Drilling Reveals Fault Rock Architecture in New Zealand’s Central Alpine Fault

            Figure 1: Location map of study by Virginia Toy et al. Image Credit: GSA
Boulder, Colo., USA - Rocks within plate boundary scale fault zones become fragmented and altered over the earthquake cycle. They both record and influence the earthquake process. In this new open-access study published in Lithosphere on 4 Feb., Virginia Toy and colleagues document fault rocks surrounding New Zealand's active Alpine Fault, which has very high probability of generating a magnitude 8 or greater earthquake in the near future.

Descriptions already suggest that the complex fault rock sequence results from slip at varying rates during multiple past earthquakes, and even sometimes during aseismic slip. They also characterize this fault before rupture; Toy and colleagues anticipate that repeat observations after the next event will provide a previously undescribed link between changes in fault rocks and the ground shaking response. They write that in the future this sort of data might allow realistic ground shaking predictions based on observations of other "dormant" faults.

The first phase of the Deep Fault Drilling Project (DFDP-1) yielded a continuous lithological transect through fault rock surrounding the Alpine fault (South Island, New Zealand). This allowed micrometer- to decimeter-scale variations in fault rock lithology and structure to be delineated on either side of two principal slip zones intersected by DFDP-1A and DFDP-1B. Here, we provide a comprehensive analysis of fault rock lithologies within 70 m of the Alpine fault based on analysis of hand specimens and detailed petrographic and petrologic analysis. The sequence of fault rock lithologies is consistent with that inferred previously from outcrop observations, but the continuous section afforded by DFDP-1 permits new insight into the spatial and genetic relationships between different lithologies and structures. We identify principal slip zone gouge, and cataclasite-series rocks, formed by multiple increments of shear deformation at up to coseismic slip rates. A 20−30-m-thick package of these rocks (including the principal slip zone) forms the fault core, which has accommodated most of the brittle shear displacement. 

This deformation has overprinted ultramylonites deformed mostly by grain-size-insensitive dislocation creep. Outside the fault core, ultramylonites contain low-displacement brittle fractures that are part of the fault damage zone. Fault rocks presently found in the hanging wall of the Alpine fault are inferred to have been derived from protoliths on both sides of the present-day principal slip zone, specifically the hanging-wall Alpine Schist and footwall Greenland Group. This implies that, at seismogenic depths, the Alpine fault is either a single zone of focused brittle shear that moves laterally over time, or it consists of multiple strands. Ultramylonites, cataclasites, and fault gouge represent distinct zones into which deformation has localized, but within the brittle regime, particularly, it is not clear whether this localization accompanies reductions in pressure and temperature during exhumation or whether it occurs throughout the seismogenic regime. These two contrasting possibilities should be a focus of future studies of fault zone architecture.

Source:GSA

What is the Benefits of ISS Research - A interview Video

Earth framing the International Space Station

Earth framing the International Space Station in May 2010 following undocking of Atlantis during the STS-132 mission. (NASA)

Almost as soon as the International Space Station was habitable, researchers began using it to study the impact of microgravity and other space effects on several aspects of our daily lives. This unique scientific platform continues to enable researchers from all over the world to put their talents to work on innovative experiments that could not be done anywhere else. 

Although each space station partner has distinct agency goals for station research, each partner shares a unified goal to extend the resulting knowledge for the betterment of humanity. We may not know yet what will be the most important discovery gained from the space station, but we already have some amazing breakthroughs! In the areas of human health, telemedicine, education and observations of Earth from space, there are already demonstrated benefits to human life. Vaccine development research, station-generated images that assist with disaster relief and farming, and education programs that inspire future scientists, engineers and space explorers are just some examples of research benefits. 

The stories featured here summarize the scientific, technological and educational accomplishments of research on the space station that has and will continue to have an impact on life on Earth.

The benefits outlined here serve as examples of the space station's potential as a groundbreaking scientific research facility. Through advancing the state of scientific knowledge of our planet, looking after our health, and providing a space platform that inspires and educates the science and technology leaders of tomorrow, these benefits will drive the legacy of the space station as its research strengthens economies and enhances the quality of life here on Earth for all people.

WATCH VIDEO HERE


Source: Nasa

‘Love, Rock and Revolution’ features legendary music photographer Jim Marshall’s work

Never-before-seen 1960s photographic work by legendary San Francisco rock and roll

photographer Jim Marshall (1936-2010) will be featured in “The Haight: Love, Rock and Revolution,” an exhibit opening Friday, Feb. 6, in the halls of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

JimMarshallExhibit-410aThe show will run through May at the school’s Reva and David Logan Gallery of Documentary Photography at North Gate Hall, located on campus near the intersection of Hearst and Euclid avenues. It is free and open to the public.

The Center for Photography at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism has joined with Marshall’s estate to launch the Jim Marshall Fellowships in Photography, with a goal of raising $500,000 to $1 million to  support the visual arts at the journalism school.

Marshall was widely known for his documentary photos of big-name musicians from the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Santana and the Rolling Stones, as well as Johnny Cash’s groundbreaking live concerts at Folsom and San Quentin prisons. His work appeared on more than 500 album covers and in magazines such as Rolling Stone.

Marshall’s photos also captured street life in San Francisco and New York, a Kentucky coal mining town’s despair and Mississippi civil rights demonstrations. He received an honorary Grammy lifetime achievement award posthumously in 2014, the only photographer to ever receive such an honor.

At the opening reception on Feb. 6, longtime San Francisco music critic and Marshall friend Joel Selvin and Amelia Davis, a photographer and Marshall assistant, will be on hand to discuss Marshall’s work.

