| Former
U.S. army chief speaks here
Former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki will address
the security challenges facing post-conflict democracies in Iraq
and Afghanistan at a conference to be held at UGA on April 16.
The conference, “From Autocracy to Democracy: The Effort to
Establish Market Democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan,” will
constitute a comprehensive analysis of the legal, political, economic
and security issues facing post-war Iraq and Afghanistan. It will
start at 9 a.m. and end at 6 p.m. The conference’s keynote
address, to be delivered by Shinseki, will begin at 11 a.m. in the
Chapel.
Shinseki was the first commanding general of NATO peacekeepers in
Bosnia. He served in this capacity from 1995 to 1998 and played
a key role in developing the United States’s strategy to stabilize
post-conflict democracies worldwide. He served as U.S. Army chief
of staff during recent wars and post-war efforts in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
Sponsors of the conference are UGA’s School of Law, Terry
College of Business and School of Public and International Affairs.
UGA officials testify before ag committee
Two UGA deans testified this past month in Athens on behalf of the
Georgia Agricultural Experiment Stations and the Cooperative Extension
Service before the U.S. House of Representatives agriculture subcommittee
on conservation, credit, rural development and research. U.S. Rep.
Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), chairman, and Rep. Max Burns (R-Ga.) represented
the subcommittee.
Gale Buchanan of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
and Sharon Nickols of the College of Family and Consumer Sciences
said extension and research programs are vital to the health of
the U.S. economy and its citizens. Federal funding, they said, is
critical to maintain them.
Buchanan recommended four ways to support extension and research
programs: increase competitive grant programs to address critical
nutrition, food security and environmental needs; restore cuts made
to the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program and increase
funding; increase funding for institutions that serve minorities;
and restore the $20.6 million in Cooperative State Research, Education
and Extension Services programs cut this past year.
NSF funds SREL amphibian study
Researchers at UGA’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, the
University of Missouri, the University of Maine and the State University
of New York have received funding from the National Science Foundation
to investigate amphibian population dynamics in relation to forest
alteration and fragmentation resulting from forest management practices.
As part of the Land Use Effects on Amphibian Populations Study,
the researchers will conduct similar experiments in their respective
regions over the next five years. In the first year (2004), experimental
arrays are being created at four wetlands in each region. Each experimental
array is centered on an existing isolated or ephemeral wetland,
with the terrestrial habitat adjacent to the wetland divided into
four equal-sized quadrants six to
10 acres in size. Quadrants will be allowed to undergo succession
in subsequent years, yielding the opportunity to follow changes
in vegetation structure and amphibian responses over time.
“The experimental nature and replication of treatments and
experiments at both local and regional scales provide an unprecedented
opportunity to identify major factors affecting the persistence
of amphibian populations, such as differences in life history among
salamanders, frogs and toads,” says Whit Gibbons, an investigator
on the project and a professor of ecology at SREL. “Also,
because recent research is revealing the extent and importance of
upland habitat use by amphibians, this study will focus on the responses
of terrestrial life stages of pond-breeding amphibians to upland
habitat alteration.”
|
