General Session I
The Cassini Mission to Saturn
Donald A. Gurnett, Ph.D.
Friday, April 29th, 11:00am
Kimmel Theatre, Open to the Public

On July 1, 2004, after a nearly seven-year journey, the Cassini spacecraft was placed in orbit around Saturn. In this talk Professor Gurnett will describe recent results from Cassini mission to Saturn. The presentation will include a discussion of spectacular images of Saturn, its rings, and its moons, particularly Titan, and the early results from the University of Iowa Instrument that is carried aboard the spacecraft.

IAS member Dr. Donald Gurnett started his science career by working on spacecraft electronics design as a student employee in The University of Iowa Physics Department in 1959. After completing his B.S. in electrical engineering at Iowa in 1962, he transferred to physics, where he received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1963 and 1965. He spent one year, from 1964 to 1965, as a NASA Trainee at Stanford University ; was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa in 1965 with subsequent promotions to Associate Professor and to Professor in 1968 and 1972. Since then he spent one year on leave as an Alexander Von Humbold Senior Scientist at the Max-Planck-Institut in Garching , Germany , and one year on leave as a visiting professor at the University of California , Los Angeles .

Prof. Gurnett specializes in the study of space plasma physics and has participated in 25 spacecraft projects, most notably the Voyager 1 and 2 flights to the outer planets, the Galileo mission to Jupiter, and the Cassini mission to Saturn. He is the author or co-author of over 450 scientific publications, primarily in the area of magnetospheric radio and plasma wave research, and has supervised 50 M.S. and Ph.D. thesis projects. Prof. Gurnett has received numerous awards for his research. These include the 1978 John Howard Dellinger Gold Medal from the International Scientific Radio Union, the 1989 John Adam Fleming Medal from the American Geophysical Union and the 1989 Excellence in Plasma Physics Award from the American Physical Society. He regularly teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in physics and astronomy, and in 1990 he received the M. L. Huit Faculty Award for outstanding service and dedication to students at the University of Iowa , and in 1994 he received the Iowa Board of Regents Award for Faculty Excellence. In 1998 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This session generously supported by Rockwell Collins.

General Session II
America's Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie
Film Screening with Dr. Daryl Smith
Friday, April 29th, 8:00pm
Kimmel Theatre, Open to the Public

America's Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie is a sixty minute documentary film designed for national broadcast on public television. The film tells the story of one of the world's great ecosystems and its transformation from natural landscape to farmland. The tallgrass prairie was once a prominent feature of the North American Continent that was reduced, in less than a hundred years, to the vanishing point. The film is narrated by Iowa native, Annabeth Gish and includes commentary by Richard Manning, Pauline Drobney and many other regional scholars. America's Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie is a co-production of the University of Northern Iowa and New Light Media, Inc and directed by David O'Shields.

IAS member Daryl Smith, Ph.D., is the project director and executive producer of the Lost Landscape Film Project. Smith is a Professor of Biology and Science Education at the University of Northern Iowa where he has taught biology and teacher preparation classes for the past 35 years. His area of expertise is in prairie restoration/reconstruction and management. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa , his masters from the University of South Dakota and his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa . He is frequently called up on as a consultant in prairie reconstruction projects. He has been a consultant for plant community analysis for the Iowa Department of Transportation and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and he developed the original restoration/reconstruction master plan for the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge and Prairie Learning Center located near Prairie City , Iowa . He directs the UNI Native Roadside Vegetation center and was Director of the Twelfth North American Prairie Conference. He also teaches Prairie Ecology and Restoration Ecology at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, the field station for Iowa 's three state universities. Smith was a primary participant in the public television program, Land Between Two Rivers.

General Session III
The Science of Human and Animal Vocalization
Ingo R. Titze, Ph.D.
Saturday, April 30th, 11:00a.m.
Kimmel Theatre, Open to the Public

Sound production in humans and animals involves the vibration of biological tissue, resonation of sound with air columns, and radiation of sound from orifices. Non-ideal sizes and location of sound sources present a great challenge for obtaining the desired loudness, frequency, and sound quality. Analysis with nonlinear dynamics shows how species utilize material and structural nonlinearities to produce sounds ranging from song-like (periodic) to shriek-like (chaotic). In teaching, singing, and public speaking, an overdose of self-induced tissue vibration can damage vocal cord tissues, a problem for which tissue engineering and molecular biology has provided some answers.

Only fragments of scientific information about the physics and physiology of vocalization can be gained experimentally. This includes imaging, electromyography of muscle activity, and excised larynx studies with tissues obtained from cadavers. The macro-integration of all these fragmentary data is performed with computer simulation, of which there will be ample demonstration, including singing, speaking, and a tiger roar.

Ingo Titze, PhD, is the Executive Director of the National Center for Voice and Speech. He also is a Distinguished Professor of Speech Science and Voice in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, The University of Iowa, and the School of Music . He is also a member of the Bioengineering faculty at the same institution.

Formally educated as a physicist and engineer, Dr. Titze has applied this knowledge to a lifelong love of vocal music. His research interests include biomechanics of tissues used in phonation, acoustic phonetics, speech science, voice disorders, professional voice production, musical acoustics, animal vocalization, singing synthesis and the computer simulation of voice.

He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Utah and his doctoral degree in physics from Brigham Young University . He has published widely in the area of voice and has authored the well-known text, Principles of Voice Production. He is currently completing a text entitled 'Vocology' and another entitled The 'Myoelastic - Aerodynamic Theory of Phonation '. With more than 250 journal articles to his credit, Dr. Titze is a guest lecturer throughout the world. His concerts and educational lectures with "Pavarobotti," a singing robot, have been publicized internationally in such publications as USA Today, The Chicago Tribune and major publications in Vienna , New York and Rome . Dr. Titze is the recipient of the William and Harriott Gould Award for laryngeal physiology, the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigation Award, the Claude Pepper Award and the Quintana Award. In addition to his scientific endeavors, Dr. Titze continues to sing, giving recitals of classical songs and show tunes.

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