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Dear Faculty, Staff, Students and Trustees:
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This year's Nevada Medal Dinners are almost here-they are scheduled for Tuesday, April 10 in Reno and Thursday, April 12 in Las Vegas. Tickets for DRI personnel are $50 each and can be purchased through Dawn Coots. The FREE lectures are at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 11, in the Stout Conference Room in Reno and 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 12 in the Rogers Building in Las Vegas. We are extremely proud and excited about this year's nominee, Dr. Susan Lindquist, who is from the Whitehead Institute at M.I.T.
Dr. Lindquist's work has had an enormous impact in fields as diverse as medicine, bioengineering, basic molecular and cell biology and evolution.
The underlying theme of her multifaceted work is protein folding and misfolding. Proteins are the basis of how biology gets things done. They start out in the body as long strings of amino acids and have to assemble themselves into complex shapes (a process called folding) before they can do anything. They are the main constituent of our brains, muscles, hair, skin and blood vessels.
What happens if proteins don't fold correctly? When proteins misfold, they can clump together, and the clumps can often gather in the brain where they are believed to cause the symptoms of Mad Cow or Alzheimer's disease. Cystic fibrosis, an inherited form of emphysema, and even many cancers are also believed to result from protein misfolding.
For her many achievements as one of the greatest and most creative molecular biologists of her generation, Dr. Lindquist has been named the recipient of the 2007 Nevada Medal. You can learn more about Dr. Lindquist and the Whitehead Institute by visiting the following two sites: http://web.wi.mit.edu/lindquist/pub/
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| New General Counsel |
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As of March 1, John Albrecht is the new General Counsel for DRI, Great Basin College and Truckee Meadows Community College. John replaces Brooke Nilson, who filled the position on an interim basis until completion of the office search process. We greatly appreciate the good work that Brooke did on DRI's behalf. John's previous positions include serving as an attorney for the Attorney General's Office and most recently he was the General Counsel for the Washoe County School District. Although John's primary focus will be to represent the institutions, he may also be involved from time with System legal issues in the north. His contact information is: (775) 784-4901 ext. 257 or mail address is: NSHE, 2601 Enterprise Road, Reno, Nevada 89512 |
| EPA Adopts DRI Method as Standard for Carbon Analysis |
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The U.S. EPA announced last April that organic and elemental carbon measured in its urban network would adopt the DRI-developed IMPROVE (Interagency Monitoring of PROtected Visual Environments) method that has been applied since 1988 to particulate matter samples taken in non-urban national parks and wilderness areas. These analyses will be implemented on the DRI Model 2001 thermal/optical carbon analyzer that is currently in commercial production and is in use for carbon analysis in the U.S. and several other countries. The differentiation between organic and elemental carbon in suspended particles is important because these components have different effects on urban and regional haze. They are also used to distinguish among different source contributions, such as diesel exhaust.
The urban network had been using a different method that provides lower levels of elemental carbon than the DRI IMPROVE method and wasn't as consistent. The lack of compatibility between the two networks and between speciation of source emissions had frustrated air quality planners and modelers, and EPA decided to standardize on the DRI IMPROVE method owing to its greater stability. DRI's Environmental Analysis Facility may be performing some of these carbon analyses for EPA's urban network in the future. For more information, see:
(http://www.epa.gov/ttn/amtic/files/ambient/pm25/spec/spnews5.pdf)
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| Kudos, Congratulations and Thanks |
 As part of the Wildland Urban Interface Conference (an international conference of fire chiefs, federal and state wildland agency personnel, firefighters, fire marshals and land use planners) held in Reno the week of March 5, Tim Brown and Beth Hall hosted the group of 80 on a field trip of the CAVE. Bill Sherman and student Michael Penick displayed the impressive fire simulation of Kyle Canyon as well as other demos to the group.
Congratulations to Dr. Nick Lancaster for receiving the Nevada System of Higher Education's Regents' Researcher of the Year Award for 2007. Dr. Lancaster, research professor and senior director of DRI's Center for Arid Lands Environmental Management (CALEM), received B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in geography from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Since then, he has established himself as one of the world's foremost experts on sand dune systems and eolian, or wind-driven processes. His research has included studies of the deserts of Namibia, Botswana, and parts of South Africa as well as North America including the Gran Desierto in northwestern Mexico and the Mojave Desert of California and Nevada. The Board of Regents established the Researcher of the Year Award in 1992, and it is bestowed upon faculty members with a substantial record of accomplishments, including a significant amount of research and scholarly work with recognition, clear evidence of the national and/or international stature of the research, and in the case of grants and contracts, they must have been competitive on a national or international level. The honoree receives a $5,000 stipend and a medal.
Congratulations to Eric McDonald, Steve Bacon, Todd Caldwell, Scott Bassett and Jeremy Burke for receiving an "Exceptional" rating--the highest rating possible--in every area of the U.S. Army's Past Performance Management System for the Yuma Proving Ground project, which included the following rating areas: (1) quality of product/service, (2) schedule, (3) cost control, (4) business relations, (5) management of key personnel, and (6) other. |
| Building Collaborations Worldwide |
| Recently, President Wells signed a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, with President Takayuki Nose of Japan's Tottori University (TU), allowing for DRI and TU, along with the Syrian-based International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), to submit a proposal for a "Global Center of Excellence Program" to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for five years of funding. If funded, the Center will support human resource development by way of graduate students from TU coming to DRI; exchange of faculty; establishing a joint educational program for graduate students; and attaching teaching graduate students of TU to DRI. Additionally, it will promote collaborative research work by way of implementing joint research between DRI and TU in a third country such as China or Mongolia; collaborative activities such as international seminars and symposia; and allowing DRI researchers to be visiting scholars to TU. A regional dryland network would also be established as part of the program. |
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Until next time,
Dr. Stephen Wells |
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