USG Institutions:
www.onlineathens.com
University system names search committee for dean at UGA-GRU medical campus in Athens
http://onlineathens.com/breaking-news/2015-02-06/university-system-names-search-committee-dean-uga-gru-medical-campus-athens
By LEE SHEARER
A 15-member search committee recently was created to pick three to five candidates to become the next dean at the Georgia Regents University-University of Georgia (GRU-UGA) Medical Campus in Athens. The committee will be headed by Houston Davis, University System of Georgia executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer, according to an announcement from University System Chancellor Hank Huckaby. The committee will forward its recommendations to Peter Buckley, dean of the medical college at GRU, and Pamela Whitten, UGA’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. Their final selection will replace Barbara Schuster, who will be stepping down in May.

Related articles:
www.chronicle.augusta.com
Search for dean of Athens branch of Medical College of Georgia announced
http://chronicle.augusta.com/latest-news/2015-02-05/search-dean-athens-branch-medical-college-georgia-announced

www.macon.com
Campus dean sought for university medical partnership
http://www.macon.com/2015/02/06/3571601_campus-dean-sought-for-university.html?rh=1

www.statesboroherald.com
Ogeechee Tech, Georgia Southern agree to limited dual enrollment
Presidents: More pathways between schools soon to be announced
http://www.statesboroherald.com/section/1/article/65681/
BY Al Hackle
Ogeechee Technical College students can now be Georgia Southern University students at the same time. Ogeechee Tech voices will even be added to the Southern Chorale. OTC President Dr. Dawn Cartee and GSU President Dr. Brooks Keel signed an agreement Thursday for a pilot project, which will allow a limited number of Ogeechee Tech students to take any of three classes at Georgia Southern. But this agreement is a first for the two schools, and their presidents say it is a step toward further agreements that will allow students who earn two-year degrees from Ogeechee Tech to continue for four-year degrees from Georgia Southern.

www.wistv.com
Georgia Southwestern receives affordable textbook grant
http://www.wistv.com/story/28033800/georgia-southwestern-receives-affordable-textbook-grant
By Krystyne Brown
ALBANY, GA (WALB) – Georgia Southwestern State University Students are getting some help with pricey school costs. The Psychology and Sociology department received a $30,000 grant for student textbooks from Affordable Learning Georgia. The department will use the funding to provide Free Open Source Digital textbooks for Introductory classes. Professors hope it will help ease the sting of high college expenses.

www.bizjournals.com
Georgia Tech finalist in NASA engineering design competition
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/morning_call/2015/02/georgia-tech-finalist-in-nasa-engineering-design.html
Carla Caldwell
Morning Edition Editor- Atlanta Business Chronicle
Georgia Tech is among 16 teams in the finals of a NASA and National Institute of Aerospace engineering design competition that challenges university students to think about conditions astronauts face as they venture beyond low Earth orbit. The undergraduate and graduate engineering students won the right to compete against each other at the 2015 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts Academic Linkage or RASC-AL forum to be held in June in Cocoa Beach, Fla. Students will present their research to a panel of NASA and industry experts.

www.ajc.com
UGA student indicted for alleged social media threats of violence
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/uga-student-indicted-for-alleged-social-media-viol/nj5Td/
Alexis Stevens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Clarke County grand jury has indicted a University of Georgia student accused of using social media to threaten mass violence on campus. Ariel Omar Arias, 19, was indicted Tuesday on four counts of making terroristic threats, all felony charges, according to Superior Court records. Arias was arrested Sept. 19, several hours after a threat made through a cellphone app prompted an evacuation and search of the Miller Learning Center, a classroom building in the heart of the Athens campus. “If you want to live don’t be at the MLC at 12:15,” Arias allegedly posted through the Yik Yak app. UGA Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said the threat was believed to be credible, and officers and a bomb squad were immediately dispatched to the area. Several campus-wide alerts were sent to students and staff members.

