Combined News

The Bangor Daily News interviewed University of Maine Cooperative Extension Cranberry Associate Charlie Armstrong about the 2012 cranberry harvest in Maine, which Armstrong said was the best harvest ever and due largely to a combination of suitable weather and better pest management.

Channel 5 (WABI) and Channel 2 (WLBZ) reported that University of Maine men’s ice hockey coaching staff, players and fans supported a Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence initiative during the Feb. 3 home game by wearing purple ribbons.

University of Maine Assistant Research Professor and polar ecologist Rhian Waller, who is collecting cold-water coral samples among icebergs in Alaskan fjords as a National Geographic grantee, posted a new blog and photographs of her expedition on the NG Explorers Journal website. Waller reports that expedition members slept through an earthquake, which caused pieces of icebergs to break off.

University of Maine School of Performing Arts faculty Beth Wiemann, clarinet, and Marcia Gronewold Sly, vocalist, taped an interview about the upcoming performance of Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg for “Morning Classical Music” with Suzanne Nance on Maine Public Radio. Their interview, including a discussion of the work’s 100-year history, is expected to air Feb. 8. The dramatic and influential Schoenberg work will be performed as part of the Cadenzato Faculty Chamber music concert at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 9, Minsky Recital Hall, Class of 1944 Hall.

From an archaeological excavation site on the Peruvian coast, University of Maine interdisciplinary Ph.D. candidate Ana Mauricio participated in a Jan. 13 live chat with primatologist Jane Goodall and underwater explorer and discoverer of the Titanic Robert Ballard, among other explorers from seven continents, organized by the National Geographic Society to celebrate its 125th anniversary.

Mauricio came to UMaine in 2009 from Peru on a Fulbright fellowship to do a master’s in Quaternary and Climate Studies with Dan Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies and dean and associate provost for graduate studies. She defended her master’s thesis in 2012 and received a master’s last August. At the same time, Mauricio began an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quaternary archaeology.

She currently is excavating the early mound site of Los Morteros on the Peruvian coast, initially supported by the National Science Foundation and the Climate Change Institute’s Churchill Exploration Fund. Recently, Mauricio was awarded a National Geographic Society Waitt Foundation grant and a Beca Andina (Andean Fellowship) from the French Institute for Andean Studies.

University of Maine Professors of Sociology Steve Barkan and Steve Cohn recently published an entry on member recruitment in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. In the entry, Barkan and Cohn discuss the importance of social movements as a basis for participation in democracies, which have achieved major political, social and cultural changes. The influence of social movements depends largely on their ability to recruit members, but what is less obvious is why people choose to participate in them, the authors say.

Click here to view the “Ice Climbing ” video on YouTube.

Click here to view the “How To: Washing Fruits and Vegetables” video on YouTube.

A Maine Public Broadcasting Network report on declining honeybee populations across the country included comments from Frank Drummond, University of Maine Professor of Insect Ecology and Entomology in the School of Biology and Ecology and a UMaine Cooperative Extension professor and bee specialist.

University of Maine Professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition Mary Ellen Camire was interviewed by Prairie Public Radio in North Dakota about a range of food topics, including nutrition, the health benefits of chocolate, food allergies, food safety and smart grocery shopping for healthy food products. Camire is a member of the national Institute of Food Technologies.

The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography on Jan. 7 named University of Maine Associate Professor of Art History Justin Wolff’s book Thomas Hart Benton: A Life one of the “Best of the Best” in its Year in Books issue. Reviewer Jason Pettus called the book a well-done biography that offers an appropriate examination of the life of Benton, an eccentric American painter and muralist who died in 1975. Wolff’s book was published in March 2012 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and will be released in March in paperback.

The Bangor Daily News interviewed Habib Dagher, director of the University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center, about plans to move a 57-foot-tall, scale-model wind turbine being built at UMaine to Castine harbor in April for testing. The project is part of a wind-energy demonstration project expected to lead to a much larger offshore wind turbine network planned off Monhegan Island in the Gulf of Maine.

Channel 5 (WABI) interviewed University of Maine Career Center Director Patty Counihan, students and exhibitors at the annual UMaine Career Fair Jan. 30 at the New Balance Student Recreation Center. Channel 7 (WVII) also covered the event, which was attended by an estimated 1,000 UMaine students.