The 6:30-8:30 p.m. event also will feature a psychedelic light show, in keeping with the popular rock programming of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, free psychedelic posters resembling those made famous during that era by the Fillmore music hall in San Francisco will be given away at the reception, while they last.

The exhibit was curated by Ken Light, the Reva and David Logan Chair in Photojournalism.

The Center for Photography at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, founded in 1996, offers courses in hands-on photojournalism and social documentary photography. The center routinely exhibits world-class photographers and hosts programs with distinguished photojournalists.

For more information about the event, contact Julie Hirano at juliehirano@berkeley.edu.

For more details about the Jim Marshall Fellowships in Photography, contact Marlena Telvick at marlenatelvick@berkeley.edu.

Source: UC Berkeley

The University of Rwanda Launch Agribusiness Program in Rwanda

                                                                   Image Credit: MSU
Michigan State University and the University of Rwanda recently launched a new Master of Science degree program in agribusiness in Kigali, Rwanda.  The gender-sensitive degree program will enroll its first cohort of students in February 2015.

The degree program was jointly developed with funding provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development through the Women’s Leadership Program, implemented globally by Higher Education for Development.

The graduate program prioritizes accessibility to women and midcareer professionals and will incorporate extensive experiential learning opportunities for students. The structure of the program requires all students to partake in an internship, thus better preparing them for leadership and entrepreneurial roles in agriculture in Rwanda. 

“Agriculture is vital to the people and economy of Rwanda, and many of those involved in agriculture are women,” said James McWha, UR professor emeritus and vice chancellor. “Their input to the business of agriculture is essential. It is also important that agriculture adopts a modern business strategy because it is a business and all those involved must learn the relevant skills. This program brings together all the components necessary for a major development of the future of the agriculture and food industries in Rwanda.” 

Using a collaborative approach, the Women’s Leadership Program is designed to support access of women to higher education and advanced degrees, strengthen institutional capacity in research and education on women’s leadership and promote women’s leadership through higher education extension/outreach efforts in underserved communities. 

“The empowerment of women through the expansion of their leadership opportunities and spaces for their voices to be heard is a top priority for USAID globally, including in Rwanda,” said Joseph Lessard, USAID/Rwanda economic growth director. “We really believe this program will give women rich opportunities to share their expertise and play major roles in the country’s economic development. We congratulate the University of Rwanda and Michigan State University on this achievement, and look forward to seeing how it will benefit Rwanda into the future.” 

MSU has a rich history of working collaboratively with the Rwandan government and its institutions of higher education. 

“It has been a great honor to continue the tradition of our two universities working together to advance the agriculture sector in Rwanda,” said Gretchen Neisler, principal investigator on this project from MSU.  “Working collaboratively on the Rwanda Women’s Leadership Program has been very rewarding. I look forward to strengthening our partnership with the UR through the continued development of this degree program.  I am also excited to explore new and innovative ways for our two universities to work together to educate the next generation of thought leaders at both Michigan State University and the University of Rwanda.”

Source: MSU

Student psychologists help the depressed

Liisa Luuk and Lisa Backlund are in the last term of their Psychology programme. During the spring they will be doing a graduation project in which they will evaluate the effects of cognitive behavioural therapy on depression, where the treatment is a combination of online treatment and actual face-to-face meetings. Their study is a part of a larger European research project in which the results from eight European countries are brought together.

Liisa Luuk och Lisa Backlund There is good support in research for both traditional face-to-face CBT and for treatment delivered online, Ms Backlund explains. What is new, and has not been researched as much, is that in this study there are four face-to-face meetings with the therapist in addition to the online treatment. Many patients request meeting their therapist, and it can result in more people completing their therapy.

“We will be taking part in the entire project,” Ms Luuk says. “We have received general guidelines from the other EU countries taking part, but we have been able to design the online treatment and the form of the treatment meetings. And we are also part of the recruitment process, conducting interviews with the participants prior to treatment. Then we follow up the results afterward, and we will also take part as therapists.”

Meeting and treating patients is not new for them.

“We see patients for three terms during our course at the university clinic ,” Ms Backlund explains. “During that time we are given basic psychotherapy training. And last term we went out for twelve weeks on professional placement, working with patients.”

In Sweden the studies will be carried out in Linköping and Stockholm. There will be places for 150 people who feel depressed to receive treatment and take part in the study, which is free. The criteria for taking part include being over 18 and having access to a telephone and a smart-phone. The treatment itself will start in February and run over ten weeks. Those interested in taking part may indicate their interest now.

“It’s important for us to have a large number of participants to make the results as reliable as possible and so that they can be compared with the various other EU countries,” Ms Luuk says. “It’s great being part of a real research project that is so big, it’s wonderful. Gaining experience of seeing how the research is done when these big names in the field are the ones doing it.”

“If we were to work as psychologists in primary care in the future, it is very possible that we would be the ones actually putting this treatment into practice,” Ms Luuk says.

Ms Backlund agrees with her.

“Yes, there's a good chance that treatment will go in this direction – more online treatment – so it’s an excellent experience for us.”

The treatment includes four face-to-face meetings with the therapist; in between, the treatment is internet-based. The participants will read some texts that talk about depression and how it is dealt with in CBT. Some of it deals with changing what you do – how to do things differently in order to deal with your depression – and part of it deals with how to manage your thinking. These are two key parts of CBT. Then there are small tasks. They might be answering questions or doing some exercises. Then you apply what you’ve read to your daily life.

Later, the treatment will be evaluated.

“We will compare it with a control group,” Ms Backlund says. “We have various questionnaires that the participants will fill in before and after the study, where they will assess how they feel. We will compare the severity of the depression symptoms before and after the treatment. We will also have a control group, that does not take part, to compare with. They will receive online treatment after the study has been completed. So everyone who takes part in the study will receive treatment.”

