Talking Points

Climate modeler identifies trigger for Earth’s last big freeze

For more than 30 years, climate scientists have debated whether flood waters from melting of the enormous Laurentide Ice Sheet, which ushered in the last major cold episode on Earth about 12,900 years ago, flowed northwest into the Arctic first, or east via the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to weaken ocean thermohaline circulation and have a frigid effect on global climate.
 
Now geoscientist Alan Condron, with Peter Winsor at the University of Alaska, using new, high-resolution global ocean circulation models, report the first conclusive evidence that this flood must have flowed north into the

Researchers propose new model of RNA transcription initiation

For years scientists have worked to understand molecular events at the initiation of RNA transcription, when special proteins called RNA polymerases, assigned to make a new hemoglobin molecule for example, kick-start the process. Now Chemistry professor Craig Martin and molecular biology doctoral student Luis Ramirez-Tapia have isolated these first steps and provide a new model for how and why it works.
 
Martin says, “People knew these steps happened, but we’re explaining why they happen and the consequences.” Using a combination of fluorescence imaging techniques in synthetic DNA, the

Researchers reveal structure of human enzyme, offering hope to children with rare metabolic disorders

Considered separately, inherited metabolic disorders such as Tay-Sachs disease and mucopolysaccharidosis 4A (MPS 4A) are exceedingly rare, complex and difficult to study. But taken as a group, the collection of more than 50 lysosomal storage diseases become more common, affecting approximately 1 in 7,000 births, and lessons learned about any one can be applied to the others.
 
Now a team of structural biologists led by Scott Garman of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has again moved the field forward by revealing the structure of human galactosamine-6-sulfatase (GALNS), the lysosomal enzyme

CASA installs its first weather radar in Texas

Brenda Philips, deputy director of the College of Engineering’s Collaborative Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) program, with engineer Eric Lyons and innovation manager Apoorva Bajaj, were on hand Oct. 28 as the first CASA weather radar unit was installed by helicopter atop a building at the University of Texas Arlington (UTA).
 
Philips said, “This represents a great technical and organizational milestone for the project.” Over the next several months it will see three more CASA units installed at partner institutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, with support from the North Texas

Students given financial need and merit awards for study abroad

This fall, 40 students are venturing into the world to study with extra financial support through the campus’s International Programs Office. 
 
The Scott Academic Merit Scholarship was awarded to 15 students with a minimum 3.8 grade point average who are studying abroad during the 2012-13 academic year. The awards range from $500 to $1,000 for each student. The Scott Academic Merit Scholarship was given by former chancellor David Scott and his wife Kathleen, strong supporters of study abroad for UMass students. 
 
In addition, the Education Abroad Scholarship was awarded to 25 students who

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