NEWSLETTER
OF THE ARIZONA-NEVADA
ACADEMY OF SCIENCE
NEWSLETTER
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Department of Geosciences
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Editor, Stephen Williams The 45th Annual meeting of the Arizona- Nevada Academy of Science will be held at The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 13-14 April 2001. Friday evening's activities will be at UNLV in the Koch Auditorium, Room A 108, Classroom Building Complex (CBC). There will be a Board Meeting from 5:00 - 6:00 pm and registration from 6:00 - 6:30 pm with light refreshments. A campus map is available on line at http://www.unlv.edu Please feel free to contact Kathy Lauckner at lauckner@unlv.nevada.edu if you need additional information about UNLV. |
IMPORTANT DATESApril 13
Classroom Building Complex, UNLV
6:00 - 6:30 pm Registration 6:30 - 8:00 pm Lied Library Tour and Reception
Classroom Building Complex, UNLV 7:30 am
8:00 - 11:30 am
12:00 -1:15 pm
1:45 - 5:00 pm |
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HOST HOTELS
Walking Distance to UNLV 4520 Paradise Road Las Vegas, NV 89109 (702) 369-3366 $72+ 9% tax
Formerly the Old Continental Hotel Paradise and Flamingo Road Southeast Corner (702) 733-7000 $79 to 89 + 9% tax
105 East Harmon Avenue Las Vegas, NV 89109 (702) 798-1020 Reservations Dept. $56.06 (Friday) and $99 (Saturday) + 9% tax NEW ANTHROPOLOGY CHAIRThe new Chair of the Anthropology Section is:Bill White, Senior Archaeologist Harry Reid Center, UNLV 4505 S Maryland Parkway Las Vegas, NV 89154-4009 (702) 895-1416 whitew2@nevada.edu |
NEW SCIENCE EDUCATION CHAIRThe new Chair of the Science Education Section is:Satish Bhatnagar Department of Mathematics University of Nevada, Las Vegas 4505 South Maryland Parkway Las Vegas, NV 89154-4020 (702) 895-0383 bhatnaga@nevada.edu VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR THE ANNUAL MEETINGSenior Academy Judges for Best Student PapersSenior Academy Judges for Best Student Poster If you are interested in serving as a much- needed judge in either of these areas for the Annual Meeting, please contact Owen Davis:
phone: (520) 621-7953 fax: (520) 621-2672 JUNIOR ACADEMY MEETING
The Arizona-Nevada Junior Academy of Science will hold their
meeting at Glendale Community College on Saturday, April 21.
If you are interested in serving as a judge for one of their
sessions please contact Owen Davis at the above numbers.
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Preregistration Form |
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REQUEST FOR PAPERS FOR THE JOURNALThe Journal of the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science requests manuscripts for publication. Each manuscript will be read and criticized by at least two referees. To facilitate review, the author should send the names, addresses and telephone numbers of have people (at other institutions) who are well qualified to review the manuscript. Contributors need not be members of the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science. Authors who are not members of the Academy will be charged a publication fee of $30 per page, members $15 per page for the first eight pages. Students who are members of the Academy may apply for waiver of the page charges if they do not have grant funds. Manuscripts that will be considered for publication include those dealing with the Southwest and those done by Academy members. We also welcome names of the membership who would be willing to serve as reviewers for his/her specialty (ies). Please send manuscripts to:
Department of Geography Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona 85287-0104 (480) 965-6436 abrazel@asu.edu STEWARD OBSERVATORY HOSTS PUBLIC EVENING LECTURES ON ASTRONOMY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM(From Lori Stiles, UA News Services)Within a few years, astronomers will probably have measured the geometry and expansion rate of the Universe with extreme accuracy, says Jill Bechtold, University of Arizona associate professor of astronomy. |
If so, we'll know whether the ultimate fate of the Uni- verse is to expand forever - very possibly at an accelerating rate or eventually collapse. Bechtold talked Monday, Jan. 22, about ideas and discoveries undreamed of in 1924, when Steward Observatory first invited the community to hear astronomers' talks and view the heavens with campus telescopes. Her talk, "Cosmology at the Beginning of the New Millennium," is the first in 2001 for Steward Observatory's Public Evening Lecture Series. It was at 7:30 pm in Room N210 of Steward Observatory, 933 N. Cherry Street, on the UA campus. All talks are free and open to the public. Bechtold highlighted key observations and current theories on the origin of the Universe, how it evolved to the present, what happened before the "Big Bang" started it all, and how it finally might end. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Arizona, she specializes in Optical and X-ray astronomy and is a foremost expert on the subject of quasars. What other speakers in this series would also shock 1920s audiences? They are:
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Contact Information:
520-621-5049 taf@as.arizona.edu . GRADUATE GRANTS-IN-AID WINNERRaul Phente-Martinez was awarded $250 for his Graduate Awards proposal entitled "Taxonomic revision and phylogeny of Nopalea ssp. (Cactaceae). Mr. Phente-Martinez is a graduate student in Plant Biology at Arizona State University. |
APPLICATION FOR RESEARCH
The Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science will award Grants-in-Aid in amounts
up to $250 to students who are enrolled in a graduate program at one
of the Universities in Nevada or Arizona and who are members of the Academy.