Professor Gerhard Andersson of the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping University is behind the project. Naira Topooco is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology, and a part of Professor Andersson’s research team. She is a project manager in the research study and Ms Luuk’s and Ms Backlund’s immediate supervisor. DAY treatment was developed by researchers and psychologists from Linköping University and is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

Source: The DAY-studie (article in Swedish)

HIV virus in disguise tricks immune system, Marie Larsson is Professor of Molecular Virology

Name: Marie LarssonTitle: Professor of Molecular Virology
Department: IKE

CONTACT

Phone: +46 (0)10-103 10 55
E-mail: marie.larsson@liu.se

Address:
Linköping University
Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine
Virology
SE-581 85 Linköping
Sweden

Marie Larsson is Professor of Molecular Virology. Her research is in the area of immunovirology, specifically HIV research with focus on the immunomodulatory effect this virus has on dendritic cells and T cells. She has also ongoing projects exploring new adjuvants and vaccine constellations for cancer and virus. Furthermore, she is investigating the induction and sustainment of cancer associated inflammation and the deleterious effect this has on host immune defense.

Immunomodulatory effects of HIV-1’s interactions with DCs and T cells from

blood and mucosa
So far over 30 million people have died from HIV-1 infection (figure 1), the majority of them in the developing countries, and this epidemic is still cause for major concern. The existing antiretroviral therapy dampens the infection and the destruction of the immune system, i.e. AIDS, but does not cure the disease. Sadly, this therapy is not available to all HIV infected and is a very expensive lifelong commitment with severe side effects.

A vaccine blocking HIV infection is theDendritic cell sought-after solution but there is no hope that we will have such a vaccine in the near future. Instead we can hope for a therapy that induces a potent long lasting immune response consisting of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, two types of control cells involved in the immune defense, that have proven to be important to control the infection. There exists a unique cell in all tissues in our bodies, the dendritic cell (DC) (Figure 2) with unique ability to activate T cells so they can perform their job in the body. DCs in the vaginal and rectal tissues are one of the first cells to encounter HIV during intercourse with an infected individual (Figure 3 and 4). Unfortunately, HIV hijacks the DCs, which makes this cell responsible for spreading the virus to interacting T cells in the body which provokes HIV-infection of T cells and cell death when it should be initiating immune responses to fight the infection.DC HIV

My research aspires to elucidate the mechanisms behind the immunomodulatory effects HIV exerts on DCs and on their ability to activate T cells. Focus will be on; Elucidation of the mechanisms involved in HIV’s binding to and uptake by DCs and the subsequent degradation that leads to DC antigen presentation of HIV peptides for activation of HIV specific T cells. Elucidation of the mechanisms responsible for the negative effects HIV exerts on DCs and if presence of HIV virions during DC T cell priming impairs the T cell function. Elucidate the effect opsonized HIV-1 exerts on immune cells such as DCs, NK cells and T cells. Identification of receptors and cells involved in the initial HIV infection of cervical mucosa and colorectal mucosa,  and potential microbiocides that can block the initial infection, and elucidation of why HIV affects the T cells in the gut to a higher extent than the T cells in blood.

HIV will continue to kill people and have a great impact on mankind until we have a drug that can stop this infection. My ambition is that the planed research will answer some basic questions regarding the role of DCs in HIV pathogenesis and induction of potent immune response against this virus. This knowledge will guide how a vaccine/therapy needs to be constructed in order to have high efficacy.

                                                             Mucosal transmission

                                                                Cervix

Cancer research

Elucidation the role of IL-1α and the microenvironment in development of pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a common gastrointestinal malignancy with an exceptional poor prognosis and a mortality rate that nearly matches the rate of incidence. The cross-talk between PDAC and stroma cells, e.g. cancer associated fibroblasts (CAF), and immune cells, may create an environment with chronic inflammation augmenting tumor transformation and maintenance.

In PDAC, more than 70% of the total tumor mass can consist of fibrotic stroma, which makes CAFs the major component in this cancer. PDAC inflammatory environment consists of many mediators, e.g. IL-1, COX-2, IL-6, and CXCL8, and some of these factors correlate to tumor development and poor prognosis. Of note, elevated expression of IL-1 in tumors has been associated with more aggressive disease. Several studies, including ours have reported that dendritic cells (DCs), one of the immune cells found in the tumor microenvironment, show phenotypic and functional abnormalities when isolated from tumor bearing animals and individuals with PDAC. Recent findings provided some evidence that the COX-2 metabolite PGE2 is involved in the upregulation of immunomodulatory factors in DCs impairing their T cell stimulatory ability. The aims are to examine the receptor-ligands and signaling pathways involved in the cross talk between stroma cells, i.e. CAFs, and PDAC cells giving rise to the inflammatory environment and creating an environment sustaining the PDAC. To examine the role IL-1 cytokine family and effects these cytokines cell signaling have on creating the inflammatory environment and in tumor development and survival. To examine whether neutralization of IL1 signaling pathway enhances the survival and quality of life for individuals with pancreatic cancer.

The information gained from the proposed research will help us understand the mechanisms underlying the development of PDAC and the effect this solid tumor exert on the body and may help designing therapies for PDAC.

Source: Linköping University

Scheduling tool a big help in healthcare

The HIV virus avoids the body’s immune cells by disguising itself using proteins that normally take part in the defence against infections. These are the findings of research conducted at the Division of Molecular Virology.

Professor Marie LarssonThese “complement proteins” are soluble molecules that attach themselves to foreign particles and those of the body in different patterns. These patterns help the immune system to identify and attack dangerous intruders such as viruses and bacteria.

