manager Charlie Duggan told the council at the Feb. 20 meeting that the city staff recommended the council deny unanimous consent of the ordinance for further discussion and come back at the March 6 meeting and approve or disapprove the agreement. Sheila Eckman, Ward 2, denied unanimous consent for the zoning ordinance text changes concerning the CEOD at the Feb. 20 meeting. Eckman said she felt that there needed to be more work done to text changes before it was approved. The specific recommendation is to create the College Edge Overlay District, as well as amend existing standards governing the Urban Core (UC) and University Service (US) districts. The Auburn Planning Commission held a public hearing on Jan. 11 and unanimously recommended approval at that time. Forrest Cotten, director of planning, said changes and concerns addressed at the Feb. 20 meeting, specifically questions about possible historic preservation, were not addressed in the second reading. "I plan to give the council separate information on historic preservation issues," Cotten said. The council will also consider an ordinance to amend the order of business at regular City Council meetings. This change will place Citizens’ Communications after Auburn University Communications and before City Manager’s Communications. Council members requested Duggan re-amend the order of business so that residents or city employees being recognized by Mayor Bill Ham during Mayor’s Communications will not have to wait through Citizens’ Communications before being honored. In other business council will: n Recognize: Jennifer Brenton, Employee of the Month; Jimmy L. Brown, Floyd H. Clanton Jr., and Benjie S. Walker, 25 years of service; Rodney Hartsfield and Melissa T. Weldon, 10 years; and Lon E. Harris, Heidi Earles Lowery and Carrie G. McLawhorn, five years; n Consider board and commission nominations: Auburn Tree Commission, one position - an unexpired term ends Nov. 7; Auburn Commercial Development Authority, three positions - three-year terms expiring March 15, 2010; and Lee-Russell Council of Governments, one position. The Committee of the Whole is scheduled to meet at 6:40 p.m. and the regularly scheduled council meeting beginning at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 171 N. Ross St. For more information visit the City of Auburn online, www.auburnalabama.org. Click on "City Council Materials" under News Bulletin.
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Richardson won't seek two-year chief job 03/06/2007 Birmingham News Charles J. Dean		Return to Top
MONTGOMERY - Auburn University President Ed Richardson said Monday he will not pursue the job of chancellor of the state's two-year college system. Last week, sources close to the situation said Richardson had expressed a willingness to take the job after he retires from Auburn, which he is expected to do about the end of June. Interim two-year Chancellor Thomas Corts abruptly quit last week following criticism of him by a majority of Alabama Board of Education over his handling of the job. Richardson said Monday it was true that there had been some talk about him taking over the job, but those discussions occurred well before news reports of troubles between the school board and Corts. Richardson declined to say with whom he had talked. "Yes. There were some discussions and, yes, I said I might have an interest, but at that time I didn't know a change was so close," Richardson said. Richardson said he thought Corts had the better part of two years remaining on his contract and assumed Corts would fulfill the contract. "My response was based on my assumption I would have had some time between my leaving Auburn and taking over somewhere else if the board wanted me to do that," said Richardson. Corts left the system after board members accused him of failing to effectively communicate with them and said they were frustrated over a host of problems in the system that Corts was not effectively dealing with. Corts was hired in July to replace fired Chancellor Roy Johnson after it was reported that Johnson and his family earned more than $560,000 in 2005 from jobs and contracts with the system and after news reports cited major problems with misspending at the Alabama Fire College. In two days, board members will discuss launching a search for a permanent chancellor. Last week board members said they hope to have a permanent chancellor on the job by the end of summer or early fall. Richardson said he will not seek the job. "I need some time," Richardson said. "I plan to be at Auburn through June. Based on what I hear, the board will want someone to come in very shortly after that, so I would really have to go directly from here to there with no break - and that's even if they wanted me - and I don't think I can do that." Richardson served as state school superintendent from 1995 to 2004, when he resigned to take over at Auburn. Richardson took over as both state superintendent and AU president during critical times and developed a reputation as a tough, take-no-prisoners reformer. "I have a wife who has put up with me now for a lot of years," Richardson said. "In a few days we're going to start construction on a new home (in Auburn), our last home. She has told me she intends to live in that home whether I do or not. So I don't think this is a good time for me to be talking about another job."
