New Publications from Dan Styer, Physics, and Bruce Simonson, Geology

Hassler, S., Biller, S., & Simonson, Bruce. M. (2019). Petrography and sedimentology of the ~2490 ma DS4 impact spherule layer revisited, brockman iron formation (hamersley group, western australia).
Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 54(10), 2241-2253. doi:10.1111/maps.13223 ER

Wiley Online Library

Simonson, Bruce. M., Beukes, N. J., & Biller, S. (2019). Extending the paleogeographic range and our understanding of the neoarchean monteville impact spherule layer (transvaal supergroup, south africa).
Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 54(10), 2217-2240. doi:10.1111/maps.13228 ER

American Association of Physics Teachers

Styer, Dan. (2019). Entropy as disorder: History of a misconception. Physics Teacher, 57(7), 454-458. doi:10.1119/1.5126822 ER 

Conference: American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Summer Meeting, Cincinnati, OH, JUL 22-26, 2017
Abstract: "Before reading this essay, go to your kitchen and find a bottle of Italian salad dressing. Get one that's been sitting still for a while at a fixed temperature-that is, one in thermal equilibrium. You'll find an oil-rich layer at the top of the bottle and a vinegar-rich layer at the bottom (see Fig. 1). But think for a moment before spreading it over a delicious salad and eating up. That bottle's in thermal equilibrium, so it's in a state of maximum entropy. Doesn't entropy mean "disorder"? No one would call a stack of 50 pennies and 50 dimes disordered if all the dimes were on the top and all the pennies at the bottom. So why is this salad dressing at thermal equilibrium segregated like an ordered stack of coins?"

Nathaniel Wehr '16 publishes in Scientific Reports, a Nature Research journal

Nate Wehr [photo from oberlin.edu]

We were very pleased to see this publication from Nate Wehr '16 who was on campus in 2018 to present a Biology Seminar on the topic.

Wehr, N. H., Kinney, K. M., Nguyen, N. H., Giardina, C. P., & Litton, C. M. (2019). Changes in soil bacterial community diversity following the removal of invasive feral pigs from a Hawaiian tropical montane wet forest. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 14681. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-48922-7

Scientific Reports is "an open-access, multidisciplinary journal from Nature Research dedicated to constructive, inclusive, and rigorous peer review."

New publications from Cruz, Fineman, and Linowitz

The first publication listed below shows a student as the first author: David Fineman, returning this fall as a sophomore.  Other new publications are by Benjamin Linowitz, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Yolanda Cruz, Professor of Biology.

View aims and scope of journal on ScienceDirect

Fineman, David C., Baer, R. J., Chambers, C. D., Rajagopal, S., Maltepe, E., Rinaudo, P. F., … Steurer, M. A. (t.y.). Outcomes of pulmonary vascular disease in infants conceived with non-IVF fertility treatment and assisted reproductive technologies at 1 year of age. Pediatric Pulmonology. doi:10.1002/ppul.24457

Linowitz, Benjamin. (2019). Brauer equivalent number fields and the geometry of quaternionic Shimura varieties. Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, 70(2), 675-687. doi:10.1093/qmath/hay061

Linowitz, Benjamin, Stover, M. ve Voight, J. (2019). Commensurability classes of fake quadrics. Selecta Mathematica-New Series, 25(3), UNSP 48. doi:10.1007/s00029-019-0492-9

Yoshida, K., Line, J., Griffith, K., Wooldredge, A., Cruz, Yolanda P. (2019). Progesterone signaling during pregnancy in the lab opossum, Monodelphis domestica. Theriogenology, 136, 101-110. doi:10.1016/j.theriogenology.2019.06.026

Publications by McCormick, Stalnaker, and Moore

New publications in neuroscience, biology and physics:

Catherine A. McCormick, Biology and Neuroscience (retired)
Immunocytochemical Evidence for Electrical Synapses in the Dorsal Descending and Dorsal Anterior Octaval Nuclei in the Goldfish, Carassius auratus
BRAIN BEHAVIOR AND EVOLUTION, 93 (1):34-49; 10.1159/000499687 2019

