UNews - New Mexico

Expert in American water law to study Alberta’s water rules as Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at the U of L

caroline.zentner — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 17:29:40 +0000

The hot, dry summer across western North America was a reminder of the importance of carefully managing the water supply but it’s something Reed Benson, a faculty member in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of New Mexico School of Law, has been aware of since his earliest days growing up on the American plains.

“I have always felt that water was important not just to societies and communities and ecosystems, it was also important to me. I went to law school thinking I could learn something to help me play a role in how water was managed. That’s always felt like the best use of my time,” he says. “I’ve spent my career working on issues of water and the environment.”

Benson will be spending the fall semester in southern Alberta as he conducts research into water law as the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Water and the Environment. He was drawn to the U of L because of its focus on water research and the expertise available here.

“I have always focused on the water challenges of the western United States and there are enough similarities in southern Alberta, both on the water supply and demand side and the legal aspects, that I thought I could learn some relevant lessons here,” says Benson.

In the western United States, as in southern Alberta, water was historically allocated without much thought about environmental impacts. Most of the widely available water has already been allocated, largely for irrigation purposes, says Benson. Now, it’s better understood that taking too much water out of a river damages aquatic and riparian ecosystems and the challenge is to develop water management practices that take the health of the river into account, along with the needs of society and the economy.

While some similarities exist between water laws in the United States and those in Canada, Benson is particularly interested in how Alberta changes operating plans for water projects like dams and reservoirs in light of changing needs for water, increasing scientific knowledge, and the expected effects of climate change. In the western U.S., the federal government operates many of the major dams.

“The practice has really been not to revise the operating plans for these reservoirs even though all of those things are changing and they’re not required to revise them,” he says. “It makes a lot of sense to engage the public and stakeholders to talk about how a dam should be operated in the future. In Alberta, there seems to be more willingness to be flexible in looking at some of these same issues.”

Benson will be studying developments in the Oldman and Bow river basins. In addition to collaborating with researchers at the U of L, Benson will also connect with law professors at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta.

“With the Rockies and the plains, this is a beautiful, interesting part of North America and I am excited to have the chance to spend a few months here,” he says.

Fulbright Canada is a not-for-profit organization with a mandate to identify the best and brightest minds in both the United States and Canada and engage them in academic exchange. Fulbright Canada provides support to students, teachers and independent researchers through a variety of programs, including the Fulbright Visiting Research Chairs Program.

Sutherland on the cutting edge of science

trevor.kenney — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:40:32 +0000

The human brain is a remarkable organ. From the day we're born until the day we die, our brains evolve as we experience the world and expand our knowledge.

But the brain is also vulnerable to dementia-related diseases like Alzheimer's disease, which kills the brain's cerebral cortex cells and erodes short-term memory.

Recently, Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) neuroscientist Dr. Robert Sutherland made international headlines when he and his research team became the first in the world to regenerate cerebral cortex brain cells in adult rats.

Sutherland's history at the U of L goes back to 1980, when he completed post-doctoral training in neuropsychology and became a psychology faculty member until 1991. After a decade teaching and researching at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of New Mexico, he returned to the U of L to help launch the CCBN, Canada's first department of neuroscience, in 2001.

Sutherland says the facility offers excellent infrastructure (including high-tech lab space and funding), and a critical mass of expertise. "It's a highly collaborative place. I've worked and published with virtually every faculty member," he says.

The CCBN is also an important training ground for up-and-coming neuroscientists, and is further evidence of how much the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ has grown in its 45 years, from a primarily undergraduate university to one that is on the cutting edge of scientific breakthroughs.

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ loses distinguished faculty member

trevor.kenney — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 04:58:17 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ community offers its most sincere condolences to the family, friends, students and many colleagues of the late Dr. Don Birchfield, a professor of Native American Studies, award-winning author and champion of, and mentor to, numerous students.

Don served the Department of Native American Studies at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge since 2001. He passed into the spirit world in the early hours of Friday, September 7, 2012. He will be greatly missed.

At this time, a memorial service is yet to be finalized. This notice will be updated with additional information as it becomes available.

Don Birchfield was a graduate of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Oklahoma College of Law and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Prior to teaching at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, Don taught American Indian studies at Cornell ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of New Mexico, and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

He served as book review editor for Studies In American Indian Literatures (SAIL), Native Americas, and News From Indian Country, and is a former editor of Camp Crier at the Oklahoma City Native American Center.

His Oklahoma Basic Intelligence Test (Greenfield Review Center, 1998) won the First Book Award For Prose from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas, and his Field of Honor (U of OK P, 2004) won the Writer of the Year award from Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers & Storytellers and the Spur Award for Best First Novel from Western Writers of America.

His other books include Black Silk Handkerchief: A Hom-Astubby Mystery (U of OK P, 2006) and nineteen textbooks for children from educational publishers.

