The Triumph of the Geese

Some amazing footage of geese who successfully nested on an Osprey platform, 70' high.  Quite the leap for baby goslings!  Take a few minutes away from mid-term studying and enjoy the view.  Another fun audiovideo piece accessible from OBIS: Sounds of Nature, episode 2: The Ballet of the Mad Geese.

International Day of Forests | United Nations

Today, March 21, 2022, is International Day of Forests | United Nations: Forests cover one third of the Earth's land mass, performing vital functions around the world.

Learn more with these new books: 

The Journeys of Trees / Zach St. George

Jungle : how tropical forests shaped the world-and us / Patrick Roberts

Finding the mother tree : discovering the wisdom of the forest / Suzanne Simard

There are many more that will inspire and delight.  Get started by searching these subject headings in OBIS: 

• Trees
• Forest conservation
• Forests and forestry

Manish Mehta with four alumni published in Journal of Chemical Crystallography

The Mehta lab recently published research on "the extent of spontaneous cocrystallization for 14 cocrystal systems, at four levels of humidity. [Their] results show cocrystal formation in all 14 systems to varying extent and are consistent with literature reports that higher humidity correlates with more rapid cocrystal formation."

Davies, Riley D. '19, Vigilante, Nicolas J. '18, Frederick, Aaron D. '16, Mandala, Venkata S. '15, Mehta, Manish A., Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  2022.  The effects of humidity on spontaneous cocrystallization: a survey of diacid cocrystals with caffeine, theophylline, and nicotinamide.  Journal of Chemical Crystallography. DI 10.1007/s10870-022-00922-8.  Early access, January 2022.  Download at SpringerLink.

For a bit of background on crystal engineering, see the article with that title by Roger Bishop in the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, online.

More than 100 titles added to Oxford Scholarship Online

 Did you know?  We have access to a treasure-trove of ebooks in Oxford Scholarship - more than 100 titles are added every month, all indexed in OBIS.  Find them with these steps:

• select the tab for E-Books
• input: "oxford scholarship" in the search box 

more than 1200 books will listed and described.  Here's a shortcut.  These two seem particularly timely!

Science Wars: The Battle Over Knowledge and Reality. 

Philosophy and history of science lead to a very good understanding of the current impasse regarding interpretation of scientific findings - whether in regard to the Covid pandemic, vaccinations, or climate change.

The Contagion Next Time.  Just what we don't want to hear... but there will be a next time, for certain.  This book will help us learn how we can make sure that society is prepared, and that we will have a common goal for getting through these challenges - most importantly, with the intent to support social and racial equity 

There is so much more to explore - either through OBIS, our online catalog, or browse directly in Oxford Scholarship Online.

Celebrating Black Achievement in Science: book display

Stop by and peruse the books on display in the Science Library's front window. Any book on display may be borrowed. One featured book is only accessible online: Beyond Stock Stories and Folktales : African Americans' Paths to STEM Fields, edited by Henry T. Frierson, William F. Tate Access through OBIS. Several are available in both print and ebook format, noted in the list below.

  

Books shown (in order on display): 

• Notable Black American Scientists
• Swimming Against the Tide (also an ebook) 
• Interrogating Whiteness and Relinquishing Power
• George Washington Carner: A Life
• Edward Bouchet (also an ebook)
• Diversifying STEM
• Benjamin Banneker (more on B. Banneker)
• Making Black Scientists (also an ebook)
• To Fathom More
• Multicultural Science Education (also an ebook)
• A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey From the Street to the Stars
• Contributions of African American Scientists
• Blacks in Science and Medicine 
• George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol 
• Growing Diverse STEM Communities
• Blacks in Science, Ancient and Modern
• Black Scientists, White Society, and Colorless Science
• Broadening Participation in STEM (also an ebook)
• Distinguished African American Scientists of the 20th Century

Three seniors, I. Leavy, J. Kibitel, and R. van der Merwe, are co-authors with researchers from other institutions

Isabelle Leavy of Sacramento, CA, with researchers at Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Malaria Branch, Atlanta:

