DALLAS (SMU) – “Even if she doesn’t say it, I know it’s my fault that my mother gets sad.”
Kids who believe comments like this – assuming blame for their mom’s sadness or depression – are more likely to face depression and anxiety themselves, a new study led by SMU has found.
“Although mothers with higher levels of depressive symptoms face increased risk that their children will also experience symptoms of depression and anxiety, our study showed that this was not the case for all children,” said SMU family psychologist and lead author Chrystyna Kouros. “Rather, it was those children who felt they were to blame for their mother’s sadness or depression…that had higher levels of internalizing symptoms.”
In light of the findings, Kouros said it’s critical that parents and others who regularly interact with children pay close attention to the kinds of comments that kids make about their mom’s symptoms and to intervene if children incorrectly think that it’s their fault that their mom is depressed. Children who take on this blame can benefit from therapies and interventions that target negative thoughts, said Kouros, SMU associate professor of psychology.
Sharyl E. Wee and Chelsea N. Carson, graduate students at SMU, and Naomi Ekas, an associate professor of psychology at Texas Christian University, also contributed to the study, which was published in the Journal of Family Psychology.
The study is based on surveys taken by 129 mothers and their children, who were recruited from the Dallas-Fort Worth community through schools, flyers and online advertisements. On average, children included in the study were 13 years old.
Moms were asked to agree or disagree to 20 statements like “I could not shake off the blues” and “I lost interest in my usual activities” to assess if they had depressive symptoms, even if they had not actually been diagnosed with depression. Nearly 12 percent of the women surveyed were found to have potential clinical levels of depressive symptoms.
The moms were also asked to assess whether they felt their children had symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Kids, meanwhile, were asked to complete a total of four surveys to see if they were dealing with any anxiety or depression and whether they blamed themselves for any signs of depression in their mothers.
Kouros said there are two likely explanations for the linkage between mothers’ depressive symptoms and kids’ own mental health issues:
“If children blame themselves for their mothers’ depressive symptoms, then they may be more likely to brood about their mother’s symptoms. And we know from an extensive body of research that rumination over stressors – especially ones that are uncontrollable – is linked with depression and anxiety,” Kouros said. “Also, if children feel personally responsible for their mothers’ symptoms, they may try to ‘make it better’ and use ineffective coping strategies. This could lead to a sense of helplessness, failure, and low self-worth in the child, since ultimately the child was misattributing the cause of their mothers’ depressive symptoms.”
More studies are needed to see if depressed dads have the same effect on their children, Kouros said.
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in eight degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.
The exhibit has been viewed by 6 million visitors since it opened last year, leading to Smithsonian granting a longer stay for the exhibit in the Washington, D.C. museum. It was originally supposed to leave next year. Smithsonian also asked for an additional exhibit window for “Sea Monsters Unearthed,” showcasing the international and interdisciplinary collaboration that went into discovering the fossils.
The exhibit showcases never-before-seen fossils from Angola that was made possible largely due to the work of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis Jacobs and his colleagues and undergraduates. SMU Emeritus Professor of Paleontology Louis Jacobs and his SMU colleague Michael Polcyn forged a partnership with collaborators in Angola, Portugal and the Netherlands to explore and excavate Angola’s rich fossil history, while laying the groundwork for returning the fossils to the West African nation. Back in Dallas, Jacobs and Polcyn, director of the University’s Digital Earth Sciences Lab, and research associate Diana Vineyard went to work over a period of 13 years with a small army of SMU students to prepare the fossils excavated by Projecto PaleoAngola. These students – including Myria Perez, a former paleontology student who is now a fossil preparator at the Perot Museum – worked in basement laboratories to painstakingly clean and preserve the fossils.
“Sea Monsters Unearthed” allows visitors to visually dive into the cool waters off the coast of West Africa as they existed millions of years ago when the continents of Africa and South America were drifting apart. It’s a unique opportunity to examine fossils of ancient marine reptiles and learn about the forces that continue to mold life both in out of the ocean.
After 2021, the exhibit will return to Angola. Learn more here.
About SMU
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.
About the National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is connecting people everywhere with Earth’s unfolding story. The museum is one of the most visited natural history museums in the world with approximately 7 million annual visitors from the U.S. and around the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. For more information, visit the museum on its website and on Facebook and Twitter.
DALLAS (SMU) – It takes a tremendous amount of computer simulations to create a device like an MRI scanner that can image your brain by detecting electromagnetic waves propagating through tissue. The tricky part is figuring out how electromagnetic waves will react when they come in contact with the materials in the device.
SMU researchers have developed an algorithm that can be used in a wide range of fields – from biology and astronomy to military applications and telecommunications – to create equipment more efficiently and accurately.
Currently, it can take days or months to do simulations. And because of cost, there is a limit to the number of simulations typically done for these devices. SMU math researchers have revealed a way to do a faster algorithm for these simulations with the help of grants from the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation.
“We can reduce the simulation time from one month to maybe one hour,” said lead researcher Wei Cai, Clements Chair of Applied Mathematics at SMU. “We have made a breakthrough in these algorithms.”
“This work will also help create a virtual laboratory for scientists to simulate and explore quantum dot solar cells, which could produce extremely small, efficient and lightweight solar military equipment,” said Dr. Joseph Myers, Army Research Office mathematical sciences division chief.
Dr. Bo Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at SMU (Southern Methodist University) and Wenzhong Zhang, a graduate student at the university, also contributed to this research. The study was published today by the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing and can be viewed here.
(From Left) Wei Cai, Dr. Bo Wang and Wenzhong Zhang. Credit: Photo courtesy of SMU (Southern Methodist University), Hillsman S. Jackson
The algorithm could have significant implications in a number of scientific fields.
“Electromagnetic waves exist as radiation of energies from charges and other quantum processes,” Cai explained.
They include things like radio waves, microwaves, light and X-rays. Electromagnetic waves are also the reason you can use a mobile phone to talk to someone in another state and why you can watch TV. In short, they’re everywhere.
An engineer or mathematician would be able to use the algorithm for a device whose job is to pick out a certain electromagnetic wave. For instance, she or he could potentially use it to design a solar light battery that lasts longer and is smaller than currently exists.
“To design a battery that is small in size, you need to optimize the material so that you can get the maximum conversion rate from the light energy to electricity,” Cai said. “An engineer could find that maximum conversion rate by going through simulations faster with this algorithm.”
Or the algorithm could help an engineer design a seismic monitor to predict earthquakes by tracking elastic waves in the earth, Cai noted.
“These are all waves, and our method applies for different kinds of waves,” he said. “There are a wide range of applications with what we have developed.”
Computer simulations map out how materials in a device like semiconductor materials will interact with light, in turn giving a sense of what a particular wave will do when it comes in contact with that device.
The manufacturing of many devices involving light interactions uses a fabrication process by layering material on top of each other in a lab, just like Legos. This is called layered media. Computer simulations then analyze the layered media using mathematical models to see how the material in question is interacting with light.
More Efficient, Less Expensive Way to Solve Helmholtz and Maxwell’s Equations
SMU researchers have found a more efficient and less expensive way to solve Helmholtz and Maxwell’s equations – difficult to solve but essential tools to predict the behavior of waves.
The problem of wave source and material interactions in the layer structure has been a very challenging one for the mathematicians and engineers for the last 30 years.
Professor Weng Cho Chew from Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue, a world leading expert on computational electromagnetics, said the problem “is notoriously difficult.”
Commenting on the work of Cai and his team, Chew said, “Their results show excellent convergence to small errors. I hope that their results will be widely adopted.”
The new algorithm modifies a mathematical method called the fast multipole method, or FMM, which was considered one of the top 10 algorithms in the 20th century.
To test the algorithm, Cai and the other researchers used SMU’s ManeFrame II – which is one of the fastest academic supercomputers in the nation – to run many different simulations.
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.
The ambassadors are encouraged to share their stories of being women innovators, in hopes it inspires the next generation of women to get into science, technology, engineering and math [STEM]
Myria Perez ’18 and Louis Jacobs
DALLAS (SMU) – SMU (Southern Methodist University) graduate Myria Perez ’18 was one of 125 women innovators across the country who was selected to be an AAAS IF/THEN ambassador.
Their mission? To share their stories and serve as high-profile role models for girls, in hopes it leads to a new generation of women getting into science, technology, engineering and math [STEM].
“We firmly believe that if we support a woman in STEM, then she can change the world,” Lyda Hill, the founder of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, said in a statement. “The goal of IF/THEN is to shift the way our country — and the world — think about women in STEM and this requires changing the narratives about women STEM professionals and improving their visibility.”
Perez, who is now a fossil preparator at the Perot Museum, worked with paleontologist Louis Jacobs and others to unearth never-before-seen fossils from Angola. Those fossils are currently on display at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Learn more about Perez in this video, Myria Perez: Portrait of a Paleontologist. You can also read about the award she won in The Dallas Morning News article.
About SMU
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.
New SMU study may provide insight on how our brains are able to produce so many different types of neurons, which control everything we do
DALLAS (SMU) – SMU (Southern Methodist University) researchers have discovered another layer of complexity in gene expression, which could help explain how we’re able to have so many billions of neurons in our brain.
Neurons are cells inside the brain and nervous system that are responsible for everything we do, think or feel. They use electrical impulses and chemical signals to send information between different areas of the brain, and between the brain and the rest of the nervous system, to tell our body what to do. Humans have approximately 86 billion neurons in the brain that direct us to do things like lift an arm or remember a name.
Yet only a few thousand genes are responsible for creating those neurons.
All cells in the human nervous system have the same genetic information. But ultimately, genes are turned “on” or “off” like a light switch to give neurons specific features and roles. Understanding the mechanism of how a gene is or is not turned on – the process known as gene expression – could help explain how so many neurons are developed in humans and other mammals.
“Studies like this are showing how by unique combinations of specific genes, you can make different specific neurons,” said Adam D. Norris, co-author of the new study and Floyd B. James Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at SMU. “So down the road, this could help us explain: No. 1, how did our brain get this complex? And No. 2, how can we imitate nature and make whatever type of neurons we might be interested in following these rules?”
Scientists already have part of the gene expression puzzle figured out, as previous studies have shown that proteins called transcription factors play a key role in helping to turn specific genes on or off by binding to nearby DNA.
It is also known that a process called RNA splicing, which is controlled by RNA binding proteins, can add an additional layer of regulation to that neuron. Once a gene is turned on, different versions of the RNA molecule can be created by RNA splicing.
But before the SMU study was done, which was published in the journal eLife, it was not exactly clear what the logistics of creating that diversity was.
“Before this, scientists had mostly been focused on transcription factors, which is layer No. 1 of gene expression. That’s the layer that usually gets focused on as generating specific neuron types,” Norris said. “We’re adding that second layer and showing that [transcription factors and RNA binding proteins] have to be coordinated properly.
And Norris noted, “this was the first time where coordination of gene expression has been identified in a single neuron.”
The sad-1 gene, present in all of the worm’s 300 neurons (visualized by fluorescence), is spliced into different versions in different neurons. Neurons with one version fluoresce red, neurons with the other version fluoresce green, and yellow neurons in the bottom panel contain both versions.
Using a combination of old school and cutting-edge genetics techniques, researchers looked at how the RNA of a gene called sad-1, also found in humans, was spliced in individual neurons of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans. They found that sad-1 was turned on in all neurons, but sad-1 underwent different splicing patterns in different neuron types.
And while transcription factors were not shown to be directly participating in the RNA splicing for the sad-1 gene, they were activating genes that code for RNA binding proteins differently between different types of neurons. It is these RNA binding proteins that control RNA splicing.
“Once that gene was turned on, these factors came in and subtly changed the content of that gene,” Norris said.
As a result, sad-1 was spliced according to neuron-specific patterns.
They also found that the coordinated regulation had different details in different neurons.
“Picture two different neurons wanting to reach the same goal. You can imagine they either go through the exact same path to get there or they take divergent paths. In this study, we’re showing that the answer so far is divergent paths,” said Norris. “Even in a single neuron, there are multiple different layers of gene expression that together make that neuron the unique neuron that it is.”
Norris used worm neurons because “unlike in humans, we know where every worm neuron is and what it should be up to. Therefore, we can very confidently know which genes are responsible for which neural process.
“The very specific details from this study will not apply to humans. But hopefully the principles involved will,” Norris explained. “From the last few decades of work in the worm nervous system, specific genes found to have a specific effect on the worm’s behavior were later shown to be responsible for the same types of things in human nerves.”
The lead author of the study was Morgan Thompson, a graduate student at SMU. Ryan Bixby, Robert Dalton, Alexa Vandenburg — all former or current students in SMU’s Biological Sciences department — also contributed to the study. In addition, John A. Calarco from the University of Toronto, Canada was a co-author.
About SMU
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.
DALLAS (SMU)—A Southern Methodist University (SMU) graduate is one of the recipients of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
Ophelie Herve, who is a first-year master’s student in Mechanical Engineering, will receive a three-year stipend of $34,000 to do research of her choosing and $12,000 to pay for her tuition and fees.
She was one of 2,050 students nationwide who was chosen to be a fellow this year. Past fellows include many Nobel Prize winners, Google founder Sergey Brin and the former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.
Born in France and raised in Austin, Herve said she plans to use the money to research how to create a prosthetic leg for amputees that it is controlled by their voluntary muscle contractions, so that the leg moves with the same precision as a natural human leg.
“This research has the potential to have a broader impact by improving rehabilitative efforts in the medical field, enhancing injury prevention, and optimizing performance in the athletic industry,” she said.
Herve said receiving an NSF fellow position has been a tremendous honor. “It is amazing to see that the door has been opened wide to pursue my passion,” she added.
Herve will graduate from SMU in 2019 with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering with a concentration in dynamics and controls.After that, she said she plans to continue her education under Dario Villarreal, the director of the NeuroMechatronics Lab at SMU, topursue a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a biomechatronics specialization.
About SMU
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.
SMU’s faculty and students join forces as co-creators of knowledge that spans the arts, sciences, engineering, business and the humanities. Students become hands-on contributors to significant discoveries. In collaboration with industry, nonprofit organizations and other institutions, our researchers forge paths to results that can be applied ethically on a local, national and global scale. Powered by the vast potential of data science and high-speed computing, they unlock new insights about critical problems. SMU researchers shape these discoveries into economic opportunities, stronger communities and a better world.
A fossil mosasaur skull and partial skeleton excavated from Angola’s costal cliffs for display in “Sea Monsters Unearthed.”
When the South Atlantic ocean basin was still young, a new deep-water connection between the Southern and Northern Hemispheres allowed giant marine reptiles to move into Angola's coastal waters. Mosasaurs and sea turtles, drawn by the region's plentiful food, were among the first reptiles to prowl these waters.
“Fossils tell us about the life that once lived on Earth, and how the environments that came before us evolve over time,” said Louis Jacobs, professor emeritus of paleontology at SMU and collaborating curator for the exhibition. “Our planet has been running natural experiments on what shapes environments, and thereby life, for millions of years. If it weren’t for the fossil record, we wouldn’t understand what drives the story of life on our planet.” (Credit: Hillsman S. Jackson, Southern Methodist University)
Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s Ancient Seas opens Nov. 9 at National Museum of Natural History
DALLAS (SMU October 15, 2018) – Once the exhibit opens, “Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s Ancient Seas” will allow visitors to visually dive into the cool waters off the coast of West Africa as they existed millions of years ago when the continents of Africa and South America were drifting apart. It’s a unique opportunity to examine fossils of ancient marine reptiles and learn about the forces that continue to mold life both in out of the ocean.
But the back story is just as fascinating: SMU Emeritus Professor of Paleontology Louis Jacobs and his SMU colleague Michael Polcyn forged a partnership with collaborators in Angola, Portugal and the Netherlands to explore and excavate Angola’s rich fossil history, while laying the groundwork for returning the fossils to the West African nation. Back in Dallas Jacobs and Polcyn, director of the University’s Digital Earth Sciences Lab, and research associate Diana Vineyard went to work over a period of 13 years with a small army of SMU students to prepare the fossils excavated by Projecto PaleoAngola.
The result is a dynamic exhibit opening Nov. 9 in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History featuring large vertebrate marine reptiles from the Cretaceous Period — mosasaurs, marine turtles and plesiosaurs. This exhibit will mark the first time Angolan fossils of colossal Cretaceous marine reptiles will be on public display.
“It turns out that Angola is the best place on the surface of the earth to see the rocks that reflect and show the opening of the South Atlantic and the split between South America and Africa,” Jacobs said. But the war of independence in Angola that began in 1961 and ended (after civil war) in 2002 effectively prevented scientists from working this rich fossil zone for nearly 40 years after continental drift and plate tectonics became accepted scientific theory.
When Jacobs and the team arrived to begin digging on the coast of Angola in 2005, they were first on the scene to record this fascinating record of sea life that existed as the South Atlantic Ocean grew between two drifting continents.
SMU students did the important, time-consuming lab work
Over the past 13 years, the fossils were shipped back to Dallas, where over 100 undergraduate students have worked in basement laboratories to painstakingly clean and preserve the fossils. Some were paleontology students, most were not – but they seem to share an appreciation for their unique role in sharing new knowledge.
“Getting fossils out of rocks is a time consuming, labor-intensive operation,” Jacobs said. “But every time a student removes a grain of sand off a fossil, they have the excitement of seeing ancient life that no one else in the world has ever seen. On top of that, these fossils are going on exhibit at the Smithsonian and then back to their own homeland. That gives our students an opportunity that they simply could not get anywhere else. And what’s not to like about that?”
The Smithsonian exhibit, made possible by the Sant Ocean Hall Endowment fund, will immerse visitors in a marine environment from the Cretaceous Period, which began about 145 million years ago and ended about 66 million years ago. It features lively animations and vivid paleoart murals of life beneath the waves courtesy of natural history artist (and longtime Jacobs collaborator) Karen Carr. The exhibit brings to life 11 authentic fossils from Angola’s ancient seas, full-size fossil reconstructions of a mosasaur and a marine turtle, as well as 3-D scanned replicas of mosasaur skulls. Photomurals and video vignettes will take visitors to field sites along Angola’s modern rugged coast, where Projecto PaleoAngola scientists unearthed the fossil remains from this lost world.
“Because of our planet’s ever-shifting geology, Angola’s coastal cliffs contain the fossil remains of marine creatures from the prehistoric South Atlantic,” said Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the National Museum of Natural History. “We are honored by the generosity of the Angolan people for sharing a window into this part of the Earth’s unfolding story with our visitors.”
About SMU
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world. For more information, visit SMU on its website and on Facebook and Twitter.
About the National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is connecting people everywhere with Earth’s unfolding story. The museum is one of the most visited natural history museums in the world with approximately 7 million annual visitors from the U.S. and around the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. For more information, visit the museum on its website and on Facebook and Twitter.
In the words of smu students and graduates who sorted, cleaned and preserved fossils for Projecto Paleoangola
Pictured (L to R): Yasmin Jackson, Tania Doblado Speck, Harrison Schumann and Evan Snyder
Evan Snyder (SMU 2019)
“This experience allowed me to work on a project far bigger than myself. Exhibits just like this one excited me as a young child and led to my study of science. I’d love to think that my work will have the same impact on kids today. Working on this project also taught me how to work on challenging and stressful tasks with the right balance of confidence and care to meet deadlines with quality work.”
Yasmin Jackson (SMU 2019)
“I was able to go to the Smithsonian for the first time through this project. I really liked being able to see all of the different exhibits that are currently in the museum and imagine what our exhibit will be like in the midst of all of it.”
Harrison Schuman (SMU 2019)
“Dr. Jacobs is an inspiring individual to be around. Despite being a world-class expert in paleontology, he made himself very approachable and was always personally invested in all of the students working on the project. This kind of attitude encourages students like me to pursue careers in science.”
Alexandra Lippas (SMU 2011)
“It is because of Dr. Jacobs that I was able to be a part of this project. He encouraged students from other branches of science to work on this study. I think it demonstrates that different perspectives can lead to great discovery.”
Connor Flynn (SMU 2014)
“My time in the lab will be a source of stories for years to come and a point of pride for a lifetime. Its lessons in patience, care and passion for the labor will never be forgotten. Dr. Jacobs’ words ‘There’s nothing so broken you can’t fix it,’ carried me through more lab accidents than i care to admit — both at SMU and beyond.”
Jennifer Welch (SMU 2019)
“Dr. Jacobs is so incredibly smart, I could point out any part of the vertebrae and he would tell me what it’s for, why it was there, how that impacted the life of the animal and the stories that told about the land where the animal lived.”
Stephen Tyler Armstrong (SMU 2012)
“As an engineering major, this project exposed me to areas of research and career paths I would otherwise not encountered. It was really interesting to work so closely with those conducting the research to learn about a subject outside of my realm.”
Never-Before-Seen Fossils From Angola Bring a Strange Yet Familiar Ocean Into View
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will open a new exhibition Nov. 9, 2018 revealing how millions of years ago, large-scale natural forces created the conditions for real-life sea monsters to thrive in the South Atlantic Ocean basin shortly after it formed. “Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s Ancient Seas” will offer visitors the opportunity to dive into Cretaceous Angola’s cool coastal waters, examine the fossils of striking marine reptiles that once lived there and learn about the forces that continue to mold life in the ocean and on land.
Over 134 million years ago, the South Atlantic Ocean basin did not yet exist. Africa and South America were one contiguous landmass on the verge of separating. As the two continents drifted apart, an entirely new marine environment — the South Atlantic — emerged in the vast space created between them. This newly formed ocean basin would soon be colonized by a dizzying array of ferocious predators and an abundance of other lifeforms seizing the opportunity presented by a new ocean habitat.
“Because of our planet’s ever-shifting geology, Angola’s coastal cliffs contain the fossil remains of marine creatures from the prehistoric South Atlantic,” said Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the museum. “We are honored by the generosity of the Angolan people for sharing a window into this part of the Earth’s unfolding story with our visitors.”
For the first time, Angolan fossils of colossal Cretaceous marine reptiles will be on public display. Through Projecto PaleoAngola — a collaboration between Angolan, American, Portuguese and Dutch researchers focused on Angola’s rich fossil history — paleontologists excavated and studied these fossils, which were then prepared for the exhibition by a team of scientists and students at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas. The exhibition was made possible by the Sant Ocean Hall Endowment Fund.
“Fossils tell us about the life that once lived on Earth, and how the environments that came before us evolve over time,” said Louis Jacobs, professor emeritus of paleontology at SMU and collaborating curator for the exhibition. “Our planet has been running natural experiments on what shapes environments, and thereby life, for millions of years. If it weren’t for the fossil record, we wouldn’t understand what drives the story of life on our planet.”
The exhibition will immerse visitors in this Cretaceous environment with lively animations and vivid paleoart murals of life beneath the waves — courtesy of natural history artist Karen Carr — that bring to life 11 authentic fossils from Angola’s ancient seas, full-size fossil reconstructions of a mosasaur and an ancient sea turtle, as well as 3-D scanned replicas of mosasaur skulls. Photomurals and video vignettes will transport visitors to field sites along Angola’s modern rugged coast, where Projecto PaleoAngola scientists unearth the fossil remains from this lost world.
A Strange but Familiar Ocean
“Sea Monsters Unearthed” paints the picture of a flourishing ocean environment that in some ways will look strange to modern eyes, yet still bears striking similarities to today’s marine ecosystems.
Peculiar plesiosaurs — massive reptiles with long necks, stout bodies and four large flippers — swam alongside 27-foot-long toothy marine lizards called mosasaurs and more familiar creatures like sea turtles. From surprising mosasaur stomach contents to the one of the oldest known sea turtles found in Africa, fossils and reconstructions of these species will offer visitors a fuller picture of their remarkable life histories and the ecosystems they were a part of.
The exhibition will also explore deeper similarities across the ecology and anatomy of ocean animals then and now. After the marine reptiles that dominated these waters went extinct 66 million years ago, modern marine mammals would not only later replace them as top predators in the world’s ocean, but also converge on many of the same body shapes and survival strategies.
The Forces That Shape Life, Then and Now
This unique period in Earth’s history reveals how key geologic and environmental forces contributed to the early establishment and evolution of life in the South Atlantic. As Africa and South America drifted apart and a new ocean basin formed, trade winds blowing along the new Angolan coastline created the conditions for upwelling, an ocean process that drives the circulation of nutrients from the deep ocean to its surface. These nutrients in turn jump-started the food web that attracted the ferocious marine reptile predators featured throughout the exhibition.
Just as tectonic forces helped create this Cretaceous marine environment, they also shaped the arid coastal cliffs where the fossils are found today. Starting 45,000 years ago, a geologic process called uplift caused Earth’s crust to bulge along Angola’s coast, lifting part of the seafloor out of the water — and along with it, the layers upon layers of fossil-filled rocks where Projecto PaleoAngola scientists work.
Though humans do not operate on a tectonic scale, their actions also have major impacts on ocean life. Humans are now the ocean’s top predators, with one-fifth of the world’s population relying on food from upwelling-based ecosystems. Scientists caution that with such great pressure on modern upwelling-based fisheries, overfishing could change the future of life in the ocean by threatening fish populations, marine ecosystems and even human health. — National Museum of Natural History
About the National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is connecting people everywhere with Earth’s unfolding story. The museum is one of the most visited natural history museums in the world with approximately 7 million annual visitors from the U.S. and around the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. For more information, visit the museum on its website and on Facebook and Twitter.
The article resulted from Patel’s 11-month stay in New Delhi, India, in which she interviewed residents of three urban refugee settlements. The purpose was to understand how issues of geopolitics and domestic policy inform various types of human insecurity for refugees.
Patel is currently a visiting student fellow at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, where she is developing further publications on Rohingya refugee displacement.
She is a doctoral candidate in SMU’s Department of Anthropology. Patel holds an M.A. degree in Cultural Anthropology from SMU and an M.A. in Religion from University of Hawaii, Manoa. As a doctoral student, her research focuses on issues of human insecurity among Rohingya refugees in the context of American resettlement as well as within New Delhi, India as urban refugees. Her research work focuses specifically on defining the subjective experience of human insecurity and how various forms of insecurity are informed by statelessness.
Patel is a student of SMU anthropology professor Caroline Brettell, an internationally recognized immigration expert and Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Institute. Brettell is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A private operating foundation, Wenner-Gren is dedicated to the advancement of anthropology throughout the world. Located in New York City, it is one of the major funding sources for international anthropological research and is actively engaged with the anthropological community through its varied grant, fellowship, networking, conference and symposia programs.
It founded and continues to publish the international journal Current Anthropology, and disseminates the results of its symposia through open-access supplementary issues of this journal. The Foundation works to support all branches of anthropology and closely related disciplines concerned with human biological and cultural origins, development, and variation.
From the field notes
of SMU PhD candidate Ashvina Patel
Ameena (a pseudonym) is a 25-year-old Rohingya refugee in New Delhi, India, who is seven months pregnant with twins. Her face is gaunt. Often there isn’t enough food at home for her family of five. Nestled among other shanty houses, her home is made of bamboo with scrap boards as paneling; a tattered piece of cloth serves as the front door. Recently, the monsoon rains caused her to slip and fall. Now one of the babies in her womb is not moving. She knows she needs to see a doctor, but she cannot afford one.
When Ameena fled acts of genocide perpetrated by her own government of Myanmar in 2012, she and her husband came to New Delhi. They both suffer from debilitating deformities due to polio, and they heard that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in New Delhi was helping Rohingya refugees. The UNHCR partners with the Indian government to provide free aid to help people obtain an education, a livelihood, and health care.
But as Ameena and others would learn, being offered access to aid isn’t always enough. Barriers to procuring those free resources often leave urban refugees to fend for themselves; many find they have to negotiate a system that inadvertently creates obstacles to reaching that aid.
Having spent 11 months with the Rohingya community in India from 2015 to 2017, I repeatedly saw how aid missed its intended target. As the UNHCR creates solutions to challenges that refugees face, these solutions can also serve as a catalyst for new obstacles or deepen already existing insecurities by creating additional barriers that are financial, linguistic, cultural, or exploitative. The UNHCR does a lot of good, but the organization could do a better job addressing challenges refugees face in accessing the services to which they are permitted.
