A Grammy in Mathematics
University of New Hampshire mathematician Kevin Short won a Grammy last week for developing an algorithm that helped a team of audio technicians restore the only recording of Woody Guthrie performing before a live audience. The wire recording was severely damaged and took more than a year to transfer into a digital format. Sound engineer Jamie Horwath used a constant hum on the tape to set algorithms that corrected variations in the original recording’s speed. He called on Short, whose research focuses on the applications of nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory, to fill in missing sounds caused by breaks in the wire. The Grammy for Best Historical Album was awarded to “The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949” on February 10. A longer report from Science News is available here.

New in Microbe Library
New resources have been added to The American Society for Microbiology’s (ASM) Microbe Library. They include a new issue of Focus on Microbiology Education that emphasizes bioinformatics and microbial genomics, and a new article in the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education on a student project to examine complex traits in Drosophila. Three new curriculum activities and three new visual resources are also available for downloading. The Microbe Library is looking for authors to submit appropriate resources, such as classroom activities and images of the microbial world. Submissions are due March 1, 2008. For more information, go to the website or contact MicrobeLibrary AT asmusa.org.

ConfChem 08 To Focus on NSDL
ConfChem is a free and open conference on topics in chemistry education that is presented entirely online. Its Spring 2008 session will focus on Chemistry at the National Science Digital Library and will open with a paper by Lee L. Zia, NSDL’s program officer at the National Science Foundation. Presentations are also scheduled from three NSDL Pathways (ChemEd DL, CSERD, and Compadre). The conference opens on April 15th. Submissions and comments will be accepted until May 15th and will then be archived online. The conference is sponsored by the Committee on Computers in Chemical Education of the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society.