FACILITIES AND SERVICES

Natural Sciences

The Animal Care Facility in Nott Hall houses the laboratory animals used at the University. The facility is supported primarily by the College of Arts and Sciences, but it also serves other colleges on campus that have teaching or research needs for laboratory animals. The facility also acts as a liaison with external groups responsible for accreditation and compliance with humane and legal requirements related to the experimental use of animals. The facility is fully accredited by the American Association for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care.

The Center for Land Information Analysis and Mapping, instituted in 1988, coordinates the research and service activities of several established units within the Department of Geography. Located in Farrah Hall, the center integrates personnel and resources of the Geographic Information Systems Laboratory, the Remote Sensing Laboratory, the University Map Library, and the Cartographic Laboratory.

The Cartographic Laboratory produces maps, graphs, and charts in black and white and in color, and in camera-ready and electronic file formats. Although the lab is designed to serve University faculty, students, and administrators, it increasingly provides work for local, state, and federal agencies. The Map Library maintains large holdings of U.S. and foreign maps and serves as a depository for the U.S. Geological Survey and the Defense Mapping Agency. In addition, an extensive land use map and energy map collection is being developed. The library also has aerial photograph coverage of most Alabama counties going back to the 1940s. The Geographic Information Systems Laboratory is a fully equipped computer graphics facility providing research and production services in computer cartography and digital photogrammetry. The Remote Sensing Laboratory serves remote sensing research activities of the Department of Geography faculty and the University community.

The Department of Biological Sciences is located in four buildings: the Biology Building, Nott Hall, Scientific Collections Facility, and Tom Bevil Energy, Mineral, and Materials Science Research Building. In addition, several faculty members are stationed at the Dauphin Island Sea Laboratory. Specialized facilities for research and teaching are housed in these buildings, including the Center for Optical Analysis, the Molecular Biology Research Support Facility, the Freshwater Biological Facilities Center, the Molecular Phylogenetics Laboratory, the Geographical Information System and Photogrammetry Laboratory, and the Experimental Mesocosm Facility. Among a range of musuem collections are the University of Alabama Herbarium, Icthyological Collection, Entomological Collection, and Marine Invertebrate Collection. The University of Alabama Arboretum, a 60-acre outdoor classroom and natural area, includes a native woodland, ornamental areas, the Alma Bishop Williams Greenhouse, the Duncan Greenhouse, and wildflower, herb, bog, and experimental gardens. The recently completed TreeTopology platform makes canopy-level research available. The J. Nicholene Bishop Biological Station is a family homestead, Tanglewood, plus 480 surrounding acres in Hale County, Alabama. This inland biological station is used to further undergraduate and graduate research in biodiveristy and environmental processes.

The facilities of the Department of Chemistry, located in Lloyd Hall, include 60 teaching and research laboratories. Special research laboratories include multinuclear NMR, EPR, GC-mass spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, and molecular modeling instrumentation. Other instruments available include proton NMR spectrometers, ultraviolet-visible spectrometers, mass spectrometers, gas chromatographs, high-performance liquid chromatographs, infrared spectrometers, and atomic absorption spectrometers. The department also maintains modern glassblowing, electronics, and machine shops for rapid maintenance of laboratory equipment and creation of custom-designed apparatus. In addition to the use of the University's Seebeck Computer Center, the department has several dedicated computers for use in magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry research that accommodate special data handling and simulation work.

The Department of Physics and Astronomy is located in Gallalee Hall, with additional research and office space in the Tom Bevill Energy, Mineral, and Materials Science Research Building. The department's facilities include teaching and research laboratories, a machine shop, and an electronics repair and design shop. The department maintains specialized research laboratories for magnetic materials, laser research, and high-energy experimental physics. Specialized research equipment includes ultrahigh vacuum thin-film deposition equipment, magnetometers, X-ray and electron diffraction systems, a scanning tunneling microscope, a ferromagnetic resonance spectrometer, an electron beam processor, state-of-the-art equipment for particle detector research and development, and an electronic instrumentation laboratory with CAD/CAM capability for high-energy research and development. A large number of state-of-the-art computer workstations are available for simulations and data analysis in astronomy, high-energy physics, and condensed-matter physics. A networked computer laboratory with access to the Internet, the University's mainframe computer, and the state's Cray supercomputer is available for general student use.

The Astronomy Observatory, also located in Gallalee Hall, is devoted primarily to teaching and public service. Its main instruments are a 10-inch refracting telescope and an eight-inch Schmidt camera. A 16-inch computerized telescope is housed at nearby Moundville Archaeological Park. Several other small telescopes, cameras, a micrometer for double-star measurements, and equipment for solar observations are also available.

The Tom Bevill Energy, Mineral, and Materials Science Research Building houses the Department of Geological Sciences and the Freshwater Studies Program. The building includes shared analytical instrumentation in the Central Analytical Facility and laboratories that are dedicated to individual programs. The Department of Geological Sciences has well-equipped laboratories for modern quantitative research. These facilities include sample preparation laboratories for aqueous and solid samples; a wet chemical analytical laboratory, containing an inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometer, an inductively-coupled plasma emission spectrometer, a graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrophotometer, and an ion chromatograph; a gas source mass spectroscopy laboratory for stable isotope analyses; an X-ray analysis laboratory, containing automated diffraction and flourescence equipment; an electron beam analysis laboratory, containing scanning Auger and electron microprobes as well as scanning transmission and scanning electron microscopes; a computer workstation-based hydrogeological modeling laboratory; geophysical equipment that includes 36-channel seismic recorder and geodetic quality GPS receivers; and a subsurface mapping laboratory with Sun and Silicon Graphics UNIX workstations and interactive seismic processing software.

The Eric and Sarah Rodgers Library for Science and Engineering serves faculty and students in science and engineering. It contains extensive collections of scientific monographs and periodicals, group study areas, computer workstations, and a fully equipped electronic classroom.