Tennessee Today » In The News

News Sentinel: Kids learning to eat healthier: UT center throws garden party

Lola Alapo — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:21:19 +0000

To eat healthier, the children and staff at UT’s Early Learning Center have begun growing a lot of their own food. They want the school’s new kitchen garden to be a model for the community and a training ground for early childhood educators on gardening with young children and families. The News Sentinel highlighted the school’s efforts in this story.

News Sentinel: Two UT grads first with sustainability degree

Whitney Heins — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:53:34 +0000

The Knoxville News Sentinel featured UT’s first graduates in the sustainability program, Nick Alderson and Alyssa Schroder. The program is an interdisciplinary degree, meaning students take courses that interest them in nearly any college as long as they focus on sustainability — the concept of living in a way that reduces society’s environmental impact and the use of natural resources.

News Sentinel: UT-ORNL hire advanced manufacturing expert as 11th Governor’s Chair

Whitney Heins — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:46:31 +0000

The Knoxville News Sentinel wrote a story about UT and ORNL’s t11th joint Governor’s Chair, an advanced manufacturing expert from Ohio State University. Sudarsanam Suresh Babu, a professor in the Welding Engineering Program in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has conducted research that has helped develop 3D printing — the layering of materials to create a three-dimensional product from digital blueprints.

New Norris House’s Top Ten Green Projects Award Featured Nationally

Lola Alapo — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:51:32 +0000

The New Norris House has been named one of the nation’s top ten examples of sustainable architecture and green design, according to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE).

The honor has garnered national recognition for the house and the College of Architecture and Design in several major publications including:

ARCHITECT: Projects You Should Know: The 2013 AIA COTE Top Ten Green Projects

Gizmodo: The Systems that Power the Year’s Most Sustainable Buildings

Knoxville News Sentinel: New Norris House: Energy, efficiency, with warmth and charm

Metropulse: UT’s College of Architecture and Design Recognized for ‘Green’ House

Scientific American: Top 10 Green Buildings Improve Surrounding Environment and Users’ Health

US Building Digest: AIA Selects 2013 COTE Top 10 Green Projects

Wired: Vintage Breweries, Salvaged Wood: This Year’s ‘Greenest’ Buildings Are Surprisingly Hip

WSJ: The Smorgasbord That Thinks It’s a Weight-Loss Plan

Lola Alapo — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:54:38 +0000

A growing number of people are heeding popular nutritional advice and have traded in the traditional breakfast-lunch-and-dinner lifestyle for a daylong stream of mini meals.

The Wall Street Journal features the research of Hollie Raynor, an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition, that looks into whether eating frequent small meals has any specific weight-loss benefits.

Read the story here (subscription required).

Cesar’s Way: Frazzled by Finals? De-stress with Fido

Lola Alapo — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:53:13 +0000

Cesar Millan, better known as the Dog Whisperer, has featured the Human-Animal Bond in Tennessee (HABIT) program and the role its animals will play in helping students relieve stress during finals week.

The article also highlights their upcoming visit to the UT Libraries. The HABIT dogs remain one of the campus’s more popular finals week activities. The animals will be visiting several locations across campus that week.

Established in 1986, HABIT is a volunteer project including people from the community, representatives from the College of Veterinary Medicine, and private practice veterinarians.

Read the Cesar’s Way article here.

To learn more about HABIT, visit the website.

Forbes: The World’s Fastest Supercomputer Will Have The World’s Fastest Data Storage

Whitney Heins — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:17:01 +0000

As reported by Forbes, a supercomputer used by many UT professors and researchers will is getting a boost. Last November, Cray’s Titan Supercomputer, which is being used at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, earned the crown of World’s Fastest Supercomputer. Now Oak Ridge hopes to bolster the performance of that supercomputer by building the world’s fastest data storage system. The system, which will be named Spider II, will have a capacity of 40 petabytes. If you have a 1 terabyte hardrive in your computer now, it would take 40,960 of them to have the same memory capacity.

WATE: UT Professor Talks About History of Violence in Chechnya

Whitney Heins — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:04:44 +0000

The marathon bombing suspects may have ethnic origins in Chechnya, a region on the border in southwestern Russia. WATE-TV spoke to Brandon Prins, an associated professor of political science, to learn more about the area’s connection with terrorism and Al Qaeda.

News Sentinel: Chechen terror suspects present riddle to experts

Whitney Heins — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:53:59 +0000

UT professors spoke to various media outlets about the Boston Marathon bombings and suspects. Natalia Pervukhin, professor in modern foreign languages, gave the Knoxville News Sentinel historical and political background on the area the alleged bombers may be from in Russia. Howard Hall, Governor’s Chair for nuclear security, spoke about potential motives in the context of terrorism.

