Focus on the Colleges

Arts & Sciences

While conducting research on infection prevention, Microbiology Professor Paul Cohen stumbled upon a natural compound that boosts antibiotic strength from 100 to 1,000 times. The compound, lysophosphatidic acid, is naturally produced in the human body in great quantities wherever there is inflammation. “In combination with this compound, even older antibiotics become much more powerful,” Cohen said. “It not only makes older antibiotics useful again, but it also allows them to be used in reduced dosages.”

Judy Beckman

Business Administration

Accounting Professor Judy Beckman has been selected an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow for the 2004-2005 academic year. The former chair of URI’s Faculty Senate, Beckman was one of only 34 ACE fellows chosen from a national pool of candidates. She will serve her fellowship at the University of Vermont, working with President Daniel M. Fogel.

Sze Yang

Engineering

Chemistry Professor Sze Yang and Chemical Engineering Professor Richard Brown have developed a new group of non-toxic, corrosion-resistant polymers designed to replace chromates in paints and other coating systems. Chromates have been used commercially to protect metal from corrosion for 50 years. ”There is now a worldwide push on to remove chromates because they are carcinogens.” said Yang.

Two URI engineers have constructed a “shock tube” to simulate the rush of gas from an exploding bomb. “What we’re creating is a controlled explosive effect so we can test materials for their resistance to explosions,” explained Carl-Ernst Rousseau, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. Rousseau and Arun Shukla, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, received grants from the U.S. Army ($150,000), the U.S. Office of Naval Research ($170,000), the URI Transportation Center ($80,000) and 3Tex Corp. ($86,000) to construct and test the 23-foot long, 6-inch diameter, aluminum tube.

Martin Bide and Margaret Ordonez

Human Science & Services

When URI researchers started building a fiber database for the FBI in October 2002, they were asked for 400 samples. By the time the project ended earlier this year, they had provided more than 1,800. Professors Martin Bide and Margaret Ordonez of URI’s Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design teamed up on the $134,000 FBI contract after learning of research opportunities with the FBI through their participation in the URI Forensic Science Partnership. The FBI is interested in refining its textile analysis processes because fibers play such a critical role in forensic investigations, Bide said.

Pharmacy

Associate Dean E. Paul Larrat spent much of the summer as a National Aeronautics and Space Administration Faculty Fellow at the Advanced Life Support Center at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He was one of 100 fellows chosen from a field of 700 nominees to work at various NASA research centers across the country. His work focused on 20 plant species that NASA believes could be grown during a flight to Mars and after landing there.

Nasser Zawia, associate professor of biomedical sciences, has found in a preliminary study a link between infant exposure to lead and precursors to Alzheimer’s disease. Intrigued by the findings, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded Zawia $499,863 in grants to expand his research. “We want to examine the fetal basis for adult disease,” said Zawia. “If you are exposed in-utero to a toxin while your brain is developing, could that lead to a compromised system that leads to later disease?”

Graduate School of Oceanography

Although impressive strides have been made over the last several years to improve hurricane tracking and intensity predictions, scientists are continually working to improve our knowledge of where a hurricane will go and how hard it will hit. Physical oceanographers Isaac Ginis, Il Ju Moon, and Tetsu Hara have received a three-year $412,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to incorporate into current computer models the impact of surface waves on the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere, and, consequently, how this interaction affects hurricane intensity, track, wind waves, and ocean prediction.

ℑ Three icebreakers carried an international team of scientists to the Arctic Ocean on August 8 to study its geological history. The chief scientists on this groundbreaking expedition were Kate Moran, associate professor of oceanography, and Jan Backman of Stockholm University. Other URI oceanographers taking part in the expedition were geologists John Farrell and Matthew O’Regan and microbiologist David Smith. In addition, Kathy Couchon ’79, a middle-school teacher from Narragansett, participated in the expedition as part of the ARMADA Project, a research and mentoring program for teachers based at GSO. The Arctic Coring Expedition drilled several hundred meters into the sediments of the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain chain. By analyzing samples from the 500-meter-thick sediment on top of the ridge, scientists will reconstruct the climatic and environmental history of the Arctic over the past 50 million years.