Jason E. Stalnaker, Associate Professor of Physics
Isotopic variation of parity violation in atomic ytterbium: Description of the measurement method and analysis of systematic effects.
with:
Antypas, D.; Fabricant, A. M.; Stalnaker, J. E.; Tsigutkin, K.; Flambaum, V. V.; Budker, D.
PHYSICAL REVIEW A, 100 (1):10.1103/PhysRevA.100.012503 JUL 3 2019

American Saw-wort Saussurea americana

Michael J. Moore, Professor of Biology
Plastome phylogenomics of Saussurea (Asteraceae: Cardueae)
with:
Zhang, Xu; Deng, Tao; Moore, Michael J.; Ji, Yunheng; Lin, Nan; Zhang,
Huajie; Meng, Aiping; Wang, Hengchang; Sun, Yanxia; Sun, Hang
BMC PLANT BIOLOGY, 19 10.1186/s12870-019-1896-6 JUL 2 2019

Image from USDA PLANTS Database, credit Susan McDougall

Recently published: Norm Craig in Molecular Physics; Michael Moore in Plant Methods

Norm Craig, Professor Emeritus, Chemistry & Biochemistry

Craig, Norman C.; Krasnoshchekov, Sergey V.  Vibrational spectroscopy of tolane; Coriolis coupling between Raman-active modes of g symmetry.   Molecular Physics, 117 (9-12):1059-1068;
June 18, 2019

From the abstract:  Vibrational spectroscopy of tolane (diphenylacetylene), which has 66 normal modes, has been advanced. Anharmonic wavenumber predictions were made with the quartic potential energy surface obtained with B3LYP/cc-pVTZ model and the second-order perturbation theory (VPT2). Infrared (IR) intensity and Raman activities were computed at the harmonic level. The IR spectrum of the crystal and Raman spectra of the liquid and the crystal tolane were newly recorded.


Michael Moore, Professor, Biology

Qu, Xiao-Jian; Moore, Michael J.; Li, De-Zhu; Yi, Ting-Shuang.  PGA: a software package for rapid, accurate, and flexible batch annotation of plastomes.   Plant Methods, 15 May 21, 2019

plantmethods.biomedcentral.com/

From the abstract: Comparisons against other available plastome annotation tools demonstrated the high annotation accuracy of PGA, with little or no post-annotation verification necessary. Likewise, we demonstrated the flexibility of reference plastomes within PGA by annotating the plastome of Rosa roxburghii using that of Amborella trichopoda as a reference. The program, user manual and example data sets are freely available at https://github.com/quxiaojian/PGA.

Ben Wisner publishes in Oxford Research Encyclopedias Online

oxfordre.com/naturalhazardscience/

Benjamin Wisner, Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Studies, has co-authored an extensive review article with co-author Terry Gibson of Inventing Futures, in Natural Hazard Science, published by Oxford University Press.

Global Overview of the Role of NGOs in Natural Hazard Governance  

Terry Gibson and Benjamin Wisner

The article includes an Appendix that defines acronyms, plus a long list of recommended reading followed by cited sources.

Pavel Kucheryavy publishes in Journal of Chemical Physics

AIP Publishing

Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Pavel Kucheryavy is co-author on this recently published article:

Spectroscopic characterization of metal ligation in trinuclear iron-mu(3)-oxo-based complexes and metal-organic frameworks.  Journal of Chemical Physics 150(17): article 174707.  May 7, 2019. DOI: 10.1063/1.5096796

Authors:  Hanna, L., Kucheryavy, Pavel, Lahanas, N., Lockard, JV.

 --as indexed in Web of Science

John Scofield authors book on Building ENERGY STAR Scores

Professor of Physics John Scofield has authored a new book, Building ENERGY STAR Scores: Good Idea, Bad Science.  It is now in the display of recent science faculty scholarship on view in the science library, and will return to the new book shelf soon.

From the book cover:
Professor Scofield has focused his research on energy use in buildings for nearly two decades, and is the author of several "peer-reviewed articles looking at energy savings (or lack thereof) of LEED-certified buildings."

"This book is the result of a three-year investigation into the science behind the U.S. EPA's energy star building benchmarking score.  In a nutshell, these scores are found to have little scientific value and are essentially ad hoc scores with little meaning or reproducibility."

