Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Lloyd Noel Ferguson (born February 9. 1918) is an African American chemist. As a child in Oakland, California, Ferguson had a backyard laboratory in which he developed a moth repellent, a silverware cleanser, and a lemonade powder. After working in construction and as a railway porter in order to earn enough money to pay for college, he did his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. from the same university in 1943, the first African American to earn a chemistry Ph.D. there. After receiving his Ph.D., he took a faculty position at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, then approximately two years later moved to Howard University, where he became the chair of his department and founded a doctoral program there, the first in chemistry at any black college.
(con't.)
While affiliated with Howard University, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1953 and an NSF grant in 1960 that allowed him to travel to the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark, and to ETH Zurich in Switzerland. He moved to the California State University, Los Angeles in 1965. He again became chair, and played an advisory role to the Food and Drug Administration. He retired in 1986.
Ferguson's is the author of seven chemistry textbooks and more than 50 research papers. His research included work on organic chemistry, the relation between structure and function in biochemistry, chemotherapy treatments for cancer, and the chemical basis for the human sense of taste.
In 1972, Ferguson was one of the founders of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers. In his honor, the organization gives its Lloyd N. Ferguson Young Scientist Award to young scientists with "technical excellence and documented contributions to their field".
Ferguson received the Outstanding Professor Award from the California State University system in 1979–1980. In 1995, the chemistry department at Cal. State L.A. established the annual Lloyd Ferguson Distinguished Lecture series, in Ferguson's honor.....Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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African-American women who do not breastfeed their babies face a higher risk of getting an aggressive form of breast cancer than their counterparts who nurse, said a US study on Tuesday. AFP: High cancer risk in black moms who don't breastfeed
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The analysis found that women who had two or more children faced a 50 percent increased risk of hormone receptor-negative breast cancer, one of the toughest kinds to treat.
But this higher risk was only present in women who did not breastfeed their children.
"African-American women are more likely to have had a greater number of full-term births and less likely to have breast-fed their babies," said Julie Palmer, professor of epidemiology at the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University.
"This study shows a clear link between that and hormone receptor-negative breast cancer."
Data for the research, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, came from the Black Women's Health Study which has followed 59,000 women since 1995.
From 1995 to 2009, researchers found 457 cases of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer and 318 cases of hormone receptor-negative breast cancer among study participants.
Among those diagnosed with hormone receptor positive breast cancer, which also tends to occur more frequently in white women, there was no link to the number of children a woman had and whether or not she breastfed.
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More of the residual damage caused by the war on drugs NYT: No Cause for Marijuana Case, but Enough for Child Neglect
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The police found about 10 grams of marijuana, or about a third of an ounce, when they searched Penelope Harris’s apartment in the Bronx last year. The amount was below the legal threshold for even a misdemeanor, and prosecutors declined to charge her. But Ms. Harris, a mother whose son and niece were home when she was briefly in custody, could hardly rest easy.
The police had reported her arrest to the state’s child welfare hot line, and city caseworkers quickly arrived and took the children away.
Her son, then 10, spent more than a week in foster care. Her niece, who was 8 and living with her as a foster child, was placed in another home and not returned by the foster care agency for more than a year. Ms. Harris, 31, had to weather a lengthy child neglect inquiry, though she had no criminal record and had never before been investigated by the child welfare authorities, Ms. Harris and her lawyer said.
“I felt like less of a parent, like I had failed my children,” Ms. Harris said. “It tore me up.”
Hundreds of New Yorkers who have been caught with small amounts of marijuana, or who have simply admitted to using it, have become ensnared in civil child neglect cases in recent years, though they did not face even the least of criminal charges, according to city records and defense lawyers. A small number of parents in these cases have even lost custody of their children.
New York City’s child welfare agency said that it was pursuing these cases for appropriate reasons, and that marijuana use by parents could often hint at other serious problems in the way they cared for their children.
Michael Kamber for The New York Times
Jose Gunnell, 23, lost custody of his 1-year-old daughter in March over a $5 bag of marijuana.
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Changes WSJ: Recruiters at Black Colleges Break From Tradition
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Katy Daugherty enrolled at Tennessee State University because of the school's flexible daytime, evening and online classes and its new urban-studies program.
Once on campus at this historically black college, where more than 70% of the students are African-American, Ms. Daugherty, 29, who is white, became the minority.
"It was definitely different, having grown up and been in the majority, and all of a sudden you are in the minority," she says.
In what has become a mutually beneficial relationship for schools and students, many of the nation's 105 historically black colleges are increasingly wooing non-black students. The goals: to boost lagging enrollment and offset funding shortfalls.
Many of the nation's 105 historically black colleges are increasingly wooing non-black students. Sue Shellenbarger explains why.
Some black colleges are stepping up recruiting at mostly white or Hispanic high schools and community colleges. Delaware State University is bringing 100 Chinese students to its Dover campus this fall for cultural and language training. Other colleges are showcasing unique programs. Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens promotes its chorale, which backed Queen Latifah in the 2010 Super Bowl, for example.
