Explore Magazine Volume 2 Issue 1

 


About the Cover



Extracts

Research Briefs

''Lost Years'' Found
Researchers at the University of Florida's Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research are using everything from DNA analyses to satellite telemetry to help answer questions about which the center's namesake could only speculate. It is a testament to Carr's knowledge of sea turtles that most of what he hypothesized, modern science has proven to be true.

An Ounce of Prevention,
A Pound of Cure

For decades, three questions have driven UF diabetes researchers: Can you predict diabetes? Can you prevent diabetes? What causes diabetes? Their discoveries have allowed physicians to predict the disease's development in many individuals. Now they are leading participants in the first nationwide study of ways to halt or delay the disease through daily doses of insulin.


Exchange

Technology Transfer

Seafood Safety
For many years, scientists at UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences have studied ways to improve the safety and quality of all seafood --- oysters, clams, shrimp, fish and a host of other seafood products.

Submarine Solutions
Until recently, geologic events on the ocean floor might as well have been the work of mythological gods. But geologists at the University of Florida now are able to base their theories about the role the ocean floor plays in the Earth's development on fact rather than fantasy.

Perpetual Plastics
University of Florida engineering Professor Charles Beatty has spent his life studying the tangled chains of polymer molecules that make up plastics in an effort to recycle 70 billion pounds of laundry detergent bottles, PVC pipe and other incompatible plastics into useful materials.
 


Excerpts

New Books

Explore: Research at the University of Florida is published each March and September by the Office of Research, Technology & Graduate Education at the University of Florida. The magazine seeks to inform readers about the economic and social benefits of the more than $200 million in research being conducted by UF faculty and students annually and to promote a greater understanding of the connection between research, technology and graduate education. For more information about the research program, contact Vice President for Research Karen A. Holbrook, Ph.D., 223 Grinter Hall, Box 115500, Gainesville, FL 32611-5500 (Phone: 352/392-1582). For details about research highlighted in this issue, contact the editor or the researchers directly.

The publication of Explore is not financed by state-appropriated funds. Opinions expressed do not reflect the official views of the university. Use of trade names implies no endorsement by the University of Florida.

(c) 1997 University of Florida. For permission to reprint any part of this magazine, contact the Editor, Explore magazine, Box 115500, Gainesville, FL 32611-5500 (Phone: 352/392-1582). e-mail: explore@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu

Visit the Explore homepage on the World Wide Web: http://www.research.ufl.edu/publications/explore/

Editor: Joseph M. Kays

Design: News & Public Affairs, University of Florida

Printing: StorterChilds Printing, Gainesville



Expressions

Stack

photo by John Knaub

STACK, the most recent work of UF assistant art Professor Celeste Roberge, consists of an antique daybed embedded in 8,000 pounds of dry-stacked midnight shale, topped by 10 boulders of red barkstone. The sculpture was on display at the Grinter Galleries as part of the 1996-97 UF Faculty Exhibition.

For the past 10 years, Roberge has been creating massive, figurative sculptures in welded steel, which are filled with geologic materials such as beach sand and glacial cobbles. This new work explores the idea of embodiment and embedding. STACK references structures such as the funerary monument, the sarcophagus, the tomb, the stone wall, the ruin and the geological fossil.