American University Launches Web 2.0 Site

WASHINGTON, March 31 /PRNewswire/ -- American University has launched a new, redesigned Web site at www.american.edu featuring interactive, multimedia capabilities that provide dynamic content with state-of-the-art Web 2.0 communication.



The site features tagged and linked content including news, success stories and profiles, site-wide global navigation, a virtual campus tour, user-generated content through a wiki system called AUpedia, and a university master calendar. Each component is implemented with a consistent integrated design, look, and feel for an enhanced user experience.

"Our new site represents the promise of a new way of reaching many audiences, particularly prospective students," said Terry Flannery, executive director of communications and marketing at AU. "It will be the front door of our university for those coming to us for the first time and allow people to access the university from points near and far."

DiscoverAU with its "Virtual Campus Experience," produced and streamed by Realview TV, is the site's cornerstone and pushes the boundaries of innovation for college videos and virtual tours. An interactive 3-D map, "My Five Faves" videos, and an InsideAU view enable the university to connect to its audience through a medium that all students crave -- online video.

This Web 2.0 development is the result of a two-year campus-wide collaborative process, led by an expert group of leaders from the university's information technology and marketing communication areas. Assisted by more than 125 people in 20 departments across the university, AU's team spent 25,000 hours to create and redesign the 7,500 pages migrated for launch.

The university turned to the New York-based firm HUGE to analyze the current site and produce a new vision based on the user's experience and not the institution's organizational chart. HUGE produced a complete visual and structural redesign that incorporated the university's brand and sub brands and provided the shared tools needed for consistent delivery.

"From day one, HUGE shared AU's commitment to raise the bar for higher education Web sites by developing an authentic, transparent online experience that truly surfaces the student voice. We focused on developing a template, modular system for AU which gives the school the flexibility to communicate with its audience in a very direct, open way," says Aaron Shapiro, partner at HUGE.

To create the site's functionality, AU turned to content management company PaperThin, Inc. and Web technology consultant firm, North Highland. PaperThin's content management product, CommonSpot(TM), makes creating and sharing content and site management easier. North Highland assisted with the mapping and planning of content to be used across departments within the university.

In a first for AU, and rare among other universities, the site was tested pre-launch under a simulated load of thousands of concurrent users to optimize performance of the site before going live. In addition, AU's Office of Information Technology upgraded bandwidth in anticipation of increased demand coming from the multimedia and dynamic content components.

They release a very great site, which may make them more popular and known for all. Just one question, how does this help if they make it beta?

No Increase in Clots With Drug-Eluting Stents

By Steven Reinberg

Despite initial concerns that stent thrombosis, a blood clot inside a stent, is more common with the drug-eluting device, there appears to be no difference in the clot risk for either drug-eluting or bare metal stents, a large new study found.


After a heart attack, many patients undergo a treatment called angioplasty, which opens the blocked coronary artery that caused the attack. With many of these procedures, the stent, a metallic mesh tube that props open the narrowed artery, is also inserted and left in place.

"We had a thrombosis rate of 3.3 percent over a year, which sounds high, but these are patients with acute [heart attacks] getting a stent," lead researcher Dr. George Dangas, an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, said during a Sunday morning teleconference at the American College of Cardiology's annual scientific sessions in Orlando, Fla. "So it's not that high after all."

"With any type of bare metal stent or drug-eluting stent, there was no difference after one year," Dangas added.

Bare metal stents -- as the name implies -- are bare tubes of metal mesh. Drug-eluting stents, in addition to keeping the artery open, slowly release a medication to prevent the build-up of scar tissue inside the stent.

A stent thrombosis can block blood flow through the stent and cause another heart attack or even death. Concerns have been raised that stent thrombosis might be more common in drug-eluting stents than bare-metal ones.

Dangas and his colleagues looked at data on 3,202 patients who participated in the HORIZONS-AMI trial; these patients received either bare metal stents or drug-eluting stents.

During the year after treatment, 107 patients (3 percent) developed stent thrombosis. The rate of stent thrombosis was the same for those treated with bare metal and those with drug-eluting stents, the researchers found.

Also, there was no difference in the rate of patients developing stent thrombosis whether they were taking the blood thinner Angiomax (bivalirudin) or heparin plus glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors, which also help prevent clots from forming.

Although patients treated with Angiomax had a higher rate of acute stent thrombosis, both groups had equal rates of stent thrombosis after a month, the researchers reported.

Dangas's group also collected information on factors that could lead to stent thrombosis, such as smoking, insulin-treated diabetes, implanting several stents, treatment of ulcerated lesions and complete blockage of the artery responsible for the heart attack.

For these patients, high doses of the anti-clotting drug Plavix (clopidogrel) protected against stent thrombosis.