The future SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment will hunt for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), hypothetical components of dark matter. If a WIMP (white trace) strikes an atom inside the experiment's detector crystals (gray), it will cause the crystal lattice to vibrate (blue). The collision will also send electrons (red) through the crystal that enhance the vibrations. (Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
“One of our major concerns is background particles that can mimic the dark matter signature in our detectors.” — Jodi Cooley
SMU physicist Jodi Cooley is a member of the international scientific team that will use a powerful new tool to understand one of the biggest mysteries of modern physics.
The U.S. Department of Energy has approved funding and start of construction for SuperCDMS SNOLAB, a $34 million experiment designed to detect dark matter.
SuperCDMS will begin operations in the early 2020s to hunt for hypothetical dark matter particles called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.
“Understanding the nature of dark matter is one of the most important scientific puzzles in particle astrophysics today,” said Cooley, an associate professor of experimental particle physics. “The experiment will have unprecedented sensitivity to dark matter particles that are hypothesized to have very low mass and interact very rarely. So they are extremely challenging to detect. This challenge has required us to develop cutting edge detectors.”
Cooley is one of 111 scientists from 26 institutions in the SuperCDMS collaboration. SMU graduate students on the experiment include Matt Stein (Ph.D. ’18) and Dan Jardin; and also previously Hang Qiu (Ph.D. ’17).
Physicists are searching for dark matter because although it makes up the bulk of the universe it remains a mystery. They theorize that dark matter could be composed of dark matter particles, with WIMPs a top contender for the title.
If dark matter WIMP particles exist, they would barely interact with their environment and fly right through regular matter. However, every so often, they could collide with an atom of our visible world, and dark matter researchers are looking for these rare interactions.
The SuperCDMS experiment will be the world’s most sensitive for detecting the relatively light WIMPs.
Understanding background signals in the experiment is a major challenge for the detection of the faint WIMP signals.
“One of our major concerns is background particles that can mimic the dark matter signature in our detectors,” Cooley said. “As such, the experiment is constructed from radiopure materials that are carefully characterized through a screening and assay before they are selected.”
The SMU research team also has performed simulations of background particles in the detectors.
“Doing this helps inform the design of the experiment shield,” Cooley said. “We want to select the right materials to use in construction of the experiment. For example, materials that are too high in radioactivity will produce background particles that might produce fake dark matter signals in our detectors. We are extremely careful to use materials that block background particles. We also take great care that the material we use to hold the detectors in place — copper — is very radiopure.”
The experiment will be assembled and operated within the existing Canadian laboratory SNOLAB – 6,800 feet underground inside a nickel mine near the city of Sudbury. That’s the deepest underground laboratory in North America.
The experiment’s detectors will be protected from high-energy particles, called cosmic radiation, which can create the unwanted background signals that Cooley’s team wants to prevent.
SuperCDMS SNOLAB will be 50 times more sensitive than predecessor
Scientists know that visible matter in the universe accounts for only 15 percent of all matter. The rest is the mysterious substance called dark matter.
Due to its gravitational pull on regular matter, dark matter is a key driver for the evolution of the universe, affecting the formation of galaxies like our Milky Way. It therefore is fundamental to our very own existence.
The SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment will be at least 50 times more sensitive than its predecessor, exploring WIMP properties that can’t be probed by other experiments.
The search will be done using silicon and germanium crystals, in which the collisions would trigger tiny vibrations. However, to measure the atomic jiggles, the crystals need to be cooled to less than minus 459.6 degrees Fahrenheit — a fraction of a degree above absolute zero temperature.
The ultra-cold conditions give the experiment its name: Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, or CDMS. The prefix “Super” indicates an increased sensitivity compared to previous versions of the experiment.
Experiment will measure “fingerprints” left by dark matter
The collisions would also produce pairs of electrons and electron deficiencies that move through the crystals, triggering additional atomic vibrations that amplify the signal from the dark matter collision. The experiment will be able to measure these “fingerprints” left by dark matter with sophisticated superconducting electronics.
Besides Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, two other Department of Energy national labs are involved in the project.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California is managing the construction project. SLAC will provide the experiment’s centerpiece of initially four detector towers, each containing six crystals in the shape of oversized hockey pucks. SLAC built and tested a detector prototype. The first tower could be sent to SNOLAB by the end of 2018.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is working on the experiment’s intricate shielding and cryogenics infrastructure.
“Our experiment will be the world’s most sensitive for relatively light WIMPs,” said Richard Partridge, head of the SuperCDMS group at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, a joint institute of SLAC and Stanford University. “This unparalleled sensitivity will create exciting opportunities to explore new territory in dark matter research.”
Close-knit network of strong partners is crucial to success
Besides SMU, a number of U.S. and Canadian universities also play key roles in the experiment, working on tasks ranging from detector fabrication and testing to data analysis and simulation. The largest international contribution comes from Canada and includes the research infrastructure at SNOLAB.
“We’re fortunate to have a close-knit network of strong collaboration partners, which is crucial for our success,” said Project Director Blas Cabrera from KIPAC. “The same is true for the outstanding support we’re receiving from the funding agencies in the U.S. and Canada.”
Funding is from the DOE Office of Science, $19 million, the National Science Foundation, $12 million, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, $3 million.
SuperCDMS to search for dark matter in entirely new region
“Together we’re now ready to build an experiment that will search for dark matter particles that interact with normal matter in an entirely new region,” said SuperCDMS spokesperson Dan Bauer, Fermilab.
SuperCDMS SNOLAB will be the latest in a series of increasingly sensitive dark matter experiments. The most recent version, located at the Soudan Mine in Minnesota, completed operations in 2015.
”The project has incorporated lessons learned from previous CDMS experiments to significantly improve the experimental infrastructure and detector designs for the experiment,” said SLAC’s Ken Fouts, project manager for SuperCDMS SNOLAB. “The combination of design improvements, the deep location and the infrastructure support provided by SNOLAB will allow the experiment to reach its full potential in the search for low-mass dark matter.” — SLAC National Laboratory; and Margaret Allen, SMU
A new research report, from Southern Methodist University and funded by NASA, found a “…large swath of West Texas oil patch is heaving and sinking at alarming rates.”
The Dedman College researchers are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images that discovered decades of oil production activity in West Texas have destabilized localities in an area of about 4,000 square miles populated by small towns, roadways and a vast network of oil and gas pipelines and storage tanks.
The study is among the first of its kind to identify small-scale deformation signals over a vast region by drawing from big data sets spanning a number of years and then adding supplementary information.
An earlier study by the researchers revealed significant ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. The SMU geophysicists found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.
By David Schechter
WFAA-TV Verify
A new research report, from Southern Methodist University and funded by NASA, found a “…large swath of West Texas oil patch is heaving and sinking at alarming rates.”
To find out if West Texas is sinking, first I’m going to the guy who wrote the report, Dr. Zhong Lu. He’s a geophysicist who studies the earth using satellites.
By shooting a radar beam from space — like a measuring stick — a satellite can calculate elevation changes down to the centimeter. Lu did that over a 4000 square mile area.
“This area is sinking at half meter per year,” Dr. Lu says.
That’s more than a foot-and-a-half. Lu says, that’s alarming because that much change to the earth’s surface might normally take millions of years.
One of the images in his reports shows an area of sinking earth, near Wink, TX from 2011. Five years later, the satellite shows the sunken area had spread almost 240%.
“In this area that you are studying, is oil and gas the cause of the sinking?” I ask.
“Related to the oil and gas activities,” he says.
“Oil and gas activity is causing the sinking in West Texas?” I clarify.
SMU Research Day 2018 featured posters and abstracts from 160 student entrants who have participated this academic year in faculty-led research, pursued student-led projects, or collaborated on team projects with graduate students and faculty scientists.
SMU strongly encourages undergraduate students to pursue research projects as an important component of their academic careers, while mentored or working alongside SMU graduate students and faculty.
Students attack challenging real-world problems, from understanding the world’s newest particle, the Higgs Boson, or preparing mosasaur fossil bones discovered in Angola, to hunting for new chemical compounds that can fight cancer using SMU’s high performance ManeFrame supercomputer.
A highlight for student researchers is SMU Research Day, organized and sponsored by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies and which was held this year on March 28-29 in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center.
The event gives students the opportunity to foster communication between students in different disciplines, present their work in a professional setting, and share the outstanding research conducted at SMU.
Ground rising and falling in region that has been ‘punctured like a pin cushion’ since the 1940s, new study finds.
The Guardian and other news outlets covered the West Texas sinkhole and ground movement research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU.
The Dedman College researchers are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images that shows decades of oil production activity in West Texas have destabilized localities in an area of about 4,000 square miles populated by small towns, roadways and a vast network of oil and gas pipelines and storage tanks.
An earlier study by the researchers revealed significant ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. The SMU geophysicists found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.
Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.
InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.
By Tom Dart
The Guardian
Oil and gas activity is contributing to alarming land movements and a rising threat of sinkholes across a huge swath of west Texas, a new study suggests.
According to geophysicists from Southern Methodist University, the ground is rising and falling in a region that has been “punctured like a pin cushion with oil wells and injection wells since the 1940s”.
There were nearly 297,000 oil wells in Texas as of last month, according to the state regulator. Many are in the Permian Basin, described in a Bloomberg article last September as the “world’s hottest oil patch”.
But the Southern Methodist report warns of unstable land and the threat of sinkholes.
“These hazards represent a danger to residents, roads, railroads, levees, dams, and oil and gas pipelines, as well as potential pollution of ground water,” Zhong Lu, a professor, said in a statement.
Wink – a tiny town 400 miles west of Dallas best known as the childhood home of the singer Roy Orbison – attracted national headlines in 2016 when the same scientists warned that the land between two expanding sinkholes a mile apart was deteriorating, risking the formation of more sinkholes or even the creation of a colossal single hole.
Injection of wastewater and carbon dioxide increases pore pressure in rocks, a likely cause of uplift. Lu told the Guardian that cracks and corrosion from ageing wells may help explain the sinking.
A “subsidence bowl” near one of the Wink sinkholes has sunk at a rate of more than 15.5in a year, probably as a result of water leaks through abandoned wells causing salt layers to dissolve, the report found. Elsewhere, a lake formed after 2003 as a result of sinking ground and rising water.
Users earn rewards with the “Just Drive” app designed to prevent distracted driving.
Neha Husein gripped her steering wheel as her car jolted forward, hit from behind on one of Dallas’ busiest and most dangerous freeways. Shaken, but not injured, the high school senior surveyed the significant damage to her car. The cause of the crash? The driver behind her was texting while driving.
The 2014 collision was the SMU junior’s inspiration to develop a solution to stop drivers from texting while driving, a practice that killed 455 Texans and played a role in 109,660 crashes in Texas in 2016. Her smart-phone app, “Just Drive,” awards points to drivers who lock their phones while driving. Those points can then be redeemed for coupons or free food, drinks or merchandise.
Husein is one of six college entrepreneurs selected to participate March 10 in the Red Bull Launch Institute at Austin’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival. She will meet with industry leaders and other entrepreneurs to further develop and amplify her project. The institute is scheduled from 3 to 6:30 p.m. at Palazzo Lavaca, 1614 Lavaca St., Austin.
She’s not being judgmental. Everyone has texted while driving, Husein says.
“We are used to multitasking, and sitting in traffic gets boring,” she says.
But the marketing and human rights major believes positive reinforcement can change behavior. Rewards are motivating to millennials like Husein. According to the Texas Department of Transportation, drivers age 16 to 34 are most likely to text while driving, but Husein is betting the app will appeal to all ages.
“Expecting incentives is a generational thing, but it’s a human thing too,” she says. “People enjoy rewards.”
Husein first presented “Just Drive” at SMU’s October 2017 Big Ideas pitch contest. She won $1,000 for her 90-second pitch and used it to create a wireframe app mock-up. The Big Ideas pitch contest is part of SMU’s Engaged Learning program, a campus wide initiative designed to enhance student learning by connecting a personal passion to academic learning and turning it into a personal project. Faculty mentorship is a key part of the Engaged Learning program.
Husein’s mentor, SMU law professor Keith Robinson, is a specialist in patent, intellectual property and technology law and co-directs the Tsai Center for Law, Science and Innovation in SMU’s Dedman School of Law. He also teaches a class to law students on designing legal apps.
“I like people who show initiative and are willing to bet on themselves,” says Robinson, who meets weekly with Husein to discuss intellectual property issues and trademark application. “Neha has developed an app for a relatable problem, one that can save lives.”
Husein is a Carrollton, Texas, native who grew up with an entrepreneur mindset. She remembers manning a toy cash register alongside her father at his convenience store. He was on hand in February 2018 to see his daughter present her business plan at the second stage of SMU’s Big Ideas competition – and win $5,000 in start-up funds.
“Just Drive is a perfect combination of my interests in human rights and marketing,” Husein says. “It combines business with a philanthropic cause.”
She plans to launch the “Just Drive” app in September, 2018. — Nancy George, SMU
SMU and other members of a scientific consortium prepare for installation of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to survey the night sky from a mile-high mountain peak in Arizona
As part of a large scientific consortium studying dark energy, SMU physicists are on course to help create the largest 3-D map of the universe ever made.
The map could help solve the mystery of dark energy, which is driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.
DESI will capture about 10 times more data than a predecessor survey of space using an array of 5,000 swiveling robots. Each robot will be carefully choreographed to point a fiber-optic cable at a preprogrammed sequence of deep-space objects, including millions of galaxies and quasars, which are galaxies that harbor massive, actively feeding black holes.
“DESI will provide the first precise measures of the expansion history of the universe covering approximately the last 10 billion years,” said SMU physicist Robert Kehoe, a professor in the SMU Department of Physics. “This is most of the 13 billion year age of the universe, and it encompasses a critical period in which the universe went from being matter-dominated to dark-energy dominated.”
The universe was expanding, but at a slowing pace, until a few billion years ago, Kehoe said.
“Then the expansion started accelerating,” he said. “The unknown ‘dark energy’ driving that acceleration is now dominating the universe. Seeing this transition clearly will provide a critical test of ideas of what this dark energy is, and how it may tie into theories of gravitation and other fundamental forces.”
SMU researchers have conducted observing with the Mayall. Decommissioning of that telescope allows for building DESI in it’s place, as well as reusing some parts of the telescope and adding major new sytems. As part of DESI, SMU is involved in development of software for operation of the experiment, as well as for data simulation to aid data anlysis.
“We are also involved in studying the ways in which observational effects impact the cosmology measurements DESI is pursuing,” Kehoe said. SMU graduate students Govinda Dhungana and Ryan Staten also work on DESI. A new addition to the SMU DESI team, post-doctoral researcher Sarah Eftekharzadeh, is working on the SMU software and has studied the same kinds of galaxies
DESI will be measuring.
Now the dome is closing on the previous science chapters of the 4-meter Mayall Telescope so that it can prepare for its new role in creating the 3-D map.
The temporary closure sets in motion the largest overhaul in the telescope’s history and sets the stage for the installation of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, which will begin a five-year observing run next year.
“This day marks an enormous milestone for us,” said DESI Director Michael Levi of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , which leads the project’s international collaboration. “Now we remove the old equipment and start the yearlong process of putting the new stuff on.”
More than 465 researchers from about 71 institutions are participating in the DESI collaboration.
The entire top end of the telescope, which weighs as much as a school bus and houses the telescope’s secondary mirror and a large digital camera, will be removed and replaced with DESI instruments. A large crane will lift the telescope’s top end through the observing slit in its dome.
Besides providing new insights about the universe’s expansion and large-scale structure, DESI will also help to set limits on theories related to gravity and the formative stages of the universe, and could even provide new mass measurements for a variety of elusive yet abundant subatomic particles called neutrinos.
“One of the primary ways that we learn about the unseen universe is by its subtle effects on the clustering of galaxies,” said DESI collaboration co-spokesperson Daniel Eisenstein of Harvard University. “The new maps from DESI will provide an exquisite new level of sensitivity in our study of cosmology.”
Mayall’s sturdy construction is perfect platform for new 9-ton instrument
The Mayall Telescope has played an important role in many astronomical discoveries, including measurements supporting the discovery of dark energy and establishing the role of dark matter in the universe from measurements of galaxy rotation. Its observations have also been used in determining the scale and structure of the universe. Dark matter and dark energy together are believed to make up about 95 percent of all of the universe’s mass and energy.
It was one of the world’s largest optical telescopes at the time it was built, and because of its sturdy construction it is perfectly suited to carry the new 9-ton instrument.
“We started this project by surveying large telescopes to find one that had a suitable mirror and wouldn’t collapse under the weight of such a massive instrument,” said Berkeley Lab’s David Schlegel, a DESI project scientist.
Arjun Dey, the NOAO project scientist for DESI, explained, “The Mayall was precociously engineered like a battleship and designed with a wide field of view.”
The expansion of the telescope’s field-of-view will allow DESI to map out about one-third of the sky.
DESI will transform the speed of science with automated preprogrammed robots
Brenna Flaugher, a DESI project scientist who leads the astrophysics department at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, said DESI will transform the speed of science at the Mayall Telescope.
“The telescope was designed to carry a person at the top who aimed and steered it, but with DESI it’s all automated,” she said. “Instead of one at a time we can measure the velocities of 5,000 galaxies at a time – we will measure more than 30 million of them in our five-year survey.”
DESI will use an array of 5,000 swiveling robots, each carefully choreographed to point a fiber-optic cable at a preprogrammed sequence of deep-space objects, including millions of galaxies and quasars, which are galaxies that harbor massive, actively feeding black holes.
The fiber-optic cables will carry the light from these objects to 10 spectrographs, which are tools that will measure the properties of this light and help to pinpoint the objects’ distance and the rate at which they are moving away from us. DESI’s observations will provide a deep look into the early universe, up to about 11 billion years ago.
DESI will capture about 10 times more data than a predecessor survey
The cylindrical, fiber-toting robots, which will be embedded in a rounded metal unit called a focal plate, will reposition to capture a new exposure of the sky roughly every 20 minutes. The focal plane assembly, which is now being assembled at Berkeley Lab, is expected to be completed and delivered to Kitt Peak this year.
DESI will scan one-third of the sky and will capture about 10 times more data than a predecessor survey, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). That project relied on a manually rotated sequence of metal plates – with fibers plugged by hand into pre-drilled holes – to target objects.
All of DESI’s six lenses, each about a meter in diameter, are complete. They will be carefully stacked and aligned in a steel support structure and will ultimately ride with the focal plane atop the telescope.
Each of these lenses took shape from large blocks of glass. They have criss-crossed the globe to receive various treatments, including grinding, polishing, and coatings. It took about 3.5 years to produce each of the lenses, which now reside at University College London in the U.K. and will be shipped to the DESI site this spring.
Precise measurements of millions of galaxies will reveal effects of dark energy
The Mayall Telescope has most recently been enlisted in a DESI-supporting sky survey known as the Mayall z-Band Legacy Survey, which is one of four sky surveys that DESI will use to preselect its targeted sky objects. SMU astrophysicists carried out observing duties on that survey, which wrapped up just days ago on Feb. 11, to support the coming DESI scientific results.
Data from these surveys are analyzed at Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility. Data from these surveys have been released to the public at http://legacysurvey.org.
“We can see about a billion galaxies in the survey images, which is quite a bit of fun to explore,” Schlegel said. “The DESI instrument will precisely measure millions of those galaxies to see the effects of dark energy.”
Levi noted that there is already a lot of computing work underway at the Berkeley computing center to prepare for the stream of data that will pour out of DESI once it starts up.
“This project is all about generating huge quantities of data,” Levi said. “The data will go directly from the telescope to the Berkeley computing center for processing. We will create hundreds of universes in these computers and see which universe best fits our data.”
Installation of DESI’s components is expected to begin soon and to wrap up in April 2019, with first science observations planned in September 2019.
“Installing DESI on the Mayall will put the telescope at the heart of the next decade of discoveries in cosmology,” said Risa Wechsler, DESI collaboration co-spokesperson and associate professor of physics and astrophysics at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University. “The amazing 3-D map it will measure may solve some of the biggest outstanding questions in cosmology, or surprise us and bring up new ones.” — Berkeley Lab and SMU
Easy, inexpensive experiment briefly sent inspiring female role models into intro to econ classes and sharply increased college female interest in the male-dominated, well-paying field of economics.
A low-budget field experiment to tackle the lack of women in the male-dominated field of economics has been surprisingly effective, says the study’s author, an economist at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Top female college students were inspired to pursue a major in economics when exposed very briefly to charismatic, successful women in the field, according to SMU economist Danila Serra.
The results suggest that exposing young women to an inspiring female role model succeeds due to the mix of both information and pure inspiration, Serra said.
“The specific women who came and talked to the students were key to the success of the intervention,” she said. “It was a factor of how charismatic and enthusiastic they were about their careers and of how interesting their jobs looked to young women.”
Given the simplicity and low-cost of the intervention, similar experiments could be easily conducted in other male-dominated or female-dominated fields of study to enhance gender diversity.
Serra’s results showed that among female students exposed to the enthusiastic mentors there was a 12-percentage point increase in the percentage of female students enrolling in the upper-level Intermediate Microeconomics course the following year — a 100% increase, or doubling, for that demographic.
Not surprisingly, given that the intervention was targeted to female students, Serra found that the role model visits had no impact on male students.
But astonishingly it had the greatest impact on high-achieving female students.
“If we restrict the analysis to the top female students, the students with a GPA of 3.7 or higher, the impact is remarkable — it is a 26 percentage points increase,” Serra said. “So this intervention was especially impactful on the top female students who perhaps were not thinking about majoring in economics.”
“I didn’t think such limited exposure would have such a large impact,” Serra said. “So this is telling me that one of the reasons we see so few women in certain fields is that these fields have been male-dominated for so long. This implies that it is very difficult for a young woman to come into contact with a woman in the field who has an interesting job in the eyes of young women and is enthusiastic about her major and her work. Young men, on the other hand, have these interactions all the time because there are so many male economics majors out there.”
Co-author on the research is Catherine Porter, associate professor of economics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Serra’s former Ph.D. classmate at the University of Oxford.
“The gender imbalance in economics has been in the news a lot lately, and much of the discussion has been very negative,” said Porter. “This study offers something positive: a cheap way of improving the gender balance. The results can hopefully be used by other schools in order to redress the low numbers of women that major in economics – women have a lot to offer and should consider economics as a subject that is interesting and varied for a career.”
Inspiring the individual is the best tool to recruit and retain
Serra launched the study after SMU was one of 20 U.S. universities randomly chosen by Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin for the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge. The project awarded each university a $12,500 grant to develop a program freely chosen by the universities to test the effectiveness of a deliberate intervention strategy to recruit and retain female majors.
Nationally, there’s only about one woman for every three men majoring in economics. SMU has a large number of economics majors for a school of its size, with 160 a year. The gender imbalance, however, is greater at SMU than the national average, with only one woman to every four men.
Serra developed her intervention based on her own experience as a Ph.D. student at the University of Oxford several years ago.
“I started thinking about role models from my personal experience,” Serra said. “As a student, I had met many female professors in the past, but my own experience taught me that inspiration is not about meeting any female professor — it’s about meeting that one person that has a huge charisma and who is highly inspiring and speaks to you specifically.”
Serra said that’s what she experienced as a graduate researcher when she first met Professor Abigail Barr, who later became her Ph.D. advisor.
“I know for a fact that that is why I decided to do a Ph.D. in economics, because I was greatly inspired by this person, her experiences and her research,” she said. “So I thought it would be interesting to see whether the same could work for a general student population.”
Two inspiring women role models, 15 minutes, four classrooms
Serra asked two of her department’s top undergraduate female economics students to take the lead in choosing the role models.
The students, Tracy Nelson and Emily Towler, sorted through rosters of SMU economics alums and shortlisted 18 men and women that they thought were working in interesting fields – which purposely excluded stereotypical jobs in banking and finance – and then carried out scripted interviews with a subset of who agreed to be interviewed via Skype to get additional information about their career path and to assess their charisma.
The students ultimately found two alumnae, Julie Lutz and Courtney Thompson, to be the most inspiring. Lutz, a 2008 graduate, started her career in management consulting but, shortly after, decided to completely change her career path by going to work for an international NGO in Nicaragua, and then as a director of operations at a toy company based in Honduras. Lutz now works in Operations at a fast-growing candy retail company. Courtney Thompson, class of 1991, has had a stellar career in marketing, becoming the senior director of North American Marketing and Information Technology at a large international communications company, with the unique claim of being not only a female econ major at a time when that was exceedingly rare, but also African American in a white dominated field.
Serra invited each woman to speak during the Spring 2016 semester for 10 to 15 minutes to four Principals of Economics classes that she had randomly selected from a set of 10. The Principles classes are very popular, with about 700 students total from a variety of desired majors, and are typically gender balanced. The imbalance, said Serra, starts the following year with Intermediate Microeconomics, which is a requirement for upper-level economics courses and so is a good indicator of a desire to major in economics.
Serra offered each role model an honorarium for speaking, but each woman declined and indicated they were happy to be back on campus sharing with students. Serra told the speakers nothing of the purpose of the research project, but encouraged each one to explain to the class why they majored in economics and to be very engaging. She directed them to approach the students with the following question in mind: “If you had to convince a student to major in economics, what would you say?”
Thompson, Serra said, during her college days played SMU’s costumed Peruna mascot, and today retains a “bubbly, big personality, that makes her extremely engaging.” In her classroom visits, Thompson described her experience working and being extremely successful in marketing with an economics degree, while being surrounded by business majors. Lutz, being still in her 20s, was very easy for the young women in the classrooms to identify with, and her experience working in the non-profit and in developing countries may have been especially appealing to them.
Young women judge best who will inspire them
Serra believes that a key to the success of the intervention was the fact her two female economics students actively participated in the selection of the role models.
“The most important thing about the project was that I realized I needed current female students to choose the role models,” Serra said. “I’m not that young anymore, so I’m probably not the best person to recognize what is inspiring to young women. I think young female students are in the best position to tell us what is most inspiring to them.”
For her highly cited corruption research, Serra uses lab experiments to study bribery, governance and accountability, questioning long-standing assumptions. Some of her findings are that corruption declines as perpetrators take into account social costs of their illegal activities, and as victims share information about specific bribery exchanges through online reporting. Serra’s current research agenda also includes experimental work on gender differences in preferences, behaviors and outcomes. — Margaret Allen, SMU
‘Outstanding student in computer science & engineering’ graduates Dec. 16 with master’s degree and Raytheon ticket to a Ph.D.
Michael Taylor will be the first to tell you that he was not ready for college when he graduated from Plano East High School in 2006. And he’ll also tell you that nobody was more surprised than he was when SMU admitted him in 2014, a little later than the average undergrad.
But Taylor’s disciplined approach to life, honed through five years in the Marine Corps, combined with the intelligence he learned to tap, has earned him a master’s degree from SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering that will be awarded Dec. 16. And after proving his mettle as a student researcher in Lyle’s Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security, Taylor has been awarded the first Raytheon IIS Cyber Elite Graduate Fellowship, which will fund his Ph.D. in quantum computing at SMU and then put him to work as an employee at Raytheon.
“Michael Taylor stood out to me when I first had him in an undergraduate class,” said Mitch Thornton, research director for the Deason Institute and Cecil H. Green Chair of Engineering at SMU. “I could sense there was something special about him and that he had a lot of talent. I actively encouraged Michael to do research with me and he has excelled in everything I have asked him to work on. He is a credit to the student body of SMU’s Lyle School, and a credit to the nation.”
Taylor learned to focus on the details in the Marine Corps. He had sampled community college very briefly after high school, but it didn’t stick. He knew he didn’t have skills to trade for a decent job, so joining the Marine Corps made sense to him.
“Honestly? In retrospect, I wasn’t ready for school,” Taylor acknowledged.
After the Marines, finally ready for college
Taylor’s dad was an SMU engineering alumnus, and this was not the career path he’d envisioned for his son. But it’s funny how things work themselves out. Taylor completed Marine basic training, and took an aptitude test to determine where his skills might fit the Marine Corp mission. He did very, very well.
“My score on that test – I qualified for every enlisted job in the Marine Corps,” Taylor said. “I got to pick what job I wanted.” Working as a calibration technician sounded interesting – a job that would require him to conduct testing for proper operation of a wide range of mechanical and electronic devices and tools. But before working in calibration, he’d have to go school for a year.
