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Library Events

 

UTD and the Apollo Missions
Monday, 2 p.m., Nov. 16, 2009

John H. Hoffman, Ph.D.
UTD Professor
Physics
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education
in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics

As a part of UT Dallas' 40th Anniversary festivities during the year, McDermott Library has organized a joint presentation by longtime UT Dallas professors John H. Hoffman, Ph.D. and James Carter, Ph.D. Dr. Hoffman will discuss "Planetary Atmospheres: A Forty Year View." Dr. Carter will talk about "Forty Years of Lunar Studies : Moon Samples to Simulated Moon Dirt."

The public is invited to hear about UT Dallas' work on the Apollo moon missions and subsequent research into atmospheric studies. Dr. Hoffman was NASA's principal investigator for a Lunar Orbital Mass Spectrometer carried on Apollos 15 and 16 and a Lunar Atmospheric Composition Device on Apollo 17. He was on the team that sent a mass spectrometer on the Giotto mission to Halley's Comet in 1986. Most recently he was the co-investigator for an experiment that flew on the Mars Scout Phoenix mission. Dr. Hoffman's mass spectrometer confirmed the existence of water on Mars.

Dr. Carter was an integral part of the UT Dallas team that received moon materials from the Apollo 11 flight and ensuing lunar landings for testing and analyzation. He helped train astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin through simulations in New Mexico. He studied moon material from all lunar landings and some from an unmanned Russian lunar probe. NASA still works with Carter, who has developed a simulated moon dirt that is the closest anyone has been to copy the real material. NASA uses Carter's creation to test equipment being developed for future lunar missions.

 

The University
and the Future of Knowledge

David Parry, Ph.D.
UTD Assistant Professor
Emerging Media, School of Arts and Humanities

Dr. David Parry, UTD Assistant Professor from Emerging Media in the School of Arts and Humanities, presented "The University and the Future of Knowledge" as a part of the McDermott Library Lecture Series on Sept. 9, 2009.

The public and library staff gathered in the McDermott Suite on the fourth level of the library, to hear Dr. Parry describe how certain intellectual institutions are now being made irrelevant by the new structure of information flow. He pointed out that students say they are completing their education without stepping foot in the library.

Librarians admit that more and more they bring the library to the students through subscriptions to large and expensive databases. Parry said these should be offered free for the first two years. Certain degrees such as those in medicine and engineering would still require "analog" rather than "digital" study and training.