A related presentation Saturday at the cardiology conference found that patients with coated stents had fewer cases of serious complications. The study -- the largest one ever to evaluate "real-world" stent patients -- included 217,675 patients over age 65 with coated stents and 45,025 patients with bare-metal devices, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The study found that patients with coated stents were significantly less susceptible to non-fatal heart attacks or death. And there were slightly fewer cases of repeat procedures with coated stent patients, while stroke rates were about the same in both groups of patients, the newspaper said.

Yale University Press faces setbacks

By: Katie Falloon

In the face of nationwide drops in book sales, the Yale University Press is contemplating changes to its business model.

As university presses struggle to combat a downturn brought on by the economic recession, the Yale University Press has also seen its revenues fall, but by slightly less than the industry average of 10 percent. Yale University Press Director John Donatich said the press — which experienced a 7 to 8 percent decline in revenue this past year — is considering cutting back on some publishing runs and will ramp up its e-book program.

The press may have been able to stay slightly ahead of the curve this year with two successful book releases — a history book for children, “A Little History of the World,” and the business and psychology book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Donatich said.

The sales of both books have benefited from being published both in the United States and by the press’s London branch, Donatich said — an advantage the press, the only American university press with a full-scale publishing program in Europe, has over its competition. The branch, which publishes 35 percent of the press’ books, is having its best year ever, Donatich said.

Even so, the effects of the recession are undeniable.

“Our books are working,” Donatich said. “But the marketplace is very soft.”

To accommodate this softer market, the press is considering publishing fewer copies of each title, he said. And while the press already has a digital presence, with close to 1,000 books available through the Amazon Kindle, an electronic book reader, the press is working to create an expanded digital platform for its works.

Representatives at the four other university presses interviewed also identified the ongoing recession as the primary factor behind falling sales, though some said digital piracy has been an issue as well.

“The retail sector is hurting in publishing as in book-selling as in everything, and we’re feeling the response to that,” said Eric Halpern, director of the University of Pennsylvania Press, which has seen revenue decline around 10 percent.

Halpern explained that while new books are being sold in the expected quantities, older books are instead being returned to the press from wholesalers and bookstores.

The Cornell University Press has seen slower sales across the board, and it may be that more students are turning to libraries rather than buying new course books, said Mahinder Kingra, the press’ marketing manager.

So far, university presses across the country have seen an average of a 10 percent drop in both net unit sales and net dollar sales in the July to December 2008 period, compared to the same period in 2007, according to a January survey of 62 university presses conducted by the American Association of University Presses.

“I don’t think anyone in the book publishing industry has any clear idea about whether we have or haven’t reached the bottom of this yet,” Brenna McLaughlin, electronic and strategic initiatives director at the American Association of University Presses, said.

The Yale University Press, which celebrated its centennial last year, is currently the largest books-only university press in the United States.

Should Obama speak at Notre Dame?

Some Fighting Irish are fighting mad about the prospect of an American president addressing graduates at the spring commencement. Should Roman Catholic colleges and universities roll out the red carpet for a sitting president if he doesn’t agree with the church’s stance regarding abortion?

Rev. Robert Barron, a seminary professor in Mundelein and one of the Chicago Archdiocese’s most respected homilists, says no way. A college freshman at the University of Notre Dame before entering college seminary in the late 1970s, Barron has paid close attention to the controversy swirling around the university’s invitation to Barack Obama to deliver the commencement speech in South Bend and receive an honorary law degree.

"President Obama is, obviously, a man of many virtues and accomplishments, and a decent human being. But he holds to a public position—legal protection for practically unlimited access to abortion—that is directly repugnant to Catholic moral teaching and anthropology," Barron said. "To make matters worse, President Obama’s advocacy of the Freedom of Choice Act makes him the most radically pro-abortion president in our history."

"The critics mistake this for ‘one issue’ politics. It is, in fact, taking a stand against a fundamental ethical indifferentism," Barron said. "And this is why I join a swelling chorus of those who say someone who holds to the pro-choice position as fully and enthusiastically as the president does should not be given a platform at a university that claims a Catholic heritage and identity."

About 65,000 people agree with Barron. They have signed a petition protesting Obama’s anticipated May 17 commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame, saying the president’s views on abortion and stem cell research "directly contradict" Roman Catholic teachings.

But Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center, says ho-hum.

"Controversy over commencement speakers at Catholic universities pops up every spring along with the tulips," he wrote. He also points to at least one cardinal who honored Obama as well as other speakers in favor of abortion rights.

"This is absurd. If Cardinal Edward Egan of New York can invite Obama to speak at the Al Smith dinner in October of 2008 when he was only a presidential candidate, then there is certainly nothing wrong with Notre Dame having the president speak at a commencement," Reese said. "What is OK for a cardinal archbishop is certainly OK for a university."

"People need to recognize that Catholic universities have to be places where freedom of speech and discussion is recognized and valued," Reese added. "Not to allow a diversity of speakers on campus is to put Catholic universities into a ghetto."