Don was a founding member of the National Advisory Caucus of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers & Storytellers. He was General Editor of the eleven-volume Encyclopedia of North American Indians (Marshall Cavendish, 1997).

In 2007, he was the Distinguished Lecturer at the 84th annual convention of the Central States Anthropological Society. His most recent book, How Choctaws Invented Civilization and Why Choctaws Will Conquer The World (U of NM P, 2007), treats American history, American Indian law and policy, Choctaw history, and academe as objects of satire.

The next generation

trevor.kenney — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 18:58:15 +0000

The human brain is a remarkable organ. From the day we're born until the day we die, our brains evolve as we experience the world and expand our knowledge.

But the brain is also vulnerable to dementia-related diseases like Alzheimer's disease, which kills the brain's cerebral cortex cells and erodes short-term memory.

Dr. Robert Sutherland is an Alberta Heritage Medical scientist; the director of the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience; and a professor of neuroscience at the U of L.

This summer, Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) neuroscientist Dr. Robert Sutherland made international headlines when he and his research team became the first in the world to regenerate cerebral cortex brain cells in adult rats.

The research focused on a part of the brain called the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped region of the brain responsible for short- and long-term memory storage and retrieval. This is an area that is especially sensitive to illnesses or injuries that can create memory loss, explains Sutherland. It's also a part of the brain that throughout adult life spontaneously creates new cells that are able to easily find their correct position in the brain's circuitry.

The team began by killing off about half of these cells by depriving them of corticosterone, an important hormone the cells need to function, causing the rats to develop memory issues very similar to humans suffering with dementia. Through a combination of a specific protein therapy, an enriched living environment and exercise, the researchers were able to re-grow the lost brain cells and prove that the rats had regained their memory function.

Regenerating brain cells is a problem neuroscientists have been struggling with for many years, with limited success. The challenge stems from the nature of the brain itself. "If you open up a laptop and take a look at the circuit board, every portion you look at has a sophisticated set of connections with other pieces," says Sutherland. "The brain is even more complicated."

Sutherland and his team at the U of L's CCBN – including undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral trainee Jen Lai and doctoral candidates Simon Spanswick and Fraser Sparks – began working on the problem about five years ago.

The CCBN is also an important training ground for up-and-coming neuroscientists, like doctoral candidate Fraser Sparks, who helped with the brain cell regeneration project. Sparks says Sutherland's lab has a unique research environment, encouraging students to assist on each other's research programs and allowing them the chance to explore anything they find intriguing. "One thing we're not afraid to do in the Sutherland lab is criticize theories – including our own," says Sparks.

While Sutherland's regeneration technique is a major discovery, it is only the beginning. The next step will be to translate the research into therapies that work for patients. Sutherland and his team have received a second five-year grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to continue the project.

"Part of what we're doing is refining the treatments to get closer to an actual effective clinical therapy, and in an absolutely convincing manner, show that these cells are functioning the way they should," says Sutherland.

For patients with dementia diseases, a clinical therapy is desperately needed. Sutherland points out that at the current rate of growth, in 30 years, someone will develop dementia every two minutes.

"The total cost of dementia could reach $153 billion per year by 2038, up from the current cost of $15 billion per year. Without fundamental scientific advances such as ours, it is certain that the burdens will grow dramatically," says Sutherland. "It is urgent that we find ways of preventing, reversing and repairing injured brains. Our findings are a significant advance in that direction."

This story originally appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of SAM. For a look at the full issue of SAM in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Lasting Images - Mary Shannon Will

trevor.kenney — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 21:38:15 +0000

Mary Shannon Will was born in Ithaca, New York, and studied at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of New Mexico in Albuquerque and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Iowa. Upon moving to Canada, Will taught at the Emily Carr College of Art & Design in Vancouver.

Will is known for her diverse artistic practice, working in a variety of media including printmaking, painting and ceramics. Today, the artist divides her life and work between Calgary and New Mexico.

Mary Shannon Will, Untitled, 1971. From the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection; Gift of the artist, 1999.

In 1999, Will donated 45 artworks to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection, spanning the breadth of her career from 1968 through 1993. This gift included ceramic pieces, paintings, drawings and archival materials associated with her practice.

These works demonstrate Will's vibrant use of colour based in Pop Art sensibilities, her sense of play within the funk ceramics movement on the Canadian prairies during the 1970s, her extension from traditional woman's forms such as jars and utilitarian objects and her complex grasp of the interests in form and composition developed within abstract artistic movements.

Mary Shannon Will, Unfinished Sculpture, 1980. From the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection; Gift of the artist, 1999.

For a look at the full issue of the November Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Programming Team Earns Second Place Finish At Rocky Mountain Regional

trevor.kenney — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:55:22 +0000

A 12-person group is split into four groups of three, and has to solve nine complex computer programming problems in a very short time. All the while, they are competing against more than 50 other teams from across North America as part of the Rocky Mountain region of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest.