Abanyie, F., Acharya, S. D., Leavy, I., Bowe, M., & Tan, K. R. (2021). Safety and Effectiveness of Intravenous Artesunate for Treatment of Severe Malaria in the United States-April 2019 Through December 2020. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 73(11), 1965-1972. 10.1093/cid/ciab570

James Kibitel of Bay Shore, NY, with researchers at Oregon State University, the Linus Pauling Institute and the College of Pharmacy, Corvalis:

Muchiri, R. N., Kibitel, J., Redick, M. A., & van Breemen, R. B.  (2022).  Advances in Magnetic Microbead Affinity Selection Screening: Discovery of Natural Ligands to the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein. Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 33(1). 10.1021/jasms.1c00318 (Early access, Dec. 2021)

Rochelle van der Merwe of Saint Paul, MN, with researchers at University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston:

Nazari, H. K., Karimaghaei, C., van der Merwe, R., Montalbano, M., Taglialatela, G., Vargas, G., Zhang, W. B., & Motamedi, M. (2022). Age Dependence of Retinal Vascular Plexus Attenuation in the Triple Transgenic Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease. Experimental Eye Research, 214. 21410.1016/j.exer.2021.108879

Shuming Chen, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, publishes in Angewandte Chemie-International Edition

Huffman, B. J., Chu, T., Hanaki, Y., Wong, J. J., Chen, Shuming M., Houk, K. N., & Shenvi, R. 2022. A.Stereodivergent Attached-Ring Synthesis via Non-Covalent Interactions: A Short Formal Synthesis of Merrilactone A. Angewandte Chemie-International Edition.  61 10.1002/anie.202114514  First published 24 Nov. 2021.

From the conclusion: "Here we disclose a surprising and, to the best of our knowledge, unprecedented model for divergent attached-ring stereocontrol via base- versus Lewis acid-mediated γ-selective butenolide Michael addition." 

Lisa Ryno publishes with past and present members of her lab: Buck, Paladino, Nagashima, Brezel, Holtzman, and Urso

Luke Buck '21, Maddison Paladino '21, Kyogo Nagashima '24, Emma Brezel '17, Josh Holtzman '21, and Sarel J. Urso '16 coauthored a publication with Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Lisa Ryno in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology titled "Temperature-dependent influence of FliA overexpression on PHL628 E. coli biofilm growth and composition." [as noted on the Ryno Lab blog]

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol., 17 December 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fcimb.2021.775270

New publications from current and emeriti faculty and senior Cal Colbert-Pollack

Ciftja, B., Colbert-Pollack, Cal (OC'22), Ciftja, O., & Littlejohn, L. (2021).Results for the electrostatic potential of a uniformly charged hemispherical surface. Results in Physics, 30 doi:10.1016/j.rinp.2021.104892 On ScienceDirect 

Getz, W. M., Salter, Richard (Emeritus Professor of Computer Science), Vissat, L. L., Koopman, J. S., & Simon, C. P. (2021). A runtime alterable epidemic model with genetic drift, waning immunity and vaccinations. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 18 (184) doi:10.1098/rsif.2021.0648  OPEN ACCESS at Royal Society Publishing

McDowell, Ruth E. (Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology), Ali, K. F., Lad, S., San Martin, V. T., Bottino, R., Walsh, M., et al. (2021). Bioenergetics of islet preparations in a pilot clinical trial of peri-transplant hydroxychloroquine for autologous islet transplantation. Cell Transplantation, 30 doi:10.1177/09636897211057440  OPEN ACCESS at Sage Journals

Scofield, John H. (Professor of Physics). (2022). Another look at "2019 energy benchmarking data for LEED-certified buildings in washington". Journal of Building Engineering, 45 doi:10.1016/j.jobe.2021.103544 On ScienceDIrect

Weber, J. M., Henderson, B. L., LaRowe, D. E., Goldman, Aaron D. (Associate Professor of Biology), Perl, S. M., Billings, K., et al. Testing abiotic reduction of NAD(+) directly mediated by iron/sulfur minerals. Astrobiology, doi:10.1089/ast.2021.0035 Access for subscribers

