By Amy Jones-Timoney and Kody Kiser

From Florida to California, from Alabama to Maine, monuments to the Confederacy have been under increased scrutiny and the subject of efforts to either preserve them or remove them from the grounds they occupy.

In an effort to get more perspective on the swirling controversy around the future of these statues, this week’s episode of "Behind the Blue" features Amy Murrell Taylor, from the Department of History in the UK College of Arts and Sciences. A 2016 winner of the UK Alumni Association’s Great Teacher Award, Taylor’s research focuses on the social and cultural history of the U.S. South in the era of the Civil War and Emancipation.

Taylor’s first book, 

By Whitney Hale

University of Kentucky's SSTOP Hunger: Sustainable Solutions to Overcome Poverty organization will host the university’s first screening of the documentary “Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry.”  The screening, to be followed by a panel discussion, will begin 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 13, in Kincaid Auditorium at Gatton College of Business and Economics.

“Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry” is a cinematic account of the changing landscapes and shifting values of rural America in the era of industrial agriculture, as seen through the mind’s eye of writer, farmer and activist Wendell Berry, an alumnus and former faculty member of the UK Department of English

By Gail Hairston

The Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA), a national nonprofit organization headed by Eric Thomas Weber of the University of Kentucky’s philosophy department, has been awarded the 2017 Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Philosophy Programs. The American Philosophical Association (APA) and the Philosophy Documentation Center (PDC) jointly sponsor the award.

This prize for excellence recognizes philosophy departments, research centers, institutes, societies, publishers and other organizations that risk undertaking new initiatives in philosophy, and do so with excellence and success.

“(The prize) honors the success of these programs so they may inspire and influence others to follow their lead,” said Amy Ferrer, executive director of APA. “(SOPHIA) is truly indicative of the innovation, excellence and inspiration that

By Gail Hairston

Akiko Takenaka, associate professor of history and associate chair of the University of Kentucky Department of History, has been awarded a 2017-18 Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant to research and write her second book, to be titled “Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Grassroots Peace Activism in Postwar Japan, 1945-1970.” She will spend the year in Tokyo with affiliations with Sophia University and Waseda University.

In her research to write the book, Takenaka said, “I look at grassroots peace activism that was initiated by women (of Japan). I’m trying to better understand the ways that Japanese women have gendered their social and political participation.

“In the book, I examine the shifts in ways that the concepts of womanhood and motherhood have been imagined and promoted, and the complex processes through which Japanese women have

By Megan Foltz

Mark P. Whitaker, a professor in the University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology, was awarded multiple grants to assist in funding an ethnographic workshop on innovative religiosity in postwar Sri Lanka that took place this summer. Whitaker received grants from both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation in support of his work. The workshop brought together 17 anthropologists and religious studies scholars at the campus of the Open University of Sri Lanka in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Whitaker’s Workshop on Innovative Religiosity posed the question: “Why have innovative religious practices and institutions in Sri Lanka and its diaspora achieved a new prominence since the end of its inter-ethnic civil war in 2009?”

“This gathering of scholars of Sri Lanka’s many politically and sociologically significant religions —

By Abby Schroering and Sara Shehata

As a land grant university, the University of Kentucky is committed to the advancement of knowledge through research. Even undergraduate students contribute significantly to that mission.

Students of any major, background and skill level have the opportunity to work with professors from all over UK, whether in labs, on faculty projects or even on independent projects that they design themselves.

“For those undergraduates who are interested in building faculty mentorships, gaining critical thinking and presentation skills and deepening their understanding of the subjects that interest them, the UK Office of Undergraduate Research (UGR) is there to help them along the way,” said Evie Russell, assistant director of the UK Office of Undergraduate Research

By Whitney Hale

 The University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced five of the university's undergraduate students pursued research in their fields of study this summer with funding from the National Science Foundation-Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) program.

The NSF funds many research opportunities for undergraduate students through its REU Sites program. An REU Site consists of a group of approximately 10 undergraduates who work in the research programs of the host institution. Each student is associated with a specific research project, where he/she works closely with faculty and other researchers. Throughout the NSF-REU program, students are granted stipends and, in many

By Whitney Hale

Angela Wei, an agricultural and medical biotechnology and mathematics senior from Lexington, was one of five students across the country selected to participate in the 2017 Dartmouth MD/PhD Undergraduate Summer Fellowship Program.

Started in 2012, the Dartmouth MD-PhD Undergraduate Summer Fellowship Program is an initiative aimed at exposing undergraduates, especially members of historically underrepresented ethnic minorities in medical science, to the vibrant career pathway of the physician-scientist.

During the 10-week fellowship, running from mid-June until mid-August, fellows were exposed to basic medical science research working alongside one of Dartmouth’s MD-PhD students

By Whitney Hale

In the wake of the recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Kentucky Women Writers Conference continues doing its part to advance dialogue, education and understanding about race and violence here in America through its Sonia Sanchez Series. As part of the series, the conference will present a screening this weekend of the critically acclaimed documentary “13th,” which explores questions of race and mass incarceration, and a few weeks later the Sonia Sanchez Lecture by University of Kentucky law and African-American and Africana studies scholar Melynda J. Price will occur during the September conference. Both events are free and open to the public

By Gail Hairston

Three nuclear physics researchers in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences have been awarded a $1.425 million grant from the Department of Energy Office of Science to explore the universe, without slipping "the surly bonds of Earth."

The principal investigator of the grant is Brad Plaster, associate professor and associate chair of the UK Department of Physics and Astronomy, with co-PIs from his department, Professor Wolfgang Korsch and Associate Professor Christopher Crawford.

