Emily Ward Bivens, an associate professor in the School of Art, was recently featured in the newsletter of the National Performance Network and Visual Arts Network. The national organizations support the work of artists working in visual and performing arts. Bivens is director of foundations in the School of Art and a member of a four-person art collaborative called the Bridge Club.

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Ernest Freeberg, professor and head of the Department of History, spoke at the Decatur Book Festival in Atlanta last month about his new book, The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America. This history of the social and cultural impact of electric light was published this year, and Freeberg has been sharing his findings with audiences across the country. The Washington Post has called the book “a captivating intellectual adventure that offers long-forgotten stories of the birth pangs of the electrical age that are amusing, surprising and tragic.” His talk in Atlanta was part of a series of talks on science and technology.

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Joshua Fu, a civil and environmental engineering professor, has received a certificate and award from publisher Elsevier Limited for his manuscript about Beijing air quality published in a 2007 edition of Atmospheric Environment. From 2007 to 2012, the paper, entitled “Air quality during the 2008 Beijing Olympic games” is ranked in the top three most cited articles in the journal, which is one of top journals in air quality and climate change.

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The Geological Society of America’s Penrose Conference will be held in honor of Distinguished Scientist and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Bob Hatcher. The event is March 30 to April 4, 2014, in Asheville, North Carolina. The topic for the upcoming conference is continental collision mountain building processes and focuses on a region of the southern Appalachians that, to quote the society, “represents the primary study locale of Bob Hatcher’s seminal career.” For more information, visit the society’s website.

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Darrin Hulsey, an assistant professor in ecology and evolutionary biology, has a paper published in the current issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society. The study cast doubt on the old hypothesis that cichlids, a freshwater fish spanning a rainbow of colors and a myriad of shapes reached multiple continents by swimming in place while an ancient supercontinent split up. Instead, Hulsey and his colleagues say the freshwater fish must have undertaken death-defying dispersals by paddling across the salty seas.

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Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Micah Jessup is the Structural Geology and Tectonics Division of the Geological Society of America’s featured essayist for this month. The society invited twelve scientists to submit scientific essays to celebrate its 125th anniversary. One essay is published each month on the society’s website during the anniversary year. To read Jessup’s essay, “Mid-crustal processes in the Himalaya”, visit the society’s website.

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Sandra Mixer, an assistant professor of nursing, is the 2013 recipient of the Transcultural Nursing Society Award. The mission of the society is to enhance the quality of culturally congruent, competent, and equitable care that results in improved health and well-being for people worldwide. Mixer will be honored at its 39th conference in October in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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Mariano Rodriguez-Cabal, a doctoral student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has had his dissertation accepted by the journal PNAS. His work demonstrates for the first time that the addition of novel species (exotic invasive species) and the resulting loss of a keystone species leads to the node-by-node disassembly of an interaction web in Patagonia resulting in a cascade of local extinctions. Together, the results demonstrate that simultaneous gains and losses of species are both consequences and drivers of global change that can lead to under-appreciated cascading co-extinctions.

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Jered Sprecher, an associate professor in the School of Art, spent two months this summer as the artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. The Chinati Foundation is a contemporary art museum. The residency concluded with an exhibition of his work at the Chinati Foundation Locker Plant.

Former Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana will deliver the Ashe Lecture on August 27, and journalist and author Tom Brokaw will give the Baker Distinguished Lecture on November 13.

The center will highlight its first decade of work with an exhibit and reception in the Baker Center Rotunda on September 4.

“This is an exciting time for the Baker Center,” Director Matt Murray said. “Senator Baker, who celebrates his eighty-eighth birthday on November 15, wanted to create a place where the campus and community could learn more about major issues facing our country.

“He also envisioned a place where students and faculty could nurture a ‘think tank’ atmosphere and become a source of expertise in the national discussion. We’ve made great strides toward that goal, and we’re excited as we plan the center’s future, focusing especially on energy and environmental issues, governance, and global security.”

Here’s the fall lineup. Events are free and open to the public unless other noted:

August 27—1:30 p.m., Baker Center Toyota Auditorium—Lugar will present Ashe Lecture.

August 29—3:30 to 5:00 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—Joshua Fu, UT associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, will talk about modeling in climate change as part of the Baker Forum on Energy and the Environment.

September 4—4:30 to 6:00 p.m. Tenth anniversary reception will be held in the Baker Center Rotunda.

September 17—5:30 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—Constitution Day panel discussion will feature several UT faculty members: Suzie Allard, associate professor of information sciences; Michael Berry, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the Center for Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning; Brandon Prins, associate professor of political science; and Glenn Reynolds, law professor.

