RESEARCH Science Archives 2008

TOPICS: Agriculture | Animal Sciences |Astronomy | Atmospheric Science | Biochemistry | Bioengineering | Biology | Chemistry | Civil Engineering | Computers | Engineering | Entomology | Environment | Food Science | Geology | Health | Materials Science| Mathematics | Medicine |Nutritional Sciences | Physics | Psychology | Theoretical and Applied Mechanics | Veterinary Medicine |

AGRICULTURE
History: Transfer RNA is an ancient molecule, central to every task a cell performs and thus essential to all life. A new study from the University of Illinois indicates that it is also a great historian, preserving some of the earliest and most profound events of the evolutionary past in its structure. (3/7/08)

ANIMAL SCIENCES

ASTRONOMY
SString Theory: The theory whose fundamental building blocks are tiny one-dimensional filaments called strings is the leading contender for a “theory of everything.” Such a theory would unify all four fundamental forces of nature (the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity). But finding ways to test string theory has been difficult. Now, cosmologists at the U. of I. say absorption features in the 21-centimeter spectrum of neutral hydrogen atoms could be used for such a test. (1/28/08)
Stel

ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE

BIOCHEMISTRY
er:Neurotransmitter: Researchers at Illinois – led by Claudio Grossman, professor of molecular and integrative physiology – have painstakingly mapped the interior of a key component of the relay system that allows the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to get its message across. (4/7/08)

DNA Repair Enzyme: U. of I. researchers have taken the first steps toward understanding how an enzyme repairs DNA. (2/18/08)

BIOENGINEERING

BIOLOGY
Frog physiology: Female concave-eared torrent frogs emit a high-pitched chirp that to the human ear sounds like that of a bird, to draw their mates. (5/12/08)

Neurology: Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share? A study appearing this week in Science finds that most people choose the latter, and that the brain responds in unique ways to inefficiency and inequity. (5/8/08)

History: Transfer RNA is an ancient molecule, central to every task a cell performs and thus essential to all life. A new study from the University of Illinois indicates that it is also a great historian, preserving some of the earliest and most profound events of the evolutionary past in its structure. (3/7/08)

Biophysics: Blood clots can save lives, staunching blood loss after injury, but they can also kill. Let loose in the bloodstream, a clot can cause a heart attack, stroke or pulmonary embolism. A new study reveals in atomic detail how a blood protein that is a fundamental building block of blood clots gives them their life-enhancing, or life-endangering, properties. (2/25/08)

Field Guides: Diane Schmidt, the biology librarian at the U. of I. has built and launched the most complete database of field guides to date. The International Field Guides Web Site merges Schmidt’s own book, “A Guide to Field Guides: Identifying the Natural History of North America” (Libraries Unlimited, 1999), and its companion Web site, International Field Guides, plus 2,000 new titles. (1/29/08)

CELL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
Immunogold: University of Illinois researchers have developed a technique for imaging cells under an electron microscope that yields a sharper image of the structure of chromatin, the tightly wound bundle of genetic material and proteins that makes up the chromosomes. (4/16/08)

CHEMISTRY
Staph Infections: Researchers at the University of Illinois helped lead a collaborative effort to uncover a completely new treatment strategy for serious Staphylococcus aureus (“Staph”) infections. The research, published Feb. 14 in ScienceXpress, the online version of Science magazine, comes at a time when strains of antibiotic-resistant Staph (known as MRSA, for methicillin-resistant S. aureus) are spreading in epidemic proportions in hospital and community settings. (2/14/08)

Buffer and pH Change: Researchers at the University of Illinois have found a simple solution to a problem that has plagued scientists for decades: the tendency of chemical buffers used to maintain the pH of laboratory samples to lose their efficacy as the samples are cooled. The research team, headed by chemistry professor Yi Lu, developed a method to formulate a buffer that maintains a desired pH at a range of low temperatures. (1/14/08)