The grant will support research on the fundamental symmetries of the universe, using neutrons as the experimental probe. The group hopes to observe violations of

A team of researchers led by Professor Suzanne Segerstrom of the University of Kentucky Department of Psychology has received a $3.3 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to continue its study of healthy aging.

The “Thought, Stress, and Immunity” study has been investigating the interactions between psychological and immunological health among older adults since 2001. Over the next five years, the study will expand to include brain health. 

“Infections and products of the immune system are being recognized as important drivers of brain aging,” Segerstrom said.

“We hope to demonstrate that as the mind and the immune system ‘talk’ to each other, there are consequences for the brain. If that’s true, improving psychological and immunological health could improve brain

By Jennifer T. Allen

University of Kentucky mathematics Assistant Professor Bert Guillou has been awarded funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his research in homotopy theory. The $139,765 grant over three years will enable Guillou to further the understanding of all of the ways that a sphere can be mapped onto a sphere of a different dimension.

“This project will attempt to classify mappings in two related contexts,” Guillou said. “The first is a rigid world of algebraic geometry, where all objects can be described by polynomial equations. The other is the equivariant setting, where symmetries of the spheres are taken into account.”

Guillou will use recently developed techniques to tighten the connection between these two arenas and extend the range of dimensions in which these mappings can be classified.

“The calculation of the set of

By Susan Odom

Yinan Wei, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Kentucky, has received an award to study membrane protein oligomerizations in bilayers. This award, supported by the 

University of Kentucky researchers participating in a Department of Energy-funded center have discovered a ground-breaking process that allows them to harness energy from chemical reactions that previously would have been dismissed as unusable. The process – which maximizes the efficiency of reactions at the molecular level – could affect everything from synthetic biology to fuel and chemical production. The authors are part of a multi-institutional team called the Biological Electron Transfer and Catalysis (BETCy) Energy Frontier Research Center. The Center is headquartered at Montana State University, and the key authors of the paper are at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo., MSU, Arizona State University, the University of Georgia and the University of Kentucky. BETCy was launched in 2014 and is one of 32 Energy Frontier Research Centers throughout

Dr. Kenneth Graham, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Kentucky, has been selected as a recipient of a CAREER Award from the Department of Energy. This award supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and stimulates research programs in the disciplines supported by the DOE Office of Science.

Dr. Graham’s research funded under this award focuses on a promising set of emerging solution-processed semiconductors, organometal halide perovskites (OMHPs).  These low-cost semiconductors can be printed from solution to make solar cells with power conversion efficiencies equal to current state-of-the-art commercial solar cell materials, which require slower and more expensive processing methods. Furthermore,

By Gail Hairston and Jenny Wells

Professor Tom Troland talks total solar eclipse. See full interview here: https://youtu.be/dpXmSyd8UYY.

Imagine humankind at the dawn of civilization, or even earlier. Men, women and children huddle mesmerized, terrified in their ignorance, as a bright sunny day suddenly darkens until the sun vanishes and stars appear in the midday sky. It is dark long enough for night creatures to make an appearance. Imagine the confusion, the panic, the helpless terror that undoubtedly engulfed those people of a darker age who had no idea if their life-giving sun would ever return.

Today, humankind is blessed with the knowledge that when the skies darken and the stars appear midday over a 100-mile-wide swath of the continental United States — including Western

By Mack McCormick and Whitney Hale

A&S history alumna and University Press of Kentucky author Judith Jennings has been named the recipient of the 2017 Sallie Bingham Award by the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Photo by Kopana Terry.

University of Kentucky alumna and University Press of Kentucky (UPK) author Judith Jennings, co-editor of “Helen Matthews Lewis: Living Social Justice in Appalachia” and author of “Why Work?,” has been named the recipient of the 2017 Sallie Bingham Award by the 

By Gail Hairston

Peter Kekenes-Huskey, assistant professor of chemistry, is the first University of Kentucky faculty member to be awarded funding under the National Institutes of Health’s Outstanding Investigator Award (R35) activity code. The new grant will be made under the National Institute of General Medical Sciences’ (NIGMS) prestigious Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program.

The $1.55 million MIRA grant will enable Kekenes-Huskey and his team of researchers to develop large-scale, computer-based models to study the role of calcium regulation at a subcellular level. The role of calcium in the body is paramount,

By Nate Harling

If you have been anywhere near the University of Kentucky’s Don & Cathy Jacobs Science Building this month, it is more than likely you heard at least one language you have never heard before. Since the beginning of July, there have been people on campus speaking a plethora languages ranging from Mauritian Creole to Farsi to Kalaallisut, the language spoken by the indigenous people of Greenland.

Creolists Salikoko Mufwene (r) and Stéphane Térosier at the Hilary J. Boone Center.

The UK College of Arts and Sciences is hosting the Linguistics Society of America’s (LSA) biennial Linguistic Institute, the world’s largest extended gathering of linguists. Institute Program Director Jo Mackby was quick to dispel the common misconception that linguists only learn how to speak foreign languages.

“

By Gail Hairston

Derek Young, University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of statistics, recently published his new book, “Handbook of Regression Methods,” which concisely covers numerous traditional, contemporary and nonstandard regression methods. 

The handbook provides a broad overview of regression models, diagnostic procedures and inference procedures, with emphasis on how regression methods are applied. The organization of the handbook benefits both practitioners and researchers, who seek either to obtain a quick understanding of regression methods for specialized problems or to expand their own breadth of knowledge of regression topics.

“Handbook of Regression Methods” covers classic material about simple linear regression and multiple linear regression, including assumptions, effective visualizations and