University Of Alabama

Orbital Sciences Corp., a Fairfax, Va., company that joined a handful of companies around the world that have launched satellites into orbit by successfully placing a 440-pound government payload into space last year, said yesterday that it has been awarded a license from the U.S. Department of Transportation for three commercial launches.Unlike its historic Pegasus rocket, which carried an experimental satellite into orbit for a division of the Department of Defense in April after being dropped from the wing of a B-52 bomber, the new launches will be suborbital and will blast off from Cape Canaveral.

The voracious hunger of the Internet for information is like nothing else in history. It sustains itself in part on titillation, sucking up huge quantities of text and images and displaying them for the use and entertainment of the public. All this has been aided by the development of inexpensive, portable cell phones that can record sounds and images and post them immediately, on the World Wide Web. ... Video recording can serve a useful purpose in some instances. But there also can be a dark side.

Bert Combs, 80, was found dead near his home in Rosslyn, Ky., early yesterday. A Democrat elected Kentucky governor in 1959, Mr. Combs attracted wide attention when he issued an executive order banning racial bias in hiring or serving customers by state-regulated firms in June 1963, a few days after Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace unsucessfully tried to block blacks students from enrolling in the University of Alabama. Police said Mr. Combs may have died of hypothermia after a traffic accident; his body was found on the banks of the rain-swollen Red River, 200 yards from his partly submerged car and four miles from his mountain cabin.

CHICAGO -- Last week, the Missouri legislature voted to let citizens carry concealed handguns with a state permit, and advocates on either side of the issue were quick to make the usual predictions. Opponents feared an epidemic of gunplay over trivial disputes, and the National Rifle Association announced, "The streets of Missouri just became safer for everyone, except criminals." Both sides have a stake in pretending that great consequences will follow. But the real news about the "right to carry" laws is that there isn't much news.

Andrea Diggs has joined the Carroll Community College staff as program director for the new Physical Therapist Assistant program.Her primary responsibility has been to implement the new program, which was developed over the past year. A two-year integrated course, the Physical Therapist Assistant program includes general educational requirements for the Associate of Applied Science degree, as well as technical requirements for eligibility for licensure as an assistant.The program will be offered for the first time this fall.

Bolstered by an outpouring of support -- and a raise in salary -- Rita R. Colwell, the president of the Maryland Biotechnology Institute, has turned down an offer to become president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.Dr. Colwell, 58, said a telephone call last week from Gov. William Donald Schaefer helped persuade her to stay."Having the support of the governor and the personal call from him, that made a big difference," Dr. Colwell said yesterday. Other state officials, as well as a representative of Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke also urged her to stay, Dr. Colwell said.

Margaret L. Sorensen, a Johns Hopkins Hospital volunteer, died Saturday of heart failure at the Presbyterian Home of Maryland in Towson. She was 87 and had lived in Mount Vernon. Born Margaret Lindquist in Edina, Minn., she was a graduate of Joliet Junior College in Illinois and studied at the University of Rochester, Vanderbilt University and the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, among other institutions. Before moving to Baltimore in 1987, she was director of Christian education at Ottawa Street United Methodist Church in Joliet, and dean of the Council of Churches Laboratory School in Will County, Ill. She received a certificate of appreciation for nearly 2,000 hours of volunteer service at Johns Hopkins' oncology department.

Q: My 6-year-old granddaughter is overweight. Most of the children make fun of her. She doesn't have many friends, although she tries hard to be friendly. We tell her to ignore them, but then they hit her. What can we do?A: Parents who called Child Life say the adults in this child's life must first protect her from these aggressive children and then build her self-esteem."This child needs to be protected physically," says a reader from Raleigh, N.C. "Children can't be allowed to hit her. She's too young to be able to work through this by herself."

The voracious hunger of the Internet for information is like nothing else in history. It sustains itself in part on titillation, sucking up huge quantities of text and images and displaying them for the use and entertainment of the public. All this has been aided by the development of inexpensive, portable cell phones that can record sounds and images and post them immediately, on the World Wide Web. ... Video recording can serve a useful purpose in some instances. But there also can be a dark side.

Dr. Robert Lawrence Campbell, 57, co-founder and director of the Norbel School on Park Heights Avenue, died of cancer at his Towson home Monday.Norbel is a combination of the names of the school's founders, Dr. Campbell and his wife, Dr. Norma Hauserman Campbell, who established the school in 1980 for students who require a personalized educational environment. The school, at the Temple Oheb Shalom, started with seven students and how has 60."The philosophy of the school emphasizes individualized instruction for the basic 3 Rs along with an equally important fourth R, rational living skills," said Dr. Hauserman-Campbell.

