Oak Ridge Today

Presidential museum, Baker Center director featured at AMSE meeting Thursday

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Alan Lowe

Alan Lowe

Alan Lowe, director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas, will be the featured speaker this week in the third of a series of community meetings on the future of the American Museum of Science and Energy.

The community meeting is scheduled from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, October 9, at AMSE.

Lowe was previously founding director of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Thursday’s meeting has been organized by the City of Oak Ridge and the American Museum of Science and Energy Foundation. Lowe’s presentation is titled “The Path Forward for AMSE: Lessons Learned from a Life in Museums.” [Read more…]

Three speakers to discuss three proposed constitutional amendments

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Corinne Rovetti

Corinne Rovetti

Two college professors and a co-director of a reproductive health center will discuss three proposed constitutional amendments that will be considered by Tennessee voters in the November 4 election.

The proposed amendments will be discussed during a Tuesday evening forum in Oak Ridge.

Corinne Rovetti, co-director and family nurse practitioner for the Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health, will address Amendment 1, which deals with reproductive choice and privacy, a press release said. [Read more…]

Education Foundation scholarship helps student with Hong Kong study abroad

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Patricia Garland in Hong Kong

Patricia Garland in Hong Kong (Submitted photo)

 

A cross-cultural learning experience in Hong Kong this summer helped Patricia Garland view sustainability problems and solutions from a new perspective.

“Culturally, it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I had never been able to work with other cultures in this capacity,” said Garland, the 2014 spring recipient of the Dr. Adrian R. Lawler Exchange Scholarship. “It was fascinating.”

The Lawler Scholarship supports international study programs and is administered by the Oak Ridge Public Schools Education Foundation. Lawler, an Oak Ridge High School graduate and the second student here to participate in an American Field Service international program in 1957, established the scholarship in 2008 to offer students here similar opportunities to gain tolerance and understanding of people from other cultures.

Garland, 23, a 2009 ORHS graduate, studied abroad through a program at Arizona State University, where she is working on her master’s degree in sustainability. She received her bachelor’s degree in environmental science, with a concentration on sociology and anthropology, from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She is the daughter of Sid and Anne Garland. [Read more…]

Award-winning author of ‘Bomb’ to visit Oak Ridge, stop at AMSE

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Bomb

By Scot Smith

The American Museum of Science and Energy will host award-winning author Steve Sheinkin on Tuesday, October 7. Among other books, Sheinkin has written “Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon.”

Sheinkin’s presentation at AMSE is scheduled for 6 p.m. October 7. His other public presentation will be for the University of Tennessee’s Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. That lecture will take place on Monday, October 6, at 7 p.m. in the Hodges Library Auditorium on the UT campus, a press release said. Books will be available for purchase and signing at both events.

During his stay in East Tennessee, Sheinkin will also present programs for students at Oak Ridge School and Jefferson and Robertsville Middle Schools, the Webb School, and the Episcopal School of Knoxville. [Read more…]

Children’s Museum awarded $137,108 grant by museum institute

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Healthy Living Exhibit

 

The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded $137,108 to the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge this month.

The museum will use the grant funds to develop its new Kids in Action! Healthy Living Exhibit and programs. Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge will plan, develop, and construct “Kids in Action,” a healthy living exhibit and accompanying educational programs to support healthy nutrition, healthy activity, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education, and community wellness, a press release said. [Read more…]

Los Alamos National Lab director to give talk at UT on Oct. 1

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Charles McMillan

Charles McMillan

Charles F. McMillan, nuclear physicist and director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, will give the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy’s annual Distinguished Global Security Lecture on October 1 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

McMillan will speak on “The Timeline of Technology” at 5:30 p.m. in the Toyota Auditorium at the Baker Center, 1640 Cumberland Avenue. The event is free and open to the public.

McMillan’s lecture will look at how innovations from the previous century are being used to solve today’s national and global security, energy, and environmental issues. Then he’ll pose a question to policy makers: “Are we prepared for the policy needed in the 22nd century with the scientific and technical expertise we have today?” [Read more…]

UT report: State economy looking more robust as year end approaches

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Matt Murray

Matt Murray

KNOXVILLE—More jobs. An unemployment rate that’s trending down. Increasing personal income.

Thanks to these gains, there is a positive ring to this fall’s Tennessee Business and Economic Outlook report prepared by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

“Tennessee’s economic outlook is very similar to the national outlook, with moderate to strong growth expected for the second half of the year and a continuation of growth through 2015,” said Matt Murray, associate director of CBER, who directed the report.

