News Releases - 2007

Dec. 20, 2007

Volunteers, including several from ASU’s Department of Speech and Hearing Science, join with audiologists, physicians and the Mesa Baseline Rotary Club to provide care and hearing aides in Guaymas, Mexico. “This year, we provided care to 218 people, mainly kids, and fitted 104 hearing aides,” says Gail Belus, an ASU clinical associate professor of audiology.

Dec. 7, 2007

ASU’s computational mathematical sciences program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will power a new set of undergraduate research projects beginning in January with a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

Dec. 3, 2007

Geocoding, national surveys, focus groups and Web collaboration portals are among the fee-based research services being used by faculty members and the public at ASU’s Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR), an on-campus, state-of-the-art research facility.

Nov. 9, 2007

ASU professor Paul Davies – an acclaimed theoretical physicist, cosmologist and popular author – was recently honored during an investiture ceremony at the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C., for his induction as a Member of the Order of Australia. The honor, part of the Australian Honours System, was awarded to Davies “for service to science, particularly the disciplines of physics, cosmology and astrobiology, as an educator, author and public commentator.”

Oct. 29, 2007

Kids of all ages, and their parents and teachers too, are invited to learn more about Earth and space through hands-on activities, experimental demonstrations and public lectures by ASU scientists from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 3, in the Bateman Physical Science Building, F-Wing, at ASU’s Tempe campus. The annual Earth and Space Exploration Day, hosted by ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, provides a variety of educational activities “for kids ages 5 to 95,” says professor Tom Sharp, a mineralogist and associate director of the NASA Arizona Space Grant Consortium.

Oct. 25, 2007

Jenny Norton, an ordained minister and former Arizona state legislator, who graduated from ASU in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in justice studies and a minor in religious studies, is this year’s recipient of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame award. The college is also honoring William C. “Bill” Jenkins, Christine Duff Muldoon and Stephen J. Pyne. Jenkins and Muldoon will receive the college’s Distinguished Achievement Award. Pyne, a Regents’ Professor in the School of Life Sciences, will receive the Distinguished Faculty Award.

Oct. 24, 2007

“Planet Bob,” a joint video production from ASU's International Institute for Species Exploration and Media Alchemy Inc., uses humor to draw attention to the serious subject of biodiversity and the science of taxonomy. Combining live action, state-of-the-art animation, and the vocal talents of venerable TV host Hugh Downs and others, “Planet Bob” presents the mysterious, exciting – and surprisingly funny – side of taxonomy.

Oct. 17, 2007

Evidence of early humans living on the coast in South Africa, harvesting food from the sea, employing complex bladelet tools and using red pigments in symbolic behavior 164,000 years ago, far earlier than previously documented, is being reported in the Oct. 18 issue of the journal Nature. The international team of researchers reporting the findings include Curtis Marean, a paleoanthropologist with the Institute of Human Origins at ASU and three graduate students in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. “Our findings show that at 164,000 years ago in coastal South Africa humans expanded their diet to include shellfish and other marine resources, perhaps as a response to harsh environmental conditions,” notes Marean. “This is the earliest dated observation of this behavior.”

Oct. 1, 2007

Gloria Steinem, a writer, editor and activist who has been speaking out on issues of equality for more than 40 years, will be at ASU Oct. 17 to deliver the Feldt/Barbanell Women of the World Lecture at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Union’s Arizona Ballroom. The title of her talk is “Feminism for the 21st Century.” The event, presented by ASU’s Women and Gender Studies program, is free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Doors open at
6 p.m. More information is available at (480) 965-2358.

Sept. 27, 2007

Analyzing layers of sedimentary rock in a kilometer-long core sample from the Hamersley Basin in Western Australia, two multinational teams of scientists, including four researchers from ASU, report finding evidence that a small but significant amount of oxygen – a whiff – was present in the oceans and possibly Earth’s atmosphere 2.5 billion years ago. “We seem to have captured a piece of time before the Great Oxidation Event during which the amount of oxygen was actually changing – caught in the act, as it were,” says Ariel Anbar, an associate professor in the college’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Sept. 7, 2007

The words “complexity” and “sustainability” haven’t commonly been partnered with one of the fastest growing economies in the world, China, but that is changing. Some 1,400 environmental scientists, and policy makers from 70 countries gathered at the EcoSummit 2007 in Beijing earlier this year to discuss such issues and the challenges of global warming and ecosystem degradation. Taking part was James Collins, Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and Environment of ASU’s School of Life Sciences, and assistant director for the biological sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Collins delivered the opening plenary lecture “Ecology in the 21st century: Where do we go from here?”

Sept. 7, 2007

Global warming looms large in the news, however, one benefit seems to have arisen from the atmospheric changes on Earth since the Paleozoic Era, 300 million years ago. Lower levels of atmospheric oxygen (21 percent now compared to 35 percent then) apparently dictate that our modern insects, like cockroaches, are no longer the size of small dogs. Good news for us, but how did such large organisms evolve in the first place and why aren’t they stopping traffic like in a bad “B” movie in downtown New York City today? The answer, supported by findings released in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by scientists from Midwestern University, Glendale, Ariz., Arizona State University, and the Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Ill., lies in how insects breathe, and more specifically, in how limited their leg space is.

