Untitled Document

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Good morning! Here's today's summary of news coverage of Auburn University.
NOTE: Any errors in text are due to formatting by the publication.

Total Clips: 7

	Date	Outlet
Former Auburn coach adjusting to new role with University	08/30/2006	WALB-TV (Albany, Ga.)
1-2-3...SEC!	08/30/2006	The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)
Research shows cutting employee incentives hurts	08/30/2006	Reliable Plant Magazine
Big House	08/30/2006	Dallas Morning News
Brewers seek to cultivate refined image	08/29/2006	Journal Gazette (Pittsburgh)
AU develops battery technology for Army, NASA	08/29/2006	Malaysia Sun
Decreasing salt intake could help control blood pressure	08/29/2006	Press-Register


Former Auburn coach adjusting to new role with University 08/30/2006 WALB-TV (Albany, Ga.)		Return to Top
Includes comment about AU's capital campaign. Albany - Auburn Tiger fans in southwest Georgia are ready for the Tigers season opener Saturday night at Jordan-Hare Stadium against Washington State. It will the first game in 25 years where Joe Whitt will not be coaching the linebackers for the Tigers. Whitt got out of coaching earlier this year and now works for the Auburn Athletic Department in their fundraising unit Tigers Unlimited. Which is raising money to improve educational and athletic opportunities at Auburn. Whitt says his new job will bring him to south Georgia alot in the near future. Joe Whitt said "I am proud to say that are people are really supporting our campaign. We have a capital campaign going on and not just football and athletics. We have a major campaign at Auburn University, $500 million campaign for all schools of the University." Auburn and Washington State will start at 7:45 p.m. Saturday night.
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1-2-3...SEC! 08/30/2006 The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.) Todd Miles		Return to Top
This story is about AU game day traditions. The Cougars are about to get a taste of Southern football madness It was like comparing apples to oranges, or a NASCAR short track to a superspeedway. Steven Dildine likes game-day football customs as much as any Pacific-10 Conference player. These are traditions not only familiar, they are ingrained. What happens in the South, in particular at Auburn University in Alabama, is downright harebrained. Consider the "Tiger Walk." As a linebacker at Washington State University, Dildine knows the tradition of pacing to the stadium on Saturdays in front of home fans. But actually hiking in? "It's like our 'Cougar Walk'," Dildine said. "Only theirs is a mile longer." Overkill? Going the extra mile? That's football in the south. The comparison is symbolic of how football-crazed Auburn is, particularly on Saturdays. Fans line up overnight to fill Jordan-Hare Stadium to its capacity of 87,451. Longtime Auburn fans joke that when the stadium is filled, it becomes Alabama's eighth-largest city. "It starts Wednesday and Thursday. Cars, motor homes pull up on campus," Auburn linebacker Karibi Dede said. "Football is king in the South. It runs in the veins of people down here." One family, the Sullivans, knows this well. Bill Sullivan, who lives in Mill Creek, near Everett, is a 1987 Auburn graduate, and now is president of a Northwest-based company called Superfloors. His parents are Auburn products. His two brothers, and a nephew, played on the football team. His sister was a Tigers cheerleader. He worked in the sports information office as part of running back Bo Jackson’s Heisman Trophy campaign. It was Sullivan’s oldest brother, Pat, who was Auburn’s first Heisman Trophy winner, in 1971. "You don’t really get to choose," Bill Sullivan said of being born to parents who attended the school. "Some children may go astray, but you’re born into it." Sullivan has three sons. His only teenager, Daniel, went to an Auburn game with him for the first time last season. "We had to park 31/2 miles away, eight hours early just to be able to get there," Sullivan said. “He said, 'Where’s the stadium, dad?’ I pointed over to it (miles away) and ... he learned about it on the hike in.” A few of the customs: • “Tiger Walk” seems to be the campus favorite of both patrons and players. It began in the 1960s when players ate their pregame meals at Sewell Hall two hours prior to kickoff. They would then walk single-file from the dormitory down Donahue Drive to Jordan-Hare Stadium. Thousands of fans lined the street to wish them well. Today, the tradition has been tweaked. Auburn players spend the night before home games in a hotel in Georgia, take a bus to the dorm and then walk through crowds that reach nearly 20,000 for some games. “It’s the first big thing that happens,” Dede said. “They’re lined up for a long stretch, all the way to the stadium. The crowd is so thick, so anxious and fired up, it’s almost game-time for them.” “Tiger Walk” is also celebrated at road games. “We went to Southern Cal (2002), and had 8,000 people there for it,” said Buddy Davidson, the former sports information director in his 50th year associated with the athletic department. “The Southern Cal people were in awe of it. Until you see it, you can’t believe it.” • Toomer’s Corner and Drug Store: Looking for a unique way to celebrate a home victory? Try congregating at the corner where the campus meets the town of Auburn (pop. 42,000). Find a seat in the old drug store and watch as Auburn fans “roll” the trees with toilet paper and other items, for hours at a time. On Sunday, a company hired by the city cleans up the mess. • “War Eagle:” As lore has it, when the Tigers scored their first touchdown in 1892, an eagle, found during the Civil War and kept at the university, broke free and flew toward the sky over the field. So before every home game, an eagle – now War Eagle VI – is freed from its cage, swoops down and grabs a piece of meat connected to a replica of the opposing team’s mascot, and flies away. That signifies the start of the “war,” or game. “If that doesn’t get the hair standing up on the back of your neck, I don’t know what will,” Davidson said. Davidson said the scope of Auburn’s traditions hit a national scale when Pat Dye took over as coach in 1981. His aim was to bring Auburn out of the shadows cast by a Bear Bryant-coached Alabama program across the state. Dye was a big reason the Auburn-Alabama game returned to Auburn. That’s when the mass-marketing of Auburn football began. ESPN began showing up on campus to televise games. In fact, Auburn has had more games televised by the cable network than any other NCAA program. “Aubie,” the school mascot, began as a caricature drawn by an Auburn student that was intended for game programs. Now, Aubie also appears on T-shirts, produced by a company called Tiger Rags. The apparel is made and sold before home games, with Aubie on the front teasing the opposing mascot in some manner. This week’s theme is “Cat Scratch Fever” for the Cougars. Then there are the postgame posters and bumper stickers. Perhaps none illustrates the phenomenon better than one printed moments after last season’s Auburn-Alabama game at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Alabama quarterback Brodie Croyle was sacked 11 times in a game won by the Tigers, 28-18. As fans headed for the parking lot, they could purchase a special bumper sticker for $2. It read, “Honk If You Sacked Brodie.” “That was pretty funny,” said Dede, one of the players responsible for Croyle’s tough night. “I’ve definitely seen them all over.” The bumper stickers were being printed in a mobile unit in the parking lot. They were sold out in minutes. Even today, the bumper sticker is a difficult item to find because it is in such heavy demand. “Auburn takes the college family cliche a long way,” Sullivan said. “We have a saying in our family, and I tell my 13-year-old this: ‘You can go to college wherever you want, but your tuition is going to Auburn.’ That’s not just our family. That’s the way it works.” AUBURN Tigers Location: Auburn, Ala. Population: 42,000. Enrollment: 23,333. The town: Founded in 1836 by a county judge in Georgia, Judge John J. Harper. The town was incorporated three years later, and in 1856 a college named East Alabama Male College was chartered, which was later re-named Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1899, then Auburn University in 1960. Geographically, the city and college meet at a street corner known as “Toomers Corner.” Famous alumni: Charles Barkley, NBA player; Jimmy Buffett, singer/songwriter; Rowdy Gaines, Olympic swimming gold medalist; Taylor Hicks, “American Idol” winner; Bo Jackson, NFL and major league baseball player; Victoria Jackson, “Saturday Night Live” comedian; Jimmy Johnson, “Arlo and Janis” cartoonist; Ken Mattingly, astronaut; Pat Sullivan, 1971 Heisman Trophy winner; Toni Tennille, singer of “The Captain & Tennille” group; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Did you know?: John Heisman, after whom college football’s “Heisman Trophy” is named, was the Auburn football coach from 1895-99. Todd Milles, The News Tribune
