The effort to constrain the link between global climate and determine how much of global warming has to do with natural geological processes will be furthered over the next couple of years by Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Geology Matthew Evans. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded him a $109,880 grant to investigate Himalayan hot springs and their long-term effect on the global carbon cycle.

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.

"We patrolled the beach at night looking for leatherback sea turtles coming up to nest. We would collect their eggs and put them in a hatchery that would be protected from poachers. It was so neat to see these huge animals up close, and it really sparked my interest in marine research and the impact we are having on marine life," she said.

She will be able to indulge that interest in a big way over the next two years, thanks to a $46,500 fellowship award. Perkins has been named an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Greater Research Opportunities Undergraduate Fellow. The fellowship is open to students in environmental fields of study. It provides up to $19,250 per year for the students’ junior and senior year and $8,000 for internship support. The internship may be fulfilled at an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) facility anywhere in the United States. Just 25 undergraduate students around the country were awarded the fellowship.

Wheaton Professor of Biology Scott Shumway applauds the committee’s choice. "I was thrilled when I heard that Ellen had received this prestigious national fellowship,” he said. “She is a highly deserving candidate with a major in environmental science and mathematics—a very strong combination. The fellowship comes at a turning point in her academic career when she needs to begin gaining research experience to complement her classroom learning. I look forward to seeing her develop as a scientist over the next two years and beyond."

Late last fall, it was Shumway who suggested that Perkins apply for the fellowship. Her stellar academic performance in science and math, combined with her broad interest in environmental science, made her an ideal candidate, he said.

Perkins didn’t know what to expect when she applied. The process began late in the fall semester, just as she was preparing for finals. "It was very complicated and came at a busy time of the school year. I am so grateful for the support I received from faculty and staff at Wheaton. I couldn’t have done it without them," she said.

Perkins also appreciates the fact that she has become very interested in “the interconnectedness” of ecology, math and environmental science because of her classes at Wheaton. “Part of the reason I am a math minor is because I enjoy math and problem solving. I also see it as a key tool to understanding and solving environmental problems. I can see the applications to the environment in all of the math classes I have taken, whether it is setting up matrices using linear algebra or using statistics.”

Working in the field, in Costa Rica

Access to field work is the most significant aspect of her academic experience here, according to Perkins. In January, she completed field research in Shumway’s "Tropical Field Biology," a faculty-led study abroad course in Costa Rica. She also took several trips to Cape Cod with Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Peter Auger’s ecology class. "Sandy Neck Beach was not only gorgeous, but also an amazing place to study the environment, as well as the impact that humans have on it."

Currently Perkins is narrowing her research possibilities and then will begin looking for a corresponding EPA facility for her internship in the summer. Although she hasn’t determined the specific focus for her research, she plans to look at the human development of coastal areas and its impact on ecological habitats, which would combine her environmental and marine biology interests.

She said she is eager to give back to the academic community by presenting her research at Wheaton College events. "Having this fellowship is a great start to doing research later on in my career, so that I would be able to go back and talk to future scientists. The results of my internship will open up the environmental science field to a whole new group of students."

The research will investigate how cilia specialize during development, with the hope of learning more about the many human diseases and birth defects that are caused by ciliary defects, such as polycystic kidney disease. Morris studies cell development in the sea urchin, a creature whose embryonic development closely resembles that of human beings.

The grant is from the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which identifies itself as “the nation’s medical research agency.”

“This formerly obscure organelle, the cell’s cilium, has undergone a revolution in research interest due to recent discoveries about its importance in human development, birth defects and disease,” says Morris, who has been studying cilia and cell development for 14 years.

Cilia are whip-like structures that extend from a cell’s surface and act as oars to propel fluid over cells, or as antennae to sense stimuli in the environment, Morris explains. In adults, motile cilia support respiratory, reproductive and nervous systems. They are also crucial to the developmental processes that position our hearts on the left and our livers on the right. Immotile cilia sense cues in embryos and sense sight, sound, and smell in adults.

The NICHD grant will support Morris and his student research team during the academic year and during a summer residence at a major marine lab, either the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., or the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Maine.

“This research program will provide the first evidence of how cilia form and specialize during the development of complex animals to create the spectrum of ciliary forms and functions essential to human health,” Morris says.

The grant will also enable Morris and two of his students to attend and present their research findings at the International Conference of the American Society for Cell Biology.