“Ironic, I know,” Taylor said, smiling. “I had to sign up for an extra year, so I ended up doing a five-year tour in the Marines.”
He spent most of that time working out of Camp Pendleton in California, but was deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, from March through September 2010, at the height of the surge of U.S. troops. “I wasn’t a combat guy,” Taylor said. “But even on base, sometimes, the rockets would come in the middle of the night.”
Nearing the end of his enlistment in 2012, Taylor was getting the hard sell to stay in and make the Marines a career. By now, he had decided he was ready for college, but the career planner he met with tried hard to talk him out of it, predicting that Taylor would “fail again.”
“He actually told me if I got out of the Marine Corps and went back to college, I’d end up living under a bridge,” Taylor said, shaking his head. It just made him more determined to succeed.
He started back at community college, and this experience was very different. “It seemed like it was so hard the first time,” Taylor said. “What then seemed like a monumental task, now seemed like nothing. I started thinking, I might be able to do school, now.”
And he started thinking about SMU. Taylor’s grades at Collin County Community College were good – good enough to get him into his father’s alma mater.
SMU Prof’s mentoring made all the difference
Taylor never dared to think he could live up to what his Dad had accomplished, starting with the scholarship to attend SMU that Jim Taylor ’89 had received from Texas Instruments. “He was a technician there,” Taylor recalled, “and they paid for him to come here. As a kid, if you’d told me I could do something like that, too, I’d never have believed you. For me there was Albert Einstein, and Jim Taylor.”
Michael Taylor came to the Hilltop on the GI Bill, and SMU’s Yellow Ribbon program for military veterans covered what the GI Bill didn’t. Then, the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security picked up the cost of his master’s degree.
Taylor’s first semester at SMU’s Lyle School was a tough adjustment after his relatively easy path at community college, but that class with professor Thornton his second semester changed everything. “Dr. Thornton offered me a position working in the Deason Institute for Cyber Security,” Taylor said. “It’s been going great since then.”
Thornton’s influence and mentoring made all the difference for Taylor.
“If I had not met Dr. Thornton, there were times I wondered if I would have gotten my bachelor’s degree. I definitely wouldn’t be getting the master’s degree. And a Ph.D. wouldn’t have been something I ever considered.”
Compelled to dive into quantum computing and cyber security
Taylor was interested in computer hardware when he arrived at SMU, but the Deason Institute opened the door to the contributions he could make in cyber security. He received the Lyle School’s 2017 Rick A. Barrett Memorial Award for outstanding work in computer science and engineering. And as he neared the completion of his master’s degree, he was tapped for the Raytheon Cyber Elite Graduate Fellowship and is looking forward to pursuing his Ph.D. in quantum computing.
“Quantum computers solve problems that are too difficult for classical computers to solve,” Taylor said. “Certain problems in classical computation are intractable, there’s no way you can solve them in this lifetime. It’s only a matter of time before quantum computers render all encryption obsolete.”
For Fred Chang, executive director of SMU’s Deason Institute and former research director for the National Security Agency (NSA), finding talented students like Taylor to fill the gaps in the cyber security workforce is “job one.” Chang testified before a congressional subcommittee in September that we are likely facing a worldwide shortage of cyber security workers five years from now.
“Today’s students will be responsible for designing, creating, operating, maintaining and defending tomorrow’s cyber infrastructure,” Chang explained. “We need a large and capable pool of folks to staff these positions for the future.”
For Taylor, cyber security is just plain compelling.
“I just like the challenge. There’s somebody out there that’s trying to crack what you have, to break you down. You have to be smarter than them. It’s a game!” — Kim Cobb, SMU
The modern link between high carbon dioxide levels and climate change didn’t appear to hold true for a time interval about 22 million years ago; but now a new study has found the link does indeed exist.
Fossil leaves from Africa have resolved a prehistoric climate puzzle — and also confirm the link between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global warming.
Research until now has produced a variety of results and conflicting data that have cast doubt on the link between high carbon dioxide levels and climate change for a time interval about 22 million years ago.
But a new study has found the link does indeed exist for that prehistoric time period, say researchers at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
The finding will help scientists understand how recent and future increases in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide may impact the future of our planet, say the SMU researchers.
The discovery comes from new biochemical analyses of fossil leaves from plants that grew on Earth 27 million years ago and 22 million years ago, said geologist Tekie Tesfamichael, lead scientist on the research.
The new analyses confirm research about modern climate — that global temperatures rise and fall with increases and decreases in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere — but in this case even in prehistoric times, according to the SMU-led international research team.
Carbon dioxide is a gas that is normally present in the Earth’s atmosphere, even millions of years ago. It’s dubbed a greenhouse gas because greater concentrations cause the overall temperature of Earth’s atmosphere to rise, as happens in a greenhouse with lots of sunlight.
Recently greenhouse gas increases have caused global warming, which is melting glaciers, sparking extreme weather variability and causing sea levels to rise.
The new SMU discovery that carbon dioxide behaved in the same manner millions of years ago that it does today has significant implications for the future. The finding suggests the pairing of carbon dioxide and global warming that is seen today also holds true for the future if carbon dioxide levels continue to rise as they have been, said Tesfamichael.
“The more we understand about the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperature in the past, the more we can plan for changes ahead,” said Tesfamichael, an SMU postdoctoral fellow in Earth Sciences.
“Previous work reported a variety of results and conflicting data about carbon dioxide concentrations at the two intervals of time that we studied,” he said. “But tighter control on the age of our fossils helped us to address whether or not atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration corresponded to warming — which itself is independently well-documented in geochemical studies of marine fossils in ocean sediments.”
Other co-authors are Lauren Michel, Tennessee Technological University; Ellen Currano, University of Wyoming; Mulugeta Feseha, Addis Ababa University; Richard Barclay, Smithsonian Institution; John Kappelman, University of Texas; and Mark Schmitz, Boise State University.
Discovery of rare, well-preserved fossil leaves enables finding
The findings were possible thanks to the rare discovery of two sites with extraordinarily well-preserved fossil leaves of flowering plants from the Ethiopian Highlands of eastern Africa.
Such well-preserved fossil leaves are a rarity, Tesfamichael said.
“Finding two sites with great preservation in the same geographic region from two important time intervals was very fortunate, as this enabled us to address the question we had about the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global temperatures,” he said.
Scientists know that variations in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide affect carbon fixation in leaves during photosynthesis. This causes leaves to develop anatomical and physiological changes such as the frequency and size of stomata — the pores on the surface of a leaf through which carbon passes.
Scientists can measure those attributes, among others, in fossil leaves, so that leaf fossils can be used as proxies for Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide history.
The sites producing the leaves for the SMU study were discovered separately in years past, but major fossil collections were produced through field work coordinated by the SMU research team and their co-authors, who have been collaborating on this project for several years.
The work has had funding from the National Science Foundation, The National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, the SMU Ford Fellowship Program, SMU Research Council, the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, and the Dallas Paleontological Society Frank Crane Scholarship.
The fossils are housed permanently in the collections at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. Institutional and governmental support came from the National Museum of Ethiopia, the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, and Addis Ababa University.
Previous studies firmly established a temperature difference
One of the sites dates to the late Oligocene Epoch, and the other to the early Miocene.
Previous studies that measured ocean temperatures from around the world for the two intervals have firmly established a temperature difference on Earth between the two times, with one much warmer than the other. So the SMU study sought to measure the levels of carbon dioxide for the two time periods.
For the SMU analyses, fossil leaves of a single species were collected from the 27 million-year-old late Oligocene site. The leaves had been deposited during prehistoric times in the area of Chilga in northwest Ethiopia most likely at a river bank. The Earth’s climate during the late Oligocene may have been somewhat warmer than today, although glaciers were forming on Antarctica. The SMU study found carbon dioxide levels, on average, around 390 parts per million, about what it is on Earth today.
Fossil leaves of the 22 million-year-old species from the early Miocene were collected from ancient lake deposits, now a rock called shale, from the modern-day Mush Valley in central Ethiopia. The early Miocene climate at that time was warmer than the late Oligocene and likewise the SMU study found higher carbon dioxide levels. Atmospheric carbon dioxide was about 870 parts per million, double what it is on Earth today.
The SMU study confirmed a relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature during the late Oligocene and early Miocene.
Paleoclimate data can help predict our planet’s future climate
While carbon dioxide isn’t the only factor affecting Earth’s climate or global mean temperature, it is widely considered by scientists among the most significant. Much is known about climate change and global warming, but questions still remain.
“One of those is ‘What’s the sensitivity of the Earth’s temperature to carbon dioxide concentration? Is it very sensitive? Is it not so sensitive?’ Estimating temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations for times in the past can help find the answer to that question,” Jacobs said. “There’s a lot of work on paleoclimate in general, but not as much on the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature.”
The finding is an important one.
“The amount of temperature change during this interval is approximately within the range of the temperature change that is estimated from climate models for our next century given a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration since the industrial revolution,” Jacobs said.
With the new model reaffirming the prehistoric relationship, scientists can look now at related questions, said climate change scientist Lauren Michel, who worked on the study as a post-doctoral researcher at SMU.
“Answering questions about the rate of change and which factors changed first, for example, will ultimately give a clearer picture of the Earth’s climate change patterns,” Michel said. “I think it is valuable to understand the relationship of greenhouse gases and climate factors represented in the rock record so we can have a better idea of what we can expect in the future and how we can prepare for that.”
SMU study confirms relationship that previous methods overlooked
Previous studies found little to no correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide for the late Oligocene and early Miocene. That has puzzled paleoclimate researchers for at least a decade.
“We have a good test-case scenario with these well-preserved plants from both time slices, where we know one time slice, with higher levels of carbon dioxide, was a warmer climate globally than the other,” Tesfamichael said.
“It’s been a puzzle as to why the previous methods found no relationship, or an inverse correlation,” he said. “We think it’s for lack of the well-dated proxy — such as our fossil leaves from two precise times in the same region — which deliver a reliable answer. Or, perhaps the models themselves needed improvement.”
Previous studies used methodologies that differed from the SMU study, although all methods (proxies) incorporate some aspects of what is known about living organisms and how they interact with atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Some studies rely on biochemical modeling of the relationship between single-celled marine fossils and atmospheric carbon dioxide, and others rely on the relationship between stomata and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration observed in the living relatives of particular fossil plant species.
“Each method has its assumptions,” said Tesfamichael. “We will see if our results hold up with further studies of this time interval using the same methodology we used.” — Margaret Allen, SMU
“In the spirit of science being a pursuit open to all, we are excited to welcome all members of the SMU family to become dark matter hunters for a day.” — SMU physicist Jodi Cooley
This Halloween, people around the world will be celebrating the mysterious cosmic substance that permeates our universe: dark matter.
To kick off the festivities, two speaking events by scientists in the field of dark matter will familiarize participants with the elusive particles that scientists refer to as dark matter. The first talk is oriented toward the general public, while the second is more technical and will appeal to people familiar with one of the STEM areas of science, technology, engineering or mathematics, particularly physics and astrophysics.
Then throughout Halloween day, everyone is invited to test their skills at finding dark matter — in this case, a series of rocks bearing educational messages related to dark matter, which the Society of Physics Students has painted and then hidden around the campus.
Anyone lucky enough to find one of the 26 rocks can present it at the Physics Department office to receive a prize, says SMU physics professor Jodi Cooley, whose research is focused on the scientific challenge of detecting dark matter.
“In the spirit of science being a pursuit open to all, we are excited to welcome all members of the SMU family to become dark matter hunters for a day,” Cooley said. “Explore your campus in the search for dark matter rocks, just as physicists are exploring the cosmos in the hunt for the nature of dark matter itself.”
Anyone who discovers a dark matter rock on the SMU campus is encouraged to grab their phone and snap a selfie with their rock. Tweet and tag your selfie #SMUDarkMatter so that @SMU, @SMUResearch and @SMUPhysics can retweet photos of the lucky finders.
As SMU’s resident dark matter scientist, Cooley is part of the 100-person international SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, which uses ultra pure materials and highly sensitive custom-built detectors to listen for the passage of dark matter.
SuperCDMS, an acronym for Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, resides at SNOLAB, an existing underground science laboratory in Ontario, Canada. Located deep underground, SNOLAB allows scientists to use the earth as a shield to block out particles that resemble dark matter, making it easier to see the real thing.
The SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, expected to be operational in 2020, has been designed to go deeper below the surface of the earth than earlier generations of the research.
“Dark matter experiments have been a smashing success — they’ve progressed farther than anyone anticipated. The SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment is quite unique,” Cooley said. “It will allow us to probe models that predict dark matter with the tiniest masses.”
Sunday, Oct. 29, 4 p.m., McCord Auditorium — Maruša Bradač, Associate Professor at the University of California at Davis, will give a public lecture on dark matter. A reception will follow the lecture from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Dallas Hall Rotunda with beverages and light snacks. This event is free and open to the public, and is designed to be open to the widest possible audience.
Monday, Oct. 30, 4 p.m., Fondren Science Building, Room 158 — SMU Associate Professor Jodi Cooley will present a seminar on the SuperCDMS direct-detection dark matter search experiment. This event is part of the Physics Department Speaker Series. While this event is open to the public, it will be a more technical talk and may appeal more to an audience interested in the STEM areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, especially physics and astrophysics.
Tuesday, Oct. 31, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., SMU Main Campus, Dark Matter Rock Hunt — The SMU Department of Physics has hidden “dark matter rocks” all across the SMU main campus. If you discover one of the dark matter rocks, bring it to the main office of the Physics Department, Fondren Science Building, Room 102, and get a special prize. All SMU students, faculty, staff and community members are welcome to join in the search.
New method uses three variables of speed, load carried and slope to improve on the accuracy of existing standards for predicting how much energy people require for walking — a method beneficial to many, including military strategists to model mission success
When military strategists plan a mission, one of many factors is the toll it takes on the Army’s foot soldiers.
A long march and heavy load drains energy. So military strategists are often concerned with the calories a soldier will burn, and the effect of metabolic stress on their overall physiological status, including body temperature, fuel needs and fatigue.
Now scientists at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, have discovered a new more accurate way to predict how much energy a soldier uses walking.
The method was developed with funding from the U.S. military. It significantly improves on two existing standards currently in use, and relies on just three readily available variables.
An accurate quantitative assessment tool is important because the rate at which people burn calories while walking can vary tenfold depending on how fast they walk, if they carry a load, and whether the walk is uphill, downhill or level.
“Our new method improves on the accuracy of the two leading standards that have been in use for nearly 50 years,” said exercise physiologist Lindsay W. Ludlow, an SMU post-doctoral fellow and lead author on the study. “Our model is fairly simple and improves predictions.”
The research is part of a larger load carriage initiative undertaken by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. The average load carried by light infantry foot soldiers in Afghanistan in April and May 2003 was 132 pounds, according to a U.S. Army Borden Institute report.
“Soldiers carry heavy loads, so quantitative information on the consequences of load is critical for many reasons, from planning a route to evaluating the likelihood of mission success,” said SMU biomechanist and physiologist Peter Weyand, @Dr_Weyand.
“The military uses a variety of approaches to model, predict and monitor foot-soldier status and performance, including having soldiers outfitted with wearable devices,” Weyand said. “There is a critical need with modern foot soldiers to understand performance from the perspective of how big a load they are carrying.”
The necessary variables are the walker’s speed, the grade or slope of the walking surface, and the total weight of the body plus any load the walker is carrying.
“That’s all it takes to accurately predict how much energy a walker burns,” Ludlow said.
While the measurement is a critical one for foot soldiers, it’s also useful for hikers, backpackers, mall-walkers and others who are calorie conscious and may rely on wearable electronic gadgets to track the calories they burn, she said.
Muscle and gait mechanics tightly coupled across speed, grade, load
Existing standards now in use rely on the same three variables, but differently, and with less accuracy and breadth.
The new theory is a departure from the prevailing view that the mechanics of walking are too complex to be both simple and accurate.
“Ultimately, we found that three remarkably simple mechanical variables can provide predictive accuracy across a broad range of conditions,” Ludlow said. “The accuracy achieved provides strong indirect evidence that the muscular activity determining calorie-burn rates during walking is tightly coupled to the speed, surface inclination and total weight terms in our model.”
By using two different sets of research subjects, the researchers independently evaluated their model’s ability to accurately predict the amount of energy burned.
“If muscle and gait mechanics were not tightly coupled across speed, grade and load, the level of predictive accuracy we achieved is unlikely,” Weyand said.
First generalized equation developed directly from a single, large database
The two existing equations that have been the working standards for nearly 50 years were necessarily based on just a few subjects and a limited number of data points.
One standard from the American College of Sports Medicine tested only speed and uphill grades, with its first formulation being based on data from only three individuals.
The other standard, commonly referred to as the Pandolf equation is used more frequently by the military and relies heavily on data from six soldiers combined with earlier experimental results.
In contrast, the generalized equation from SMU was derived from what is believed to be the largest database available for human walking metabolism.
The SMU study tested 32 adult subjects individually under 90 different speed-grade and load conditions on treadmills at the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory, @LocomotorLabSMU.
“The leading standardized equations included only level and uphill inclinations,” Weyand said. “We felt it was important to also provide downhill capabilities since soldiers in the field will encounter negative inclines as frequently as positive ones.”
Subjects fast prior to measuring their resting metabolic rates
Another key element of the SMU lab’s Minimum Mechanics Model is the quantitative treatment of resting metabolic rate.
“To obtain true resting metabolic rate, we had subjects fast for 8 to 12 hours prior to measuring their resting metabolic rates in the early morning,” Ludlow said. “Once at the lab, they laid down for an hour while the researchers measured their resting metabolic rate.”
In separate test sessions, the subjects walked on the treadmill for dozens of trials lasting five minutes each, wearing a mouthpiece and nose clip. In the last two minutes of each trial, the researchers measured steady-state rates of oxygen uptake to determine the rate at which each subject was burning energy.
Adults in one group of 20 subjects were each measured walking without a load at speeds of 0.4 meters per second, 0.7 meters per second, 1 meter per second, 1.3 meters per second and 1.6 meters per second on six different gradients: downhill grades of minus six degrees and minus three degrees; level ground; and uphill at inclines of three degrees, six degrees and nine degrees.
Adults in a second group of 20 were each tested at speeds of 0.6 meters per second, 1 meter per second and 1.4 meters per second on the same six gradients, but they carried loads that were 18 percent of body weight, and 31 percent of body weight.
Walking metabolic rates increased in proportion to increased load
As expected, walking metabolic rates increased in direct proportion to the increase in load, and largely in accordance with support force requirements across both speed and grade, said Weyand and Ludlow.
Weyand is Glenn Simmons Professor of Applied Physiology and professor of biomechanics in the Department of Applied Physiology and Wellness in SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. He also is lead scientist for the biomechanics and modeling portion of the Sub-2-Hour marathon project, an international research consortium based in the United Kingdom. — Margaret Allen, SMU
The health and science reporter for Quartz magazine, Katherine Ellen Foley, covered the research of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand and his colleagues Andrew Udofa and Laurence Ryan for a story about how world championship sprinter Usain Bolt runs so fast.
The researchers in the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory reported in June that world champion sprinter Usain Bolt may have an asymmetrical running gait. While not noticeable to the naked eye, Bolt’s potential asymmetry emerged after the researchers dissected race video to assess his pattern of ground-force application — literally how hard and fast each foot hits the ground. To do so they measured the “impulse” for each foot.
Biomechanics researcher Udofa presented the findings at the 35th International Conference on Biomechanics in Sport in Cologne, Germany. His presentation, “Ground Reaction Forces During Competitive Track Events: A Motion Based Assessment Method,” was delivered June 18.
The analysis thus far suggests that Bolt’s mechanics may vary between his left leg to his right. The existence of an unexpected and potentially significant asymmetry in the fastest human runner ever would help scientists better understand the basis of maximal running speeds. Running experts generally assume asymmetry impairs performance and slows runners down.
Udofa has said the observations raise the immediate scientific question of whether a lack of symmetry represents a personal mechanical optimization that makes Bolt the fastest sprinter ever or exists for reasons yet to be identified.
By Katherine Ellen Foley
Quartz
Eight years ago, Usain Bolt made history in less than 10 seconds at the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championship in Berlin, Germany.
The Jamaican sprinter set the world record for the 100-meter dash, clocking in at 9.58 seconds. Since then, no one (not even Bolt himself) has been able to best that time. On Saturday, August 5, Bolt will once more run the 100-meter dash at the IAAF World Championship (assuming he makes it through the qualifying race on August 4). This will be his last race; Bolt is set to retire after this running season (there’s some speculation he may still race in the 2020 Olympics, although as of now Bolt has said he doesn’t want to).
There’s no such thing as a perfect human running machine. But Bolt comes close—thanks to a combination of having all the advantages of a natural-born sprinter and putting in the effort needed to minimize any of his disadvantages.
Broadly speaking, Bolt has the unique muscular build shared by most of the very best sprinters. All human muscles are made of a mix of slow- and fast-twitch fibers—as well as some that are undifferentiated, and will become slow- or fast-twitch depending on how we use them most often. Slow-twitch fibers are built for efficiency and use oxygen to generate energy from sugar. They’re most effective for activities sustained over a long period of time, like distance running. Fast-twitch muscle fibers are used to generate huge amounts of force, but they don’t use oxygen and as a result can’t carry us far. Training can help shape undifferentiated fibers into either slow- or fast-twitch, but for the most part the best runners were born with an imbalance of one or the other. Elite marathoners have way more slow-twitch fibers, and sprinters like Bolt have an abundance of fast-twitch ones.
The best sprinters also run with a different form than the rest of us. It’s not that they move their legs significantly faster; it’s that they hit the ground harder (paywall). Most of the force sprinters generate is directed straight into the ground for vertical movement; only about 5% is used to propel them forward, Peter Weyand, a physiologist studying human speed at Southern Methodist University in Texas, told Popular Science in 2013. The more force a sprinter can pack into the ground with a quick foot strike, the faster he or she goes.
In a 2010 study, Weyand’s lab conducted an experiment where subjects jogged, ran, and hopped on one foot on a treadmill. They found that the most force came from hopping, thanks to the leg’s longer airtime. The researchers then calculated that if a runner were to generate the maximum hopping force possible with each step, he or she’d be able to reach a speed of 19.3 meters per second (63.3 feet per second)—which would make for a 5.18 second 100-meter dash.
This is just a fun theoretical experiment; it’s impossible to actually sprint and jump straight up and down at the same time. But it appears Bolt generates a powerful punch to the track—maybe the most powerful ever.
Journalist Patrick J. Kiger with the news site How Stuff Works covered the research of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand and his colleagues Andrew Udofa and Laurence Ryan for a story about Usain Bolt’s asymmetrical running gait.
The researchers in the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory reported in June that world champion sprinter Usain Bolt may have an asymmetrical running gait. While not noticeable to the naked eye, Bolt’s potential asymmetry emerged after the researchers dissected race video to assess his pattern of ground-force application — literally how hard and fast each foot hits the ground. To do so they measured the “impulse” for each foot.
Biomechanics researcher Udofa presented the findings at the 35th International Conference on Biomechanics in Sport in Cologne, Germany. His presentation, “Ground Reaction Forces During Competitive Track Events: A Motion Based Assessment Method,” was delivered June 18.
The analysis thus far suggests that Bolt’s mechanics may vary between his left leg to his right. The existence of an unexpected and potentially significant asymmetry in the fastest human runner ever would help scientists better understand the basis of maximal running speeds. Running experts generally assume asymmetry impairs performance and slows runners down.
Udofa has said the observations raise the immediate scientific question of whether a lack of symmetry represents a personal mechanical optimization that makes Bolt the fastest sprinter ever or exists for reasons yet to be identified.
By Patrick J. Kiger
How Stuff Works
Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt is the world record-holder in both the 100- and 200-meter, and winner of those events in the last three Summer Olympics. Bolt can hit a top speed of around 27 mph (43.5 kph), and has clearly established himself as the greatest sprinter of all time. But there’s something curious about his legs, and the way he uses them.
As the athlete prepares to run in his final world championship meet in London’s 2017 World Athletics Championships, taking place Aug. 4-13 and less than three weeks before Bolt’s 31st birthday, scientists are still trying to figure out just how the fastest human on the planet manages to achieve such incredible speed. Researchers at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Locomotor Performance Laboratory don’t quite have the answer yet — but they’ve made a surprising discovery.
The researchers analyzed video footage of Bolt and other sprinters from the 2011 Diamond League race at the World Athletics Championships in Monaco. They also used a “two mass model” analysis tool they developed, which allows them to study the physical forces that a runner creates — without actually bringing Bolt into a lab and putting him on a treadmill. They found that Bolt had an uneven, assymetrical stride, which is something that scientists might have expected to slow him down.
When he runs, Bolt’s right leg strikes the ground with 13 percent more peak force than does his left leg, and with each stride, his left leg stays in contact with the track about 14 percent longer than the right. The researchers findings have been published in a new study in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Bolt’s asymmetrical stride is probably due to his anatomy. As he recounted in his autobiography “The Fastest Man Alive: The True Story of Usain Bolt,” Bolt discovered as an adult that he has scoliosis, a condition in which his spine curves slightly to the left, which has forced his hips out of alignment so that his right leg is a half-inch (1.2 centimeters) shorter than the left. Bolt has written that he feels awkward standing still, and leans to the right because it feels uncomfortable to stand and place pressure on his left leg. Sitting in the same position for too long gives him backaches.
Slate online magazine journalist Adam Willis covered the research of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand and his colleagues Andrew Udofa and Laurence Ryan for a story about the world’s fastest sprinter, Usain Bolt, and whether he could possibly run even faster with different form.
Weyand, who leads the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory, is an expert on human locomotion and the mechanics of running. In his most recently published research, Weyand was part of a team that developed a concise approach to understanding the mechanics of human running. The research has immediate application for running performance, injury prevention, rehab and the individualized design of running shoes, orthotics and prostheses. Called the two-mass model, the work integrates classic physics and human anatomy to link the motion of individual runners to their patterns of force application on the ground — during jogging, sprinting and at all speeds in between.
His lab also reported in June that world champion sprinter Usain Bolt may have an asymmetrical running gait. While not noticeable to the naked eye, Bolt’s potential asymmetry emerged after the researchers dissected race video to assess his pattern of ground-force application — literally how hard and fast each foot hits the ground. To do so they measured the “impulse” for each foot.
Udofa presented the findings at the 35th International Conference on Biomechanics in Sport in Cologne, Germany. His presentation, “Ground Reaction Forces During Competitive Track Events: A Motion Based Assessment Method,” was delivered June 18.
The analysis thus far suggests that Bolt’s mechanics may vary between his left leg to his right. The existence of an unexpected and potentially significant asymmetry in the fastest human runner ever would help scientists better understand the basis of maximal running speeds. Running experts generally assume asymmetry impairs performance and slows runners down.
Udofa has said the observations raise the immediate scientific question of whether a lack of symmetry represents a personal mechanical optimization that makes Bolt the fastest sprinter ever or exists for reasons yet to be identified.
Weyand also has been widely interviewed in years past on the controversy surrounding double-amputee South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius. Weyand co-led a team of scientists who are experts in biomechanics and physiology in conducting experiments on Pistorius and the mechanics of his racing ability.
By Adam Willis
Slate
Usain Bolt is the only person to win both the 100 and 200 meters at three Olympic games. He is also the only person to do this at two Olympic games. Bolt has broken five individual outdoor track and field world records, three of them his own. He has run three of the five fastest 100-meter races and four of the six fastest 200-meter races in history. As Bolt gets set for the World Athletics Championships in London, the final meet of his beyond-illustrious career, we should be grateful for all the memorable moments the world’s fastest man has given us. We should also be ingrates and ask: Could he have run faster?
Bolt has an uncanny knack for making the incredibly difficult look easy—like Muhammad Ali coming off the ropes, like Westley fencing with his left hand, like James Joyce writing Ulysses from Paris. It’s only natural to wonder, then, if he could have done more. His midrace celebrations, his apparent aversion for practice and affinity for parties, his less than sensible diet—he reportedly ate 1,000 Chicken McNuggets in 10 days during the Beijing Olympics—all suggest history’s greatest sprinter might’ve had a little bit more in the tank.