Jillian Scudder publishes in MNRAS; senior Loubna El Meddah El Idrissi is one of three co-authors

 Jillian M. Scudder, Assistant Professor of Physics; Sara L. Ellison; Loubna El Meddah El Idrissi; Henry Poetrodjojo. Conversions between gas-phase metallicities in MaNGA. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (submitted 10 August, 2021; accepted 12 August 2021)  Pre-publication access: arXiv: 2108.04934  20 pages, 14 figures, 4 tables. Supplementary material available online

From the abstract: We present polynomial conversions between each of 11 different strong line gas-phase metallicity calibrations, each based on ∼ 1.1 million star-forming spaxels in the public Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 15 (DR15) Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey.  

New Publications: Dan Stinebring with NANOGrav in Astrophysical Journal, and Franne Kamhi in Journal of Experimental Biology

 

Turner, J. E., McLaughlin, M. A., Cordes, J. M., Lam, M. T., Shapiro-Albert, B. J., Stinebring, Dan R. ... NANOGrav Collaboration. (2021). The NANOGrav 12.5 year data set: monitoring interstellar scattering delays. Astrophysical Journal, 917(1), article 10.

From the abstract: "We extract interstellar scintillation parameters for pulsars observed by the NANOGrav radio pulsar timing program.  ...For most pulsars for which scattering delays are measurable, we find that time-of-arrival uncertainties for a given epoch are larger than our scattering delay measurements, indicating that variable scattering delays are currently subdominant in our overall noise budget but are important for achieving precisions of tens of nanoseconds or less."

Islam, M., Deeti, S., Kamhi, J. Frances, & Cheng, K. (2021). Minding the gap: learning and visual scanning behaviour in nocturnal bull ants. Journal of Experimental Biology, 224(14), jeb242245.

From the abstract: "Insects possess small brains but exhibit sophisticated behaviour, specifically their ability to learn to navigate within complex environments. To understand how they learn to navigate in a cluttered environment, we focused on learning and visual scanning behaviour in the Australian nocturnal bull ant, Myrmecia midas, which are exceptional visual navigators."

Dan Stinebring publishes in Astrophysical Journal with NANOGrav Collaboration

Emeritus Professor of Physics Dan Stinebring is a senior member of the NANOGrav Collaboration.  See the recent story of his work in Campus Digest. 

New publication from the Collaboration:

Arzoumanian, Zaven; Paul T. Baker; Adam Brazier; Paul R. Brook, et al.  2021. The NANOGrav 11 yr Data Set: Limits on Supermassive Black Hole Binaries in Galaxies within 500 Mpc.  Astrophysical Journal 914:121.  Access in OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center or pre-published version on ArXiv.

Learn more about NANOGrav, The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves

Photo: The 100-meter Green Bank Telescope, the world's largest fully steerable telescope. Image credit: NRAO

Source:  http://nanograv.org/telescopes/

New publication from Dan Stinebring with alumnus Hengrui Zhu, and from Michael Moore with collaborators in China and Missouri

AAS and IOP publication

As found in the Web of Science:

• a recent publication from Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy Dan Stinebring and May graduate Hengrui Zhu. 

Dolch, T., Daniel R. Stinebring, G. Jones, Hengrui Zhu '21, R. S. Lynch, T. Cohen, P. B. Demorest, M. T. Lam, L. Levin, M. A. McLaughlin, and N. T. Palliyaguru. 2021. Deconvolving pulsar signals with cyclic spectroscopy: a systematic evaluation. Astrophysical Journal 913:98.

From the abstract: "We show that cyclic spectroscopy is most effective for high [signal-to-noise ratio] and/or highly scattered pulsars. We conclude that cyclic spectroscopy could play an important role in scattering correction to distant populations of highly scattered pulsars not currently included in PTAs."

