Mullendore
Gretchen Mullendore
Gretchen Mullendore, assistant professor of atmospheric sciences, heads UND’s participation in the NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE) program. NICE supplies teachers with lesson plans on science and climate change.
In summer 2010, the program also provided internships at UND to undergrads from around the region. The UND students used NASA Earth observation data to conduct research and create webcasts on YouTube to share with middle school students. That fall, lesson plans were created to complement the webcasts. This year, the lesson plans are being field-tested by middle school teachers. The curriculum also was used this past summer at the University of Texas, San Antonio.
Collaborating with Mullendore on the project are Laura Munski, director of the Dakota Science Center in Grand Forks; Andrei Kirilenko, associate professor of earth system science and policy; Fred Remer, associate professor of atmospheric sciences; and Mary Baker, associate professor of teaching and learning.
***
Weaver-Hightower
Marcus Weaver-Hightower
Marcus Weaver-Hightower, associate professor of educational foundations and research, has won a 2012 Critic’s Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Association for his publication, School Food Politics: The Complex Ecology of Hunger and Feeding Around the World. He wrote the book with Sarah A. Robert from the University of Buffalo.
The award typically is given to “recognize and increase awareness of recent scholarship deemed to be outstanding in its field.”
The essays in this book concentrate on the relationship between food and politics among all six inhabited continents of the world. Contributors provide personal experiences with forms of school food programs from all over the globe. The end of the book focuses on the hope for the future of school meals.
Weaver-Hightower is no stranger to the authoring world. He wrote The Politics of Policy in Boys’ Education: Getting Boys “Right” (2008) and was co-editor, with Wayne Martino and Michael Kehler, for The Problem with Boys’ Education: Beyond the Backlash (2009), as well as numerous journal articles. Weaver-Hightower’s research interests include food politics, gender and education, educational policy, and the politics and sociology of education.
***
Askelson
Semke
Mark Askelson and Will Semke
Leaders from industry, government and academe, particularly UND, recently completed two weeks of flight testing of new “sense-and-avoid” technology that could someday help unmanned aircraft better integrate into the national air transportation system.
UND researchers, led by Mark Askelson, associate professor of atmospheric sciences, and Will Semke, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and The MITRE Corporation developed the automatic sense-and-avoid computer software algorithms that were uploaded onto a NASA Langley Research Center general aviation aircraft for the September test. The NASA Langley Cirrus SR-22 flew 147 maneuvers during 39 hours of flight tests in airspace near the Grand Forks International Airport.
The NASA aircraft demonstrated how the technology allowed it to sense and avoid a UND Cessna 172 “intruder” plane, flown by a university instructor pilot.
***
Milavetz
Barry Milavetz
UND has formed the country’s first Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Research Compliance Committee that aims to get ahead of federal plans to regulate UAS in terms of privacy concerns and other social issues. The committee met for the first time Oct. 12, 2012.
The committee comprises first responders; city, county and state government officials; a state’s attorney and a member of the Grand Forks County Sheriff’s Department; UND aerospace experts and other faculty with backgrounds in law, philosophy, ethics, and history. It also includes community members. Barry Milavetz, UND professor of molecular biology and associate vice president for research development and compliance, proposed the UAS committee idea last summer. He says privacy, social responsibility and the relationship between scientific freedom of inquiry and protection of society’s interests are top concerns for UAS researchers.
***
Zhao
Julia Xiaojun Zhao
Julia Xiaojun Zhao, associate professor of chemistry, has been awarded a patent for a breakthrough method that reliably produces nanoparticles potentially useful in medical, environmental and many other creative biotech applications.
Zhao made the discovery with Yuhui Jin, a former chemistry graduate student currently employed by Corning Inc. (of Pyrex fame) in New York, under a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Zhao’s latest patent describes a synthetic method for producing nanoparticles of reproducible and multiple sizes over a specific range. A major challenge is to produce nanoparticles consistent in both quality and size; Zhao and her colleagues invented a breakthrough process to do just that.
This is Zhao’s second patent in the last three years and is based on her extensive ongoing research in the field of nanoparticles. Nanoparticles range in size from 1 to 100 nanometers, or 1 billionth of a meter; a 6-foot person would be about 2 billion nanometers tall and a human hair is about 60,000 nanometers in diameter. Nanoparticles can be used in applications in modern sunscreens — the best contain nanoparticles of zinc oxide, which are practically invisible compared to old screens that layered on thick and white. Nanoparticles are used in scratchproof eyeglasses and stain-repellent fabrics; they’re also used in coatings for solar cells. Gold nanoparticles can be used as part of a process that cleans toxic chemicals out of air.