After Bolt breezed to a 9.69 world record in the 100 meters at the 2008 Olympics, jogging and chest thumping across the finish line just days before his 22nd birthday, his coach Glen Mills made headlines with his claim that Bolt would have hit 9.52, at worst, if he had just run through the line. Scientists took on the task of projecting the time that might have been, with most concluding that 9.52 was, at best, a slight exaggeration. Bolt, though, made that claim look less sensational when he tore through his own world records at the world championships in Berlin a year later, posting 9.58 in the 100 and 19.19 in the 200. Still, Bolt would never reach the 9.52 that Mills estimated, nor, for that matter, the 9.4 that he himself predicted. He would never best those world records that he set in Berlin, when he was not yet 23 years old.
“We haven’t seen the 2009 Bolt since 2009,” says Peter Weyand, the director of the Locomotor Performance Laboratory at Southern Methodist University and a leading expert on the science of sprinting. When I asked Weyand about Bolt’s early peak, he told me that, although 22 or 23 is not an unusual age for a sprinter to top out, he would have predicted more after Bolt’s 2009 performances.
While recent research from Weyand’s lab concluded that Bolt’s stride is abnormally asymmetric, Weyand says it’s unlikely this asymmetry held Bolt back in any way. He does point, however, to several aspects of Bolt’s form that are considered unorthodox and potentially suboptimal.
A new giant bird-like dinosaur discovered in China has been named for SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, Corythoraptor jacobsi, by the scientists who identified the new oviraptorid. (Credit: Zhao Chuang)
A new giant bird-like dinosaur discovered in China has been named for SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, Corythoraptor jacobsi, by the scientists who identified the new oviraptorid.
Jacobs mentored three of the authors on the article. First author on the paper was Junchang Lü, an SMU Ph.D. alum, with co-authors Yuong–Nam Lee and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, both SMU Ph.D. alums.
A world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist, Jacobs in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education. He joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.
Jacobs is the author of “Quest for the African Dinosaurs: Ancient Roots of the Modern World” (Villard Books and Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2000); “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (Texas A&M U. Press, 1999), which is the basis of a Texas dinosaur exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History; “Cretaceous Airport” (ISEM, 1993); and more than 100 scientific papers and edited volumes.
By Laura Geggel
Live Science
The newly identified oviraptorid dinosaur Corythoraptor jacobsi has a cassowary-like head crest, known as a casque.
A Chinese farmer has discovered the remains of a dinosaur that could have passed for the ostrich-like cassowary in its day, sporting the flightless bird’s head crest and long thunder thighs, indicating it could run quickly, just like its modern-day lookalike, a new study finds.
The newfound dinosaur’s 6-inch-tall (15 centimeters) head crest is uncannily similar to the cassowary’s headpiece, known as a casque, the researchers said. In fact, the crests have such similar shapes, the cassowary’s may provide clues about how the dinosaur used its crest more than 66 million years ago, they said.
The findings suggest that the dinosaur, which would have towered at 5.5 feet (1.6 meters), may have had a similar lifestyle to the modern cassowary bird (Casuarius unappendiculatus), which is native to Australia and New Guinea, the study’s lead researcher, Junchang Lü, a professor at the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, told Live Science in an email.
Researchers found the oviraptorid — a type of giant, bird-like dinosaur — in Ganzhou, a city in southern China, in 2013. The specimen was in remarkable shape: The paleontologists found an almost complete skeleton, including the skull and lower jaw, which helped them estimate that the creature was likely a young adult, or at least 8 years of age, when it died.
The long-necked and crested dinosaur lived from about 100 million to 66 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, and likely used its clawed hands to hunt lizards and other small dinosaurs, Lü added.
The research team named the unique beast Corythoraptor jacobsi. Its genus name refers to the raptor’s cassowary-like crest, and the species name honors Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University who mentored three of the study’s researchers.
The researchers think the crest likely served the dinosaur in different ways, they said, including in display, communication and perhaps even as an indication of the dinosaur’s fitness during the mating season.
The researchers in the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory reported in June that world champion sprinter Usain Bolt may have an asymmetrical running gait. While not noticeable to the naked eye, Bolt’s potential asymmetry emerged after the researchers dissected race video to assess his pattern of ground-force application — literally how hard and fast each foot hits the ground. To do so they measured the “impulse” for each foot.
Biomechanics researcher Udofa presented the findings at the 35th International Conference on Biomechanics in Sport in Cologne, Germany. His presentation, “Ground Reaction Forces During Competitive Track Events: A Motion Based Assessment Method,” was delivered June 18.
The analysis thus far suggests that Bolt’s mechanics may vary between his left leg to his right. The existence of an unexpected and potentially significant asymmetry in the fastest human runner ever would help scientists better understand the basis of maximal running speeds. Running experts generally assume asymmetry impairs performance and slows runners down.
Udofa has said the observations raise the immediate scientific question of whether a lack of symmetry represents a personal mechanical optimization that makes Bolt the fastest sprinter ever or exists for reasons yet to be identified.
An expert on human locomotion and the mechanics of running, Weyand has been widely interviewed about the running controversy surrounding double-amputee South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius. Weyand co-led a team of scientists who are experts in biomechanics and physiology in conducting experiments on Pistorius and the mechanics of his racing ability.
For his most recently published research, Weyand was part of a team that developed a concise approach to understanding the mechanics of human running. The research has immediate application for running performance, injury prevention, rehab and the individualized design of running shoes, orthotics and prostheses. The work integrates classic physics and human anatomy to link the motion of individual runners to their patterns of force application on the ground — during jogging, sprinting and at all speeds in between.
The New York Times subscribers or readers with remaining limited free access can read the full story.
EXCERPT:
By Jeré Longman
The New York Times
DALLAS — Usain Bolt of Jamaica appeared on a video screen in a white singlet and black tights, sprinting in slow motion through the final half of a 100-meter race. Each stride covered nine feet, his upper body moving up and down almost imperceptibly, his feet striking the track and rising so rapidly that his heels did not touch the ground.
Bolt is the fastest sprinter in history, the world-record holder at 100 and 200 meters and the only person to win both events at three Olympics. Yet as he approaches his 31st birthday and retirement this summer, scientists are still trying to fully understand how Bolt achieved his unprecedented speed.
Last month, researchers here at Southern Methodist University, among the leading experts on the biomechanics of sprinting, said they found something unexpected during video examination of Bolt’s stride: His right leg appears to strike the track with about 13 percent more peak force than his left leg. And with each stride, his left leg remains on the ground about 14 percent longer than his right leg.
This runs counter to conventional wisdom, based on limited science, that an uneven stride tends to slow a runner down.
So the research team at S.M.U.’s Locomotor Performance Laboratory is considering a number of questions as Bolt prepares for what he said would be his final performances at a major international competition — the 100 meters and 4×100-meter relay next month at the world track and field championships in London.
Among those questions: Does evenness of stride matter for speed? Did Bolt optimize this irregularity to become the fastest human? Or, with a more balanced stride during his prime, could he have run even faster than 9.58 seconds at 100 meters and 19.19 seconds at 200 meters?
“That’s the million-dollar question,” said Peter Weyand, director of the S.M.U. lab.
The S.M.U. study of Bolt, led by Andrew Udofa, a doctoral researcher, is not yet complete. And the effect of asymmetrical strides on speed is still not well understood. But rather than being detrimental for Bolt, the consequences of an uneven stride may actually be beneficial, Weyand said.
It could be that Bolt has naturally settled into his stride to accommodate the effects of scoliosis. The condition curved his spine to the right and made his right leg half an inch shorter than his left, according to his autobiography.
Initial findings from the study were presented last month at an international conference on biomechanics in Cologne, Germany. Most elite sprinters have relatively even strides, but not all. The extent of Bolt’s variability appears to be unusual, Weyand said.
“Our working idea is that he’s probably optimized his speed, and that asymmetry reflects that,” Weyand said. “In other words, correcting his asymmetry would not speed him up and might even slow him down. If he were to run symmetrically, it could be an unnatural gait for him.”
Antti Mero, an exercise physiologist at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, who has researched Bolt’s fastest races, said he was intrigued by the S.M.U. findings.
The New York Times subscribers or readers with remaining limited free access can read the full story.
Lippert’s team develops synthetic organic compounds that glow in reaction to certain conditions. He led his lab in developing a new technology that uses photoswitch molecules to craft 3-D light structures — not holograms — that are viewable from 360 degrees. The economical method for shaping light into an infinite number of volumetric objects would be useful in a variety of fields, from biomedical imaging, education and engineering, to TV, movies, video games and more.
For biomedical imaging, Lippert says the nearest-term application of the technique might be in high-volume pre-clinical animal imaging, but eventually the technique could be applied to provide low-cost internal imaging in the developing world, or less costly imaging in the developed world.
Lippert’s lab includes four doctoral students and five undergraduates who assist in his research. He recently received a prestigious National Science Foundation Career Award, expected to total $611,000 over five years, to fund his research into alternative internal imaging techniques.
NSF Career Awards are given to tenure-track faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research in American colleges and universities.
Lippert joined SMU in 2012. He was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, and Bachelor of Science at the California Institute of Technology.
By Joel F. Hooper
Cosmos
Those of us who grew up watching science fiction movies and TV shows imagined our futures to be filled with marvellous gadgets, but we’ve sometimes been disappointed when science fails to deliver. We can’t take a weekend trip to Mars yet, and we’re still waiting for hoverboards that actually hover.
But in the case of 3-D image projection, the technology used by R2D2 in Star Wars is making its way into reality. Using advances in fluorescent molecules that can be switched on by UV light, scientists at Southern Methodist University in Dallas have created a method for producing images and animations by structuring light in 3-dimentions.
The technology uses a solution of fluorescent molecules called rhodamines, which have the potential to emit visible light when they are excited by a light beam of the right wavelength. But these molecules are usually in an inactive state, and must be “switched on” by UV light before they can become emitters. When a UV light or visible light beam alone shines through the solution, the rhodamines to not emit light. But where these two beams intersect, the emitting molecules are both switched on and excited, and can produce a small glowing 3D pixel, known as a voxel.
When a number of voxels are produced at once, using two projectors positioned at 90° to a flask containing a solution of the fluorescent molecules, a 3D image is produced.
“Our idea was to use chemistry and special photoswitch molecules to make a 3D display that delivers a 360-degree view,” says Alexander Lippert, lead author of the study. “It’s not a hologram, it’s really three-dimensionally structured light.”
Photoswitch chemistry allows construction of light shapes into structures that have volume and are viewable from 360 degrees, making them useful for biomedical imaging, teaching, engineering, TV, movies, video games and more
A scientist’s dream of 3-D projections like those he saw years ago in a Star Wars movie has led to new technology for making animated 3-D table-top objects by structuring light.
The new technology uses photoswitch molecules to bring to life 3-D light structures that are viewable from 360 degrees, says chemist Alexander Lippert, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, who led the research.
The economical method for shaping light into an infinite number of volumetric objects would be useful in a variety of fields, from biomedical imaging, education and engineering, to TV, movies, video games and more.
“Our idea was to use chemistry and special photoswitch molecules to make a 3-D display that delivers a 360-degree view,” said Lippert, an assistant professor in the SMU Department of Chemistry. “It’s not a hologram, it’s really three-dimensionally structured light.”
Key to the technology is a molecule that switches between non-fluorescent and fluorescent in reaction to the presence or absence of ultraviolet light.
The new technology is not a hologram, and differs from 3-D movies or 3-D computer design. Those are flat displays that use binocular disparity or linear perspective to make objects appear three-dimensional when in fact they only have height and width and lack a true volume profile.
“When you see a 3-D movie, for example, it’s tricking your brain to see 3-D by presenting two different images to each eye,” Lippert said. “Our display is not tricking your brain — we’ve used chemistry to structure light in three actual dimensions, so no tricks, just a real three-dimensional light structure. We call it a 3-D digital light photoactivatable dye display, or 3-D Light Pad for short, and it’s much more like what we see in real life.”
At the heart of the SMU 3-D Light Pad technology is a “photoswitch” molecule, which can switch from colorless to fluorescent when shined with a beam of ultraviolet light.
The researchers discovered a chemical innovation for tuning the photoswitch molecule’s rate of thermal fading — its on-off switch — by adding to it the chemical amine base triethylamine.
Now the sky is the limit for the new SMU 3-D Light Pad technology, given the many possible uses, said Lippert, an expert in fluorescence and chemiluminescence — using chemistry to explore the interaction between light and matter.
For example, conference calls could feel more like face-to-face meetings with volumetric 3-D images projected onto chairs. Construction and manufacturing projects could benefit from rendering them first in 3-D to observe and discuss real-time spatial information. For the military, uses could include tactical 3-D replications of battlefields on land, in the air, under water or even in space.
Volumetric 3-D could also benefit the medical field.
“With real 3-D results of an MRI, radiologists could more readily recognize abnormalities such as cancer,” Lippert said. “I think it would have a significant impact on human health because an actual 3-D image can deliver more information.”
Unlike 3-D printing, volumetric 3-D structured light is easily animated and altered to accommodate a change in design. Also, multiple people can simultaneously view various sides of volumetric display, conceivably making amusement parks, advertising, 3-D movies and 3-D games more lifelike, visually compelling and entertaining.
Co-authors are Shreya K. Patel, lead author, and Jian Cao, both students in the SMU Department of Chemistry.
Genesis of an idea — cinematic inspiration
The idea to shape light into volumetric animated 3-D objects came from Lippert’s childhood fascination with the movie “Star Wars.” Specifically he was inspired when R2-D2 projects a hologram of Princess Leia. Lippert’s interest continued with the holodeck in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
“As a kid I kept trying to think of a way to invent this,” Lippert said. “Then once I got a background in chemistry molecules that interact with light, and an understanding of photoswitches, it finally dawned on me that I could take two beams of light and use chemistry to manipulate the emission of light.”
Key to the new technology was discovering how to turn the chemical photoswitch off and on instantly, and generating light emissions from the intersection of two different light beams in a solution of the photoactivatable dye, he said.
SMU graduate student in chemistry Jian Cao hypothesized the activated photoswitch would turn off quickly by adding the base. He was right.
“The chemical innovation was our discovery that by adding one drop of triethylamine, we could tune the rate of thermal fading so that it instantly goes from a pink solution to a clear solution,” Lippert said. “Without a base, the activation with UV light takes minutes to hours to fade back and turn off, which is a problem if you’re trying to make an image. We wanted the rate of reaction with UV light to be very fast, making it switch on. We also wanted the off-rate to be very fast so the image doesn’t bleed.”
SMU 3-D Light Pad
In choosing among various photoswitch dyes, the researchers settled on N-phenyl spirolactam rhodamines. That particular class of rhodamine dyes was first described in the late 1970s and made use of by Stanford University’s Nobel prize-winning W.E. Moerner.
The dye absorbs light within the visible region, making it appropriate to fluoresce light. Shining it with UV radiation, specifically, triggers a photochemical reaction and forces it to open up and become fluorescent.
Turning off the UV light beam shuts down fluorescence, diminishes light scattering, and makes the reaction reversible — ideal for creating an animated 3-D image that turns on and off.
“Adding triethylamine to switch it off and on quickly was a key chemical discovery that we made,” Lippert said.
To produce a viewable image they still needed a setup to structure the light.
Structuring light in a table-top display
The researchers started with a custom-built, table-top, quartz glass imaging chamber 50 millimeters by 50 millimeters by 50 millimeters to house the photoswitch and to capture light.
Inside they deployed a liquid solvent, dichloromethane, as the matrix in which to dissolve the N-phenyl spirolactam rhodamine, the solid, white crystalline photoswitch dye.
Next they projected patterns into the chamber to structure light in two dimensions. They used an off-the-shelf Digital Light Processing (DLP) projector purchased at Best Buy for beaming visible light.
The DLP projector, which reflects visible light via an array of microscopically tiny mirrors on a semiconductor chip, projected a beam of green light in the shape of a square. For UV light, the researchers shined a series of UV light bars from a specially made 385-nanometer Light-Emitting Diode projector from the opposite side.
Where the light intersected and mixed in the chamber, there was displayed a pattern of two-dimensional squares stacked across the chamber. Optimized filter sets eliminated blue background light and allowed only red light to pass.
To get a static 3-D image, they patterned the light in both directions, with a triangle from the UV and a green triangle from the visible, yielding a pyramid at the intersection, Lippert said.
From there, one of the first animated 3-D images the researchers created was the SMU mascot, Peruna, a racing mustang.
“For Peruna — real-time 3-D animation — SMU undergraduate student Shreya Patel found a way to beam a UV light bar and keep it steady, then project with the green light a movie of the mustang running,” Lippert said.
So long Renaissance
Today’s 3-D images date to the Italian Renaissance and its leading architect and engineer.
“Brunelleschi during his work on the Baptistery of St. John was the first to use the mathematical representation of linear perspective that we now call 3-D. This is how artists used visual tricks to make a 2-D picture look 3-D,” Lippert said. “Parallel lines converge at a vanishing point and give a strong sense of 3-D. It’s a useful trick but it’s striking we’re still using a 500-year-old technique to display 3-D information.”
The SMU 3-D Light Pad technology, patented in 2016, has a number of advantages over contemporary attempts by others to create a volumetric display but that haven’t emerged as commercially viable.
Some of those have been bulky or difficult to align, while others use expensive rare earth metals, or rely on high-powered lasers that are both expensive and somewhat dangerous.
The SMU 3-D Light Pad uses lower light powers, which are not only cheaper but safer. The matrix for the display is also economical, and there are no moving parts to fabricate, maintain or break down.
Lippert and his team fabricated the SMU 3-D Light Pad for under $5,000 through a grant from the SMU University Research Council.
“For a really modest investment we’ve done something that can compete with more expensive $100,000 systems,” Lippert said. “We think we can optimize this and get it down to a couple thousand dollars or even lower.”
Next Gen: SMU 3-D Light Pad 2.0
The resolution quality of a 2-D digital photograph is stated in pixels. The more pixels, the sharper and higher-quality the image. Similarly, 3-D objects are measured in voxels — a pixel but with volume. The current 3-D Light Pad can generate more than 183,000 voxels, and simply scaling the volume size should increase the number of voxels into the millions – equal to the number of mirrors in the DLP micromirror arrays.
For their display, the SMU researchers wanted the highest resolution possible, measured in terms of the minimum spacing between any two of the bars. They achieved 200 microns, which compares favorably to 100 microns for a standard TV display or 200 microns for a projector.
The goal now is to move away from a liquid vat of solvent for the display to a solid cube table display. Optical polymer, for example, would weigh about the same as a TV set. Lippert also toys with the idea of an aerosol display.
The researchers hope to expand from a monochrome red image to true color, based on mixing red, green and blue light. They are working to optimize the optics, graphics engine, lenses, projector technology and photoswitch molecules.
“I think it’s a very fascinating area. Everything we see — all the color we see — arises from the interaction of light with matter,” Lippert said. “The molecules in an object are absorbing a wavelength of light and we see all the rest that’s reflected. So when we see blue, it’s because the object is absorbing all the red light. What’s more, it is actually photoswitch molecules in our eyes that start the process of translating different wavelengths of light into the conscious experience of color. That’s the fundamental chemistry and it builds our entire visual world. Being immersed in chemistry every day — that’s the filter I’m seeing everything through.”
The SMU discovery and new technology, Lippert said, speak to the power of encouraging young children.
“They’re not going to solve all the world’s problems when they’re seven years old,” he said. “But ideas get seeded and if they get nurtured as children grow up they can achieve things we never thought possible.” — Margaret Allen, SMU
The researchers assessed Bolt’s running using a new motion-based method to test how hard and fast each foot hits the ground.
Journalist Lance Murray with D Magazine’s Dallas Innovates covered the research of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand and his colleagues Andrew Udofa and Laurence Ryan for a story about Usain Bolt’s asymmetrical running gait.
The researchers in the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory reported in June that world champion sprinter Usain Bolt may have an asymmetrical running gait. While not noticeable to the naked eye, Bolt’s potential asymmetry emerged after the researchers dissected race video to assess his pattern of ground-force application — literally how hard and fast each foot hits the ground. To do so they measured the “impulse” for each foot.
Biomechanics researcher Udofa presented the findings at the 35th International Conference on Biomechanics in Sport in Cologne, Germany. His presentation, “Ground Reaction Forces During Competitive Track Events: A Motion Based Assessment Method,” was delivered June 18.
The analysis thus far suggests that Bolt’s mechanics may vary between his left leg to his right. The existence of an unexpected and potentially significant asymmetry in the fastest human runner ever would help scientists better understand the basis of maximal running speeds. Running experts generally assume asymmetry impairs performance and slows runners down.
Udofa has said the observations raise the immediate scientific question of whether a lack of symmetry represents a personal mechanical optimization that makes Bolt the fastest sprinter ever or exists for reasons yet to be identified.
By Lance Murray
Dallas Innovates
When it comes to running, nobody does it faster than Usain Bolt, the eight-time Olympic champion and triple world record holder.
The lanky Jamaican sprinter is known for his explosive acceleration down the track and the famous images of him looking back as he leaves his competitors in his wake.
You’d think Bolt’s powerful legs work as a symmetrical team propelling him at great speed toward the finish line, but according to researchers at Southern Methodist University, Bolt’s gait may, in fact, be asymmetrical.
SMU researchers examined the running mechanics of Bolt, who is considered the world’s fastest man.
The analysis, so far, suggests that his mechanics may vary from his right leg to his left, according to Andrew Udofa, a biometrics researcher in the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory.
According to a blog on SMU Research News, most running experts assume that asymmetry impairs performance and slows a runner down. This unexpected asymmetry in Bolt’s mechanics could help scientist better understand the basis of maximal running speeds, according to the university.
“Our observations raise the immediate scientific question of whether a lack of symmetry represents a personal mechanical optimization that makes Bolt the fastest sprinter ever or exists for reasons yet to be identified,” Udofa, a research team member, said in the blog.
A new method for assessing patterns of ground-force application suggests the right and left legs of the world’s fastest man may perform differently, defying current scientific assumptions about running speed.
World champion sprinter Usain Bolt may have an asymmetrical running gait, according to data recently presented by researchers from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
While not noticeable to the naked eye, Bolt’s potential asymmetry emerged after SMU researchers assessed the running mechanics of the world’s fastest man.
The existence of an unexpected and potentially significant asymmetry in the fastest human runner ever would help scientists better understand the basis of maximal running speeds. Running experts generally assume asymmetry impairs performance and slows runners down.
“Our observations raise the immediate scientific question of whether a lack of symmetry represents a personal mechanical optimization that makes Bolt the fastest sprinter ever or exists for reasons yet to be identified,” said Udofa, a member of the research team.
The SMU Locomotor Lab, led by Peter Weyand, focuses on the mechanical basis of human performance. The group includes physicist and engineer Laurence Ryan, an expert in force and motion analysis, and doctoral researcher Udofa.
The intriguing possibility of Bolt’s asymmetry emerged after the SMU researchers decided to assess his pattern of ground-force application — literally how hard and fast each foot hits the ground. To do so they measured the “impulse” for each foot.
Impulse is a combination of the amount of force applied to the ground multiplied by the time of foot-ground contact.
“The manner in which Bolt achieves his impulses seems to vary from leg to leg,” Udofa said. “Both the timing and magnitude of force application differed between legs in the steps we have analyzed so far.”
Impulse matters because that’s what determines a runner’s time in the air between steps.
“If a runner has a smaller impulse, they don’t get as much aerial time,” Weyand said. “Our previous published research has shown greater ground forces delivered in shorter periods of foot-ground contact are necessary to achieve faster speeds. This is true in part because aerial times do not differ between fast and slow runners at their top speeds. Consequently, the combination of greater ground forces and shorter contact times is characteristic of the world’s fastest sprinters.”
The researchers didn’t test Bolt in the SMU lab. Instead, they used a new motion-based method to assess the patterns of ground-force application. They analyzed Bolt and other elite runners using existing high-speed race footage available from NBC Universal Sports. The runners were competing in the 2011 Diamond League race at the World Athletics Championships in Monaco.
Udofa analyzed 20 of Bolt’s steps from the Monaco race, averaging data from 10 left and 10 right.
The researchers relied upon foot-ground contact time, aerial time, running velocity and body mass to determine the ground reaction forces using the new method, made possible by the “two-mass model” of running mechanics.
Runners typically run on a force-instrumented treadmill or force plates for research examining running ground-reaction forces. However, the two-mass model method provides a tool that enables motion-based assessments of ground reaction forces without direct force measurements.
“There are new avenues of research the model may make possible because direct-force measurements are not required,” Weyand said. “These include investigations of the importance of symmetry for sprinting performance. The two-mass model may facilitate the acquisition of data from outside the lab to help us better address these kinds of questions.”
Udofa presented the findings at the 35th International Conference on Biomechanics in Sport in Cologne, Germany. His presentation, “Ground Reaction Forces During Competitive Track Events: A Motion Based Assessment Method,” was delivered June 18.
Two-mass model relies on basic motion data
SMU researchers developed the concise two-mass model as a simplified way to predict the entire pattern of force on the ground — from impact to toe-off — with very basic motion data.
The model integrates classic physics and human anatomy to link the motion of individual runners to their patterns of force on the ground.
It provides accurate predictions of the ground force vs. time patterns throughout each instant of the contact period, regardless of limb mechanics, foot-strike type or running speed.
The two-mass model is substantially less complex than other scientific models that explain patterns of ground force application during running. Most existing models are more elaborate in relying on 14 or more variables, many of which are less clearly linked to the human body.
“The two-mass model provides us with a new tool for assessing the crucial early portion of foot-ground contact that is so important for sprinting performance,” said Udofa. “The model advances our ability to assess the impact-phase force and time relationships from motion data only.”
The two-mass model was developed in SMU’s Locomotor Performance Laboratory by Kenneth P. Clark, now an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at West Chester University, West Chester, Pa.; Ryan, a physicist and research engineer at SMU’s Locomotor Performance Laboratory; and Weyand.
NSF Career Awards are given to tenure-track faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research in American colleges and universities.
Lippert’s team develops synthetic organic compounds that glow in reaction to certain conditions. For example, when injected into a mouse’s tumor, the compounds luminesce in response to the cancer’s pH and oxygen levels. Place that mouse in a sealed dark box with a sensitive CCD camera that can detect low levels of light, and images can be captured of the light emanating from the mouse’s tumor.
“We are developing chemiluminescent imaging agents, which basically amounts to a specialized type of glow-stick chemistry,” Lippert says. “We can use this method to image the insides of animals, kind of like an MRI, but much cheaper and easier to do.”
Lippert says the nearest-term application of the technique might be in high-volume pre-clinical animal imaging, but eventually the technique could be applied to provide low-cost internal imaging in the developing world, or less costly imaging in the developed world.
But first, there are still a few ways the technique can be improved, and that’s where Lippert says the grant will come in handy.
“In preliminary studies, we needed to directly inject the compound into the tumor to see the chemistry in the tumor,” Lippert says. “One thing that’s funded by this grant is intravenous injection capability, where you inject a test subject and let the agent distribute through the body, then activate it in the tumor to see it light up.”
Another challenge the team will use the grant to explore is making a compound that varies by color instead of glow intensity when reacting to cancer cells. This will make it easier to read images, which can sometimes be buried under several layers of tissue, making the intensity of the glow difficult to interpret.
“We’re applying the method to tumors now, but you could use similar designs for other types of tissues,” Lippert says. “The current compound reacts to oxygen levels and pH, which are important in cancer biology, but also present in other types of biology, so it can be more wide-ranging than just looking at cancer.”
“This grant is really critical to our ability to continue the research going forward,” Lippert adds. “This will support the reagents and supplies, student stipends, and strengthen our collaboration with UT Southwestern Medical Center. Having that funding secure for five years is really nice because we can now focus our attention on the actual science instead of writing grants. It’s a huge step forward in our research progress.”
Lippert joined SMU in 2012. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2009-12, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 and earned a Bachelor of Science at the California Institute of Technology in 2003.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…” NSF is the funding source for approximately 24 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s colleges and universities. — Kenny Ryan, SMU
The researchers are leading an SMU assault on cancer in partnership with fans of the popular best-selling video game “Minecraft.”