• and from Professor of Biology Mike Moore:

Zhang, Y., T. Deng, L. Sun, J. B. Landis, Michael J. Moore, H. Wang, Y. Wang, X. Hao, J. Chen, S. Li, M. Xu, P. Puno, P. H. Raven, and H. Sun. 2021. Phylogenetic patterns suggest frequent multiple origins of secondary metabolites across the seed-plant 'tree of life'. National Science Review 8:nwaa105.

The concluding sentence of the abstract notes that "the distribution patterns for [plant secondary metabolites] observed in this study may also be useful in the search for natural compounds for medicinal purposes."

Michael Moore and alumni Noah Last and Riva Bruenn are co-authors in Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society

This recent publication from Professor of Biology Mike Moore explores the evolution of fruiting structures in Nyctaginaceae, known as the Four-o'clock family of flowering trees, shrubs, and herbs.

Sukhorukov, A. P., M. Nilova V.,

Journal cover from Oxford Univ Press

Michael J. Moore, Riva Bruenn, Noah Last, E. F. Sandoli Rossetto, and N. A. Douglas. 2021. Anatomical diversity and evolution of the anthocarp in Nyctaginaceae. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 196:21-52.  Access at OhioLINK Journal Center

From the abstract: We investigate anthocarp evolution in Nyctaginaceae through extensive anatomical studies (159 species from 28 genera representing six of seven tribes) and phylogenetic character state reconstructions. We found highly diverse anthocarp anatomy across Nyctaginaceae, with most traits analysed evolving multiple times throughout the family.

More about Nyctaginaceae, from ScienceDirect.

Assistant Professor of Physics Jillian Scudder is a coauthor on two new publications

Teimoorinia, H., M. Jalilkhany, Jillian M. Scudder, J. Jensen, and S. L. Ellison. 2021. A reassessment of strong line metallicity conversions in the machine learning era. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 503:1082-1095. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab466

From the Abstract: 

The random forest (RF) algorithm [developed by the authors] is non-parametric and therefore more flexible than polynomial conversions, due to its ability to capture non-linear behaviour in the data. The RF method yields the same accuracy as the (updated) polynomial conversions, but has the significant advantage that a single model can be applied over a wide range of metallicities, without the need to distinguish upper and lower branches in R-23 calibrations. The trained RF is made publicly available for use in the community. Access on ArXiv (preprint version, Feb. 16, 2021)

---

Also accessible on ArXiv is this publication describing a project that allows easier study of distant galaxies across wavelength.

Shirley, R., K. Duncan ...J. Scudder, et al. 2021. HELP: The Herschel Extragalactic Legacy Project. arXiv:2105.05659 [astro-ph.GA]

From the Abstract: 
With this project definition paper we provide full access to the first data release of HELP; Data Release 1 (DR1), including a monolithic map of the largest SPIRE extragalactic field at 385 deg2 and 18 million measurements of PACS and SPIRE fluxes. We also provide tools to access and analyse the full HELP database. This new data set includes far-infrared photometry, photometric redshifts, and derived physical properties estimated from modelling the spectral energy distributions.

New publications by Geology and Physics faculty

 Zeb Page and Dan Stinebring published these papers in the past two months:

Cruz-Uribe, A. M., F. Zeb Page, Associate Professor of Geology, et al. 2021. Trace element and isotopic zoning of garnetite veins in amphibolitized eclogite, Franciscan Complex, California, USA. Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology 176:41.

Pol, N. S. … Daniel R. Stinebring, Emeritus Professor of Physics, et al., and NANOGrav Collaboration. 2021. Astrophysics milestones for pulsar timing array gravitational-wave detection. Astrophysical Journal Letters 911:L34.

Yao, J. … Daniel R. Stinebring, Emeritus Professor of Physics, et al. Evidence for three-dimensional spin-velocity alignment in a pulsar. Nature Astronomy, early access May 2021.

Geology faculty publish in Frontiers in Marine Science; Earth and Planetary Science

Assistant Professor Rachel Eveleth and Associate Professor Amanda Schmidt, both of the Geology Department, published journal articles recently.  Alex Grande, Class of 2020, is the first author on the paper with Prof. Schmidt.

