Garfield Farm Museum Presents CORN 101

On Sunday, September 28 at 2 p.m., Garfield Farm Museum volunteer Chuck Bauer will give a lecture on the history of corn. There will be a discussion of the corn breed used in the 1840s and how farmers manipulated corn to create the variety we have today.

Garfield Farm Museum is located 5 miles west of Geneva, off Rt. 38 on Garfield Road.

Bauer was a polymer scientist/engineer at Amoco Chemicals for 31 years. With the modern day application of corn in so many products as well as a gasoline substitute, Bauer’s perspective is quite broad. Growing up in north-central Ohio, Bauer always had an interest in farming and animals.

Bauer took a special interest in corn while demonstrating the Garfield’s corn sheller at one of the museum’s Harvest Days events. He has grown several varieties of corn, including pod corn.

There is a $5 donation for the talk and refreshments. For more information call the museum at (630) 584-8485, or e-mail at [email protected].

Student proton-therapy researcher wins poster award at conference on accelerators

Kent Wong, a graduate student in physics at Northern Illinois University, was recognized recently at an international conference for his research on the development of a new device that would use proton beams to generate medical images.

Wong, of Naperville, received the Outstanding Poster Award at the International Conference on the Application of Accelerators in Research and Industry for his work on proton computed tomography. The conference was held last month in Fort Worth, Texas.

NIU, Loma Linda University Medical Center and the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics are working together to develop proton computed tomography, which would utilize proton beams to produce highly detailed images of structures inside the human body. Proton computed tomography could potentially provide doctors who use proton therapy with more precise information about the size, density and location of a tumor. The technology also could help to better predict the path of a proton beam during treatment.

Wong’s research, which he will expand upon for his master’s thesis, examines proton beam trajectories through materials that mimic human tissue.

Professor to address educational aspirations of Puerto Rican girls, women living in Chicago

Laura Ruth Johnson spent five years as the director of the Family Literacy Center in Paseo Boricua, a Puerto Rican community located in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Although the women ranged in age from 14 to 45, they all shared two things in common: a child younger than 7 in their care and the desire to earn a high school diploma.

Now an assistant professor in NIU’s Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment, Johnson spent years asking questions of the women, first as a center employee and later as an academic scholar.

Johnson’s stories of the women of Paseo Boricua will enlighten women who attend her presentation at noon Friday, Sept. 26, in the Chandelier Room of Adams Hall. Men are invited also. NIU’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women and the Women’s Resource Center are co-sponsors of the event.