Columns:: UGA’s Faculty/Staff Newspaper

since 12/15/98

Columns::September 22, 2003

Front Page

Geneticist Richard Meagher is working with the city of Danbury, Conn., to remove mercury from soil at an old industrial site.

Root of the problem: Researchers plant trees that help clean up toxic waste site

Can genetically engineered cottonwood trees clean up a site contaminated with toxic mercury? A team of UGA researchers--in the first such field test ever done with trees--is about to find out.
The results could make clearer the future of phytoremediation--a technique of using trees, grasses and other plants to remove hazardous materials from the soil. On July 16, UGA scientists and city officials in Danbury, Conn., planted, at the site of a 19th-century hat factory in that city, some 60 cottonwoods with a special gene.
“We hope to see a significant difference in the levels of mercury in the soil within 18 months, perhaps as much as a twofold reduction,” says Richard Meagher, professor of genetics.

Two new faculty members are named Eminent Scholars in molecular genetics, biochemistry

Two new faculty members at the university have been named

Eminent Scholars by the Georgia Research Alliance.
Jeffrey Bennetzen has been named the first recipient of the Norman and Doris Giles/Georgia Research Alliance Professorship in Molecular Genetics, and Ying Xu is Regents/GRA Eminent Scholar in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Bennetzen comes to UGA from Purdue University, where he was the Edwin Umbarger Distinguished Professor of Genetics, while Xu was most recently at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Sahebarao Mahadik of MCG (left) and Alvin Terry Jr. of MCG and UGA are examining the long-term effects of drugs used to treat schizophrenia.

UGA, MCG study long-term impact of schizophrenia drugs

Whether the long-term use of the newer schizophrenia drugs damages or improves a patient’s cognitive ability is the focus of a cooperative study by the University of Georgia and the Medical College of Georgia.
Many of the older antipsychotic drugs that are used to quell delusions and hallucinations--the hallmark of schizophrenia--also impair the ability to think, learn and remember, says Alvin V. Terry Jr., pharmacist and pharmacologist at UGA and MCG.

Filmmaker Trisha Das visits campus for CHA artist lecture series

Trishsa Das

Indian filmmaker Trishsa Das will make several public presentations during her visit to UGA. On Sept. 24, she will give a visiting artist lecture for the Center for Humanities and Arts in Park Hall. On Sept. 23, she will speak in Brumby Hall about the relationship between music and social change. And on Sept. 26 she will be the speaker at the regular Women’s Studies Program presentation, discussing women and development in India.

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