FACULTY/STAFF NEWS

Alison Aune, assistant professor, Art Education, Museum Education and Jen Dietrich, assistant professor of art, have been selected to present a joint paper, “Blue Light: Northern and Circumpolar Art,” for artist-art educators at the National Art Education Association’s (NAEA) annual conference in Denver, Colorado.

Ron Caple, professor, Department of Chemistry, had two papers, “Empleo De La Calorimetría Diferencial De Barrido (DSC) En El Estudio De La Estructura De Biopolímeros Naturales (Celulosa) De Madera De Especies De Eucaliptos” and “Estudio De La Estructura De La Celulosa Mediante Espectroscopia Ir En Madera De Especies De Eucalipto,” selected for a poster presentations in November 2003 during COMAT 2003-XVI SPM National Meeting. This project is in conjunction with Uvaldo Orea Igarza, Leila R. Carballo Abreu, Elena Cordero Machado, and Addis Bermellow, Universidad de Pinar del Rio, Cuba.

James H. Fetzer, McKnight Distinguished Professor, Department of Philosophy, made a number of appearances in November in association with the anniversary of JFK’s death. He was a guest on Coast-to-Coast AM, a nationally broadcast talk radio show; he was a local commentator after the ABC two-hour special on JFK, he was a guest on MSNBC’s “Jesse Ventura’s America”; and he attended a book signing for his newest book, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003) at Barnes and Noble.

Dalibor Froncek, assistant professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, attended the conference MIGHTY XXXVII in Valparaiso, IN along with his students Petr Kovar and Tereza Kovarova. Froncek presented a talk “Regular Clique Covers of Graphs,” Kovar presented “Vertex magic total labeling of Cartesian products of some regular VMT regular graphs and even cycles” and “Diameters of isomorphic spanning trees factorizing complete graphs.”

Cecilia Giulivi, associate professor, Department of Chemistry, was invited to present a research seminar in November on “Mitochondrial Nitric Oxide Synthase” at the Institute of Biomedical Research on Light and Image, School of Medicine, University of Coimbra. She also delivered lectures on oxygen and nitrogen radical chemistry and biochemistry, and coordinated discussions on current topics on the same field. Giulivi, along with professor Virginia Junqueira, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and professor Josianne Cillard, University of Rennes, France, was invited to teach a course on Free Radicals in Toxicology for Ph.D. students in the Neuroscience Program at the University of Coimbra,Coimbra, Portugal.

Elaine S. Hansen has been appointed Director of the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) Center for Economic Development. Hansen was most recently Director of Development for the Labovitz School of Business and Economics.

Carmen Latterell and Heather Kahler, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, had their article “Moving Mathematics Online” published in the November 2003 issue of eLearn Magazine.

Richard Leino, senior research associate, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, along with Gerald Ankley and associates at the Environmental Protection Agency Mid-Continent Ecology Division in Duluth have had a paper published on the harmful effects of low levels of trenbolone, a synthetic steroid extensively used in the United States as a growth promoter in beef cattle, on fish: Ankley, G. T, et al. 2003. Effects of the androgenic growth promoter 17-beta-trenbolone on fecundity and reproductive endocrinology of the fathead minnow, Environ. Toxicol. Chem., 22, 1350-60.

Ron Marchese, professor of ancient history and archaeology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, published “The Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul” in LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture.

In August he had an audience with “His Beatitude Mesrob II,” the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul and Turkey who approved the second volume of Marchese’s research on the sacred relics and artifacts from the Patriarchate. The second volume, Articles of Faith: Sacred Relics and Artifacts from the Armenian Churches of Istanbul will appear in 2005 while Splendor and Spectacle: The Armenian Orthodox Church Textile Collections of Istanbul is currently in press and is available for advanced purchase with an appearance in early 2004.