Dan Stinebring publishes in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty3192

Francis D Federighi Professor of Physics Dan Stinebring co-authors a paper with collaborators from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and University of Manchester, U.K.

Driessen, L. N., G. H. Janssen, C. G. Bassa, B. W. Stappers, and D. R. Stinebring. 2019. Scattering features and variability of the Crab pulsar. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 483:1224-1232.

Partial abstract: 

"We report on Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope observations of the Crab pulsar at 350MHz from 2012 November 24 until 2015 June 21. During this period we consistently observe variations in the pulse profile of the Crab. Both variations in the scattering width of the pulse profile as well as delayed copies, also known as echoes, are seen regularly. These observations support the classification of two types of echoes: those that follow the truncated exponential shape expected for the thin-screen scattering approximation, and echoes that show a smoother, more Gaussian shape."

Oberlin's online access to this journal was through the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center; that ceased in 2012 due to publisher changes.  Access the pre-print version of the article at ArXiv.org.

Yumi Ijiri Published in Physical Review

Professor of Physics Yumi Ijiri is the lead author on this recent paper, as indexed in the Web of Science:

Ijiri, Y., K. L. Krycka, I. Hunt-Isaak, H. Pan, J. Hsieh, J. A. Borchers, J. J. Rhyne, S. D. Oberdick, A. Abdelgawad, and S. A. Majetich. 2019. Correlated spin canting in ordered core-shell Fe3O4/MnxFe3-xO4 nanoparticle assemblies. Physical Review B 99:094421. Published 18 March 2019.

Subscribers can access the full-text on the American Physical Society journals website, where anyone can learn more about the newest addition to the APS suite of journals:

APS is launching a new open access journal: Physical Review Research or PRResearch.  Learn more:

https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/ 

Marta Laskowski co-authors Principles of Life, 3rd edition

Principles of Life, 3rd ed.

Congratulations to Professor of Biology Marta Laskowski on publication of Principles of Life, 3rd edition, by David M. Hillis, et al.  Author information and the table of contents are given at the publisher's site, macmillanlearning.com.

Recent publications from Mary Garvin, Biology; Matthew Elrod, Chemistry; and affiliated students

https://pubs.acs.org/journal/accacs

As found in the Web of Science: 

Fu, N., Y. Shen, Anthony R. Allen ’18, L. Song, A. Ozaki, and S. Lin. 2019. Mn-Catalyzed Electrochemical Chloroalkylation of Alkenes. ACS Catalysis 9:746-754.

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/insects

Garvin, Mary C., A. Austin, K. Boyer, M. Gefke, C. Wright, Y. Pryor, A. Soble, and Rebecca J. Whelan. 2018. Attraction of Culex pipiens to House Sparrows Is Influenced by Host Age but Not Uropygial Gland Secretions. Insects 9:127.

https://pubs.acs.org/journal/esthag

Stropoli, Santino J.’18, Corina R. Miner ’18, junior Daniel R. Hill, and Matthew J. Elrod. 2019. Assessing Potential Oligomerization Reaction Mechanisms of Isoprene Epoxydiols on Secondary Organic Aerosol. Environmental Science & Technology 53:176-184.

Names of Oberlin affiliated authors at the time of research are shown in bold font.  Rebecca Whelan is now teaching at Notre Dame University.  Alumni are identified by the year of graduation following the name.

New publications by FitzGerald and Howard

-->

 Stephen A. FitzGerald, Professor of Physics

publisher's site

       
Kapelewski, M. T., T. Runcevski, J. D. Tarver, H. Z. H. Jiang, K. E. Hurst, P. A. Parilla, A. Ayala, T. Gennett, S. A. FitzGerald, C. M. Brown, and J. R. Long. 2018. Record High Hydrogen Storage Capacity in the Metal-Organic Framework Ni-2(m-dobdc) at Near-Ambient Temperatures. Chemistry of Materials 30:8179-8189.
Access from OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center

Christopher D. Howard, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience

publisher's site

       

Schuweiler, D. R., C. D. Howard, E. S. Ramsson, and P. A. Garris. 2018. Improving in Situ Electrode Calibration with Principal Component Regression for Fast-Scan Cyclic Voltammetry. Analytical Chemistry 90:13434-13442.

