Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 414/832-6590
For Immediate Release					September 19, 1996
 
Two Science Grants Give Lawrence University Research Capabilites High-Tech
Boost
  
 
	APPLETON, WIS.-- Two separate grants worth a combined $273,000 will
provide Lawrence University scientists and students with several new pieces of
high-tech equipment and instrumentation for cutting edge interdisciplinary
research.

	Awarded by the National Science Foundation's Academic Research
Infrastructure Program, the grants will support the purchase of a inductively
coupled plasma-mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) and a state-of-the-art computer
imaging system.   

	The acquisition of an ICP-MS puts Lawrence among only a handful of small
schools in the country with such an instrument.  Originally developed for water
analysis and for use in agricultural labs for monitoring levels of metals in
foods, the ICP-MS can determine within seconds the individual element content of
any liquid.

	"If we can dissolve it, we can analyze its make-up," said Karen Harpp,
assistant professor of chemistry who will administer the instrument's use. 
"Soil, rocks, plant matter, anything we can convert to a liquid state can be
analyzed.  It's an incredible research tool, the cutting edge of analytical
methods, capable of determining extremely small amounts of material down to the
parts per trillion level."

	Among its many practical research applications, the ICP-MS technology
can support analysis of not only the amounts, but also the sources, of arsenic
in drinking water or further the study of the distribution of contaminants in
the sediment of the Fox River and Lake Winnebago and how the contaminants are
being transported.  

	In addition to interdisciplinary research conducted by Lawrence
chemistry, geology and biology students with the ICP-MS, Harpp said cooperative
programs with schools such as UW-Oshkosh and Macalester in St. Paul, Minn., for
additional research with the instrument will enable Lawrence to serve as a hub
for regional undergraduate research of this nature in the Midwest.

	A second grant will support a computer imaging system in Lawrence's
biology and geology departments.  The system features scanning equipment and a
digital camera that can be attached to either of two new microscopes which will
send digitized images to a computer for analysis.  As part of the grant,
Lawrence also received considerable computer software from the National
Institutes of Health that will be used in conjunction with the equipment to
analyze and quantify data.

	According to Nancy Wall, assistant professor of biology, the equipment
and software has biological and geological research applications ranging from
ecological field studies to molecular biology.  The system can digitally capture
images ranging from the microscopic to the global level, allowing the computer
to perform a variety of analyses of the images, such as determining the amounts
of DNA, RNA or proteins isolated from samples.  It can also quantify size and
shape data, which is used in studying the composition and function of things as
small as single cells to objects as large as landforms from satellite images.

	"This is an exciting addition to Lawrence's overall science research
capabilities," said Wall.  "A sophisticated computer imaging system like this
will offer our students a wide array of new research opportunities as well as
expose them to hands-on use of the kind of high-tech instrumentation that is
usually only available to graduate students at much larger institutions."