Current Issue
September 2019 – Vol. 9, No. 9
Table of Contents
Cover Story / Page 6
“Give Me Liberty” took Sundance and Cannes by storm, won the heart of critics, and opened to a sold-out theater in Milwaukee in August. The film’s co-writers, Kirill Mikhanovsky (’98, BA Film, Linguistics, and Russian) and former UWM adjunct theater professor Alice Austen, hope the movie, made entirely in Milwaukee, will put the city on the national film-making map.
Page 2
It’s okay to rain on Jasmine Viges’ parade. She’s got a barrel and a garden to handle that. Viges is a global studies major and an intern with the Fresh Coast Resource Center, where she helps people install green infrastructure like rain barrels and rain gardens. She’s helping mitigate storm water runoff, which protects Milwaukee’s waterways and sewers alike.
Page 4
Microscopic microfractures in minuscule grains of quartz revealed a big secret to Geosciences graduate student Chad Martin. He’s researching why rocks along the Willard Thrust Fault in Utah show signs of “shearing,” or having been “squished” together at some point in the past. His research took him all the way to the Berkeley National Lab’s Advanced Light Source.
Page 9
It’s a big web, so how do little spiders find the dead prey they’ve cached to eat? Most arachnids rely on vibrations in their web to show their location, but research from UWM biologist Rafael Rodriguez Sevilla shows that black widow spiders actually remember where in their webs they stored their snacks.
Page 10
From Chinese poetry to enzyme interactions, from racial rhetoric to radioactivity in the groundwater, the new faculty members of Letters & Science have varied and fascinating research interests. Meet them and learn more about the special qualities they bring to UW-Milwaukee!
Page 13
The more teens use marijuana, the more their cognitive function – including memory – seems to wane, according to research by UWM associate professor of psychology Krista Lisdahl. But, her new research also shows that some of that decline can be stalled with aerobic exercise.
Page 14
Vicki Bermudez spends her days hopping between courtrooms, speaking rapid-fire Spanish as she interprets for victims, defendants, and other non-English speakers in Racine County Court. Bermudez, a 2008 Spanish alum, is one of just three dedicated court interpreters in Wisconsin.