Dr. Sergei Markov, associate professor in the APSU Department of Biology, will speak at 3:00pm, Thursday, February 9th in the Morgan University Center, Room 303. The event is free and open to the public.

The title of his talk is “Conformational regulation of hydrogenase gene expression in algae.”

The research showed that a loop conformation exists in the hydrogenase gene when algal cells are exposed to oxygen and the hydrogenase gene is inactive. In contrast, under oxygen-free conditions, when hydrogenase gene is active, no loop conformation in the gene region is present.

The data obtained in this project may have various applications in the area of biofuel production from microscopic algae. Better understanding of the regulation of algal genes will help to optimize generation of algal biofuels and in particularly hydrogen.

Markov joined the biology faculty of APSU in 2006. He received his Ph.D. in microbiology from Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he started his research on biofuels. From 1991 until 1995, he worked in England at King’s College London and Ecotec, Research and Consulting. Later, he was invited to the U.S. to join the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the U.S. Department of Energy in Golden, CO, where he worked for several years.

His biofuel research is supported by several grants from the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. He is author of more than 70 research publications on biofuels and a patent for hydrogen production by cyanobacteria.

As a result, his work has appeared in a dozen of publications on the Internet, including Science Daily, and on several foreign news websites.

Other sessions in the Provost Lecture Series also are planned for the academic year. All sessions are from 3:00pm-4:30pm in the MUC, Room 303 (unless noted otherwise) and include the following:

February 16th: Cynthia Marsh, professor of art
February 23rd: Dr. Christine Mathenge, associate professor of geology
March 1st: Dr. Robert Shelton, associate professor of chemistry
March 15th, MUC 307: Dr. Allyn Smith, associate professor of physics
March 22nd: Dr. Sharon Mabry, professor of music
March 29th: Dr. Cameron Sutt, assistant professor of history
April 5th: Mark DeYoung, assistant professor of art
April 12th: Dr. Tim Winters, professor of English
April 19th, MUC 103: Dr. Jeffrey Wood, professor of music

The Provost Lecture Series seeks to foster a spirit of intellectual and scholarly inquiry among faculty, staff and students. The program will be used as a platform for APSU faculty members who are recent recipients of provost summer grants, who have been awarded faculty development leaves and who have engaged in recent scholarly inquiry during sabbatical leaves.

APSU faculty members with recent research of acclaim also will be given a platform within this series. In addition, other faculty members of local or widespread renown will be invited to lecture within this series.

For more information about the Provost Lecture Series, call Dr. Brian Johnson, assistant vice president of academic affairs at APSU, at 931.221.7992 or email him at .

“In my opinion, children are innately musical and artistic at that age,” Eric Branscome, assistant professor and coordinator of music education at Austin Peay State University, said. “They love drawing, they love coloring, they love singing, they love painting.”

Beginning at 4:30pm on February 7th, APSU faculty and students will host the Children’s Arts InterAction Program in the Children’s Library of the Clarksville-Montgomery County Public Library. The program, which is free and open to all pre-school and early elementary aged children, will continue on the first Tuesday of each month throughout the semester.

“The program is basically targeting younger children, preschool-aged children, early elementary school-age children,” Branscome said. “It will have music, singing time, music activities. A lot of our student organizations will be going over to perform for the kids. And at the end of the time, the (APSU) art education students will lead a craft or related art activity for the kids.”

The activities will all be focused around literacy concepts developed by the library staff.

In addition to providing a valuable service for the community, the Children’s Arts InterAction program will also help prepare APSU students for their future careers.

“One of the main reasons we wanted to start this, in addition to community outreach, was so that our students in music education and art education could get extra experience working with these young kids before they go out and do student teaching,” Branscome said.

The program will meet at 4:30pm at the library on the following days:

• February 7th
• March 6th
• April 10th
• May 8th

For more information on Children’s Arts InterAction, contact Branscome at or Jennifer Snyder, APSU assistant professor of art education, at .

This event is free and open to the public.

