Apr 20, 2010

Note to Teachers: Stay in School

Retaining beginning teachers is a continuing problem in the United States – and around the world. Approximately one-third of all new teachers leave the profession within their first three years of teaching, increasing to nearly 50 percent after the first five years. Scary figures considering the importance great teachers make in the lives of our… 

Apr 19, 2010

Take Two … and Lose a Liver

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew that Tylenol – or some other drug – was bad for your health before you took it? To study ways of predicting drug toxicity to humans, Dr. David Threadgill, professor and head of genetics, examined mouse genes. Threadgill and colleagues published a paper in Genome Research that found… 

Apr 19, 2010

The Physics of Falling Fruit

Picture this – you’re at the store, in a hurry, and you just need to grab a couple of apples, so you head over to the produce section and pluck a likely looking specimen from the pile…only to watch in horror as the entire pyramid of golden delicious topples at your feet.  If you’ve ever… 

Apr 19, 2010

Little Things Mean A Lot

It is widely thought that advances in the use of engineered nanoscale materials will have significant impacts on fields ranging from medicine to electronics – but how do we get there from here? We are talking about manufacturing and manipulating things so small it’s difficult to conceptualize what we’re talking about. After all, William Powell…