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Research shows cutting employee incentives hurts 08/30/2006 Reliable Plant Magazine		Return to Top
This story is about a study co-authored by Dave Ketchen, Lowder Eminent Scholar at AU. A study of nearly 20,000 organizations shows that employee incentives really are good for business. Data from 19,319 organizations reveals that when a company emphasizes human resource activities such as incentive pay and flextime, it can enjoy a 10 percent to 20 percent improvement in employee retention, employee productivity, profitability and stock price, according to an upcoming study in Personnel Psychology. Meanwhile, companies that cut these programs can expect a 10 to 20 percent reduction in their bottom line. "Over the last 25 years, corporate America has debated whether the human resources function adds value or if it is just a necessary evil," said Dave Ketchen, study co-author and Lowder Eminent Scholar at Auburn University. "Our results show that negative images of human resource managers miss the mark. Skilled HR managers can make the difference between a company making a profit or losing money." The study found that performance improvements are stronger when companies take a systematic approach to human resources rather than implementing one or two practices. "A firm can't view training or team-building as a magic bullet that will deliver profits," said Ketchen. "Executives need to adopt a strategic view of the human resource function and create sets of practices that reinforce each other." The study also found that human resource activities make a bigger difference among manufacturing firms than among service firms. "Manufacturing jobs often involve complex and dangerous machinery," said Ketchen. "In high-performing companies, the services that the human resource function provides, such as safety and training, support other programs such as quality management and lean manufacturing systems to make sure that workers are safe, motivated and productive." The study used a technique called meta-analysis to mathematically combine the findings of 92 previous studies published since the mid-1980s. Co-authors with Ketchen on the project were James Combs, Yongmei Liu and Angela Hall, all of Florida State University.
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Big House 08/30/2006 Dallas Morning News		Return to Top
Dr. Charles Ray, an Extension entomologist and research fellow with AU's Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology is quoted in a story about yellow jackets nests that receives ongoing coverage. It also appeared on KHOU-TV (Houston), KGW-TV (OR), KMSM (AZ), WCNC-TV (Charlotte, NC), WVEC-TV (VA), KMOV-TV (St. Louis, MO) and in the Riverside Press-Enterprise (CA). Big house: There's been a buzz about giant yellow-jacket nests in Alabama and Georgia, but in the Web-size photos that accompany news stories, it's been hard to see much detail. The Montgomery Advertiser ran an AP story (Giant nests perplex experts) that included the photo of the nest that swallowed a car in Tallassee, Ala., right. Playing around with the url of the photo, I discovered that it ended with "MaxW=300" I wondered if it were actually larger, just set to display no wider than 300 pixels, and I played with that number. Here it is, the original 800-pixel-wide photo of a yellow-jacket nest in Harry Coker's 1955 Chevy. If you use a Firefox extension such as Image Zoom, or download the image to a photo viewer, you can see it even larger. Much of it is in perfect focus. Spooky, like hard cobwebs. You can see a bit more of the car's exterior, and read more about giant nests, at this July 10 Alabama Cooperative Extension blog item (What is Causing Super-sized Yellow Jacket Nests?): "It's speculated --- and, again, this is only speculation --- that the very mild winter has allowed these nest to survive," he (Dr. Charles Ray, an Extension entomologist and research fellow with Auburn University's Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology) says. "Rather than starting spring with a single queen --- as yellow jackets traditionally do --- these nests are starting with possibly a couple of thousand workers and possibly multiple queens." Even so, Ray concedes that this is little more than an educated guess. "We're not really sure how this multiple queen thing works. It could be that the daughters of the original queen don't leave the nest or that the queens have developed some way to cooperate." That would be an evolutionary leap.