Sept. 5, 2007

Acclaimed journalist Robin Wright has covered every major political change in the Middle East from the Iranian revolution in 1979 to the rise of militant Islam to the war in Iraq. She will address "The Problems and Promise of Democracy in the Middle East” when she delivers this year’s Jonathan and Maxine Marshall Distinguished Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 18 in ASU’s Gammage Auditorium. This annual lecture series brings to ASU nationally known scholars concerned with promoting culture through the humanities and a better understanding of the problems of democracy.

Sept. 5, 2007

When the larvae of the primitive social insect Polistes metricus, a paper wasp, slips into the quiet pupal stage, she doesn’t know if she’ll arise a worker or gyne (future queen) – unless she consults with ASU’s social insect researcher Gro Amdam. Amdam’s group, which includes postdoctoral fellow Florian Wolschin, is shedding new light on the development of colonial insects from solitary ancestors through study of a primitive social order of wasps. Their findings were highlighted on the cover and published Aug. 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Sept. 5, 2007

Doris Marie Provine, a professor and former director of the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at ASU has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to do research in Canada and Mexico. Her current work centers on unauthorized immigrants who have set down roots in their adopted homes and in particular how city officials in Vancouver, Phoenix and Mexico City manage immigration issues; how police, judges and other legal officials are dealing with people they believe to be in the country without authorization.

Aug. 27, 2007

The largest grant amount ever awarded to fund mathematics research at ASU will support a project aimed at making advances in medical technology to improve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The National Science Foundation grant will provide $1 million over three years to the project titled “Mathematical Foundations of Magnetic Resonance Imaging” led by Rosemary Renaut, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

Aug. 3, 2007

Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, widely acclaimed for her scholarly and pioneering work promoting understanding and appreciation of the rich diversity of American society, has been named associate dean for strategic initiatives in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. “Dr. Candelaria’s unique background, scholarship and leadership at ASU will be a valuable asset to our foci on reinventing what a liberal arts education means in the 21st century and in creating a challenging yet nurturing academic environment that contributes to the retention, success and graduation of our students,” says Quentin Wheeler, ASU vice president and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Aug. 1, 2007

For nearly 40 years, the complete photographic record from the Apollo moon project sat in a freezer at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, almost untouched, until now. A new digital archive – created through a collaboration between ASU and NASA – is making available on the Internet high-resolution scans of original Apollo flight films. These startling images will be accessible to both researchers and the general public, to browse or download. Mark Robinson, professor of geological sciences in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, is the lead scientist on the project.

July 18, 2007

Frigid geysers spewing material up through cracks in the crust of Pluto’s companion Charon and recoating parts of its surface in ice crystals could be making this distant world into the equivalent of an outer solar system ice machine. “There are a number of mechanisms that could explain the presence of crystalline water ice on the surface of Charon. Our spectra point consistently to cryovolcanism, which brings liquid water to the surface, where it freezes into ice crystals. That implies that Charon’s interior possesses liquid water,” says Jason Cook, a doctoral student in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU who led a team of planetary scientists studying the surface of Charon. Their findings are published in a July issue The Astrophysical Journal.

July 11, 2007

Scientists at ASU's Mars Space Flight Facility are using the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to monitor a large dust storm on the Red Planet. The instrument, a multi-wavelength camera sensitive to five visible wavelengths and 10 infrared ones, is providing Mars scientists and spacecraft controllers with global maps that track how much atmospheric dust is obscuring the planet. The dust storm, which erupted during the last week of June 2007, is affecting operations for all five spacecraft operating at Mars. The fleet includes two NASA rovers on the ground (Spirit and Opportunity), plus three orbiters, two of which belong to NASA (Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) and one to the European Space Agency (Mars Express).

July 10, 2007

Gro Amdam, an assistant professor in Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences who heads social insect studies in laboratories at both ASU and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, is one of 20 researchers now bearing the distinction “Outstanding Young Investigator” from the Research Council of Norway. She will receive the U.S. equivalent of about $1.6 million over four years from this award to support her research in understanding the genetic and physiological basis of life history regulation in honeybees at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences’ Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences.

July 9, 2007

ASU researcher Stephen Albert Johnston, a professor in the School of Life Sciences, has received a five-year, $7.5 million grant to develop a preventive vaccine against breast cancer, the second-leading cause of death in women.

July 9, 2007

John Kouvetakis, a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry, and Wayne Frasch, a professor in the School of Life Sciences, are among Arizona State University professors receiving funding from Science Foundation Arizona’s 2007 Small Business Catalytic program.