They are partnering with the world’s vast network of gamers in hopes of discovering a new cancer-fighting drug. Vogel and Wise expect deep inroads in their quest to narrow the search for chemical compounds that improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs.
A boost in computational power by adding crowdsourcing may help the researchers narrow their search.
By Lance Murray
Dallas Innovates
Game developers and researchers at SMU are partnering with a worldwide network of gamers who play the popular game in a crowdsourcing effort to beat the disease.
The project is being led by biochemistry professors Pia Vogel and John Wise of the SMU Department of Biological Sciences, and Corey Clark, deputy director of research at SMU Guildhall, the university’s graduate video game development program.
“Crowdsourcing as well as computational power may help us narrow down our search and give us better chances at selecting a drug that will be successful,” Vogel said in a release. “And gamers can take pride in knowing they’ve helped find answers to an important medical problem.”
Vogel and Wise have been utilizing the university’s ManeFrame supercomputer, one of the most powerful academic supercomputers in the country, to sort through millions of compounds that potentially could work in the fight against cancer.
Now, they’re going to try crowdsourced computing.
The researchers believe that the network of gamers will be able to crunch massive amounts of data during routine game play by pooling two weapons — human intuition and the massive computing power of the networked gaming machine processors.
Adding gamers could double processing power
That should more than double the amount of processing power aimed at their research problem.
“If we take a small percentage of the computing power from 25,000 gamers playing our mod we can match ManeFrame’s 120 teraflops of processing power,” said Clark, who is also an adjunct research associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.
“Integrating with the ‘Minecraft’ community should allow us to double the computing power of [SMU’s] supercomputer.”
The research labs of Vogel and Wise are part of the Center for Drug Discovery, Design, and Delivery in SMU’s Dedman College, whose mission is a multidisciplinary focus for scientific research that targets medically important problems in human health, the release said.
According to SMU, the research is partly funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The researchers narrowed a group of compounds that show potential for alleviating the issue of chemotherapy failure after repeated use.
Using gamers in research has happened before
Using human gamers to enhance data-driven research has been done before with success and is a growing practice.
The big, boxy California transplant is being adopted by Southern Methodist University and will be retooled for Texas to help teachers fuel the creative spark in students.
The School of Engineering and SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development are building a dedicated place for students to adopt a “maker-based approach” to education.
By Dave Moore
Dallas Innovates
You might call it a maker truck in the making, and it’s about to hit the streets of Dallas to promote the maker movement to teachers and students alike.
Formerly called the SparkTruck, Southern Methodist University adopted the vehicle from Stanford University in California where it resided for the past five years.
The truck made a cross-country journey to Dallas where SMU students will redesign it, inside and out, to make it a teaching tool to help K-12 teachers to inspire and to pursue professional development through innovation.
“This big truck is a kind of rolling ambassador for the maker movement,” said Katie Krummeck, director of SMU’s Deason Innovation Gym. “If you’re not familiar with it, the maker movement is all about sharing creative challenges with people from very different backgrounds to build things.“
Krummeck said the truck will be a big boost in maker education.
“The explosion in easily available digital tools and software is fueling the fire, and it turns out that this kind of hands-on maker-based instruction is a great way to engage students in whatever subject they are learning,” she said.
SMU students will retrofit the truck to ensure that its educational mission is supported by things such as workflow, storage, and comfort.
During its journey from California, the truck carried this message on its side: “This is not a maker truck” — yet.
Krummeck is familiar with the truck. She managed the SparkTruck program at Stanford before coming to SMU in 2015.
“We’re going to develop teaching frameworks, open-source curriculum, tools, and resources as well as some really engaging professional development opportunities for educators,” Krummeck said in a release. “And we’re going to deliver these resources and experiences out of the back of this mobile makerspace. We’ll know what to call it after our students put their heads together during the design challenge we have planned for May 22-26.”
Each year, potentially thousands of domestic abusers in Dallas County should surrender firearms. Only 60 guns have been surrendered in two years.
Under Texas and Federal law, individuals convicted of domestic abuse are required to surrender any firearms they possess — but it rarely happens.
A team of SMU law students who spent the past year studying Dallas County’s gun-surrender efforts say the program can be improved and presented recommendations during the Twelfth Annual Conference on Crimes Against Women on May 24, 2017 at the downtown Dallas Sheraton hotel.
“It is estimated that between 7,000 and 8,000 cases of domestic violence go through the courts each year in Dallas County, and yet only 60 guns have been turned in over the past two years,” says SMU Law professor Natalie Nanasi, director of the Judge Elmo B. Hunter Legal Center for Victims of Crimes Against Women. Nanasi advised law students Laura Choi, Rachel Elkin and Monica Harasim in assembling the report.
“We spent the past year looking at other programs around the country, like El Paso, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. and developed recommendations on how to improve what’s being done in Dallas County,” Harasim says.
“Statistics show that the presence of a firearm in a domestic violence situation increases the likelihood of death by 500 percent,” Elkin says. “We hope that this report can be a tool for Dallas County leaders to use to expand and improve the Gun Surrender Program.”
The students presented their findings alongside Dallas County Criminal Court Judge Roberto Cañas, who first attempted to tackle the gun-surrender problem in Dallas County in 2015 by soliciting a grant and launching a program responsible for collecting the 60 guns over two years.
Before that, there were no organized efforts to collect guns from domestic abusers.
“Initial estimates suggested that Judge Cañas’ program would collect approximately 800 guns per year, but those estimates assumed that all judges in Dallas County would participate in the program equally, (which didn’t turn out to be the case),” says Choi. “There’s no question that the program sends an important message just by existing. The fact that the program is here and is collecting weapons speaks volumes to Dallas County’s commitment to survivor safety.”
Vogel and Wise expect deep inroads in their quest to narrow the search for chemical compounds that improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs.
“Crowdsourcing as well as computational power may help us narrow down our search and give us better chances at selecting a drug that will be successful,” said Vogel. “And gamers can take pride in knowing they’ve helped find answers to an important medical problem.”
Up to now, Wise and Vogel have tapped the high performance computing power of SMU’s Maneframe, one of the most powerful academic supercomputers in the nation. With ManeFrame, Wise and Vogel have sorted through millions of compounds that have the potential to work. Now, the biochemists say, it’s time to take that research to the next level — crowdsourced computing.
A network of gamers can crunch massive amounts of data during routine gameplay by pairing two powerful weapons: the best of human intuition combined with the massive computing power of networked gaming machine processors.
Taking their research to the gaming community will more than double the amount of machine processing power attacking their research problem.
“With the distributed computing of the actual game clients, we can theoretically have much more computing power than even the supercomputer here at SMU,” said Clark, also adjunct research associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. SMU Guildhall in March was named No. 1 among the Top 25 Top Graduate Schools for Video Game Design by The Princeton Review.
“If we take a small percentage of the computing power from 25,000 gamers playing our mod we can match ManeFrame’s 120 teraflops of processing power,” Clark said. “Integrating with the ‘Minecraft’ community should allow us to double the computing power of that supercomputer.”
Even more importantly, the gaming community adds another important component — human intuition.
Wise believes there’s a lot of brainpower eager to be tapped in the gaming community. And human brains, when tackling a problem or faced with a challenge, can make creative and intuitive leaps that machines can’t.
“What if we learn things that we never would have learned any other way? And even if it doesn’t work it’s still a good idea and the kids will still get their endorphin kicks playing the game,” Wise said. “It also raises awareness of the research. Gamers will be saying ‘Mom don’t tell me to go to bed, I’m doing scientific research.”
The Vogel and Wise research labs are part of the Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery (CD4) in SMU’s Dedman College. The center’s mission is a novel multi-disciplinary focus for scientific research targeting medically important problems in human health. Their research is funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.
The research question in play
Vogel and Wise have narrowed a group of compounds that show promise for alleviating the problem of chemotherapy failure after repeated use. Each one of those compounds has 50 to 100 — or even more — characteristics that contribute to their efficacy.
“Corey’s contribution will hopefully tell us which dozen perhaps of these 100 characteristics are the important ones,” Vogel said. “Right now of those 100 characteristics, we don’t know which ones are good ones. We want to see if there’s a way with what we learn from Corey’s gaming system to then apply what we learn to millions of other compounds to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
James McCormick — a fifth year Ph.D. student in cellular molecular biology who earned his doctoral degree this spring and is a researcher with the Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery — produced the data set for Clark and Guildhall.
Lauren Ammerman, a first-year Ph.D. student in cellular and molecular biology and also working in the Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery, is taking up the computational part of the project.
Machines can learn from human problem solving
Crowdsourcing video gamers to solve real scientific problems is a growing practice.
Machine learning and algorithms by themselves don’t always find the best solution, Clark said. There are already examples of researchers who for years sought answers with machine learning, then switched to actual human gamers.
Gamers take unstructured data and attack it with human problem-solving skills to quickly find an answer.
“So we’re combining both,” Clark said. “We’re going to have both computers and humans trying to find relationships and clustering the data. Each of those human decisions will also be supplied as training input into a deep neural network that is learning the ‘human heuristic’ — the technique and processes humans are using to make their decisions.”
Gamers already have proven they can solve research problems that have stymied scientists, says Vogel. She cites the video game “Foldit” created by the University of Washington specifically to unlock the structure of an AIDS-related enzyme.
Some other Games With A Purpose, as they’re called, have produced similar results. Humans outperform computers when it comes to tasks in the computational process that are particularly suited to the human intellect.
“With ‘Foldit,’ researchers worked on a problem for 15 years using machine learning techniques and were unable to find a solution,” Clark said. “Once they created the game, 57,000 players found a solution in three weeks.”
Modifying the “Minecraft” game and embedding research data inside
Gamers will access the research problem using the version of “Minecraft” they purchased, then install a “mod” or “plugin” — gamer jargon for modifying game code to expand a game’s possibilities — that incorporates SMUs research problem and was developed in accordance with “Minecraft” terms of service. Players will be fully aware of their role in the research, including ultimately leaderboards that show where players rank toward analyzing the data set in the research problem.
SMU is partnering with leaders in the large “Minecraft” modding community to develop a functioning mod by the end of 2017. The game will be heavily tested before release to the public the second quarter of 2018, Clark said.
The SMU “Minecraft” mod will incorporate a data processing and distributed computing platform from game technology company Balanced Media Technology (BMT), McKinney, Texas. BMT’s HEWMEN software platform executes machine-learning algorithms coupled with human guided interactions. It will integrate Wise and Vogel’s research directly into the SMU “Minecraft” mod.
SMU Guildhall will provide the interface enabling modders to develop their own custom game mechanic that visualizes and interacts with the research problem data within the “Minecraft” game environment. Guildhall research is funded in part by Balanced Media Technology.
“We expect to have over 25,000 people continuously online during our testing period,” Clark said. “That should probably double the computing power of the supercomputer here.”
That many players and that much computing power is a massive resource attacking the research problem, Wise said.
“The SMU computational system has 8,000 computer cores. Even if I had all of ManeFrame to myself, that’s still less computing and brainpower than the gaming community,” he said. “Here we’ve got more than 25,000 different brains at once. So even if 24,000 don’t find an answer, there are maybe 1,000 geniuses playing ‘Minecraft’ that may find a solution. This is the most creative thing I’ve heard in a long time.” — Margaret Allen, SMU
The best in SMU undergraduate and graduate research work was on full display at Research Day in the Hughes Trigg Student Center.
More than 150 graduate and undergraduate students at SMU presented posters at SMU Research Day 2017 in the Promenade Ballroom of Hughes-Trigg Student Center Ballroom on March 28.
Student researchers discussed their ongoing and completed SMU research and their results with faculty, staff and students who attended the one-day event.
“Research Day is an opportunity for SMU students to show off what they’ve been doing at the grad level and at the undergrad level,” Weyand said, “and that’s really an invaluable experience for them.”
“It’s a huge motivation to present your work before people,” said Aparna Viswanath, a graduate student in engineering. Viswanath presented research on “Looking Around Corners,” research into an instrument that converts a scattering surface into computational holographic sensors.
The goal of Research Day is to foster communication about research between students in different disciplines, give students the opportunity to present their work in a professional setting, and to share the outstanding research being conducted at SMU.
Adel Alharbi, a student of Dr. Mitchell Thornton in Lyle School’s Computer Science and Engineering presented research on a novel demographic group prediction mechanism for smart device users based upon the recognition of user gestures.
Ashwini Subramanian and Prasanna Rangarajan, students of Dr. Dinesh Rajan, in Lyle School’s Electrical Engineering Department, presented research about accurately measuring the physical dimensions of an object for manufacturing and logistics with an inexpensive software-based Volume Measurement System using the Texas Instruments OPT8241 3D Time-of-Flight camera, which illuminates the scene with a modulated light source, observing the reflected light and translating it to distance.
Gang Chen, a student of Dr. Pia Vogel in the Department of Chemistry of Dedman College, presented research on multidrug resistance in cancers associated with proteins including P-glycoprotein and looking for inhibitors of P-gp.
Tetiana Hutchison, a student of Dr. Rob Harrod in the Chemistry Department of Dedman College, presented research on inhibitors of mitochondrial damage and oxidative stress related to human T-cell leukemia virus type-1, an aggressive hematological cancer for which there are no effective treatments.
Margarita Sala, a student of Dr. David Rosenfield and Dr. Austin Baldwin in the Psychology Department of Dedman College, presented research on how specific post-exercise affective states differ between regular and infrequent exercisers, thereby elucidating the “feeling better” phenomenon.
Bernard Kauffman, a Level Design student of Dr. Corey Clark in SMU Guildhall, presented research on building a user interface that allows video game players to analyze vast swaths of scientific data to help researchers find potentially useful compounds for treating cancer.
According to the Fall 2016 report on Undergraduate Research, SMU provides opportunities for student research in a full variety of disciplines from the natural sciences and engineering, to social sciences, humanities and the arts. These opportunities permit students to bring their classroom knowledge to practical problems or a professional level in their chosen field of study.
Opportunities offered include both funded and curricular programs
that can be tailored according to student needs:
Students may pursue funded research with the assistance of a
variety of campus research programs. Projects can be supported
during the academic year or in the summer break, when students
have the opportunity to focus full-time on research.
Students may also enroll in research courses that are offered in
many departments that permit them to design a unique project,
or participate in a broader project.
Students can take advantage of research opportunities outside
of their major, or design interdisciplinary projects with their faculty
mentors. The Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute supports
such research via the Mayer Scholars.
In the first study of its kind, self-persuasion software on an iPad motivated low-income parents to want to protect their teens against the cancer-causing human papillomavirus
As health officials struggle to boost the number of teens vaccinated against the deadly human papillomavirus, a new study from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, found that self-persuasion works to bring parents on board.
Currently public health efforts rely on educational messages and doctor recommendations to persuade parents to vaccinate their adolescents. Self-persuasion as a tool for HPV vaccinations has never been researched until now.
The SMU study found that low-income parents will decide to have their teens vaccinated against the sexually transmitted cancer-causing virus if the parents persuade themselves of the protective benefits.
The study’s subjects — almost all moms — were taking their teens and pre-teens to a safety-net pediatric clinic for medical care. It’s the first to look at changing parents’ behavior through self-persuasion using English- and Spanish-language materials.
“This approach is based on the premise that completing the vaccination series is less likely unless parents internalize the beliefs for themselves, as in ‘I see the value, I see the importance, and because I want to help my child,’” said psychology professor Austin S. Baldwin, a principal investigator on the research.
Depending on age, the HPV vaccine requires a series of two or three shots over eight months. External pressure might initially spark parents to action. But vaccinations decline sharply after the first dose.
The new study follows an earlier SMU study that found guilt, social pressure or acting solely upon a doctor’s recommendation was not related to parents’ motivation to vaccinate their kids.
Both studies are part of a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute. Baldwin, associate professor in the SMU Department of Psychology, is co-principal investigator with Jasmin A. Tiro, associate professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.
Addressing the HPV problem
A very common virus, HPV infects nearly one in four people in the United States, including teens, according to the Centers for Disease Control. HPV infection can cause cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers in females; penile cancer in males; and anal cancer, back of the throat cancer and genital warts in both genders, the CDC says.
The CDC recommends a series of two shots of the vaccine for 11- to 14-year-olds to build effectiveness in advance of sexual activity. For 15- to 26-year-olds, they are advised to get three doses over the course of eight months, says the CDC.
Currently, about 60% of adolescent girls and 40% of adolescent boys get the first dose of the HPV vaccine. After that, about 20% of each group fail to follow through with the second dose, Baldwin said.
The goal set by health authorities is to vaccinate 80% of adolescents to achieve the herd immunity effect of indirect protection when a large portion of the population is protected.
NCI grant aimed at developing a software app
The purpose of the National Cancer Institute grant is to develop patient education software for the HPV vaccine that is easily used by low-income parents who may struggle to read and write, and speak only Spanish.
A body of research in the psychology field has shown that the technique of self-persuasion among well-educated people is successful using written English-language materials. Self-persuasion hasn’t previously been tested among underserved populations in safety-net clinics.
The premise is that individuals will be more likely to take action because the choice they are making is important to them and they value it.
In contrast, where motivation is extrinsic, an individual acts out of a sense of others’ expectations or outside pressure.
Research has found that people are much more likely to maintain a behavior over time — such as quitting smoking, exercising or losing weight — when it’s autonomously motivated. Under those circumstances, they value the choice and consider it important.
“A provider making a clear recommendation is clearly important,’” said Deanna C. Denman, a co-author on the study and a graduate researcher in SMU’s Psychology Department. “Autonomy over the decision can be facilitated by the doctor, who can confirm to parents that “The decision is yours, and here are the reasons I recommend it.’”
Doctor’s recommendation matters, but may not be sufficient
For the SMU study, the researchers educated parents in a waiting room by providing a custom-designed software application running on an iPad tablet.
The program guided the parents in English or Spanish to scroll through audio prompts that help them think through why HPV vaccination is important. The parents verbalized in their own words why it would be important to them to get their child vaccinated. Inability to read or write wasn’t a barrier.
Parents in the SMU study were recruited through the Parkland Memorial Hospital’s out-patient pediatric clinics throughout Dallas County. Most of the parents were Hispanic and had a high school education or less. Among 33 parents with unvaccinated adolescents, 27 — 81% — decided they would vaccinate their child after completing the self-persuasion tasks.
New study builds on prior study results
In the earlier SMU study, researchers surveyed 223 parents from the safety-net clinics. They completed questionnaires relevant to motivation, intentions and barriers to vaccination.
The researchers found that autonomous motivation was strongly correlated with intentions, Denman said. As autonomous motivation increased, the greater parents’ intentions to vaccinate. The lower the autonomous motivation, the lower the parents’ intentions to vaccinate, she explained.
“So they may get the first dose because the doctor says it’s important,” Baldwin said. “But the second and third doses require they come back in a couple months and again in six months. It requires the parent to feel it’s important to their child, and that’s perhaps what’s going to push or motivate them to complete the series. So that’s where, downstream, there’s an important implication.”
Other co-authors on the study are Margarita Sala, graduate student in the SMU Psychology Department; Emily G. Marks, Simon C. Lee and Celette Skinner, who along with Tiro are at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center in Dallas; L. Aubree Shay, U.T. School of Public Health, San Antonio; Donna Persaud and Sobha Fuller, Parkland Health & Hospital System, Dallas; and Deborah J. Wiebe, University of California-Merced, Merced, Calif.
New approach simplifies the physics of running, enabling scientists to predict ground force patterns; applies to rehab, shoe design and athletic performance.
Researchers at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, have developed a concise approach to understanding the mechanics of human running. The research has immediate application for running performance, injury prevention, rehab and the individualized design of running shoes, orthotics and prostheses. The work integrates classic physics and human anatomy to link the motion of individual runners to their patterns of force application on the ground – during jogging, sprinting and at all speeds in between.
Researchers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas have developed a concise new explanation for the basic mechanics involved in human running.
The approach offers direct insight into the determinants of running performance and injuries, and could enable the use of individualized gait patterns to optimize the design of shoes, orthoses and prostheses according to biomechanics experts Kenneth Clark , Laurence Ryan and Peter Weyand, who authored the new study.
The ground force-time patterns determine the body’s motion coming out of each step and therefore directly determine running performance. The impact portion of the pattern is also believed to be a critical factor for running injuries.
“The human body is mechanically complex, but our new study indicates that the pattern of force on the ground can be accurately understood from the motion of just two body parts,” said Clark, first author on the study and currently an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
“The foot and the lower leg stop abruptly upon impact, and the rest of the body above the knee moves in a characteristic way,” Clark said. “This new simplified approach makes it possible to predict the entire pattern of force on the ground — from impact to toe-off — with very basic motion data.”
This new “two-mass model” from the SMU investigators substantially reduces the complexity of existing scientific explanations of the physics of running.
Existing explanations have generally relied upon relatively elaborate “multi-mass spring models” to explain the physics of running, but this approach is known to have significant limitations. These complex models were developed to evaluate rear-foot impacts at jogging speeds and only predict the early portion of the force pattern. In addition, they are less clearly linked to the human body itself. They typically divide the body into four or more masses and include numerous other variables that are hard to link to the actual parts of a human body.
The SMU model offers new insight by providing concise, accurate predictions of the ground force vs. time patterns throughout each instant of the contact period. It does so regardless of limb mechanics, foot-strike type and running speed.
“Our model inputs are limited to contact time on the ground, time in the air, and the motion of the ankle or lower limb. From three basic stride variables we are able to predict the full pattern of ground-force application,” said Ryan, who is a physicist and research engineer at SMU’s Locomotor Performance Laboratory.
“The approach opens up inexpensive ways to predict the ground reaction forces and tissue loading rates. Runners and other athletes can know the answer to the critical functional question of how they are contacting and applying force to the ground.” added Ryan.
Current methods for assessing patterns of ground force application require expensive in-ground force platforms or force treadmills. Additionally, the links between the motions of an athlete’s body parts and ground forces have previously been difficult to reduce to basic and accurate explanations.
“From both a running performance and injury risk standpoint, many investigations over the last 15 years have focused on the link between limb motion and force application,” said Weyand, who is the director of SMU’s Locomotor Performance Laboratory. “We’re excited that this research can shed light on this basic relationship.”
Overall force-time pattern is the sum of two parts
Traditional scientific explanations of foot-ground forces have utilized different types of spring and mass models ranging from complex to very simple. However, the existing models have not been able to fully account for all of the variation present in the force-time patterns of different runners — particularly at speeds faster than jogging. Consequently, a comprehensive basis for assessing performance differences, injury risks and general running mechanics has not been previously available.
The SMU researchers explain that the basic concept of the new approach is relatively simple — a runner’s pattern of force application on the ground is due to the motion of two parts of the body: the lower portion of the leg that is contacting the ground, and the sum total of the rest of the body.
The force contributions of the two body parts are each predicted from their largely independent, respective motions during the foot-ground contact period. The two force contributions are then combined to predict the overall pattern. The final prediction relies only upon classical physics and a characteristic link between the force and motion for the two body parts.
New approach can be applied accurately and inexpensively
The application of the two-mass approach is direct and immediate.
“Scientists, clinicians and performance specialists can directly apply the new information using the predictive approach provided in the manuscript,” Clark said. “The new science is well-suited to assessing patterns of ground-force application by athletes on running tracks and in performance training centers.”
These capabilities have not been possible previously, much less in the inexpensive and accurate manner that the new approach allows for with existing technology.
“The only requirement is a quality high-speed camera or decent motion sensor and our force-motion algorithms,” Clark said. “It’s conceivable that even shoe stores would benefit by implementing basic treadmill assessments to guide footwear selection from customer’s gait mechanics using the approach.”
A critical breakthrough for the SMU researchers was recognition that the mass contribution of the lower leg did not vary for heel vs. forefoot strikes and was directly quantifiable. Their efforts lead them to recognize the initial force contribution results from the quick stopping of the lower part of the leg — the shin, ankle and foot — which all come down and stop together when the foot hits the ground.
Olympic sprinters were a clue to discovery
The SMU team discovered a general way to quantify the impact forces from the large impacts observed from Olympic-caliber sprinters. Like heel strikers, the patterns of Olympic sprinters exhibit a sharp rising edge peak that results from an abrupt deceleration of the foot and lower leg. However, sprinters accomplish this with forefoot impacts rather than the heel-first landing that most joggers use.
“The world-class sprinters gave us a big signal to figure out the critical determinants of the shape of the waveform,” said Weyand. “Without their big impact forces, we would probably have not been able to recognize that the ground-force patterns of all runners, regardless of their foot-strike mechanics and running speed, have two basic parts.”
When the researchers first began to analyze the seemingly complicated force waveform signals, they found that they were actually composed of two very simple overlapping waveforms, Ryan said.
“Our computer generated the best pattern predictions when the timing of the first waveform coincided with the high-speed video of the ankle stopping on impact. This was true to within a millisecond, every single time. And we did it hundreds of times,” he said. “So we knew we had a direct physical relationship between force and motion that provided a critical insight.”
New approach has potential to diagnose injury, rehab
The SMU team’s new concise waveforms potentially have diagnostic possibilities, Weyand said.
For example, a runner’s pre-injury waveforms could be compared to their post-injury and post-rehab waveforms.
“You could potentially identify the asymmetries of runners with tibial stress fractures, Achilles tendonitis or other injuries by comparing the force patterns of their injured and healthy legs,” he said.
And while medical images could suggest the injury has healed, their waveforms might tell a different story.
“The waveform patterns might show the athlete continues to run with less force on the injured limb. So it may offer an inexpensive diagnostic tool that was not previously available,” Weyand said.
Weyand is Glenn Simmons Professor of Applied Physiology and professor of biomechanics in the Department of Applied Physiology and Wellness in SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.
Researchers at Southern Methodist University are putting many Smart Car/Smart City theories to real-world tests.
Reporter Dave Moore with Dallas Innovates covered the research of Khaled Abdelghany in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of the SMU Lyle School of Engineering. Abdelghany is an associate professor and chair of the department.
His research focuses on advanced traffic management systems, intermodal transportation networks, airlines scheduling and irregular operations, and crowd dynamics. The article, “SMU Students Taking Wireless Vehicle Tech to the Streets,” published Jan. 18, 2017.
By Dave Moore
Dallas Innovates
In urban areas, trips by cars and trucks are often unpleasant (and all-too-familiar) adventures in avoiding accidents, potholes, construction zones, and other drivers.
Researchers at Southern Methodist University are developing technologies that allow vehicles, traffic signals, and even construction signs to share information, to reduce unwanted surprises and drama on roadways.
While what Khaled Abdelghany and his team of researchers is up to sounds incredibly complex (because it is), the net result might lead drivers to do something as simple as stopping for a cup of coffee instead of sitting in traffic caused by an accident.
“With the information we’ve been collecting, perhaps someday, you will receive a message in your car that says ‘There’s congestion ahead; why don’t you stop and get a Starbucks?’ ” said Abdelghany, an associate professor in SMU’s Lyle Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.
Abdelghany is working on the project with four students in his department, and is collaborating with Dinesh Rajan and Joseph Camp, who are professors in SMU’s Lyle Electrical Engineering Department.
RESOLVING URBAN PROBLEMS WITH SMART TECH
Their research is part of a larger initiative to resolve long-standing urban problems.
SMU, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Texas at Arlington are taking part in a nationwide effort — called MetroLab Network — to solve lingering urban problems by pairing university researchers with cities and counties seeking solutions.
Launched by the White House in 2015, the MetroLab Network includes 34 cities, three counties, and 44 universities, organized into 30 regional city-university partnerships.
The Texas Research Alliance is coordinating research efforts locally. The resulting technology developed in North Texas is intended to be deployed at some point in Downtown Dallas’ West End, and, perhaps, scaled regionally or nationwide.
Abdelghany and his students chose to tackle the problem of traffic congestion for their MetroLab project in part because they had already been working on various iterations of the issue.
Over the past several years, Abdelghany has collected Dallas-area traffic data, for purposes of predicting future traffic jams, and to help develop strategies for routing traffic around tie-ups when they happen.