For more details on the Kleeman Center’s “Words for the Heart”, please contact the Clarksville Parks and Recreation at 931.645.7476 or visit www.cityofclarksville.com.

Clarksville, TN

The samples were placed in test tubes, and back in his lab inside the APSU Sundquist Science Complex, Lebkuecher noticed that the algae were thriving. This was not good news for the creek.

“A problem with pollution or excess nutrients (such as fertilizers) is they cause what we call algal blooms (rapid algae growth),” he said. “I found the water quality within the creeks is poor. The reasons for the poor water quality include excessive sediments from erosion and high concentrations of nutrients as a result of fertilizer use by local farms.”

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation recently awarded Lebkuecher a $78,000 contract to expand his study of the impacts of water pollution on algae and other microscopic organisms throughout the Red River Watershed. His work will help determine the health of local streams and the impacts of pollution on aquatic organisms.

“Algae are such accurate indicators of habitat impairment that the data can be used directly for watershed management decisions,” he said. “Some algae are indicators of heavy erosion. Some are indicators of high concentration of nutrients.”

The objectives of the state contract include developing standardized methods for state researchers to evaluate the impacts of pollution in Tennessee rivers and assessing the effects of water pollution in the Red River Watershed.

“The grant also includes a little bit of money for me to hire students,” Lebkuecher said. Those students, through hands on fieldwork, will gain experience in biological monitoring.

“Hopefully, using these standard protocols I’m writing now, the state will be able to hire Austin Peay graduates to continue the work,” he said. “I teach a phycology class, and a major goal of that course is to train students to do that type of work.”

The work conducted under this new state contract could provide the first step in cleaning and protecting local waterways. For more information on this research, contact Lebkuecher at .

The money has been used to replace the roof at Sevier Station.

“As a society we are ‘preserving the past for the future’. Clarksville has a rich heritage that is slowly disappearing along with its buildings. As a society we are trying to prevent this,” said Sandra Stacey, President of the Montgomery County Historical Society, “We are proud to be part of the restoration of Sevier Station.”

Parking will be available across from Greenhill Church, located at 311 Walker Street.

For a more information, please visit www.cityofclarksville.com or call 931.645.7476.

Meat will be smoked on Saturday, April 7th and ready for pick up that same day from 2:00pm-5:00pm. Pick up point is located off I-24, Exit 11 in the parking lot at the corner of Highway 76 and Hornbuckle Road (beside the Shell Station).

April 7th is the Saturday before Easter, so it’s a great way to support your local Boy Scouts, and have something delicious to serve for Sunday Dinner.

Money raised will go towards the purchase of a larger trailer for Troop 503 to be used for outings and activities.

For more information or to purchase tickets, contact Alicia at 931.358.3606.

The gymnasium will be closed February 20th-26th to replace flooring. The center will return to normal operating hours the Monday following the annual maintenance period.

For more details on this or other community center activities, please contact Parks and Recreation at 931.645.7476.

Rose Austin, bursar, received the PeayFormance Partner Award. The Enrollment Management and Academic Support presents this award quarterly to faculty, staff or administrators who work in partnership with EMAS staff to demonstrate excellent service.

Charles Booth, staff writer in the APSU Office of Public Relations and Marketing, will have his short story, “The Last Blood Maple,” published in a forth-coming edition of SLAB (Sound and Literary Art Book) magazine, produced by Slippery Rock University. His short story “Medjugorje” will also appear this spring in Booth: A Journal – a literary magazine named after the writer Booth Tarkington and published by Butler University.

Johnathan Button, financial aid assistant in the Office of Financial Aid and Veterans Affairs, received the PeayFormance Customer Service Award. The Enrollment Management and Academic Support presents this award quarterly to a professional or clerical staff member nominated by his or her peers as exemplifying service above and beyond the call of duty to APSU students, faculty and the general campus community.

Dr. Culley Carson-Grefe, professor of French and Spanish, attended the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities from January 10th-13th in Honolulu. She chaired a session on second language studies and presented a paper, titled “Apples to Apples: Teaching Translation.” She also participated in a panel on “Promoting Innovation in World Language Instruction: Issues, Examples, Action.”

