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TECHNICIAN
GOP Elects New Chairman
Dudley sex-abuse case goes back to court
The case of Howard Dudley, imprisoned for 23 years as part of a life sentence for allegedly sexually assaulting his then 9-year-old daughter, Amy Moore, will go back to court on Thursday for the first time since 2005. There was no physical evidence of abuse. The only evidence against Dudley was the testimony of his daughter, Amy Moore. Just months after the trial, Moore told babysitters she lied about her father. She went on to file sworn affidavits and testify in court that her father never molested her. Moore said she was angry at his strict discipline and jealous of his new wife and their two small children. She said she got the idea of the molestation from the Sally Jessy Raphael show. She has written governors and prison superintendents asking them to free her father. Amy Moore’s mental disabilities are at the heart of Dudley’s bid for freedom, according to his lawyer, Theresa Newman of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at the Duke University School of Law. SOURCE: The News & Observer
DMV Offers Online License Renewal
The Department of Motor Vehicles this week launched an online driver’s license renewal program that allows most people to update their license and pay by credit card at the agency’s website. Drivers can use the service only if they have no restrictions on their license other than needing glasses or contacts — drivers also must attest that they have no vision problems that would hinder their driving skills. Commercial licenses cannot be renewed online, and people with expired, suspended or revoked licenses must go to a DMV for a new one. The new license will be mailed in seven to 14 business days and will be valid for five or eight years, depending on the driver’s age. In its first three days of operation, more than 7,000 people statewide renewed or requested a replacement for a lost license online, and DMV officials estimated the online option will save North Carolina residents 125,000 hours this year and an estimated 188,000 hours in 2016. SOURCE: WRAL.com
11 2015
Raleigh, North Carolina
Big Rock reels in research
IN BRIEF
The N.C. Republican Party has elected Hasan Harnett as its new chairman Saturday, naming a successor to Claude Pope. Harnett, a businessman and author from Concord, served as campaign manager for GOP congressional candidate Vince Coakley last year who lost to his Democratic challenger. Harnett, who will be the state party’s first black chairman, says he can expand the GOP’s appeal to minorities. “If you can raise money in that district, you can raise money anywhere,” Harnett said. “We need a bold, reinvigorated Republican Party who listens to the grass roots. Together we will win in 2016 because teamwork makes the dream work.” Harnett’s challenger, Craig Collins, had the endorsement of nearly all major Republican state leaders: Gov. Pat McCrory, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore and was nominated by the House Rules chairman, David Lewis of Dunn. SOURCE: The News & Observer
thursday june
Gavin Stone Assistant News Editor
ABHILASHA JAIN/TECHNICIAN
Seth Hollar, associate director of the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at NC State and co-visionary behind the EcoPRT rail system, envisions that automated fiberglass cars will be used to transport people between Centennial and Main Campus in the future. “It will solve the problem of focusing on extremely small and lightweight vehicles, so if you need to build infrastructure, for example bridges, its lightweight and small form factor make it much less expensive than traditional solutions to move people around,” Hollar said.
Interconnecting campus Professors break ground on rail system that will connect Centennial Campus to Main Campus Thiago De Souza Correspondent
Two NC State professors are on track to create a rail system, EcoPRT, which will offer efficient transportation around campus. Seth Hollar, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Marshall Brain, director of the NC State Engineering Entrepreneurs Program have been working for years now on EcoPRT. A prototype car was recently made, and construction for the test track begins this week.
These cars run on elevated tracks funded by whoever is requesting to build the track. The car will cost $10,000 per vehicle and the track will cost $1 million per mile, both fractions of what subways and buses cost. “The bus system on campus costs maybe $5 million, $6 million,” Hollar said. Subway tracks can cost more than $100 million. “It’s free for NC State students within campus, but maybe if they want to go somewhere else, they pay,” Hollar said. Off-campus travel will cost 50 cents per mile, but their first big on-campus goal is connecting D.H. Hill and Hunt Library to each other. “Right now if you try to get between the two libraries on the bus, and you don’t include the wait time, it’s like an 18-minute-average ride,” Brain said. “We’d like to get that down to three or four minutes with no wait time ever.”
The foundation for bridging this gap had been laid out decades prior. “There’s actually a master plan that has a transit route on it that’s been preserved since the 1990s,” Hollar said. “The original intent was a monorail solution, but because of cost, that never became a reality.” There are two main differences between EcoPRT and other rail systems: its cost and its efficiency. The future plan is to extend the rail system to off-campus locations such as Cameron Village and Glenwood South. Heavily populated areas such as airports and shopping malls will be key targets of business due to their already large parking decks and lots. “It makes a lot of sense to leverage existing parking structures to have stations in some areas,” Hollar said. “There you offload the burden of actually having to build stations
ECOPRT continued page 2
College of Sciences selects new dean Ian Grice Staff Writer
Beginning Sept. 1, NC State’s College of Sciences will be receiv ing a new dean f rom the University of Hawaii at Manoa. William Ditto will be replacing Daniel Solomon, who served as dean since the formation of the college in 2013. “Dr. Ditto is a highly cited physicist and over the course of his career has been a leader in discovery and innovation,” said Provost Warwick Arden. “We are looking forward to his leadership of the College of Sciences as it continues on a trajectory toward worldwide prominence.” Ditto is recognized internationally for the development of a new type of computer based on non-
linear dynamics and chaos, and his findings having been used to study new ways of controlling heart arrhythmias, seizures and epilepsy. Ditto is also looking at how technology can be used to innovate and enhance the student experience using virtual cohorts of students to connect freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, graduate students, alumni, members of the business community and the general public to create a larger mentoring community. “NC State is one of a handful of institutions around the country that has the potential to really recreate public education that’s both a combination of the old school personal interaction that has a huge technology boost, but not at the expense of mentorship and personal interaction,” Ditto
PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAM DITTO
William Ditto from the University of Hawaii at Manoa is the new dean of the College of Sciences. His research interests include nonlinear dynamics, chaos systems and neuroscience.
The opening day of the 57th Annual Big Rock Tournament on Monday was big with four blue marlins brought in to be weighed. But the tournament is not all about sport. In addition to raising money for charity, each fish caught at the event handed over to NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine to provide valuable data about the fish population. Jeff Buckel, a professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at NC State, said that the latter’s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, known as CMAST, is providing the National Marine Fisheries Service with anal fin
FISH continued page 3
Fund chosen to handle Hofmann Inez Nicholson News Editor
The Conservation Fund has been chosen to handle land-use negotiations for the 79,000-acre Hofmann Forest. The primary goal of The Conservation Fund is to conserve as much of the forest as possible, while still being able to generate profits that will go back into the College of Natural Resources to help fund research, scholarships and other opportunities that will increase or stabilize the CNR’s budget, according to David Ashcraft, executive director of external relations and development of CNR. NC State announced in a press release that it wants to ensure conser vation of as much as 70,000 acres of the land. However, conser vationists worr y about the fate of the remaining 9,000 acres. “When it comes to our public land, it is not an acceptable compromise to only sell off small acreages and conserve the rest,” said Ron Sutherland, a conservation scientist at Wildlands Network. “Would we be happy if they announced they were going to sell off ‘just a small percentage’ of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for example?” Despite concerns, President of the Conservation Fund Larry
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