USM Public Affairs

Finding Published In ‘Nature’

University of Southern Maine Professor Julie Ziffer is part of an international team of eight researchers that has discovered a layer of ice and organic molecules covering the surface of an asteroid. The team’s discovery could explain how ingredients necessary for life arrived on Earth.

The team’s findings will be published tomorrow, Thursday, April 29, in the journal “Nature.”  The April 29 edition also will feature a complementary article by another team of scientists. (more…)

Assistant Professor of Physics Julie Ziffer is part of an international team that may have discovered a possible link between asteroids and the origins of life on earth.

Read more at http://blogs.usm.maine.edu/publicaffairs/archives/3207

Now available online is the USM Dean’s List for full-time students (from in-state and out-of-state) for the Fall 2009 semester

Full-time Instate:
http://usm.maine.edu/mcr/news/deanslist_full_instate_fall09.html

Full-time Out-of-State:
http://usm.maine.edu/mcr/news/deanslist_full_out_fall09.html

(more…)

AL BEAN, director of Athletics and Recreation, was named president of the National Association of Division III Athletic Administrators for a two-year term.  Bean was also selected to the Board of Directors of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics for a four-year term.

PIERS BEIRNE, professor of criminology, and JIM MESSERSCHMIDT, professor of criminology, had the fifth edition of their book, “Criminology: A Sociological Perspective,” published by Oxford University Press (New York, 2010).

LIBBY BISCHOF, assistant professor of history, was invited to present her paper, “Revisiting Time in New England: Paul Strand, Nancy Newhall, and the Fashioning of a Composite Portrait of Place,” at Wellesley College’s one-day symposium, “New England Self-Fashioning: Portraits and Presentations, 1700-1950.”

ROXIE M. BLACK, professor and director of LAC’s Master of Occupational Therapy Program, was an invited visiting scholar for a three-day visit at the University of Findlay (Ohio) where she was the sixth invitee in their “Evening with a Leader in Occupational Therapy” series. Black presented “Is Culturally Competent Care Achievable?” to a group of 300 community therapists, and “Becoming Culturally Competent: Focus on Self” to a group of 200 students and practitioners.

SCOTT W. BROWN, professor of psychology, and MARY E. SOHL, undergraduate research assistant, presented their paper, “Executive Resources in Timing, Aging, and Inhibitory Control,” at the 20th annual meeting of New England Sequencing and Timing, which met in March 2010 at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Conn.

PAUL CHRISTIANSEN, assistant professor of music, was recently awarded a grant from Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (German Academic Exchange Service) for full tuition and room and partial board to study German for four weeks this summer at Goethe Institute in Germany.  Christiansen is studying German to improve his translation ability and begin work on a book about composer Joseph Haydn.

KALI LIGHTFOOT, executive director of the OLLI National Resource Center, spent three days in Washington D.C. as a reviewer of grant proposals to the National Science Foundation Division of Informal Science Education.