Phd student Rada EllegårdInstead, HIV exploits the complement proteins present in all body fluids in order to make its way into the body tissues without being attacked. It was known previously that infections are much more effective if the virus is surrounded by the bodily fluids normally present in blood or sexual contagion than if it is isolated in a laboratory environment. In an article in the Journal of Immunology Marie Larsson, professor of molecular virology (left) and PhD student Rada Ellegård (right) provide an explanation of this phenomenon.

“The ability to use our complement proteins in this way is probably key to the success of HIV in being transmitted. We are currently carrying out further work to investigate these mechanisms in the male genital mucous membrane – the tissue where the virus infection takes place in sexual transmission,” says Ms Larsson.

The first thing HIV particles come into contact with is dendritic cells, immune cells that function as sentry posts. Their job is to identify viruses as dangerous and hostile to the body, and to respond by producing the substances that combat infections and moving to a lymph node to set a specific immune defence in motion.

In the case of HIV, this process does not seem to work very well. The disguise stops the dendritic cells recognising the virus, which instead establishes an infection in the mucous membrane and uses the movement to the lymph nodes as a way to spread around the whole body.

As more and more cells are infected and killed, the virus slowly breaks down our immune system. Without treatment this sequence of events leads to AIDS, a condition where the victim becomes extremely vulnerable to infection and where normally harmless viruses and bacteria become life-threatening.

Related content

Marie Larsson - research presentation >>

                                       HIV-illustration

When a virus is captured by a dendritic cell, it is recognised by a virus sensor that normally sets in motion infection reduction factors which inhibit the production of new virus particles (picture, left). HIV has the ability to clothe itself in complements, a type of protein present in our bodily fluids. In this way it can dampen the signals from the virus sensors and produce many new particles (picture, right).


Source: Linköping University

Five AGRIPIR projects for introducing new technologies into highland agriculture

Five projects for introducing new technologies into highland agriculture will be launched as a result of the European cross-border cooperation AGRIPIR project. In concrete, plans are being drawn up for the teledetection of diseases amongst animals, the prevention of attacks by wolves and other predators, there mote monitoring of herd activity, and the self-supply of energy to remote holdings, as well asa “virtual herder” for controlling herds at a distance.

The European AGRIPIR project, in which various partners on both sides of the Pyrenees have been working for over three years in order to modernise agriculture and animal herding in mountainous areas, concluded with a two-day seminar in Bidart (in Labourd, in the continental Basque Country) . Five innovative projects to introduce new technologies onPyrenees farm-holdings were presented. The seminar was held on 11 and 12 ofDecember, in the presence of a number of authorities, outstanding amongst whom was the recently appointed European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr. Phil Hogan from Ireland.

In concrete, this network of exchange and experimentation for the revaluation and enhancement of agriculture in the Pyrenees has given rise to four new projects:

- Power Box: developing an energy kit made up of various supply sources and that guarantees energy autonomy for mountain herders and shepherds in zones of difficult access in order to carry out their daily tasks.

- Mastech: developing technologies based on nuclear magnetic resonance, thermography, proteomics (the study of proteins) and measures based on behaviour andphysiologyfor the early detection amongst sheep, goat and cattle herds of mastitis processes (the most frequent diseases that affect the dairy industry worldwide).

- Live-Pre Life: improving the co-existence of large predators and herds in mountain areas, through developing intelligent fencing, methods for the early detection of attacks, and active systems to drive away wolves and other potentially dangerous animals.

- Cowmon: developing an open, low-cost system with unlimited autonomy for monitoring herd activity over large expanses of terrain and to provide new services linked to animal welfare and tothe productivity of farmlands.

A pilot project known as e-Pasto has also already been developed, involving a “virtual herder” to control herds remotely, using latest-generation geo-location devices fitted to the collars of the animals.

Source: Elhuyar Fundazioa

Graphene Is Strongest Material in the World Even with Defects

Graphene remains the strongest material ever measured and, as Professor Hone once put it, so strong that "it would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.” —Illustration by Andrew Shea for Columbia Engineering

In a new study, published in Science May 31, 2013, Columbia Engineering researchers demonstrate that graphene, even if stitched together from many small crystalline grains, is almost as strong as graphene in its perfect crystalline form. This work resolves a contradiction between theoretical simulations, which predicted that grain boundaries can be strong, and earlier experiments, which indicated that they were much weaker than the perfect lattice.

Graphene consists of a single atomic layer of carbon, arranged in a honeycomb lattice. “Our first Science paper, in 2008, studied the strength graphene can achieve if it has no defects—its intrinsic strength,” says James Hone, professor of mechanical engineering, who led the study with Jeffrey Kysar, professor of mechanical engineering. “But defect-free, pristine graphene exists only in very small areas. Large-area sheets required for applications must contain many small grains connected at grain boundaries, and it was unclear how strong those grain boundaries were. This, our second Science paper, reports on the strength of large-area graphene films grown using chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and we’re excited to say that graphene is back and stronger than ever.”

The study verifies that commonly used methods for post-processing CVD-grown graphene weaken grain boundaries, resulting in the extremely low strength seen in previous studies. The Columbia Engineering team developed a new process that prevents any damage of graphene during transfer. “We substituted a different etchant and were able to create test samples without harming the graphene,” notes the paper’s lead author, Gwan-Hyoung Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in the Hone lab. “Our findings clearly correct the mistaken consensus that grain boundaries of graphene are weak. This is great news because graphene offers such a plethora of opportunities both for fundamental scientific research and industrial applications.”

