Air Force ROTC unit wins national honor
The top honor for an Air Force ROTC detachment has been awarded to a group based at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, the university announced Thursday.
Air Force ROTC Detachment 030 has received the 2014 AFROTC Right of Line Award as the nation's top small Air Force detachment. The group currently has 63 cadets, said Cat Donnelly, an administrative specialist for the organization. The detachment was singled out for the honor among other ROTC detachments with fewer than 75 cadets, Donnelly said.
Detachments were judged based on leadership, physical fitness, problem solving and overall professional bearing, according to the UA announcement.
The detachment includes mostly UA students but also serves as a host for students attending nearby colleges such as University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, John Brown University in Siloam Springs and Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, Donnelly said.
The Right of Line award reflects hard work and dedication to excellence, Lt. Col. Buster McCall, the detachment's commander, said in a statement.
"Dually promoting the mission of both the Air Force and the university produces outstanding community, state and national leaders," he said.
-- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Professor organizes Florida conference
A University of Arkansas at Fayetteville math professor is one of two organizers for a special conference to be held in Florida in honor of Nobel Laureate Paul Dirac.
John Ryan is a co-investigator for a National Science Foundation grant helping fund the conference to be held Dec. 15-17 at Florida State University.
The title of the conference, Clifford Analysis and Related Topics, a Conference in honor of Paul A.M. Dirac, reflects a field of study that applies what are known in mathematics as Dirac-type operators named for the famed English physicist who died in 1984.
"Ryan is a leader in this active field and the department," Chaim Goodman-Strauss, chairman of UA's math department, said in a statement. "This conference will bring visibility to the department and the University of Arkansas."
Craig Nolder, a math professor at Florida State University, is the other co-investigator on the project.
Dirac's work in the 1920s helped establish quantum mechanics as a way of understanding how matter behaves on a scale much smaller than is generally visible to the naked eye. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 with Erwin Schrodinger.
-- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Professor analyzing social media funded
A professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville has been awarded a $99,933 grant to study the connection between social media and real-life behaviors, the university announced Wednesday.
Xuan Shi, an assistant professor of geoinformatics, will work with researchers at Kent State University and San Diego State University as part of a National Science Foundation-supported effort receiving $1 million in grant funding.
His work will involve developing computer and Web tools to analyze social-media communications.
The project involves studying public responses to disaster warnings and political topics as a way to develop a new communication theory for highly reproducible messages.
-- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
False notice given of killer's release
TULSA -- The family of an Oklahoma woman killed by her fiance was startled after receiving a false notification saying he was released from state custody.
Kevin Sweat was sentenced in October to three life terms without parole after pleading guilty in the 2011 death of Ashley Taylor, 23, and in the 2008 deaths of two girls.
On Wednesday, Taylor's father and stepmother woke up to find a message on their phones from Vinelink, an inmate notification system, saying that Sweat had been released.
But he wasn't. Sweat had been taken from the Lexington Assessment and Reception Center to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
A Vinelink spokesman said the service is merely a conduit of inmate information. A Department of Corrections spokesman said a worker might have checked the wrong box in listing Sweat as being "released" instead of "transferred."
-- THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Man pleads guilty in Joplin shooting
NEOSHO, Mo. -- A 23-year-old man has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a 2012 shooting outside a popular Joplin dance club.
Damon A. Williams admitted that he shot Charles Tumbleson, 25, two years ago outside the Jukebox Saturday Night dance club. Police said the two men had a feud before the shooting.
The Joplin Globe reported that Williams was scheduled to go on trial for first-degree murder Monday in Newton County Circuit Court. Instead, he pleaded guilty Tuesday to the lesser offense in return for a 13-year prison sentence.
Circuit Judge Kevin Selby accepted the plea deal and assessed that sentence.
-- THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NW News on 12/06/2014