FACULTY/STAFF NEWS

Aydin Durgunoglu, professor, Department of Psychology, and her colleagues at Mother Child Education Foundation wrote a literacy curriculum for Turkey, taught and revised it. The literacy program recently received one of the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prizes. Their program targets underprivileged girls and women. It also developed a wide range of educational material which also benefits a number of male participants, particularly Turkish army conscripts. A women’s support component focusing on women’s rights, health and hygiene, communication and child development is also part of the program. Durgunoglu will be in Turkey this summer to work on another revision.

Douglas Dunham, professor, Department of Computer Science, is one of 17 recipients nationally to receive the Outstanding Advising Certificate of Merit in the faculty academic advising from the National Academic Advising Association.

Charlene Harkins, assistant professor, Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, presented at the Annual Meeting of the Minnesota Dietetic Association, April 27-28 in Alexandria, MN. The title of her presentation was “Sports Nutrition for Young Athletes... and their parents.”

Sandy Maturi, student support assistant, Department of Social Work, was honored as the 2006 Outstanding Staff for the College of Education and Human Services Professions (CEHSP). Lynn Bye, associate professor, Department of Social Work, was selected as the 2006 Outstanding Faculty CEHSP. Both awards were presented at the CEHSP's
Thirteenth Annual Honors Convocation on May 1, 2006.

MINNESOTA SEA GRANT NEWS

Douglas Jensen, aquatic invasive species program coordinator, and Dale Bergeron, maritime commerce educator, gave a presentation “Stopping the Stowaways: Aliens of Lake Superior,” for Cafe Scientifique held at Pizza Luce during May. Jensen gave the presentation, “Habitattitude: A National Education Campaign to Prevent the Release of Aquarium Fish and Plants,” at a meeting of the City of Duluth’s Environmental Advisory Council during May.
Jensen also gave a presentation, “Baseline Survey Shows that Aquarists and Water Gardeners Can be the Problem and Solution to AIS Spread,” at the 14th International Conference on Aquatic Invasive Species, in Key Biscayne, FL, in May.

Barb Liukkonen, water resources education coordinator, gave two presentations and a poster during the Association of Natural Resource Extension Professionals conference at Park City, UT, in May. The first presentation, with Eleanor Burkett of the UM Extension Service, was “Preventing the Spread of AIS from Water Gardening.” The second presentation, with V. Crary, M. Erickson, J. Linn, and M. Murphy, was “Does Arsenic in Drinking Water Affect Dairy Products?” The poster, with Burkett and Mary Blickenderfer, Extension Service, and Cindy Hagley, environmental quality extension educator, was “Sustaining Our Shores: New Research, Demonstration and Education Through the University of Minnesota Shoreland Education Program, Erosion Control for Property Owners.”
Luikkonen was also co-author of the presentation, “Volunteer Monitoring of E. coli in Upper Midwest Streams: A Comparison of Methods and Preferences,” with K. Stepenuck, L. Crighton, J. Iles, E. O’Brien, and L. Wolfson, given at the 5th National Water Quality Monitoring Conference held in San Jose, CA, during May.
Liukkonen received two gold awards from the Association of Natural Resources Extension Professionals (ANREP). The first was for her work as part of an outstanding E. coli volunteer monitoring project team along with members from Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Iowa. The second gold award was for mixed materials created for the “Prevent the Introduction of Aquatic Invasive Species Through Water Gardening” project. Eleanor Burkett, UM Extension Service, shared in this award. The awards were given during ANREP’s biannual business meeting in Park City, UT, during May.

Sharon Moen, editor, gave a reading from her book, Superior Science, Stories of Lake Superior Research, as part of the Northern Festival of Words sponsored by Lake Superior Writers in April.

Marie Zhuikov, communications coordinator, and Marco Yzer with the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Minneapolis campus, gave the talk “Using Media Effectively for Behavior Change,” at the National Sea Grant Outreach Meeting held in Rincon, Puerto Rico, during May.

Nick Zlonis, communication designer, and his work on the Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence Great Lakes Web site (www.coseegreatlakes.net) was honored by the Great Lakes Information Network as Site of the Month for June. Zlonis gave the presentation, “Web Communication Trends” at the National Sea Grant Outreach Meeting held in Rincon, Puerto Rico, during May.

NRRI NEWS

Subhash Basak chaired a session on Environmental Fate Modeling at the 12th International Workshop on Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships in Environmental Chemistry (QSAR 2006) in Lyon, France, May 8-12. He gave the following invited lecture at the conference, “Prediction of halocarbon toxicity using chemodescriptors and proteomics based biodescriptors: An integrated approach,” and presented the poster “Prediction of dermal absorption using quantitative structure-activity relationship modeling” authored collectively with Denise Mills (NRRI) and Moiz Mumtaz and Selene Chou (both of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry).
Additionally, several other members of Basak’s research team attended the conference, presenting the following lectures and posters:

Brian Gute presented a paper, authored collectively by Gute, Basak and Douglas Hawkins (University of Minnesota Twin Cities), entitled “Use of tailored similarity in estimating toxicity of chemicals” and two posters: 1) “A tailored approach to clustering and data mining” authored collectively by Gute, Basak and James Riviere (North Carolina State University) and 2) “Map information content: An information-theoretic biodescriptor for characterizing toxic response in proteomics maps” authored collectively by Gute, Basak and Frank Witzmann (Indiana University School of Medicine).

Ramanathan Natarajan presented a paper, authored jointly by Natarajan, Basak, Megan Forbes (all three of NRRI), and Jessica Kraker and Douglas Hawkins (both from University of Minnesota Twin Cities), entitled “Predicting toxicity of uncouplers of oxidative phosphorylation: A hierarchical QSAR approach” and three posters: 1) “Developing QSAR models using primary and/or secondary descriptors” authored jointly by Natarajan, Mills, Basak, Kraker and Hawkins; 2) “NMR spectral invariant: Novel descriptors for diastereomers and enantiomers” authored jointly by Natarajan and Basak; and 3) “Proper use of cross-validation while descriptor thinning: Naïve versus true q-square” authored collectively by Natarajan, Basak, Kraker and Hawkins.

Ashesh Nandy presented a paper, authored jointly by Nandy and Basak, entitled “Mathematical bio-descriptors of DNA sequence structure and their applications” and the poster “Graphical representation and numerical characterization of H5N1 avian flu neuraminidase gene sequence” authored jointly by Nandy, Basak and Gute.

Terry Neumann (a UMD Chemistry graduate student working with Basak’s group) presented the poster “A novel approach for the numerical characterization of molecular chirality” authored collectively by Neumann, Natarajan and Basak.

Lucinda Johnson was one of three speakers invited to brief the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Department Heads and Program Managers on May 11 at their annual retreat about the science of climate change models and potential impacts of climate change in Minnesota. Johnson’s presentation was entitled “Great Lakes in a Changing Climate.”
She also participated in a workshop entitled “Old Growth and Extended Rotation Forest Workshop” from May 21 - 24, organized by researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison and funded by the National Council on Science for Sustainable Forestry. From May 18-20, Johnson attended a workshop on Urban Ecosystems held at the Environmental Protection Agency’s MidContinent Ecology Lab in Duluth.
On April 19, Lucinda Johnson presented a seminar entitled “Developing Indicators of Condition in Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands: What Do Fish and Invertebrates Tell Us?” at the Coastal Mississippi Research Laboratory of the University of Southern Mississippi. Johnson also was the featured seminar speaker on April 26th at the St. Anthony Falls Hydrologic Laboratory’s (UM-TC) Annual Award ceremony. The title of her seminar was “Developing Indicators of Great Lakes Coastal Ecosystems.”
Lucinda Johnson was appointed by Thomas Sullivan, Sr. V.P. for Academic Affairs and Provost, to serve on a committee to design a blueprint for a University-wide “Institute on the Environment.” She has also been appointed to the Science Advisory Board of the Syracuse Center for Excellence in Water and the Environment, an EPA-funded institute similar to NRRI. Johnson attended the first Science Advisory meeting May 8-9 to review proposals for the first competitive round of grants to be awarded by the Center.

Igor V. Kolomitsyn presented a paper at The American Society for Microbiology 106th general meeting entitled: “Evaluation of Betula neoalaskana, Betula kenaica, and Betula papyrifera outer bark extracts Against Human Herpes Virus 2 (HSV2)” co-authored by T. Todosiychuk (National Technical University of Ukraine), I. V. Kolomitsyn (NRRI), P. A. Krasutsky (NRRI), M. R. Karim (UMD Department of Biology).

Dean Peterson gave the following presentations at the 52nd Annual Institute on Lake Superior Geology meeting in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, in May: A poster presentation titled “3D visualizations of mafic intrusions in the Duluth Complex, northeastern Minnesota,” and, along with Jim Miller of U.S. Geographical Survey, a presentation titled “The Precambrian Research Center - A new initiative to promote Precambrian field studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth”.

Mark Severson was a co-author on the following publications, 1) “Final report on the geology, geochemistry, geophysical attributes, and platinum group potential of mafic to ultramafic intrusions in Minnesota, excluding the Duluth Complex” Jirsa, M.A., Miller, J.D., Jr., Severson, M.J., and Chandler, V.W., Minnesota Geological Survey, 2006, and 2) “Platinum group element potential of mafic to ultramafic intrusions in Minnesota” Jirsa, M.A., Miller, J.D., Jr., Severson, M.J., and Chandler, V.W., The Minnesota Prospector, May, 2006, p. 1-5.

Larry Zanko gave a presentation titled “An overview of taconite aggregate research efforts” at the 17th Annual Transportation Research Conference in St. Paul.

PHARMACY NEWS

Paul Ranelli, professor, was elected as Member at Large to the Minnesota Public Health Association’s Governing Council for a two-year term.

UM MEDICAL SCHOOL-DULUTH NEWS
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