                                              Profs. James Hone and Jeffrey Kysar
In its perfect crystalline form, graphene (a one-atom-thick carbon layer) is the strongest material ever measured, as the Columbia Engineering team reported in Science in 2008—so strong that, as Hone observed, “it would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.” For the first study, the team obtained small, structurally perfect flakes of graphene by mechanical exfoliation, or mechanical peeling, from a crystal of graphite. But exfoliation is a time-consuming process that will never be practical for any of the many potential applications of graphene that require industrial mass production.

Currently, scientists can grow sheets of graphene as large as a television screen by using chemical vapor deposition (CVD), in which single layers of graphene are grown on copper substrates in a high-temperature furnace. One of the first applications of graphene may be as a conducting layer in flexible displays.

“But CVD graphene is ‘stitched’ together from many small crystalline grains—like a quilt—at grain boundaries that contain defects in the atomic structure,” Kysar explains. “These grain boundaries can severely limit the strength of large-area graphene if they break much more easily than the perfect crystal lattice, and so there has been intense interest in understanding how strong they can be.”

The Columbia Engineering team wanted to discover what was making CVD graphene so weak. In studying the processing techniques used to create their samples for testing, they found that the chemical most commonly used to remove the copper substrate also causes damage to the graphene, severely degrading its strength.

WATCH VIDEO
Click on the Video to watch Prof. James Hone take us on a tour of his synthesis lab in the Northwest Corner Building, where he grows graphene and nanotubes.

Their experiments demonstrated that CVD graphene with large grains is exactly as strong as exfoliated graphene, showing that its crystal lattice is just as perfect. And, more surprisingly, their experiments also showed that CVD graphene with small grains, even when tested right at a grain boundary, is about 90% as strong as the ideal crystal.

“This is an exciting result for the future of graphene, because it provides experimental evidence that the exceptional strength it possesses at the atomic scale can persist all the way up to samples inches or more in size,” says Hone. “This strength will be invaluable as scientists continue to develop new flexible electronics and ultrastrong composite materials.”

Strong, large-area graphene can be used for a wide variety of applications such as flexible electronics and strengthening components—potentially, a television screen that rolls up like a poster or ultrastrong composites that could replace carbon fiber. Or, the researchers speculate, a science fiction idea of a space elevator that could connect an orbiting satellite to Earth by a long cord that might consist of sheets of CVD graphene, since graphene (and its cousin material, carbon nanotubes) is the only material with the high strength-to-weight ratio required for this kind of hypothetical application.

The team is also excited about studying 2D materials like graphene. “Very little is known about the effects of grain boundaries in 2D materials,” Kysar adds. “Our work shows that grain boundaries in 2D materials can be much more sensitive to processing than in 3D materials. This is due to all the atoms in graphene being surface atoms, so surface damage that would normally not degrade the strength of 3D materials can completely destroy the strength of 2D materials. However with appropriate processing that avoids surface damage, grain boundaries in 2D materials, especially graphene, can be nearly as strong as the perfect, defect-free structure.”

The study was supported by grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

—by Holly Evarts

Source: Columbia University

Grad Student Solves 30-Year-Old Physics Problem

                    Emilie Huffman, second year PhD student in physics. Credit: Duke University

Sometimes an age-old question just needs a fresh set of eyes.

That was the case in Duke’s physics department, where a graduate student and professor recently resolved a calculating dilemma that has vexed computational physicists for decades.

Emilie Huffman is a second-year PhD student from Charlotte, North Carolina. Last spring she began working with Shailesh Chandrasekharan, an associate professor and the director of graduate studies in physics, on what’s known as a sign problem.

Chandrasekharan is a theoretical nuclear and particle physicist who specializes in solving sign problems, which arise when one uses certain computational algorithms to calculate the behavior of large numbers of particles called fermions.

“Almost all the matter we know of are made with fermions,” Chandrasekharan said. “As building blocks of matter, it’s very important to be able to do calculations with them.”

But calculations of such complexity get tricky, and sign problems make it easy for wrong results to surface.

“It’s a very broad problem that affects almost all fields of physics involving quantum mechanics with strong correlations, where Monte Carlo methods are essential to perform calculations,” Chandrasekharan said.

Some in the field have simply moved on since the 1980s, leaving interesting questions plagued by sign problems unexplored. Other scientists have found workarounds and approximations. Very few, including Chandrasekharan, have tried to figure out solutions through the years. Huffman began work to expand on one of her advisor’s solutions, involving a grouping concept called fermion bags, and apply them to a new class of problems.

“She finally figured out a nice formula,” Chandrasekharan said. “Although the formula is quite simple and elegant, I couldn’t guess it.”

“In physics, often there’s a truth, and if you’re hitting on the right truth, everything starts falling into place.” Chandrasekharan says that’s what happened when he began applying Huffman’s formula to a class of problems.

Their paper appeared recently in the journal Physical Review B’s Rapid Communications.

“Now that I have a solution, I can begin to apply it,” Huffman said. Starting with condensed matter physics, Huffman plans to apply her solution to various questions that have been stymied by sign problems. “I can use this solution to study properties of graphene,” she said, referring to the single-layer carbon that has been touted as the strongest material in the world. Many puzzles remain in the field, especially involving multi-layer graphene sheets.

Wherever she turns her attention next, it’s clear Huffman has a promising career ahead.

Citation: “Solution to sign problems in half-filled spin-polarized electronic systems,” Emilie Huffman and Shailesh Chandrasekharan. Physical Review B Rapid Communications, March 12, 2014. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.89.111101.

Source: Duke University

Studying patterns in bacterial organization

credit to Gerard Wong, of the California NanoSystems Institute

Bacterial biofilms, at first glance, may seem to be spontaneous, random phenomena from which we have no power to protect our environment or ourselves.