Grande, Alexandra, Amanda H. Schmidt, P. R. Bierman, L. B. Corbett, C. Lopez-Lloreda, J. Willenbring, W. H. McDowell, and M. W. Caffee. 2021. Landslides, hurricanes, and sediment sourcing impact basin-scale erosion estimates in Luquillo, Puerto Rico. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 562:116821.

Eveleth, Rachel, D. M. Glover, M. C. Long, I. D. Lima, A. P. Chase, and S. C. Doney. 2021. Assessing the Skill of a High-resolution marine biophysical model using geostatistical analysis of mesoscale ocean chlorophyll variability from field observations and remote sensing. Frontiers in Marine Science 8:612764.

The publisher notes that this article is part of the research topic "Unraveling Mechanisms Underlying Annual Plankton Blooms in the North Atlantic and their Implications for Biogenic Aerosol Properties and Cloud Formation"  View all 17 articles on the topic from Frontiers in Marine Science.  Open Access.

New faculty publications in Astronomy, Biology, and Physics from Jillian Scudder, Mike Moore, and Bruce Richards

 Recently published, as found in Web of Science 

Jillian Scudder, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Ellison, S. L., L. Lin, M. D. Thorp, H. Pan, J. M. Scudder, S. F. Sanchez, A. F. L. Bluck, and R. Maiolino. 2021. The ALMaQUEST Survey - V. The non-universality of kpc-scale star formation relations and the factors that drive them. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 501:4777-4797.
  repository copy, open access

Mike Moore, Professor of Biology

Morales-Briones, D. F., G. Kadereit, D. T. Tefarikis, Michael J. Moore, S. A. Smith, S. F. Brockington, A. Timoneda, W. C. Yim, J. C. Cushman, and Y. Yang. 2021. Disentangling sources of gene tree discordance in phylogenomic data sets: testing ancient hybridizations in Amaranthaceae s.l. Systematic Biology 70:219-235.
https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syaa066

Bruce Richards, Emeritus Professor of Physics

Richards, W. Bruce 2021. Understanding a paradox in special relativity. Physics Teacher 59:284-285. https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0004159

Rich Salter and collaborators create web app for assessment of COVID-19 mitigation measures

Professor Emeritus of Computer Science Richard Salter is one of the developers of a new web application, described in this publication and indexed in Web of Science and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

Getz, Wayne M.; Salter, Richard; Luisa Vissat, Ludovica; Horvitz, Nir.  2021.  A versatile web app for identifying the drivers of COVID-19 epidemics.  Journal of Translational Medicine 19 (1): article number 109.   DOI: 10.1186/s12967-021-02736-2

From the abstract: "Our web app provides policy makers and health officers who have no epidemiological modelling or computer coding expertise with an invaluable tool for assessing the impacts of different outbreak mitigation policies and measures. This includes an ability to generate an epidemic-suppression or curve-flattening index that measures the intensity with which behavioural responses suppress or flatten the epidemic curve in the region under consideration."

Michael Moore, Professor of Biology, publishes with colleagues from Spain in American Journal of Botany

Blanco-Sanchez M; Moore Michael J; Ramos-Munoz M; Pias B; Garcia-Fernandez A; Prieto M; Plaza L; Isabel I; Escudero A; Matesanz S. Phylogeography of a gypsum endemic plant across its entire distribution range in the western Mediterranean. American Journal of Botany, Early View, March 2021. DOI: 10.1002/ajb2.1625

Conclusions of this research, from the abstract: "Lepidium subulatum diverged from its nearest relatives similar to 3 million years ago, and ITS and psbA/matK trees supported the monophyly of the species. These results suggest that both geological and climatic changes in the region around the Plio-Pleistocene promoted its origin, compared to other evolutionary processes... Despite being an edaphic endemic, Lepidium subulatum possesses high genetic diversity probably related to its relatively old age and high population sizes across its range. Our study highlights the value of using different markers to fully understand the phylogeographic history of plant species."