Climate change: Adapt or die

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Abby Kimmitt

My research is dependent on migratory birds being present on their wintering grounds in the Appalachian Mountains in the month of March. But this year it was an unseasonably warm winter, and it was not possible to know when migrants would depart for their breeding grounds. Luckily, the temperatures dropped again and the migrants hung around these wintering grounds for another month.

It is becoming more common that organisms are changing where they live and when they migrate in response to climate change. Climate change affects ecosystems and climate zones by disrupting weather and temperature patterns and by producing catastrophic storms (IPCC 2013). Almost all plants and animals need stable environmental patterns in order to survive. Once unstable, species must find a new suitable habitat or will be unable to survive. This map (courtesy of Dan Majka) shows projected paths taken by organisms relocating to more suitable habitats. But what if some species are just not able to adjust? Plant and animal diversity may consequently decline at an alarming rate as organisms succumb to changing environments. (more…)

Who’s eating who? Predators that cause disease epidemics & Predators that improve human health

Posted on August 8, 2017 by Briana K. Whitaker

A women sits in a blue boat (kayak) holding a double-sided paddle in the middle of a lake. Trees and cloudy background. — Fig. 1 – Maja Šljivar, a research student in IU’s Department of Biology, kayaks around University Lake in Bloomington, collecting samples for her research on Daphnia disease. (Photo courtesy of Maja Šljivar.)

Pathogens and parasites are the hidden players of many of nature’s most bizarre and beautiful patterns and processes. For example, the extraordinary levels of plant animal biodiversity we find in the tropics is thought to be due, at least in part to the high levels of disease and natural enemies we find in those environments. Similarly, the medical community and casual observers are often fascinated by the boom and bust cycles seen in disease epidemics. How does disease spread so quickly through some populations but not others? What about certain habitats keeps the rate of new infections low? Well, PhD student Maja Šljivar (Figure 1) and her advisor, Dr. Spencer Hall (see Lab website), are interested in these types of questions, but maybe from an angle you haven’t thought of before. (more…)

The smell of chemistry

Posted on August 1, 2017 by Victoria Kohout

Chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. Your grandmother’s perfume. Newly cut grass. Each of the listed descriptions is extremely different but can be linked together by one fundamental thread–smell. Smell or olfaction is an essential sense in everyday life that helps guide what we eat and how we perceive the world around us. It has even been predicted that humans may be able to distinctly discriminate more than one trillion different scents!¹

Although nearly everyone is familiar with the common scents like vinegar or rancid meat, only a handful of people are acquainted with the common chemical names associated with these smells, and even less are able to identify their molecular structure. Acetic acid–vinegar–or (R)-(-)-carvone–spearmint–can sound misleading or even strike fear in those that are not familiar with what they are. Demystifying these names and what these molecules look like could help the general public better understand the chemicals in their everyday lives, and possibly open the door to more in-depth discussions about chemistry. (more…)

This is your brain on electricity

Posted on July 25, 2017 by Noah Zarr

Metal box with many switches and dials, supposedly used to shock participants. — Shock control panel used by subjects in the Milgram experiment to “shock” the other participant. Photo by Isabelle Adam, https://www.flickr.com/photos/diamondgeyser/5727759849

In the famous Milgram Experiment, it only took commands from a purported authority figure to get people to subject another study participant to electric shocks up to 450 volts (about a quarter of the voltage used to execute people in the electric chair). In reality, the other participant was an actor, and there were no actual shocks. Nevertheless, the experiment revealed how easily influenced people are by authority, even when that authority has little real power. If that’s how ordinary people react to an unrelated authority, graduate students have no chance to resist their advisor’s commands. That was the situation faced by Andrew Jahn, who graduated from IU with his PhD in 2015. While a member of the Cognitive Control Lab at IU, he completed a project in which participants were shocked inside a brain scanner, to watch what happened inside the brains of the research participants. (Humorous allusions aside, the electric shocks in this case were much smaller and calibrated to be tolerable by the participants). (more…)

How do you get adolescents to meditate? Part 2

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Ryan G. Erbe

Adolescence is an important time in development due to significant changes in the adolescent brain. During this time, brain regions appear to integrate, which helps the adolescent self-regulate and/or improve self-control. Self-regulation is critical for success in life for both adolescents and adults. Meditation is a behavior that promotes self-regulation and enhances the integration of the adolescent brain. Although we know meditation enhances self-regulation during a critical time in life, unfortunately, very few adolescents meditate. I discussed the finer points of adolescent self-regulation and meditation in a previous blog post, but in this post I want to delve deeper into the research being done here at IU on this subject. (more…)

Globular cluster simulator: Can your PC handle it?