Parents and nonparents alike buffer their views of physical discipline and rate it more common, acceptable and effective when it’s labeled with a more neutral, less violent word
Parents and nonparents alike feel better about corporal punishment when it’s called ‘spanking’ rather than ‘hitting’ or ‘beating,’ according to a new study by researchers at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Study participants judged identical acts of a child’s misbehavior and the corporal punishment that followed it, but rated the discipline as better or worse simply depending on the verb used to describe it.
Discipline acts referred to as spank and swat were ranked as more effective and acceptable than those referred to as slap, hit or beat.
The findings of the study indicate that people buffer negative views of corporal punishment by calling it by a more culturally acceptable label, said psychologist Alan Brown, psychology professor at SMU and lead author on the research.
“Our findings suggest that the way child-discipline is described may alter the action’s implied intensity or physical harm, and its consequences such as emotional upset,” Brown said. “Calling a response to misbehavior a ‘swat’ may imply higher prevalence of that response as well as make it seem more justifiable and valid — even if the actual punishment is the same as an act described more harshly.”
Participants in the study rated the acts after reading and responding to hypothetical scenarios in which a mom disciplined her misbehaving son. Spank rated highest for commonness, acceptability and effectiveness, while beat ranked the worst, he said.
“The labels that we give to our experiences can have a moderate to profound influence on how we interpret and remember these events,” Brown said. “We found that altering the verb used to describe an act of corporal punishment can change perception of its effectiveness and acceptance of it.”
One implication of the study is that public health interventions to eliminate corporal punishment should focus on changing the semantics of discipline to reduce or prevent violence, say the authors. They cite UNICEF’s 2014 recommendation that “There is a need to eliminate words which maintain ‘social norms that hide violence in plain sight.’”
The psychologists endorse replacing the verb spank with the verb assault, as suggested by other researchers in the field, which they say could change the perception of spanking and reduce its use.
Labels can buffer how actions are perceived
Research consistently has found that corporal punishment does emotional and developmental harm to children and fails to improve a child’s behavior over the long run.
“Our belief is that it is never OK to discipline a child by striking them, and that various terms commonly used to describe such actions can buffer how these actions are perceived,” Brown said. “Our research demonstrated that ratings of how common, acceptable and effective an act of corporal punishment appears to be is significantly influenced by the word used to describe it.”
Co-author on the study was psychologist George Holden, a noted expert on parenting, discipline and family violence and co-author on the research and a professor in the SMU Department of Psychology.
The other co-author on the research was Rose Ashraf, a graduate student in SMU’s Department of Psychology.
Holden is a founding steering committee member and current president of the U.S. Alliance to End the Hitting of Children.
Study examined how different terms influence perceptions and actions
Participants were 191 nonparents and 481 parents.
The discipline scenarios were between a mom and her 5-year-old son. The mom and son varied with each scenario, which described a boy in eight acts of misbehavior: aggression, stealing, ignoring requests, deception, teasing, property destruction, animal cruelty and lying.
Study participants read each vignette of misbehavior, and the subsequent description of the mom’s response using a term commonly reflecting corporal punishment: spank, slap, swat, hit and beat.
The authors selected the labels from the most commonly used terms in the research literature for corporal punishment in American culture.
The hypothetical scenarios were brief and left context and details such as the seriousness of the transgression or the intentions of the misbehaving child to the respondents’ imaginations.
For example: “John continues to hit his sibling after his mother has asked him to stop. John’s mother ______ him.” The participants then rated the mother’s response on how common it was, how acceptable it was and how effective it was.
The purpose was to examine how differences in the terms influence perceptions of parental discipline, the authors said.
“Our study highlights the role of language in legitimizing violent parental behavior,” according to the authors in their article. “Altering the verb used to describe the same act of corporal punishment can have a substantial impact on how that parental response is evaluated, with some terms having a relative tempering effect (spank, swat) compared with others (hit, slap, beat).”
Genes common to both the human T-cell leukemia virus and high-risk human papillomaviruses activate survival mechanisms in cancer cells. An SMU lab, with National Cancer Institute funding, is hunting ways to inhibit those genes to halt the development of cancer.
SMU virologist and cancer researcher Robert L. Harrod has been awarded a $436,500 grant from the National Cancer Institute to further his lab’s research into how certain viruses cause cancers in humans.
Under two previous NCI grants, Harrod’s lab discovered that the human T-cell leukemia virus type-1, HTLV-1, and high-risk subtype human papillomaviruses, HPVs, share a common mechanism that plays a key role in allowing cancers to develop.
Now the lab will search for the biological mechanism — a molecular target — to intervene to block establishment and progression of virus-induced cancers. The hope is to ultimately develop a chemotherapy drug to block the growth of those tumor cells in patients.
“The general theme of our lab is understanding the key molecular events involved in how the viruses allow cancer to develop,” said Harrod, an associate professor in SMU’s Department of Biological Sciences whose research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of viral initiation of cancer formation.
While HTLV-1 and HPV are unrelated transforming viruses and lead to very different types of cancers, they’ve evolved a similar mechanism to cooperate with genes that cause cancer in different cell types. The lab discovered that the two viruses tap a common protein that cooperates with cellular genes to help the viruses hide from the immune system.
That common protein, the p30 protein of HTLV-1, binds to a different protein in the cell, p53, which normally has the job of suppressing cancerous growth or tumor development. Instead, however, p30 manages to subvert p53’s tumor suppressor functions, which in turn activates pro-survival pathways for the virus.
From there, the virus can hide inside the infected cell for two to three decades while evading host immune-surveillance pathways. As the cell divides, the virus divides and replicates. Then ultimately the deregulation of gene expression by viral encoded products causes cancer to develop.
“They are essentially using a similar mechanism, p30, to deregulate those pathways from their normal tumor-suppressing function,” Harrod said.
Tumor suppression, DNA damage-repair pathways, begin to fail with age
About 15 percent to 20 percent of all cancers are virus related. Worldwide, about 10 million people are infected with HTLV-1 and, as with other viral-induced cancers, about 3 percent to 5 percent of those infected go on to develop malignant disease.
Cancer is often associated with the process of normal aging, because our tumor suppression and DNA damage-repair pathways begin to break down and fail, explained Harrod. Our pathways don’t as easily repair genetic mutations, which makes us more susceptible to cancers like adult T-cell leukemia and HPV-associated cervical cancers or head-and-neck carcinomas, he said.
The human T-cell leukemia virus is transmitted through blood and body fluid contact, usually infecting infants and children via breastfeeding from their mother. A tropical infectious disease, it’s endemic to Southeast Asia, primarily Japan, Taiwan, China and Malaysia, as well as certain regions in the Middle East, Northern Africa and islands of the Caribbean. In the United States, Hawaii and Florida have the highest incidence of adult T-cell leukemia. HTLV-1 is highly resistant to most modern anticancer therapies, including radiotherapy and bone marrow or matching donor stem cell transplants. The life expectancy of patients with acute or lymphoma-stage disease is about six months to two years after diagnosis.
In the case of HPV, certain high-risk sub-types aren’t inhibited by today’s available HPV vaccines. It’s considered the high-risk HPVs are sexually transmitted through direct contact with the tissues of the virus-producing papillomas or warts. High-risk HPVs can also cause cervical cancers and head and neck carcinomas, many of which are associated with poor clinical outcomes and have high mortality rates.
How do viruses cause cancer?
For both HTLV-1 and HPV, the virus itself does not cause cancer to develop.
“It’s cooperating with oncogenes — cellular genes that become deregulated and have the potential to cause cancer,” Harrod said. “The role of these viruses, it seems, is to induce the proliferation of the cell affected with cancer. We’re trying to understand some of the molecular events that are associated with these cancers. ”
The lab’s three-year NCI grant runs through 2019. Harrod’s two previous grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health were also three-year-grants, for $435,000 and $162,000. Each one has targeted HTLV-1 and the p30 protein.
“We find that the p30 protein is involved in maintaining the latency of these viruses. These viruses have to persist in the body for 20 to 40 years before a person develops disease. To do that they have to hide from the immune response,” Harrod explained. “So p30 plays a role in silencing the viral genome so that the affected cells can hide, but at the same time it induces replication of the affected cells. So when the cell divides, the virus divides. We call that pro-viral replication.”
The term “latency maintenance factor” in reference to p30 originated with Harrod’s lab and has gained traction in the HTLV-1 field.
Under the lab’s second NCI grant, the researchers figured out how to block pro-survival pathways to kill tumor cells.
In the current grant proposal, Harrod’s lab demonstrated that by inhibiting specific downstream targets of p53 — essentially blocking pathways regulated by the p53 protein — they could cause infected tumor cells to collapse on themselves and undergo cell death.
“We do that independent of chemotherapy,” Harrod said. “So that was a big find for us.”
Goal is to eliminate cancer cells by inhibiting pathway
Each grant project builds upon the one before it, and the third grant extends the work, to now include high-risk HPVs.
“Now that we’ve shown we can block one or two of these factors to cause cell death, we’re starting to get an eye really on how we can inhibit these cancer cells and what potentially down the road may lead to a therapeutic,” Harrod said. “That’s the ultimate goal.”
One of the biggest challenges will be to inhibit the pathways in the tumor cells without targeting normal cells, he said. The lab’s recent findings indicate the researchers may soon be within reach of identifying a new strategy to eliminate cancer cells by inhibiting pathways key to their survival.
Harrod’s lab collaborates on the research with: Lawrence Banks, Tumor Virology Group Leader, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Trieste, Italy; Brenda Hernandez, Associate Director, Hawaii Tumor Registry, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu; and Patrick Green, Director, Center for Retrovirus Research, The Ohio State University. — Margaret Allen, SMU
“Recurring cancers have ‘learned’ how to evade chemotherapy by pumping it out of the cancer cells so that only sub-therapeutic concentrations remain in the cell, making the drug useless.” — SMU biochemist Pia Vogel
The SMU undergraduate students and Dallas-area high school students get hands-on experience working on cancer research in the combined SMU Department of Biological Sciences laboratories of Wise and Vogel.
The researchers and students are working to find ways to treat cancer patients whose cancer has either returned after initial chemotherapy or was initially hard to treat using chemotherapeutics. The research is funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.
Students recently in the lab included Victoria Bennet, Hockaday School, and Shaffin Siddiqui and Robert Luo, both from Highland Park High School. SMU undergraduates included Hamilton Scholar Alexis Sunshine, Clinton Osifo, Stefanie Lohse, Brianna Ramirez, Henry Thornton, Shirely Liu, Justin Musser, Jake Oien and Michael Fowler. Also currently working in the lab are M.S. student and Hamilton Scholar Collette Marchesseau (2016 SMU graduate), and Ph.D. students Amila Nanayakkara, Mike Chen, Courtney Follit, Maisa Oliveira and James McCormick.
“Often, recurring cancers have ‘learned’ how to evade chemotherapy by pumping the therapeutic out of the cancer cells so that only sub-therapeutic concentrations remain in the cell, making the drug useless,” said Vogel, a professor and director of the SMU interdisciplinary research institute, the Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery.
The pumps that do the work are proteins that span the cell membranes and use the biological fuel ATP to actively pump chemotherapeutics and other toxins out of the cells.
“We like to compare these proteins to biological sump pumps,” said Wise, associate professor.
Wise and Vogel use a combination of computational, biochemical and human cell-based techniques to find new drug-like compounds that inhibit the action of the pumps. If successful, the novel drugs — or derivatives of them — will be given to patients with therapy-resistant cancer together with the chemotherapeutic.
“Since our novel compounds block the pumps, the chemotherapeutic will remain in the cell and kill the cancer that had not been treatable previously,” Vogel said.
The researchers have discovered drug-like compounds that can be modified and developed into medicines that target the protein, called P-glycoprotein.
The SMU researchers discovered the compounds after virtually screening more than 10 million small drug-like compounds made publically available in digital form from the pharmacology database Zinc at the University of California, San Francisco.
Using SMU’s Maneframe high performance computer, Wise ran the compounds through a computer-generated model of the protein. The virtual model, designed and built by Wise, is the first computational microscope of its kind to simulate the actual behavior of P-glycoprotein in the human body, including interactions with drug-like compounds while taking on different shapes. The promising compounds were then tested in the lab.
“We have been quite successful and already have identified close to 20 novel compounds that block the pumps in our cell-based assays,” said Wise. “In these experiments we culture therapy-resistant prostate or ovarian or colon cancer cells in the lab and then show that we can kill these cancer cells using normal amounts of commonly available therapeutics in the presence of our novel compounds — even though in the absence of our novel compounds, the cancer cells would not be treatable.”
A pharmaceutical hit compound, like those discovered by Vogel and her co-authors, is a compound that is a promising candidate for chemical modification so it can eventually be delivered to patients as a therapeutic drug. In the case reported here, the compounds were commercially available for testing. The timeline from drug discovery to development to clinical trials and approval can take a decade or more.
SMU undergraduates and high school students experience world-class research
SMU undergraduate and high school students have been involved in different aspects of the research. Typically the beginning students work together with graduate or advanced undergraduate students to learn techniques used in the lab.
Some perform small research projects. Others have simply learned state-of-the-art techniques and “how science works” in the context of critical human health problems.
“High school student Robert Luo was interested in the computational side of our work, so he’s worked with senior SMU Ph.D. candidate James McCormick on trying to evaluate how strongly one of the therapy-sensitizing compounds we found potentially interacts with the pump protein at different proposed binding sites,” said Wise. “It is actually a significant project and will help with our research.”
The opportunities available for students to learn how science works using high performance computing, biochemistry and cell biology can be valuable even for those who won’t necessarily become practicing scientists, said Wise, citing as an example a recent SMU graduate who previously worked in the lab.
“Ketetha Olengue (SMU ’15) is a good example,” he said. “She is now in her second year at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, where she is pursuing her M.D. degree in a novel program with USC Engineering.” — Margaret Allen, SMU
One of the longest Etruscan texts ever found, the inscription’s mention of Uni may indicate she was patroness of the Poggio Colla cult, with stone’s language spelling out ceremonial religious rituals
Archaeologists translating a very rare inscription on an ancient Etruscan temple stone have discovered the name Uni — an important female goddess.
The discovery indicates that Uni — a divinity of fertility and possibly a mother goddess at this particular place — may have been the titular deity worshipped at the sanctuary of Poggio Colla, a key settlement in Italy for the ancient Etruscan civilization.
The mention is part of a sacred text that is possibly the longest such Etruscan inscription ever discovered on stone, said archaeologist Gregory Warden, professor emeritus at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, main sponsor of the archaeological dig.
Scientists on the research discovered the ancient stone slab embedded as part of a temple wall at Poggio Colla, a dig where many other Etruscan objects have been found, including a ceramic fragment with the earliest birth scene in European art. That object reinforces the interpretation of a fertility cult at Poggio Colla, Warden said.
Now Etruscan language experts are studying the 500-pound slab — called a stele (STEE-lee) — to translate the text. It’s very rare to identify the god or goddess worshipped at an Etruscan sanctuary.
“The location of its discovery — a place where prestigious offerings were made — and the possible presence in the inscription of the name of Uni, as well as the care of the drafting of the text, which brings to mind the work of a stone carver who faithfully followed a model transmitted by a careful and educated scribe, suggest that the document had a dedicatory character,” said Adriano Maggiani, formerly Professor at the University of Venice and one of the scholars working to decipher the inscription.
“It is also possible that it expresses the laws of the sanctuary — a series of prescriptions related to ceremonies that would have taken place there, perhaps in connection with an altar or some other sacred space,” said Warden, co-director and principal investigator of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project that made the discovery.
Warden said it will be easier to speak with more certainty once the archaeologists are able to completely reconstruct the text, which consists of as many as 120 characters or more. While archaeologists understand how Etruscan grammar works, and know some of its words and alphabet, they expect to discover new words never seen before, particularly since this discovery veers from others in that it’s not a funerary text.
The Mugello Valley archaeologists had planned to announce discovery of the goddess Uni at an exhibit in Florence on Aug. 27, “Scrittura e culto a Poggio Colla, un santuario etrusco nel Mugello,” and in a forthcoming article in the scholarly journal Etruscan Studies. The exhibit opening has been delayed to Sept. 2 due to the recent devastating earthquake in areas of Italy unrelated to the Poggio Colla research.
Text may specify the religious ritual for temple ceremonies dedicated to the goddess
It’s possible the text contains the dedication of the sanctuary, or some part of it, such as the temple proper, so the expectation is that it will reveal the early beliefs of a lost culture fundamental to western traditions.
The sandstone slab, which dates to the 6th century BCE and is nearly four feet tall by more than two feet wide, was discovered in the final stages of two decades of digging at Mugello Valley, which is northeast of Florence in north central Italy.
Etruscans once ruled Rome, influencing that civilization in everything from religion and government to art and architecture. A highly cultured people, Etruscans were also very religious and their belief system permeated all aspects of their culture and life.
Inscription may reveal data to understand concepts and rituals, writing and language
Permanent Etruscan inscriptions are rare, as Etruscans typically used linen cloth books or wax tablets. The texts that have been preserved are quite short and are from graves, thus funerary in nature.
“We can at this point affirm that this discovery is one of the most important Etruscan discoveries of the last few decades,” Warden said. “It’s a discovery that will provide not only valuable information about the nature of sacred practices at Poggio Colla, but also fundamental data for understanding the concepts and rituals of the Etruscans, as well as their writing and perhaps their language.”
Besides being possibly the longest Etruscan inscription on stone, it is also one of the three longest sacred texts to date.
One section of the text refers to “tinaś,” a reference to Tina, the name of the supreme deity of the Etruscans. Tina was equivalent to ancient Greece’s Zeus or Rome’s Jupiter.
Slab was once an imposing and monumental symbol of authority
The slab was discovered embedded in the foundations of a monumental temple where it had been buried for more than 2,500 years. At one time it would have been displayed as an imposing and monumental symbol of authority, said Warden, president and professor of archaeology at Franklin University Switzerland.
The text is being studied by two noted experts on the Etruscan language, including Maggiani, who is an epigrapher, and Rex Wallace, professor of classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who is a comparative linguist.
A hologram of the stele will be shown at the Florence exhibit, as conservation of the stele is ongoing at the conservation laboratories of the Archaeological Superintendency in Florence. Digital documentation is being done by experts from the architecture department of the University of Florence. The sandstone is heavily abraded and chipped, so cleaning should allow scholars to read the inscription.
Other objects unearthed in the past 20 years have shed light on Etruscan worship, beliefs, gifts to divinities, and discoveries related to the daily lives of elites and non-elites, including workshops, kilns, pottery and homes. The material helps document ritual activity from the 7th century to the 2nd century BCE.
Besides SMU, other collaborating institutions at Mugello Valley Archaeological Project include Franklin and Marshall College, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, the Center for the Study of Ancient Italy at The University of Texas at Austin, The Open University (UK), and Franklin University Switzerland. — Margaret Allen, SMU
Four years after Oscar Pistorius made history at the London Olympics, the question remains unanswered
Science writer Larry Greenemeier cited the research of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand for an article in Scientific American that examines the pros and cons of carbon-fiber blade prosthetics used by athlete amputees.
Greenemeier cites Weyand’s research findings from a study of Olympic blade-runner Oscar Pistorius to determine whether the double-amputee had a competitive advantage from his carbon-fiber prosthetic legs. The article “Blade Runners: Do High-Tech Prostheses Give Runners an Unfair Advantage?” published Aug. 5, 2016.
Weyand, director of the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory, is one of the world’s leading scholars on the scientific basis of human performance. His research on runners, specifically world-class sprinters, looks at the importance of ground forces for running speed, and has established a contemporary understanding that spans the scientific and athletic communities.
In particular, Weyand’s finding that speed athletes are not able to reposition their legs more rapidly than non-athletes debunked a widespread belief. Rather, Weyand and his colleagues have demonstrated sprinting performance is largely set by the force with which one presses against the ground and how long one applies that force.
By Larry Greenemeier
Scientific American
Paralympic long jump champ Markus Rehm’s bid to compete in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics fell short in July when he could not prove that his carbon-fiber “blade” prosthesis didn’t give him an advantage. His baffling case serves as a reminder that four years after South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius propelled himself into history as the first amputee Olympic athlete to compete using blade prostheses, the technology’s impact on performance remains unclear despite ongoing research.
Blade prostheses, like Rehm uses on his right leg and Pistorius used on both, share some characteristics with biological limbs. The blades store energy as they bear the runner’s weight and then release it as the runner pushes off the ground, much the way a leg’s calf muscles and Achilles’ tendons spring and recoil. But an important difference is the foot, which on a blade prosthetic does not pivot or generate its own energy. A biological foot has muscle fibers that help it push off the ground in a way that creates “metabolic efficiency so your muscles don’t have to put all of the work back in with every step as you’re running,” says David Morgenroth, an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine…
…Shortly after track and field’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), banned Pistorius in 2008 from competing against so-called “able-bodied” competitors, he underwent a series of tests at Rice University’s Locomotion Laboratory in an attempt to be reinstated. The researchers concluded that Pistorius used 17 percent less energy than that of elite sprinters on intact limbs. The tests also revealed that it took the South African 21 percent less time to reposition, or swing, his legs between strides. Big disagreements arose over how to interpret the research.
Southern Methodist University’s Peter Weyand and Matt Bundle from the University of Montana saw a clear overall advantage in Pistorius’s faster leg swings and more energy-efficient stride, which they said could create up to a seven-second advantage in the 400-meter race. “The more mass you have closer to the axis—in this case, your hips—the easier it is to stop the rotation and then turn it around,” Bundle says. “Whereas if you had that same amount of mass located a long way away from the axis—in your lower legs and feet—it becomes much more difficult to stop it and get it going in the opposite direction.”
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its experiments are back in action, now taking physics data for 2016 to get an improved understanding of fundamental physics.
Following its annual winter break, the most powerful collider in the world has been switched back on.
Geneva-based CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — an accelerator complex and its experiments — has been fine-tuned using low-intensity beams and pilot proton collisions, and now the LHC and the experiments are ready to take an abundance of data.
The goal is to improve our understanding of fundamental physics, which ultimately in decades to come can drive innovation and inventions by researchers in other fields.
Scientists from SMU’s Department of Physics are among the several thousand physicists worldwide who contribute on the LHC research.
“All of us here hope that some of the early hints will be confirmed and an unexpected physics phenomenon will show up,” said Ryszard Stroynowski, SMU professor and a principal investigator on the LHC. “If something new does appear, we will try to contribute to the understanding of what it may be.”
SMU physicists work on the LHC’s ATLAS experiment. Run 1 of the Large Hadron Collider made headlines in 2012 when scientists observed in the data a new fundamental particle, the Higgs boson. The collider was then paused for an extensive upgrade and came back much more powerful than before. As part of Run 2, physicists on the Large Hadron Collider’s experiments are analyzing new proton collision data to unravel the structure of the Higgs.
The Higgs was the last piece of the puzzle for the Standard Model — a theory that offers the best description of the known fundamental particles and the forces that govern them. In 2016 the ATLAS and CMS collaborations of the LHC will study this boson in depth.
Over the next three to four months there is a need to verify the measurements of the Higgs properties taken in 2015 at lower energies with less data, Stroynowski said.
“We also must check all hints of possible deviations from the Standard Model seen in the earlier data — whether they were real effects or just statistical fluctuations,” he said. “In the long term, over the next one to two years, we’ll pursue studies of the Higgs decays to heavy b quarks leading to the understanding of how one Higgs particle interacts with other Higgs particles.”
In addition, the connection between the Higgs Boson and the bottom quark is an important relationship that is well-described in the Standard Model but poorly understood by experiments, said Stephen Sekula, SMU associate professor. The SMU ATLAS group will continue work started last year to study the connection, Sekula said.
“We will be focused on measuring this relationship in both Standard Model and Beyond-the-Standard Model contexts,” he said.
SMU physicists also study Higgs-boson interactions with the most massive known particle, the top-quark, said Robert Kehoe, SMU associate professor.
“This interaction is also not well-understood,” Kehoe said. “Our group continues to focus on the first direct measurement of the strength of this interaction, which may reveal whether the Higgs mechanism of the Standard Model is truly fundamental.”
All those measurements are key goals in the ATLAS Run 2 and beyond physics program, Sekula said. In addition, none of the ultimate physics goals can be achieved without faultless operation of the complex ATLAS detector, its software and data acquisition system.
“The SMU group maintains work on operations, improvements and maintenance of two components of ATLAS — the Liquid Argon Calorimeter and data acquisition trigger,” Stroynowski said.
Intensity of the beam to increase, supplying six times more proton collisions
Following a short commissioning period, the LHC operators will now increase the intensity of the beams so that the machine produces a larger number of collisions.
“The LHC is running extremely well,” said CERN Director for Accelerators and Technology, Frédérick Bordry. “We now have an ambitious goal for 2016, as we plan to deliver around six times more data than in 2015.”
The LHC’s collisions produce subatomic fireballs of energy, which morph into the fundamental building blocks of matter. The four particle detectors located on the LHC’s ring allow scientists to record and study the properties of these building blocks and look for new fundamental particles and forces.
This is the second year the LHC will run at a collision energy of 13 TeV. During the first phase of Run 2 in 2015, operators mastered steering the accelerator at this new higher energy by gradually increasing the intensity of the beams.
“The restart of the LHC always brings with it great emotion”, said Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director General. “With the 2016 data the experiments will be able to perform improved measurements of the Higgs boson and other known particles and phenomena, and look for new physics with an increased discovery potential.”
New exploration can begin at higher energy, with much more data
Beams are made of “trains” of bunches, each containing around 100 billion protons, moving at almost the speed of light around the 27-kilometre ring of the LHC. These bunch trains circulate in opposite directions and cross each other at the center of experiments. Last year, operators increased the number of proton bunches up to 2,244 per beam, spaced at intervals of 25 nanoseconds. These enabled the ATLAS and CMS collaborations to study data from about 400 million million proton–proton collisions. In 2016 operators will increase the number of particles circulating in the machine and the squeezing of the beams in the collision regions. The LHC will generate up to 1 billion collisions per second in the experiments.
“In 2015 we opened the doors to a completely new landscape with unprecedented energy. Now we can begin to explore this landscape in depth,” said CERN Director for Research and Computing Eckhard Elsen.
Between 2010 and 2013 the LHC produced proton-proton collisions with 8 Tera-electronvolts of energy. In the spring of 2015, after a two-year shutdown, LHC operators ramped up the collision energy to 13 TeV. This increase in energy enables scientists to explore a new realm of physics that was previously inaccessible. Run II collisions also produce Higgs bosons — the groundbreaking particle discovered in LHC Run I — 25 percent faster than Run I collisions and increase the chances of finding new massive particles by more than 40 percent.
But there are still several questions that remain unanswered by the Standard Model, such as why nature prefers matter to antimatter, and what dark matter consists of, despite it potentially making up one quarter of our universe.
The huge amounts of data from the 2016 LHC run will enable physicists to challenge these and many other questions, to probe the Standard Model further and to possibly find clues about the physics that lies beyond it.
The physics run with protons will last six months. The machine will then be set up for a four-week run colliding protons with lead ions.
“We’re proud to support more than a thousand U.S. scientists and engineers who play integral parts in operating the detectors, analyzing the data, and developing tools and technologies to upgrade the LHC’s performance in this international endeavor,” said Jim Siegrist, Associate Director of Science for High Energy Physics in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. “The LHC is the only place in the world where this kind of research can be performed, and we are a fully committed partner on the LHC experiments and the future development of the collider itself.”
The four largest LHC experimental collaborations, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb, now start to collect and analyze the 2016 data. Their broad physics program will be complemented by the measurements of three smaller experiments — TOTEM, LHCf and MoEDAL — which focus with enhanced sensitivity on specific features of proton collisions. — SMU, CERN and Fermilab
Analysis of exploding star’s light curve and color spectrum reveal spectacular demise of one of the closest supernova to Earth in recent years; its parent star was so big it’s radius was 200 times larger than our sun
A giant star that exploded 30 million years ago in a galaxy near Earth had a radius prior to going supernova that was 200 times larger than our sun, according to astrophysicists at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
The sudden blast hurled material outward from the star at a speed of 10,000 kilometers a second. That’s equivalent to 36 million kilometers an hour or 22.4 million miles an hour, said SMU physicist Govinda Dhungana, lead author on the new analysis.
