Fri, Aug 25, 2006
August 25-27, 2006
LEAD INSTITUTE IN CONSORTIUM
Research Celebrates MATC Grant
UNL has been awarded a $6.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration designating UNL's Mid-America Transportation Center as a regional University Transportation Center. "For five years we have had a vision of winning this regional university transportation center and now our day has come," said UNL Vice Chancellor for Research Prem Paul. "This is an important grant because this center will put us in the driver's seat as the leader in transportation research and education in this region and it will put our faculty, our university and our state at the table where national transportation priorities are set."
The Mid-America Transportation Center is a consortium with UNL as the lead institution and regional partners Kansas State University, University of Kansas, University of Missouri-Rolla and Lincoln University of Missouri. The Nebraska Department of Roads and the Kansas and Missouri Departments of Transportation also are key partners. Laurence Rilett, Keith W. Klaasmeyer Chair in Engineering and Technology in the civil engineering department at UNL, is the center director.
MATC
STUDENT OBSERVATORY, FRI 8:15PM
Late Summer Skies Featured at Student Observatory
Weather permitting, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Student Observatory's series of fall public nights kicks off from 8:15 pm to 11:00 pm. on Friday, Aug. 25, with the opportunity to see the planets Mars, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus, as well as more-distant attractions of the late summer sky. Jupiter and its moons will be best seen early in the evening.
There is no charge for admission to the observatory and children of all ages are particularly welcome. Astronomers on hand to answer questions, and telescopes will be available for children to use. The observatory will not be open if it is mostly cloudy. If in doubt about the weather, call the observatory at (402) 472-4728.
STUDENT OBSERVATORY
EXTREME LIGHT LABORATORY, BASEMENT OF BEHLEN HALL, FRI 2:30PM
UNL to Unveil World-Class Laser
For months construction workers and physicists have prepared the sub-basement of Behlen Laboratory for the arrival of a laser so powerful and ultra-fast that it has the potential for reaching the highest intensity ever produced by any laser in the world.
The new Extreme Light Laboratory will greet its first public visitors at an unveiling celebration at 2:30 p.m. Aug. 25, where physicist Donald Umstadter, director and principal scientist of the laboratory, will offer tours of the facility and the chance to see the new ultra-fast, high intensity Diocles laser.
Producing more power than 100,000 Hoover Dams in bursts lasting only only 30 billionths of one millionth of a second, the Diocles Laser and Umstadter are putting UNL at the forefront of international high-field physics and laser research. more...
EXTREME LIGHT LAB
MARY RIEPMA ROSS MEDIA ARTS CENTER
Strangers With Candy, Lower City Show at the Ross
UNL's Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center presents Strangers With Candy, and Lower City. Both films will be showing through August 31.
Strangers With Candy is a daring leap backwards. A prequel to the critically acclaimed Comedy Central series of the same name, it is the tale of Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris), a forty-seven year old ex-con, junky whore who decides to return home after thirty-two years as a runaway. When Jerri arrives at her childhood home, she discovers her earlier disappearance has caused her father to slip into a self-induced coma. Moved by guilt, and with hopes of jarring her father from his eternal slumber, Jerri decides to turn her life around by picking it up exactly where she left off - as a high school freshman. She's going to start her life over, only this time she's going to do the wrong things the right way. Once reenrolled in high school, and seeking to find that special thing that will erase thirty-two years of debauchery, Jerri stumbles upon the school sponsored State Science Fair. Convinced that winning the fair will resurrect her father, she signs up, expecting an easy stroll down the road to victory. Not surprisingly, she finds that the path is fraught with the many adolescent problems and temptations that plague all teenagers, but especially this forty-seven year old former boozer, user and loser.
In Lower City, steamy sex, glistening sweat, dark photography, grungy ghetto colors, and sudden violence pervade this Brazilian feature from director Sergio Machado. Alice Braga (City of God) stars as Karinna, a traveling prostitute who trades her favors to lifelong friends Deco (Lazaro Ramos) and Naldinho (Wagner Moura) for a ride back to Salvador on their run down boat. After Deco is almost killed at a cockfight, the three form a temporary menage-a-trois friendship, but the intense love each man feels for Karinna coupled with their homophobic macho wariness threatens to destroy their once unbreakable friendship.
More information is available at the Ross website.
MRRMAC | STRANGERS WITH CANDY | LOWER CITY
