UNL researchers Valery Forbes and Richard Rebarber led a multidisciplinary life sciences group of 40 international scientists in a workshop to develop predictive models for ecological risk assessment.
The workshop, hosted by the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis at the University of Tennessee from April 28-30, is a collaboration between the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other agencies.
Participants included researchers from academic institutions, national laboratories, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The group focused on developing an integrated understanding of the impacts of industrial and agricultural chemicals on biological systems, from molecules to ecosystems.
“We believe that a multidisciplinary and integrative approach will lead to chemical risk assessments that are more scientifically sound, cost-effective, and management-relevant than current approaches used by regulatory authorities,” Forbes said. “The collaboration between math and biology, that is particularly strong at UNL, is providing new and exciting opportunities for improving the prediction of human impacts on biological systems.”
Forbes is a professor and director of biological sciences. Rebarber is a professor of mathematics.
For more information, go to http://go.unl.edu/htqy.
Other recent awards and honors earned by UNL faculty, staff, students and departments include:
Faculty
• A screening of films by Wheeler Winston Dixon, professor of English, is May 4 at the Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y. The screening is the first of Dixon’s work since a 2003 career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The program will include six of Dixon’s early works, made from 1969 to 1976. The films incorporate original footage from peace marches, Fluxus performance, commercials and appropriated images.
“Wheeler Winston Dixon is a masterful film editor. His sensitivity to the movement within the frame and of the camera itself allows for fluidity in his editing that is exuberant and refreshing. He is skillful not only in manipulating the flow of images but the flow of ideas as well,” said Bruce Rubin, head of the film department at the Whitney Museum of American Art. “He has assembled his images mostly from television commercials and juxtaposed them in such a way that their very ordinary nature suddenly becomes extraordinary. Through the editing process he reveals secrets of our culture that have always been sitting on our television screens but we have never seen them before.”
Dixon is recognized as an author, professor, and underground filmmaker. His body of film work includes roughly 40 films, the originals of which are now in the collection of MoMA.
• Brett Ratcliffe, professor of entomology with the University Museum, helped debunk a myth about dung beetles in an April 29 Earth Touch News Network article. Ratcliffe’s lab is home to the fourth-largest scarab beetle collection in the world — behind London, Berlin and Paris. He has been studying Scarabaeoidea, a superfamily of beetles that includes dung beetles, for the last 45 years. http://go.unl.edu/cagh
• Zhigang Shen, an associate professor of construction management, will teach at New York University as a visiting associate professor. The one-year sabbatical begins in the fall. Shen will also conduct research on building information modeling and urban infrastructure data management at NYU.
Students
• Scott Baier, a doctoral candidate in Janos Zempleni’s lab in the Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences, was selected as a winner in the American Society for Nutrition’s Graduate Student Research Awards Competition. Baier’s presented his abstract, “MicroRNAs in Bovine Milk are Bioavailable in Healthy Adults and Down-Regulate Reporter Gene Activity in Human Kidney HEK-293 Cell Cultures,” at ASN’s Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting during the Experimental Biology 2014 conference April 24-30, in San Diego, Calif. He was one of three winners and received a cash award in addition to a $750 travel award.
Departments
• The University Health Center laboratory has been accredited by the Commission on Office Laboratory Accreditation. The endorsement acknowledges the UHC’s commitment to provide quality service to patients, rigid standards of quality in day-to-day operations and performance on laboratory proficiency tests. COLA is a nonprofit, physician-directed organization promoting quality and excellence in medicine and patient care. COLA accredits almost 8,000 medical laboratories. http://health.unl.edu/lab.
• The College of Business Administration presented awards for outstanding accomplishments by business leaders and corporations during an Advisory Board Annual Awards Luncheon on April 4. The 2014 honorees included David Graff of Lincoln; Brian Kaiser of New York City; John Wirtz of Lincoln; Barb Schaefer of Omaha; Jim Kroeker of Norwalk, Conn.; Nelnet; and Carrie Tolstedt of San Francisco. http://go.unl.edu/0ups
This column is a regular feature of UNL Today. Faculty, staff and students can submit their achievements to be considered for this column via email to achievements@unl.edu. For more information, call 402-472-8515.