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Brewers seek to cultivate refined image 08/29/2006 Journal Gazette (Pittsburgh) Len Boselovic		Return to Top
This story, quoting Michael R. Solomon, an AU professor whose specialty is consumer behavior, continues to be covered by media outlets nationwide. With U.S. beer shipments falling, brewers want to polish up the consumer image and stem the boredom with domestic brands. "Sophisticated beer drinker." If the above phrase leaves an oxymoronic aftertaste on your palate, you have an idea of what beer makers are up against. U.S. beer shipments last year were flatter than a stale ale, falling 0.1 percent, according to the Beer Institute. The industry group says shipments to the U.S. market – which accounted for about 86 percent of overall business – declined 2.2 percent to 178.8 million barrels. The drop was offset by a 7.2 percent increase in imports and an 8 percent increase in exports. Shipments fell in 30 states. Meanwhile, the Wine Institute reports wine consumption grew 5.2 percent in 2005, while the Distilled Spirits Council says sales rose 2.9 percent based on the volume of alcohol sold. Marketing experts say the disparity indicates the degree to which wine and distilled spirits producers have capitalized on changing consumer tastes. Drinkers are more sophisticated, willing to try something new and looking for different beverages that are appropriate for different occasions. More importantly, they don’t want to be seen drinking the same thing as everybody else. Brewers, long criticized for advertising that targeted the lowest common denominator, are finally realizing that a crucial market is more sophisticated than their baby boomer parents. "This twentysomething is "They don't want to be seen as a guzzler, a dumb guy, six-pack drinker. They want to be seen as a connoisseur." The beer industry created those perceptions with high-priced advertising: Old Milwaukee’s Swedish Bikini Team, Miller Lite's "Catfight" ad featuring two scantily clad women trying to resolve the "tastes great, less filing" debate, and Coors Light's bikini twins. "When you drink a lot of wine, you're refined. When you drink a lot of beer, you're just a beer drinker," says Michael R. Solomon, an Auburn University professor whose specialty is consumer behavior. Perception is only part of the problem. While major brands such as Budweiser, Miller Lite and Coors Light still dominate the market, all the growth is coming from craft brewers and imports. That reflects what Solomon calls "some sort of boredom with the major brands." "Domestic beer occupies this territory of being ordinary, everyday," says Jim Forrest, vice president of Synovate, a market research firm. Forrest says wine and distilled spirits producers have done a good job of fashioning strategies around occasions to consume their products. Craft and import beer producers have done the same, he says. The importance of appealing to more discriminating, higher-brow tastes is evident in the distilled spirits industry. While overall sales grew 8 percent last year, sales of premium products grew at a double-digit clip, says David Ozgo, chief economist for the Distilled Spirits Council. Consumers view a $30 or $40 bottle of vodka as an affordable luxury and "tend to want to drink better," he says.
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AU develops battery technology for Army, NASA 08/29/2006 Malaysia Sun		Return to Top
AUBURN, Ala. - It looks like a tackle box, but weighs nearly 50 pounds. However, it's what's inside that matters most to Auburn University, the U.S. Army and NASA. After 18 months, researchers at Auburn's Space Research Institute, with their partner, Radiance Technologies Inc., last week unveiled a new technology that will provide the Army with a portable and reliable method of recharging AA batteries. The development will also help AU test a 5-kilowatt engine NASA would use for a lunar module. The Army's Research Office and Central Electronics Command funded the $750,000 project to find a source of silent electrical power. While AA batteries are thrown out, other batteries are restored by connecting a charger to a running Humvee. "Our goal was to be stealth but still be able to (use the technology to) communicate," said Mary Henrixon, project manager at Central Electronic Command. The new technology isn't completely silent, but tremendously quieter than a Humvee's engine, said SRI Director Henry Brandhorst. But it creates portable energy to recharge AA batteries, a capability the Army does not have. Henrixon said each soldier uses 88 AA batteries each day. A platoon on a five-day mission would dispose of about 650. This new technology would reduce the amount of batteries soldiers use and carry, she said. The technology isn't meant to be mass produced for the entire Army, but used by specialized units only. Eventually, it could be mass produced by a company at a low enough cost general consumers could afford, said SRI Research Fellow Ray Kirby. The prototype has proved itself in more than 500 hours of laboratory testing and is capable of generating enough