Dr. Carter Smith, assistant professor of criminal justice and homeland security, had a paper, “A Comprehensive Literature Review of Military-Trained Gang Members,” published in the Fall 2011 Journal of Gang Research and also is included in the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.

Clarksville, TN – Two Fort Campbell soldiers, Scott Puckett and Joseph Demille, received Mayor’s Certificates for taking action and assisting law enforcement in capturing burglars in December 2011.

On December 27th, 2011, a little after midnight Joseph Demille caught three teenagers breaking into vehicles in his neighborhood. He took decisive action and detained the men until Clarksville Police arrived.

(L to R) Joseph Demille and Scott Puckett received the Mayor's Certificate Thursday night at the Clarksville City Council meeting.

The man fought with Puckett, dragging him across the yard. Puckett was able to subdue the man and hold him until Police arrived. The man Puckett subdued was later charged with four other vehicle burglaries and fraudulent use of a credit card.

Scott Puckett and Joseph Demille were presented the Mayor’s certificates at the City Council meeting held at Public Square.

Knoxville, TN – Earning certification to prepare, manufacture and sell certain foods from a home kitchen is now more convenient for Tennesseans thanks to a new online training module from University of Tennessee Extension.

Domestic Kitchen Food Safety Training, which launched Wednesday, February 1st, provides instruction centered around the state’s Domestic Kitchen Rule. The rule allows people to commercially prepare, manufacture and sell non-potentially hazardous foods in the home while ensuring the public’s health is protected.

Examples of non-potentially hazardous foods include jams, jellies, candies and certain baked goods.

“We think that bringing the Domestic Kitchen Food Safety training online will improve accessibility to the required training for entrepreneurs who wish to produce non-potentially hazardous foods in their domestic kitchen,” said Dr. Faith Critzer, an assistant professor in the UT Department of Food Science and Technology and a UT Extension specialist.

Critzer — along with Dr. P. Michael Davidson, professor and head of UT’s Department of Food Science and Technology, and John Sanford, Tennessee Department of Agriculture administrator for food manufacturing — will teach the course.

Richard Karel with UT’s Office of Information Technology helped Critzer and Davidson transform the course from a traditional classroom format to the new online version. For those who prefer face-to-face training, Critzer and Davidson will continue to lead the course in a traditional classroom setting several times per year.

Participants who successfully complete the program earn certification from the University of Tennessee Food Science and Technology Extension program. Certification is the first step toward meeting requirements to manufacture non-potentially hazardous foods in a domestic kitchen.

Foods are considered non-potentially hazardous if they do not consist mainly of meat, poultry, liquid eggs, partially cooked egg products, fish, milk and milk products, shellfish, partially cooked bakery products, or other ingredients susceptible to the rapid growth of microorganisms when stored out of recommended temperature ranges for cold or hot foods.

Other prohibited foods include low-acid canned vegetables and acidified foods such as salsa or pickled vegetables.

Individuals interested in forming a catering business (made-to-order birthday cakes, wedding cakes, etc.) are not required to take the course and should contact a local health department for information regarding regulations.
In addition, individuals with an inside pet of any kind will not qualify as a food manufacturer under the Domestic Kitchen Rule.

Tennessee residents seeking the online certification should visit the UT Extension Online Learning website at http://tiny.utk.edu/kitchencert beginning February 1st. The course fee is $75.00, which is payable online. First-time site users must create an account.

For more information, contact Nancy Austin in the Department of Food Science and Technology at 865.974.7717 or .

About the UT Extension Office

UT Extension provides a gateway to the University of Tennessee as the outreach unit of the Institute of Agriculture. With an office in every Tennessee county, UT Extension delivers educational programs and research-based information to citizens throughout the state. In cooperation with Tennessee State University, UT Extension works with farmers, families, youth and communities to improve lives by addressing problems and issues at the local, state and national levels.