OPINION: Thumbs up to two Coker biology students for fellowship

Thumbs up to Coker College biology students Cynallyhia Indriago of Columbia and Bryan Musungu of Fayetteville, N.C., who each have been awarded a $9,000 summer research fellowship funded by the National Science Foundation. They will spend eight weeks at Purdue University in Indiana studying genes important in plant-fungal interactions. Indriago is a junior and a member of the Lady Cobras volleyball team. Musungu is a senior and a plays on the Cobras men’s soccer team. The work Indriago and Musungu will conduct at Purdue is directly related to the research they are doing at Coker with Dr. Joseph Flaherty, assistant professor of biology. Flaherty has been awarded a five-year, $502,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a student-centered research program concentrating on gene discovery in fungi. The focus of Flaherty’s research is Fusarium head blight, which is caused by the fungal plant pathogen Fusarium graminearum. A worldwide threat to cereal crops, Fusarium head blight has caused more than $3 billion of crop loss in the United States over the past decade.

Thumbs up to students at Hartsville Middle School, who, after a month of selling Fox paws and candy and soliciting donations, the school presented a check for $2,351.44 to the American Red Cross for relief efforts in Haiti where an earthquake struck Jan. 12. Principal Meredith Taylor said the idea for a fundraiser started with the students. “They came to me and said, ‘We have to do something,’” she said. “This was totally student-driven. I was excited about their enthusiasm.” Hartsville Middle was one of the top area schools donating to the Haiti Relief Fund, alongside West Florence High and Hannah-Pamplico Elementary/Middle schools.“By yourself, $100 might not mean a lot, but, when you pull together as a team, you can do a lot,” American Red Cross Pee Dee Chapter Executive Director Linda Boone-Smith said. South Carolina has donated $2 million for the people of Haiti through the American Red Cross. The Pee Dee Chapter, which serves Chesterfield, Darlington, Dillon, Florence, Marion and Marlboro counties. The Red Cross receives no funding from state or federal governments. Donations can be made to the Pee Dee Chapter at its offices on 1601A W. Lucas St., Florence, SC 29501; by calling (843) 662-8121 or (800) Help-Now; or by visiting its Web site, http://peedee.redcross.org/content/index.html.

Thumbs up to Doctors Care for distributing checks totaling $32,055 to schools that have sent student-athletes to its centers for sports physicals. Doctors Care offers sports physicals at a rate of $30 at all of its 43 locations, including its two in Florence, each year from April to September. This is the fourth year the company has given $5 from each of those examinations back to the athletes’ schools. This year, Doctors Care performed 6,411 physicals on students sent by 165 participating schools throughout South Carolina. Overall, the centers provided more than 12,000 sports physicals throughout the state in 2009. The physicals are required for students who play sports, cheerleaders, gymnasts and those planning to attend summer camps. Doctors Care President and CEO Dr. Michael Stout said many insurance plans don’t cover the costs for these physicals. “We’re helping families by offering a discounted rate, and we’re helping support schools with the resources they need at a critical time, when schools throughout the state are facing budget cuts,” he said. Doctors Care, a division of UCI Medical Affiliates Inc., is headquartered in Columbia and operates 43 clinics in South Carolina and one in Knoxville, Tenn.