July 5, 2007

Roy Curtiss, a professor in the School of Life Sciences and director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at ASU's Biodesign Institute, was named “Bioscience Researcher of the Year” by the Arizona BioIndustry Association. Curtiss was honored for his outstanding contributions to improve health care and a better quality of life through his research. He is a leader in exploring the genetic basis by which bacteria colonize, invade and induce disease. Dubbed in the press as a “70-year-old biology superstar,” Curtiss also has considerable expertise in avian, plant and phage genetics.

June 21, 2007

Laboratory measurements of a high-pressure mineral believed to exist deep within the Earth show that the mineral may not have the right properties to explain a mysterious layer lying just above the planet's core. A team of scientists, including Allen McNamara of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration, made the first laboratory study of the deformation properties of a high-pressure silicate mineral named post-perovskite. The work appears in the June 22 issue of the scientific journal Science.

June 20, 2007

A sheet of molten rock roughly 10 miles thick spreads underneath much of the American Southwest, some 250 miles below Tucson, Ariz. From the surface, you can't see it, smell it or feel it. But Arizona geophysicists Daniel Toffelmier and James Tyburczy detected the molten layer with a comparatively new and overlooked technique for exploring the deep Earth that uses magnetic eruptions on the sun.

June 19, 2007

Gro Amdam, an assistant professor in ASU ’s School of Life Sciences who heads social insect studies in laboratories at both ASU and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences’ Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences, is one of only 20 researchers chosen this year to enter The Pew Charitable Trusts’ exclusive rolls as a Pew Scholar in the biomedical sciences. About 150 eligible colleges across the nation were invited to submit a candidate for the award this year. Remarkably, it was the first year that Arizona State University was invited to participate and Amdam was the sole candidate put forward by ASU President Michael M. Crow.

June 8, 2007

James Rice, of ASU's Mars Space Flight Facility, will be one of the initial eight inductees into the Space Camp Hall of Fame at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. Emceeing the June 13 event will be actor William Shatner (of Star Trek fame), with special guests former NASA astronauts Story Musgrave and Jim Halsell. Rice is a faculty research associate in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. An astrogeologist, Rice works primarily on NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

June 8, 2007

ASU’s innovative “cosmic think tank” – BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science – will host an international workshop this month to probe the innermost secrets of the atom. Physicist Yakir Aharonov, the Distinguished Professor of Theoretical Physics in the Center for Quantum Studies at George Mason University, Fairfax, Va., will deliver the opening address.

June 6, 2007

A team of researchers from Arizona State University, Purdue University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences has discovered evidence that honeybees have adopted a phylogenetically old molecular cascade – TOR (target of rapamycin), linked to nutrient and energy sensing – and put it to use in caste development. Gro Amdam, an assistant professor in ASU’s School of Life Sciences, notes that queen-fate can be blocked, and that workers develop, when TOR activity is reduced during development.

June 5, 2007

How social or altruistic behavior evolved has been a central and hotly debated question, particularly by those researchers engaged in the study of social insect societies – ants, bees and wasps. Researchers, including professor Bert Hölldobler of ASU's School of Life Sciences and the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, propose a model, based on tug-of-war theory, that may explain the selection pressures that mark the evolutionary transition from primitive society to superorganism.

June 1, 2007

Patterns of human behavior and movement in crowded cities – the tipping point at which agitated crowds become anti-social mobs, the configuration of civic areas as defensible spaces that also promote free speech, the design of retail space that fosters active walking – are at the core of an immersive 3-D computational model under development by an Arizona State University geographer. “Crowds are vital to the lifeblood of our cities, yet, crowd behavior is veiled to traditional academic inquiry,” says Paul M. Torrens, an assistant professor in the School of Geographical Sciences.

May 9, 2007

Two professors from the cadre of chairs and directors in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have been tapped to head up the college’s largest divisions – the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the Division of Social Sciences.

Sid P. Bacon, who chaired the Department of Speech and Hearing Science before becoming interim dean of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in December, has been appointed dean of that division. And, Linda Costigan Lederman, a professor of health communication in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication and director of the Institute for Social Science Research, has been appointed dean of the Division of Social Sciences. The appointments were made by Quentin Wheeler, ASU vice president and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

May 9, 2007

Professor Sid P. Bacon is an auditory psychophysicist – a hearing scientist – and the new dean of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His appointment as dean of the college’s largest division is the latest leadership role held by Bacon since coming to ASU in 1988 as an associate professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science. Bacon served as director of the interdisciplinary doctoral program in the department, and later as acting chair and then chair. This past December, he was tapped to serve as interim dean of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, a position recently made permanent.

May 9, 2007

Understanding human beings and human behavior is a central theme of contemporary times, says Linda Costigan Lederman, who, on May 15, becomes the dean of the Division of Social Sciences in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “That’s the importance of social sciences – understanding the individual in relation to others in the context of cultures and societies,” says Lederman, director of the Institute for Social Science Research at ASU and a professor of health communication in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication.

May 9, 2007

Sharon E. Robinson Kurpius, David MacKinnon and N. Joseph Cayer have been named ASU outstanding graduate mentors for 2006-2007. The award recognizes their commitment and excellence in encouraging the intellectual and professional growth of their students.

