August 8 - August 15, 2005
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DEVANEY SPORTS CENTER, SAT 9:30AM
Ben Kuroki to Receive Honorary Doctorate at Aug. 13 Commencement
Ben Kuroki, a University of Nebraska alumnus who had a distinguished career in the military in World War II and later as a journalist and editor, will receive an honorary doctor of letters degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln during Aug. 13 commencement exercises.
A native of Hershey and the son of a farmer, Kuroki faced considerable prejudice after Pearl Harbor due to his Japanese-American heritage, but managed to enlist in the U.S. Army and later became one of the few Nisei (pronounced nee-say, second generation Japanese-Americans) to join the Army Air Corps. He earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses and was acclaimed as the first Nisei war hero after flying 30 missions in Europe as a tailgunner and top turret gunner aboard a B-24 named "The Red Ass."
After his initial request was denied, Kuroki became the only Nisei to serve in active combat with the Air Corps in the Pacific Theater, and flew 28 missions over Japan. Following the war he spoke to audiences nationwide and was the subject of a 1946 biography, "Boy from Nebraska" by Ralph G. Martin. In 2000, he was the subject of a PBS documentary, "Conscience and the Constitution."
Barbara Couture, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at UNL, will give the address and Chancellor Harvey Perlman will preside at the exercises, which begin at 9:30 a.m. at the Bob Devaney Sports Center, 1600 Court St. Approximately 750 students will receive degrees. more...
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MUELLER PLANETARIUM, TUE-SUN 2PM
Mueller Planetarium Hosts "Point Of No Return"
Journey with Mueller Planetarium into a universe of bizarre monsters as the planetarium explores quasars and supermassive black holes in a new show: "Point of No Return." The feature delves into the story of quasars, the most powerful steady sources of energy in the universe. Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes with masses millions to billions of times the mass of our sun. It is only within the last few years that astronomers have been acquiring a more complete picture of quasars. "Point of No Return" uses powerful graphics to represent some of the newest discoveries.
The new show, which will be in shown in planetariums around the country, was created by Mueller Planetarium and produced with financial support from the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. It is a collaborative effort between members of the Mueller Planetarium staff, and UNL quasar research group members Martin Gaskell, Mary Hiller, and Elizabeth Klimek. The late Thomas Gehringer, director of the Burke High School planetarium in Omaha, served as the educational consultant to the show. The show is dedicated to his memory. The music is by award-winning composer Mark Petersen. The new program is the first produced entirely digitally by Mueller Planetarium.
The Mueller Planetarium showings of "Point of No Return" are preceded by an introduction to the current night sky's constellations and planets. The entire presentation lasts approximately 35 minutes.
Admission to Planetarium Astronomy Shows is $6 for Adults and $4 for all Children and UNL students. This price includes museum admission. All tickets are sold at the front desk of the Museum once the Museum opens for the day. Mueller Planetarium is located in the University of Nebraska State Museum (Morrill Hall) at 14th and U. Streets on the UNL City Campus.
MUELLER PLANETARIUM
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UNL HELPS LEAD SCIENTIFIC STUDY
$12.9 Million ANDRILL Grant To fund U.S. Antarctic Research
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David Harwood and Richard Levy
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The National Science Foundation has
awarded a $12.9 million Antarctic research grant to a consortium of five
U.S. universities headed by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Northern
Illinois University in DeKalb. The grant supports an ambitious
international effort to probe deeper than ever before into geological
strata buried beneath the frozen sea in order to help scientists better
understand contemporary global warming trends.
Dubbed ANDRILL, which is short for ANtarctic geological DRILLing, the
project will be a focal point during International Polar Year (2007-09), a
worldwide campaign of polar education and analyses.
Other members of the U.S. consortium making up the American half of the
ANDRILL program are Florida State University in Tallahassee, Ohio State
University in Columbus and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The
international half of the venture will include scientists from New Zealand,
Italy and Germany.
The NSF grant, to be dispersed over five years, will be administered by
the ANDRILL Science Management Office, headquartered at UNL. In all,
ANDRILL is backed by more than $30 million in funding, including $9.7
million in previous and ongoing national agreements to support operations
and nearly $8 million from the other countries to support scientific
research.
In October and November of 2006 and 2007, ANDRILL scientists will use a
powerful new drilling system partially owned by UNL and NIU to recover rock
cores from the seabed in the McMurdo Sound area of the Ross Sea, using
floating ice as a drilling platform. By studying the cores, scientists in
Antarctica and around the world will be able to develop a detailed history
of the Antarctic climate and the expansion and contraction of the area's
ice sheets over the past 20 million years.
Watch video clips from the ANDRILL announcement
Quicktime 1 | 2 | 3
Windows Media 1 | 2 | 3
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ANDRILL's Science Management Office opened at UNL in 2002, soon after
the completion of its predecessor, the Cape Roberts Project (1995-2000) in
the western Ross Sea region. Also in 2002, Harwood and Powell secured a $1
million Major Research Initiative grant from NSF to help build the drilling
system. Nearing completion in Christchurch, New Zealand, the system will be
tested this fall in New Zealand.
The program will proceed in three stages. Seismic surveys to determine
the best drilling sites will be completed in October and November. In 2006,
a team led by Powell and Tim Naish of the Institute of Geological and
Nuclear Sciences in New Zealand, will drill from the McMurdo Ice Shelf
south of Ross Island. In the second drilling season, a team led by Harwood
and Fabio Florindo of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and
Volcanology will drill from a site west of Ross Island.
