NY Times review praises novel about spiteful U-M academic
Source: The New York Times, 3/17/2010
The new book "Next" goes from Ann Arbor to
Austin and takes a few daring twists and turns along the way according
to one The New York Times book editor.
Excerpt:
Kevin
Quinn, the protagonist of James Hynes’s “Next,” is first seen on an
airplane that is making its descent into Austin, Tex. He’s wondering
whether one of those shoulder-launched missiles with the same name as a
cocktail — a Stinger — will hit the plane, which itself reminds him of a
can of chips. “A Pringles can with wings, packed full of defenseless
Pringles,” is what Kevin sees.
Some of Kevin’s paranoia is
prompted by news reports of terrorist attacks. But most of it comes from
the same wellspring of anxiety that led Virginia Woolf, in a 1915 diary
entry cited by Mr. Hynes, to be jolted by the sound of a bursting tire
into envisioning an attack from the sky. Woolf’s diary added that
alongside our instinct to exaggerate such fears is our real if misplaced
confidence that peril will leave us unscathed.
As Kevin frets
his way through the single day on which “Next” takes place, he envisions
many different threats. But the true stealth attack in “Next” is the
one launched at the reader by Mr. Hynes. This is a book that begins
innocently and is careful not to tip its hand, even though there’s
something very unusual at work. The title signals nothing. The cover art
depicts an empty sky. Blurbs on the back allow four very different
writers to skip the hosannas and cut to the chase. They find roundabout
ways to say that “Next” took nerve to write, is much more potent than it
may initially appear and has an ending that beggars description. That
ending will not be given away here.
Mr. Hynes encrypts so much
foreshadowing into “Next” that there might as well be none at all.
Little jabs are everywhere. Kevin’s fantasy life is activated by a
surreptitious one-day trip from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Austin for a job
interview. He is one of those spiteful academics about whom Mr. Hynes
has written so well in earlier novels, “all of them as amiable and
collegial as scorpions.”
Read the rest of the story here.
Forbes ranks U-M as a top college sports town
Source: Forbes, 3/17/2010
There are many who see Ann Arbor as not
only one of the top college sports towns in America, but the only one.
Add Forbes magazine to that list.
Excerpt:
Ann
Arbor, Mich., home to the University of Michigan, is a great choice. The
town of 114,000 has it all: a top-notch public school system, a low
crime rate and very affordable housing (the median price for a
four-bedroom, two-bathroom, 2,200-square-foot is $148,000). Museums and
good restaurants abound. And even though its high-profile football and
basketball teams have struggled as of late, the school's other
teams--like golf, rowing and softball--have excelled, so much so that
Michigan finished fifth overall in the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup
last year, a ranking by the National Association of Collegiate Directors
of Athletics of schools based on their performance in every sport.
With
its excellent mix of livability and sports, Ann Arbor leads our annual
ranking of the Top College Sports Towns, besting Chapel Hill, N.C. (home
of the University of North Carolina), and Norman, Okla. (home of the
University of Oklahoma).
Read the rest of the story here.
Terumo capitalizes on MEDC tax credits in Ann Arbor
Source: Detroit Free Press, 3/17/2010
Many Ann Arbor-based companies receive
state tax breaks to create jobs, but few are taking advantage of them as
effectively as the rapidly growing, Tree Town-based Terumo.
Excerpt:
To
those searching for snippets of some of the good things going on out
there, I offer up Terumo.
You may not have heard of Terumo, but
lots of surgical patients have. Terumo products are used in cardiac and
vascular surgeries in more than 1,000 cases a day worldwide.
Capitalizing
on the growth in the medical device market, the Ann Arbor company,
which includes Terumo Cardiovascular Systems and Terumo Heart, won a
$1-million tax credit from the Michigan Economic Growth Authority almost
two years ago to keep operations here and bring in more jobs -- which
it has done. The two firms together employ 500 people in Ann Arbor and
are the 24th-largest company in Washtenaw County.
Read the rest
of the story here.
The Village cashes in on co-op to condo switch in Ann Arbor
Source: AnnArbor.com, 3/17/2010
There's a new condo project in Ann Arbor,
but it's not new construction. The Villages are making the leap from
co-operative living to condominiums to help create more value in their
living area.
Excerpt:
Buyers seeking a condominium
in Ann Arbor can turn to one of the city’s vintage communities to find a
new option on the market.
The Village - long-known as Pittsfield
Village - completed the conversion of its 422 units from cooperative to
condominium in late 2009.
Now owners and buyers will see the
market set the price for the homes - which are again called Pittsfield
Village after the transition.
"Over the next 18 months to 24
months, the Village is going to create its own value," said Hilary Ward,
a Realtor with the Charles Reinhart Co. who has several listings in the
community.
Read the rest of the story here.
EMU prof helps preserve Michigan's only rock paintings
Source: Eastern Michigan University, 3/17/2010
Eastern Michigan University is taking
historic preservation to a whole new level by trying to figure out a way
to save Michigan's only early man rock paintings.
