By Sarah Geegan

There's just no telling where an education from the University of Kentucky can take you.

For U.S. Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Smith, the journey that began at UK has taken him around the world and deep below the ocean's surface, as captain of the USS Kentucky, a nuclear submarine.

"Having been born in Kentucky and growing up there, I can’t imagine any pride greater than serving as commander of the ship that bears my home state's name," says Smith, whose parents and sister still live in Kentucky.

Born in Covington and raised in Independence, Smith graduated from Simon Kenton High School and attended Xavier University for a year before transferring to UK. After graduating in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in physics, Smith was commissioned in the Navy and went to officer candidate school in Pensacola, Fla., where he began nuclear

The Milky Way is a large spiral galaxy surrounded by dozens of smaller satellite galaxies. Scientists have long theorized that occasionally these satellites will pass through the disk of the Milky Way, perturbing both the satellite and the disk. A team of astronomers from the U.S. and Canada, including one professor from the University of Kentucky, have discovered what may well be the smoking gun of such an encounter, one that occurred close to our position in the galaxy and relatively recently, at least in the cosmological sense.

“We have found evidence that our Milky Way had an encounter with a small galaxy or massive dark matter structure about 100 million years ago,” said Larry Widrow, professor at Queen’s  University in Canada. “We clearly observe unexpected differences in the Milky Way’s stellar distribution above and below the Galaxy’s midplane that

By Sarah Geegan

Christopher Crawford, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, recently received a prestigious five-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's 2012 Early Career Research Program.

The program supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and stimulates research careers in the disciplines supported by the DOE Office of Science. Crawford's award will allow him to study the forces that hold the atomic nucleus together and that cause nuclear decays.

"I study symmetries of these forces," Crawford said. "There are certain properties of neutron postulated, such as an

By Sarah Geegan

What used to be a standard component for universities with archaeology programs is becoming increasingly rare: field school — an experiential course in which students excavate real archaeological sites. However, the UK Department of Anthropology has remained firmly committed to providing opportunities for students to dig into real-world experience.

Kim McBride, anthropology professor and co-director of the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, taught Anthropology 585: Field Methods in Archaeology at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, 25 miles southwest of Lexington. Students enrolled in the six-week course excavated, collected artifacts and interpreted

By Sarah Geegan

Nina Elliott and Elizabeth Walsh have assembled an impressive list of accomplishments at UK this year, from creating new derivatives of the molecule phenothiazine, to potentially increasing performance of lithium-ion batteries, to co-authoring a paper in preparation for publication. Their next task to check off: graduating from high school.

Susan Odom, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, has hosted the two Paul Laurence Dunbar High School students in her chemistry laboratory over the past semester. Elliott and Walsh assisted Odom in a project involving specific organic molecules and their utility in lithium-ion batteries.

"The idea is, phenothiazine derivatives have been used as additives

Will Justice Be Televised?: An Interview with Justin Wedeking https://wired.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Will%20Justice%20Be%20Televised_%20Interview%20with%20Justin%20Wedeking.mp3

Justin Wedeking studies dynamics within the courtroom - from how Supreme Court decisions are made to how useful confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominess are. Wedeking is a professor in the Department of Political Science, and is currently involved in research to determine whether or not televising court proceedings

By Sarah Geegan

The S.T. Roach Community Conversations series, "Rebuilding the Block," will conclude its seven-month sequence on Father's Day weekend by honoring outstanding men in the community.

The Sankofa Awards, honoring African-American men who have demonstrated excellence in the categories of service, social and environmental justice, scholarship, philanthropy, creativity and entrepreneurship, will provide a symbolic end to the series that began in December 2011. Consisting of monthly public forums led by UK experts at the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center, the series focused on

By Sarah Geegan

A new study by University of Kentucky researchers shows how light and strained ruthenium-based drugs may be more effective at fighting cancer cells and less toxic to healthy cells than a similar and widely used drug.

Cisplatin is a common platinum-based cancer drug. But while cisplatin kills cancer cells, it also attacks healthy cells, causing debilitating side effects. Ruthenium is a rare transition metal also belonging to the platinum group of the periodic table, and the UK researchers developed two new ruthenium complexes designed to kill cancer cells while preserving healthy cells.

These complexes are inert in the dark, but when activated with light, they become up to 200 times as toxic, and up to three times as potent as cisplatin against tumor cells.

Published in the 

By Guy Spriggs

Casey Carmichael, who earned his masters degree in Classics at the University in Kentucky in 2010, has been awarded six-month doctoral fellowship from the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany.

“Receiving the fellowship has brought me great joy and an added sense of motivation to pursue my doctoral research,” Carmichael said.

The fellowship funds doctoral and post-doctoral candidates to write their research projects at the Leibniz Institute. From July to December 2012, Carmichael will be researching and writing his doctoral dissertation for the Faculty of Theology at the University of Geneva.

Carmichael’s current project focuses on biblical exegesis of seventeenth-century Dutch theologian Johannes Cocceius. “I am fascinated by the history of