Posted on July 4, 2017 by Maria Tiongco

If you are a video game enthusiast, you might be familiar with the importance of the graphics processing unit, or the GPU. The GPU determines whether you can play a game with all the fancy visual effects turned on, how high you can set the screen resolution, and how many frames (the images you see on the screen) it can process in a second. Did you know that they are used for scientific research purposes as well? Our own premier supercomputer, Big Red II, has hundreds of NVIDIA GPUs inside of it and, as a gamer myself, I think it’s pretty neat that I get to use them for my research.

An image of hundreds of thousands of small points representing stars with streaks showing their motion. The points and trails are the most dense in the center, and decrease in density outward. — A snapshot of a globular cluster simulation containing approximately 100,000 stars that move under the influence of the cumulative gravity of all the other stars in the cluster. This simulation was run on IU’s Big Red II, with a code that mundanely prints the positions and velocities of the stars to a file for each time snapshot, but this file can be used afterwards to make appealing visualizations as was done here by IU’s Advanced Visualization Lab (AVL). Each star has an added trail that shows its most recent trajectory, and the green line is a visual aide for the size of the cluster representing 32 light-years across. The full video made by the AVL can be found here.
Credit: © IU Advanced Visualization Lab, Bill Sherman, Enrico Vesperini, Jongsuk Hong

(more…)

Life after graduate school: Industry edition

Posted on June 27, 2017 by Taylor Nicholas

As a third year Ph.D. candidate in biology, I am constantly bombarded with questions from concerned loved ones: “When are you graduating?” or “What will you do with your degree?” My unexciting and somewhat embarrassing answer to these questions is always, “I don’t know;” and the truth is, how can I know? I have been immersed in an academic setting for twenty years now. I know little about life outside academia, and I’ll admit—I’m a little terrified about leaving a university setting. It’s hard to make an informed decision about your future when you know little about the options. My professors and mentors, as brilliant as they are, are really only suited to advise me on pursuing a career in academia. So, how does one break the mold? (more…)

“Indiana habla dos idiomas”

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Emily Byers

A few weeks ago, I attended a report release at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, D.C. on best practices for educating children who are learning English. These reports are published after a preeminent group of experts reviews the evidence and reaches a consensus, so I knew it would be interesting. Slide 2 of the presentation was more than interesting – it was mind-boggling.

Indiana has the second-fastest growing population of school-aged children whose native language is not English (among states that have experienced a 200 percent growth in non-native speakers) [1]. These students are known as “dual language learners” (DLLs), although they are more commonly referred to as “ELLs” (“English language learners”) in many school districts. My mouth fell open. (more…)

An introduction to spectroscopy: Applications from astronomy to art

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Ed Basom

Astronomers have a favorite saying that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a spectrum is worth a thousand pictures.

A vibrant image of the Eagle Nebula with cloud-like formations colored in blues and reds and speckled with occasional small bright dots. — A combination of two different types of spectroscopy produced this image of the Eagle Nebula. Image credit: NASA/ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium (https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/ image_feature_2153.html)

A spectrum is measured by the scientific technique known as spectroscopy, and unless you’re already familiar with the term, this may compel you to ask: what is spectroscopy? The short answer is that spectroscopy refers to the study of the interaction between light and matter. Today, the field of spectroscopy is incredibly broad and advanced, with applications in not just astronomy but also chemistry, physics, biology, environmental science, and even art! (more…)

Knock knock: Nano-delivery! Activating the immune system with viral structure

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Kimberly McCoy

Viral infections are the cause of many common illnesses, such as the flu and the common cold. The symptoms aren’t pleasant, and typically involve the well-known repertoire of coughing, sneezing, and achiness. But sometimes, symptoms from viral infections can be more severe. Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infects most people before their second birthday. In many cases this infection does not cause serious illness in people with healthy immune systems. However, the number of hospitalizations and emergency room visits in children under five is higher by three times compared to instances caused by the flu [1]. Additionally, 14,000 RSV-related deaths occur per year in the US in older adults [2]. The best tool scientists have against viruses like RSV are vaccines.

The purpose of a vaccine is to trigger the body to create a long-lasting line of defense against a specific pathogen. This is accomplished by exposing the body to small pieces or a weakened version of the pathogen. Upon exposure to the infectious pathogen, the body will be prepared to fight it off. However, immunity isn’t created toward every pathogen equally. Some pathogens, like RSV, have no licensed vaccine. (more…)