Scott Abella (Life Sciences) presented the first talk in the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension's 2016 Nevada Naturalist Lecture Series. His presentation was titled "Conserving America’s National Parks." Abella shared stories of active conservation projects across the national park system, including many local parks such as…

Biologist Daniel Thompson (Life Sciences) was recently featured in the Vegas PBS series Outdoor Nevada. Thompson and colleagues from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service joined host John Burke to discuss rare butterflies in the Spring Mountains. Vegas PBS’ Outdoor Nevada originally aired from 1995…

Josh Bonde (Geoscience) is one of 10 community members to be appointed to the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument Advisory Council by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. The council will provide the secretary guidance for the management of the monument, including advisement on the preparation and implementation of a park management plan.

Matthew Lachniet (Geoscience) was featured in the December 2015 issue of National Geographic Espana. The piece was about previous work that Lachniet conducted using a 2,400-year-old stalagmite from a cave in southwestern Mexico. The research describes how the rise and fall of the ancient pyramid city of Teotihuacan and other Mesoamerican…

Brian Hedlund (Life Sciences) recently co-authored “Global Metagenomic Survey Reveals a New Bacterial Candidate Phylum in Geothermal Springs” with several colleagues in the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute as well as other institutions of higher education. The article appears in Nature Communications, published by the…

Paleontologist Josh Bonde (Geoscience) recently was featured on the Vegas PBS series Outdoor Nevada. Bonde and host John Burke went fossil hunting at Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. Vegas PBS’ Outdoor Nevada originally aired from 1995 to 1999. Hosted by highly regarded television host and actor John Burke, Outdoor Nevada will delve…

Brett Riddle (Life Sciences) is a co-author on a paper that was recently published in Nature. The article is titled, "Holocene Shifts in the Assembly of Plant and Animal Communities Implicate Human Impacts." Understanding how ecological communities are organized and how they change through time is critical to predicting the effects of climate…

Arthur Baragar (Mathematical Sciences) gave the opening remarks at the A-Star Winter Math Camp, which was held on the UNLV campus Dec. 19-23. The camp presents a unique opportunity for interested and talented students to improve their math skills during winter break before the upcoming competition season.

Jason Steffen (Physics and Astronomy) was a guest on NPR's Marketplace, talking about how to more efficiently board an airplane. He began researching the issue as a graduate student after being frustrated by slow boarding processes and flight delays. The algorithm he used to find the optimal boarding method is called Markov Chain…

Zhongbo Yu (Geoscience) recently received the John Hem Award for Excellence in Science & Engineering from the National Ground Water Association. The award honors significant scientific or engineering contributions to the understanding of groundwater. The award will be presented at the 2015 Groundwater Expo in Las Vegas this week. Yu was…

Brian Hedlund (Life Sciences) recently received an $876,229 National Science Foundation grant for his project, "Collaborative Proposal: Biodiversity Discovery and Analysis of 'Aigarchaeota', a Globally Distributed But Poorly Understood Archaeal Lineage." The grant is for three years.    

Biochemistry professor Ernesto Abel-Santos and former postdoctoral scholar Amber Howerton were recently issued patent #9,079,935, which describes a novel compound designed to prevent Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections.