Scientists at UNC-CH, Duke and N.C. State prepare hundreds of requests they hope will snare some of the coming federal stimulus money aimed at kick-starting academic research, the N&O reports.

DURHAM, N.C.  – A dissertation written by President Barack Obama’s mother is getting published.

Duke University Press said Monday that an edited version of Ann Dunham’s anthropological study about rural craftsmen in Indonesia is scheduled to reach stores this fall. Dunham completed the study three years before she died in 1995.

Duke marketing manager Emily Young said the foreword was written by the president’s half-sister and Dunham’s daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng (so-TOR’-oh ING).

The book is based on Ann Dunham’s 14 years of research among village industry workers on the Indonesian island of Java.

Young said the project came to the university’s press arm because it has a good reputation for publishing anthropological studies.

The White House had no immediate comment Monday.

DURHAM, N.C. — The Obama Administration’s promised level of transparency, as evidenced by the new government website Recovery.gov, carries risks, but is the right way to try to build trust with the American public, says a Duke University expert.

“There are good reasons why leaders and managers in both the public and private sectors generally prefer to keep as much information as possible under wraps. Mistakes, and worse, can happen and one would prefer that these were never seen by potential critics,” said Wayne Norman, the Mackowski Professor of Ethics at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics.

“The other side of this transparency and accountability initiative is that it gives the White House a better chance to know the truth about how the money is being spent, and more of the truth, sooner and more completely. It can deal with problems before they get worse. And it can put criticisms about this or that program into context.

“There’s an old adage in business: if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. This website initiative is, in part, about measuring it, so they can manage it,” Norman said.

Increased transparency will not prevent rumors and allegations about wasteful, silly or corrupt spending of stimulus money, Norman said, but it will help Obama build social capital, or trust, with the American people so he can pursue his legislative agenda.

“If the Obama administration goes back to the well for more stimulus and bail-out money, they must first prove they are responsible guardians of it,” Norman said.

Making the stimulus process transparent is “simply the appropriate thing to do in a democratic state. It is part of the ‘change’ that Obama campaigned on,” Norman said. “It is also a nod to bi-partisanship since worries about waste and earmarks were voiced as reasons why many Republican lawmakers opposed the bill.”

He added that by adopting transparency and accountability at the top, the government forces it upon everyone down the chain — from federal departments and agencies to state and city governments and, ultimately, to contractors and subcontractors.

“Everybody will have to be transparent, and more importantly, they know they will be exposed. In short, it gives an incentive for everyone down the expenditure line to use the funds appropriately, because they know it will be harder to get away with anything shady,” Norman said. “Although the value of transparency can sometimes be trumped by the value of privacy or confidentiality, there are no principled reasons why anyone should oppose the spirit of transparency and accountability in the spending of this money.”

RALEIGH, N.C. – What’s a ticket to next week’s Duke-North Carolina game worth? How about a seat in the North Carolina Senate?

That’s what Sen. Eddie Goodall is offering on eBay in exchange for two tickets to the Tobacco Road rivalry game.

The Union County Republican said Friday he was inspired by the impeachment of ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (bluh-GOY’-uh-vich), but insists with a laugh that he’s no crook.

His ad only offers the actual seat on which he sits, and not a chance to take over his elected office. He paid $788 for the black leather swivel chair three years ago.

Goodall had received no bids by Friday afternoon, which is just as well, since he says it’s all meant to be a joke.

From Duke’s basketball team to Obama’s Presidential team, Reggie Love shares the details.

Dr. Robert Califf may have a second shot at running the Food and Drug Administration.

The respected Duke University cardiologist and head of the Duke Clinical Research Institute is among people mentioned as possible candidates for FDA commissioner in the administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

DURHAM, N.C. — Robert Gottlieb, a historian of the U.S. environmental movement, will discuss “The New Environmentalism: After the 2008 Election” in a lecture Tuesday, Nov. 11 at Duke University.

The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place at 4:30 p.m. in White Lecture Hall on Duke’s East Campus.

Gottlieb will discuss what changes might be anticipated within environmental advocacy, based on the outcome of the 2008 national election.

The environmental movement has experienced shifts in its focus and organization following key elections during the last 40 years, Gottlieb notes. The 1970 congressional and 1972 presidential elections, for instance, ushered in a new era of environmental policymaking. George W. Bush’s election in 2000 heralded “the most significant shift in environmental policymaking in more than three decades,” he said.

Gottlieb is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban Environmental Studies and director of the Urban Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

He is the author of the MIT Press series, “Urban and Industrial Environments,” and co-author of 11 books, including “Reinventing Los Angeles” (MIT Press, 2007); “Environmentalism Unbound: Exploring New Pathways for Change” (MIT Press, 2001); and “Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement” (Island Press, 1993).

Gottlieb’s talk at Duke is the 2008 Lynn W. Day Distinguished Lectureship in Forest and Conservation History. The event is sponsored by the Forest History Society, the Duke University Department of History and the Nicholas School of the Environment.

White Lecture Hall is located at 113 Campus Drive. Parking will be available on the East Campus Quad. A reception will follow Gottlieb’s talk at 5:30 p.m. in the East Duke Parlors.

Libertarian and Duke University doctoral student Horacio Carias said he was likely to make his presidential choice based on what he heard Tuesday in a small campus lecture hall.
     
Carias, 25, of Orlando, Fla., wanted to hear from his party’s presidential candidate, former Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia.
     
“I’m torn between Bob Barr and none of the above,” he said before the first of two Barr campaign appearances on North Carolina campuses Tuesday. Barr also was scheduled to speak at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
     
Carias said he held off on mailing his Florida absentee ballot until he could hear from Barr, who Carias said lacked credibility by becoming a Libertarian after a political career as a Republican.
     
Barr made no pretense that he believed he would win next week’s presidential election. Lacking any entourage or visible bodyguards, Barr leaned on a wooden lectern and told the audience of about 100 that both major political parties were working to build a bigger, more intrusive government.
     
Neither the Democrats who have run Congress for almost two years nor the Republicans in charge for most of the preceding decade were interested in limiting the president’s growing powers, Barr said.

DURHAM, N.C. — State Senator and U.S. Senate Candidate Kay Hagan will attend a rally on the campus of Duke University, sponsored by the Duke Democrats at 2:30 p.m. Thursday.

She will speak at the Duke University, Griffith Theatre at the Bryan Center in Durham.

According to her campaign, Hagan will cast her early vote Thursday morning in Greensboro.