Welcome reception, 7-9 p.m., The Belmont, downtown Austin
Join us for an Austin welcome with hors d’oeuvres and music. Buses will leave the AT&T Conference Center at 6:30 p.m. and begin returning at 9 p.m. If you wish, enjoy the live music throughout downtown Austin and return on your own later via taxi or city bus.
The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Monday, Oct. 19
Campus Tours, 1-4:30 p.m.
Option 1: Rx for Nature: Research on native greenery demonstrates how to save plants from extinction while regenerating iconic landscapes. Limit: 50
The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center offers public gardens of native Texas plants and uses its 279 acres to study how these plants can be incorporated into homeowners’ yards and public and commercial spaces for economic benefit and visual appeal. Visit a research field where the surprising functional variability of manufactured green roofs with native plants is being investigated; learn how citizen scientists trained by center staff use GPS to locate invasive plants statewide for eradication and other efforts; hear about research to save the first plant ever placed on the Endangered Species list; and view prairies exposed to fire to learn the benefits of this natural management tool. Research facilities are primarily outdoors, 20 minutes from main university campus.
Option 2: Tour the Brack: Meet head-popping parasitic flies and surround yourself with tropical butterflies. Limit: 50.
The Brackenridge Field Laboratory (BFL) is a premier urban field lab, just five minutes from campus along Lady Bird Lake. On this tour, you’ll visit the Texas Fire Ant Lab, the genesis of research on the biocontrol of invasive, pain-inducing fire ants with tiny parasitic flies. BFL is also home to an extensive trail system, a large tropical butterfly enclosure, and research on sexual selection and evolution of fish, drought adaptation in plants, invasive giant cane biocontrol, and most recently, algal biofuels.
Option 3: Texas-sized Science: The Next Big Idea. Limit: 100
Visit several of the university’s premier research laboratories and hear about the latest research being conducted
at our main campus and the Pickle Research Center, including:
A Laser with Texas-sized Power
When you take on Todd Ditmire in laser tag, don't let him bring his own laser. The Texas Petawatt Laser is the most
powerful laser in the world, brighter than sunlight on the surface of the sun. Its blast lasts for less than an instant, a 10th
of a trillionth of a second (0.0000000000001 second). Ditmire, other researchers and students use the laser to experiment with
high-energy reactions, simulate the workings of stars and other celestial bodies, and investigate nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun.
Detail of Willard Boepple, American, born 1945. Eleanor at 7:15, 1977. Cor-ten steel, 49 × 35 × 45 inches. Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous gift, 1978. 1978.567.5. Photo by Ben Aqua, courtesy of Landmarks.
A Smooth Ride
Roads that would bounce soldiers out of troop carriers with a standard suspension ride a lot smoother with the electronic transmission developed
at the Center for Electromechanics. The center is also working on improving hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Into Clean Air
Want a breath of fresh air? You might not want to go inside. Indoor air is beset by its own set of problems.
Researchers at the Texas Institute for the Indoor Environment find out what ails you inside and how get to rid of it. They also work on
getting remnants of anthrax out of buildings and how to clean up a house that used to be a meth lab.
Picture This
The Vizualization Lab helps researchers see what their science is doing--and in great detail. The Viz Lab turns computer simulations into
virtual reality so researchers can maneuver around a cell or a star system.
Feel the Earth Move Under Your Feet
Meet the T-Rex and the Liquidator, earthquake simulators at the University of Texas at Austin's node in the George Brown Network for
Earthquake Engineering Simulation. See and learn how earthquake simulations are done and why.
GOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!
Peter Stone combines two passions in his research: artificial intelligence (AI) and soccer. His lab develops software for soccer-playing
robots for studying AI issues such as multi-agent systems, machine learning and real-time planning. Catch a game, or something very much like it, at a stop in his lab.
Option 4: The Science of History. Limit: 100
Beyond Elmer’s Glue and Dust Rags – How a Chemist/Art Conservator Keeps Public Art Looking its Best
Catherine Williams has worked on the conservation of artifacts such as plaster casts of Teddy Roosevelt’s teeth,
a medical heart pump made in 1950s from an erector set and Pancho Villa’s saddle. She combines her love of science
and art to come up with solutions to preserve the condition and artistic integrity of sculptures by renowned artists
such as Louise Bourgeois, Mark di Suvero and Tony Smith. The 28 sculptures of the university’s Landmarks public art
program, on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, are maintained in top condition thanks to Catherine’s knowledge
and resourcefulness in regards to materials, chemistry, and art. An engaging and passionate speaker – her tour is not to be missed!
Preservation tools and techniques keeping the past alive
Photographs, documents and the random pair of socks don’t just jump into a proper storage box all by themselves.
The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin is an internationally
renowned humanities research library and museum and its extensive holdings (including the Watergate papers, “Gone With the Wind”
costumes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s socks) provide a unique record of the creative process of writers and artists, deepening our
understanding of literature, photography, film, art and the performing arts. You’ll have a chance to visit three of the labs
working to preserve and make accessible the collections. The book conservation lab repairs damaged
and deteriorated bound materials and the paper conservation lab is responsible for the safe storage, care and conservation treatment of
the manuscripts, prints, drawings, posters and other works on paper. The photograph conservation lab is responsible for
conservation treatments and physical stabilization of photographic materials in the holdings, including the very first photograph.
The International Year of Astronomy
On view in the Ransom Center galleries will be the exhibition “Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works”
(http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/2009/astronomical/). In
conjunction with the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, “Other Worlds” features items from the center's science collections
relating to early astronomy. Highlights include the Coronelli celestial globe (1688); two copies of “Copernicus De Revolutionibus";
first editions by Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton and others; papers of the Herschel family of English astronomers;
and the Cassini moon map. Dr. Mary Kay Hemenway of the Department of Astronomy will be leading tours of this exhibit
Bat watching, buses will begin leaving the AT&T Conference Center at 6 p.m., returning at about 8 p.m.
Every summer, more than 1 million Mexican free-tailed bats make their home in Austin under the Ann Richards Congress Avenue Bridge.
Their nightly exodus is a sight to be seen, and this is your chance to be up close and personal as we go to the shores of Lady Bird Lake in
downtown Austin. We’ll be joined by neurobiologist Dr. George Pollak,
who studies how bats, such as the Mexican free-tailed bats, process sound information. His research yields insights into the way sound
is analyzed by the brain and how the brain processes cues that allow animals to associate a sound with its location of origin.
Bats are ideal for his research because their auditory systems place a premium on hearing.