CIVIL ENGINEERING

CROP SCIENCES
Maize: A team of plant geneticists and crop scientists has pioneered an economical approach to the selective breeding of maize that can boost levels of provitamin A, the precursors that are converted to vitamin A upon consumption. This innovation could help to enhance the nutritional status of millions of people in the developing world. (1/17/08)

ENGINEERING
Nanotechnology: University of Illinois researchers are pooling their knowledge of health sciences and engineering on a project that ultimately could benefit combat soldiers who’ve received serious – but often immediately undetectable – blast-related brain injuries. The project will focus on the use the latest communications technology to transfer real-time blast-injury data to first responders. (3/6/08)

Electronics: Carbon nanotubes have a sound future in the electronics industry, say researchers who built the world’s first all-nanotube transistor radios to prove it. (1/28/08)

ENTOMOLOGY
Honey Bee Invasion: Like any species that aspires to rule the world, the honey bee, Apis mellifera, invades new territories in repeated assaults. A new study demonstrates that when these honey bees arrive in a place that has already been invaded, the newcomers benefit from the genetic endowment of their predecessors. (2/25/08)

Insect Fear Film Festival: It’s insect fear from the insect’s perspective this year at the Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois, with a free screening of “Bee Movie,” hosted by its director, Simon J. Smith. (2/18/08)

Parsnips: What could be lower than the lowly parsnip, a root once prized for its portable starchiness but which was long ago displaced by the more palatable potato? Perhaps only the parsnip webworm gets less respect. An age-old enemy of the parsnip, the webworm is one of very few insects able to overcome the plant’s chemical defenses. The tenacious parsnip webworm has followed the weedy version of the parsnip in its transit from its ancestral home in Eurasia to Europe, North America and – most recently – New Zealand. (1/30/08)

ENVIRONMENT
Bio

FOOD SCIENCE

GEOLOGY
Iron Snow: New scientific evidence suggests that deep inside the planet Mercury, iron “snow” forms and falls toward the center of the planet, much like snowflakes form in Earth’s atmosphere and fall to the ground. The movement of this iron snow could be responsible for Mercury’s mysterious magnetic field, say researchers from the University of Illinois and Case Western Reserve University. (3/10/08)

Core: Geologists at the University of Illinois have confirmed the discovery of Earth’s inner, innermost core, and have created a three-dimensional model that describes the seismic anisotropy and texturing of iron crystals within the inner core. (3/10/08)

Hot Springs: Scientists studying microbial communities and the growth of sedimentary rock at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park have made a surprising discovery about the geological record of life and the environment. (1/22/08)

HEALTH
Exercise & MS: While others work to find a cure for multiple sclerosis – which Rob Motl said is unlikely to materialize any time soon – he and colleagues at the U. of I. are focusing their research on “understanding the role of exercise as rehabilitation for MS, with the goal of slowing, mitigating or ending the devastating effects of the disease." (2/28/08)

Reproductive Health: The Advisory Council of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has approved funding to support a Center for Reproduction and Infertility Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The center will support research aimed at expanding the science underlying the success or failure of human reproduction with the goal of improving human reproductive health. (1/29/08)

MATERIALS SCIENCE
Stretchable Electronics: Scientists have developed a new form of stretchable silicon integrated circuit that can wrap around complex shapes such as spheres, body parts and aircraft wings, and can operate during stretching, compressing, folding and other types of extreme mechanical deformations, without a reduction in electrical performance. (3/27/08)

HIV Protein: Scientists have known for more than a decade that a protein associated with the HIV virus is good at crossing cell membranes, but they didn’t know how it worked. A multidisciplinary team from the University of Illinois has solved the mystery, and their findings could improve the design of therapeutic agents that cross a variety of membrane types. (3/17/08)

Nanocrystals: Finding the key to gold’s chemical reactivity (or that of any metal nanocrystal) has been difficult, as few measurement techniques work at the nanoscale. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated a sensitive probe that can identify and characterize the atomic structure of gold and other nanocrystalline materials. (3/10/08)

Photonic Crystals: Researchers at the University of Illinois are the first to achieve optical waveguiding of near-infrared light through features embedded in self-assembled, three-dimensional photonic crystals. Applications for the optically active crystals include low-loss waveguides, low-threshold lasers and on-chip optical circuitry. (1/7/08)

MECHANICAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Femtogram Measurements: Researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated a method for simultaneous structural and chemical characterization of samples at the femtogram level (a femtogram is one quadrillionth of a gram) and below. The measurement technique combines the extraordinary resolution of atomic force microscopy and the excellent chemical identification of infrared spectroscopy.

