ASTRONOMY IN ARIZONA

Nine physics majors traveled to Tucson as part of the J-term courses Observational Astrophysics and Astronomy in the Southwest. The students spent several nights operating the Kuiper Telescope at Steward Observatory on Mt. Bigelow northeast of Tucson imaging Saturn in search of a unique but poorly understood dynamical effect in Saturn's rings. The image at left is a full color composite representing several hours of observing Saturn with the 61" Kuiper Telescope.

Collisions between ring particles should make the rings appear uniform. However, a variety of interesting non-uniformities such as spokes, ripples, and waves have been observed propagating throughout the ring structure. The Carthage team sought to image spoke structures seen in the animation below. Poor weather and instrumental challenges prevented the team from observing the spokes, but the students did manage to acquire some excellent images of Saturn.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE REACHES OUT

Carthage Environmental Science students install solar panels to a new greenhouse at the Racine Montessori School.

In the Spring, Environmental Science 161 students participated in a variety of local projects, including monitoring the effects of invasive garlic mustard in local woodlands, including the Phil Sanders Nature Sanctuary, Hawthorn Hollow Nature Center, and Bristol Woods Nature Center. The class also developed a unique collaboration with the Kenosha Wastewater Treatment Facility, which allowed our students to examine the balance of anaerobic and aerobic bacteria in their aeration tanks with the goal of discovering ways to maximize efficiency. Students tested four hypotheses relating nutrient availability and microbial growth, and a final report was submitted to the treatment facility in March. This report is now being used as a baseline for follow-up experiments at the facility.

Students appreciate the hands-on nature of these projects:

“Research provides a legitimate experience that is useful in the outside world. It feels good to be a student involved in something real, not just learning something out of books.”
-- Amanda Petrovic ‘08

“This class (ENVS 160) expanded my awareness and influenced me to major in environmental science. This class makes me want to better the world and shows that you can.”
-- anonymous comment from class evaluation

These local experiences are also preparing students to be successfully placed in a wide-array of outside research and internship experiences. Recent examples include an REU at Penn State University (Michelle Budny ’09), and internships at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (Matt Notter ’07) the Environmental Protection Agency (Anelle Cheney ’08), Whitefish Dunes State Park (Dan Dembkowski ’09) and the Kenosha Agriculture  Extension (Amy Anderson ’09). 

If you would like to collaborate with future Environmental Science classes or if you are interested in providing internships or research experiences to individual Carthage Environmental Science students, please contact Tracy Gartner (Program Director).

DESIGN THEORY

Students Brittany Chase, Dan Monfre, and Roger Straz were awarded the first Math Department Summer Research Grants. They will be working as a team under Professor Erlan Wheeler in the area of Design Theory, an exciting branch of mathematics that blends ideas and techniques from combinatorics, algebra, and geometry. The team will continue an ongoing student investigation that has been running since the summer of 2006 and has resulted in winning Carthage's Research and Creativity contest and several student papers and talks, including a Best Presentation award at a national conference.

The mathematics department hopes to expand its offering of summer student research opportunities in the future. To find out more or to help support math research at Carthage, please contact Mark Snavely.

FACULTY NOTES

The Biology department welcomes three new colleagues and says goodbye to Janet Huie who left to take a position at Ithaca College in New York. Meet the new biologists:

• Deanna G. P. Byrnes, Assistant Professor: Deanna began studying evolutionary biology while earning her B.S. at Cornell University. After working at Abbott Laboratories for six years, she returned to her interests in mammal evolution and tropical ecology to earn her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 2005. She is a rural Wisconsin native, and will join the Carthage faculty Fall 2007, after teaching and researching as a Lawrence University Postdoctoral Fellow in Appleton, Wisconsin.

• Dana Garrigan, Associate Professor: Dana’s research interests have taken him from the desert southwest of the United States to the rainforest of South America, the New Zealand highlands, and the Galapagos Islands. Recently, he has been studying butterfly distributions in Mount Rainier National Park to assess the potential impacts of climate change on alpine species. Dana was an undergraduate at St. Olaf College and earned his Ph.D. in Biology at the University of Utah. His research interests focus on insects, plants, and their interactions.

• Deborah Tobiason, Assistant Professor: Deb is a microbiologist whose research has involved DNA recombination and replication in human pathogens, as well as host-pathogen interactions. She earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Emory University in 1998 and went on to join the Department of Microbiology-Immunology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University where she moved up the ranks to Research Assistant Professor.

The math department adds two:

• Dominic Klyve, Assistant Professor: Dominic is a number theorist whose thesis work is in the area of "explicit inequalities in number theory, and includes theoretical and computational questions concerning the distribution of twin primes." Dominic recently completed his Ph.D. at Dartmouth College. His B.A. in Mathematics and Physics is from Hamline University.

• Erik Tou, Assistant Professor: Erik is also a number theorist at Dartmouth where he recently completed his Ph.D. Erik has been selected as a Project Next Fellow, a prestigious position awarded to a select few young professors in the first few years of their careers. Erik received his B.A. in Mathematics from Gustavus Adolphus College.

Dominic and Erik bring a unique program to Carthage: As co-founder and Chief Historian of the Euler Archive, an online repository of the translated works of Leonhard Euler, Dominic and Erik curate a nationally recognized archive of historical material on the life and work of one of the most prolific scientists and mathematicians of all time. Carthage students in a wide spectrum of disciplinary pursuits will benefit from direct engagement with this project. More in an upcoming edition of this newsletter.

FEATURED LAB

Learn about Professor Kevin Morris's group and their work toward understanding molecular micelle-drug complexes here.