WXII-TV (Winston Salem, NC)
Wake Forest students fight hunger with TurkeyPalooza event ahead of Thanksgiving
For the 18th year, Wake Forest's TurkeyPalooza is underway. Volunteers are helping to prepare 700 meals, complete with turkey and all the fixings. The event benefits organizations such as the Ronald McDonald House, Shalom Project and Samaritan Ministries. Coinciding with Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week, highlighting the importance of community support and awareness is vital during the holiday season. Rachel Von Dohlen, student director at the University's Campus Kitchen, was interviewed for this piece. Spectrum News also covered TurkeyPalooza.
November 20, 2024
ECO Magazine
How viruses shape marine microbe interactions
By looking at the tiniest virus-infected microbes in the ocean, researchers are gaining new insights about the marine food web that may help improve future climate change predictions. A new study, co-authored by biology professor Sheri Floge, looks at marine microbes and what happens when viruses infect them. "When we try to create predictive models of what is going to happen in the future with climate change, a lot of our uncertainty comes back to microbial interactions because they have been very much a black box. This study helps us unlock the box and gather important data that changes our understanding of some of the roles of viruses in the ocean," Floge said. The study was also featured on phys.org.
November 19, 2024
WFDD-FM (Winston-Salem, NC)
Wake Forest students prep and donate nearly 700 meals for annual TurkeyPalooza
Inside the Wake Forest Campus Kitchen, towers of styrofoam to-go containers tilt slightly on top of a coffee table. Students write “Happy Thanksgiving,” or “Happy Holidays” and put them in a separate stack. They’ve got about 700 boxes to go. In a few days, those same containers will be filled with turkey, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, and all the other fixings. It's part of the 18th annual TurkeyPalooza.
November 19, 2024
Winston-Salem Journal
Why 67,000 Greensboro residents got a lead pipe letter, compared to 4,000 in Winston-Salem
A nationwide effort to pinpoint potential issues in so-called service lines — the stretches of pipe that connect the water meter to the building — was initiated by the U.S. Environmental Agency in 2021 in the wake of Flint, Michigan’s pervasive issues with lead in its water, said Stan Meiburg, former acting deputy administrator at the EPA. The resulting revisions to federal regulations “required communities to update their inventory and identify lead pipes in their jurisdiction,” he said.
November 18, 2024
ABC News
Trump has ambitious plans for federal land use. He may not be able to accomplish them all.
"Every administration gets to the place where they have to differentiate between the rhetoric that they use in the campaign and the actual challenges when it comes to actually governing," said Stan Meiburg, executive director of Wake Forest University's Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability. The biggest roadblock to Trump's plans to drill on federally protected lands is whether or not those areas are actually economically competitive, compared to places where people are drilling on private land using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, he said.
November 16, 2024
Winston-Salem Journal
Triad cities look for help in identifying lead pipes on private property
A nationwide effort to pinpoint potential issues in so-called service lines — the stretches of pipe that connect the water meter to the building — was initiated by the U.S. Environmental Agency in 2021 in the wake of Flint, Michigan’s pervasive issues with lead in its water, said Stan Meiburg, executive director of Wake Forest's Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability. The resulting revisions to federal regulations “required communities to update their inventory and identify lead pipes in their jurisdiction.”
November 16, 2024
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What we don’t know about Trump’s EPA pick and the risks we face
Executive director of Wake Forest University's Sabin Family Center for Environment writes: "President-elect Donald Trump has again confounded conventional wisdom in nominating former lawmaker and New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin to be the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency. This pick signals that Trump continues to value loyalty in choosing America’s next environmental leader.
November 15, 2024
Winston-Salem Journal
Wake Forest University opens new daycare center
Although almost every industry has returned to normal levels after the COVID-19 pandemic, childcare is still in a national crisis. “When you’re entrusting your child to someone else’s care, it’s a big deal,” said Vice President for Sustainability Dedee DeLongpre Johnston. “It’s having your attention split between your work and giving your child the care they need.” The childcare center, serviced by KinderCare, an early childhood development and education provider, can serve 120 children in eight classrooms.
November 15, 2024
Legal Newsline
Hedge-fund money complicates J&J’s massive settlement for talc claims
Johnson & Johnson’s lawyers think they’ve identified the reason the company is having such a hard time settling thousands of lawsuits claiming its talcum powder causes cancer, even though it’s won the vast majority of the cases that have gone to trial. Hedge funds are standing in the way. Those numbers make perfect sense to law professor Samir Parikh, who studies hedge funds and litigation finance, which he calls “opaque capital.” Hedge funds love investments that are difficult to price and that can grow exponentially in value with deft behind-the-scenes maneuvering, he said.
November 14, 2024
WXII-TV (Winston Salem, NC)
North Carolina political experts weigh in on Donald Trump’s plan to end the Department of Education
Donald Trump has promised to end the Department of Education. If the Department of Education were to go, those responsibilities would still need to be fulfilled. "Those functions that the education department currently performs are mandated by federal law," said politics professor John Dinan. "They would have to be performed, if not by the education department, by some other department or other officials."
November 13, 2024
Business Insider
Polymarket and Kalshi predicted Trump’s win. Now comes the hard part.
The argument for prediction markets' accuracy is that people are more decisive with their money, picking outcomes they think will happen, not just ones they want to happen. "When they actually put their money behind what they say, they're putting themselves out there," said economics professor Koleman Strumpf. He predicts that prediction markets will be around for 2028 — and they'll be bigger.
Strumpf was also interviewed on the Kalshi blog: 'Nobody came close to the markets' and his research mentioned in the Wall Street Journal.
November 12, 2024
Environmental Health News
Trump’s plans may shrink EPA workforce, curbing Biden-era growth
Stan Meiburg, who served as EPA acting deputy administrator during the Obama administration, said the agency has long been understaffed. It has a steady loss of personnel from retirements, transfers and turnover. “You’re losing roughly 1,000 people a year, just if you were standing still,” Meiburg said. “They have been actively trying to hire because they have all this work to do.”
November 11, 2024