They’re potentially useful as an aid to wastewater treatment, but they also cause infections that account for $6 billion a year in health care costs. Biofilms are also more resistant to antibiotic drugs, making them difficult to eradicate.

Dr. Kun Zhao, of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, refuses to see biofilms as arbitrary: he emphasizes the fact that biofilms are communities of bacteria in self-produced polymeric matrices of polysaccharides, and using a biophysical approach, he studies the pattern behind their organization.

Central questions in Zhao’s research include how bacterial colonies transition from reversible to irreversible attachment, how they migrate, and how they ultimately disperse. Specifically, Zhao examines the polysaccharide Psl, which poses a positive feedback loop because it is both secreted by moving bacteria and serves as a chemo-attractant for future bacteria movement. The positive feedback creates an inherent pattern, as bacteria are more likely to visit a location they have been to before.

Zhao and colleagues have also discovered that bacterial mutants that cannot produce Psl exhibit more random and uniform movement.

To better quantify bacterial movement,Zhao has created a computer algorithm that shows the full movement history of each individual bacterium on a dish, and that provides a “search engine” allowing researchers to find every bacterium performing specific life cycle activities, like division.

Zhao has postulated a “rich get richer” mechanism for biofilms. He compares bacterial organization to Wall Street because concentrated movement ensures that some cells become extremely enriched. In the future, he hopes to model colloidal structures for biological problems, like the growth of the bacterial cell wall. Zhao currently uses colloids, which in physics are used as models for atomic systems, to observe how shapes affect self-assembly. He also would like to look at cell-substrate interactions, which are implicated in bacterial territoriality and social interactions.

by Olivia Zhu

Source: Duke University

The Power of the Past

If you grow up in the working class, neither love nor money can trump your blue-collar roots, a Duke sociologist has found.

Her study of couples from different social classes suggests that those who “marry up” still make life decisions based on their upbringing.

                             Cover of Streib book by Eric Ferreri, Duke News & Communications
                          Sociologist Jessi Streib’s book “The Past” is about class structure in marriages.

“Your social class never goes away,” says Jessi Streib, an assistant professor of sociology whose findings are revealed in her new book: The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages. “It stays with you in terms of how you live your life. The class you’re born into sticks with you and shapes you, even when you marry into more money and a far more financially secure life.”

Streib’s findings derive from interviews she conducted with white, heterosexual Midwestern couples. She interviewed 32 couples in which one spouse came from a working class background, the other from the middle class. For comparison, she also interviewed 10 couples in which both spouses grew up in the middle class.

Streib defines working class as people raised by parents with high school educations; the middle class subjects were raised by college-educated parents.

Her findings run contrary to the notion held by many scholars that strivers can outrun a difficult childhood by getting a college degree and good-paying middle-class job.

While the findings suggest that a middle class upbringing isn’t required to excel in the American workplace, those upwardly mobile people from working class roots may still miss out on opportunities if they can’t or don’t subscribe to the unspoken norms of middle class culture, Streib notes.

Streib found that couples from different classes held onto their own, firmly-rooted beliefs regarding money and parenting, often negotiating fervently with each other over the proper amount of career planning and nurturing of children. Should children be left to grow and discover on their own, or should goals and schedules be set for them?

“Those are the sorts of tiny battles cross-class couples have all the time,” Streib said. “These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are certainly common and consistent.”

Source: Duke Univesity

How an innovative grants program (and Belgian beer mixers) at Johns Hopkins fuels discoveries about the human brain

A neuroscientist, an electrical engineer, a surgeon, and an education researcher walk up to a bar.

This could be the start of a joke, or it could be a scene from a recent Science of Learning Institute event at Johns Hopkins University. At the institute's four-times-yearly Belgian Beer Events, scientists from far-flung fields—and often from far-flung parts of the university itself—present their research to each other in short, digestible chunks. Their creativity and conviviality stimulated by a cup of ale or lager, the researchers strike up conversations and form connections that range widely across disciplinary boundaries, from classroom learning to machine learning, from recovery from stroke to memory formation in the brain.

Such conversations can be all too rare at a university where faculty are spread not just across a campus but throughout a large city and beyond. The result, for an inherently interdisciplinary subject like the science of learning, is that projects that could address fundamental and important questions can be hard to conceive and get off the ground. And too often, promising basic research doesn't get translated into the settings where it could help real-world learners.

The Belgian Beer Events, conceived shortly after the institute launched in 2013, are helping change that. They provide an informal space where basic researchers can meet translators, where machine-learning experts can meet early-childhood educators, where cognitive scientists can meet smartphone app developers. The events rotate between locations: October's was at the School of Education, and December's was hosted by the Department of Biomedical Engineering; previous ones were held at the School of Medicine and in Homewood's Levering Hall. Computer scientist Greg Hager likens the events to "an intellectual mixing bowl."

Beyond generating lively conversation, the gatherings are sparking collaborations between researchers who otherwise might never have met. At an event in 2013, neurologist Bonnie Nozari presented her work on speech and language processing disorders. Computer scientist Raman Arora then spoke about his work on machine learning and speech recognition. Recognizing a mutual interest in speech, the two chatted. The next day, they began planning a joint project to see if computers can predict how humans will pronounce words, and then provide feedback to people seeking to learn a new language, or to relearn how to speak after a stroke.

It sounds like a lucky encounter, but in fact electrical engineer Sanjeev Khudanpur, a member of the institute's steering committee, was at work behind the scenes. He conceived the Belgian Beer Events, and he made sure that Arora, his colleague in the Whiting School of Engineering, would be speaking on the same day as Nozari, of the School of Medicine. Later, when the two were ready to apply for funding, Khudanpur encouraged their ultimately successful proposal for one of the institute's research grants. "I see myself as a matchmaker," he says.

