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About 100 science writers from all over the country visited the University of Arkansas in the fall to hear about the latest cutting-edge research on campus and around the nation at the 42nd New Horizons Briefing put on by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. During that time, they took a field trip to the Ozark Mountains, where entomologist Fred Stephen talked to them about the red oak borer, an insect that threatens trees in the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks and represents a rare case in which an indigenous insect threatens to destroy its native ecosystem.
The writers also participated in an international search for slime molds, funded by a National Science Foundation biodiversity grant, to search for and characterize slime molds all over the world. Led by biological sciences professors, Fred Spiegel and Steve Stephenson, the group scoured the forest floor and the leaf canopy and discovered about 36 different species of slime molds.
Other campus researchers who gave lectures include Peter Ungar, anthropology; Laurent Bellaiche, physics; Donald Judges, law; Brent Smith, sociology; Jean-Francois Meullenet, food science; and Jerry Havens and Tom Spicer, chemical engineering.