Tuesday, September 2, 2003, Volume 21 number 1
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Gloria DeFilipps Brush, professor, art and design department, had work in the Digital Art Gallery at the 2003 Information and Visualization Conference IV at the University of London, England, from July 16-18. The event has a number of multinational sponsors. Her work also was included at the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery at the SIGGRAPH 2003 international conference on computer graphics and emerging technologies at the San Diego Convention Center from July 27-31. The work appears in the catalog and on CD, and was selected for the traveling exhibition which will go to various sites internationally over the coming two years. Patricia Dennis, associate professor, head of the UMD Department of Theatre, has been elected secretary of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc. (USITT). USITT is an association of design, production, and technology professionals in the performing arts and entertainment industry with more than 3,500 members nationwide. Dalibor Froncek, assistant professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, presented a contributed talk, “Another Anti-Oberwolfach Solution: Pancomponented 2-factorizations of Complete Graphs” at the International Conference, Graph Theory of Brian Alspach, in Burnaby, Canada. Froncek also constructed (in collaboration with Dr. Mariusz Meszka from University of Mining and Metallurgy, Krakow, Poland) a schedule for the Czech National Soccer League. Froncek has constructed football and soccer conference schedules for the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference for next season. He used graph-theoretic techniques on the schedules to minimize the number of consecutive games on the road for all teams. Joseph Gallian, professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, has published “A Dynamic Survey of Graph Labeling Methods” in the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics. He also has authored two chapters in the Sixth edition of the book, For All Practical Purposes, published by Freeman. His article on “Putnam Trivia for the 90s” previously published in the American Mathematical Monthly has been reprinted in book The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition: 1985-2000 published by the the Mathematical Association of America. Richard Green, professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gave the opening presentation at the Fifth Hans Kristiansson Symposium on Bayesian Foraging, August 4-6 at Lunds Universitet, Lunds, Sweden. His lecture was entitled “Feeding, Optimal Foraging Theory and Baysesian Foraging.” He also presented a second lecture on the optimal foraging strategy for “Bayesian” birds. Alec Habig, assistant professor of physics, is one of 200 international scientists participating in the MINOS neutrino experiment at the Soudan Underground Lab in Soudan, Minnesota. Data-taking with the 6,000 ton detector began August 14. Physicists will use the MINOS detector deep in the Soudan Mine to explore the phenomenon of neutrino mass. To view photos, visit www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/ press_releases/MINOS_photos. Vicki L Hansen, professor, Department of Geological Sciences, and her students, presented three talks and posters at the NASA Planetary Geologic Mappers Meeting at Brown University in June 2003. The talks with abstracts are: Hansen, V.L., “Mapping tectonomagmatic planets; Planetary Geology;” Lang, N. P. and Hansen, V.L., “Geologic map of the Greenaway Quadrangle (V24), Venus;” and López, I. and Hansen, V.L., “Preliminary geologic mapping of the Helen Planitia Quadrangle (V52), Venus.” Hansen will also be presenting an invited talk, “In situ partial melting and crustal differentiation on Venus: Evidence for global scale metamorphism?” at the National Geological Society of America Meeting in Seattle in October 2003. She has a paper, “Venus diapirs: Thermal or compositional” in the 2003 September issue of the Geological Society of America Bulletin. Stephen Hilyard, assistant professor, Department of Art and Design, will show some of his art work as part of a group exhibition at the Soo Visual Arts Center, www.soovac.org, in Minneapolis. The exhibition will open September 15, and a reception will be held on September 19. Bruce Peckham, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gave an invited lecture on July 25, 2003 entitled “The breakup of an invariant circle in the presence of noninvertibility” at the “Codimension-two bifurcations of Piecewise Smooth Dynamical Systems” workshop at the University of Bristol in Bristol, England. Rip Rapp, Department of Geological Sciences, gave a lecture to university and Institute of Archaeology scholars at Zhengzhou, China on his recently published work at Ancient Troy. He also co-authored a paper on the Compositions of Shang-Zhou Proto-Porcelains in the Chinese journal Kaogu [Archaeology]. Cheryl Reitan, UMD publications director, was awarded writing residencies at Wellspring House in Ashfield, Massachusetts for the first two weeks of June, 2003 and the Nantucket Island School of Design and the Arts on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts for the second two weeks of June, 2003. Patricia A. Samberg, executive administrative specialist at the UMD Center for Economic Development, will be awarded the Minnesota Small Business Development Center “State Star Award” at the National Association of Small Business Development Centers conference in San Diego CA. The award is given to the top state employee who exhibits exemplary performance, makes a significant contribution to the states SBDC program and shows a strong commitment to small business. MINNESOTA
SEA GRANT NEWS Jesse Schomberg, coastal communities and land use planning extension educator, conducted a water quality workshop called, “Water, Water, Everywhere; but Dare We Take a Drink?” in Grand Marais in August. The workshop was sponsored by the Cook County Coalition of Lake Associations, Cook County Water Services, and the Minnesota Lakes Association. A report recently completed by the University of Minnesota confirms concerns by the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe that a federal Superfund site located along Pike Bay in Cass Lake, is not being properly remediated. The report is a result of a project that was a collaboration between the University of Minnesota Sea Grant Program, the Natural Resources Research Institute, and the Leech Lake Tribal Council. It was funded by a grant in 1998 from the U.S. EPA’s Environmental Justice Program. Studies completed in the process of preparing the report found that both human and environmental health risks exist at the site, where a former wood preserving facility owned by St. Regis Corp. (now International Paper Co.) used to operate. The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe suspected that the site was never properly studied and that clean-up actions by St. Regis Corp. were not effective. The three-part report encompasses panel reports on groundwater conditions on the site, environmental health risks, and human health risks. Testing on the site found harmful levels of dioxins, furans, and other compounds left behind from treating wood. These chemicals are known cancer-causers. The report is available on Minnesota Sea Grant’s Web site at: www.seagrant.umn.edu/water/leech.html.
NRRI
NEWS Coleraine Minerals Research Facility Endowed Taconite Chair Iwao Iwasaki, joins other accomplished professionals in new 58th Edition of Who’s Who in America. The Marquis Who’s Who is the leading biographical reference publisher of the highest achievers and contributors from across the country and around the world. Since 1899, Who’s Who in America has been an essential source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms around the world. George Host and Rich Axler attended the symposium, Frontiers in Assessment Methods for the Environment (FAME), which was held in August in Minneapolis. The Association of Environmental Engineering Science Professors (AEESP) and the National Science Foundation sponsored the symposium to focus on recent advances in environmental measurement and assessment technologies, modeling, and data processing tools to promote a cleaner environment. Host presented Internet-based remote sensing and visualizations of water quality information: education applications for specialists and citizens co-authored by Axler (NRRI), Cynthia Hagley (Sea Grant), Bruce Munson (UMD- Education), Carl Richards (Sea Grant) and Glenn Merrick (Lake Superior College). Axler presented “Duluth Streams: Community partnerships for understanding urban storm water and water quality issues at the head of the Great Lakes” coauthored by Marion Lonsdale (City of Duluth), Cynthia Hagley (Sea Grant), Host (NRRI), Bruce Munson (UMD- Education) and Carl Richards (Sea Grant). Subhash Basak was the co-chairperson from USA of the Third Indo-U.S. Workshop on Mathematical Chemistry, in August , organized by NRRI/UMD. Scientists from three continents and over a dozen countries participated in the deliberations of the workshop.
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