May 4, 2007

The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter is helping mark a milestone May 4. An image from THEMIS showing Martian lava flows and wind streaks mingling with impact craters, becomes the 1,200th "Image of the Day" posted online at themis.asu.edu/latest.html.

The Mars Space Flight Facility in the School of Earth and Space Exploration operates the site, which is updated every weekday with images and data from THEMIS. The first Image of the Day was posted March 27, 2002. "We usually select the Image of the Day to show the wide variety of surface features present on Mars," says Kelly Bender, THEMIS mission planner. Image of the Day #1200 shows a strip of ground on Mars that measures 11 miles (18 kilometers) wide by 39 miles (63 km) long. "From the very beginning of the THEMIS project I wanted to bring Mars alive for everyone," says Philip Christensen, Regents' Professor of geological sciences. "One of the most enjoyable ways has been to post a new image each day of the mission with a brief description of what we think we are looking at."

May 4, 2007

Arizona State University will join 23,000 members of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in 145 countries to celebrate International Museum Day on May 18. Nine museums and galleries on ASU’s Tempe campus, including several in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will each be open for a scheduled tour between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. The public is invited to participate in one of the guided tours, or, spend the entire day.

May 3, 2007

The Mathematical Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) and its founder, Arizona State University Regents’ Professor Carlos Castillo-Chavez, received high marks from the American Mathematical Society (AMS) for increasing diversity in the mathematics profession. The AMS Committee on the Professions cited the work done by the institute as a 2007 “mathematics program that makes a difference” and commended Castillo-Chavez “for his high level of commitment and his successful efforts to improve the diversity of the profession of mathematics in the United States.”

May 3, 2007

During the remarkable cascade of events of photosynthesis, plants approach the pinnacle of stinginess by scavenging nearly every photon of available light energy to produce food. Yet after many years of careful research into its exact mechanisms, some key questions remain about this fundamental biological process that supports all life on earth. Now, a research team led by Neal Woodbury, a scientist at ASU’s Biodesign Institute, has come up with a new insight into the mechanism of photosynthesis, which involves the orchestrated movement of proteins on the timescale of a millionth of a millionth of a second. Their findings are described in the May 4 issue of the journal Science. The research team includes lead author Haiyu Wang, Biodesign Institute; Su Lin, Biodesign Institute; James Allen, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; JoAnn Williams, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Sean Blankert and Christa Laser, Biodesign Institute.

May 3, 2007

Graduate students from life sciences, anthropology and mechanical engineering at ASU are among the select applicants chosen nationwide to receive National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research fellowships. Dani Moore, Zachary Stahlschmidt, Phillip Wheat and Ashley Evans will receive $30,000 for three years, plus an additional $11,000 in educational and travel allowances, to pursue their research dreams.

May 3, 2007

Maria Luz Cruz-Torres, an associate professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University, has been elected a Fellow in the Society for Applied Anthropology. Fellows are elected for their academic and applied contributions in the field and the excellence of their scholarship. Cruz-Torres is a socio-cultural anthropologist who specializes in environmental, applied and economic anthropology. Her areas of research include the impact of globalization, political ecology, and women and work in the informal economic sector.

May 2, 2007

For the first time, scientists have found that water ice lies at variable depths over small-scale patches on the Red Planet. The discovery draws a much more detailed picture of underground ice on Mars than was previously available. The new results appear in the May 3 issue of the scientific journal Nature. "We find the top layer of soil has a huge effect on the water ice in the ground," says Joshua Bandfield, a research specialist in Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration and sole author of the paper. His findings come from data sent back to Earth by the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. THEMIS is a sophisticated camera that takes images in 5 visual bands and 10 heat-sensing (infrared) ones. "Scientists have known for more than a decade that water is on Mars, mostly in the form of ice," says Philip Christensen of ASU's Mars Space Flight Facility. Christensen, a Regents' Professor of geological sciences at ASU, designed THEMIS but did not participate in this research. "What's exciting is finding out where the ice is in detail and how it got there. We've reached the next level of sophistication in our questions," Christensen says.

May 2, 2007

Angelita Reyes, professor of African and African American Studies and English, is traveling to Almaty and Astana, Kazakhstan, this spring at the invitation of the U.S. Department of State’s International Information Programs to lecture on “African American Women in American Society.” Almaty is home to the largest number of women's organizations in Kazakhstan and Astana is the capital city and center of the government. At the request of Ablay Khan Kazakh University of International Relations and World Languages, Zhetysu State University, and Kazakhstan-Russia University, Reyes will participate in formal and informal sessions about African American women’s experiences, accomplishments, and challenges in the United States in the framework of race, ethnicity, gender, and society. She will also present autobiographical vignettes from her own cultural background, in part, from the Garifuna of Honduras.

May 1, 2007

As ASU positions itself to make a major move forward as the academic leader in sustainability, Jonathan Fink has been named the Julie A. Wrigley director of the Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS), and chief sustainability officer, a newly created position within the Office of the President. Fink, ASU’s vice president for research and economic affairs for the past 10 years, will split his faculty appointment between the School of Sustainability and the School of Earth and Space Exploration.