Excerpt:
YPSILANTI
- Eastern Michigan University Chemistry Professor Ruth Ann Armitage
recently traded in her Nicaraguan spelunking helmet for a trash bag with
arm holes in it.
The 55-gallon trash bag was a good way to keep
dry while hiking a rocky beach in cold, rainy weather on the shoreline
of Big Bay de Noc on Lake Michigan in northern Michigan.
“The
rock paintings there are the only ones in the state of Michigan.
They’re thought to be connected to the Ojibwe,” said Armitage, who took a
student and went in search of the paintings.
Read the rest of
the story here.
WSJ describes economy through Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Saline
Source: The Wall Street Journal, 3/17/2010
How the economy is recovering, or at least
trying to, can be easily illustrated through the stories of businesses
in Ann Arbor, Saline and Ypsilanti.
Excerpt:
YPSILANTI,
Mich.—Thomas Harrison, chief executive of Michigan Ladder Co., has a
plan that would contribute to the U.S. economic recovery: Expand the
108-year-old company, adding at least 20 jobs in the process. His
chances of getting the loan of $300,000 or more he needs to do so,
though, depend in part on what happens to folks like home builder James
Haeussler.
Both are customers of the same community bank, the
Bank of Ann Arbor. Mr. Haeussler is struggling to repay $8.3 million he
and a partner borrowed to build a residential community in nearby
Saline, Mich. In this economic environment, the bank doesn't want to
take a chance on what it sees as a risky new loan to Mr. Harrison.
"In
a world where Jim Haeussler makes it, Tom Harrison will make it," says
Timothy Marshall, the bank's president. "But it's not prudent to do both
loans at this point in time. We're in a more risk-averse mode."
Read
the rest of the story here.
U-M continues to build, no matter what
Source: The Detroit News, 3/10/2010
Continual growth for the foreseeable
future is the name of the game at the University of Michigan, which
makes it a point to keep building up its campus and curriculum even if
its local peers are not.
Excerpt:
The University of
Michigan and Michigan State University are separated by 60 miles and a
few billion dollars. Both are public universities. Both have fiercely
loyal alumni and are a few thousand apart in numbers of students. Yet
MSU is enacting painful program cuts and layoffs, while U-M is adding
staff and is in the midst of one of the biggest building booms in school
history. The budget gap between the two schools has ballooned to almost
a half-billion dollars per year and is growing.
Read the rest of
the story here.
Tech Brewery comes of age as home for Ann Arbor start-ups
Source: AnnArbor.com, 3/10/2010
The Tech Brewery in Ann Arbor is more
about the former than the later (Ie. tech not beer) as a good cross section of Tree Town's
new economy entrepreneurs continues to congregate where the good beer is
made.
Excerpt:
Ann Arbor’s technology
entrepreneurs chose office space in the Northern
Brewery building on Jones Drive over the years because of its
location, its historic loft-like offices and its reputation as a
creative hub.
But for nearly a year, a portion of the building
has been building its own identity as a unique collaboration among many
early-stage companies.
Dubbed the Tech Brewery, a vacant
2,000-square-foot space now offers short-term desk space in a
collaborative environment that makes it unique among Ann Arbor offices.
Most
office incubators provide services and shared resources, founder and
entrepreneur Dug
Song said.
"That's not really what we're doing here," he
said. "…There's a lot more social interaction. More synergistic
relationships, since there are a lot of companies doing similar kinds of
things."
Read the rest of the story here.
Sakti3's Sastry points way to Mich recovery with green jobs
Source: Crain's Detroit Business, 3/10/2010
Green businesses are the path to
sustainable firms that produce long-lasting jobs and improving the over
all environment in Michigan. At least that's what one of Ann Arbor's
best known entrepreneurs believes.
Excerpt:
Ann
Marie Sastry, CEO and co-founder of Ann Arbor-based Sakti3, said
Michigan can lead the way in vehicle electrification and, in doing so,
reduce the state’s carbon footprint and oil dependence and create green
jobs.
Read the rest of the story here.
U-M's silver medalist skaters recount Olympics
Source: The Michigan Daily, 3/10/2010
It ain't gold but it's hardly a loss.
After all, second best in the world is still second-freakin'-best in the
world. Two University of Michigan students have quite the story to tell
after doing just that in the Winter Olympics.
Excerpt:
It's
not every day that University President Mary Sue Coleman calls students
on their cell phones.
But after University students and ice
dancers Charlie White and Meryl Davis won silver medals in the 2010
Olympic Winter Games last month, Coleman did just that.
"I was
just listening to my voicemails after the free dance, and I came upon
one that said, 'Oh, hi Meryl, this is Mary Sue Coleman,' and I was a
little shocked but very excited and honored," Davis said in an interview
last week.
Read the rest of the story here.
Ypsilanti biz helps IdeaPaint become reality
Source: CNN, 3/10/2010
When only family and friends believed in
IdeaPaint, a promising Massachussetts-based start-up, Ypsilanti's CAS-MI
Laboratories gave them a shot at the big time.