electrical power to charge six AA batteries every 15 minutes. "This means that more than 150 AA batteries can be charged for each pound of propane fuel used," said Brandhorst. "We believe that this technology has the potential to greatly increase the efficiency of supplying American soldiers in the field with battery power." Brandhorst said the project, which is far from over, will hopefully bring notoriety to Auburn, along with more research dollars, as well as attract students. "What we want to do is to generate system engineers," he said of the growing field. The next phase of the project has already begun, and is set to serve as a teaching tool. The Army wants the technology to be lighter, diesel-powered and a 160-watt system. The prototype uses propane. It will take several months for another model to be created and then it will undergo "torture tests" by the military, Brandhorst added. "We know it works. The next step is now can you make it better," Brandhorst said. Auburn is one of a few universities across the country working with Stirling technology. The prototype uses two free-piston Stirling engines, which eliminate vibration and noise. "It uses heat from an external source and converts this heat to electrical power," said Brandhorst. "It has only two moving parts and because the external heat can come from a multitude of sources, this technology is a reliable basis for military and other defense-related applications." The lessons learned from this project will help Auburn prepare for a $2.7 million deal with NASA. Kirby hopes the university will be able to begin testing a 5-kilowatt engine by next December. Brandhorst said NASA is interested in an engine for possible space power applications.
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Decreasing salt intake could help control blood pressure 08/29/2006 Press-Register		Return to Top
Robert Keith, ACES nutrition and health specialist and professor of nutrition and food science at AU was quoted in this story. It also appeared in the Brewton Standard. Scientists stress the high correlation between obesity and hypertension Many people assume that forgoing table salt is the simplest and surest way to control their blood pressure. Granted, it's a good first step, according to Dr. Robert Keith, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System nutrition and health specialist and professor of nutrition and food science at Auburn University. There is, after all, a strong link between higher-sodium diets and high blood pressure -- a fact borne out in other parts of the world, especially in some Asian countries, where higher sodium consumption is linked with higher rates of hypertension. Studies have shown that reducing sodium in processed foods, home cooking and table use could result in a 10-point decrease in systolic pressure, one of the two scores that make up your overall blood pressure reading. Even so, like most first steps, reducing table salt intake will only take you so far. A possibly even bigger contributor is obesity. Scientists have long stressed the high correlation between obesity and hypertension, especially in cases where obesity is associated with large amounts of abdominal fat. Indeed, considering the strong link between obesity and hypertension, it's easy to understand why there has been such a steep hike in hypertension among Americans in recent years. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, and the enormously high levels of hypertension among the population appear to follow this trend closely. Roughly 25 percent of the adult U.S. population suffers from high blood pressure -- a problem even more widespread among the elderly, of whom 50 percent are sufferers. Simply put, the heavier we become, the more prone we are to hypertension. Nutrient intake also figures into the picture. Doctors have known for a long time that potassium, widely available in fresh fruits and vegetables, is a major player in blood pressure reduction. Consuming potassium-rich fresh fruits and vegetables at least five times a day, while reducing sodium intake, often results in a significant reduction in blood pressure. Even people willing to go half the distance by increasing their intake of dietary potassium can reap huge benefits. Just remember that there's a big distinction between fresh vegetables and canned vegetables, which tend to be high in sodium and low in potassium. For instance, a cup of fresh peas may contain several hundred milligrams of potassium and almost no sodium at all. On the other hand, if you use canned peas instead, you may get the just the opposite. Rounding out the story is calcium, another key ingredient associated with lower rates of hypertension. Studies have shown that people who fail to consume sufficient amounts of dietary calcium face a higher risk of developing hypertension. Keith said to remember to go light on the table salt, heavy on fruits and vegetables and nonfat dairy. Heeding this advice, coupled with weight control and regular exercise, will go a long way toward helping you manage your blood pressure.
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