The comprehensive analysis of the exploding star’s light curve and color spectrum have revealed new information about the existence and sudden death of supernovae in general, many aspects of which have long baffled scientists.
“There are so many characteristics we can derive from the early data,” Dhungana said. “This was a big massive star, burning tremendous fuel. When it finally reached a point its core couldn’t support the gravitational pull inward, suddenly it collapsed and then exploded.”
The massive explosion was one of the closest to Earth in recent years, visible as a point of light in the night sky starting July 24, 2013, said Robert Kehoe, SMU physics professor, who leads SMU’s astrophysics team.
The explosion, termed by astronomers Supernova 2013ej, in a galaxy near our Milky Way was equal in energy output to the simultaneous brightness of 100 million of the Earth’s suns.
The star was one of billions in the spiral galaxy M74 in the constellation Pisces.
Considered close by supernova standards, SN 2013ej was in fact so far away that light from the explosion took 30 million years to reach Earth. At that distance, even such a large explosion was only visible by telescopes.
Dhungana and colleagues were able to explore SN 2013ej via a rare collection of extensive data from seven ground-based telescopes and NASA’s Swift satellite.
The data span a time period prior to appearance of the supernova in July 2013 until more than 450 days after.
The team measured the supernova’s evolving temperature, its mass, its radius, the abundance of a variety of chemical elements in its explosion and debris and its distance from Earth. They also estimated the time of the shock breakout, the bright flash from the shockwave of the explosion.
The star’s original mass was about 15 times that of our sun, Dhungana said. Its temperature was a hot 12,000 Kelvin (approximately 22,000 degrees Fahrenheit) on the tenth day after the explosion, steadily cooling until it reached 4,500 Kelvin after 50 days. The sun’s surface is 5,800 Kelvin, while the Earth’s core is estimated to be about 6,000 Kelvin.
Shedding new light on supernovae, mysterious objects of our universe
Supernovae occur throughout the universe, but they are not fully understood. Scientists don’t directly observe the explosions but instead detect changes in emerging light as material is hurled from the exploding star in the seconds and days after the blast.
Telescopes such as SMU’s robotic ROTSE-IIIb telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas, watch our sky and pick up the light as a point of brightening light. Others, such as the Hobby Eberly telescope, also at McDonald, observe a spectrum.
SN 2013ej is M74’s third supernova in just 10 years. That is quite frequent compared to our Milky Way, which has had a scant one supernova observed over the past 400 years. NASA estimates that the M74 galaxy consists of 100 billion stars.
M74 is one of only a few dozen galaxies first cataloged by the astronomer Charles Messier in the late 1700s. It has a spiral structure — also the Milky Way’s apparent shape — indicating it is still undergoing star formation, as opposed to being an elliptical galaxy in which new stars no longer form.
It’s possible that planets were orbiting SN 2013ej’s progenitor star prior to it going supernova, in which case those objects would have been obliterated by the blast, Kehoe said.
“If you were nearby, you wouldn’t know there was a problem beforehand, because at the surface you can’t see the core heating up and collapsing,” Kehoe said. “Then suddenly it explodes — and you’re toast.”
Distances to nearby galaxies help determine cosmic distance ladder
Scientists remain unsure whether supernovae leave behind a black hole or a neutron star like a giant atomic nucleus the size of a city.
“The core collapse and how it produces the explosion is particularly tricky,” Kehoe said. “Part of what makes SN 2013ej so interesting is that astronomers are able to compare a variety of models to better understand what is happening. Using some of this information, we are also able to calculate the distance to this object. This allows us a new type of object with which to study the larger universe, and maybe someday dark energy.”
Being 30 million light years away, SN 2013ej was a relatively nearby extragalactic event, according to Jozsef Vinko, astrophysicist at Konkoly Observatory and University of Szeged in Hungary.
“Distances to nearby galaxies play a significant role in establishing the so-called cosmic distance ladder, where each rung is a galaxy at a known distance.”
Vinko provided important data from telescopes at Konkoly Observatory and Hungary’s Baja Observatory and carried out distance measurement analysis on SN 2013ej.
“Nearby supernovae are especially important,” Vinko said. “Paradoxically, we know the distances to the nearest galaxies less certainly than to the more distant ones. In this particular case we were able to combine the extensive datasets of SN 2013ej with those of another supernova, SN 2002ap, both of which occurred in M74, to suppress the uncertainty of their common distance derived from those data.”
Supernova spectrum analysis is like taking a core sample
While stars appear to be static objects that exist indefinitely, in reality they are primarily a burning ball, fueled by the fusion of elements, including hydrogen and helium into heavier elements. As they exhaust lighter elements, they must contract in the core and heat up to burn heavier elements. Over time, they fuse the various chemical elements of the periodic table, proceeding from lightest to heaviest. Initially they fuse helium into carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Those elements then fuel the fusion of progressively heavier elements such as sulfur, argon, chlorine and potassium.
“Studying the spectrum of a supernova over time is like taking a core sample,” Kehoe said. “The calcium in our bones, for example, was cooked in a star. A star’s nuclear fusion is always forging heavier and heavier elements. At the beginning of the universe there was only hydrogen and helium. The other elements were made in stars and in supernovae. The last product to get created is iron, which is an element that is so heavy it can’t be burned as fuel.”
Dhungana’s spectrum analysis of SN 2013ej revealed many elements, including hydrogen, helium, calcium, titanium, barium, sodium and iron.
“When we have as many spectra as we have for this supernova at different times,” Kehoe added, “we are able to look deeper and deeper into the original star, sort of like an X-ray or a CAT scan.”
SN 2013ej’s short-lived existence was just tens of millions of years
Analysis of SN 2013ej’s spectrum from ultraviolet through infrared indicates light from the explosion reached Earth July 23, 2013. It was discovered July 25, 2013 by the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope at California’s Lick Observatory. A look back at images captured by SMU’s ROTSE-IIIb showed that SMU’s robotic telescope detected the supernova several hours earlier, Dhungana said.
“These observations were able to show a rapidly brightening supernova that started just 20 hours beforehand,” he said. “The start of the supernova, termed ‘shock breakout,’ corresponds to the moment when the internal explosion crashes through the star’s outer layers.”
Like many others, SN 2013ej was a Type II supernova. That is a massive star still undergoing nuclear fusion. Once iron is fused, the fuel runs out, causing the core to collapse. Within a quarter second the star explodes.
Supernovae have death and birth written all over them
Massive stars typically have a shorter life span than smaller ones.
“SN 2013ej probably lived tens of millions of years,” Kehoe said. “In universe time, that’s the blink of an eye. It’s not very long-lived at all compared to our sun, which will live billions of years. Even though these stars are bigger and have a lot more fuel, they burn it really fast, so they just get hotter and hotter until they just gobble up the matter and burn it.”
For most of its brief life, SN 2013ej would probably have burned hydrogen, which then fused to helium, burning for a few hundred thousand years, then perhaps carbon and oxygen for a few hundred days, calcium for a few months and silicon for several days.
“Supernovae have death and birth written all over them,” Kehoe said. “Not only do they create the elements we are made of, but the shockwave that goes out from the explosion — that’s where our solar system comes from.”
Outflowing material slams into clouds of material in interstellar space, causing it to collapse and form a solar system.
“The heavy elements made in the supernova and its parent star are those which comprise the bulk of terrestrial planets, like Earth, and are necessary for life,” Kehoe said.
Besides physicists in the SMU Department of Physics, researchers on the project also included scientists from the University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary; the University of Texas, Austin, Texas; Konkoly Observatory, Budapest, Hungary; and the University of California, Berkeley, Calif. — Margaret Allen
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Video reporter Ben Kruger with CNN covered SMU-sponsored research at Italy’s Poggio Colla site where archaeologists have found what may be rare sacred text in the lost language of the Etruscans. The text is inscribed on a large 6th century BC sandstone slab and could reveal name of the god or goddess that was worshipped at the site.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Archaeologists in Italy recently uncovered an ancient slab that could unlock mysteries of the Etruscan culture. Here’s what scientists are hoping it will tell them.
For more information
To book a live or taped interview with Gregory Warden, call SMU News, 214-768-7654, or email news@smu.edu.
Video journalist Grace Raver at TECH Insider covered SMU sponsored research at Italy’s Poggio Colla site where archaeologists have found what may be rare sacred text in the lost language of the Etruscans. The text is inscribed on a large 6th century BC sandstone slab and could reveal name of the god or goddess that was worshipped at the site.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Researchers found the inscribed slab near Florence and believe it might hold secrets behind the language of Italy’s pre-Roman culture
Science reporter Rossella Lorenzi Discovery News segment “Digging History” covered SMU sponsored research at Italy’s Poggio Colla site where archaeologists have found what may be rare sacred text in the lost language of the Etruscans. The text is inscribed on a large 6th century BC sandstone slab and could reveal name of the god or goddess that was worshipped at the site.
By Rosella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Archaeologists have unearthed an inscribed sandstone slab in Italy that features what may be a rare sacred text written in the mysterious Etruscan language.
The finding promises to yield a wealth of new knowledge about one of the ancient world’s most fascinating and mysterious civilizations.
Weighing about 500 pounds and nearly four feet tall by two feet wide, the slab was unearthed at Poggio Colla, some 22 miles miles north-east of Florence in the Mugello Valley.
Intact, Packed Etruscan Tomb Found
The stone had been buried for more than 2,500 years in the foundations of a monumental temple at the Etruscan site. It was heavily abraded and chipped, with one side reddened possibly from burning.
According to archaeologist Gregory Warden, co-director and principal investigator of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which made the discovery, the 6th-century B.C. slab has at least 70 legible letters and punctuation marks.
“Now if we could only unravel that text,” Warden, professor emeritus at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, told Discovery News.
Skeleton of Ancient Prince Reveals Etruscan Life
He explained that it will probably take months of study by Rex Wallace, a noted expert on the Etruscan language at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, before the researchers can say anything definitive about the text written on the stele, as such slabs are called.
“At this point we have just finished cleaning the stele, and Professor Wallace is working from photos. He will return to Italy in June to continue to work on it,” Warden said.
Warden speculates the text may refer to a goddess that was worshiped at the site.
“The center of worship was an underground fissure that was ritually treated after the destruction of the temple,” Warden said.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Researchers found the inscribed slab near Florence and believe it might hold secrets behind the language of Italy’s pre-Roman culture
The Fox News segment “Digging History” covered SMU sponsored research at Italy’s Poggio Colla site where archaeologists have found what may be rare sacred text in the lost language of the Etruscans. The text is inscribed on a large 6th century BC sandstone slab and could reveal name of the god or goddess that was worshipped at the site.
Fox News
Archaeologists have unearthed a rare text from an ancient temple in Italy that could reveal new details about the Etruscan civilization.
The text is inscribed on a large sandstone slab from the 6th century B.C. and may provide insight into Etruscan worship of a god or goddess.
“This is probably going to be a sacred text, and will be remarkable for telling us about the early belief system of a lost culture that is fundamental to western traditions,” said archaeologist Gregory Warden, in a statement released by Southern Methodist University.
Warden, professor of archaeology at Franklin University, Switzerland, is professor emeritus at Southern Methodist University and co-director and principal investigator of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which made the discovery.
The Etruscan civilization existed from approximately the 8th century B.C. to the 3rd century in what is now central and northern Italy. Etruscans influenced many aspects of the Roman Empire, such as religion, government, art and architecture, according to experts.
Weighing about 500 pounds, the slab is nearly four feet tall and more than two feet wide. Warden notes that the slab has about 70 legible letters and punctuation marks.
The slab, or stele, was found in the foundations of an Etruscan temple northeast of Florence, where it had been buried for more than 2,500 years.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Researchers found the inscribed slab near Florence and believe it might hold secrets behind the language of Italy’s pre-Roman culture
Science reporter Jason Daley with Smithsonian covered SMU sponsored research at Italy’s Poggio Colla site where archaeologists have found what may be rare sacred text in the lost language of the Etruscans. The text is inscribed on a large 6th century BC sandstone slab and could reveal name of the god or goddess that was worshipped at the site.
By Jason Daley
Smithsonian.com
We know a lot about the ancient Romans—from their legal system to how they liked to cook their chicken stew. We have thousands of monuments, books, and archeological sites detailing their accomplishments and famous individuals. But before 500 B.C. when the Romans took over, the Estruscans ruled the central and northern portion of the Italian peninsula. And this culture remains an enigma to modern archaeologists.
Of particular mystery is the Estruscan language, which doesn’t seem related to other nearby languages. And researchers have uncovered few inscriptions or documents to help us figure it out—until now. Archaeologists of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project recently uncovered a 500-pound, four-foot by two-foot stele, or monumental marker at Poggio Colla site, northeast of Florence. The sandstone slab originally stood in front of an Etruscan temple and is inscribed with 70 legible letters and punctuation marks.
“We hope to make inroads into the Etruscan language,” Gregory Warden, co-director and principal investigator of the project who made the discovery, says in a press release. “Long inscriptions are rare, especially one this long, so there will be new words that we have never seen before, since it is not a funerary text.”
Most of what historians know about the Etruscans comes from their elaborate burials, which are still sometimes found in the Italian countryside. But it has been difficult finding documents about their government, daily life, and other aspects of Etruscan culture. Even though scholars know they were one of the most religious peoples in the ancient world, they don’t even know the names of their gods, though Warden hopes the new stele may finally reveal that.
“Inscriptions of more than a few words, on permanent materials, are rare for the Etruscans, who tended to use perishable media like linen cloth books or wax tablets,” Etruscan scholar Jean MacIntosh Turfa of the University of Pennsylvania Museum says in the release. “This stone stele is evidence of a permanent religious cult with monumental dedications, at least as early as the Late Archaic Period, from about 525 to 480 BCE. Its re-use in the foundations of a slightly later sanctuary structure points to deep changes in the town and its social structure.”
Researchers are currently cleaning and scanning the stele in Florence, and they will turn the inscriptions over to an expert in the Etruscan language to decipher the text after that.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Secondo gli scienziati il testo riportato sulla pietra potrebbe dare un contributo decisivo alla ricostruzione del linguaggio di questo popolo.
Italian newspaper Il Tirreno in Italy covered SMU sponsored research at Italy’s Poggio Colla site where archaeologists have found what may be rare sacred text in the lost language of the Etruscans. The text is inscribed on a large 6th century BC sandstone slab and could reveal name of the god or goddess that was worshipped at the site.
Il Tirreno
FIRENZE. E’ una scoperta che potrebbe dare un contributo decisivo per ricostruire il linguaggio degli Etruschi. Un gruppo di ricercatori del Mugello Valley Archaeological Project ha portato alla luce una stele che riporta una scrittura etrusca. La scoperta è stata fatta nel sito di Poggio Colla in Toscana. La pietra, che pesa 227 chili ed è alta poco più di un metro, faceva parte di un tempio sacro che 2500 anni fa venne demolito per costruirne uno più grande.
La stele si presenta ben conservata. Contiene 70 lettere leggibili e segni di punteggiatura, caratteristiche che la rendono uno dei più lunghi esempi di scrittura etrusca mai rinvenuti finora. Gli scienziati sono convinti che le parole e i concetti sulla stele siano una rarissima testimonianza di questa civiltà, considerando che finora le nostre conoscenze sugli etruschi sono legate unicamente a, necropoli, tombe e oggetti funerari. La traduzione del testo sarà affidata all’Università del Massachusetts di Amherst.
“Le scoperte etrusche in Mugello, che hanno portato poi alla realizzazione del bellissimo Museo comprensoriale di Dicomano, trovano con la stele scavata dal Mugello Archaeological Project un punto di riferimento essenziale”. Lo afferma il presidente del Consiglio regionale Eugenio Giani, in una nota sul ritrovamento nel sito di Poggio Colla.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Il ritrovamento di un stele etrusca potrebbe aiutare a ricostruire il linguaggio di questo popolo antico, arricchendo anche lo studio sul funzionamento delle città e della società.
Italian science reporter Anna Lisa Bonfranceschi with Wired in Italy covered SMU sponsored research at Italy’s Poggio Colla site where archaeologists have found what may be rare sacred text in the lost language of the Etruscans. The text is inscribed on a large 6th century BC sandstone slab and could reveal name of the god or goddess that was worshipped at the site.
By Anna Lisa Bonfranceschi
Wired.it
Alta più di un metro e pesante oltre 200 chili, ricorda la stele di Rosetta. Ma invece di essere egiziana è etrusca e contiene circa 70 lettere e alcuni tratti di punteggiatura – un linguaggio in parte perso – che potrebbe aiutare a capire qualcosa di più sulla cultura degli antichi Etruschi, ricostruita soprattutto grazie alle necropoli e agli oggetti funerari.
La lastra in questione risale a 2.500 anni fa, è in arenaria ed è stata ritrovata nel sito di Poggio Colla, in Toscana, nelle fondamenta di un tempio, dove probabilmente veniva esposta come simbolo di autorità, come ha spiegato Gregory Warden del Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, che ha ritrovato la pietra. Pietra che si spera possa aiutare a far luce sul linguaggio degli Etruschi, grazie alla lunghezza del testo rinvenuto e al fatto che, non trattandosi di un testo funerario, probabilmente saranno presenti parole nuove. “Sappiamo già come funziona la grammatica etrusca, quali sono i verbi, gli oggetti, e alcune delle parole”, ha aggiunto Warden: “ma speriamo che l’analisi della lastra ci riveli il nome del dio o della dea che veniva adorata in questo sito”, richiamando il grande peso avuto dalla religione nella civiltà etrusca.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Day of presenting in Hughes-Trigg Student Center allows students to discuss their research, identify potential collaborators, discover other perspectives.
SMU graduate and undergraduate students presented their research to the SMU community at the University’s Research Day 2016 on Feb. 10.
The annual Research Day event fosters communication between students in different disciplines, gives students the opportunity to present their work in a professional setting, and allows students to share with their peers and industry professionals from the greater Dallas community the outstanding research conducted at SMU.
A cash prize of $250 was awarded to the best poster from each department or judging group.
Faris Altamimi, a student of Dr. Sevinc Sengor in Lyle School‘s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, presented a study investigating experimental and modeling approaches for enhanced methane generation from municipal solid waste, while providing science-based solutions for cleaner, renewable sources of energy for the future.
Yongqiang Li and Xiaogai Li, students of Dr. Xin-Lin Gao in Lyle School’s Mechanical Engineering Department, are addressing the serious blunt trauma injury that soldiers on the battlefield suffer from ballistics impact to their helmets. The study simulated the ballistic performance of the Advanced Combat Helmet.
Audrey Reeves, Sara Merrikhihaghi and Kevin Bruemmer, students of Dr. Alexander Lippert, in the Chemistry Department of Dedman College, presented research on cell-permeable fluorescent probes in the imaging of enzymatic pathways in living cells, specifically the gaseous signaling molecule nitroxyl. Their research better understands nitroxyl’s role as an inhibitor of an enzyme that is key in the conversion of acetaldehyde to acetic acid.
Rose Ashraf, a student of Dr. George Holden in the Psychology Department of Dedman College, presented her research on harsh verbal discipline in the home and its prediction of child compliance. It was found permissive parents are least likely to elicit prolonged compliance.
Nicole Vu and Caitlin Rancher, students of Dr. Ernest N. Jouriles and Dr. Renee McDonald in the Psychology Department of Dedman College, presented research on children’s threat appraisals of interparental conflict and it’s relationship to child anxiety.
See the full catalog of participants and their abstracts.
SMU scientists and their research have a global reach that is frequently noted, beyond peer publications and media mentions.
By Margaret Allen
SMU News & Communications
It was a good year for SMU faculty and student research efforts. Here is a small sampling of public and published acknowledgements during 2015:
Hot topic merits open access
Taylor & Francis, publisher of the online journal Environmental Education Research, lifted its subscription-only requirement to meet demand for an article on how climate change is taught to middle-schoolers in California.
Co-author of the research was Diego Román, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.
Román’s research revealed that California textbooks are teaching sixth graders that climate change is a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions, rather than a scientific conclusion based on rigorous scientific evidence.
Research makes the cover of Biochemistry
Drugs important in the battle against cancer were tested in a virtual lab by SMU biology professors to see how they would behave in the human cell.
A computer-generated composite image of the simulation made the Dec. 15 cover of the journal Biochemistry.
Scientific articles about discoveries from the simulation were also published in the peer review journals Biochemistry and in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives.
The researchers tested the drugs by simulating their interaction in a computer-generated model of one of the cell’s key molecular pumps — the protein P-glycoprotein, or P-gp. Outcomes of interest were then tested in the Wise-Vogel wet lab.
The ongoing research is the work of biochemists John Wise, associate professor, and Pia Vogel, professor and director of the SMU Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery in Dedman College. Assisting them were a team of SMU graduate and undergraduate students.
The researchers developed the model to overcome the problem of relying on traditional static images for the structure of P-gp. The simulation makes it possible for researchers to dock nearly any drug in the protein and see how it behaves, then test those of interest in an actual lab.
To date, the researchers have run millions of compounds through the pump and have discovered some that are promising for development into pharmaceutical drugs to battle cancer.
Strong interest in research on sexual victimization
Teen girls were less likely to report being sexually victimized after learning to assertively resist unwanted sexual overtures and after practicing resistance in a realistic virtual environment, according to three professors from the SMU Department of Psychology.
The finding was reported in Behavior Therapy. The article was one of the psychology journal’s most heavily shared and mentioned articles across social media, blogs and news outlets during 2015, the publisher announced.
The study was the work of Dedman College faculty Lorelei Simpson Rowe, associate professor and Psychology Department graduate program co-director; Ernest Jouriles, professor; and Renee McDonald, SMU associate dean for research and academic affairs.
Consumers assume bigger price equals better quality
Even when competing firms can credibly disclose the positive attributes of their products to buyers, they may not do so.
Instead, they find it more lucrative to “signal” quality through the prices they charge, typically working on the assumption that shoppers think a high price indicates high quality. The resulting high prices hurt buyers, and may create a case for mandatory disclosure of quality through public policy.
That was a finding of the research of Dedman College’s Santanu Roy, professor, Department of Economics. Roy’s article about the research was published in February in one of the blue-ribbon journals, and the oldest, in the field, The Economic Journal.
Published by the U.K.’s Royal Economic Society, The Economic Journal is one of the founding journals of modern economics. The journal issued a media briefing about the paper, “Competition, Disclosure and Signaling,” typically reserved for academic papers of broad public interest.
Chemistry research group edits special issue
Chemistry professors Dieter Cremer and Elfi Kraka, who lead SMU’s Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Group, were guest editors of a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Physical Chemistry. The issue published in March.
The Computational and Theoretical research group, called CATCO for short, is a union of computational and theoretical chemistry scientists at SMU. Their focus is research in computational chemistry, educating and training graduate and undergraduate students, disseminating and explaining results of their research to the broader public, and programming computers for the calculation of molecules and molecular aggregates.
The special issue of Physical Chemistry included 40 contributions from participants of a four-day conference in Dallas in March 2014 that was hosted by CATCO. The 25th Austin Symposium drew 108 participants from 22 different countries who, combined, presented eight plenary talks, 60 lectures and about 40 posters.
CATCO presented its research with contributions from Cremer and Kraka, as well as Marek Freindorf, research assistant professor; Wenli Zou, visiting professor; Robert Kalescky, post-doctoral fellow; and graduate students Alan Humason, Thomas Sexton, Dani Setlawan and Vytor Oliveira.
There have been more than 75 graduate students and research associates working in the CATCO group, which originally was formed at the University of Cologne, Germany, before moving to SMU in 2009.
Vertebrate paleontology recognized with proclamation
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings proclaimed Oct. 11-17, 2015 Vertebrate Paleontology week in Dallas on behalf of the Dallas City Council.
The proclamation honored the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which was jointly hosted by SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College and the Perot Museum of Science and Nature. The conference drew to Dallas some 1,200 scientists from around the world.
Making research presentations or presenting research posters were: faculty members Bonnie Jacobs, Louis Jacobs, Michael Polcyn, Neil Tabor and Dale Winkler; adjunct research assistant professor Alisa Winkler; research staff member Kurt Ferguson; post-doctoral researchers T. Scott Myers and Lauren Michael; and graduate students Matthew Clemens, John Graf, Gary Johnson and Kate Andrzejewski.
The host committee co-chairs were Anthony Fiorillo, adjunct research professor; and Louis Jacobs, professor. Committee members included Polcyn; Christopher Strganac, graduate student; Diana Vineyard, research associate; and research professor Dale Winkler.
KERA radio reporter Kat Chow filed a report from the conference, explaining to listeners the science of vertebrate paleontology, which exposes the past, present and future of life on earth by studying fossils of animals that had backbones.
SMU earthquake scientists rock scientific journal
Modelled pressure changes caused by injection and production. (Nature Communications/SMU)
Findings by the SMU earthquake team reverberated across the nation with publication of their scientific article in the prestigious British interdisciplinary journal Nature, ranked as one of the world’s most cited scientific journals.
The article reported that the SMU-led seismology team found that high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of unusually frequent earthquakes occurring in the Dallas-Fort Worth area near the small community of Azle.
The research was the work of Dedman College faculty Matthew Hornbach, associate professor of geophysics; Heather DeShon, associate professor of geophysics; Brian Stump, SMU Albritton Chair in Earth Sciences; Chris Hayward, research staff and director geophysics research program; and Beatrice Magnani, associate professor of geophysics.
The article, “Causal factors for seismicity near Azle, Texas,” published online in late April. Already the article has been downloaded nearly 6,000 times, and heavily shared on both social and conventional media. The article has achieved a ranking of 270, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 144,972 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and 98th percentile of 626 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.
“It has a very high impact factor for an article of its age,” said Robert Gregory, professor and chair, SMU Earth Sciences Department.
The scientific article also was entered into the record for public hearings both at the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas House Subcommittee on Seismic Activity.
Researchers settle long-debated heritage question of “The Ancient One”
The skull of Kennewick Man and a sculpted bust by StudioEIS based on forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning. (Credit: Brittany Tatchell)
The research of Dedman College anthropologist and Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory David Meltzer played a role in settling the long-debated and highly controversial heritage of “Kennewick Man.”
Also known as “The Ancient One,” the 8,400-year-old male skeleton discovered in Washington state has been the subject of debate for nearly two decades. Argument over his ancestry has gained him notoriety in high-profile newspaper and magazine articles, as well as making him the subject of intense scholarly study.
Officially the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 and radiocarbon dated to 8500 years ago.
Because of his cranial shape and size he was declared not Native American but instead ‘Caucasoid,’ implying a very different population had once been in the Americas, one that was unrelated to contemporary Native Americans.
But Native Americans long have claimed Kennewick Man as theirs and had asked for repatriation of his remains for burial according to their customs.
Meltzer, collaborating with his geneticist colleague Eske Willerslev and his team at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, in June reported the results of their analysis of the DNA of Kennewick in the prestigious British journal Nature in the scientific paper “The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man.”
The results were announced at a news conference, settling the question based on first-ever DNA evidence: Kennewick Man is Native American.
The announcement garnered national and international media attention, and propelled a new push to return the skeleton to a coalition of Columbia Basin tribes. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Bring the Ancient One Home Act of 2015 and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has offered state assistance for returning the remains to Native Tribes.
Science named the Kennewick work one of its nine runners-up in the highly esteemed magazine’s annual “Breakthrough of the Year” competition.
The research article has been viewed more than 60,000 times. It has achieved a ranking of 665, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 169,466 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and in the 94th percentile of 958 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.
In “Kennewick Man: coming to closure,” an article in the December issue of Antiquity, a journal of Cambridge University Press, Meltzer noted that the DNA merely confirmed what the tribes had known all along: “We are him, he is us,” said one tribal spokesman. Meltzer concludes: “We presented the DNA evidence. The tribal members gave it meaning.”
Prehistoric vacuum cleaner captures singular award
Paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science named a new species of extinct marine mammal identified by two SMU paleontologists among “The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015.”
The new species, dubbed a prehistoric hoover by London’s Daily Mail online news site, was identified by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist and SMU adjunct research professor Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.
Jacobs and Fiorillo co-authored a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.
Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Their strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.
As noted by the CERN Courier — the news magazine of the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, which hosts the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest science experiment — more than 250 scientists from 30 countries presented more than 200 talks on a multitude of subjects relevant to experimental and theoretical research. SMU physicists presented at the conference.
The SMU organizing committee was led by Fred Olness, professor and chair of the SMU Department of Physics in Dedman College, who also gave opening and closing remarks at the conference. The committee consisted of other SMU faculty, including Jodi Cooley, associate professor; Simon Dalley, senior lecturer; Robert Kehoe, professor; Pavel Nadolsky, associate professor, who also presented progress on experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; Randy Scalise, senior lecturer; and Stephen Sekula, associate professor.
Sekula also organized a series of short talks for the public about physics and the big questions that face us as we try to understand our universe.
African Americans make up 11% of U.S. workforce but only 6% of STEM workers; 83% of SMU STEM students pursue grad school
Dallas eighth-graderTomisin Ogunfunmi measure sodium bicarbonate for a lab simulating air bag inflation.
The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded the STEMPREP Project at Southern Methodist University a $3.78 million grant to support its goal of increasing the number of minorities in STEM fields.
The grant follows a $2.6 million grant in 2014.
According to a report just released from the Executive Office of the President, 21 percent of Hispanic men and 28 percent of black men have a college degree by their late twenties compared to nearly half of white men. The 2013 U.S. Census Bureau reports that African Americans make up 11 percent of the U.S. workforce but only 6 percent of STEM workers. Hispanics make up 15 percent of the U.S. workforce, but just 7 percent of the STEM workforce.
One hundred seventh and eighth grade minority students live on the SMU campus through August 1 for six weeks of college-level biology, chemistry, statistics and research writing and presentation classes, laboratory techniques course, and the creation of a final in-depth research presentation on a disease. Each day begins with class at 8:30 a.m and wraps up after study hall at 8:30 p.m.
Eighth-grader Walter Victor Rouse, II wants to be a heart surgeon and professional basketball player to honor his grandfather, Loyola basketball standout Vic Rouse, who died from heart disease before Walter was born. Vic Rouse was an honor student at Loyola University in 1963 when his rebound and basket in overtime clinched the NCAA basketball championship for Loyola. Rouse died in 1999 at age 56.
STEMPREP identifies talent early and nurtures it with practice and coaching
As a STEMPREP student, Walter is part of a program that boasts an impressive success rate – 100 percent of STEMPREP project students who finish the program attend college and 83 percent go on to graduate school to become physicians, pharmacists, dentists, researchers or engineers.
“Being in this program empowers students,” says Charles Knibb, STEMPREP director of academic affairs, an SMU research professor and a former surgeon.
Moses Williams, executive director, founded the program in 1990 when he was director of admissions for Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
“As a gatekeeper, I realized there were not a lot of minorities being considered,” he says. “I wanted to change that.” He compares the program to training young athletes: Identify talent early and then nurture it through practice and coaching.
Eighth-grader Beatriz Coronado of Marietta, Georgia, says she would be spending the summer taking care of her little brothers if she wasn’t at SMU as part of STEMPREP. Instead she recently completed her favorite lab so far, an enzyme-linked immuno assay simulation that detects and measures antibodies in the blood. She plans to become a family physician.
Book a live interview
To book a live or taped interview with Charles Knibb in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call the SMU News office at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
Dallas eighth-grader Tomisin Ogunfunmi says he didn’t know he could be so independent until he spent six weeks on the SMU campus at STEMPREP last summer. Now he looks forward to next summer when he will work in a Philadelphia university research lab with a scientist as a mentor. He plans to pursue a combination MD/PhD to become a biomedical engineering researcher, possibly at a university.
After participants in the STEMPREP program finish the junior high component, they spend their senior high and college summers working in university, U.S. government and private research laboratories in Philadelphia, Bethesda, Seattle, Toronto and Vancouver.
Taisha Husbands, who graduated from SMU in May with psychology and chemistry degrees, joined the STEMPREP program as an eighth grader.
“I’ve known since I was four that I wanted to be a doctor,” says Husbands, a native of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. “But I come from a family of teachers and police officers; I thought this program would help me reach my goal.”
Husbands starts medical school in August at the University of Southern California. In the meantime, this summer she is teaching science to current STEMPREP seventh and eighth graders and lives with them in a residence hall on campus. She hasn’t forgotten what it is like to be an eighth grader wrestling with college-level material and created an evening study session for students who wanted extra help.
“When I was in eighth grade, one of the STEMPREP teachers sat down with me at lunch every day to help me with the material,” she says. “Helping these students is one of those pay-it-forward things.”
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Rios was a graduate student in the SMU Department of Physics and as part of a team led by SMU Physics Professor Ryszard Stroynowski spent from 2007 to 2012 as a member of the ATLAS experiment at Switzerland-based CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, the largest high-energy physics experiment in the world. Rios and the SMU team were part of the successful search for the Higgs boson fundamental particle.
Rios is now a senior research engineer for Lockheed Martin at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
By Glenn Roberts Jr.
Symmetry Magazine
As a member of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, Ryan Rios spent 2007 to 2012 surrounded by fellow physicists.
Now, as a senior research engineer for Lockheed Martin at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, he still sees his fair share.
He’s not the only scientist to have made the leap from experimenting on Earth to keeping astronauts safe in space. Rios works on a small team that includes colleagues with backgrounds in physics, biology, radiation health, engineering, information technology and statistics.
“I didn’t really leave particle physics, I just kind of changed venues,” Rios says. “A lot of the skillsets I developed on ATLAS I was able to transfer over pretty easily.”
The group at Johnson Space Center supports current and planned crewed space missions by designing, testing and monitoring particle detectors that measure radiation levels in space.
Massive solar flares and other solar events that accelerate particles, other sources of cosmic radiation, and weak spots in Earth’s magnetic field can all pose radiation threats to astronauts. Members of the radiation group provide advisories on such sources. This makes it possible to warn astronauts, who can then seek shelter in heavier-shielded areas of the spacecraft.
Johnson Space Center has a focus on training and supporting astronauts and planning for future crewed missions. Rios has done work for the International Space Station and the robotic Orion mission that launched in December as a test for future crewed missions. His group recently developed a new radiation detector for the space station crew.
Rios worked at CERN for four years as a graduate student and postdoc at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. At CERN he was introduced to a physics analysis platform called ROOT, which is also used at NASA. Some of the particle detectors he works with now were developed by a CERN-based collaboration.
Fellow Johnson Space Center worker Kerry Lee wound up a group lead for radiation operations after using ROOT during his three years as a summer student on the Collider Detector at Fermilab, or CDF experiment.
Bitcoin is the digital world’s most popular virtual currency, with millions in circulation.
The study is the first empirical study of its kind. Vasek and Moore found that hucksters used four different types of schemes through authentic-looking web-based investment and banking outlets to lure customers and heist deposits.
Vasek explained to CoinDesk journalist Joon Ian Wong how the researchers extracted Bitcoin addresses linked to the frauds, enabling them to look at transactions from victims to fraudsters recorded on the transaction addresses.
By Joon Ian Wong
CoinDesk
Scams promising bitcoin riches have netted swindlers at least $11m in the last four years, researchers have found.
Some 13,000 victims handed over their money unwittingly in 42 different scams over that time period, their data suggests.
However, the total amount of funds cheated from victims over this period is almost certainly higher than the estimated $11m the research identified.
A co-author of the research, Marie Vasek, said:
“There are a lot of scams that we couldn’t measure at all. There were scams we couldn’t find or verify … We think presenting our findings as they are, a lower bound, makes a lot of room for us and others to further quantify scams in this space.”
Vasek, who researches computer security at Southern Methodist University, co-wrote the paper with Tyler Moore, an assistant professor in computer science at the same institution.
Painstaking search
The paper, titled There’s No Free Lunch, Even Using Bitcoin: Tracking the Popularity and Profits of Virtual Currency Scams, has been presented at the Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference taking place in Puerto Rico this week.
Vasek and Moore combed online repositories of scam accusations, including a mega-thread of scams, hacks and heists on the Bitcointalk forum that has been maintained since 2012, as well as the subreddit r/bitcoin, BadBitcoin.org and CryptoHYIPs.com.
This process required the researchers to painstakingly go through forum threads post by post, even translating messages that were written in languages other then English, as well as visiting the websites that scammers created to publicise themselves.
“We went through every single post to determine if the scheme was a scam, any associated bitcoin addresses with the scheme, and any associated scams,” Vasek said.
Using this method they found 349 scams, which were then whittled down to 192 deceptions after excluding phishing, malware and pay-for-click websites, which fall outside the scope of the study.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
First empirical study of its kind identifies fraud on seemingly legitimate web sites purposely designed to steal customers’ funds
Fraudulent schemes have scammed at least $11 million in Bitcoin deposits from unsuspecting cyber customers over the past four years, according to new cyber security research from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Bitcoin is the digital world’s most popular virtual currency, with millions in circulation.
In the first empirical study of its kind, SMU researchers found that hucksters used four different types of schemes through authentic-looking web-based investment and banking outlets to lure customers and heist deposits, said computer security expert Marie Vasek, lead researcher on the study.
Book a live interview
To book a live or taped interview with Marie Vasek or Dr. Tyler Moore in the SMU Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
“Our calculation of $11 million is almost certainly at the low-end,” said Vasek. “The amount of Bitcoin that depositors have lost to these scams is probably many millions more.”
Typically the scams succeed by exploiting not only people’s greed, but also the urge to “get rich quick,” coupled with the inability to judge the legitimacy of web services to decide which financial sites are good or bad, said Bitcoin and cyber security expert Tyler W. Moore, co-researcher on the study.
“Because the complete history of Bitcoin transactions are made public, we have been able to inspect, for the first time, the money flowing in and out of fraudulent schemes in great detail. It’s like having access to all of Bernie Madoff’s books for many of these scams,” said Moore, director of the Economics and Social Sciences program of the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security in SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering.
13,000 victims and counting in four different kinds of scams
The researchers identified 41 scams occurring between 2011 and 2014, in which fraudulent sites stole Bitcoin from at least 13,000 victims, and most certainly more.
“We found that the most successful scams draw the vast majority of their revenue from a few victims,” Vasek said.
The researchers were only able to track revenues for about 21 percent of the scams, which would indicate that the amount of Bitcoin actually stolen most likely far exceeds $11 million.
The findings emerged when the researchers ran a Structured Query Language database dump of all relevant Bitcoin transactions, then analyzed Bitcoin addresses (the account numbers) of both victims and the siphoning transactions of scammers.
“The amount of fraud being attracted by Bitcoin is a testament to the fact the virtual currency is gaining in legitimacy,” said Moore. “But scams that successfully hijack funds from depositors may end up scaring away consumers who will fear using Bitcoin for their legitimate digital transactions.”
There are 13.7 million Bitcoin in circulation, according to blockchain.info. The number of Bitcoin transactions exceeds 100,000 per day.
The research was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, Cyber Security Division, and the Government of Australia and SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific.
Four scams, each with varying lifespans, strategies and success
Vasek and Moore identified four common scams by tracking forum discussions, where scams are often initially advertised and later exposed, and by tracking web sites.
High-yield investment programs, otherwise known as online Ponzi schemes, which promise investors outlandish interest rates on deposits. The scammers lure both unsuspecting victims as well as those fully aware it’s a Ponzi scheme who hope to cash out in time. Of all the scams, this type has taken in the lion’s share of money from victims. The biggest of these scammers was Bitcoin Savings & Trust, formerly First Pirate Savings & Trust. When such schemes collapse, as they eventually do, and often within about 37 days, they’re replaced with a new program, often run by the same criminals, say the researchers. These scammers consistently pay out to their investors far less than they take in.
Mining investment scams are classic advanced-fee fraud, taking orders and money from customers but never delivering any mining equipment — specialized computer processors and electronic devices for mining Bitcoin. These retailers typically endure for 145 days, much longer than Ponzi schemes. Vasek and Moore looked at Labcoin, Active Mining Corp., AsicMiningEuipment.com and Dragon-Miner.com.
Victims make deposits into scam wallets under the promise the service offers greater transaction anonymity. If the deposit is small, scammers leave the money, but if it rises above a threshold, scammers move the money into their wallet. Services such as Onion Wallet, Easy Coin and Bitcoinwallet.in each surfaced with transfers from victims siphoned to one address held by a scammer.
Exchange scams, such as BTC Promo, CoinOpend and Ubitex, offer PayPal and credit card processing, but at a better exchange rate than competitors. Customers soon find out, however, they never get Bitcoin or cash after making payment. Longer-lived exchange scams survived about three months. Wallet and exchange scams exploit the difficulty in judging the legitimacy of web services.
The study is not a comprehensive review, the researchers note, as they were limited to those scams for which they could determine a minimum estimate of the prevalence and criminal profits of the scams after analyzing the public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions ever executed.
The researchers conservatively estimate that $11 million has been taken by scams, while only $4 million has ever been returned. Most of the successful scams catch a few “big fish,” say the researchers, who pay the bulk of the money into the scam.
“Bitcoin scams pose a problem for more than the victims who directly lose money,” Moore said. “They threaten to undermine trust in this promising technology, and cast a chilling effect on those interested in trying out new services. By mining the public record for fraudulent transactions, we hope to deter would-be scammers and assist law enforcement in cracking down on the bad actors.” — Margaret Allen
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Their five stars will be known by 16-digit serial numbers. Dominik would have rather immortalized his four dogs.
Lake Highlands High School students Dominik Fritz (right) and Jason Barton collected data until they had what they needed to define their star-to-be as a variable — a star that changes brightness. (Credit: KERA)
Reporter Courtney Collins with the news team at public radio station KERA covered the discovery of five stars made by two Dallas high school students as members of an SMU summer physics research program. Called Quarknet, the program enabled the students to analyze data gleaned from a high-powered telescope in the New Mexico desert.
All five stars are eclipsing contact binary stars, pairs of stars that orbit around each other so closely that their outer atmospheres touch. As the stars eclipse, they dim and then brighten as one emerges from behind the other. These stars are categorized as variable stars, stars that change brightness, which make up half the stars in the universe.
Lake Highlands High School seniors Dominik Fritz and Jason Barton are the first high school researchers at SMU to discover new stars.
Fritz and Barton are among nine high school students and two high school physics teachers who conducted physics research at SMU through the QuarkNet program.
By Courtney Collins
KERA News
To most teenagers, star-gazing is the stuff of first dates.
For two seniors at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas, star-gazing over the summer led to five unusual discoveries.
In some respects, Dominik Fritz and Jason Barton are typical high-schoolers. Jason’s haircut would make a pop star envious and Dominik’s snazzy specs are effortlessly cool.
When these two kids start to talk science, you realize quickly, they’re two in a million.
“I’m personally fascinated by nuclear reactions and that’s basically what happens in stars, it’s full of nuclear reactions, nuclear fusion, a little bit of fission,” Dominik says.
That set of interests made Dominik a perfect candidate for a summer physics program at SMU. Jason and two other Richardson school district students joined him.
While analyzing data from a high-powered telescope, Jason noticed a few stars that weren’t already in the database.
“I started looking over several nights and seeing if they were actual variable stars and if they did change in brightness over time, and then I combined them all and then I eventually submitted it,” Jason says.
In fact, both teens made submission to an international star index that were accepted. Between them, they’d discovered five eclipsing binary contact stars. Dominik translates:
“Two very, very large star systems that are so close that they actually share their atmospheres.”
Lake Highlands physics teacher Ken Taylor says not many kids make it to upper level physics. That’s why he was so keen to get these students out of the textbook and into real research.
“It was beautiful for me to see my students who were going and forging ahead and taking things that they had learned and going into new territory and seeing the looks on their faces when they began to go somewhere where, in a sense, no one had gone before.”
SMU alum partners with Texas to preserve tracks of huge meat-eating dinosaur that roamed San Antonio 110 million years ago.
Houston Chronicle reporter Marvin Pfiefer has written about a project led by SMU alum Thomas L. Adams to catalog and protect the tracks of a 110 million-year-old dinosaur preserved in rock at Government Canyon State Natural Area. Adams, a paleontologist, is a graduate of Dedman College’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.
Adams is curator of paleontology and geology at the Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas.
Adams will be joined on the project by other student volunteers from surrounding colleges to team up with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to catalog the tracks, which were discovered about 10 years ago.
While at SMU, Adams’ contributions to the field of paleontology included making a 3-D image of Texas’ high-profile Glen Rose dinosaur footprints using portable laser scanning technology. That research was covered by Earth magazine in the 2011 article Mapping Dino Footprints in 3D.
He also identified a 96-million-year-old crocodile Terminonaris making its first appearance in Texas. It’s narrow fossil snout was discovered along the shoreline of a lake near Dallas, which was covered by London’s Daily Mail newspaper in the article Meet the 25 ft prehistoric Texas crocodile who lived 100 million years ago in 2011.
By Marvin Pfeiffer
Houston Chronicles
It walked slowly along the tidal flat, looking for something to eat that might have washed up on the shoreline. To its right were the sounds of the surf and the ancestral Gulf of Mexico. To its left was a dense forest.
Acrocanthosaurus, a fearsome meat-eating dinosaur 40 feet long and 16 feet tall, was on the move.
“It’s the size of Tyrannosaurus rex — not as bulky, but as big. And here it is, walking across the beach 110 million years ago in what is now San Antonio,” said Thomas L. Adams, Ph.D., curator of paleontology and geology at the Witte Museum.
It’s a striking discovery: the only publicly known dinosaur tracks in Bexar County. Officials have known about the tracks at Government Canyon State Natural Area for about 10 years, but it wasn’t until this summer that scientists and students began work to catalog and protect them.
Dinosaur tracks might not seem to be as interesting as fossilized bones, but scientists beg to differ.
“The hard parts of the animals that are preserved are remains of dead animals,” Adams told the San Antonio Express-News. “They tell you something about a dead animal.
“This was made by a living animal. He was moving. He was interacting with his environment. It tells you many, many things. It tells you what the shape of its foot was like because in a skeleton we can’t see that. These are the remains of living animals. They tell you a story.”
The Witte is working with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which manages Government Canyon, on a joint project to bring the tracks to the public. Adams and John Koepke, natural area interpreter/volunteer coordinator at Government Canyon, are heading the research.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Sprinters lift their knees higher before driving their foot down, like a hammer striking a nail, says Clark.
Shape magazine reporter Amanda MacMillan has covered the research of SMU researcher Ken Clark, a doctoral student and researcher in the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory. The lab and research are under the direction of SMU biomechanics expert Peter G. Weyand, associate professor of applied physiology and biomechanics.
Clark’s and Weyand’s new research found that the world’s fastest sprinters have unique gait features that account for their ability to achieve fast speeds.
Book a live interview
To book a live or taped interview with Ken Clark in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
The new findings indicate that the secret to elite sprinting speeds lies in the distinct limb dynamics sprinters use to elevate ground forces upon foot-ground impact.
By Amanda MacMillan
Shape
Scientists say they’ve figured out why elite sprinters are so much faster than the rest of us mere mortals, and surprisingly, it has nothing to do with the donuts we ate for breakfast. The world’s fastest runners have a significantly different gait pattern than other athletes, according to a new study from Southern Methodist University—and it’s one that we can train our own bodies to emulate.
When researchers studied the running patterns of competitive 100- and 200-meter dash athletes versus competitive soccer, lacrosse, and football players, they found that the sprinters run with a more upright posture, and lift their knees higher before driving their foot down. Their feet and ankles remain stiff upon making contact with the ground too—”like a hammer striking a nail,” says study co-author Ken Clark, “which caused them to have short ground contact times, large vertical forces, and elite top speeds.”
Most athletes, on the other hand, act more like a spring when they run, says Clark: “Their foot strikes aren’t as aggressive, and their landings are a little more soft and loose,” causing much of their potential power to be absorbed rather than expended. This “normal” technique is effective for endurance running, when runners need to conserve their energy (and go easier on their joints) over longer time periods. But for short distances, says Clark, moving more like an elite sprinter may help even normal runners pick up explosive speed.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Two high school students collected data until they had what they needed to define their star-to-be as a variable — a star that changes brightness.
Lake Highlands High School students Dominik Fritz (left) and Jason Barton collected data until they had what they needed to define their star-to-be as a variable — a star that changes brightness. (Credit: DMN)
Reporter Alexis Espinosa with the Dallas Morning News covered the discovery of five stars made by two Dallas high school students as members of an SMU summer physics research program. Called Quarknet, the program enabled the students to analyze data gleaned from a high-powered telescope in the New Mexico desert.
All five stars are eclipsing contact binary stars, pairs of stars that orbit around each other so closely that their outer atmospheres touch. As the stars eclipse, they dim and then brighten as one emerges from behind the other. These stars are categorized as variable stars, stars that change brightness, which make up half the stars in the universe.
Lake Highlands High School seniors Dominik Fritz and Jason Barton are the first high school researchers at SMU to discover new stars.
Fritz and Barton are among nine high school students and two high school physics teachers who conducted physics research at SMU through the QuarkNet program.
By Alexis Espinosa
Dallas Morning News
Dominik Fritz sat in a Southern Methodist University science lab sifting through data. He hoped to discover a star by searching through months of information collected from a telescope in the New Mexico desert 14 years ago.
And then he found it.
He found a star whose variation had not yet been defined. And he would be the one to define it.
He collected data until he had everything he needed to define it as a variable — a star that changes brightness. A day after he submitted the star to the American Association of Variable Star Observers, the organization requested a few minor corrections.
And then, his star was accepted.
“I was so, so happy. My name is out there. I felt like I really accomplished something,” Fritz said. “I can literally tell people … ‘I found a star.’”
Fritz and a classmate, Jason Barton, both discovered stars this summer as part of the SMU’s QuarkNet program.
QuarkNet is a physics teacher development program funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy in universities and laboratories across the country. SMU’s QuarkNet program, which began in 2000, also provides research opportunities to high school students like Fritz and Barton, who are seniors at Lake Highlands High School in Richardson ISD.
Treasures of the night sky: Pairs of stars orbit around each other so closely their outer atmospheres touch, so they dim and brighten.
Artist’s impression of an eclipsing binary star system. The stars pass in front of one another and their combined brightness decreases. (Credit: European Southern Observatory)
Two Dallas high school students discovered five stars as members of an SMU summer physics research program that enabled them to analyze data gleaned from a high-powered telescope in the New Mexico desert.
All five stars are eclipsing contact binary stars, pairs of stars that orbit around each other so closely that their outer atmospheres touch. As the stars eclipse, they dim and then brighten as one emerges from behind the other. These stars are categorized as variable stars, stars that change brightness, which make up half the stars in the universe.
Lake Highlands High School seniors Dominik Fritz and Jason Barton are the first high school researchers at SMU to discover new stars.
New discoveries in Pegasus, Ursa Major are registered with Variable Star Index
The stars are located in the northern sky constellations of Pegasus and Ursa Major, but can’t be seen by the naked eye.
Lake Highlands High School student Dominik Fritz and teacher Ken Taylor at SMU. Fritz participated in Quarknet, an SMU Physics Department program for area high school students. (Photo Credit here)
Working in a campus science building basement laboratory, the students used analysis software, perseverance and patience to parse the data collected (but never analyzed for the purpose of studying binary stars) in 2000 by Robert Kehoe, SMU associate professor of physics.
Kehoe collected the data through ROTSE-I, a prototype robotic telescope at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
“Scientists are driven by the sense of discovery,” says Kehoe, who took the data originally to study gamma ray bursts. “These students can lay claim to information that didn’t exist before their research.”
SMU only university in North Texas offering the nation’s QuarkNet program
Fritz and Barton are among nine high school students and two high school physics teachers conducting physics research at SMU through the QuarkNet program.
QuarkNet is a physics teacher development program with 50 centers at U.S. universities and national laboratories. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, the program gives teachers and students opportunities to learn about the most recent discoveries in physics.
Other sponsors include two of the world’s leading high-energy physics research centers — CERN in Switzerland and Fermilab in Illinois. SMU is one of four Texas universities to offer the QuarkNet program and the only QuarkNet university in North Texas.
“High school physics curriculum includes very little modern physics,” says Simon Dalley, a member of the SMU physics faculty and coordinator of its QuarkNet program. “This hurts recruitment to the field and prevents the general population from understanding physics’ contribution to the modern world.”
Ken Taylor, Lake Highlands High School physics teacher, is determined to introduce new physics research to his students. He has participated in QuarkNet at SMU since 2000, seizing opportunities to join physics researchers at high-energy particle colliders at CERN and Fermilab. This is the first summer he has selected students to join him in physics research at SMU.
“I like to support students beyond the classroom walls,” he says. “These students have gone through the whole process of scientific discovery and can use these projects as jumping off points for the next phases of their lives.”
With acceptance into the VSX catalog of variable stars, the students’ names are forever linked with their stars on the official registry.
But instead of creating new star names, star discoverers follow a protocol that includes the name of the telescope and the stellar coordinates.
Both students plan to pursue science careers, Fritz in nuclear engineering and Barton in medicine.
Other student QuarkNet researchers include KeShawn Ivory from Garland High School and Madison Monzingo and Lane Toungate from Lake Highlands High School. In addition, Hockaday School teacher Leon de Oliveira and his four students – Eliza Cope, Allison Aldrich, Sarah Zhou and Mary Zhong — also conducted QuarkNet research this summer.
“These students have made a real contribution to science,” says Farley Ferrante, the former high school physics teacher and current SMU astrophysics graduate student who supervised the students’ research. “A better understanding of variable stars helps us to understand the age and formation of the universe; the sun, which is a variable star; and even the possibility of extra-terrestrial life.”
One hundred percent of STEMPREP project students who finish the program attend college and 83 percent go on to graduate school to become physicians, pharmacists, dentists, researchers or engineers.
The U.S. Department of Defense recently awarded the STEMPREP Project at Southern Methodist University a $2.6 million grant to support its goal of increasing the number of minorities in STEM fields. STEMPREP recruits bright, science-minded minority middle school students for the two-summer classroom phase of the STEMPREP project, then provides high school students with summer opportunities at research labs.
The program, based at SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, boasts an impressive success rate. One hundred percent of STEMPREP project students who finish the program attend college and 83 percent go on to graduate school to become physicians, pharmacists, dentists, researchers or engineers.
“Being in this program empowers students,” says Charles Knibb, STEMPREP director of academic affairs, an SMU research professor and a former surgeon.
According to a 2013 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, African Americans make up 11 percent of the U.S. workforce but only 6 percent of STEM workers. Hispanics make up 15 percent of the U.S. workforce, but just 7 percent of the STEM workforce.
STEMPREP students intern at laboratories throughout the United States Joy Brown-Bryant plans to change those statistics – she would like to be U.S. surgeon general one day. But first, the 14-year-old from Oakland, Calif. wants to help reconstruct the faces of military burn victims as a plastic surgeon. Brown-Bryant is well on her way to achieving her goal.
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She is one of 100 seventh- and eighth-grade STEMPREP students living on the SMU campus for six weeks of college-level biology, chemistry, statistics and research writing classes, daily biochemistry labs, and development of a final in-depth research presentation on a disease.
After two summers at SMU, students in grades 9 through 12 are ready to work as summer research interns at laboratories at universities, the National Institutes of Health and private industry, with careful mentoring all along the way. This summer, STEMPREP high school and college students are interning in research laboratories in Bethesda, Philadelphia, Vancouver and Dallas.
Moses Williams, executive director, founded the program in 1990 when he was admissions director for Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
“As a gatekeeper, I realized there were not a lot of minorities being considered,” he says. “I wanted to change that.” He compares the program to training young athletes: Identify talent early and then nurture it through practice and coaching.
STEMPREP students also learn the nonacademic lessons of college life at SMU – sharing a room in a residence hall, selecting their own meals in the campus dining hall and washing their own clothes. “I’m an only child; I’ve always had my own room,” says Stephen Isabell, a seventh-grader from Olney, Md. “Living in a dorm is a lot different than home, but it’s worth it. I’m becoming more independent.”
STEMPREP students return as counselors to other young scientists At SMU, 12 STEMPREP high school seniors have come full circle, returning to the university as counselors to the newest crop of young scientis
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