WBIR-TV: In-depth: Benefits of outdoors

Lola Alapo — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:54:06 +0000

WBIR-TV Channel 10 featured the research of UT professor Dawn Coe about the benefits of playing outside for young children. Her research examines the differences in children’s energy levels when they play on a natural playground that incorporates elements like logs and flowers compared to a traditional playground with metal equipment.

Coe is an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies. View the story here.

WBIR: CEO of Norfolk Souther Speaks about Future of Railroads

Whitney Heins — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:37:12 +0000

WBIR-TV featured the keynote address by Charles W. “Wick” Moorman, chairman, president and CEO of Norfolk Southern Corp., at the 2013 Joint Rail Conference hosted by the Center for Transportation Research at UT. He discussed the conference theme, Next Generation Railroads, Next Generation Railroaders: Innovations and People for the Future. “Knoxville is strategically important for Norfolk Southern. It lies on one of our new main corridor developments, the so-called Crescent Corridor to move traffic off the highways between the south and the southwest,” he said.

To view Ken Schwall’s story, visit WBIR’s website.

WSJ: UT Renovates Classroom Building to Focus on Student Collaboration

Whitney Heins — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:17:03 +0000

Numerous outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Sacramento Bee, Reuters and Yahoo! News have covered the renovations to the Humanities and Social Sciences Building. The building was renovated last year in an effort to overhaul the traditional higher education lecture. It is one of the first universities in the country to dedicate an entire classroom building to the collaborate learning style.

News Sentinel: UT cultivates long-term gifts to retain top faculty

Whitney Heins — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:04:16 +0000

The Knoxville News Sentinel conducted an article about the Chancellor’s Faculty Challenge which aims to attract money for faculty fellowships. So far $9 million has been garnered thanks to a $2.5 million matching contribution from Chancellor Jimmy Cheek as part of the program.

News Sentinel: UT using donated corpses in mass grave project with international aspirations

Whitney Heins — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:58:04 +0000

The Knoxville News Sentinel profiles the mass grave research project being conducted the Forensic Anthropology Center. For the next three years, scientists will monitor fresh burial sites made at the center from the sky, from the ground, through sampling and in different light spectrums to determine if the mass graves can be detected from afar. If the remote sensing technology they plan to use works, it could mean huge gains in the ability to uncover clandestine graves around the world and to prosecute the killers.

U.S. News and World Report: Study Finds Oil-Eating Bacteria Mitigated Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Whitney Heins — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:58:35 +0000

Terry Hazen, UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair for Environmental Biotechnology, has been interviewed my multiple news outlets including CBS News, the BBC, the Ottawa Citizen, and U.S. News and World Report, about his research in the Gulf of Mexico. Hazen has found that the gulf may have a much greater natural ability to self-clean oil spills than previously believed. Hazen conducted research following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which is estimated to have spilled 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. His research team used a powerful new approach for identifying microbes in the environment to discover previously unknown and naturally occurring bacteria that consume and break down crude oil.

Science: An Emergency Hatch for Baby Lizards

Whitney Heins — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:37:16 +0000

Research by Sean Doody in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology was featured in Science. The research has found that unborn lizards can erupt from their eggs days early if vibrations hint at a threat from a hungry predator, new research shows. The premature hatchlings literally “hit the ground running—they hatch and launch into a sprint at the same time,” said Doody.

BBC: Why do ‘single’ birds dance?

Whitney Heins — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:10:04 +0000

The groundbreaking research of Gordon Burghardt, Alumni Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, was cited in a BBC article about cranes dancing. Burghardt studies animals at play. He defines play as a repeated behavior that should not contribute to survival. It is spontaneous and voluntary, performed when the animal is healthy and free from stress. “Maybe one of the functions in cranes is that it helps keep the [long-term] pair bond exciting and interesting,” he said. Read the full article here.

News Sentinel: Serving up thanks: UT culinary students treat West High teachers to tasty lunch

Lola Alapo — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:09:30 +0000

Students from the university’s culinary program catered a teacher appreciation lunch at West High School on Tuesday as part of their curriculum. They fed 120 staff members free of charge as they learned how to pull off an off-site catering event. They were featured in this News Sentinel story.

News Sentinel:UT’s Institute for Nuclear Security

Whitney Heins — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:07:27 +0000

The Knoxville News Sentinel featured the annual report of UT’s Institute for Nuclear Security, which is headed by Howard Hall, a Governor’s Chair position at UT and ORNL.

News Sentinel: UT student studying temperature, activity effects on bat-killing fungus

Rebekah Winkler — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:50:49 +0000

A team of UT students hiked in the Great Smoky National Park earlier this month with their lab equipment to capture, weigh, measure, and release bats infected with a fungus that causes white-nose syndrome. Biologists say the fast-spreading disease is the worst wildlife epidemic in recorded history. Doctoral student Riley Bernard is taking the first hard look at how the winter feeding activity of bats that hibernate in the caves of Tennessee could contribute to the spread of the disease.

Read the full story in the Knoxville News Sentinel.