The grant funds may be used for any activity directly associated with an
ongoing research project (equipment purchase, supplies, travel to field
site, etc.) The funds may not be used for travel to scientific meetings,
publication costs or any other activity not directly associated with the research.
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Application for Grad-Student Grant-in-Aid |
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U.S. 89 ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECTThe U.S. 89 Archaeological Project, undertaken by Desert Archaeology, Inc., investigated 40 prehistoric sites between the town of Fernwood, just north of Flagstaff, and the southern boundary of Wupatki National Monument. The archaeological investigations were funded by the Arizona Department of Transportation as part of a road widening project, spending just over 2.5 million dollars on the archaeology. In all, over 70 structures and hundreds of other features were excavated, making this the largest single archaeological project ever undertaken in the Flagstaff area. Over 100,000 artifacts were recovered. Structures consisted of small masonry room blocks, isolated field houses, and pithouses. Other feature types included extramural roasting pits, storage pits, hearths, and agricultural features such as check dams or linear borders. All structures within the right-of-way were excavated. Work outside of the right-of-way included mapping and surface collection of artifacts. The project area encompasses 16.6 linear miles ona north-south transect,ranging in elevation from around 5,500 ft above sea level in the northby Wupatki National Monument to over 7,200 ft above sea level in the south by Sunset Crater National Monument. Vegetation moves from a sage and juniper dominated grassland to a ponderosa pine forest, affording a varied resource base and an opportunity to investigate how prehistoric peoples made use of different environmental zones. Perhaps most significantly, the project area also crosses Deadman Wash, which is in the approximate center of the linear transect. The Deadman Wash area was investigated by Dr. Harold Colton and colleagues at the Museum of Northern Arizona in the 1930s, uncovering a mixture of prehistoric remains and ceramic types. Colton postulated that Deadman Wash was a prehistoric frontier between two |
different cultural groups. The Cohonina lived north of the wash and made a gray ware pottery called San Francisco Mountain Gray Ware while the Sinagua lived south of the wash and made a brown ware pottery called Alameda Brown Ware. Colton further suggested that the Kayenta Anasazi, who made a gray ware pottery called Tusayan Gray Ware, lived in the nearby Wupatki area. Therefore this project provides an excellent opportunity to examine a frontier zone and to test whether these remains are from two different groups or whether other factors account for these differences. Sites in the project area date between A.D. 400 and A.D. 1175. The earliest site contained three small oval to circular pithouses and is now the earliest ceramic period site known in the Flagstaff area. The latest sites were occupied prior to the large-scale aggregation into large pueblos that occurred sometime after A.D. 1150 when the Sunset Crater Volcano is believed to have initially erupted (ca. A.D. 1064). Volcanic ash found on the floors of some excavated houses indicate that the project area was inhabited when the volcano erupted, forcing migration of peoples into areas removed from the lava and heavy ash fall. It is estimated that an area of around 125 sq km had to be abandoned following the eruption. Investigating the eruption of Sunset Crater and how prehistoric peoples adapted to catastrophic events is another major research question. Another research question is the relationship of prehistoric project area inhabitants to the modern Hopi. Ethnographic investigations undertaken for this project indicate that the Hopi are the probable ancestors. Hopi oral traditions of more than 20 clans specifically mention stopping and living in the project area as the Hopi migrated on their way to the Hopi Mesas. Hopi accounts of the eruption of Sunset Crater and occupation of Wupatki are also being collected as part of the research. Analysis and report write-up is now |
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underway and we are anticipating a 5 volume publication of project results late in the year 2002. These volumes will be available from Desert Archaeology and the University of Arizona Press. An exhibit on the project will open at the Museum of Northern Arizona in March 2001 and be up through April. The exhibit will then be moved to the Sunset Crater visitor center where it will be up indefinitely. A 30- minute video on the project entitled, "In the Shadow of the Volcano: Prehistoric Life in Northern Arizona," is available at the Museum of Northern Arizona and at the Sunset Crater and Wupatki visitor centers. For additional information contact mark@noah.desert.com . TWO ASU METEORITE RESEARCHERS
Laurie Leshin, an assistant professor in geological sciences,
and Carleton Moore, a chemistry and geology professor,
both from ASU, each had an asteroid named after them.
For Leshin, the 4.5 billion year-old asteroid is known as "4922 Leshin".
Dr. Leshin's contributions to understanding the role of atmosphere-rock
interactions on Mars has made her a leader in the field.
At the age of 30, she became the youngest person ever to
receive the Nier prize, given by the Meteoritical Society for
outstanding contributions by a scientist in the planetary sciences field.
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To see a list of asteroid namesakes, visit the Website at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/MPNames.html . SWARM MEETINGThe Annual Spring Meeting is fast approaching. They will be meeting at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas on March 25-28, 2001. The "Call For Papers" is posted on SWARM's web-site: http://www.biology.colostate.edu/SWARM . The deadline for submitting abstracts is February 20, 2001.If you cannot access the website, have a difficult time registering there, or need a question answered, please contact Donald J. Nash at: dnash@lamar.colostate.edu or call (970) 491- 5481. You may also contact his administrative assistant Cynthia Botteron at cynn@lamar.colostate.edu
SWARM Division of AAAS Department of Biology Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 |
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Last Modified 2/01 by OKD