Research Frontiers Magazine in Your Pocket

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Readers can see the Spring 2011 issue of Research Frontiers on the Web or use smart phones to access videos, slide shows and stories.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Readers who want to learn more about research at the University of Arkansas can phone it in by using QR codes in Research Frontiers magazine, or on table tents across campus. The codes will lead readers to videos, slide shows and stories about faculty and student research.

QR codes, short for quick-response codes, are two-dimensional bar codes usually designed in a square matrix. Applications can be downloaded to smart phones to allow the phone to read the QR code and go immediately to an Internet site associated with the code.

“We’re continuing to expand our use of this technology,” said Melissa Lutz Blouin, editor of Research Frontiers and director of science and research communications at the University of Arkansas. “Readers can go beyond the magazine and watch videos or slide shows on their phones.” The use of QR codes on table tents at campus dining halls won an Award of Excellence from district III of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

This spring’s videos include a feature on two students who are examining water quality in Arkansas streams by looking at bugs; a video on a professor who started a nanotechnology company to create products from the fruits of his innovative research; and a look at 10 years of interdisciplinary research in the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences.

The slide show features hand-drawn illustrations of teeth by Peter Ungar, Distinguished Professor and department chair of anthropology. Ungar wrote the book Mammal Teeth in which the illustrations appear.

The magazine’s four main features extend from memory research to building businesses on technology and from cancer research to the ethics of baseball’s designated hitter rule.

Psychologists Denise Beike and James Lampinen have studied memories for decades. Beike has focused on autobiographical memory, while Lampinen studies mistaken and false memories. Together they talk about the fluidity of memory and its strengths and weaknesses.

Another feature highlights other aspects of the brain, the ability to take an idea and use it to create a business. This article examines the origins of three businesses in the Arkansas Research and Technology Park – SFC Fluidics, Arkansas Power Electronics International and NN-Laboratories. These companies, founded by University of Arkansas researchers, provide innovative products to consumers, such as energy-efficient lighting and economical hybrid electric vehicles.

Innovation led engineer David Zaharoff to bring together material found in lobster shells with a discarded cancer medicine to produce a promising treatment for cancer. Early laboratory tests in mice have had success in treating bladder, colorectal and pancreatic cancer. This feature follows the story of how an engineer looked at medicine with new eyes and saw a potentially powerful new way to fight cancer.

The last feature focuses on a different aspect of thought: ethics. Law professor Dustin Buehler looks at the designated hitter rule in baseball and does a cost-benefit analysis based on moral hazard.

Other stories include a feature on drama professor Amy Herzberg and a story about a study of women veteran amputees conducted by graduate student Janet Cater.

Also, in the UA Q&A feature, readers can find out why there has been a sudden upsurge of bed bugs and what causes soda pop to fizz.