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AU students build studio for quilter 03/06/2007 Montgomery Advertiser Thomas Spencer, Birmingham News		Return to Top
This story also appeared in the Herald Tribune, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Gadsden Times, Thibodaux Daily Comet and Houma Courier. WAVERLY -- Mozell Benson's new quilting studio is like her quilts, patched together from what was at hand, made for function but designed with flair. The studio, opening Wednesday, is a collaboration between Auburn University architecture students and students in Auburn's design-build master's program. Working with just $11,000 in grants plus donated and salvaged materials, they're building for Benson, a nationally recognized quilter, a house and studio where she can live, work and teach her craft to another generation. Benson, a youthful 73, is modest and a little surprised that the craft she learned simply to keep her family warm at night has led to recognition by art critics, a 2001 National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship, and travels around the world. Her quilts hang in museums and galleries and grace the covers of books about the utilitarian craft that has become recognized as an art form. "I never expected to be where I am today," Benson said. Born in 1934, Benson grew up one of 10 children in a sharecropping family. She remembers playing beneath the quilts her mother was stitching with other women in the community. At a young age, she joined in to help. She married at 17 and had 10 children, all in need of quilts to keep them warm in a house that itself had been patched together and added to with whatever materials were available. "Back in the 1930s and 1940s, everybody was quilting. It was a necessity, truly," Benson said. "We didn't have a lot. We made quilts out of old flour bags and scraps of worn-out shirts and pants and the scraps that people who worked at the fabric mills would bring us. I've always been a scrap quilter." Benson's hands are large and strong. Besides raising her children, she drove a school bus and tended a garden that spreads across her wide front yard, which is speckled with flowers and jumping with collards. During winters, she's made dozens of quilts and given them away to people in the community. Since being discovered by academics and the art world, she's conducted workshops around the country. The studio and house project began about a year ago, after Benson was invited to speak to an architecture class on textiles. Auburn professor Magdalena Garmaz wanted to present students with the idea that textiles were the first form of shelter. And with high-tech fabrics available today, such as Kevlar and carbon fibers, textiles again are being used in architecture. Students could learn from the technique and artistry of traditional textile makers. In conversation after the seminar, Garmaz learned that Benson's home had fallen into disrepair and was not habitable. She was living in a rented house in Opelika but wanted a place where she could teach in her home community. Garmaz sought help from D.K. Ruth, the co-founder of Auburn's Rural Studio and director of the design-build master's program, and from Sheri Schumacher, a fellow architecture professor who had worked on design-build projects in the past. Soon students were at work on designs and then at turning those designs into buildings. You wouldn't necessarily think quilting and construction have any relation to one another. "You'd think that, but they have a lot to do with each other," said Emily Bullard, a fourth-year architecture student from Cullman. "This project has been about understanding your design through the lens of fabrication." Schumacher, who is leading the interior architecture portion of the project, said students drawing on paper often don't have a sense of how components have to be fitted together in the field. The quilting studio's construction has given them a real education in that, Schumacher said. Students have had to be particularly creative since they are fitting together salvaged material. They've taken lumber from Benson's old home, which stands, partially demolished, on the site. The odd assortment of materials serves the improvisational spirit of the quilting studio. Like a quilt, which has two sides joined with batting in the middle, the studio is fitted together in layers, with exterior and interior skins and a middle layer of insulation that in this case is made from recycled denim shredded into a foam. Colorful samples of carpet, donated by carpet designer David Oakey, have been stitched together to make wall-mounted storage spaces. "Just like Mozell's quilts, which are not made of one piece, this project is coming together with the stitching together of goodwill," Garmaz said. Benson was involved in the design process for the studio. In the simple rectangular shed, there is a large front porch that can serve as an outdoor classroom and a large room with a high ceiling where she can work and teach. She wanted concrete floors for their durability and lack of maintenance. But Benson mostly encouraged the students to pursue their vision. "She doesn't want people to tell her how to quilt and she is real sensitive to telling people how to design," Schumacher said. Benson is a gifted quilter, Garmaz said, but she is also a wise teacher who, by her very manner, teaches generosity, commitment to community and how you can make much out of little. "She gives much more than quilting lessons," Garmaz said.
