Congrats to the Class of 2020 from the Science Library.

On this quiet afternoon, a day that would normally resound with music and laughter from Tappan Square as Commencement exercises end and families celebrate, it seemed fitting to don academic regalia and say Congratulations! to the Class of 2020. Be well, be bold, do good.

Good News! Senior Rainie Heck receives NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

https://tinyurl.com/yanexrqs

Congratulations to Rainie Heck, a senior mathematics and physics major, on receiving a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, an award that supports graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in the United States.

Story by Amanda Nagy

Articles recently published by faculty and students in astronomy, neuroscience, and mathematics

As indexed in Web of Science

  Faculty names are in boldface, names of current students and recent graduates are italicized.

Ellison, S. L., M. D. Thorp, L. Lin, H. Pan, A. F. L. Bluck, Jillian M. Scudder, H. Teimoorinia, S. F. Sanchez, and M. Sargent. 2020. The ALMaQUEST survey - III. Scatter in the resolved star-forming main sequence is primarily due to variations in star formation efficiency. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 493:L39-L43.

Lam, M. T., T. J. W. Lazio, T. Dolch, M. L. Jones, M. A. McLaughlin, Daniel R. Stinebring, and M. Surnis. 2020. On frequency-dependent dispersion measures and extreme scattering events. Astrophysical Journal 892:89.

Paine, Tracie A., Sara Chang, and Rachel Poyle. 2020. Contribution of GABA(A) receptor subunits to attention and social behavior. Behavioural brain research 378:112261.

Walsh, James, and E. Widiasih. 2020. A Discontinuous ODE model of the glacial cycles with diffusive heat transport. Mathematics 8 (3). DOI: 10.3390/math8030316

Throwback Thursday: Science Soirée for All In For Oberlin

Emeritus Professor Bruce Richards, acoustics demonstration

Helen Fleischer, alphorn

The Science Soirée "Shatter the Silence" (2015) was a great opportunity to enjoy the quirky acoustics of the north reading area.  We are looking forward to having our community together again, post-COVID-19, to celebrate the diversity of talents in a variety of library spaces.  Donate today to support the libraries! 

Donate at http://ow.ly/wwRq50zmmQ8

   

Daniel Orson, viola

Lawrence Suh, violin

New publications from Neuroscience and Geology departments

Neuroscience professors Mariani and Thornton publish in Hormones and Behavior with alumni Mojziszek and Curley

Mariani, Monica M., Mojziszek, Kirsten '19, Curley, Emily '16, & Thornton, Janice E. (2020). Lowering luteinizing hormone (LH) reverses spatial memory deficits associated with neurotoxin infusion into the hippocampus of ovx rats. Hormones and Behavior, 119, 104631. 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2019.104631 ER

Open access article by oceanographer Rachel Eveleth, Geology department, appears in Frontiers in Marine Science

Yang, B., Boss, E. S., Hantjens, N., Long, M. C., Behrenfeld, M. J., Eveleth, Rachel, & Doney, S. C. (2020). Phytoplankton phenology in the North Atlantic: insights from profiling float measurements. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7, 139. 10.3389/fmars.2020.00139 ER

Jordan Price, Dan Russo '19 publish in Mbio with five co-authors

Jordan Price, Assistant Professor of Biology, and Daniel Russo '19 co-authored a paper with researchers at University of California Berkeley and Duke University, published in mBio, an open-access journal from the American Society for Microbiology.

Price, J. V., Russo, D., Ji, D. X., Chavez, R. A., DiPeso, L., Lee, A. Y., Coers, J., & Vance, R. E. (2019). IRG1 and Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase Act Redundantly with Other Interferon-Gamma-Induced Factors To Restrict Intracellular Replication of Legionella pneumophila. Mbio, 10(6), 2629.

https://mbio.asm.org/

From the abstract:
"Our study defines a complete set of cell-intrinsic factors required for IFN-􏰀-mediated restriction of an intracellular bacterial pathogen and highlights the combinatorial strategy used by hosts to block bacterial replication in macrophages...Our results clarify the molecular basis underlying the potent effects of IFN-􏰀 and highlight how redundancy downstream of IFN-􏰀 is key to prevent exploitation of macrophages by pathogens."

New publications from Michael Moore, Jillian Scudder

Jillian Scudder's (Physics and Astronomy) latest publication appears in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society with co-authors in Canada, Taiwan, England and Mexico. Michael Moore (Biology) has published in Systematic Botany and the Journal of Systematics and Evolution with co-authors from Mexico, China, Australia, Japan, and Washington D.C.  A strong international collaboration is represented in these three papers!

Ellison SL, Thorp MD, Pan H, Lin L, Scudder Jillian M, Bluck AFL, Sanchez SF, Sargent M. 2020. The ALMaQUEST survey II. what drives central starbursts at z ti 0? Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 492(4):6027-41.

The author present molecular gas maps obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) observatory for 12 central starburst galaxies at z 0 drawn from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey.

Antiphytum brevicalyx in the field (Mendoza-Díaz et al. 643, 644).

