The legislature's new Republican majority has made its first move to put an imprint on the UNC system. On Thursday, the Senate appointed eight new members to the UNC system's Board of Governors.

The eight new appointees don't signal a dramatic shift, in that four are either re-appointed current or former board members. But taken collectively, they are seven white men and one white woman; meanwhile, the board stands to lose four African-Americans and at least five women once all appointments are made.

The House appoints eight additional new members next week.

Here's today's story.

Reappointed to the UNC Board of Governors were long-time education advocate Ann Goodnight, wife of SAS Institute CEO Jim Goodnight, and Peter Hans, a senior policy adviser with the Nelson Mullins law firm in Raleigh.

Former board members H. Frank Grainger of Cary and John Fennebresque of Charlotte also were appointed. Grainger is part-owner of Fair Products Inc. and Tritest Environmental Lab, and Fennebresque is an attorney.

The four newcomers were Fred Eshelman of Wilmington, executive chairman and founder of Pharmaceutical Product Development Corp.; W. Louis Bissette Jr., an attorney from Asheville; Thomas Harrelson of Southport, vice president of AECOM, a former state legislator and DOT secretary appointed by Republican Gov. Jim Martin; and Phillip Walker, senior vice president with BB&T in Hickory.

Travel + Leisure magazine has named the Umstead Hotel and Spa in Cary as one of its top 500 Hotels in the World for 2010.

The luxury hotel, which opened in Jan. 2007, is the brainchild of philanthropist and businesswoman Ann Goodnight, wife of SAS co-founder and billionaire Jim Goodnight.

It's one of only three North Carolina hotels on the Travel + Leisure list. The others are both in Asheville: the Inn on Biltmore Estate and Richmond Hill Inn.

The magazine cites the Umstead's "art-filled public spaces on 12 wooded acres," and recommends room 103 as the "room to book," with a patio facing the herb garden and three-acre lake.

A researcher at N.C. State who made a career out of investigating the bacteria responsible for the words "contains live and active cultures" on every yogurt cup you've ever seen was recognized Friday for his work.

Todd Klaenhammer, who has spent 31 years in an NCSU lab, received the O. Max Gardner Award, the UNC system's top faculty honor. It recognizes a distinguished body of work primarily related to what some call "good bacteria," which we get through yogurt and other dairy products.

This bacteria helps bolster our immune systems, Klaenhammer explained Friday, drawing chuckles from members of the UNC system's Board of Governors as he accepted his award with a quickie version of Good Bacteria 101.

"If you count the number of cells in your body, there are 10 times more bacteria in you and on you than cells in your bodies," he told the audience, most of whom are not professors of food bioprocessing and nutrition sciences and thus had to take him at his word. "Think about that. They're the good guys. They protect you."

Klaenhammer explained that his research group - which has overseen the educations of 43 graduate students and 21 post-docs over the years -focuses in two areas. First, it works to understand the properties that make the bacteria beneficial to humans. And second, it goes a step further and looks for ways the bacteria can be used to deliver vaccines.

On that latter front, there's been progress. His work has created a new way to deliver an anthrax vaccine orally to mice, and it is also being used for HIV vaccine delivery research.

One projected benefit - because this bacteria can be easily made and stored in a dried form, it could provide a new immunization strategy in under-developed nations, where injections may not be feasible.

"The word 'groundbreaking' is used often," said Ann Goodnight, a UNC system board member who chaired the committee that selected Klaenhammer for the award. "But in the case of Dr. Klaenhammer, it is all too true."

The Gardner award honors top faculty from across the 16-university system, but in recent years it has had a Triangle flavor. Klaenhammer is the eighth member of the NCSU faculty to win the award since 1997; UNC Chapel Hill has had three winners in that same time period.

(NCSU and UNC-CH share one winner, chemist Joe DeSimone, who holds faculty appointments at both universities and won in 2000.

N.C. Central University faculty members have won twice in recent years as well – physicist Branislav Vlahovic in 2004 and biochemist Ken Harewood in 2006.
 

You can tell a lot about candidates from who gives them money.

As noted in today's article by Michael Biesecker, there are pretty noticeable patterns in the people giving money to County Commissioner Kenn Gardner and challenger Stan Norwalk.

Gardner's getting a lot of money from developers and the housing industry. Norwalk is getting a lot of money from slow-growth advocates and educators.