"It's that kind of really innovative, different seeding of projects that I think we've done really well," says Barbara Landau, the institute's director and the Dick and Lydia Todd Professor of Cognitive Science in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. The institute funded eight projects in 2013 and eight more in 2014, with projects receiving an average of $140,000 spread over two years. Funding goes to hiring graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, developing software, purchasing equipment, and supplying other research needs. The grants are competitive; the review committee has received around 30 proposals a year. The funded projects address a broad range of learning settings, from the classroom to the operating room to distance learning that can take place anywhere. The learners are not limited to humans, either; many of the projects include a strong component of "machine learning"—harnessing computers to recognize patterns in data and use them to develop new human learning applications. Other projects focus on developing animal models that can be used to study human learning.

The grant program allows researchers to get support for projects that might not be quite ready for a proposal to a traditional funding agency like the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health, says Landau. Almost without exception, an NSF or NIH review panel will want to see at least preliminary data demonstrating that an idea is viable. With Science of Learning Institute funding, scientists can do exploratory research that will provide the data needed to support a larger proposal to a more traditional funding agency. "It allows people to do things that they wouldn't necessarily be able to accomplish by a standard grant," says Landau. "The granting agencies tend to be somewhat conservative, and we're looking for innovation."

Like Arora and Nozari's collaboration, many of the funded projects harness existing technological applications to improve learning, often in novel ways. For example, Khudanpur and Hager are working with Gyusung Lee, an instructor of surgery in the School of Medicine, to develop computer software that can help teach surgeons how to use the da Vinci robotic surgical platform. The project grew out of an existing effort called the Language of Surgery, developed by researchers in the Whiting School of Engineering's Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics.

Through this effort, which began in 2006, Hager, Khudanpur, and colleagues program computers to record and analyze the different kinds of movements that surgeons make while performing certain tasks with surgical robots. The researchers' goal was to find movements that could consistently be classified as either expertlike or novicelike. Novice surgeons are more likely to break a suture, for example, or to push or pull on tissue while using the robot to manipulate a surgical needle. The researchers were able to train computer software to recognize such expert and novice movements much as a surgical trainer would.

The next step is to have the assessment tool provide real-time feedback to surgical trainees. With the kind of application the researchers are envisioning, trainees could, in theory, receive an unlimited amount of individualized feedback on what skills they have mastered and where more work is needed. "We're putting the computer in the human learning loop," Khudanpur says. "The computer has certain abilities that are complementary to humans. [For example,] the computer doesn't get tired. The computer usually doesn't charge by the hour."

A few years ago, when the researchers applied for an NIH grant to develop such a learning application, the proposal was rejected because they had no data showing the idea had promise. Thanks to their Science of Learning Institute research award, the scientists are starting to collect that data. Backed by some preliminary results, they recently put in a new NIH proposal and are waiting to hear back.

Meanwhile, thanks to a talk Hager gave last fall, his team's research may soon spawn another effort, which would take Language of Surgery technology out of the operating room and into the classroom. Hager's presentation inspired Landau and Amy Shelton, a professor in the School of Education, who is also on the institute's steering committee, to wonder whether motion-tracking software could recognize the movements that young children make when learning to build toy towers out of blocks. Spatial skills like tower building, in addition to being important in their own right, are of interest to researchers because they often predict children's future abilities in math and other areas. Hager, Landau, and Shelton are now discussing a potential project to put motion sensors on blocks and use computers to track how children acquire manipulation skills, a tactic similar to the one Hager's team uses to assess the skills of aspiring surgeons.

Institute-funded collaborations between computer scientists and education researchers are also reaching far beyond traditional education settings like medical training. In a project funded in 2014, computer scientists Philipp Koehn and Jason Eisner are teaming with Chadia Abras in the School of Education's Center for Technology Education to develop a radically new way to learn a foreign language. The idea is based on macaronic language—a kind of text that mixes two languages into a Spanglish-like hybrid. While such mixing has traditionally been employed by novice speakers or for satirical purposes, Eisner realized that coupled with recent advances in machine translation, it could also help introduce learners to foreign vocabulary and syntax in a gentle and piecemeal way rather than all at once, as in a typical foreign text read laboriously with the aid of a dictionary.

To implement the idea, the researchers are developing software that translates a text progressively, with more and more of the text appearing in the foreign language as the reader's comprehension improves. For an English-to-German learner, for instance, the English phrase "a loaf of bread" could start to appear as "ein Loaf of Bread." When the reader is comfortable with reading the German word "ein" instead of the English "a," the program could progress to "ein Breadloaf," resembling German in syntax but retaining English words. The text would then become "ein Brot loaf," and finally the fully German "ein Brotlaib*." The program will intermittently assess the student's reading comprehension and ability, and tune the amount of foreign language presented to the reader's progress; readers also can direct the program to make the translation easier or harder.

Since the concept still needs to be proved, it makes an ideal Science of Learning Institute project, says Koehn. Eisner adds, "It's a bet that this will work out and will not, for example, confuse people or give them bad habits." The researchers plan to develop an English-to-German application and test it on the Web and in Johns Hopkins classes in combination with more traditional classroom and textbook instruction. If successful, the software could also be made available on the Internet for independent learners.

The project exemplifies how interdisciplinary teams can merge cutting-edge research in machine and human learning, says Kelly Fisher, the institute's assistant director and an assistant professor in the School of Education. "It's a software program that is learning itself, learning about the learner."