How did the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge group fare? Very well. Of the four teams in the competition from the U of L, one group took second place and three other teams landed in the middle third of the results – 23rd, 25th, and 29th place overall.

"Students have to apply what they learn in different courses, and some problems require knowledge of techniques or algorithms that are not taught in any course," says team advisor
Dr. Howard Cheng (mathematics and computer science). "These are taught during our regular practice sessions, where the teams spend several hours per week training for this contest."

The competition draws students from large and small colleges and universities throughout Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Eastern Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Mexico. The group received funding from the Faculty of Arts and Science as well as Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures to support the costs for participation.

Cheng says the contest requires logical thinking skills and precise implementation of their ideas.

"If their solution is incorrect for even one test case, it is considered wrong," he says.

The groups had limited time to complete a series of nine problems, which ranged from supposedly simple, to very complex.

"We had to figure out how to write code based on where the letter 't' appeared in a series of words," says Keilan Scholten, a third year mathematics and computer science student. "It seems simple, but we wound up using more than an hour and a half of our time allotment. The first six of our problems were done in just over two hours."

Among the problems, the group successfully created a ranking of teams for a soccer league, figured out the maximum number of climbers a piece of climbing rope can support and worked out a way to determine if packages of certain dimensions were the right size to be mailed.

Team group members included: (Team A) Darcy Best, Keilan Scholten, Hugh Ramp; (Team B) Jeremy Andrijancic, Johnny Boldt, Kim Wikkerink; (Team C) Mark Fischer, Mark Hunter, Fern Leavens; (Team D) Falcon Momot, Jason Racine and Fei Wang. Best (fourth year), Ramp (second year) and Scholten (third year) also finished third in the Alberta Collegiate Programming Contest, held in mid-October as a warm-up to the regional contest.

For a look at the full issue of the November Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Campus Kudos

trevor.kenney — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:56:22 +0000

Mary Dyck (Kinesiology and Physical Education) and Ard Biesheuvel (BEd '90, MEd '98) authored a book, Coaching Volleyball Champions: Principles and Practices of Successful Coaches. Each chapter in the book includes a biography of one of North America's outstanding volleyball coaches, followed by an in-depth interview and the coach's five favorite drills. Dyck also co-authored, Everybody Move: A multimedia package for daily physical activity, published by Human Kinetics in November 2009.

Denton Fredrickson (Art) and Catherine Ross (Art Technician) have been awarded the Public Art commission for the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Applications were received from around the world and the selection committee consisted of representatives from the Allied Arts Council and the SAAG, a community member, an artist and a technical expert. Ross and Fredrickson proposed to create a giant stringed instrument responsive to the day-to-day wind and light levels in Lethbridge. Visually, the installation reflects a flock of birds both at rest and in flight, appearing to move seamlessly from exterior to interior. The work should be installed by fall 2011.

Dr. Shelley Scott (Theatre & Dramatic Arts) has been elected by acclamation to a second two-year term as the president of the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR).

Merle Fuller (MEd) has been accepted into the PhD in Management program at Sobey School of Business, St. Mary's ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, Halifax, N.S. Fuller's project, Living with a cop: A handbook for Police Officers and their Families (a training handbook for police officers addressing work/family issues) was a significant factor in his being accepted into the IO/Pscyh PhD stream of this excellent PhD program.

Dr. Ed Jurkowski (Music) was recently elected to a three-year term as English editor for the journal Intersections, the peer-review bilingual publication of the Canadian ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Music Society.

Bente Hansen (Music), Dale Ketcheson (Music), Nicole Higginson (BFA/BEd) and Jesse Plessis (music major) all performed at For the Love of Music: For the Love of Medicine concert to raise funds for a medical mission to El Salvador being undertaken by U of L pre-medical students.

Katherine Taylor (Psychology) is one of 12 winners of a 2010 NEADS Equity Through Education Student Award. Taylor was selected out of a field of 375 total applicants. Equity Through Education is a charitable initiative launched by BMO Capital Markets in 2005 to help people realize their educational ambitions by giving them the means to pursue those goals.

Ed Wasiak (Music Education) has been appointed to the Editorial Committee of the Journal of Historical Research in Music Education (JHRME). Taking over the Canadian seat, Wasiak joins a body of 16 international scholars on the JHRME Committee.

Don Gill's (Art) exhibition Erratic Spaces/THE LAND is at THE LAND/Gallery in Albuquerque, N.M. from June 5 to 26. The exhibition is an installation based on Gill's February 2010 residency at THE LAND/an art site. www.landartsite.org/exhibitions/index.html

Nick Sullivan (Music) performed as a soloist with the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra during its season finale.

Catherine Ross (Art) has an exhibition of Stella Mere at the Glenbow Museum, Aug. 2. Stella Mere is a spectacular installation made up of 750 shimmering starfish, each individually cast in aluminum and mounted on thin threaded steel rods. Stella Mere took three years and the help of more than 20 people to complete.

UNews - New Mexico

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