Four years after arguing that humans probably got the AIDS virus from butchering chimpanzees for food, the same researchers say they have traced the origin back one step further - to the monkeys that the chimpanzees ate. They believe the simian precursor to the AIDS virus was created in chimps that ate two kinds of monkeys with different but related viruses: red-capped mangabeys and spot-nosed guenons. They made the deduction by sequencing the genes of the simian immunodeficiency viruses in chimpanzees and 30 monkey species and then compiling "family trees" to see which were most closely related.

West Nile virus got its name from the district in Uganda where it was first identified. Epstein-Barr virus received its moniker from the researchers who initially described it. Arenavirus was so dubbed for its grainy look: The Latin word "arena" means sand. The new coronavirus responsible for the worldwide outbreak of SARS has yet to be officially named. But some researchers have already weighed in. They want to honor Carlo Urbani, the World Health Organization physician who died of the illness and was among the first to identify it. One suggestion: "Urbani SARS-associated coronavirus."

Margaret L. Sorensen, a Johns Hopkins Hospital volunteer, died Saturday of heart failure at the Presbyterian Home of Maryland in Towson. She was 87 and had lived in Mount Vernon. Born Margaret Lindquist in Edina, Minn., she was a graduate of Joliet Junior College in Illinois and studied at the University of Rochester, Vanderbilt University and the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, among other institutions. Before moving to Baltimore in 1987, she was director of Christian education at Ottawa Street United Methodist Church in Joliet, and dean of the Council of Churches Laboratory School in Will County, Ill. She received a certificate of appreciation for nearly 2,000 hours of volunteer service at Johns Hopkins' oncology department.

Using a new kind of stroke rehabilitation therapy, scientists have shown for the first time that the brain can be coaxed into reorganizing its circuitry so that people can regain nearly full use of their paralyzed limbs in just two to three weeks, even if the stroke happened years ago. The rehabilitation involves immobilizing a good arm or leg so that the patient is forced to use the paralyzed arm or leg for familiar tasks. By intensively using the paralyzed limb, people can literally rewire parts of their brains, researchers said, overcoming a kind of learned helplessness that prevented their limbs from moving.

Q: My 6-year-old granddaughter is overweight. Most of the children make fun of her. She doesn't have many friends, although she tries hard to be friendly. We tell her to ignore them, but then they hit her. What can we do?A: Parents who called Child Life say the adults in this child's life must first protect her from these aggressive children and then build her self-esteem."This child needs to be protected physically," says a reader from Raleigh, N.C. "Children can't be allowed to hit her. She's too young to be able to work through this by herself."

Andrea Diggs has joined the Carroll Community College staff as program director for the new Physical Therapist Assistant program.Her primary responsibility has been to implement the new program, which was developed over the past year. A two-year integrated course, the Physical Therapist Assistant program includes general educational requirements for the Associate of Applied Science degree, as well as technical requirements for eligibility for licensure as an assistant.The program will be offered for the first time this fall.

Using a new kind of stroke rehabilitation therapy, scientists have shown for the first time that the brain can be coaxed into reorganizing its circuitry so that people can regain nearly full use of their paralyzed limbs in just two to three weeks, even if the stroke happened years ago. The rehabilitation involves immobilizing a good arm or leg so that the patient is forced to use the paralyzed arm or leg for familiar tasks. By intensively using the paralyzed limb, people can literally rewire parts of their brains, researchers said, overcoming a kind of learned helplessness that prevented their limbs from moving.

Dr. Robert Lawrence Campbell, 57, co-founder and director of the Norbel School on Park Heights Avenue, died of cancer at his Towson home Monday.Norbel is a combination of the names of the school's founders, Dr. Campbell and his wife, Dr. Norma Hauserman Campbell, who established the school in 1980 for students who require a personalized educational environment. The school, at the Temple Oheb Shalom, started with seven students and how has 60."The philosophy of the school emphasizes individualized instruction for the basic 3 Rs along with an equally important fourth R, rational living skills," said Dr. Hauserman-Campbell.

Bolstered by an outpouring of support -- and a raise in salary -- Rita R. Colwell, the president of the Maryland Biotechnology Institute, has turned down an offer to become president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.Dr. Colwell, 58, said a telephone call last week from Gov. William Donald Schaefer helped persuade her to stay."Having the support of the governor and the personal call from him, that made a big difference," Dr. Colwell said yesterday. Other state officials, as well as a representative of Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke also urged her to stay, Dr. Colwell said.