May 1, 2007

Three dynamic women who share a dream of helping Native American communities have won national Udall Scholarships. One of the three is Sharon Cini, an American Indian Studies major in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, who wants to become a health care administrator at the hospital in her grandmother’s hometown, on the Navajo reservation. Cini already is involved in Native American health care, having worked as an outreach coordinator and parent educator at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, a substance abuse counselor and a clinician who trains non-Native American foster parents for Native American children. This spring she began working with the board of the Sage Memorial Hospital in Ganado, a struggling institution that needs leadership and is grateful for her help. Cini, a Navy veteran who is Navajo and Hopi, follows a tradition: her great-grandmother was a medicine woman and her mother was a nurse at Winslow Indian Health Services for 30 years.

Grant Foundation selects SSFD's Simpkins as 'Grant Scholar'

May 1, 2007

Sandra Simpkins, an assistant professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics, is one of the five newly named William T. Grant Scholars. She will receive $350,000 over five years to support her research titled “The Determinants of Mexican-Origin Adolescents’ Participation in Organized Activities: The Role of Culture, Settings, and the Individual.” The William T. Grant Scholars program has a 26-year history of supporting early career researchers in the social and behavioral sciences. Some 129 scholars have been named during the history of the program. "The goal of this program is to identify exceptional early career scholars and give them the financing, mentorship, and interdisciplinary experiences to make them even better,” said Robert C. Granger, president of the New York-based William T. Grant Foundation.

April 30, 2007

The Arizona InterFaith Movement recently honored ASU's Center for the Study of Religion & Conflict with a Golden Rule Award. The mission of the Arizona InterFaith Movement is to build bridges of understanding, respect and support among diverse people of faith through education, dialogue, service and the implementation of the Golden Rule. “Speaking on behalf of the many faculty and staff associated with the center, we are honored to be recognized by the Arizona Interfaith Movement,” says Linell Cady, director and Franca G. Oreffice Dean's Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies. “This organization, under the leadership of Dr. Paul Eppinger, is involved in working to foster understanding and respect across religious communities in our state. It is such important work. We very much appreciate their recognition of our efforts at ASU to deepen understanding and advance solutions for conflicts that include a religious dimension.”

April 27, 2007

Sex sells. The thrum and flash of an automobile, the whisper of designer silk, the tease of a tattoo, and the ching-ching of gold chains and rings are paired in media and on the streets with come-hither abdominal tautness and the flutter of eyelashes. It's a potent advertising mix, all to say: “Pick me.” You don't have to look far to find correlates in the animal and plant kingdoms. Nature's showy subjects also promote reproductive success with bright colors and flash, in feathers, scales, petals and wings. So what is it about bling? With millions of years of evolution behind them, wouldn't you think butterflies would be more evolved? It turns out that there's more substance behind all that flash and glitter than show. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, ASU biologists Nathan Morehouse and Ron Rutowski demonstrate that butterflies have taken their colors and flash seriously, into the ultraviolet wavelengths where humans cannot see, but butterflies can, using pigments (pterins) and nanoscale structures that make human nanofabrication look downright crude – and female butterflies swoon.

April 27, 2007

ASU's Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost of the University introduced the new annual Faculty Achievement Awards April 24 at the inaugural award ceremony held at the ASU Art Museum. The award, created to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the New American University, honored a unique set of 19 faculty members across a wide range of disciplines, including several from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

April 25, 2007

The next astronauts to go to the moon will know where to land, thanks to a powerful camera run by one of ASU's own. “I'm allowed to work only on ‘M' bodies: The moon, Mercury, Mars, minor planets … you get the idea,” jokes Mark Robinson, a professor of geological sciences in ASU's new School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE).

April 20, 2007

Happy birthday, William Shakespeare! How time flies. How did you get to be 443, and still be so much alive? ASU's Department of English has planned an entire day of festivities to celebrate the Bard's birthday April 23 on the Tempe campus. The day begins with festivities hosted by the English Club, from 8 a.m. to noon on the Alumni Lawn. These include live readings, performances of short scenes and parodies, and “general merriment and reveling.” From 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., about 90 students from Fountain Hills High School and the New School for Arts and Academics will perform “A Midsummer Night's Dream” on Alumni Lawn, alternating in scenes to create a full production. The finale is “Shakespeare's Multimedia Birthday Party,” from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in Coor Hall, room 120. This event will include scenes and soliloquies, live Elizabethan music, a reading of select sonnets and an illustrated talk on Shakespeare in film.

April 20, 2007

The National Science Foundation has selected School of Life Sciences graduate student Jason Walker to attend the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes for U.S. Graduate Students (EAPSI).

