UO E-clips, Dec. 4

NCAA: Coaching continuity plans detrimental to diversity (USA TODAY): Whatever colleges may gain in continuity by naming designated successors to their current head football coaches, minority coaching candidates may be losing in interview chances and job opportunities, the NCAA's top official on minority issues said Wednesday. NCAA vice president for diversity and inclusion Charlotte Westerhaus made her comments in an interview a day after Oregon became the fifth major school in the past year — and the second in as many weeks — to name a head coach in-waiting. Oregon's move came against a backdrop of firings that has reduced the number of black head coaches in the Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) to three, from six. Blacks comprise 46.4% of the FBS players.

DNA Secrets: Cave's latrines yield new evidence about prehistoric North America (Associated Press, appearing in North Carolina's Winston-Salem Journal): For some 85 years, homesteaders, pot hunters and archaeologists have been digging at Paisley Caves, a string of shallow depressions washed out of an ancient lava flow by the waves of a lake that comes and goes with the changing climate. Until now, they have found nothing conclusive -- arrowheads, baskets, animal bones and sandals made by people who lived thousands of years ago on the shores of what was then a 40-mile-long lake, but is now a sagebrush desert on the northern edge of the Great Basin. But a few years ago, Dennis Jenkins, a University of Oregon archaeologist, and his students started digging where no one had dug before. What the team discovered in an alcove used as a latrine and trash dump has elevated the caves to the site of the oldest radiocarbon-dated human remains in North America.

Recession grinds Oregon economy, too (The Oregonian): The University of Oregon Index of Economic Indicators fell sharply in October, suggesting the state remains mired in a lengthening recession. Oregon labor markets deteriorated and U.S. consumer confidence fell, as did other indicators in the monthly index. Initial unemployment claims jumped to a weekly average of 10,805, exceeding the peak of 10,245 reached during the 2001 recession. New orders for capital goods fell in October as the intensifying credit crunch and softening consumer demand prompted companies to delay capital spending. "This sharp shift in firm behavior will deepen and lengthen the recession," wrote Tim Duy, Oregon Economic Forum director, who runs the index.