Zhongbo Yu (Geoscience) recently received the John Hem Award for Excellence in Science & Engineering from the National Ground Water Association. The award honors significant scientific or engineering contributions to the understanding of groundwater. The award will be presented at the 2015 Groundwater Expo in Las Vegas this week. Yu was…

Brian Hedlund (Life Sciences) recently received an $876,229 National Science Foundation grant for his project, "Collaborative Proposal: Biodiversity Discovery and Analysis of 'Aigarchaeota', a Globally Distributed But Poorly Understood Archaeal Lineage." The grant is for three years.    

Biochemistry professor Ernesto Abel-Santos and former postdoctoral scholar Amber Howerton were recently issued patent #9,079,935, which describes a novel compound designed to prevent Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections.

Scott Abella (Life Sciences) and his collaborators at the University of California, Berkeley, received a $48,000 award (UNLV portion) from the congressionally authorized Joint Fire Science Program. This nationally competitive funding agency supports fire research in wildlands and the wildland-urban interface across the United States.…

Josh Bonde (Geoscience) spoke to nearly 800 students from Kitty Ward Elementary School about fossils as part of National Fossil Day at Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument on Oct. 14. Steve Ross, Las Vegas Mayor pro tem, spoke to the students about the new national monument and Superintendent Jon Burpee taught the…

Michael Pravica (Physics and Astronomy) recently received a 2015 Stewardship Science Academic Alliances award through the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. The three-year, $780,000 grant is to develop a novel field of science Pravica has been developing, called "useful hard X-ray photochemistry."…

Scott Abella (Life Sciences) just published a book, Conserving America's National Parks. The book coincides with the 100-year centennial of the National Park Service in 2016. The 200-page book provides an unprecedented view of the challenges and threats facing the 408 units of the national park system. It also provides inspiring…

Scott Abella (Life Sciences) recently received two grants. One is a three-year, $115,000 grant from the National Park Service (NPS). He is working with the southwest exotic plant management team of the NPS to plan, write,  and execute three restoration plans for two national parks. There will be two plans for Guadalupe Mountains…

Frederic Poineau (Chemistry and Biochemistry) recently received a three-year, $640,000 Nuclear Energy University Programs (NEUP) grant. The grant supports his work investigating the thermochemistry of used fuel zirconium cladding components chlorides as well as their activation products and residual radionuclide metal chlorides. The research…

Ye Li and Bing Zhang (both Physics & Astronomy) recently published an article titled, "Can Life Survive Gamma-Ray Bursts in the High-Redshift Universe" in the Sept. 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The work also was cited in a recent article in New Scientist.   In this paper, they investigated the “habitability” of…

Barbara Lavina (Physics & Astronomy) is the author of an article, "Unraveling the Complexity of Iron Oxides at High Pressure and Temperature: Synthesis of Fe5O6," which appeared in the June 26 issue of Science Advances. Using laser heating in the diamond anvil cell and synchrotron microfocused X-ray beam, Lavina and Yue Meng from…

Balakrishnan Naduvalath (Chemistry and Biochemistry) recently published an article titled, "The Geometric Phase Controls Ultracold Chemistry," in the July 30 issue of Nature Communications. The research demonstrates a new interference mechanism in ultracold chemical reactions, one which has important technological…