April 18, 2007

Many significant discoveries have enriched our exploration and understanding of the brain, including one of its most active cellular elements – neurons – since the brain was first described in 7,000 B.C. by Egyptian scholars. Scientists know basics behind how nerves transmit action potentials, the concepts of electrical and chemical transmission, and identified a variety of pumps, pores, and proteins, as well as a range of ion channels (sodium, potassium and calcium), designed to propagate or modulate neuronal activity. Now, ASU neurophysiologist Carsten Duch and doctoral student Stefanie Ryglewski have discovered evidence that a voltage sensor might exist that directly activates an intracellular calcium release mechanism, via a G-protein. It had been thought that G-proteins were activated by G-protein coupled receptors and not by voltage sensors. This new finding may expand scientist's understanding about how individual neurons manage multiple tasks.

April 17, 2007

A team of chemists, led by Mark Hayes, an ASU associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has come up with an elegant method for cutting proteins into more manageable pieces for analysis. The method, which uses industrial fillers commonly found in paint and light, could significantly aid the development of bioanalysis tools that identify human remains – and might aid ushering in the age of personalized medicine.

April 16, 2007

Science Foundation Arizona (SFAz) has awarded $1.5 million in funds to seed the first round of research grants to eight ASU professors, including two from the School of Life Sciences. SFAz's Competitive Advantage Awards are a strategic investment designed to provide a catalyst for researchers of exceptional quality to help secure future federal funding.

April 16, 2007

Chris Samila, a senior in ASU's School of Global Studies, began to realize that he and his generation would be the ones most affected by the depletion of the world's resources. He also had a conviction that “green” businesses could make money, while at the same time protecting the environment – but they also would need green-minded customers. All of those thoughts coalesced, with help from the School of Global Studies Student Association and other organizations, to produce the Green Summit, a one-day sustainability event that will take place on the Tempe campus from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., April 19.

April 13, 2007

Recipients of the President's Award for Innovation, the President's Medal for Social Embeddedness, and the top multiple SUN Award for Individual Excellence winners, including Christina Smith from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, were honored by ASU President Michael Crow at the President's Recognition Reception and award ceremony April 11 in the Alumni Lounge of the Memorial Union on ASU's Tempe campus.

April 12, 2007

The long, challenging technological march from the low-power light bulb Thomas Edison invented to the ultimate in a bright and energy-efficient lighting device may reach fruition in work led by the two ASU researchers. A recent cover story in the journal Advanced Materials, a leading materials and device engineering research publication, details advances in the use of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) by Ghassan Jabbour and Jian Li, with help from graduate students Evan Williams and Kirsi Haavisto, a Fulbright scholar from Finland. Jabbour is a professor and Li is an assistant professor in the new ASU School of Materials, which is jointly administered by the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

April 10, 2007

“No small part of being human is having the urge to explore beyond the boundaries of the known and into the unknown,” says Kip Hodges, founding director of ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. A reception and ceremony April 10, marked the official launch of the school. "My hope is that this is a beginning point, that what we’ve been doing here at ASU over the last few decades is incubating great programs in geology and astronomy and astrophysics and systems engineering and so forth,” said ASU President Michael Crow at the launch. “This incubation process has brought us to the point where today; we are launching this new enterprise, this School of Earth and Space Exploration; and that this will be a place like no other where there’s freedom of thinking, freedom of movement, intellectual agility, the ability to take on the big questions, the ability to attract students and the ability to have the fun of exploration embedded in the act of science. ”

April 11, 2007

Research promising to break new ground in the understanding and treatment of epilepsy and similar maladies is detailed in a paper by Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering faculty member Ying-Cheng Lai published in March by a leading physics journal.

“Characterization of synchrony with applications to epileptic brain signals” in Physical Review Letters reveals recent findings by Lai, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Lai also is a professor in the Department of Physics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The paper delves into one of the most important and challenging problems in biomedical sciences: understanding the dynamics of seizures.

April 10, 2007

ASU students' excellence in science and engineering has again been recognized nationally. Two outstanding engineering students were chosen to receive Goldwater Scholarships, and Nicholas Tatonetti, a junior majoring in math and molecular biosciences in the College of Liberar Arts and Sciences was chosen to receive an honorable mention.

April 5, 2007

ASU professor Laurie Chassin's father was a practicing physician who made a lot of house calls. As a child growing up in Queens, N.Y., Chassin was interested in her father's work and often accompanied him on hospital rounds and visits with patients in their homes. She observed his techniques in asking patients questions about their health, and about what else was happening in their lives. That experience, she guesses, is what influenced her to prophetically record “clinical psychologist” as her future occupation in her high school yearbook. “Now, I make a lot of house calls,” Chassin says, describing just one aspect of her pioneering longitudinal studies of children and families at risk for substance abuse and dependence, as an ASU professor of psychology. Her long-term, multigenerational research stands out among an extensive list of distinguishing accomplishments that has led to Chassin's recent appointment as an ASU Regents' Professor.

