ASU Research Magazine - Fall 2005

Visit the ASU Research Magazine website for more research articles

The Real George Washington (PDF)
Close your eyes and picture George Washington. Chances are the image that pops into your head is the one on the dollar bill. The fact is that no one today knows for sure exactly what George Washington looked like, especially when he was a young man. ASU researchers are changing that reality.

Requiem for Singing Geese (PDF) 
Thanks to diligent scholarship by ASU art history professor Corine Schleif and a respected German musicologist, music and song preserved in a rare medieval text is being performed once again after a 500-year respite.

Being Red  (PDF)
Kevin McGraw sees lots of things when he looks at a parrot feather. He sees evolution at work.  But what really intrigues the ASU biologist is the color of the feather. How does a feather get its color? And what does that color really mean for the bird?

Basic Ability  (PDF)
Developing a new, safer smallpox vaccine is a national priority. But vaccine development takes a long, long time. Virologist Bert Jacobs and his team at ASU’s Biodesign Institute have a head start on the competition.

Fighting AIDS at the Gate  (PDF)
The rampant spread of HIV infection across the globe is no longer the media crisis of the moment. But AIDS has not gone away. In fact, every minute of every day 10 new people are infected with HIV and five people die of AIDS. At ASU’s Biodesign Institute, biologist Tsafrir Mor and other researchers are tackling HIV from a new angle.

Untangle   (PDF)
During a biopsy, surgeons often remove small pieces of tissue from a diseased organ. They study the piece to learn more about the illness. Brain disease is different. Doctors can’t just remove a piece of brain to study. Michael Sierks and ASU scientists at The Biodesign Institute are working to develop new methods and treatments.

Concrete Thinking   (PDF)
Barzin Mobasher and his team of civil and environmental engineers are devising more intelligent methods for using cement and concrete. The result could be better housing that is safer, more durable, and longer lasting.

When the Rubber is the Road   (PDF)
ASU engineers have found that adding a common material to asphalt can increase the lifetime of roadway pavement. It also can reduce freeway noise, increase visibility in wet weather, reduce air pollution, and even affect a city’s temperature. The material is rubber.

Legacies on the Land   (PDF)
To fully understand the prehistoric cultures of the Southwest, ASU scientists study how the landscape influenced societal and economic changes. They want to know how these changes, in turn, transformed the landscape.

A Tale of Two Species   (PDF)
Excavations taking place in a remote Spanish cave might help paleoanthropologists shed new light on humans living in prehistoric Europe. Work by Ana Pinto and her colleagues at the Institute of Human Origins suggest that Neanderthals and early modern humans likely engaged in a dramatic cultural overlap 100,000 years in the making.

Is it Good?  (PDF)
If the students in ASU’s InnovationSpace program had their way, blindness, hearing loss, paralysis, and other physical disabilities would present only minor inconveniences, not insurmountable barriers. The students are designing beautiful products that better society with minimal impact on the environment.

Live from Mars!   (PDF)
A new ASU web site provides the public and scientists “live” views of Mars. The site shows visual and infrared images of Mars as they are received in real time from the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on board NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter.

Cover (PDF)