Barron calls this approach hypocritical.

"Anyone even vaguely associated with the secular academy knows that it is governed by a fairly strict ideological orthodoxy and marked by many forms of censorship, both explicit and implicit," Barron said.

He might have a point. Remember when Pope Benedict XVI tried to speak at Sapienza University in Rome last year? Students and professors protested the pontiff’s planned visit to the university to mark its opening day for the 2008 academic year because of previous remarks rationalizing the church’s trial and conviction of Galileo. The pope canceled his appearance.

Now the tables are turned. But would disinviting an American president smack of bad manners and un-Christ-like behavior? What do you think?

Story Source:http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/religion_theseeker/2009/03/notre-dame-scandal-.html

American University in Blagoevgrad set for major construction projects

By: Nick Iliev

The American University in Bulgaria has launched a tender for an ambitious concept design that envisages the construction of a new large multifunctional sports facility, a project called the Students' Centre, which will be attached to the Skaptopara university campus.

The pool consists of a total of 18 Bulgarian construction companies who have submitted their application forms and have bought the appropriate documentation required for participation in the design tender which had a deadline of March 12 for the submission of all bids.

The second phase envisions the applications and the concept design bids, and these should be submitted by April 28.

The new multifunctional sports facility will be incorporated within the student's complex.

The construction company, which will be selected at the end of the competition, will be allocated the contract for the overall technical design. The future students' centre will expand on a parcel of 2700 sq m, deemed a large enough area to accommodate all the sports facilities inside, including ample capacity for spectators, but it will be a low-rise building, not exceeding 15m in height.

The American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) is behind the project. A university spokesman said that they expected the scheme to be successful and popular.

Currently, within the University campus there are two student hostels along with dormitories (a third is currently under construction) plus a new academic building and a library. The sports complex will accommodate basketball, volleyball and other sports as well as a spacious modern fitness centre. The Bulgarian company, Tilev Architects, built one of the university hostel a few years ago after won an international tender.

American University (24-7) vs. Villanova (26-7)

By Sports Network

GAME NOTES: The third-seeded Villanova Wildcats have the advantage of opening the 2009 NCAA Tournament in front of a friendly Philadelphia crowd and against the 14th-seeded American University Eagles in East Region action.

Villanova plays some of its home games at the Wachovia Center, so the team knows the arena quite well. The winner will move on to the second round to take on either sixth-seeded UCLA or 11th-seeded Virginia Commonwealth.

American is making its second consecutive appearance in the "Big Dance" after winning the Patriot League regular season and tournament titles this season. The Eagles are riding the nation's second-longest active win streak with 13 consecutive victories, and they have won 19 of their last 20 outings. Their 24 overall wins are tied for the most in program history, and the team's 11 road wins are tops in the NCAA.

As for Villanova, it is making its fifth consecutive appearance in the NCAA Tournament under the guidance of head coach Jay Wright. The Wildcats, who are 26-7 overall, went 13-5 versus Big East competition during the regular season. Villanova, which won its only national title back in 1985, has more wins as an underdog seed (13) in the NCAA Tournament than any other program, but the club will be playing the role of a heavy favorite tonight.
Villanova has won all eight previous meetings with American, and the most recent bout took place in 1993.

While American enters this game as a huge underdog, there is enough talent on the roster for the team to be competitive. Patriot League Player of the Year Derrick Mercer is a steady performer who averages 11.5 ppg and 4.4 apg. Mercer is the only player in league history to record 1,200 points and 500 assists and is the school's all-time leader in games played. The top scorer for the Eagles is Garrison Carr, who is netting 17.8 ppg on the strength of 108 three- pointers. Brian Gilmore contributes 12.4 ppg and 5.4 rpg to bring balance to the floor. Strong defense has been an obvious key to AU's success this season, as the team is limiting opponents to 58.4 ppg on 39.4 percent shooting from the field. Offensively, the Eagles are scoring a modest 64.5 ppg.
Villanova is undoubtedly battle-tested, as the team played top-notch competition most nights during the Big East season. The Wildcats have a number of key contributors in the fold, and forward Dante Cunningham has been the team's most consistent player this season. Shooting 52.9 percent from the floor, Cunningham is averaging 16.0 ppg to go along with 7.2 rpg and 41 blocked shots. He can score on the interior and has a tremendous mid-range jumper. Scottie Reynolds is an explosive guard who is netting 15.5 ppg in addition to handing out 118 assists and coming up with 53 steals. Reynolds is a streaky player who can dominate a game when he is on track. Corey Fisher is the third and final double-digit scorer on the roster, as he brings 10.8 ppg to the mix. Villanova is generating 76.5 ppg while allowing just 67.0 ppg.

Story source:http://www.kansascity.com/472/story/1095159.html