By Jenny Wells

Beth Guiton, professor of chemistry, and Susan Odom, assistant professor of chemistry, in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, have been selected as Scialog Fellows by the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement.

As fellows, Guiton and Odom will participate in Scialog: Advanced Energy Storage, a program involving early career rising stars, beyond postdoctoral appointment, interested in pursuing collaborative, high-risk, highly impactful discovery research on untested ideas applicable to creating breakthroughs in energy storage. The program has a format in which participants are encouraged to engage in dialogue and form new research teams, often multidisciplinary and composed of both theorists and experimentalists.

By Gail Hairston

The last event of the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences’ Civil Life Panel Series’ spring season is slated noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 19, with two follow-up panel discussions later the same day. The topic is “Science Speaks.”

Allan Butterfield, Alumni Association Endowed Professor of Biological Chemistry; Andrea Erhardt, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences; Bruce Webb, professor of entomology; and David Weisrock, associate professor of biology, will gather for a lively discussion at noon in the UK Athletics Auditorium of the William T. Young Library.

They will discuss what it means

Atmospheric aerosols such as smoke, fog, and mist are made of fine solid or liquid particles suspended in air. In the lower atmosphere aerosols play a major role in controlling air quality, as well as in scattering and absorbing sunlight. This interaction of aerosols with light varies widely and depends on their complex chemical composition that rapidly changes under the governing highly reactive conditions found in the atmosphere. Importantly, the mysterious formation of carbon-containing atmospheric particles has intrigued atmospheric scientists during the last decade. This issue demands a thorough understanding of the mechanisms of atmospheric reactions as tackled in a new laboratory study entitled Reactivity of Ketyl and Acetyl Radicals from Direct Solar Actinic Photolysis of Aqueous Pyruvic Acid published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A.

By Gail Hairston

Molly T. Blasing, assistant professor of Russian studies in the University of Kentucky Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, has been awarded a 2017 NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Summer Stipend, one of only two conferred this year in Kentucky.

She will use the funding to complete research on a final chapter of her book, “Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture.”

Blasing's project examines the relationship between photographic seeing and poetic creation in Russia and the Soviet Union. The book represents an interdisciplinary approach to modern literary studies, visual culture and the social history of technology.

Blasing’s study considers how photography

By Jenny Wells

Lithospheric magnetic field. Video courtesy of European Space Agency (ESA)

A University of Kentucky geophysicist is helping an international team of scientists reveal dramatic new information about the Earth’s magnetic field.

Two years ago, Dhananjay Ravat, who is a professor in the UK Departments of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Physics and Astronomy, was asked by the leader of the Swarm Satellite Constellation Application and Research Facility of the European Space Agency (ESA) to collaborate with their team to create a map of the magnetic features of the Earth’s lithosphere. Ravat, who has worked on geophysical data from several space missions around the Earth, Mars and the moon, was intrigued by the Swarm project, and his

By Whitney Hale and Gail Hairston

Watch as contestants at the Brooklyn Book Festival try to figure out what "The Animators," by UK alumna Kayla Rae Whitaker, is all about based only on its cover.

Very few authors find themselves publishing their debut novel with a name as big as Random House, much less earning acclaim from critics such as The New York Times. But for University of Kentucky alumna Kayla Rae Whitaker, these are natural next steps for someone who showed tremendous promise during her college career. Whitaker’s novel, "The Animators," was released earlier this year.

Aspiring writers from the university and across the nation will get to hear Whitaker's own take on her early success and hear a reading from "

By Gail Hairston

The Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT) recently named Brenna Reinhart Byrd Teacher of the Year. Byrd is a University of Kentucky assistant professor of German studies. As the southern regional representative chosen by SCOLT, she will compete for Teacher of the Year at the national level at the annual conference of the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages. 

Byrd was named Kentucky's Teacher of the Year by the Kentucky World Languages Association in September 2016.

Byrd has over 15 years of education and teaching experience in the German language. She received her bachelor’s degree in German and a minor in linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin and both her master’s and doctoral degrees in Germanic linguistics from University of California, Los Angeles, before

By Gail Hairston

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced Friday that University of Kentucky’s Peter Joseph Kalliney and 172 other scholars, artists and scientists in the United States and Canada have received a coveted Guggenheim Fellowship.

According to the foundation’s announcement, successful candidates were appointed on the basis of “prior achievement and exceptional promise.”

“It’s exciting to name 173 new Guggenheim Fellows,” said the President of the Guggenheim Foundation Edward Hirsch in a media release. “These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best. Each year since (its establishment in) 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has bet

By Kathy Johnson and Terry Sebastian

A University of Kentucky sociology class won the #VoiceofJustice video contest, as announced via Facebook Live yesterday by Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear and Eileen Recktenwald, director of the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs (KASAP).

The competition called upon college students to submit 30-second videos to promote the free and confidential Sexual Assault Hotline, 800-656-HOPE, and to increase awareness of sexual assault and active bystanding to help prevent it.

A panel of survivors and victim advocates selected the video “Stand with us” as the overall $500 video prizewinner. Students enrolled in Emily Bonistall

By Dominique Page

This week, the University of Kentucky Center for Research on Violence Against Women (CRVAW) will present the fourth lecture of their series "Researching Violence: Challenges, Strategies, and Practices."

Claire Renzetti, professor and chair of the UK Department of Sociology, and the Judy Conway Patton Endowed Chair for CRVAW, will deliver the lecture titled "Benefits and Challenges of Using Amazon's Mechanical Turk for Studying Violence Against Women" at noon, Wednesday, April 12, in Room 115 of the UK College of Nursing.

The endowed faculty at the center are presenting topics over the next several years regarding the challenges of measuring violence against women and potential strategies for conducting this research. The focus is on conceptual and

By Gail Hairston

The fourth event for the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences Civic Life seminar series will be moderated by Molly Thomasy Blasing, assistant professor of Russian studies in the college’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures (MCLLC). The event will be noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 12, in the UK Athletics Auditorium of the William T. Young Library.

This week’s topic is “Russia and the World in 2017."

A panel discussion will be moderated by Blasing with: Gregory Hall (Patterson School); Karen Petrone (History); Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby (MCLLC);

A research study performed by Dr. Dmytro Havrylyuk, Dr. David Heidary, Leona Nease, Dr. Sean Parkin, and Dr. Edith Glazer was profiled on the back cover of the journal The European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry for a special cluster issue titled "Metal Anticancer Complexes – Activity, Mechanism of Action and Future Perspectives". 

From the description of the cover art: "This cover feature shows a selection of inorganic elements that are used in new anticancer agents described in this cluster issue. The hourglass symbolizes the time-sensitive nature of chemotherapy treatment as well as the spatial and temporal control achieved with light-activated compounds. The strained complex on the left can eject a ligand to form covalent adducts with DNA, while the unstrained complex on the right generates ROS. In both cases pyridylbenzazole ligands (X = CH, NH, O, S) were