Excerpt:
The
young entrepreneurs refused to believe it. "Our joke was, if we could
put a man on the moon, we can make dry-erase paint," says Newman, 25.
Then
they found CAS-MI Laboratories in Ypsilanti, Mich., where the
scientists were willing to give their plan a shot and even cover some of
the development costs.
With the help of $1 million from family,
friends and a few angel investors, the group spent the next four years
fine-tuning their recipe.
Read the rest of the story here.
Unique Ann Arbor house turns heads
Source: AnnArbor.com, 3/10/2010
No two houses are exactly alike in Ann
Arbor, and this little cottage is definitely one of a kind.
Excerpt:
Tim
and Cyndy Vachon took a 500-square-foot, single-story, cinder block
house, added creative touches that come from being artists and
eco-friendly touches that come from being green to create what they call
the "Curious House."
This whimsical, eclectic and - yes -
curious house is hidden behind a stand of trees on South Maple Road near
Pauline Road in Ann Arbor. It is a showcase for stone and tile, with
leanings toward Arts and Crafts style and a cottage look.
But it
is also a repository for discarded material that could have ended up in
the landfill: A sturdy glass light shade that turned on its head and is
used as a bathroom sink, the soapstone kitchen countertops with a rich
patina that once served as the tabletops in a chemistry lab of a old
Detroit high school and the walnut and oak discarded by relatives used
for trim and to make the stairway that leads to the second floor.
While
the Vachons had the artistic and architectural skills to create the
Curious House, they also had the building skills to turn the vision into
a house. Except for part of the framing, the drywall and the roof, the
couple built Curious House themselves, adding another 1,200 or so square
feet to the original structure.
Read the rest of the story here.
New invention leads to cleaner hands in hospitals
Source: The New York Times, 3/3/2010
Experts from the University of Michigan
are easy to find, even if you are a reporter from The New York Times
looking for the inside dope on new plasma hand sanitizers.
Excerpt:
HOSPITAL
workers often have to wash their hands dozens of times a day — and may
need a minute or more to do the process right, by scrubbing with soap
and water. But new devices could reduce the task to just four seconds,
cleaning even hard-to-reach areas under fingernails.
Instead of
scrubbing, the workers would put their hands into a small box that
bathes them with plasma — the same sort of luminous gas found in neon
signs, fluorescent tubes and TV displays. This plasma, though, is at
room temperature and pressure, and is engineered to zap germs, including
the drug-resistant supergerm MRSA.
The technology is being
developed in several laboratories. Gregor Morfill, who created several
prototypes using the technology at the Max Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, says the plasma quickly
inactivates not only bacteria but also viruses and fungi.
Dr.
Morfill and his colleagues have tested their devices on hands and feet.
“It works on athlete’s foot,” he said. “And the nice thing is, you don’t
have to take your socks off. They are disinfected, too.” (The cleaning
takes a bit longer when socks are added to the job, he said — about 25
seconds. “And it doesn’t yet work through shoes,” he added.)
Plasmas
engineered to zap microorganisms aren’t new. During the last decade,
they have come into use to sterilize some medical instruments. But using
them on human tissue is another matter, said Mark Kushner, director of
the Michigan Institute for Plasma Science and Engineering and a
professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Many thousands of
volts drive the generation of plasma,” he said, “and normally one
doesn’t want to touch thousands of volts.” But the design of the new
hand sanitizers, he said, protects people from doing so. Reassured by
that design, about five years ago he put his naked thumb into a jet of
microbe-destroying plasma at the lab of another plasma researcher.
Read
the rest of the story here.
U-M libraries bid farewell to their card catalogs
Source: AnnArbor.com, 3/3/2010
Not all mediums of information are eternal
at the University of Michigam. It's graduate library is getting rid of
its card catalogs ...and maybe even its books one day in the future.
Excerpt:
Nothing
lasts forever.
So it will be said about the University of
Michigan Library's card catalogs when they are removed from their home
in the bowels of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library on March 8.
Twelve
and a half million volumes strong, the card catalog has been in disuse
for more than 20 years, ever since the university established the MIRLYN
electronic catalog in 1988.
By 1991, every book in the library
system had been catalogued onto MIRLYN, and the card catalogs were a
relic of the past.
"I'm sad to see them go," said Paul Courant,
U-M's Dean of Libraries. "This is truly the end of an era. But it is
time to move on."
Read the rest of the story here.
Small Company Innovation Program helps U-M start-ups
Source: The Associated Press, 3/3/2010
More and more non-traditional ways are
materializing to help local start-ups bridge the seed capital gap. One
of the latest from the University of Michigan involves the Small Company
Innovation Program and the $30,000 it recently awarded.
Excerpt:
Software
that translates drawings of chemical compounds into standard notation
is moving from a campus research project toward commercial application,
with help from the University of Michigan.
Officials say it's
part of a broader effort at Michigan to encourage a spirit of
entrepreneurship on campus.
Read the rest of the story here.