Stephanie Drumheller-Horton, assistant adjunct professor and lecturer in earth and planetary sciences, is involved in a unique funding competition. She and partner Christopher Noto, assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside and research affiliate with the Perot Museum, have been selected to participate in experiment.com’s Paleontology Challenge.
Continue reading
Earth & Planetary Sciences
UT Science Writer All About the Beasts
A captive-raised whooping crane in Louisiana, a caucasian parsley frog, and a reconstruction of a 32-million-year-old fossil with the gut shown in blue.
Getting the word out about your research can be a beast. Luckily, the University of Tennessee has a talented team of communicators to help with that task.
Science writer Lola Alapo wrote three stories in the last week that dealt with research on beasts of the air, land and one from the prehistoric sea.
Continue reading
UT Postdoc Leads New Phase of NASA’s Pluto, Spitzer Telescope Observations
NASA scientists will get a deeper look at Pluto thanks to a new round of observations being led by a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, postdoctoral student.
Noemi Pinilla-Alonso, a postdoctoral researcher in earth and planetary sciences, is the lead investigator of the Spitzer Space Telescope observations. The seven-day study, which began Thursday, is gathering infrared data at 18 different longitudes. The information will help scientists better understand the possible changes to the ice on the dwarf planet’s surface over the past 10 years.
Continue reading
Bacteria the Newest Tool in Detecting Environmental Damage
The reaction most people have when they hear the word bacteria is rarely a good one.
While it’s true that food- and water-borne bacteria cause untold illnesses and even death around the world, a team of researchers from UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has found a way to use bacteria to help prevent some of the very symptoms most people associate with them.
Continue reading
Professor Researches Rare Rock with 30,000 Diamonds
The rare Udachnaya diamondiferous peridotite. Photo Credit: Larry Taylor
Diamonds are beautiful and enigmatic. Though chemical reactions that create the highly coveted sparkles still remain a mystery, a professor at UT is studying a rare rock covered in diamonds that may hold clues to the gem’s origins.
The golf-ball sized chunk of rock contains more than 30,000 diamonds, each less than a millimeter in size (rendering them worthless), along with speckles of red and green garnet and other minerals.
The rock was found in Russia’s Udachnaya diamond mine in northern Siberia. The diamond company of Russia, ALROSA, loaned it to Earth and Planetary Sciences Professor Larry Taylor and a team of researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences so they could study the rock to uncover the diamonds’ genesis.
Continue reading at tntoday.utk.edu.