Attended by some 10,000 scientists in the fields of cell and developmental biology, the conference is a premier opportunity to present research and a “transformative experience for the students as undergraduates,” says Morris.

]]> http://wheatoncollege.edu/news/2009/09/22/morris-wins-150000-nih-grant/feed/ 0 http://wheatoncollege.edu/news/2009/06/18/nasagrant/ http://wheatoncollege.edu/news/2009/06/18/nasagrant/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:30:10 +0000 Sandy Coleman http://wheatoncollege.edu/news/2009/06/18/nasagrant/ The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) has awarded Assistant Professor of Physics Jason Goodman a five-year grant to investigate the flows of ice-covered oceans on Europa (one of Jupiter's moons) and other moons in the outer solar system. His work ultimately aims to help determine whether life could exist elsewhere in the solar system, and to guide geologists and other scientists investigating the surface features of these icy worlds.

"The overall thrust of this research is to get at some really fundamental issues about the limits of life. Is life limited to Earth? Is there a possibility that it could be elsewhere? If so, maybe these ice-covered oceans are one of the best places to look for it," said Goodman, whose research focuses broadly on fluid mechanics of atmospheres, oceans and ice.

The NASA award is part of a larger five-year grant given to a newly selected NAI team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The grant amount to Wheaton for the first year is $30,000. Goodman will be working in collaboration with Steve Vance, a planetary geophysicist at JPL.

Wheaton Associate Professor of Geology Geoff Collins, who has been researching Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, is co-investigator on the project. Wheaton students will be hired to work with Goodman in performing computer and laboratory simulations of the flow of heat and currents in the oceans of these distant worlds.

The NAI-JPL team consists of 47 researchers and education specialists representing 21 institutions. The team includes 17 universities, two non-profit research organizations, and two NASA centers spanning 11 states and four countries, according to Isik Kanik, NAI-JPL team leader. The team will research various aspects of the icy worlds of the outer planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

"These planets have a number of moons that are basically big balls of ice. It has become clear over the years that many of these balls may actually have liquid water underneath their surfaces," said Goodman. "That makes them really the only places in the universe in the solar system besides the Earth that have clearly substantial amounts of liquid water readily available. And since as far as we can tell liquid water is a prerequisite for life on Earth if you are interested in life elsewhere, these would be the places to check out."

Europa is one of the moons with the most obvious evidence of liquid water under its icy crust, he said. "There have been a lot of questions about the source of the heat that seems to be keeping the water layer liquid instead of freezing. And a lot of planetary geologists interested in the surface have been making descriptions about certain features on the surface-weird chunks of ice and evidence of it moving and breaking apart. The belief is that some sort of heating from the liquid below caused the ice to do that. But if you are going to make that kind of argument, you really need to know something about how the water is moving and transferring heat. Up until this point, really nobody had made a serious effort to understand that."

Over the years the professor, who calls his work planetary oceanography, has written about the flows of water beneath these icy worlds. Now, using a combination of laboratory, computational and theoretical approaches, he will investigate circulation within Europa's sub-ice ocean.

"The basic problem is that nobody has ever seen this ocean, nobody has ever taken a cup of water out of it. It's under several kilometers of a thick layer of ice," he said. "So it's really tough to get any real data about it. So in the absence of actually being able to measure things, we are working from first principles and trying to predict what we think it will be like and how it is likely to flow."

(Photo of Europa: courtesy of NASA/JPL)

Rossetti is particularly interested in stem cell research because of its potential to yield knowledge for cell-based therapies for such illnesses as diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, heart disease and cancer.

"The ability for stem cells to create any cell type makes them ideal targets for cell-based therapies for neurogenerative diseases and cancer," Rossetti said.

And there is still much to learn about stem cells, he added.

"One area of significant interest concerns the processes involved in the regeneration of new stem cells and creation of differentiated progenitor cells by asymmetric cell division," Rossetti said. "Research in this area will help elucidate the role of cell division machinery in the self-renewal and differentiation of stem cells, in turn unlocking opportunities for the use of stem cells in disease cures and prevention."

During his Fulbright year, Rossetti will focus on research aimed at understanding developmental gene activities during cell division in the roundworm C. elegans. The asymmetric division of human embryonic stem cells is similar to that which takes place in the early embryos of the roundworm, he said.

While in Holland, Rossetti will also take graduate courses and seminars through the university's Cancer Genomics and Developmental Biology program.

Rossetti, who hails from Plymouth, Mass., is a Charles C. Dana Scholar, a Presidential Scholar and a Trustee Scholar at Wheaton.  He has been a lead student researcher in Professor Robert Morris's lab, which focuses on the study of cell biology. In 2008, Rossetti received a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the premier national award for undergraduates in the fields of mathematics, science and engineering.

Last summer, he worked as a technician in the microscope facilities at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., where he also assisted Morris with his research on cell division in sea urchins.

Rossetti plans to pursue doctoral studies in biology and hopes to teach cell and developmental biology at the university level while continuing his research activities.

During his year abroad, he looks forward to experiencing a European culture in depth as he studies and learns at a distinguished university that dates back to the Middle Ages. And although English is widely spoken in the Netherlands, he is looking forward to learning Dutch. 

"The prospect of living and working with others while communicating in their native language is particularly exciting," he said. "By removing this boundary, we will open new opportunities for learning and collaboration."

The workshop will be held at Wheaton from July 26-28, and the application deadline is May 15.

CaMeW is a three-day program for women entering their final year of graduate school in mathematics. Its aim is to highlight skills of the job-search process while helping the women form a network of support for questions, concerns and advice. Participants are chosen for the program based on their ability to articulate the benefits they think they will gain, as well as on a "genuine interest in meeting other women" in the field, says DeCoste.

She notes that some participants come from departments with very few women graduate students, and they are looking for other women with whom they can share their experiences. 

DeCoste's inspiration for the workshop came from her own experiences and observations throughout her job search.

"Frequently, as a graduate student finishes her dissertation, her advisor--who may have finished his or her own Ph.D. more than twenty years before--is the only source of advice on her career," says DeCoste. "Open and honest conversations with those who have recently been successful in beginning their careers at a variety of institutions will offer an additional perspective for the finishing graduates."

DeCoste wants to see more women starting their careers in mathematics with knowledge of their options, confidence in themselves and support from others.

The goal of the CaMeW program is for each of the 15 participants to learn an array of job-process skills such as interviewing and presentation of their dissertations, and to learn about postdoctoral and grant opportunities. Workshop presentations will include a keynote speaker as well as discussion led by junior and senior faculty members in mathematics.

DeCoste, who joined the Wheaton faculty after her initial founding of CaMeW in 2007 at West Point (USMA), held a second workshop at Wheaton in July 2008. DeCoste is excited about bringing CaMeW to Wheaton for a second time.

"Wheaton's history as a women's college is extremely important to its present and future," she says. "We need to support programs that help increase the number of women and minorities in traditionally male fields such as math and science.

"Wheaton has been a welcoming place for me personally," she continued, "and it provides a supportive environment for the participants so they feel comfortable discussing sensitive issues: How do you balance a family and a career? How do you find the job you want when maybe your Ph.D. adviser thinks you should be doing something else?"

Previous CaMeW participants have indicated in surveys that "they felt very well-informed and prepared for the stresses of the job search after their participation in the workshop," cites DeCoste.

"We present a diverse array of experiences," she adds, "and I think we open the participants' eyes to the fact that there are many different paths to 'success' and we should each define success for ourselves and not let outside influences determine what makes us happy professionally."

DeCoste notes that the college has encouraged her efforts to bring the workshop to Wheaton. "Both the Math/Computer Science Department and the Provost's Office have been very supportive of this program from the moment I mentioned it, when I was interviewing here. I appreciate their support and participation in this program and hope that will continue."

Wheaton received additional support for the program from the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the United States Military Academy (USMA), Wheaton's Office of the Provost, SMP, Carleton College's Summer Math Program for Women and Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE).

That longstanding interest in the natural world and the forces that shape and re-shape our planet has inspired her studies at Wheaton, and it will take her to Norway to join an ongoing study of glaciers as a window on the arctic's response to a warming environment.

O'Sadnick has been named a 2009 Fulbright Scholar, and she will join a research team at the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) studying glaciers located on Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard. Specifically, she will focus on analyzing snow depth measurements collected on three glaciers and comparing those results with radar data. Her work could help scientists to make more extensive use of radar data in the study of polar regions.

"The findings will help enhance predictions of how these glaciers may behave in the future," she wrote in her Fulbright proposal. "In addition, this knowledge can be applied to other smaller glaciers to better judge their possible influence on phenomena such as sea level rise."

O'Sadnick's Fulbright plan represents the next stage of her natural evolution as a scholar. She says that an Introduction to Geology course "spurred a real passion within me and led me to focus my interests on the physical processes shaping our landscape." She adds, " My Physics major has provided me with a good base by exposing me to the finer physical processes occurring all around us. I have been able to familiarize myself with the mathematical and truly nitty-gritty side of science that I feel will be incredibly helpful in future as I pursue the earth and engineering sciences."

The Wheaton Balfour Scholar began to refine her focus on the arctic environment in 2007 when she spent the summer participating in the Juneau Icefield Project, measuring snow accumulation, collecting GPS data on glacial flow direction and velocity and studying supraglacial streams. That experience was funded in part by a NASA Space Grant for the University of Alaska Southeast Fellowship, an award to students who show promise in the sciences.

The following year, O'Sadnick worked in the lab, rather than the field, analyzing data at the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. The experience, which was supported by a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Grant, provided an introduction to the interdisciplinary nature of arctic environmental research and helped her "appreciate the importance of collaboration in research."

Those research internships will be vital to her work in Norway, according to glaciologist Jack Kohler, a research scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute, who supported O'Sadnick's Fulbright proposal.  "Megan's previous experiences … put her in an excellent position to assist our work, and provide valuable cross-fertilization with our goals for this project," Kohler wrote.

For her part, O'Sadnick expects to learn a lot as well. "I expect to gain a tremendous amount of knowledge, not only through my research but through interaction with the many scientists working at NPI whose research … necessitates familiarity with many other disciplines."

While the Evergreen, Colo. native works at NPI, she will live in Tromsø, Norway. "Many  of the people who live in the area are involved in arctic research. or are students at the University of Tromsø,creating, what sounds to be, an intellectually curious and active community that is rather international as well " she said. "I'm excited to experience a new culture and explore the beautiful surroundings.  While I am unfamiliar with the Norwegian language, I plan on learning at least the basics before arriving which will hopefully open up more opportunities to explore not only Tromsø but other parts of the country.

O'Sadnick is an active member of the Wheaton community. She serves as co-president of the Physics Club and as a peer mentor to first-year students. In addition, she has competed on the college's track and field and cross country teams.

Following her Fulbright year, O'Sadnick plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Focus the Nation is a national initiative that seeks to engage young people in conversations about pressing environmental issues. This year's focus is on sustainability.

Wheaton's program features a sustainability forum with a panel of faculty, students and staff; two faculty lectures; a resources-and-information fair, and more. Events will highlight an array of environmental threats and what individuals can do to make a positive difference.

Issues include the growing human population, urban sprawl, our diminishing water supply and wasteful energy practices.  Speakers throughout the week will include President Ronald Crutcher, SGA President Austin Simko, Assistant Professor of Political Science Thomas Vicino and Professor of Biology Scott Shumway.

"Focus the Nation is really about getting people involved and excited about the environment and sustainability," says Claire Anderson '09, a lead organizer of the campus initiative for the second consecutive year. Anderson said the idea was sparked last year by Jeremiah Murphy, professor of political science. Murphy died suddenly in December 2008, and Anderson said she and her fellow Face the Nation organizers keenly miss him this year.

"Professor Murphy was a behind-the-scenes kind of guy and was very involved in promoting student's ideas to help them evolve into action," said Anderson, who developed an independent major in environmental policy with the guidance of professors Murphy and Shumway.

Anderson hopes that this year's Focus the Nation will be "even better than last year, in remembrance of Professor Murphy, though it is difficult not to have his support and encouragement."

Wheaton's Focus the Nation project represents a collaboration by Anderson and other student leaders, the Green Initiatives Committee, the Student Government Association, the Sustainability Committee, the Wheaton chapter of the Roosevelt Institution and members of the faculty and staff such as Bernice Morrissey of the Provost's Office.

All Focus the Nation events are free and open to the campus community. A complete schedule (pdf file) is online. For more information on Focus the Nation 2009, visit http://focusthenation.org.

With the support of a Wheaton Community Scholars stipend, the psychology major served as a clinical intern and research assistant on the retrospective study at the Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center (CERC), a developmental pediatric clinic in The Bronx.

During the summer of 2007, Galdston reviewed the clinical charts of 80 children, looking for differences between bilingual (Spanish- and English-speaking) and monolingual (English-speaking) toddlers. The data was collected in a database and later analyzed. 

"We found that although language skills in children with autism deviate from the norm, bilingual children with autism use more gestures than do monolingual children with autism," Galdston said. (Monolingual and bilingual children who are "typically developing" also display such differences in gesture use.)

The CERC study was presented as a poster and published as a monograph abstract at the 2008 International Meeting for Autism Research, the premiere meeting of its kind. The research conference, held in London last year, is the annual meeting of the International Society of Autism Research. 

The study was also published as a poster presentation at the joint meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies and the Asian Society for Pediatric Research. A full article on the study has been submitted to a journal for review.

"Children with autism represent a population with unique language impairment," Galdston said. "Knowing about this difference [in gesture use] can provide a significant advantage when working with bilingual children with autism. In light of their impairment, the use of gesture can serve as a helpful and unique way to break the barrier of communication."

Galdston also noted that the new knowledge could help ensure that bilingual children with autism do not go unidentified.

"In the diagnostic and screening process, the presence of gesture (such as pointing) is typically seen as a sign that the child is not on the autistic spectrum," she said. "Knowing that bilingual children with autism spectrum disorders have a better developed gesture system will ensure that they do not go undiagnosed, and will help guide clinicians toward the most appropriate methodology for intervention."

Galdston added: "Helping children develop their ability to use gestures can serve as an initial means for improving communication and therefore social interaction."

Galdston's interest in child development stems back to her own childhood and adolescence, when she worked as a babysitter and spent time at work with her mother, a speech and language pathologist. 

"In my freshman year I took 'Developmental Psychology,' which to this day remains one of my favorite psych classes," Galdston said. "My interest in child development and developmental disabilities was solidified when I was able to study these topics in the classroom, and my desire to work with children in a clinical setting has only grown stronger since then."

With funding support from the Wheaton Fellows and the Nancy Lyon Porter '43 Community Service Fellows programs, Galdston returned to CERC in the summer of 2008 to assist with a study on the stability of the autism diagnosis in children who are diagnosed under the age of three.

"We found that the diagnosis is stable as the children grow older," said Galdston, adding that this study has been accepted for presentation at the 2009 International Meeting for Autism Research in Chicago.

The tenure of Professor of Chemistry Emerita Bojan Hamlin Jennings is legendary at Wheaton. She was instrumental in establishing a rigorous chemistry major here, and in the 1980s, she designed the major in biochemistry. On Thursday, Oct. 30, Wheaton will recognize her lifetime of achievements by presenting her with an honorary doctor of science at noon in Cole Memorial Chapel.

It is estimated that in her four decades at Wheaton Jennings encouraged more than 150 chemistry majors at the college, many of whom went on to doctoral work in the sciences, including Professors Suzanne Purrington '60, Donna S. Amenta '65 and Interim Provost Elita Pastra-Landis '69. In 2006, Jennings was honored with the distinguished American Chemical Society Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences.

The ACS award is a testament to the years of innovation and opportunity in research she brought to Wheaton and to the world of chemistry. In 1959, Jennings won Wheaton's first summer research grants, $2,190 to study the effects of ultrasound on carbon tetrachloride and chloroform. In addition to studying chemical reactions induced by ultrasound, Jennings has researched photochemical reactions of bases found in DNA and RNA and the synthesis of steroids related to estrogens. All of her research was done with students and supported by grants from the Research Corporation, the Petroleum Research Fund, The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Throughout her career, Jennings published 10 professional articles in scientific journals. All were co-authored with her students.

Jennings, who holds degrees from Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe and Harvard, where she earned her Ph.D., was chair of Wheaton's Department of Chemistry from 1978 until her retirement in 1985. From 1975 to 1978, she held the A. Howard Meneely Professorship for Excellence in Teaching.

She is now retired, but has not slowed down. A trustee of the Pilgrim Society in Plymouth, she has served on a variety of its committees. She is the author of four books, including Chemistry at Wheaton and Bathshua: The Most Extraordinary Crime Ever Perpetrated in New England. The latter is a fictionalized account of a very real murder that took place in Massachusetts during the American Revolution.

On Thursday, President Ronald A. Crutcher will lead the ceremony. Interim Provost Elita Pastra-Landis '69, chemistry professor and a former student of Jennings, will present the honorary degree. And the hooding will be done by Purrington '60.