Sixteen years ago, Jason Hill stood before some 30 students in one of his first classes as a teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota. This June, more than 14,000 students will log on to take his course, Sustainability of Food Systems: A Global Life Cycle Perspective.
Hill’s class is among the first five massive open online courses (MOOCs) the U of M is offering (for free) through a partnership with Coursera, a leading MOOC platform. (more…)
Since its inception in 1909, University of Minnesota Extension has worked with farmers to find solutions to their biggest challenges. And, since we all eat—our biggest challenges. For the past 25 years, Extension has shared the U’s expertise by educating agriculture professionals, who in turn have the most influence on crop farmers today.
Keeping agriculture professionals on top of current research helps ensure economically and environmentally responsible cropping decisions are made throughout the state. (more…)
3-D CT scans give the U a leg up in spotting veterinary injuries
When Gauge fell from a rooftop a few months ago, he had two strikes against him:
• The ground was five stories down
• He was a dog, not a cat
Rushed to the University of Minnesota Veterinary Medical Center, Gauge looked like a goner. Even after his internal injuries were tended to, his fractured pelvis loomed like a third strike that would hobble him for life. That’s what it’s like for too many animals, whose veterinary surgeons have only conventional X-rays or a stack of two-dimensional CT scans to guide them as they go into surgery. (more…)
Erin Diamond shines as a brain researcher
In October 2010 freshman Erin Diamond first walked into Yang Zhang’s lab, knowing nothing about his specialty: brain imaging.
Before the day was out, she was setting up experiments, putting an EEG cap on volunteers, and generally undergoing total immersion in the field. (more…)
A study of its basin paves the way for cleaner water everywhere
The Minnesota River’s usually placid surface belies its status as a river —and a watershed—in need of help.
The river is naturally prone to heavy sediment loads. It runs through rich glacial deposits, in a channel carved by a catastrophic flood at the end of the last ice age, when a large lake formed by glacial meltwater gave way. (more…)
How a ‘motor mouth’ is changing dentistry
If you want your dental fillings, crowns, implants, and so on to last, you can thank ART.
Chewing involves some of the human body’s most complex motions, and ART, the artificial mouth at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, can perform a year’s worth of chewing—300,000 cycles—in just a day or two. (more…)
New study challenges theory of upward mobility in developing nations
Donald Bogue, professor emeritus in sociology and a distinguished scholar of demography, has found that unlike immigrants to the United States, immigrants between nations in Latin America frequently do not improve their lives by moving. (more…)
Sensor gloves detect obstacles for firefighters in smoky rooms
University of Minnesota researchers have taken a step toward providing first responders with a new means of finding their way through dark or smoky buildings.
Lucy Dunne, an assistant professor in the College of Design’s Department of Design, Housing & Apparel, and graduate student Tony Carton, working with funding from the U’s Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station to augment the sensory awareness of first responders like firefighters, designed gloves that use ultrasonic sensors to detect walls and other objects. (more…)
