When cats purr and dogs invite more, more, more tummy scratching, their human friends assume the animals are enjoying themselves. But we have no ultimate proof that animals feel pleasure. Research scientist Jonathan Balcombe (Knoxville ’91), who has spent years studying animal behavior, posits in his book Pleasurable Kingdom that humans aren’t the only animals capable of feeling pleasure.
Like many youngsters who grew up in the 1950s, Michael Lofaro enjoyed watching Fess Parker portray frontiersman Davy Crockett on television. Eventually his interest in Crockett and Daniel Boone led him to a career teaching and researching early American literature and folklore. Lofaro keeps an autographed photo of Parker wearing the famous coonskin cap on a bookcase in his office at UT Knoxville.
President George H. W. Bush enjoyed showing his friends the White House painting of President Abraham Lincoln and his Civil War generals. Bush would point to the painting and assert that all of America’s great presidents were tested by fire. Bush, a decorated World War II hero and experienced Cold War warrior, would have an opportunity to prove himself as America’s commander-in-chief during the l991 Gulf War. His son George W. Bush, only the second U.S. presidential offspring to also hold the presidency, will be judged for his own wartime decisions.
Despite an occasional lull in the procedure and conversation about UT sports, the surgical team in the operating room at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville focuses on the task at hand: implanting an electronic device into the inner ear of an 11-year-old boy to help restore hearing to his left ear.
Tennessee business people, farmers, scientists, and political leaders have begun to rally around a shared vision of a statewide economy powered by ethanol, but this fuel has a distinctly Tennessee twist. What sets Tennessee’s vision apart from other states with an eye toward biofuels is the commitment to make that ethanol from sources other than corn—mostly from a hardy plant called switchgrass.
Why would a retired police officer from Miami own a herd of goats? When you meet Deb Kidwell, it makes perfect sense. Kidwell is raising mules and a special breed of donkey called American Mammoth Jackstock on her farm in Weakley County, Tennessee. It’s her goats that literally clear the way for her growing livestock operation, Lake Nowhere Mule and Donkey Farm.
Ask conservation ecologist Dr. Luke Dollar to describe the moment when he felt farthest removed from the University of Tennessee campus, and he’ll likely cite Madagascar, where he’s logged nearly 6 years researching mammalian predators. Chief among them is the enigmatic fossa (pronounced “FOO-suh”), a 20-pound carnivore that blends a mountain lion’s agility and cunning with the sheer bellicosity of a mongoose.
Foosas help control the predators that devour the human food supply on Madagascar. So when Luke Dollar discovered villagers had killed a foosa, he launched a poster campaign to “Save the fossa, save the harvest.” The campaign has been a success, says Dollar, and its effectiveness has inclined him to expand his educational efforts to the youngest members of Malagasy society, most of whom receive fewer than five years of formal education.
Tom Coens knew something didn’t look right with the letter. Coens, assistant editor for the Andrew Jackson papers at UT Knoxville, spends much of his time perusing letters, memos, speeches, and other communications to and from Jackson.
Alternative fuels--a topic that sparks political, social, intellectual, and cultural debates. As gasoline prices continue to fluctuate, nearly everyone has an opinion about fuel production and consumption and, ultimately, about how to rescue the motorist at the pump, curb U.S. dependency on foreign oil, and lessen adverse effects on the environment.
Maggie Carlin could barely walk 15 feet without taking a break. Although she was only 10 years old, the vivacious redhead suffered excruciating pain from arthritis in both knees. Pain wasn’t anything new to her. At the tender age of 6 months, a veterinarian in Texas diagnosed the golden retriever with luxating kneecaps, and she underwent surgery on her knees. One was successful; the other wasn’t.
Each year almost 10,000 Tennesseans die as a direct result of cigarette smoking. Yet some 1.1 million of the Volunteer State’s residents over the age of 18 continue to smoke. That’s nearly 28 percent of the state’s population, compared with the national average of 23 percent.
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