News

Corn Contributes to Muggy Weather
MSI PI Tim Griffis, a professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, was interviewed recently by Minnesota Public Radio about how the change from a prairie landscape to crop fields has affected Minnesota weather. Crops, especially corn, “sweat” moisture into the atmosphere much more than do prairie plants. The result is more water vapor in the air, which makes it more uncomfortable when the temperature rises.
Butterfly Nutrition and Development
Since 2011, MSI PI Emilie Snell-Rood, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, has collected butterflies around the country. She and her lab compared butterfly traits to try to determine how nutrition affected them and their development. This study is notable for its huge number of species.
Urban Design to Fight Heat Waves
MSI PIs were featured in a recent Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) story about how designers are developing ways to construct city neighborhoods in such a way that they will not create “heat islands,” where temperatures are higher than they are in surrounding areas.
Galaxy Platform for Multiomics
The College of Biological Sciences Connect blog features a story about MSI PI Tim Griffin (Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics; Director, Center for Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics) and the Galaxy platform hosted by MSI.
Using the Sun to Clean the Environment
MSI PI Larry Wackett (Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics) recently published a paper in the Nature online journal Scientific Reports that discusses a method of using sunlight to fight clean up toxic waste. The method involves a group of bacteria that use sunlight and others that eat and degrade toxic materials.
Investigating Adolescent Depression
Assistant Professor Karina Quevedo, an MSI PI in the psychiatry department, has been interviewed by the news website MinnPost about her research into ways to fight depression in adolescents. Her current study involves teaching participants to use positive memories to activate certain areas of the brain. The study involves MRI scanning.
Paper by MSI PI Donald Truhlar Reveals Oxidation State 10
Oxidation state is an identifier used by scientists to understand the mechanisms of oxidation-reduction reactions and catalysis. In a recent paper, published in Angewandte Chemie, by graduate student Haoyu Yu and Regents Professor Donald Truhlar, an MSI PI in the Department of Chemistry, the authors reveal the existence of oxidation state 10. Previously, oxidation states ranged from -4 through +9.
U-Spatial Helps IonE Researcher Visualize Recreation Choices
U-Spatial, one of MSI’s sibling organizations in Research Computing, recently helped researchers at the Institute on the Environment (IonE) on a project that showed the importance of water quality to people making decisions about which lake to visit. A story about this project and the work done by U-Spatial appears on the IonE website: There’s a map for that.  
MSI PI Dan Keefe Featured in Driven to Discover
MSI PI Dan Keefe, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, is featured in the U’s Driven to Discover campaign: To Create 3D Space to Explore New Worlds.
July 2016 Maintenance
On Wednesday, July 6, 2016, from 8:00am – 5:00pm CDT, MSI staff will perform scheduled maintenance and upgrades to the network and various MSI systems. July maintenance will impact the following systems: Mesabi and Itasca will be generally unavailable from 8:00am - 5:00pm CDT while MSI staff make system upgrades. Systems status is always available on our System Status page. If you have any questions, please email help@msi.umn.edu.

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