Related article:
www.accessnorthga.com
Former UGA student indicted on threat charges
http://www.accessnorthga.com/detail.php?n=284880

www.bizjournals.com
Innovation in Georgia: What recent news tells us about the state
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/print-edition/2015/02/06/innovation-in-georgia-what-recent-news-tells-us.html
Amanda Shailendra
Since the beginning of 2015, there has been a surge of companies announcing new technology and R&D centers in metro Atlanta. Our team has been working with many of these top global brands who are expanding or relocating to Georgia to take their corporate innovation and technology growth to the next level. Mercedes-Benz USA announced its headquarter re-location to Georgia, we welcomed The Home Depot Technology Center to Tech Square, celebrated Twitter’s expansion to Ponce City Market, welcomed Google Fiber to metro Atlanta, and heard about Coca-Cola and Microsoft’s plans to locate innovation offices near Georgia Tech’s Atlanta Technology Development Center (ATDC).

www.bizjournals.com
ATDC to develop medical device incubator at Georgia Tech
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2015/02/atdc-to-develop-medical-device-incubator-at.html
Urvaksh Karkaria
Staff Writer- Atlanta Business Chronicle
Georgia Tech plans to develop an incubator aimed at nurturing the next generation of medical device companies. It is part of a broader expansion by the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a 30-year-old business technology incubator that has produced several Atlanta tech companies including Suniva, CardioMEMS and Vendormate. ATDC’s plan includes opening multiple satellite offices in Midtown, where it will focus on building startups in niches, such as microelectronics fabrication, advanced manufacturing and clean tech.

www.bizjournals.com
Area becoming innovation hub
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/print-edition/2015/02/06/area-becoming-innovation-hub.html
Doug DeLoach, Contributing Writer
Recent activities in and around Technology Square on the Georgia Tech campus point to the area’s emergence as a magnet for science- and technologically-oriented businesses and entrepreneurs. Opened in 2003, the $380 million, 1.4 million-square-foot development is home to academic, research, hospitality, office and retail enterprises, serving as a model for urban planners around the U.S. Last year, The Home Depot Inc. announced plans to open the company’s first university-based research and development center in the area. Additionally, AT&T Mobility, Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America, GE Energy, and ThyssenKrupp Elevator Americas are among a steady stream of companies that have established entrepreneurial outposts of one kind or another around Tech Square. At the beginning of 2015, nearly six years after moving from Dayton, Ohio to Gwinnett County, NCR Corp. revealed plans to relocate its headquarters to Centergy North, which sits at 8th and Spring streets, near Tech Square. The move is expected to bring as many as 3,500 to 4,000 jobs to the Midtown area.

www.myfoxatlanta.com
Georgia Tech studying efficiency of ramp meter system
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/28023198/webstory-georgia-tech-studying-efficiency-of-ramp-meter-system
By Katie Beasley, Good Day Atlanta Transportation Reporter
You probably get stuck at one of those pesky ramp light meters each morning. The stop and go, getting onto the interstate can be a headache but did you know they are safer and actually save you time on your commute? SkyFox Traffic’s Katie Beasley breaks down the science and engineering behind them. Researchers at Georgia Tech have been looking closely at ramp meters to make them even more efficient. While you may have to wait a couple of minutes on the ramp, the idea is to speed up your ride once you’re on the interstate. “This is a plot of the travel time,” Senior Research Engineer Angshuman Guin, highlights some of his data on ramp meters.

www.bizjournals.com
Coca-Cola Enterprises to open innovation center at Tech Square
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/print-edition/2015/02/06/coca-cola-enterprises-to-open-innovation-center-at.html
Urvaksh Karkaria
Staff Writer- Atlanta Business Chronicle
Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. will open a nearly 5,000-square-foot innovation and development center at Tech Square. Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Enterprises (NYSE: CCE) is The Coca-Cola Co.’s (NYSE: KO) marketer and distributor in Western Europe and one of the largest independent bottlers globally. The company declined comment. CCE will locate the innovation center in the Centergy building, a 650,000-square-foot development home to several corporate innovation hubs, startups, venture capital firms and tech incubator Advanced Technology Development Center(ATDC).