Access from OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center

Faculty publish in Astrophysical Journal and Physics of the Dark Universe

Recent publications co-authored by faculty in Physics and Astronomy:

Scudder, Jillian M.

Pan H, Lin L, Hsieh B, Xiao T, Gao Y, Ellison SL, Scudder JM, Barrera-Ballesteros J, Yuan F, Saintonge A, Wilsons CD, Hwang HS, De Looze I, Gao Y, Ho LC, Brinks E, Mok A, Brown T, Davis TA, Williams TG, Chung A, Parsons H, Bureau M, Sargent MT, Chung EJ, Kim E, Liu T, Michalowski MJ, Tosaki T.

The effect of galaxy interactions on molecular gas properties. Astrophysical Journal 2018 DEC 1;868(2):132.

Stalnaker, Jason E.

Afach S, Budker D, DeCamp G, Dumont V, Grujic ZD, Guo H, Kimball DFJ, Kornack TW, Lebedev V, Li W, Masia-Roig H, Nix S, Padniuk M, Palm CA, Pankow C, Penaflor A, Peng X, Pustelny S, Scholtes T, Smiga JA, Stalnaker JE, Weis A, Wickenbrock A, Wurm D.

Characterization of the global network of optical magnetometers to search for exotic physics (GNOME). Physics of the Dark Universe 2018 DEC;22:162-80.


Stinebring, Daniel R.

Brook PR, Karastergiou A, McLaughlin MA, Lam MT, Arzoumanian Z, Chatterjee S, Cordes JM, Crowter K, DeCesar M, Demorest PB, Dolch T, Ellis JA, Ferdman RD, Ferrara E, Fonseca E, Gentile PA, Jones G, Jones ML, Lazio TJW, Levin L, Lorimer DR, Lynch RS, Ng C, Nice DJ, Pennucci TT, Ransom SM, Ray PS, Spiewak R, Stairs IH, Stinebring DR, Stovall K, Swiggum JK, Zhu WW. 

The NANOGrav 11-year data set: Pulse profile variability. Astrophysical Journal  2018 DEC 1;868(2):122.


Thompson, Katz and Sheehan: Chemical comparison of Prunus africana bark and pygeum products marketed for prostate health.

New publication from Rob Thompson, Professor of Chemistry, with senior Daniel Katz and Brendan Sheehan (OC'18, biochemistry).

Chemical comparison of Prunus africana bark and pygeum products marketed for prostate health.
Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis Vol. 163, 30 January 2019, pp. 162-169

Access this title at the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center or at the publisher's site, Elsevier's ScienceDirect.

From the introduction and conclusions:

"Pygeum is the powdered bark of Prunus africana (also called Pygeum africanum), an evergreen tree that grows across the mountainous regions of Africa. Both the powder and a lipophilic extract are sold commercially under the same name... Ingestion of pygeum has been found to inactivate the androgen receptor and inhibit prostate cancer cell growth."

[Conclusions after chemical analysis of samples of both bark and pygeum powder:]

Harvesting Prunus africana bark. 
Credit: SouthWorld, May 1, 2016

"The amounts per gram of the BPH-active compounds atranorin, atraric acid, total ferulic acid, and total beta-sitosterol and the fractions of free beta-sitosterol were quite different in bark from Prunus africana and in the contents of commercial pygeum capsules, contents purported to be derivatives of the same bark. This was unexpected and suggested that the BPH-active components in commercial pygeum may not be fully sourced from natural materials as labeled. Also unexpected was that no N-butylbenzene sulfonamide was found in any sample. The variation in the composition of four bark samples, two of which were botanical reference materials, demonstrated the need for a phytochemical standard for pygeum, with reference values for the BPH-active compounds studied here."

What Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Higher Ed Gets Wrong

In this interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, Tyson discusses "how to explain science to the masses and [rips] into what he sees as higher education’s misguided incentive system, valuing research over teaching and public service and not creating space for people like him to flourish. 'It’s a sad fact,' he says, 'for the future of science in America.' "

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is one of Tyson's most recent books.  The science library's copy is checked out, but there are plenty of other copies to borrow through OhioLINK.