Nanofiber Fabrication: The continuous fabrication of complex, three-dimensional nanoscale structures and the ability to grow individual nanowires of unlimited length are now possible with a process developed by researchers at the University of Illinois. (1/30/08)

MEDICINE
Biophysics: Blood clots can save lives, staunching blood loss after injury, but they can also kill. Let loose in the bloodstream, a clot can cause a heart attack, stroke or pulmonary embolism. A new study reveals in atomic detail how a blood protein that is a fundamental building block of blood clots gives them their life-enhancing, or life-endangering, properties. (2/25/08)

MICROBIOLOGY

PHYSICS
Motor Protein: Cell division is essential to life, but the mechanism by which emerging daughter cells organize and divvy up their genetic endowments is little understood. In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois and Columbia University report on how a key motor protein orchestrates chromosome movements at a critical stage of cell division. (5/13/08)

Photon: The record for the most amount of information sent by a single photon has been broken by researchers at the University of Illinois. Using the direction of “wiggling” and “twisting” of a pair of hyper-entangled photons, they have beaten a fundamental limit on the channel capacity for dense coding with linear optics. (3/24/08)

Mixed Reality: Using a virtual pendulum and its real-world counterpart, scientists at the University of Illinois have created the first mixed reality state in a physical system. Through bidirectional instantaneous coupling, each pendulum “sensed” the other, their motions became correlated, and the two began swinging as one. (3/10/08)

Biophysics: Blood clots can save lives, staunching blood loss after injury, but they can also kill. Let loose in the bloodstream, a clot can cause a heart attack, stroke or pulmonary embolism. A new study reveals in atomic detail how a blood protein that is a fundamental building block of blood clots gives them their life-enhancing, or life-endangering, properties. (2/25/08)

PLANT BIOLOGY
Aya Papaya: A broad collaboration of research institutions in the U.S. and China has produced a first draft of the papaya genome. This draft, which spells out more than 90 percent of the plant’s gene coding sequence, sheds new light on the evolution of flowering plants. And because it involves a genetically modified plant, the newly sequenced papaya genome offers the most detailed picture yet of the genetic changes that make the plant resistant to the papaya ringspot virus. (4/23/08)

CO2: Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising at an alarming rate, and new research indicates that soybean plant defenses go down as CO2 goes up. Elevated CO2 impairs a key component of the plant’s defenses against leaf-eating insects, according to the report. (3/25/08)

PSYCHOLOGY
Happiness: Could the pursuit of happiness go too far? Most self-help books on the subject offer tips on how to maximize one’s bliss, but a new study suggests that moderate happiness may be preferable to full-fledged elation. (1/16/08)

THEORETICAL AND APPLIED MECHANICS

VETERINARY MEDICINE
Poxvirus: Researchers report this month that red colobus monkeys in a park in western Uganda have been exposed to an unknown orthopoxvirus, a pathogen related to the viruses that cause smallpox, monkeypox and cowpox. Most of the monkeys screened harbor antibodies to a virus that is similar – but not identical – to known orthopoxviruses. (4/22/08)

Exotics: Ferrets, frogs and finches are becoming more common as pets, but the list of unusual species adopted into human households now includes some of the most exotic creatures on the planet. A new textbook on exotic pet practice offers practical guidance on how to treat your average crocodile, cicada or chinchilla. (3/20/08)

Wildlife: Herons nesting in the wetlands of southeast Chicago are still being exposed to chemicals banned in the U.S. in the 1970s, a research team reports. The chemicals do not appear to be affecting the birds’ reproductive success, however. (1/16/08)