NC State zoology professors Frederick S. Barkalow (left) and Reinard Harkema (right), in 1950, holding a fur coat while standing behind display of furbearing animals used to make clothing. (Photograph courtesy of Special Collections, NCSU Libraries)
NC State’s Special Collections Research Center has thousands of images in its online database that you can view.
Do you have an NC State photo you think might make a good photo of the day? Send it to us at alumniblog@gw.ncsu.edu!
Michael Roberts, an assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics, is back on The New York Times’ Room for Debate blog (we linked previously to his May appearance). This time, he responded to the question “Can Biotech Food Cure World Hunger?” One of his concerns:
I am mindful of arguments coming from technological optimists who believe crop yields will continue to rise, that there is plenty of oil still left to find and that geo-engineering will solve global warming.
But I don’t think today’s doomsayers are a few voices in small corners of the scientific community. There is a real threat to worldwide food security over the next 10 to 40 years. The threat comes from global income inequality combined with projected global warming, which could cause tremendous declines in crop yields.
As he writes in his follow up on his excellent Greed, Green and Grains blog:
I don’t think biotech crops are evil and could be a big help, especially in developing nations. But I think we’d be naive to think these will solve all the world’s food problems going forward. Maybe they will but they probably won’t.
Roberts and a colleague from Columbia University published a paper in August that made some startling predictions about declines in crop yields due to global warming.
h/t to @ncstatenews
Great news on the ice cream front. That delicious NC State ice cream you wait in line for at the State Fair each October? You can now trek on down to the Bragaw C-store and pick up a pint for $4.50. Flavors include chocolate chocolate chip, vanilla, cookie dough, chocolate chip mint and campfire delight (a graham-cracker flavored ice cream with chocolate chunks and marshmellows). Of course, you can always get your 3-gallon tubs and tiny cups at Schaub Hall or settle in with a book and a sundae from The Creamery in D.H. Hill Library.
We wrote about the ice cream in a 2003 story and dug up this about dairy production at NC State:
In fact, dairy production at NC State dates to the early 20th century, when the first pasteurized milk was produced in the basement of Polk Hall. Those early supplies went to soldiers in World War I. In the early 1960s, the dairy science curriculum merged with a few other majors to become food science. And in 1968 the new major found a home in Schaub Hall, which was built with a fully operational dairy pilot plant.
A 4-H member shows off his pig at a Kinston stock show in 1946. (Photograph courtesy of Special Collections, NCSU Libraries)
NC State’s Special Collections Research Center has thousands of images in its online database that you can view.
Do you have an NC State photo you think might make a good photo of the day? Send it to us at alumniblog@gw.ncsu.edu!
William E. Splinter of the Biology and Agricultural Engineering Department shows a tobacco leaf harvested by a machine he helped develop. The photograph is from August 1967. (Photograph courtesy of Special Collections, NCSU Libraries)
NC State’s Special Collections Research Center has thousands of images in its online database that you can view.
Do you have an NC State photo you think might make a good photo of the day? Send it to us at alumniblog@gw.ncsu.edu!
NC State News Services posted a couple of YouTube clips recently that give you an idea of the breadth of work done here. The first, above, is from a forensics discovery and recovery course that’s part of the N.C. Program for Forensic Science, which trains state law enforcement officers and medical examiners. Warning: There is an image of a dead pig in the clip.
The second looks at the work of forestry doctoral student Chris Hopkins ’05 MR, who’s part of a group here looking at ways to turn woodchips into a substitute for coal. Pretty cool stuff!
Today, we were pointed to two neat articles in the press that feature NC State experts and make for good Friday afternoon reading. . .
The first, from CNN, is about an expected battle in Congress over buying American when purchasing uniforms for the military. Producers visited the College of Textiles, where materials were tested, and talked with Roger Barker, a professor who studies the thermal protective performance of fabrics and clothing. If they ever put up the video from the piece, we’ll post it.