Marchese also conducted research on the artifactual collections in Istanbul in August of 2003 and most recently returned from a research project on felt production in central Turkey over the Thanksgiving break. Unfortunately, the recent terrorism in Turkey curtailed the latter project which is scheduled for completion in the summer of 2004.

Alexis Pogorelskin, member of the Assembly of Yale Alumni and the Executive Committee of Yale Graduate School Alumni, attended meetings of both groups in New Haven in November.

MINNESOTA SEA GRANT NEWS

Jeffrey Gunderson, assistant director, recently received a $245,762 grant from the Great Lakes Protection Fund for a two-year project entitled, “ANS-HACCP Training Initiative: To Prevent the Spread of Biological Pollution.” The goal of the project is to minimize the chance for spreading aquatic nuisance species through fisheries management and baitfish farming operations. Minnesota Sea Grant is leading this project, which involves Sea Grant programs throughout the Great Lakes states.

Gunderson presented, “The ANS-HACCP Approach to Prevent the Spread of Aquatic Nuisance Species by Aquaculture and Baitfish Operations,” at a workshop called Aquaculture Effluents: Overview of EPA Guidelines and standards and BMPs for pond, raceways, and recycle culture systems in October at Ames, IA.

NRRI NEWS

Subhash Basak delivered the following invited lectures during his recent trip to India; “Use of mathematical chemodescriptors and biodescriptors in drug discovery and hazard assessment of chemicals” at Delhi University, Delhi, India; and the Distinguished Professor Ashis Chandra Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India, entitled “Drug discovery in the postgenomic era: A computational/ mathematicalfishing exercise.”
Also during this trip, Basak, as the current President of the International Society of Mathematical Chemistry (ISMC), discussed with leading Indian scientists the opening of local chapters of ISMC in different regions of India including New Delhi, Mumbai/Pune and Kolkata. The Eastern India chapter of ISMC was organized under the guidance of Basak with Professor DK Sinha, former vice chancellor of Visva Bharati University and co-chairperson of the Indo-US Workshop on Mathematical Chemistry Series, being elected the chair of the chapter.

MEDICAL SCHOOL

Robert T. Cormier, assistant professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was recently awarded a $199,850 grant from the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center Faculty Research Development Grant programs 2003. Co-investigators are David A. Largaespada, associate professor, UMN Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development, and Cathy S. Carlson, associate professor, UMN Veterinary Diagnostic Medicine. The title of their grant is “Transposon mediated mutagenesis and gene discovery in ApcMin/+ tumorigenesis.”

Joseph R. Prohaska, professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was an invited speaker at Cornell University in November. He presented a seminar to the Animal Science Department on “What are the characteristics of publishing a successful nutrition manuscript?” A second seminar was given to the Nutritional Sciences Division and was entitled “Regulation of Copper-Dependent Enzymes: Superoxide Dismutase.”

Patricia M. Scott, research assistant professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was awarded a $150,000 grant from the American Cancer Society for her research entitled “Role of GGAs in Yeast Membrane Trafficking.” The grant will run from January 2004 to December 2004.

Scott was also awarded a $12,000, one-year grant from the Minnesota Medical Foundation to support her grant “Characterization of Functional CGA Interactions.”

Anna A. Gybina, graduate student in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Joseph R. Prohaska, professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, published a manuscript entitled “Increased Rat Brain Cytochrome C Correlates with Degree of Perinatal Copper Deficiency Rather than Apoptosis” in the Journal of Nutrition 133, 3361-3368 (2003).

Kendall B. Wallace, professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was an invited speaker at the South Central Regional Chapter of the Society of Toxicology held Louisiana State University, Shreveport, LA in October. The title of his seminar was “Multiple mechanisms of chemical-induced mitochondrionopathies.” Wallace also presented an invited seminar entitled “Conceiving of the next generation of biomarkers of cardiac injury” at the Joint Summit of Markers in Cardiology, Jewish Hospital Heart and Lung Center in Louisville, KY, in October.

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