Objects from long ago and far away promise a tantalizing museum experience this summer at UT Knoxville. The Frank H. McClung Museum is offering “Ancient Bronzes of the Asian Grasslands,” an exhibit from the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, through August 3.
The majority of students can succeed at math and science. “They just need to be taught how,” says Dr. Saundra McGuire, a UT alumna and recent winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.
McGuire is director of the Center for Academic Success at Louisiana State University. She says the earlier students learn how to learn, the better.
Ann Draughon’s career has included many firsts, but she says the most important thing she has done is prepare women and minorities for careers in food microbiology.
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.
What if your computer weren’t really a computer? What if the “hard drive” where you store the vital pieces of your life—like work applications, e-mail, and financial and medical information—wasn’t located in a single piece of equipment, but was available everywhere, all the time, as part of a computing “cloud”?
A glimpse of East Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains shrouded in low-slung clouds is an archetypical image and one that prompted the Cherokee Indians to term the region “the place of blue smoke.” But while the daydreamers among us are inclined to study the cloud formations drifting overhead, the region’s scientists—UT researchers among them—are more interested in what’s happening on, and under, the ground. The cloud formations above and the moving water below are, in fact, closely linked.
The first few months of Madras’s life weren’t easy, although she didn’t seem to mind. During birth, her mother Buljba, an older tiger having her first litter, sat down as the cub was partially out of the birth canal. When the trainer tried to get Buljba to stand, the tiger swung around and slung the newborn cub against the bars of the cage. The result for the cub, Madras, was a severe head tilt.
Jan Simek steps in as interim Knoxville Chancellor, forensic science on display, and UT Extension’s efforts to put Tennessee’s winemaking industry on the map—these and other stories in this edition of UTopics.
Educating students to succeed in the global workplace isn’t just a lofty slogan. Today it’s a necessity. Hundreds of UT Knoxville alumni work in China or travel there frequently. Tennessee Alumnus thanks the many alumni who sent information about their experiences. Unfortunately we couldn’t feature all of them. Here are a few that represent just what a small world our planet has become.
Richmond taps Ayers as president, Mears dies in Knoxville, Geier joins university—these and other stories in this edition of UTopics.
A career in natural resources management conjures up thoughts of working in serene settings, protecting the environment, being a friend to wildlife, and teaching young and old to appreciate the outdoors. Jereme Odom (Martin ’98) does all that and more as a Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency officer. He enforces hunting, fishing, and boating laws, manages state-owned land, and conducts youth programs.
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.
UT is a leader in the development of alternative fuels, the university is enjoying its best year in recent history in terms of state funding, and Dr. Bill Bass has solved the mystery of “The Big Bopper”—these and other stories in this edition of UTopics.
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.
