CHAPEL HILL – Two UNC students recently received the Henry Luce Foundation scholarship to connect future American leaders with Asian colleagues in their fields.

Outgoing Student Body President Will Leimenstoll and Henry Ross received the scholarships that give recent college graduates up to age 30 the chance to travel abroad. Leimenstoll is an environmental studies major and city planning minor; Ross is a classics major and biology minor as well as a Morehead-Cain Scholar.

Leimenstoll will study sustainable city planning and urban design as a Luce Scholar. He says he hopes to focus on developing environmentally-friendly buildings and neighborhoods in the United States.

Ross hopes to attend law school in the future. He’s already done research abroad as he studied in Cape Town, South Africa and taught school in rural Zimbabwe.

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The North Carolina Botanical Garden at UNC has received two grants from businesses in Research Triangle Park to continue a science program for pediatric patients at UNC Hospitals.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund gave a grant in the amount of $121,000 to go towards the Healing and Hope Through Science program; the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation gave $25,000 through the Ribbon of Hope grant to help the program as well.

Due to infection-control restrictions, children in the hospital do not have access to plants. The Healing and Hope Through Science program will design ways for the children to interact will living plant material.

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Two local restaurants have been honored as top establishments by the James Beard Foundation.

The Lantern Restaurant in Chapel Hill has been named a semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurant. This could be the second Beard award for owner and chef Andrea Reusing as she won Best Chef Southeast in 2011.

This year’s Best Chef Southeast includes Hillsborough’s Aaron Vandemark of Panciuto.

To see the complete list of semifinalists in the 2013 James Beard Awards, click here.