Job growth [Read more…]

UT engineering students help ORNL, Local Motors print drivable 3D car

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3D Car

John Rogers, co-founder and CEO of Local Motors, left, and Douglas Woods, president of the Association for Manufacturing Technology, drive away from the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago over the weekend in a car printed with the help of UT students. (Photo courtesy UT)

 

KNOXVILLE—The only “car” that most people associate with printers is a “car-tridge” of ink, but that may soon change thanks in part to several students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

UT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Local Motors, Cincinnati Incorporated, and Oak Ridge Associated Universities teamed up to print a working, drivable car over the weekend at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago.

The Strati 3D, officially produced by Local Motors, which has an office on Market Square in Knoxville, highlighted the show and placed what sounds like a product of science fiction firmly in the realm of reality.

“This brand-new process disrupts the manufacturing status quo,” said John B. Rogers Jr., chief executive officer of Local Motors. “It changes the consumer experience and proves that a car can be born in an entirely different way.” [Read more…]

Abolitionist, women’s rights leader to be portrayed at AAUW meeting

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Teresa Collard and Lisa LeBleu

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an abolitionist and women’s rights leader, will be remembered in a historical portrayal during a Monday, September 22, meeting of the Oak Ridge Branch of the AAUW.

The presentation is titled “In Her Own Voice: Elizabeth Cady Stanton Remembers.”

The AAUW will meet at 11:30 a.m. in Room 102 of the Activities Building of First United Presbyterian Church. A catered luncheon will be served at 11:30 a.m., with the program beginning at noon.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, along with Susan B. Anthony, headed a group, which was also interested in women’s rights, that gathered 400,000 signatures on a petition to bring about the immediate passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to end slavery in the United States, a press release said. [Read more…]

Gov. Haslam, Bredesen to discuss Amendment 2 at UT on Wednesday

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Governor Bill Haslam

Bill Haslam

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and former Governor Phil Bredesen will discuss a constitutional amendment that could affect the judicial system during a Wednesday celebration of Constitution Day at the University of Tennessee.

Amendment 2 to the Tennessee Constitution will be on the ballot in November. It proposes new checks and balances to the governor’s appointment of Supreme Court and intermediate appellate court judges. It also protects the rights of Tennesseans to vote to retain or replace those judges in retention elections, UT said in a press release.

Haslam and Bredesen will discuss the amendment at 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Toyota Auditorium of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy. The discussion will be moderated by Doug Blaze, dean of UT’s College of Law.

It’s part of the Baker Center’s celebration of Constitution Day on Wednesday. Free and open to the public, the day’s events will also include: [Read more…]

UT’s Medal of Honor involvement very special for grad student and her dad

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Peter and Laura Lemon at Medal of Honor Convention

Medal of Honor recipient Peter Lemon, on the right, sits next to his daughter, Laura Lemon, a University of Tennessee doctoral student. They are surrounded by UT public relations students, some of whom are in Laura Lemon’s class. (Photos courtesy UT)

 

KNOXVILLE—Graduate teaching associate Laura Lemon found herself in an interesting spot at last week’s Medal of Honor Town Hall at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

On one side of her sat her public relations students, eagerly taking notes to write a press release about the event. On the other side sat her father, Medal of Honor recipient Peter Lemon.

A doctoral student, Laura Lemon said her involvement with UT’s Medal of Honor Project began last year when she went to Assistant Professor Nick Geidner’s office for help in one of his classes that she was taking.

Geidner directs the Medal of Honor Project, which is an award-winning service-learning collaboration between UT’s School of Journalism and Electronic Media and the 2014 Medal of Honor Convention, held last week in Knoxville. (It included a Town Hall Forum in Oak Ridge on Friday.) Through the project, students produced written, audio, and video pieces related to the convention. Although the convention is over, the project will continue sharing stories about Medal of Honor recipients and become a model for other universities that want to partner with future conventions. [Read more…]

DOE program funds alloy research led by UT; ORNL collaborates

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Haixuan Xu

Haixuan Xu

KNOXVILLE—An international research team led by an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville has received a grant to help with work involving a key component of nuclear reactors.

The U.S. Department of Energy grant is worth $800,000 over three years, and it has been awarded to UT Assistant Professor Haixuan Xu. It’s part of the Nuclear Energy University Programs funding and will be used to work on a pair of particular steel alloys, a press release said.

“Getting support on this will allow us to investigate and understand the defect evolution in these materials,” said Xu, of the UT Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “What we hope to gain is fundamental insight into the effects of radiation on the alloys so that we can better predict and detect how they will break down over time and adjust the materials accordingly.”

The alloys in question would be used in sodium-cooled reactors. Xu’s research is important because little is known about how the materials stand up to high levels of radiation over time. [Read more…]