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Colombia Fish Disaster Highlights Importance of Pond-Raised Aquaculture 03/05/2007 News Blaze Associated Press		Return to Top
Claude E. Boyd, professor of Agriculture and Environment at AU, is quoted in this story. Following reports on February 28, 2007 by the Associated Press regarding the loss of an estimated 3 million cage-raised tilapia due to a drought in southern Colombia, Norbert Sporns, CEO of HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries, Inc. (OTCBB: HQSB) (formerly OTCBB: HQSM), emphasized the significance of pond-raised aquaculture. Norbert Sporns said, "This environmental tragedy sadly highlights one of the ongoing debates in the aquaculture industry today about the advantages of pond-raised vs. cage-raised farmed fish. Advocates of cage-raised practices assume that fish in cages are raised in a constantly flowing water supply which reduces the effects of algae cultures and leads to better-tasting, healthier fish. But in fact, this reliance on an uncontrolled water environment can lead to many problems, one of which is horribly dramatized by the disaster in Colombia." (To read the AP report, please go to: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4590479.html.) To learn more about the event, Mr. Sporns spoke with Dr. Claude E. Boyd, Professor of Agriculture and Environment at Auburn University, Alabama, and a long-time consultant to numerous domestic and international organizations including the World Aquaculture Society and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Dr. Boyd explained that conflicts in management of water resources can result in such a kill-off. Dr. Boyd, who is Butler Cunningham Eminent Scholar in Auburn's Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquaculture and the author or co-author of numerous scientific books on pond aquaculture, added, "In general terms, pond culture is more environmentally friendly than cage culture, because it enables greater control of the water environment and effluents that impact the health of the fish." HQ Sustainable is a leader in toxin-free integrated aquaculture and aquatic product processing. The Seattle-based company's tilapia farm operations are pond-based and located in the environmentally pristine island province of Hainan, China. They are carefully controlled to mimic tilapia's natural habitat. As a vertically integrated operation, HQ maintains control over all aspects of production, from the manufacture of feed, to water quantity and quality, to processing a good-tasting toxin-free final product. Concerns regarding pond practices focus primarily on the pollution of a closed environment and the growth of algae, which affects the health and taste of the fish. HQ's pond farms demonstrate environmentally friendly aquaculture solutions that ensure sustainable production of good-tasting fish that are free of all toxins, including hormones and antibiotics. HQ's Pond Raised Solutions -- Pond environment controls inflow and outflow of water, avoiding the need for any prophylactic use of antibiotics. -- Pond-grown algae provide excellent feed supplement where adequate quantities of dissolved oxygen are present, which eliminates any off-flavor from anaerobic algae cultures. -- HQ's poly-species approach mimics nature by introducing natural bottom-feeder fish and predator fish to maintain the pond eco-system. -- Tilapia are herbivores and no fishmeal need be added to tilapia feed which could possibly introduce ocean-sourced pollutants such as heavy metals, PCBs or dioxins. Pond stability provides favorable feed conversion rates over cage-raised tilapia. -- Finally, ponds are located away from mangrove swamp areas to preserve crucial natural habitat, and used pond water provides valuable natural nutrients to neighboring farmers' fields instead of being released into waterways, providing downstream concerns to other waterway users. The Global Aquaculture Alliance, the World Aquaculture Society and most recently the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) (see http://worldwildlife.org/cci/dialogues/tilapia2.cfm) have increased their study of aquaculture techniques in response to growing interest in aquaculture. "The debate will certainly continue, but I believe consumer opinion is gradually shifting," concluded Mr. Sporns, who cited the following sources of information about innovations in pond aquaculture, particularly in China: The Government of China has introduced a stringent set of best aquaculture practices, similar to the U.S. HACCP quality control regulations, to encourage the highest standards of aquaculture management in conjunction with products destined for export. These practices help avoid tragic kills like that in Colombia. HQ stringently enforces and enhances these practices with its cooperative suppliers. China is a leading nation in developing such an advanced regulatory framework for export-oriented food practices. According to "Amber Waves," a publication by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service: "Chinese officials have resolved to improve the quality and safety of food in China. Initial efforts were aimed at export-oriented production, which has traditionally had much higher standards and often completely separate production and marketing chains from products destined for the domestic market." (See article in Amber Waves, "Food Safety Improvements Underway in China" http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/November06/Features/FoodSafety.htm.) For more information regarding the quality of HQ's aquaculture techniques, see http://www.hqfish.com. About HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries, Inc. HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries, Inc. is an integrated aquaculture and aquatic product processing company, with operations based in the environmentally pristine island province of Hainan, in the South China Sea. HQ practices cooperative sustainable aquaculture, using nutraceutically enriched feeds and conducting fish processing and sales. The company is dedicated to sustainable toxin-free methods giving its customers the purest products possible. The Company holds HACCP certification from the U.S. FDA and the EU Code assignment of quality, permitting its products to be sold in these international markets. It owns a nutraceuticals and health products company, which is HACCP certified, and produces and sells products subject to stringent laboratory tests certified by the China Ministry of Health. This plant produces nutraceuticals, which enrich feed used by HQ's cooperative aquaculture operations. In addition to headquarters in Seattle, HQ has operational offices in Haikou, Hainan. (http://www.hqfish.com). Certain statements in this press release that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate," "believe," "expect," "future," "may," "will," "would," "should," "plan," "projected," "intend," and similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries, Inc. (the Company) to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The Company's future operating results are dependent upon many factors, including but not limited to the Company's ability to: (i) obtain sufficient capital or a strategic business arrangement to fund its expansion plans; (ii) build the management and human resources and infrastructure necessary to support the growth of its business; (iii) competitive factors and developments beyond the Company's control; and (iv) other risk factors discussed in the Company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available for review at www.sec.gov under "Search for Company Filings." Consulting For Strategic Growth I, Ltd. ("CFSG") provides HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries, Inc. (HQ) with consulting, business advisory, investor relations, public relations and corporate development services, for which CFSG receives a fixed monthly fee for the duration of the agreement. Independent of CFSG's receipt of cash compensation from HQ, CFSG may choose to purchase the common stock of the company and thereafter sell those shares at any time it deems appropriate to do so.
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