September 26—3:30 to 5:00 p.m., 416 Dougherty Engineering Building—Jim Shortie, a professor at Penn State University, will talk about agricultural and environmental economics as part of the Baker Forum on Energy and the Environment.

October 12—10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Toyota Auditorium—Working in collaboration with UT and city officials, students will develop suggestions for a parking policy for the future renovated Cumberland Strip. Check bakercenter.utk.edu for more information about how to participate.

October 24—6:00 to 7:30 p.m, Toyota Auditorium—Panelists from several universities will discuss emerging challenges to global security.

October 24—3:30 to 5:00 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—J.B. Ruhl, David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law at Vanderbilt University, will talk about environmental law as part of the Baker Forum on Energy and the Environment.

November 6—12:40 to 2:10 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—2013 Women’s Leadership Summit. The topic will be “Sustainable Quality of Life.” Co-sponsored by UT Center for Sustainable Business and Development.

November 13—1:30 p.m., University Center Auditorium—Tom Brokaw will give the Baker Distinguished Lecture. A Patrons Lunch will be held prior to the lecture. Cost is $250 per person and reservations are required. The free public lecture will be held at 1:30 p.m. in University Center Auditorium, 1502 Cumberland Avenue.

November 14—3:30 to 5:00 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—Bruce McCarl, a professor of agricultural economics at Texas A & M University, will talk about biofuels and climate change as part of the Baker Forum on Energy and the Environment.

Established in 2003, the Baker Center seeks to further the public’s knowledge of the US government and public policy and to encourage civil leadership and public service. The center sponsors programs to encourage informed discussion, with a special focus on engaging young people in policy issues and public service.

For more information about the Baker Center, visit bakercenter.utk.edu.

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CONTACT:

Nissa Dahlin-Brown (865-974-8681, nissa@utk.edu)

Results show the region will be hotter and wetter.

Joshua Fu, a civil and environmental engineering professor, and Yang Gao, a graduate research assistant, developed precise scales of cities which act as a climate crystal ball seeing high resolution climate changes almost fifty years into the future.

The study found that heat waves will become more severe in most regions of the eastern United States and both the Northeast and Southeast will see a drastic increase in precipitation.

The findings are published in the November 6 edition of Environmental Research Letters.

Harnessing supercomputing power of UT’s Kraken and Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Jaguar (now Titan, the fastest in the world), the researchers combined high-resolution topography, land use information and climate modeling. Then, they used dynamical downscaling to develop their climate model results. Dynamical downscaling allowed the researchers to develop climate scales as small as four square kilometers.

“Instead of studying regions, which is not useful when examining extreme weather, dynamical downscaling allows us to study small areas such as cities with a fine resolution,” said Fu, who is also a professor within the UT-ORNL Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education (CIRE).

The researchers evaluated extreme events along with daily maximum and minimum temperatures and daily precipitation. For the twenty-three states east of the Mississippi River, they analyzed the present-day climate from 2001 to 2004 and predicted the future climate from 2057 to 2059. This is the first study to predict heat waves for the top twenty cities in the eastern United States. For example, Nashville will see a temperature rise of 3.21 degrees Celsius and Memphis will see a rise of 2.18 degrees Celsius.

In comparing present climate to future, the researchers found that heat waves will become more severe throughout the eastern part of the nation. The Northeast and eastern Midwest will experience a greater increase in heat waves than the Southeast, which will almost equalize the temperatures between the future North and current South.

“Currently, the mean heat wave duration is about four days in the Northeast and eastern Midwest and five days in the Southeast,” said Fu. “By the end of the 2050s, the Northeast and eastern Midwest will be gaining on the Southeast by increasing two days.”

In addition, the Northeast and eastern Midwest are likely to suffer from steeper increases in the severity of heat waves.

“While the Southeast has the highest intensity in heat waves, the Northeast is likely to experience the highest increase,” said Fu. “We are looking at temperature increases of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius, with New York experiencing the highest hike.”

Both the Northeast and Southeast will experience an increase of precipitation of 35 percent or more. Most coastal states will see the greatest increase, of about 150 millimeters a year. Taking into consideration heat waves and extreme precipitation, the Northeast shows the largest increases in precipitation. This suggests a greater risk of flooding.

“It is important that the nation take actions to mitigate the impact of climate change in the next several decades,” said Fu. “These changes not only cost money—about a billion a year in the US—but they also cost lives.”

Fu and Gao collaborated with researchers at Emory University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They received assistance from the National Center for Computational Sciences, the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Computational Sciences, and UT’s National Institute for Computational Sciences.

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C O N T A C T :

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

Joshua Fu (865-974-2629, jsfu@utk.edu)