Even top-ranked black schools such as Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Spelman College in Atlanta, are recruiting more aggressively in the face of intensifying competition for top African-American students.
About 82% of students at the nation's 105 black colleges are African-American, a percentage that has been fairly constant over the past 30 years, according to a data analysis for this column by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a New York nonprofit. Increases in Hispanic and Asian students have offset declines in whites, partly because of cuts in federal- and state-scholarship programs that encouraged white students to attend historically black colleges, says the fund's president, Johnny C. Taylor Jr. He predicts growth in white, Hispanic and Asian enrollment, as black colleges cast a wider net.
Brandon Thibodeaux for The Wall Street Journal
Paul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell, center, with incoming freshman Celia Soto, left, and recruiter Jessika Lara, right
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News flash someone is making racist comments again. Media Matters: Rush Limbaugh's "Or-Bam-eo" Slur
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Today on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh described a new Oreo that will have both chocolate and vanilla cream as a "biracial" cookie and said that "it isn't going to be long before it's going to be called the Or-Bam-eo or something like this." Limbaugh later called it the "Or-Bam-eo" himself.
Listen:
LIMBAUGH: Kraft foods is going to launch a new Oreo. You ought to see -- that got Snerdly's attention. It's a Triple Double Oreo. Do you like Oreos, is that?
Well, it -- what it's going to be here, it's actually a biracial cookie. You've got three of the chocolate wafers, and then you've got the white vanilla cream -- the cream -- and then there's a chocolate cream. So you've got, you've got three -- the stuff, the thing that says Oreo on it, the wafer. And then you've got the white cream, then you've got another chocolate wafer, then you've got the chocolate cream, and then you've got the bottom wafer.
The Triple Double Oreo. You wait, it isn't going to be long before it's called the Or-Bam-eo, or something like this. Well, it's a biracial cookie, here. And this story is from the Chicago Tribune, and it's all about Kraft's juicing up its investment in the Oreo in recent years. Legitimate businesses.
Do I know you get Oreos and ice cream? Yeah, I know that. I don't -- I'm not a big ice cream fan, but I know that you can do that. I know that you can -- you know what? What I heard the other day, McDonald's? You know these -- what are they called? Rolos, these caramel things that come in a roll that you get? McDonald's is putting those in their soft ice cream or shakes or whatever. I saw that the other day. Yeah.
In the midst of all this talk of obesity. And, I mean, every time Michelle Obama goes out there and talks about healthful eating, the food industry responds with, "Oh, yeah? Take this." And Kraft comes up with the Or-Bam-eo, the triple double-dipper.
OK, to the phones.
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Panic over single black women is unfounded. Two black scholars have the numbers to prove it. The Root: Myth-Busting the Black Marriage 'Crisis'
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When it comes to marriage in the African-American community, two black scholars have a message: The mainstream media's analysis is divisive and defeatist. We're slammed with panic-inducing statistics because fear sells. And we need to stop buying into it.
Their research, recently published in Empower Magazine, is an answer to the onslaught of gloom-and-doom news about black women's struggles to find black mates. You know, the coverage that's oozing with desperation and grounded in seemingly alarming numbers. Take a Washington Post piece from 2006:
In the Washington area, there are 83 single black men for every hundred single black women ... For Robyn and black women like her -- who see their fates intimately bound to black men -- life means strategizing and dreaming beyond the numbers in a world where it seems the ground has shifted under their feet.
The coverage of this issue is excessive, and the tone and content can be unproductive. That's clear. But we can't question the alarming statistics that drive the discussion. Right?
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Actually, we can. Enter Ivory A. Toldson, Ph.D., a Howard University professor and research analyst for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation; and Bryant Marks, a psychology professor at Morehouse College and faculty associate at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
Eye rolling over the excessive efforts to stir up panic over black marriage is nothing new. But these two have the expertise -- and, more important, the incentive -- to challenge the very assumptions that drive the discussion. They've looked at the same old data (from the census and American Community Surveys), but through a different lens. It's one that's not set on manufacturing a catastrophic picture of black people and marriage. In fact, they consider it a personal mission to do the opposite.
Toldson and Marks say that the statistics about single black women and "undesirable" black men have been intentionally presented in the worst-possible light. Their work -- they call it "myth busting" -- tells a different story.
Most black women do get married. The ABC News/Nightline article "Single, Black, Female" presents this stat: "42 percent of U.S. black women have never been married, double the number of white women who have never tied the knot." True, say Toldson and Marks. But their independent analysis of American Community Surveys data from 2000 to 2009 shows that among black women 35 and older, the percentage that have never been married drops to 25 percent, meaning that a solid majority (75 percent) of black women get married before they turn 35.
"The often-cited figure of 42 percent of black women never marrying includes all black women 18 and older," Toldson says. "Raising this age in an analysis eliminates age groups we don't really expect to be married and gives a more accurate estimate of true marriage rates." Same data, but significantly less scary.
Thinkstock
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