ANDRILL's drilling system, developed and operated by Antarctica New
Zealand (the project operator for ANDRILL, and the major international
partner), will enable the program to drill in much deeper water than
earlier projects allowed. The drill is designed to punch through about 275
meters of ice, drop through 900 meters of water to the sea floor, and pull
a continuous 1,000-meter-long sediment core at each drilling site.
The core samples will first be examined by scientists at McMurdo Station
and then stored at Florida State University's Antarctic Research Facility
in Tallahassee, where they will be available for the thorough, ongoing
studies that will give scientists a much clearer picture of Antarctica's
recent climate history.
Full Press Release
ANDRILL
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GREAT PLAINS ART MUSEUM
Gude, Murphy Exhibition Continues
This Week At Great Plains Art Museum
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Deborah J. Murphy, "The Silence Is Golden" 2005, prismacolor on board
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Parallel exhibitions featuring
the work of two Great Plains artists will open June 3 and run through
July 31 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Great Plains Art
Museum.
"From the Heart of a Regionalist: Paintings by Anthony Benton Gude"
will include nearly 60 works, mostly oil paintings, but also a number of
watercolors and drawings.
"WaterWays & Other Perspectives" will feature 13 Prismacolor drawings
by Deborah J. Murphy of Omaha, all completed in the last two years.
Both artists will be featured at an opening reception from 7-9 pm
June 3 at the museum, 1155 Q St., Hewit Place. The receptions and
exhibitions are free and open to the public.
"These are two wonderful exhibits and each is powerful in its own
right, although they do complement each other in some ways," said Reece
Summers, curator of the museum. "The two artists work with different
materials, Gude mostly with oils and Murphy with Prismacolor pencils, but
both look at the landscapes of the Midwest and Great Plains, and the
interactions of humans with the natural world."
Gude attended the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston in
1986-87 and later studied at the Art Student's League in New York City,
focusing on drawing and paint. He mastered the Venetian technique of oil
painting, a system that employs the use of monochromatic under painting to
develop form and composition before the color is painted on. The many
layers of paint give the final result a stronger body.
His recent commissions include four historical murals covering 480
square feet for the St. Joseph River Boat Partners in St. Joseph, Mo.; "The
Benton," a portrait of a stern-wheeler, for The River Club in Kansas City,
Mo.; and a mural, "A Century of Service," 8 feet by 12 feet, and five
paintings of various Kansas themes for Western Resources in Topeka, Kansas.
Gude and his family live on a small farm in southeastern Marshall
County, Kan. (county seat Marysville). The farm was originally purchased in
an unusual fashion by his grandfather, muralist Thomas Hart Benton
(1889-1975). Benton painted a picture of the farm's barnyard and silo, sold
the painting and purchased the farm with the proceeds of the sale.
A native of North Platte, Murphy has been a professional artist for
more than 30 years and has shown extensively around the Midwest, where her
work has been collected both publicly and privately. She is known primarily
for her Midwestern landscapes, and in recent years has come to prefer using
Prismacolor pencils to capture the texture and colors of prairie
vegetation. She uses poster board of a particular texture that allows her
to build many layers of color.
Murphy, who earned a bachelor's degree in music education at the
University of Nebraska at Kearney (then Kearney State College), was the
recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in painting in
1994 and a Distinguished Achievement Grant from the Nebraska Arts Council
in 1998.
The Great Plains Art Museum is part of the Center for Great Plains
Studies at UNL. It is open from 10 am to 5 pm Tuesday through Saturday
and 1:30-5 pm Sundays. It is closed Mondays.
GREAT PLAINS ART MUSEUM
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MARY RIEPMA ROSS MEDIA ARTS CENTER
Continuing This Week at the Ross: The Flatwater Native Film Festival, Murderball.
UNL's Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center
presents The Flatwater Native Film Festival and
Murderball, the winner of the Documentary Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Editing at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
The Flatwater Native Film Festival features the best documentary works and short films from Indian Country. The line-up this year includes A Thousand Words, the newest film from award-winning director Chris Eyres (Smoke Signals, Skins) which takes an intimate glimpse into the lives of four contemporary Native Americans as they confront the crises that arise in a single day. Trudell by Heather Rae examines the life and incredible story of the Native American poet-prophet-activist and his heartfelt message of active, personal responsibility to the earth, all of its inhabitants, and our descendants while Homeland - Four Portraits of Native Action takes a look at activists who fight to protect Indian lands, preserve their sovereignty, and ensure the cultural survival of their peoples.
Featuring fierce rivalry, stopwatch suspense, and larger-than- life personalities, Murderball, Winner of the Documentary Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Editing at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, is a film about tough, highly competitive rugby players. Quadriplegic rugby players. Whether by car wreck, fist fight, gun shot, or rogue bacteria, these men were forced to live life sitting down. In their own version of the full-contact sport, they smash the hell out of each other in custom-made gladiator-like wheelchairs. And no, they don't wear helmets. From the gyms of middle America to the Olympic arena in Athens, Greece, Murderball tells the story of a group of world-class athletes unlike any ever shown on screen. In addition to smashing chairs, it will smash every stereotype you ever had about "gimps" and "cripples." It is a film about family, revenge, honor, sex (yes, they can) and the triumph of love over loss. But most of all, it is a film about standing up, even after your spirit - and your spine - has been crushed.
More information is available at the Ross website.
MRRMAC | FLATWATER NATIVE FILM FESTIVAL | MURDERBALL |
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