www.phys.org
Identification of much-needed drug target against MRSA, gram-positive infections
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-identification-much-needed-drug-mrsa-gram-positive.html
The increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance, when infectious bacteria evolve to evade drugs designed to control them, is a pressing public health concern. Each year two million Americans acquire antibiotic-resistant infections, leading to 23,000 deaths. In light of these unsettling statistics, there has been a call to develop new weapons to combat bacterial threats to human health. Scientists at the University of Utah and the University of Georgia have uncovered a pharmacological target that could enable development of novel drugs against antibiotic-resistant pathogens, including Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other infectious Gram-positive organisms such as Listeria and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

www.bizjournals.com
UGA researcher develops promising new blood drug from fly spit
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2015/02/05/uga-researcherdevelops-promising-new-blood-drug.html
David Allison
Editor- Atlanta Business Chronicle
A researcher at The University of Georgia has turned fly saliva into a promising new anti-clotting drug that might one day be an alternative to the now commonly used heparin.
The new drug, called Simukunin, is very effective at stopping blood clotting and offers other medical advantages, says Donald Champagne, an associate professor at UGA who has been working for 20 years to extract salivary proteins from mosquitoes, ticks and black flies.

Editorials/Columns/Opinions:
www.getschooled.blog.ajc.com
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
New law would ignore test failures and award belated high school diplomas to 8,000
http://getschooled.blog.ajc.com/2015/02/05/did-states-high-school-graduation-test-hurt-students-was-it-a-bad-test/
The Georgia General Assembly is about to change the lives of 8,000 people never able to graduate high school because they failed part of the Georgia High School Graduation Test.
House Education Chair Brooks Coleman, R-Duluth, is the sponsor of a bill that frees former Georgia high school students from having to pass the GHSGT to earn their diplomas. You can read House Bill 91 here. The bill is expected to pass both chambers.

Higher Education:
www.myajc.com
Bill retroactively ending state graduation test passes House committee
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local-education/bill-retroactively-ending-state-graduation-test-pa/nj4wk/#e732c160.3458083.735634
By Janel Davis – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former high school students who couldn’t pass a state graduation test that used to be required will find it easier to obtain diplomas under a bill approved Wednesday by a House education committee. House Bill 91 would retroactively eliminate any tests that are no longer required for students to graduate from high school, including the Georgia High School Graduation Test. Passing that multi-part test, established in 1994, was eliminated as a graduation requirement in 2011. “We have heard from some students who had taken” parts of the graduation test “more than 15 or 20 times because they couldn’t pass it,” said Rep. Brooks Coleman, chairman of the House education committee, who is sponsoring the bill. “This will allow young people to go on with their lives that we’ve held up for the last ten or 12 years.”

www.insidehighered.com
Income-Based Repayment Costs Rising
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/06/obama-administration-pay-you-earn-expansion-will-cost-9-billion
By Michael Stratford
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration revealed this week that extending its income-based repayment program to 5 million existing student loan borrowers will cost taxpayers more than $9 billion. The price tag for the expansion of the Pay As You Earn program had not previously been made public but was included as part of the administration’s annual budget. It came as the U.S. Department of Education also raised its estimate of the long-term cost to the government of all federal direct loans.

www.diverseeducation.com
How Altruism Impacts Minority Students’ Academic and Career Paths in STEM Fields

How Altruism Impacts Minority Students’ Academic and Career Paths in STEM Fields

Data from the National Science Foundation shows that of the 597,000 college graduates who hold jobs in biological or medical sciences, only 2.7 percent are African Americans.
Scientists at Montana State University and California State University, Long Beach, have produced a new study that found that students from underrepresented minority groups are more likely to pursue courses of study and careers in the biosciences if they believe that pursuing this life path will help them solve problems in their communities.

www.nytimes.com
Millions of Anthem Customers Targeted in Cyberattack

By REED ABELSON and MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN
Anthem, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, said late Wednesday that the personal information of tens of millions of its customers and employees, including its chief executive, was the subject of a “very sophisticated external cyberattack.” The company, which is continuing its investigation into the exact scope of the attack, said hackers were able to breach a database that contained as many as 80 million records of current and former customers, as well as employees. The information accessed included names, Social Security numbers, birthdays, addresses, email and employment information, including income data. Anthem said no credit card information had been stolen, and it emphasized that it did not believe medical information like insurance claims or test results were compromised. It said hospital and doctor information was also not believed to have been taken.