A paperback copy of the novel 1984 was probably not an uncommon item in households in 1963, including the white, two-story home at 214 Neely St. in Dallas. But because that home was the boarding house of Lee Harvey Oswald, George Orwell's 1949 cautionary tale against totalitarianism was seized by Dallas Police Department officers as evidence on Nov. 22, 1963 – along with other items belonging to Oswald.

For the first time, photographs of these items and many other Dallas Police Department photos related to the investigation of President John F. Kennedy's assassination are now available for public viewing via a search engine, thanks to UNT Libraries' Portal to Texas History and the Dallas Municipal Archives. Left, police officers with Oswald.

The UNT Libraries' Digital Projects Unit, which manages the portal, recently received a Rescuing Texas History grant from the Summerlee Foundation to digitize 404 images taken by the Dallas Police Department during the week following Kennedy's assassination. The Dallas Municipal Archives, a division of the City of Dallas City Secretary's Office, possesses all of the original investigation files except for those that have been transferred permanently to the federal investigation collection held at the National Archives.

Zhibing Hu, left, Regents Professor of physics, helped develop a new and potentially better way to model the formation of glasses, a type of amorphous solid that includes common window glass.

Hu worked with a team of researchers from Harvard and Columbia on the findings, which are detailed in the November issue of Nature. The team was led by David Weitz of Harvard.

The research could lead to improvements in the design and manufacturing of high-performance glasses.

“The insight gained from this study can help us understand the origin of dynamic processes in glassy systems,” Hu says. “For example, we found that elastic energy plays an important role in glass formation, something that was not previously determined.” 

A $310,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board will boost the university’s efforts to increase college enrollment among first generation college students. The grant is the largest awarded to the 32 universities that received funding to operate G-Force programs.

Thanks to the Work-Study Student Mentorship Program grant, UNT will be able to hire more students to work for the G-Force program, part of the Closing the Gaps initiative launched by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Closing the Gaps aims to enroll 630,000 more students in Texas colleges and universities by 2015.

UNT G-Force mentors develop and supervise Go Centers at area high schools to encourage more students in North Texas to graduate from high school and go to college. Go Centers are physical spaces in participating high schools that provide prospective college students with information related to college and career options as well as opportunities for financial aid and mentoring. Many of the students G-Force mentors work with are from groups that are underrepresented in colleges and universities.

"The work performed by G-Force mentors directly impacts the lives of the thousands of students that they encounter in the high school Go Centers," says Patrick Vasquez, left, director of the Office of Outreach and Community Involvement. 

Each year worldwide, farmers spend an estimated $33 billion to help protect their crops against disease and pests. And each year, they still lose an estimated $100 billion to disease and pests.

New research at UNT aims to lessen the need for costly pesticides by arming plants with more effective natural defenses.

Jyoti Shah, left, associate professor of biology, recently received more than $1 million in two grants from the National Science Foundation to improve the understanding of plant responses to stress. “We want to understand how plants defend themselves,” Shah says. “If you understand basic defense mechanisms, you can develop plants with enhanced resistance. It’s better to protect than cure.”

Under one grant, which will provide $640,000 over the next four years, researchers will study plant defense against the green peach aphid, a tiny insect that can feed on more than 50 kinds of plants, including apple, peach, tomato, potato, bean, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, cucumber, cantaloupe and watermelon.

The aphids essentially steal nutrients from the plants, which reduces crop productivity. In addition, the insects are vectors of viral diseases of plants.

Previous research at UNT discovered that a gene involved in the metabolism of trehalose, a sugar that is present in trace amounts in plants, can help plants defend against aphids. Shah will now study how this gene and the metabolism of trehalose contribute to defense and whether they can be engineered to enhance resistance.

In a second grant, which will provide $400,452 over the next four years, Shah will work with researchers at Kansas State University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis to understand how the oxidation of lipids contributes to stress responses in plants. Membranes, which are primarily constituted of lipids, are present on the surface and inside of cells and are critical for cell function. Stress induces the oxidation of lipids, which may result in the release of signals that stimulate defenses.

In both projects, Shah will use the Arabidopsis thaliana, a small weed that has long been utilized as a genetic model for studying plant growth, development and stress responses. Graduate and undergraduate students will work on both projects.

Shah belongs to UNT’s plant signaling cluster, a seven-person group of plant science researchers who explore the plant signals that control growth and defense against pathogens with the intent of developing new technologies in agriculture and medicine.

Two new collaborative research clusters have been formed to build on research already under way on the campus. This brings the total number of active research clusters to seven, following the initial announcement of the cluster initiative in September 2008. 

The new clusters are:
• Cradle-to-Cradle: Multifunctional Renewable Bioproduct Solutions
• Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Research and Conservation Program

The collaborative research clusters are funded through a $25 million commitment by the university as part of a long-term effort to bolster research, strengthen the state’s economy and develop technology vital to addressing today’s most pressing needs.

“Both of these new research clusters are directly focused on sustainability and environmental issues, research areas that UNT has a long and successful history of supporting,” says Provost Wendy K. Wilkins, left. “I’m very pleased to approve these two new clusters because of their potential worldwide impact. UNT is committed to finding new, creative, sustainable solutions to today’s environmental challenges.” 

See Extended Entry to learn more about the scope of each research cluster.

Bioactive glasses can help restore and repair bones, act as coatings for knee and hip replacements and assist in drug delivery. But researchers still don’t know much about the complex structure of the materials, which limits their potential.

Jincheng Du, left, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, will conduct a three-year project to further our understanding of bioactive glasses, which is a group of biocompatible, surface reactive glass-ceramics developed in the late 1960s. The research is funded by a $220,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

The work could help scientists develop better designs of the glasses, discover new applications and improve the quality of life for millions of people. Bioactive glasses are able to bond to bone and soft tissue, which makes them invaluable to bone growth and development.

“We have an aging population and increasing number of patients that need bone restoration and treatment due to disease or trauma,” Du says. “Success of the project will lead to a more rational design of bioactive glasses for various applications.” 

Du will use computational simulations combined with neutron and X-ray diffraction to characterize the structure of glasses. He also will study how bioactive glasses dissolve in fluids, which could help scientists know how to best use them in gradual drug delivery.

Du will synthesize and characterize the materials using facilities at UNT’s Center for Advanced Research and Technology, a federally funded collection of high-powered microscopes and other imaging equipment used for characterizing materials.

Neutron and high energy X-ray diffraction studies for the project will be carried out at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

Graduate and undergraduate students will work with Du on the project, which begins this summer.