April 4, 2007

Nearly 35 years ago, Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Hagan Schmitt became the 12th and last man to step onto the moon. He was the lunar module pilot for that mission, and carries the distinction of being the only geologist to ever walk on the lunar surface. Photos showing him in a space suit – covered in lunar dust as he collected geological samples – are reappearing these days in magazines and on the Web as NASA prepares to return to the moon. Schmitt, who chairs the NASA Advisory Council, will be on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University April 10 to present a 7:30 p.m. lecture in Armstrong Hall titled “Lunar Field Exploration: the Post-Shoemaker Era.” The lecture rounds out a day of public events to mark the official launch of ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.

April 4, 2007

International leaders in field-based scientific research, as well as space and undersea exploration, will examine questions regarding the motivations for such exploration and the role of technology during a symposium April 10 at ASU titled “Emerging Vistas: The New Golden Age of Exploration.” The symposium will lead off a day of activities marking the official launch of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, a groundbreaking endeavor in higher education that fuses Earth and space sciences with engineering. Held from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Biodesign Institute Auditorium, B Building, on ASU’s Tempe campus, the symposium will be followed by a reception and official launch ceremony with ASU President Michael M. Crow at 4:30 p.m. in the Administration Building A Courtyard.

April 3, 2007

Larry King, described as the “Muhammad Ali of the broadcast interview” and dubbed “master of the mic” by Time magazine, will receive the Hugh Downs Award for Communication Excellence this month from ASU. King – host of CNN’s Larry King Live, the first worldwide phone-in television talk show – is celebrating his 50th year in broadcasting. He will be the first recipient of the award for excellence in communication given by ASU’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at a
6 p.m. dinner, April 11, at the Phoenix Ritz-Carlton.

April 3, 2007

A sampling of international wines and imported beers will be paired with an array of hors d’oeuvres from acclaimed Valley restaurants at this year’s International Wine and Beer Festival at Arizona State University. The annual scholarship fundraiser, hosted by the alumni leadership council of ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will be held from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 21, on the lawn by Old Main on ASU’s Tempe campus. The event, which includes a silent auction, is open to the public.

April 3, 2007

Science is a nonstop source of news. The public senses and respects its power to penetrate mystery. Yet the amount of coverage mainstream media is giving to science news is shrinking, forcing scientists and science writers to navigate blogospheres and the Internet to tell their stories. Those were among sentiments expressed by veteran science writer Charles Petit and some of the nation’s leading scientists and science journalists during a symposium April 2 at Arizona State University titled “Essential Dialogues: Why Scientists and Engineers Must Not Speak in Tongues.”

April 2, 2007

It’s hard to say what may have impressed the Truman Scholarship Foundation committee the most, leading them to award a $30,000 scholarship to ASU junior Megan McGinnity. Perhaps it was the commitment that led her to volunteer for eight months in a state-run orphanage in Romania, or the determination that drove her to confront the human slave traffic she encountered in African fishing villages last year. Maybe it was the fact that they surprised her by conducting the first half of the Truman interview in French, and she smoothly answered them en français. McGinnity, a political science and economics major with a blazing intellect and a sincere desire to improve the human condition, is one of a kind, her professors say. The committee seemed to agree, awarding her the prestigious Harry S. Truman Scholarship, the nation’s highest undergraduate leadership award given to about 75 college juniors each year who exhibit outstanding leadership potential and the intent to pursue careers in public service.

April 2, 2007

ASU’s Institute for Humanities Research in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is sponsoring presentations by an impressive array of university-affiliated literary talent at the April 14 Arizona Book Festival, which is presented annually by the Arizona Humanities Council. ASU Regents’ Professor of English Alberto Ríos will be honored with the 2007 Literary Treasure Award.

March 30, 2007

Subhash Mahajan will have to come up with something really special next year to keep his career hot streak going. In 2004, the professor in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering received the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society national Educator Award. In 2005, Mahajan was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering. In 2006, he was named director of the university’s new School of Materials, which is jointly administered by the engineering school and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He’s following up those distinctive achievements in 2007 by being named an ASU Regents’ Professor, one of several typically chosen for the honor each year for outstanding accomplishments in teaching, scholarship, research, creative activities, and national and international recognition in their fields.

March 30, 2007

Until last July, Donny George Youkhanna was director general of the Iraq Museum and chair of Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. Then he found a letter with a bullet in it in the driveway of his parents' Baghdad home. The letter, from the Brigade of Martyrs, accused George's teenage son, Martin, of teasing Muslim girls. Its writers – who said they knew that George worked with Americans – warned that they would kidnap and behead Martin if George did not write a letter of apology and pay $1,000. George's wife and mother urged him to pay, so he wrote a letter and sent the ransom money – and immediately made plans to get his family out of Iraq. George told the story of his forced exile from Iraq in a recent lecture sponsored by the School of Human Evolution & Social Change, the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, and the Department of Political Science.

March 29, 2007

Students gather around a table on ASU's Tempe campus to read and translate “Juliana,” a poem written in the 9th or 10th century in Old English, a language that has not been spoken since the early 12th century. The Old English Reading Group has been in existence since 1994, and is one of three language study groups that Robert Bjork started when he became director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies that year.