Jordan Price and students publish in Journal of Bacteriology

New publication by Jordan Price, Assistant Professor of Biology, with students Kallie Jiang and Abby Galantowicz, and collaborators at Univ Calif Berkeley:

Price, Jordan V.; Jiang, Kallie; Galantowicz, Abby; Freifeld, A., & Vance, R. E. (2018). Legionella pneumophila is directly sensitive to 2-deoxyglucose-phosphate via its UhpC transporter but is indifferent to shifts in host cell glycolytic metabolism. Journal of Bacteriology, 200(16), 176. doi:10.1128/JB.00176-18 ER

Importance of this research:  "We explored the relationship between macrophage glycolysis and replication of an intracellular bacterial pathogen, Legionella pneumophila. Previous studies demonstrated that a glycolysis inhibitor, 2-deoxyglucose (2DG), blocks replication of L. pneumophila during infection of macrophages, leading to speculation that L. pneumophila may exploit macrophage glycolysis. We isolated L. pneumophila mutants resistant to the inhibitory effect of 2DG in macrophages, identifying a L. pneumophila hexose-phosphate transporter, UhpC, that is required for bacterial sensitivity to 2DG during infection. Our results reveal how a bacterial transporter mediates the direct antimicrobial effect of a toxic metabolite. Moreover, our results indicate that neither induction nor impairment of host glycolysis inhibits intracellular replication of L. pneumophila, which is consistent with a view of L. pneumophila as a metabolic generalist."

New publications by Stinebring (Physics & Astronomy) and Moore (Biology)

Recent publications by Dan Stinebring, Francis D Federighi Professor of Physics; and Mike Moore, Professor of Biology:

Lam, M. T., Ellis, J. A., Grillo, G., Jones, M. L., Hazboun, … Daniel R. Stinebring, et al. (2018). A second chromatic timing event of interstellar origin toward PSR J1713+0747. Astrophysical Journal, 861(2), 132. 10.3847/1538-4357/aac770 ER

an Open Access journal
from Taylor & Francis

Zhu, Z., Wang, J., Cai, Y., Zhao, K., Michael J. Moore, & Wang, H. (2018). Complete plastome sequence of erythropalum scandens (erythropalaceae), an edible and medicinally important liana in china. Mitochondrial Dna Part B-Resources, 3(1), 139-140. 10.1080/23802359.2017.1413435 ER

Angie Roles publishes in Ecology and Evolution

Blandy Experimental Farm, Boyce, Virginia

Recent research by Associate Professor of Biology Angie Roles and collaborators "assessed phenotypes associated with survival and reproductive success in over 30,000 plants representing 100 mutation accumulation lines of Arabidopsis thaliana across four temporal environments at a single field site." The authors conclude, "The combination of large environmental variance with a mean effect of mutation near zero suggests that mutations could contribute substantially to standing genetic variation."

Rutter, Matthew T., Roles, Angela J., & Fenster, Charles B. (2018). Quantifying natural seasonal variation in mutation parameters with mutation accumulation lines. Ecology and Evolution, 8(11), 5575-5585. 10.1002/ece3.4085  (Open Access)

Dan Stinebring contributes as part of the NANOGrav collaboration.

published by Institute of Physics IOPScience

Dan Stinebring, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, is one of 60+ authors, representing 41 organizations and institutions, who contributed to the research described in this recent publication:

Arzoumanian, Z., Baker, P. T., Brazier, A., Burke-Spolaor, S., Chamberlin, S. J., Chatterjee, S., . . . NANOGrav Collaboration. (2018). The NANOGrav 11 Year Data Set: Pulsar-timing Constraints on the Stochastic Gravitational-wave Background. Astrophysical Journal, 859(1), 47. 10.3847/1538-4357/aabd3b

Partial abstract:
"We search for an isotropic stochastic gravitational-wave background (GWB) in the newly released 11. year data set from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav). While we find no evidence for a GWB, we place constraints on a population of inspiraling supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries, a network of decaying cosmic strings, and a primordial GWB. For the first time, we find that the GWB constraints are sensitive to the solar system ephemeris (SSE) model used and that SSE errors can mimic a GWB signal."   Learn more about NANOGrav