faculty/staff NEWS

Cheryl Reitan, publications director, presented "Grabbing--and keeping--the reader's attention in print and on the Web" along with Martha Coventry, U of M-Twin Cities, at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District V conference in Chicago in December.

Robert Repinski, associate professor of art, has received a Juror’s Award of Merit for his work “Shelter #1,” included in the exhibition “Monoprint / Monotype,” sponsored by the Mid-America Print Council and currently on view at Quincy University’s Gray Gallery, in Quincy, Illinois. The exhibit was co-curated by Robert Lee Mejer, Distinguished Professor of Art at Quincy and Robert Kennon, associate professor of art at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Mo.
Repinski also had work selected for inclusion in “Positive/Negative 24,” a national, juried exhibition that will be on view during the month of Feb. at the Slocumb Galleries of East Tennessee State University. Photographer Pradip Malde chose the work from several hundred submissions.

NRRI NEWS
The St. Louis River Alliance awarded the Weber Stream Restoration Initiative at UMD’s Natural Resources Research Institute with the Milton Pelletier Environmental Stewardship Award on Jan. 21. The award was given for the Initiative’s efforts to enhance habitat and biodiversity in Lake Superior tributary streams by protecting and restoring watersheds along the North Shore.
Weber Initiative Coordinator and NRRI Scientist Dan Breneman accepted the award as one of several other awardees of the Alliance which seeks to restore and protect the lower St. Louis River and its estuary.
Learn more about the Weber Stream Restoration Initiative at www.lakesuperiorstreams.org/weber.

The UMD Center for Freshwater Research and Policy (CFRP) recently published Fresh Water: Understanding and solving freshwater problems facing the world, a publication that highlights aquatic research being conducted at UMD and how freshwater professionals in northern Minnesota are making a global impact. Copies of this publication can be downloaded from the CFRP web site: http://www.d.umn.edu/cfrp/index.htm

Subhash Basak gave the following six invited lectures and practical tutorial presentations at the University of Valencia, Spain, in December under the “Masters in Green Chemistry” program funded by the University of Valencia and other Spanish universities. This is a newly designed, high-quality, inter-university science program aimed at training gifted students in six advancing frontiers of Green Chemistry.
Basak also gave an invited faculty seminar entitled “Use of mathematical chemodescriptors and biodescriptors in predicting bioactivity and toxicity of chemicals” at the University of Valencia.

Among the 20 most-accessed papers of the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling in 2006 is “Combining Chemodescriptors and Biodescriptors in Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship Modeling” authored by Douglas M. Hawkins (UM, TC), Subhash C. Basak, Jessica Kraker (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire), Kevin T. Geiss (U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Ohio), and Frank A. Witzmann (Indiana University School of Medicine), published in Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 46(1) pp 9 - 16. For more info visit: http://pubs3.acs.org/journals/jcisd8/promo/most/most_accessed/2006.html.

Cindy Hale conducted a seminar entitled “Developing Management Recommendations to Limit the Continued Spread of Invasive Earthworms in Working Forests” at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, on Dec. 4.

Douglas Hawkins (School of Statistics, U of MN, TC campus), Jessica Kraker (University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire), Subhash Basak, and Denise Mills published the paper, “QSPR Checking and validation: a case study with hydroxyl radical reaction rate constant” in the international journal SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research, volume 19, pp. 525-539, 2008.

Larry Zanko gave a presentation entitled “Gray is Green: Aggregate Potential of Minnesota Taconite Industry By-products, Use of Mine and Industrial By-products as Aggregate,” at the National Transportation Board Meeting in Washington, D.C. in Jan.

MN SEA GRANT NEWS
New Publication from Minnesota Sea Grant -Towards Sustainable Tourism. This 40-page interactive Web booklet explores the ingenuity and efforts applied to sustainable tourism in the countries of Chile, New Zealand, and Australia. Access on-line http://www.seagrant.umn.edu/publications/T16.

Sea Grant Fellowship Opportunities
Application deadlines are approaching for the Great Lakes Commission/Sea Grant Fellowship, the Knauss/Sea Grant Fellowship, and the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service/Sea Grant Fellowship in Fisheries. Review these opportunities carefully and encourage students to apply.

MEDICAL SCHOOL-DULUTH NEWS
An article about teaching children about the brain appeared in the Dec. issue of Minnesota Medicine “Service Learning in Rural Communities (Medical Students Teach Children about the Brain).” Written by the Medical School’s Janet L. Fitzakerley, Ph.D., associate professor, physiology and pharmacology, and Ruth Westra DO, MPH, chair of the Duluth Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, the article describes the potential benefits to both medical and elementary school students of incorporating service learning into medical school curriculum via Brain Awareness presentations. Since 2005, medical students taking part in the program have made presentations about the brain and how it works to more than 10,000 elementary school students throughout Minnesota and Northwestern Wisconsin.

The UMD Medical School from Dec. 6-7, was the site of a Military Combat Healthcare Training program for military medics and police officers. Forty-three army medics from the 34th Infantry Division, six police officers from Duluth, and 13 instructional staff from Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin participated in the program. All of the medics were preparing for tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. Colonel Kevin Murphy, M.D. from the Army National Guard in Duluth started this program working with Arlen Severson, Ph.D., anatomy professor on the Duluth campus, about 10 years ago.

The Medical School hosted the annual meeting of the Autosense project from Dec. 11-12. Team members attended from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), University of Memphis, Ohio State University, and Guided Therapeutics an Atlanta-based company that has developed a tool to assess alcohol and stress hormones. The Autosense project is supported by NIH to develop a wireless sensor network that enables continuous collection of real-time data on the effects of stress and addictive substances.

PHARMACY NEWS
See the next issue of Currents.

Campus Events --- This issue

Campus News --- This issue

Currents Schedule

Subscribe for an E-mail notice of each Currents issue: instructions

To submit material to CURRENTS, email currents@d.umn.edu

The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.

Comments to: creitan@d.umn.edu
Copyright: 2008-2009 University of Minnesota Duluth
Page URL: http://www.d.umn.edu/currents
Page Coordinator: University Relations