Institute-funded research also targets learners far beyond those who are acquiring skills for the first time. Learning is critical for the millions of people who lose skills when they suffer strokes and other neurological conditions and then need to regain them, often through lengthy and complex rehabilitation processes. Research on how to more efficiently relearn lost skills could make a huge difference in how quickly such people can return to work and fully participate in society again.

Cognitive scientist Michael McCloskey recently discovered a new, debilitating, and apparently very rare reading deficit known as alphanumeric visual awareness deficit, or AVAD. McCloskey, a professor in Cognitive Science, identified the condition based on two cases that came to him in one year. One of them, a 61-year-old Baltimore geologist with a neurological disease, could see fine in general, but when looking at letters or numbers, he saw only blurs. McCloskey and his colleagues found, however, that by teaching the patient new characters to use in place of the digits, they could restore his recognition abilities. The researchers developed a smartphone calculator app and modified the geologist's laptop to allow him to do math with the new symbols.

Seeking to build on this work, McCloskey assembled a team of neurologists and cognitive scientists to look for more people with AVAD in order to study the condition using brain imaging and other techniques, and to develop apps and other technology that would help affected people make sense of letters and numbers again. But the researchers have run into a roadblock: They haven't found a single other case of AVAD beyond the original two. A woman in North Carolina who seemed to have the deficit turned out to have a somewhat different condition. "On the one hand, it's interesting that [AVAD is] so rare; on the other hand, it's not what we were hoping for," McCloskey says.

So he and his team have reoriented their project, broadening the scope to include more-common character recognition disorders. For example, some people cannot recognize a number or letter when it is presented to them whole but can recognize a character if they watch it being drawn. Perhaps, says McCloskey, a smartphone app could be developed to read signs and other important text, and draw each character in sequence for people with this deficit. His team is also starting to collaborate with a software developer, MicroBLINK, to make an app that would identify characters and then read the text aloud.

In addition to potentially helping people regain lost abilities, many institute-funded projects such as McCloskey's are aimed at teasing apart the different brain regions and processes responsible for seemingly coherent learned skills like reading. Along these lines but focusing on an entirely different brain function, psychologist Marina Bedny, of the Krieger School's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, is heading a team that received an institute grant to study how the brain can retool its hardware when the original purpose of one of its regions is no longer needed. In sighted people, around a quarter of the brain is devoted to visual processing; in blind people, these brain regions get repurposed. How does this work? Bedny wondered.

To investigate this question, she and colleagues in the Krieger School's Department of Cognitive Science and in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the School of Medicine are combining language comprehension assessments with a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. They hope to learn whether brain regions normally devoted to sight are needed for language processing in blind people. The researchers recently collected data at a National Federation of the Blind convention and are in the process of testing a control group of sighted people. This effort would have been impossible without a source of support for interdisciplinary projects, Bedny says. "You just can't do this kind of research without an interdisciplinary team because you need so many different kinds of expertise," from linguistics to neuroimaging to TMS. "We really needed the whole team to make it happen."

In another example of institute-funded brain research, neuroscientist David Foster, of the School of Medicine, is taking on perhaps the most basic of all aspects of learning: memory formation. Specifically, Foster is interested in how certain kinds of memories are formed in a brain region called the hippocampus. He has studied this process in detail in rat brains, using dozens of implanted electrodes to precisely record electrical signals as the rats' neurons fire in sequences that represent stored memories. Foster would like to carry out similar studies in humans, but he cannot just go sticking electrodes deep into people's brains. So he first needs to develop less-invasive procedures.

Foster and William Anderson, an associate professor of neurosurgery in the School of Medicine, are now developing such techniques, piggybacking on research that Anderson's group does on epilepsy patients wherein they collect and analyze electrical data gathered from the surface of the brain. By piloting their study on a small sample of patients, the researchers hope to strengthen their position for applying for a larger grant, possibly from the NIH.

Bedny and Foster, both assistant professors, say that institute funding has allowed them to take on projects that might have otherwise been too risky and uncertain for an untenured faculty member. "I probably would not do too much looking outside of my own area to collaborate if I wasn't pushed and incentivized to do so by this kind of mechanism," Foster says. "This allows me, and pays me, to invest in thinking outside of my own small area."

The research grant program is the Science of Learning Institute's first major initiative, and many of the projects from the initial funding round are close to reporting results. The institute plans to continue awarding grants for at least three more years, and possibly more, depending on funding. To assess the program's success, Landau and Fisher are tracking metrics such as publications that awardees produce and external awards that leverage institute-funded work.

The institute also just launched its second big initiative: the Distinguished Science of Learning Fellowship Program. This program will award around five postdoctoral and predoctoral fellowships annually to students wanting to pursue interdisciplinary research in learning. Each fellow will have two advisers from different disciplines.

The fellows also will play a key role in the third prong of the institute's mission: translating and disseminating results beyond academia. Traditionally, much of the learning that occurs in the nation's formal classrooms and more informal settings is not as informed by research as it could be, says Fisher. To help change that, the Science of Learning Institute recently launched partnerships with the Port Discovery Children's Museum in Baltimore and the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York to develop exhibits that are based on the research into the science of learning. The institute also plans to hire a dissemination expert to help translate research results into classrooms and other learning settings.

The Science of Learning Institute's stated mission is "to understand and optimize the most essential part of our human capital: the ability to learn." The mission makes the institute a crucial catalyst at a university—a place dedicated to learning—where all the pieces are already in place to make major progress on one of the most important scientific questions of our time, says Landau. "One of the goals of the Science of Learning Institute," she says, "is really to sew together the parts of the university that haven't yet interacted—to make it, in President Daniels' words, one university."

Source: JHU