Young has shared her green thumb at Wheaton for 19 years. She graduated from Stonehill College as a history major certified to teach secondary education, but discovered her love of plants soon after graduation when she entered a plant store. She went in to buy a celebratory cactus and left with her first post-graduate job in plant care and retail. With her self-taught knowledge of botany and her knack for teaching, she began to teach extension courses in indoor horticulture at the Rhode Island School of Design early in her career. For years she wrote a weekly column for the Boston Globe.

At Wheaton, she says that it is the natural-yet-controlled environment that she enjoys most about working in the greenhouse. “It is a perfect combination of nature and serenity,” she says. “Nature can be very violent, unpredictable and dangerous, but the greenhouse provides a place to enjoy the different natural settings of plants without the risk of dangerous weather conditions, animals, disease and geographic hazards. “I can watch cacti bloom without getting stranded in the desert. I can see rainforest plants grow and thrive without having to avoid snakes and quicksand. I have the best of the best without the worst, so to speak. Plus I don't need a passport or vaccinations!”

The new greenhouse gathers this world of botanical diversity into a 1,200-square-foot setting. The adjacent rooms that make up the greenhouse include a rainforest room, desert room, and temperate room. A larger space also is reserved for student and faculty research. In each designated environment, the lighting, temperature, humidity and ventilation are all adjusted automatically in response to outdoor climate conditions. On bright days, warm sunlight streaming in creates a beautiful atmosphere, and provides for the plants.

Not only is the greenhouse a beautiful rooftop sanctuary, it is also a teaching tool. It holds four new growth chambers, enclosed machines that allow researchers to tinker with exactly how much light, heat and humidity a growing plant will receive. Many classes benefit from the student research room, growth chambers, and diversity of plants. For example, students in “Introduction to Biology” can use the facility to conduct their self-designed research projects. Students in “Plant Biology” visit the greenhouse regularly to study species diversity and anatomy, and “Genetics” classes use greenhouse plants to study cross-pollination in rapid cycling Brassica plants, which grow very quickly, enabling students to study two generations of plants by the end of the semester.

The general public benefits, too: Wheaton interns at the on-campus Elizabeth Amen Nursery School bring children to visit the greenhouse, and local elementary schools and other groups such as Assisted Living of Norton and the Westwood Garden Club also stop by.

To view photos and to read more about the greenhouse visit: http://wheatoncollege.edu/science/greenhouse/.

Elizabeth Meyer '14

The professor and researcher offered the following thoughts on the discovery, which was announced by NASA on Wednesday:

"I'm amazed that they found such a small moon around Pluto. It's a testament to how great a space telescope is (which is politically relevant because Congress is currently slashing funding for the next space telescope to replace Hubble).

"My connection to this [discovery] is a project I've been collaborating on with colleagues to figure out what Pluto's moon Charon can tell us about the geological history of Pluto and the giant impact that probably formed its moons.

"The orbital evolution of Pluto and Charon together helps us figure out whether we should expect to find that Pluto's surface has been torn apart by faults, a kind of geologic activity that could be driven by tides from Pluto's large moon. We'll find out the answer to my question when the New Horizons spacecraft gets there in 2015.

"This tiny little moon that was just discovered doesn't have a direct effect on my results, but it does bring up interesting questions about the long-term history of the three small moons of Pluto: Nix, Hydra and now P4.

"Unlike the giant impact theory for Pluto, we actually have quite a bit of evidence (some from lunar samples gathered during the Apollo program) that the Earth's Moon was formed when an object about the size of Mars whacked into the proto-Earth. Now people have been using the same explanation to puzzle out why a small "dwarf planet" like Pluto got such a (comparatively) large moon like Charon.

"Pluto and Earth appear to share this rare event in their history: a giant impact that formed a large moon. The question you should be asking yourself is why Pluto got four moons out of the deal, and we only got one!"

How did you become interested in tropical ecology?
I was drawn to the tropics [in 1978] through an opportunity to do a course in Belize. I plunged ahead, knowing relatively little about tropical ecology but eager to learn along with my students. Thirty-three years later, alums still talk about that first course. I continued to offer it and have since explored Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela to learn more and more about tropical ecology.

Why did you write this book?
My first tropical book, A Neotropical Companion, focused mainly on the Middle American tropics. Many college courses in tropical ecology adopted it, but there was a clear need for a college-level comprehensive textbook on tropical ecology, and my editor asked me to take it on. Tropical regions offer outstanding opportunities to research and to learn how complex interactions occur among species that have profound effects in structuring ecosystems and in how our very planet functions.

What can tropical ecology teach us about life on Earth?
The key to tropical ecology is in the complexity of relationships among the myriad of species present. No other ecosystems, natural or otherwise, rival the tropics in the number of species of plants, birds, mammals, insects, microbes, etc. that you find in just a hectare of forest. Well over 50 percent of the world’s species are found only in the tropics, even though the total area of the tropics is proportionally far less than that. There are 20 to 30 species of trees and shrubs in Wheaton Woods. But if we moved Wheaton to, say, Amazonia, we’d have 200 to 300 or more species of trees and shrubs in the same amount of area. We’d be able to discover new species of insects and various other forms of life.

Why is biodiversity important?
Biodiversity is important to life on Earth because it is life on Earth; it is what we share the planet with. The various life forms, in their combined and complex activities and interrelationships, are responsible for keeping everything—from the atmosphere to soil and water—relatively stable. We call this collective effect “ecosystem services,” and these services depend on biodiversity to supply the labor. It is astonishing that we have reached a point in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history where one species, one genome, namely Homo sapiens, has significantly altered and perturbed such global processes as regulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans. We need all the help available to maintain a stable Earth, and biodiversity does that. Earth is a living planet, and biodiversity is the expression of that life.

You’re an ornithologist. How did you first get interested in birding?
I have had a lifelong interest in birds and other forms of life. I began as a small child and still have the heavily worn, indeed beat-up copy of my first bird guide. Birding is most definitely an aesthetic pursuit as well as a scientific one. My vocation and avocation are one and the same.

An expanded version of this interview has been published in the fall 2011 issue of the Wheaton Quarterly.

Author photo: Martha Vaughan

Students, faculty, staff members, alumnae/i and friends signed their names to the final steel beam before it was hoisted up into the building's superstructure. The beam was painted white and the signatures were made with blue markers, mirroring the college's school colors.

Learn more about the Mars Center for Science and Technology.

Check out the site with our construction web cam.

The 99,000-square-foot project, which includes the construction of a new, three-story building and the renovation of the first floor of the existing science building, will expand and improve facilities for scientific and interdisciplinary scholarship as well as further the college's Connections curriculum.

In addition, the project has been designed to promote the college's efforts in promoting sustainability and environmental conservation, from the installation of energy-efficient systems and a "green" roof to architectural features that will control water run-off on the site.

"This project makes a bold statement about Wheaton's commitment to the sciences and to high-quality liberal arts education for all students," said President Ronald Crutcher. "This investment reflects our belief that scientific literacy and research are critical components of a 21st century liberal arts education.

"Our new science center builds on what makes Wheaton distinctive. The design for the project encourages active learning and collaboration, and it will allow our students and faculty to fully develop the  Connections curriculum, which strengthens students' capacity to engage the perspectives of multiple disciplines."

The cost of the building is approximately $42 million. More than half the funding ($27 million) will come from gifts to the college for the project.Work will begin this spring; the project will be completed in the fall of 2011.

The new building will contain classroom, lab and office space, as well as greatly expanded common spaces for the college. It will serve as the home for biology, chemistry and cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. Math, physics and computer science will be located in the renovated portion of the existing facility.

Among the laboratories that will be created will be multi-use labs uniquely suited to collaborative, interdisciplinary research among students and faculty, said Tommy Ratliff, associate professor of mathematics and the faculty coordinator for the project. "When this project is complete, our students are going to have the space they deserve for the outstanding work they do," he said. In addition, the new building will include  classrooms outfitted for transformation into research labs, allowing the science program room to evolve as students' needs change.

Beyond its goals to provide new facilities for the sciences, the new science center will also provide more community spaces such as study lounges and cafés. These features will facilitate collaboration among students and faculty, allowing for formal learning and teaching as well as the informal interactions that build a sense of community.

Designed by Einhorn Yaffe Prescott, the project also reflects Wheaton's commitment to environmental sustainability. The new center will incorporate a host of features that will enable the building to earn LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a nationally recognized benchmark for sustainable buildings established by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The Wheaton senior wouldn't have it any other way. Her late hours and research passion have just paid off in a big way. She has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany to join the research team at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich. She also will take graduate level courses at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.

The Westford, Mass., resident will study the neurogenetics of sleep regulation. "Our sleep cycle is affected by a variety of factors and more recently in the scientific world experts have taken a molecular approach toward studying these factors by analyzing various genes and gene products," says Albu. The goal is to understand how chemicals and changes in the brain affect sleep patterns.

"By studying sleep processes on a molecular level, revolutionary therapeutic advances could potentially be made for treating diseases such as insomnia, narcolepsy, sleep apnea and even related disorders such as anxiety and depression," she says.

Albu has been pursing her interest in sleep regulation since her junior year when she conducted research at the McCarley Sleep Lab division of Harvard Medical School/VA Healthcare System. That work allowed her to develop a hands-on understanding of neurobiological approaches. She continued her research there in the form of an honors thesis for her major at Wheaton. Through the experience she realized that she wanted to concentrate on sleep medicine and eventually study it at the graduate level.

The professors who recommended her for the Fulbright say she is perfectly suited for the research.

"She is the type of scholar I imagine the Fulbright program is meant to support," wrote Assistant Professor of Psychology Meg Kirkpatrick, her psychobiology adviser. "It is also the uniquely perfect combination of opportunities that I find most exciting. To imagine the chance for a successful German-speaking scholar to build on previous research experience in the neuro-mechanism of sleep in Munich seems the stuff of dreams."

Along with psychobiology, Albu is majoring in German. "I am often asked why I chose such an unusual combination of majors," she notes. "However there is a reason. Germany is technologically very competitive in the field of science comparable to the advances made in the USA, and currently German is the second most widely spoken language in the sciences.

"I've known from a young age that my interest lies in scientific inquiry; however, inquiring about your environment and culture is similarly as important. While taking biology courses abroad my sophomore year [at the University of Regensburg], I truly understood the necessity of being able to communicate your thoughts with those around you and it was then that my interest for the German language and culture was sparked."

At Wheaton, Albu has been involved in German related activities, including being president of the German Club, a German language tutor and German department assistant. She is also a member of the Tri-Beta Biological Honors Society executive board, and last summer she interned at the German Mission to the United Nations in New York City.

She is the 2009-2010 Jeannette Kittredge Watson Named Scholar, and she has won many honors over the past four years, including the 2006-2007 Federal Republic of Germany Consulate Excellence Award and the Hedda Korsch Prize in German.

Albu, who was born in Romania, attributes her success to the work ethic set by her parents and to the support she has received at Wheaton.

"I immigrated to the U.S. at the age of seven. My parents reshaped their reality so that my brother and I would have opportunities unheard of in Romania," says Albu. "With their ambitious and humble outlooks on integrating, they truly fulfilled the American Dream. It is their unceasing dedication and perseverance that has taught me that through hard work anything is possible."

As for Wheaton, she adds: "I would not be where I am today were it not for the small liberal arts setting and nurturing community here. It is with the guidance and support of such enthusiastic and devoted professors that I have come this far. Most importantly, my advisers [Assistant Professor of German] Tessa Lee and Meg Kirkpatrick, two of the most brilliant women I have met, both served as outstanding examples by continuing to motivate me to take my education one step further.

"Receiving the Fulbright still does not seem like a reality to me, the next morning I reread the letter a few times to make sure it wasn't just a dream," Albu says.



The winning scholarship by Eric Drewniak '11 developed and tested an algorithim for detecting patterns in large sets of data, an application that has grown in importance as major online firms such as Google, Amazon and Netflix have employed such methods to deliver core services of their business.

The math and computer science major's project was selected as the second-place finisher in the undergraduate research competition at the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGSCE) conference, which was held in Milwaukee, Wisc. SIGSCE is the largest conference of computer science educators in the nation.

The appeal of the project, says Drewniak, lies in its applicability to a variety of problems.

"The data can be from any source: the closing prices of a stock over the course of a year, average temperature for a region over a decade, a buoy measuring water levels or temperatures in the ocean or a patient's heart rate," explained Drewniak, who conducted the research under the mentorship of Assistant Professor of Computer Science Tom Armstrong.

At the conference, Drewniak presented his research in an initial round of poster sessions, which placed him among the top five finishers. In the formal oral presentation that followed, he was awarded second place overall.

The Ludlow, Mass. native worked with Professor Armstrong on the research during the summer with support from the Mars Student-Faculty Research Partnership program at Wheaton College. He hopes to continue that work this summer, improving the speed of the algorithim through the use of parallel computing and expanding it to handle multiple-variable data sets.

"The diversity of data that can be examined makes the project particularly valuable to many fields. It is a way computer science can help benefit other fields," he explained. "Humans have a hard time finding patterns in large data sets and cannot constantly monitor incoming data."

Dr. Jennifer Forman Orth, state plant pest survey coordinator for the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, will present a lecture on the non-native insect at 7:30 p.m. in Hindle Auditorium, Wheaton College Science Center, Norton. The event is free and open to the public.

Adult Asian longhorned beetle, male. Photo by Jennifer Forman Orth, Mass DAR

The Asian Longhorn Beetle is an invasive species native to China, according to the Massachusetts Introduced Pests Outreach Project. It was first discovered in the U.S. in New York in 1996, and has also been found in Chicago and New Jersey.

An outbreak in Worcester has necessitated the removal of more than 20,000 trees in an effort to eradicate the beetle, which drills holes in tree trunks before laying its eggs. Its larvae eat trees from the inside out, disrupting the sap flow and weakening and eventually killing them.

This pest attacks a wide variety of hardwood trees, particularly maples. State agricultural and environmental officials consider it a serious threat to the nursery, lumber, wood products, maple syrup, and tourism industries. The insect's spread also poses a hazard to the region's forest ecosystem.

In a paper published in the latest edition of the academic journal Perception, Rolf Nelson, a psychology professor at Wheaton who studies human visual perception, finds that playing different kinds of video games changes the way people think and approach their surroundings.

Nelson performed two different experiments in which participants played either a fast-action video game (Unreal Tournament) or a puzzle-solving video game (Portal). Before and after their gaming sessions, participants performed a task in which both speed and accuracy were emphasized.

People who played the action video game did tasks faster, but at the cost of being less accurate. Those who played the strategy game did things more accurately, but more slowly.

Nelson said the results could show that the kinds of video games that children and college students play might affect the ways they approach their school work or other tasks. For example, if they’re playing an action game and then switch to homework, they may try to blaze through their homework at the cost of making mistakes. Or if they play strategy games, they may work slowly, but turn in more accurate work.

“In fact, it is striking how dramatically these strategies can be shifted by a single hour of video-game play,” Nelson said.

He said the implications could also be felt in the workplace.

“The same thing that applies to kids might apply to adults. Workers who play action video games during their lunch hour may find that it affects the accuracy of their work soon after,” Nelson said.

The study, “Action and puzzle video games prime different speed/accuracy tradeoffs,” offers a rare look at the impact different types of video games have on cognitive and perceptual abilities. “While there has been a great deal of [research] focused on performance differences between non-video-game players and avid video-game players, we were interested in looking at the affects of playing different types of video games,” he says.

The research was co-authored by Ian Strachan, a 2009 psychobiology graduate at Wheaton.

“Results convincingly demonstrate a priming effect for two different types of video games,” Nelson says. “Playing Unreal Tournament, an action video game, resulted in faster reaction times and lower accuracy on a location task, while playing Portal, a puzzle game, resulted in slower reaction times and higher accuracy.”

According to Nelson, these results underscore the importance of studying the cognitive and perceptual consequences of video games in terms of the types of skills demanded from the particular video game under study. “It is also clear that generalized statements about how video games affect cognition are misleading,” Nelson says.

“Different genres affect perception and strategy in very different ways.” An action video game and a puzzle video game have very different demands, he says, and no doubt there are other demands of video games which fall into other categories. He notes that most studies on the perceptual effects of video games in recent years have utilized a particular genre, that of the fast-action first-person shooter (FPS). “However, it is misleading to base conclusions about video games in general on a single genre, just as it would be misleading to base one's conclusions about the effects of television by considering only crime shows.”

In recent years, video games have evolved into a number of distinct genres, Nelson says. “Although many games may overlap in genre, they are often broken down into categories such as sports, simulation, puzzle, FPS, role-playing, with each of these categories including several subgenres.” In the study of the effects of video-game play on perceptual and attentional processes, the relevant categorization into genres may be different than for other purposes, notes the Wheaton College professor.

“For example, the game Halo 3 has a science fiction theme, while the game Medal of Honor 4 has a military theme,” he says. “If they were films, they might be categorized into war and science-fiction genres.” However, the relevant aspect here is that they are both FPS games with a similar style of play--fast reactions, accuracy, and good spatial navigation being important for successful game play. “In order to make a serious effort at understanding the perceptual and cognitive effects of video games, it must be realized that the variety of video games is quite broad.”

Nelson, whose primary research focus is on visual perception and attention, says the project has led him to ponder the degree to which the type of effect demonstrated in this research manifests itself in everyday life: “How might video-game play affect the way in which students interact in the classroom?”

Perhaps students who have just played an action video game before class are less patient but faster in their interactions, while those who have played a puzzle game show a slower but more accurate mode of interaction.

Evans plans to take at least one Wheaton College student  with him to the Himalayas to help with research, which will be a collaborative effort between Wheaton and Cornell University. Undergraduate and graduate students from both schools also will do extensive laboratory work.

The research continues and expands collaborative work he conducted with colleagues while working on his dissertation at Cornell University. Evans and colleagues sampled geothermal springs in Nepal and found that they produce large amounts of carbon dioxide CO₂.

Traditionally, it has been thought that the formation of mountains reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide, through a series of chemical reactions in which CO₂ from the atmosphere combines with water to form a weak acid, which then breaks down minerals within these mountain belts, said Evans. However, his research of hot springs flowing on the southern flank of the Himalayan mountain range offers a different possibility.

“Our work has shown that the hot springs are bringing to the surface as much, if not more, CO₂ than is being removed by these chemical weathering processes,” he said. “Up to this point, delivery of CO₂ from mountain ranges hasn’t been considered a significant source. So this finding represents a significant shift in the current paradigm, and has impacts on our understanding of the relationship between tectonics, climate and the carbon cycle.”

The long-term climate record, said Evans, shows the extent of variability possible in the Earth system, from snowball to hothouse. “We need to understand how the carbon cycle and long-term global climate are related, even in the absence of humans, so that we can better estimate how the disturbances we are causing may impact the system.”

That understanding hinges on the ability to constrain the carbon sources and carbon “sinks” (places of accumulation). “Ultimately, Earth scientists are trying to figure out how the Earth works, and the linkage between mountain building, global climate and the carbon cycle is a great example of the dynamic Earth system.”

The carbon cycle, which plays a role in climate change, is the complex process in which CO₂ is removed from and emitted back into the atmosphere, ideally in a balanced way. Since the Industrial Revolution, concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere have greatly increased, largely due to human activities, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Scientists, as well as policy makers, have been keenly interested in the long-term impact on life on Earth.

Evans’s NSF grant will provide two years of financial backing for research. Much of the funding will go to support fieldwork in central and western Nepal, and in northwestern India, a new area for him.

The students that he will take to the Himalayas will help with sampling. The funding also should support at least two student research projects or senior theses, he said. A summer salary for students to help perform chemical analyses, and collect and synthesize the chemical data is also available.

“It’s really a very exciting opportunity, both for me and for Wheaton,” said Evans, a geochemist who uses water chemistry to examine geological processes at and near the Earth’s surface.