And from Wine Spectator, an article on the effort at NC State to decode the brettanomyces genome.
Brettanomyces, aka brett, can be a winemaker’s worst enemy. A yeast species that contaminates wine and corrupts the entire fermentation process, brettanomyces can lead to flavors best described as sweaty horse, manure, Band-Aid and burnt plastic. At lower levels, some find it pleasantly spicy, with cedar and earth undertones. But higher concentrations ruin a wine completely.
In the 1920s, members of the N.C. 4-H's Clarendon Women's Club of Columbus County hold their dress molds. (Photo courtesy of Special Collections, NCSU Libraries)
The N.C. 4-H Club will celebrate its 100th anniversary this week as members from across the state will be in Raleigh to participate in competitions and events as part of its annual 4-H Congress. Among the events will be a Centennial Homecoming Celebration on Tuesday night, when there will be a reunion dinner and a Rockin’ Clover Bash and when the first class of the 4-H Hall of Fame will be announced. NC State helped develop the N.C. 4-H Club — which also has been called the Corn Club and the Farmers’ Boy Club — in 1909.
NCSU Libraries’ Special Collections has an online exhibit, Green’n’ Growing, that includes a detailed history of the N.C. 4-H Club and hundreds of great photos of the club’s work over its 100-year history. The N&O also has some colorful photos of the recent N.C. State 4-H Horse Show, one of the nation’s largest 4-H horse programs.
Sometimes it seems like we don’t talk enough about the great work NC State faculty members do and have done. On Sunday, The News & Observer highlighted the work of Will Hooker ’79 MLA, a professor of horticulture. The New York native has taught here for about 30 years and has seen a lot change in that time:
Now environmentalism is all the rage. The green movement on campus is in full swing, with student organizations dedicated to the environment, departments focused on being more eco-friendly and an office assigned to organize environmental projects.
And as if some cruel joke is being played on him, it comes as Hooker is too tired to lead the push.
At 65, after 30 years of teaching landscape horticulture and pushing environmental causes for the university, Hooker could retire whenever he wants. But he can’t. Not yet.
“Apparently I didn’t make a reasonable argument back then,” he said. “But now the students are pushing it.”
And this morning, I found an article in The Beacon-News out of Aurora, Ill., that described an effort to preserve a mural painted by Manuel Bromberg in a post office in Geneva, Ill. Bromberg taught in the College of Design during its early years. As a young man during World War II, he was a member of the U.S. War Artist’s Unit and took photos of the aftermath of the storming of Omaha Beach. Design Observer has an analysis and a collection of his Normandy photos. It’s powerful work. A picture of Bromberg instructing an NC State student is after the jump.
Retired animal science professor Jim Lecce studied porcine husbandry but has been working as an artist for almost 20 years, sculpting in wood and stone. He and his wife, Eileen, have willed their estate — valued at more than $1 million — to the university. It will be the largest arts gift in NC State history. From an N&O profile of Lecce:
He recently went into his garage and pulled out a two-foot-high carving he’d done years ago. It had been gathering cobwebs since Farrow shipped it back to Lecce 10 years ago.
It’s autobiographical. A man’s face, a woman’s body reaching away from the man, a baby’s face below them, and a pig’s face and snout pulling the man from behind. The piece represents him, his wife, the children they never had and Lecce’s mistress of an academic career.
The sculpture sits on Lecce’s sun porch. He scowls a little, admitting he never liked it himself. He says the piece is mocking him.
So what’s it called?
“I hate you,” Lecce says with another wink.
Feeling better than he has in a long time, Lecce laughs easily, especially at himself. His family legacy has a name and a home at N.C. State.
NCSU Alumni Association, 2450 Alumni Drive, Campus Box 7503, Raleigh NC 27695-7503
Phone: 919.515.3375 | 800.627.2586 | Email: alumni@ncsu.edu
Copyright © 1998-2009 NC State Alumni Association
Subscribe to our RSS Feeds