kennedy | speaker series kicks off thursday, 3a |final four Four contenders remain in chase for Detroit, 1B
auto lab| Students love working on vehicles, off-roading, 3A
Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009
Central Michigan Life
Mount Pleasant, Mich.
[cm-life.com]
p h y s i c s b y d a y, a s t r o n o m y b y n i g h t
nsf grant plagiarism
OSU not taking action against former CMU prof School awaiting final report; NSF has no plans for one By Jake Bolitho Senior Reporter
jake may/staff photographer
Assistant physics professor Axel Mellinger pours liquid nitrogen onto a laser beam, a procedure he uses while teaching students about physics, Tuesday in the basement of Anspach Hall. Mellinger is an amateur photographer who created his second all-sky panorama in August. The photo took 22 months and two trips to South Africa to create, allowing viewers to see connections between night sky elements. “Science and astronomy. It is just so much fun to play with these things and see what we can discover,” he said.
A galaxy quest Mellinger traveled to both hemispheres to complete all-sky panorama By Maryellen Tighe | Staff Reporter
A
xel Mellinger has a hobby that takes him halfway around the world. The assistant physics professor is an amateur photographer and finished his second all-sky panorama in August. The photo, which took 22 months and two trips to South Africa, shows the entire night sky and allows viewers to see connections between night sky elements. “It’s only my hobby,” he said. “During the daytime, I do polymer physics.” In order to complete his all-sky image, Mellinger needed to photograph from the northern and southern hemispheres. He traveled to Texas and northern Michigan to take the photos for the northern hemisphere. “What’s unique about Dr. Mellinger’s work is that it stretches and you can see how everything fits together,” said David Batch, director of Abrams Planetarium in East Lansing.
Most astronomy photographs are of a specific part of the sky, Batch said. Mellinger’s work allow viewers to see how objects are related. Another unique part of Mellinger’s work is the color and exposure. He took each photo with red, yellow and blue filters, and used three exposure times in order to have proper dynamics. For clarity, he repeated the entire process five times to average the effects. “I divided the sky in a grid of 70 fields, starting at the North Celestial Pole,” Mellinger said. “It takes about an hour and 40 minutes to complete each field.” The photos show lanes of dust and any organic, metallic or silicate microscopic material across the sky, said physics professor Glen Williams. It obscures light and causes distant stars to have a red tint.
A Brooks space odyssey Stars highly visible in winter atmosphere
For a link to the panorama photo, visit the Web site. “I was stunned when I saw his picture, and you see these dust lanes more clearly than I’ve ever seen before,” he said. Photography has been a serious hobby of Mellinger’s since he was a child. In 1998, he put together images of the Milky Way, which his friends said resembled a painting of the sky. Mellinger finished his first full-sky panorama in the late 1990s with a chemical film camera to replicate the painting. As a physicist, he had the skills to do the image processing. “It was something that not a lot of other people were doing,” Mellinger said. university@cm-life.com
libby march/staff photographer
But not only is the view getting clearer, there are several fascinating objects at their peak viewing conditions right now or will be in coming weeks.
“We generally find that the winter sky has a lot of interesting things to look at,” Williams said. “Still visible now is the A brooks | 2a
Gov.: Diversify economy through higher education Granholm discussing plans Thursday at CMU By Carisa Seltz Staff Reporter
Gov. Jennifer Granholm said she hopes to diversify Michigan’s economy by removing barriers to higher education to double the number of Michigan college graduates. Michigan needs to reshape its economy as national economic trends shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, she said Thursday in a conference call with reporters. “We have to recognize that Michigan’s economy has changed,” she said. “What worked for your parents doesn’t work for you anymore.” Granholm is encouraging
If you go... w What: Gov. Jennifer Granholm w When: 9:15 a.m. Thursday w Where: Charles V. Park Library Auditorium
students to contact their state senators and representatives and tell them to support the reinstatement of the Michigan Promise. She is visiting universities and community colleges this week, including CMU at 9:15 a.m. Thursday in the Charles V. Park Library Auditorium, to discuss the Michigan Promise Scholarship. Funding higher education is Granholm’s answer to the state’s economic woes. But allocating more tax dollars to fund public education is easier said than done. Michigan
A GRANHOLM | 2A
Students generally prefer cmich e-mail
By Connor Sheridan Staff Reporter
Coldwater sophomore Kayla Nearpass listens as physics professor Glen Williams explains the workings of the 16-inch reflecting telescope Oct. 26 in Brooks Hall. The telescope, bought 13 years ago for approximately $78,000, would cost more than $100,000 today.
A nsf | 2A
technology
Elimination not a consideration for Central
By Connor Sheridan Staff Reporter
As the autumn weather turns crisp and memories of July’s fireworks begin to fade, students can still find beauty in the skies any clear night. Stargazing will be at its peak in the coming months of fall and winter because of simple atmospheric changes. “Winter nights are better because the air is drier,” said physics professor Glen Williams. The observatory will host an open session for students to use the telescope from 8 to 10 p.m. Tuesday in the Brooks Hall Observatory.
cm-life.com
An Ohio State University official said they have taken no action with the CONCEPT grant controversy despite employing one of the math professors cited in several investigative reports. Earle Holland, assistant vice president of Research Communications at OSU, said the university will not consider the case resolved until the National Science Foundation issues its final report. In August 2008, an investigative committee formed by Central Michigan University concluded plagiarism occurred in an NSF grant proposal, as well as course materials produced
from the research. CMU math professor Douglas Lapp was named in the report regarding the grant proposal, as was Azita Manouchehri, a former CMU professor who now teaches at OSU. The CMU Board of Trustees approved returning $619,489 of the $770,119 in grant money to the NSF because of the committee’s findings. Manouchehri could not be reached for comment. The committee’s findings do not mean OSU considers the investigation to be over, Holland said. “The only connection that we might have is that this individual is on our campus,” he said. “The end of the process would be an NSF report.” Maria Zacharias, a public affairs specialist for the NSF, said she is unaware of such a process for this case.
More schools than ever are considering dropping student e-mail accounts. Central Michigan University is working on expanding theirs. More students get their essential e-mail connection from CMU than the national average, according to a study conducted by the Faculty Center for Information Technology in 2006 that showed 84.2 percent of CMU students preferred their university e-mail to other forms. This number is higher than
the average of 82.8 percent across other four-year institutions. “There is a sort of mounting thought of the idea of not assigning e-mail addresses,” said Roger Rehm, vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer. A study conducted by EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit organization promoting information technology for higher education, indicated around 25 percent of institutions such as CMU have begun to consider ending email address services. This number is a marked increase from the 1 to 2 percent figures of 2004. But Rehm is not entertaining the idea. “It would disadvantage a number of students and that
would concern me,” he said. While higher education in general is getting to the point where it begins to consider e-mail roughly equivalent to paper mail, Rehm said, the benefits just do not outweigh the potential risks. “(The CMU account) is the primary account that I use,” said Madison Heights sophomore Emily Denryter. “Most of the people I know mostly use the CMU account.” She said she only had one other account which she used to keep up with a student group, and she is happy with CMU’s service. “That’s my primary account,” said Rockford senior Samantha Corey.
A CMICH e-mail | 6a