Mendoza-Diaz N, Ochoterena H, Moore Michael J, Flores-Olvera H. 2020. Molecular and morphological evidence reveals a new species of Antiphytum (Echiochiloideae, Boraginaceae) from Guerrero, Mexico. Systematic Botany 45(1):190-9.

The new species is from the Sierra Madre del Sur, in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, here described as Antiphytum brevicalyx.

Wang H, Moore Michael J, Barrett RL, Landrein S, Sakaguchi S, Maki M, Wen J, Wang H. Plastome phylogenomic insights into the Sino-Japanese biogeography of Diabelia (Caprifoliaceae). Journal of Systematics and Evolution. DO10.1111/jse.12560, early access.

Student Janet Wu publishes in Science Translational Medicine

We were excited to learn that 4th-year student Janet Wu is a co-author on a paper published this week in Science Translational Medicine:

stm.sciencemag.org/

Wnt-mediated endothelial transformation into mesenchymal stem cell–like cells induces chemoresistance in glioblastoma.

Authors: Menggui Huang, Duo Zhang, Janet Y. Wu, Kun Xing, Euin Yeo, Chunsheng Li, Lin Zhang, Eric Holland, Lutian Yao, Ling Qin, Zev A. Binder, Donald M. O'Rourke, Steven Brem, Constantinos Koumenis, Yanqing Gong, Yi Fan.

Science Translational Medicine, 26 Feb 2020, Vol. 12, Issue 532, eaay7522
DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aay7522

The paper stems from research at the Univ. of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and suggests a strategy to overcome therapeutic resistance in Glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive brain tumors.  

Science Translational Medicine is one of the suite of Science journals published by AAAS.

Aaron Goldman and collaborators publish in Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres

New publication from Associate Professor of Biology Aaron Goldman, as cited in Web of Science:

https://link.springer.com/journal/11084

"Reactivity of Metabolic Intermediates and Cofactor Stability under Model Early Earth Conditions."
Authors: Maltais, TR; VanderVelde, D; LaRowe, DE; Goldman, AD; Barge, LM.
Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres access via SpringerLink for subscribers
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11084-019-09590-9.  Published online: 25 JAN 2020

From the conclusion: This research suggests "that perhaps early Earth’s oxygen-free atmosphere and ocean would be a critical factor for stabilizing some of these metabolic intermediates long enough (and suppressing side reactions) for proto-metabolic reactions to occur. Further investigations of cofactors with minerals could assist to overcome the competing chemistries, and further define the capabilities of cofactor chemistry in the early Earth environment."

Michael Moore publishes with research colleagues in Beijing and Kunming, Peoples R China

https://www.publish.csiro.au/sb

Michael Moore, Professor of Biology, has co-authored an article in Australian Systematic Botany, CSIRO Publishing:

Assembly and comparative analyses of the mitochondrial genome of Castanospermum australe (Papilionoideae, Leguminosae). 
Authors:  Zhang, Rong; Jin, Jian-Jun; Moore, Michael J.; Yi, Ting-Shuang.

The Chinese collaborators are all affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Science, Kunming Institute of Botany, Germplasm Bank Wild Species, Kunming, Yunnan, Peoples R China.  Zhang is also affiliated with University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, Peoples R China.

From the abstract: "Plant mitochondrial genomes are often difficult to assemble because of frequent recombination mediated by repeats. Only a few mitochondrial genomes have been characterised in subfamily Papilionoideae of Leguminosae. Here, we report the complete mitochondrial genome of Castanospermum australe A.Cunn. & C.Fraser, an important medicinal and ornamental species in the Aldinoid clade of Papilionoideae."

Mary Garvin, Biology, publishes in Chemosphere (Elsevier)

Published by Elsevier

New publication from Mary Garvin, Biology.  Collaborators include alumni Sonya Kaufman and Courtney Konow; also Rebecca Whelan, previously in the Oberlin College Chemistry & Biochemistry Department.

Garvin, M. C., Schijf, J., Kaufman, S. R., Konow, C., Liang, D., Nigra, A. E., Stracker, N. H., Whelan, R. J., & Wiles, G. C. (2020). A survey of trace metal burdens in increment cores from eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) across a childhood cancer cluster, Sandusky County, OH, USA. Chemosphere, 238, UNSP 124528. 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2019.124528
Also accessible in OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center

From the abstract:

"A dendrochemical study of cottonwood trees (Populus deltoides) was conducted across a childhood cancer cluster in eastern Sandusky County (Ohio, USA). The justification for this study was that no satisfactory explanation has yet been put forward, despite extensive local surveys of aerosols, groundwater, and soil. Concentrations of eight trace metals were measured by ICP-MS in microwave-digested 5-year sections of increment cores, collected during 2012 and 2013...
"Whereas our results do not implicate exposure to metals as a causative factor, we conclude that, after 1970, cottonwood trees have accumulated more Cd, Cr, and Ni, inside the childhood cancer cluster than elsewhere in Sandusky County."

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.