Physicists, says Randy Ruchti, are driven by the great questions.
The importance of fundamental science for us is in our bloodstream,the 31-year veteran of the University of Notre Dame physics faculty reflected last month during the earliest working days of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the massive new particle physics facility at the Center for European Nuclear Research (CERN) that straddles part of France and Switzerland.
The University of Notre Dames Center for Astrophysics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) and Department of Physics will host the 18th annual Midwest Relativity Meeting on Friday and Saturday (Oct. 24-25) at the Jordan Hall of Science.
John Janovy Jr., Varner Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska, will deliver the first lecture in the University of Notre Dame College of Science’s new Innovations and Excellence in Science Teaching series at 7 p.m. Thursday (Nov. 20) in room 105 of the University of Notre Dame’s Jordan Hall of Science.
GreeND, a University of Notre Dame student organization focused on energy and environmental issues, received an Energy Patriot award from Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., who spoke on campus and toured the Universitys Energy Center on Oct. 8.
Pre-med juniors Megan Rybarczyk, Greg Podolej, and Brennan Bollman will join Father Thomas Streit C.S.C. on Jan. 3 in Haiti to help with research projects that are aimed to rid the impoverished Caribbean country of LF, or lymphatic filariasis, as part of the overall goal for the Notre Dame Haiti Program.
Astrophysicist Michael C. Wiescher has been named an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The foundation was established by the Federal Republic of Germany to promote international cooperation in research. This prestigious fellowship will allow Wiescher to study the nuclear reactions leading to the formation of an isotope of iron, 60Fe, which has been found in sediments on the deep-ocean floor. This isotope is thought to be and related to a supernova a few million years ago in our neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy.
Yesterday's announcement of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics also served as a reminder of the prominent role three University of Notre Dame researchers have played in the field of particle physics.
The Nobel Foundation honored Yoichiro Nambu of the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic particles. Makoto Kobayashi of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University were recognized for their discovery of the origin of broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.
Notre Dame physicists Ikaros Bigi, John LoSecco and Colin Jessop have joined Kobayashi and Maskawa in making key contributions to the understanding of how matter gained the upper hand over antimatter in the universe.
Chicago has worn many nicknames throughout its history including the Windy City, the Second City,and the City of the Big Shoulders. However, if Chi-Town successfully adopts the recommendations of a climate report co-authored by Jessica Hellmann, a University of Notre Dame biologist, it may well be known as America's Greenest City.
Following completion of the report from a 26-member Chicago Climate Task Force that included Hellmann, Mayor Richard Daley recently unveiled a plan to reduce the city's emission of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
Sherri Smith has won a three-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. She is working under Nancy Guillén, studying the parasite Entamoeba histolytica. The research involves characterizing the immune response during infection with the amoeba and determining the role potential virulence factors play in the elicited immune response.
