The Toys for Tots drive led by Veteran Services and the student organization VeteranOne collected 445 toys for needy children in the area with the help of several other student groups and organizations, reports Judy Gagnon, coordinator of Veteran Services.
The toy drive was conducted in coopeartion with the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Belchertown and received a boost of support from Alpha Phi Omega, a coed service organization, the Joint Student Engineering Societies, the Student Nurses Association and the Off Campus Student Center.
VeteranOne single-handedly collected more than 230 toys
A new high-resolution climate study by campus scientists, the first to apply regional climate models to examine likely near-term changes in temperature and precipitation across the Northeast United States, suggests temperatures are going to be significantly warmer in all seasons in the next 30 years, especially in winter. Also, they project that winters will be wetter, with more rain likely than snow.
Joseph Goldstein, Distinguished Professor in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, is part of a research team trying to produce an iron-nickel alloy that is currently only found in meteorites, for use in making supermagnets. The goal of the research is to develop bulk quantities of commercially viable, environmentally sound supermagnets, which can be used in electric vehicles, wind-turbine generators and many other machines.
Campus officials this week praised the completion of a two-year, $12.3 million laboratory renovation in the Lederle Graduate Research Center, saying the project will enhance research in the biological and physical sciences and make the campus competitive nationally.
Molecular chaperones have emerged as exciting new potential drug targets, because scientists want to learn how to stop cancer cells, for example, from using chaperones to enable their uncontrolled growth. Now a team of biochemists led by Lila Gierasch has deciphered key steps in the mechanism of the Hsp70 molecular machine by “trapping” this chaperone in action, providing a dynamic snapshot of its mechanism.
Always looking for opportunities to offer students a way to practice their new skills into real-life settings to broaden their experience and increase their comfort in unfamiliar situations, Judi LaBranche, a lecturer in Kinesiology, recently took eight juniors and seniors majors to the Hampshire County Jail in Northampton to participate in the correctional facility’s health fair. The health and fitness specialist supervised students as they carried out health testing for about 80 minimum- and medium-security inmates during the three-hour event.
Seven teams of aspiring entrepreneurs shared $10,000 in prize money from the initial phase of the Innovation Challenge competition held Dec. 4. The awards were based on executive summaries that each team submitted in advance to a panel of judges plus an elevator pitch followed by questions from the judges during the competition.
Poinsettias are springing up in offices across campus, but they’re not being brought by elves — the holiday plants are part of a new horticultural program launched by Landscape Management and employing the skills of students from the Stockbridge School of Agriculture.
The W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies is being awarded this year’s American Historical Association's Equity Award recognizing success in training and placing nearly 100 percent of its minority historians in academia.
All 45 of the campus's residence halls are now protected with fire sprinkler systems, following a massive, voluntary retrofit to protect students in one of the nation’s largest on-campus housing systems. State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan hailed the achievement as an impressive commitment to public safety.