March 28, 2007

Some of the nation’s leading scientists and science journalists will present their perspectives on the roles of scientists and engineers in popular communication during a symposium April 2 at ASU titled “Essential Dialogues: Why Scientists and Engineers Must Not Speak in Tongues.” The symposium will be held from 8 to 11:30 a.m. in the Biodesign Institute Auditorium, B Building, on ASU’s Tempe campus. It is sponsored by the Hendricks Family Foundation and is one of several activities planned this spring to mark the official launch of ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, a groundbreaking endeavor in higher education that fuses Earth and space sciences with engineering.

March 26, 2007

Research conducted to diagnose autism before displaying symptoms, a possible vaccine for the deadly Ebola virus and a study on the economic effects of the HPV vaccine are just a few of the many research projects being conducted by undergraduate students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU. These researchers, under watchful guidance of faculty mentors, will have an opportunity to discuss their research with the public and other students at the collegewide undergraduate research symposium from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 29, in the Memorial Union, Room 207, on ASU’s Tempe campus. Students from the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences and mathematics will exhibit their research and advance knowledge in their fields of study. Topics range from possible theories on why Elizabeth I never married to creating a database that will measure variations in nature at the molecular level.

March 23, 2007

“The humanities offer riskful thinking; they ask us to think about things in unusual ways,” says Sally Kitch, who joined Arizona State University this year as the founding director of the Institute for Humanities Research. Now in its second year, the Institute for Humanities Research in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will celebrate transformational humanities scholarship at a reception for Kitch, from 5:30 to 6:45 p.m. March 29, at the Lattie F. Coor Building, east portico, on ASU’s Tempe campus. The reception precedes a 7 p.m. lecture — “After the Humanities” — given by Marjorie Garber, an author, cultural critic and Harvard University professor.

March 23, 2007

Cultural critic and author Marjorie Garber will address issues concerning the present state and the future of humanities in our culture during a 7 p.m. lecture, March 29, in the Lattie F. Coor Building, Room 170, on Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. The lecture – “After the Humanities” – is sponsored by ASU’s Institute for Humanities Research. “Marjorie Garber’s scholarly work is breathtaking in its range. Her methodology is to take a cultural phenomenon, like a beauty contest, and demonstrate how it embodies aspects of our social fabric that we recognize but didn’t know we knew,” says Sally Kitch, founding director of the Institute for Humanities Research.

March 23, 2007

In April, under a wide, azure sky, heat is rising from desert expanses prickling with cactus – just what you’d expect in Phoenix. But just outside the city in Tres Rios Wetlands, the unexpected can be found: scores of birds, water fringed with reedy grasses and trees, and the low buzz of dragonflies. On Saturday, April 7, from 9 a.m. until noon, faculty and students from ASU's School of Life Sciences will put aside their microscopes and lecture notes to lead guided hikes for the community in Tres Rios Wetlands.

March 23, 2007

Professor LeRoy Eyring’s contributions to science education and research at ASU were honored March 23 in a ceremony to mark the naming of the LeRoy Eyring Center for Solid State Science (CSSS). Eyring, who died in 2005 at age 85, is credited for earning the university recognition as home to one of the top chemistry departments in the country, and for work that paved the way for establishment of CSSS. The center is now part of ASU’s new School of Materials, which is jointly administered by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering. Professor Nate Newman is director of CSSS, which pursues research in solid-state physics and chemistry, earth and planetary sciences and development of new materials.

March 21, 2007

The recently expanded and renamed Transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies Department at ASU focuses on U.S. and Mexican regional immigration policy and economy, media literature and arts, and transborder community development and health – areas that have a significant impact in the Latino community. The transformed department provides students with a value-added environment combining classroom instruction, applied field research, field station instruction in leadership and management, a rigorous program of methodological skills that span quantitative and qualitative approaches and an insistence in bilingualism and biliteracy.

March 15, 2007

ASU ecologist James Elser is at the leading edge of a field of research that focuses on understanding of the processing of energy and multiple chemical elements in plants, animals, and microbes and how these sculpt ecosystems: ecological stoichiometry. Stoichiometry is basically just a formal way of counting carbon and nitrogen and the atoms of other key nutrient elements to study how limitations of what is in the environment or lack of limitations may shape the growth of organisms, says Elser, a professor with the School of Life Sciences.

March 12, 2007

The University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix in Partnership with Arizona State University has received accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education for its new four-year program in downtown Phoenix. The school opened its doors last October, and the initial 24 first-year medical students are scheduled to begin classes in July. More than 650 students have been interviewed to fill the 134 slots (110 in Tucson and 24 in Phoenix).

March 9, 2007

How social life evolved from solitary ancestral lifestyles has been an enduring mystery for years, and now scientists are one step closer to unraveling its genetic underpinnings. In a paper published March 6 by the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology, Arizona State University School of Life Sciences collaborators Gro Amdam, Robert Page and Kate Ihle, together with University of California affiliated Mindy Nelson, have shown that a single gene, vitellogenin, controls multiple aspects of honey bee social organization.