News

UMass Amherst Researchers Unravel Secrets of Parasites' Replication

AMHERST, Mass. – A group of diseases that kill millions of people each year can’t be touched by antibiotics, and some treatment is so harsh the patient can’t survive it. They’re caused by parasites, and for decades researchers have searched for a “magic bullet” to kill them without harming the patient. Now, a team of microbiologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has made an advance that could one day lead to a new weapon for fighting parasitic diseases such as African sleeping sickness, chagas disease and leishmaniasis.
 
In the cover article of the current issue of Eukaryotic

UMass Amherst Physicists' Work is Critical to Higgs Boson Search

AMHERST, Mass. – Physicists Benjamin Brau, Carlo Dallapiccola and Stephane Willocq at the University of Massachusetts Amherst were instrumental in this week’s preliminary observation of a new particle, possibly the long-sought Higgs boson, announced by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) particle physics laboratory.
 
The Standard Model of particle physics can correctly explain the elementary particles and forces of nature after more than four decades of experiments.

UMass Amherst Biochemists Developing Tools to Stop Plague and Other Bacterial Threats

AMHERST, Mass. – Biochemist Alejandro Heuck at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently received a five-year, $950,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to map the molecular structure of a needle-like tool used by deadly bacteria to drill holes in mammalian cell walls.
 
Once a channel is open, bacteria that cause such diseases as bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis), dysentery (Shigella), food poisoning (Salmonella) and sepsis (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) pump proteins in to destroy the body’s ability to fight infection, killing millions each year worldwide.

UMass Amherst Hosts LEGO Robot Training Workshop for Science Teachers and Coaches on Friday, June 29

*** MEDIA ADVISORY ***
 
DATE:           Friday, June 29
TIME:            9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., MEDIA ACCESS at noon
WHAT:          LEGO robot training workshop for teachers and adult coaches
WHERE:       UMass Amherst Computer Science Building, 140 Governors Dr.
 
At a sold-out coach training workshop on Friday, June 29 at the Computer Science Building on the UMass Amherst campus, visiting experts will teach 32 science teachers and other adults how to build and program LEGO robots so they can help to form FIRST LEGO League (FLL) robotics teams for 9- to 14-year-old boys and girls in area

UMass Amherst Police Station Awarded LEED Gold Certification

AMHERST, Mass. – The UMass Amherst Police Station has been awarded LEED Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI).
 
LEED—Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—is the nation’s preeminent program for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings.
 
The building was designed by Caolo & Bieniek Associates, Inc. of Chicopee. The general contractor was CTA Construction Company of Waltham.
 
The new police station is unique both in terms of LEED certification and building use,

UMass Amherst Researchers, International Team, Say Past Periodic Warmth in Arctic May Be Related to Melting Antarctic Ice Sheets

AMHERST, Mass.  – First analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the Arctic, published this week inScience, provide dramatic, “astonishing” documentation that intense warm intervals, warmer than scientists thought possible, occurred there over the past 2.8 million years.
 
Further, these extreme inter-glacial warm periods correspond closely with times when parts of Antarctica were ice-free and also warm, suggesting strong inter-hemispheric climate connectivity, say the project’s three co-chief scientists.

UMass Amherst Culinary Team Wins Gold Medal

AMHERST, Mass. – For a second straight year, a team of chefs from UMass Amherst Dining Services won a gold medal in the annual Tastes of the World Chef Culinary Conference’s team competition.
 
Pastry chef Simon Stevenson, chef Anthony Jung of Berkshire Dining Commons, chef Shawn Stemp of the University Club, and culinarian Taylor Whittemore of Berkshire Dining Commons topped 12 other teams in the American Culinary Federation-sanctioned event held June 15 at UMass Amherst.
 
The team’s winning four-course meal consisted of pan-fried cod with Meyer lemon parsley vinaigrette, stuffed chicken

UMass Amherst Dining Services Wins National Award for 'Baby Berk' Food Truck

AMHERST, Mass. – Baby Berk, the mobile eatery operated by Dining Services at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has won top honors in the 2012 Loyal E. Horton Awards given by the National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS).
 
The presentation will be made in July during the association’s national conference in Boston.
 
The popular food truck, which made its debut last September, was the gold medalist in the “retail sale-single concept” category for large schools.

UMass Amherst Computer Network Researchers Help Lay Groundwork for New White House 'US Ignite' Initiative

AMHERST, Mass. – On Thursday afternoon, June 14, senior officials from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and non-government partners will announce the launch of US Ignite, a national “innovation ecosystem” for developing and deploying public sector applications and services on ultra-fast, software-defined networks to enhance the next generation of the Internet.
 
Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are among those from nearly two dozen institutions tapped by NSF to take part.

Badgett Testifies Before Senate in Favor of Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act

M.V. Lee Badgett, director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration and professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee today that Congress should pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because lesbian, gay and bisexual people are nearly as likely to file discrimination complaints as those already protected by federal anti-bias laws.
 
Badgett was one of five witnesses who provided the Senate committee with testimony related to the proposed bill, which would ban discrimination in hiring and other

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