Research Highlights

EPSCoR partner North Dakota’s Gateway to Science continues to deliver hands-on STEM programming throughout North Dakota. Gateway to Science on the Go was recently in Jamestown with its STEMzone program at Lincoln Elementary School.

STEMzone is a carnival-style event with STEM stations that allow students to engage in hands-on learning experiences in STEM. The STEMzone in Jamestown included stations where students could work on circuits, do brain teasers, look at objects through microscopes, build structures, create and test air-powered vehicles, and more.

As the world searches for and demands more sustainable sources of energy and materials, plant biomass may provide the solution by serving as a renewable resource for biomaterials and biofuel production. However, until now, the complex physical and chemical interactions in plant biomass has been a challenge in post-harvest processing.

In a new study published today in Nature Communications, LSU Department of Chemistry Associate Professor Tuo Wang and his research team reveal how carbohydrates interact with lignin to form plant biomass. This new information can help advance the development of better technology to use biomass for energy and materials.

The Wang research team examined the nanoscale assembly of lignocellulosic components in multiple plant species, including grasses and hardwood and softwood species. The grasses contain many food crops, such as maize, and are the primary feedstock for biofuel production in the U.S.. Woody plants, often used for building construction materials, have become promising candidates for the next generation of biofuel to reduce the dependence on food crops.

Portions of this work was sponsored by grants from the DOE and NSF.

A Louisiana State University chemist and her research team have discovered a promising new treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, or TNBC, an aggressive form of breast cancer with limited treatment options. Compared to other types of breast cancer, TNBC has a shorter overall survival rate, and is more common in women of color and women under the age of 40.

A portion of this research was funded by the NIH INBRE program.

Pangolins are unique, scaled mammals found across Asia and in parts of Africa. Claire Terhune, University of Arkansas, and a team of researchers funded by NSF are using pangolin fossils to better understand the evolution and biogeography of ancient pangolins during the Pleistocene.

This work was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Terhune’s collaborators were Sabrina Curran at Ohio University, Timothy Gaudin the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Alexandru Petculescu at Emil Racoviţă Institute of Speleology in Bucharest.

In an attempt to study microbes in their natural environment, co-chief scientists Drs. Eric Wommack and Shawn Polson led other members of the Viral Ecology and Informatics Lab (VEIL) in an NSF EPSCoR-funded mission on the R/V Hugh R. Sharp, University of Delaware’s 146-foot ocean-going research vessel. They spent eight days at sea to conduct what is known as a Lagrangian Experiment, monitoring a single water mass over time.

The members of the VEIL involved in the experiment included Wommack; Polson; Barbra Ferrell, VEIL lab coordinator; Rachel Keown, doctoral student in biological sciences; Amanda Zahorik, doctoral student in biological sciences; and Amelia Harrison, VEIL technician and master’s degree graduate in marine biosciences. In addition, they were joined by Bruce Kingham, director of the UD Sequencing and Genotyping Center.

Alaska NSF EPSCoR Boreal Fires co-lead Uma Bhatt is also project lead for the Sea Ice Prediction Network. SIPN formed shortly after the then-record Arctic sea ice minimum of 2007. Bhatt said the SIPN team hopes to work with the Alaska maritime industry, especially the Bering Sea snow crab fishermen, to make ice forecasts even more accurate and useful to those who work in or live next to the world’s polar waters and to scientists studying sea ice decline and the Arctic climate.

In the heat of summer, signs go up at beaches and access points around Lake Champlain, warning of the presence of cyanobacteria and its potential dangers to people and pets. Scientists and lake experts have predicted that climate change will spur the formation of blue-green algae blooms, which harm water quality and recreational use of the lake by residents and tourists.

Now, a new study led by a team of researchers based at the University of Vermont has applied a unique modeling method to more precisely assess the influences of temperature and precipitation – and the relationship between them – on cyanobacteria growth. They focused on Missisquoi Bay, a shallow swath of northeastern Lake Champlain where cyanobacteria is prevalent.

The study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment by a multidisciplinary team working with the Vermont Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or VT EPSCoR, funded by the National Science Foundation.

The researchers found that major storms, such as Nor’easters and hurricanes, followed by prolonged periods of heat – even a year or more after those storms – created the ripest atmosphere for the blue-green algae, which is not actually algae but bacteria.

Nebraska EPSCoR-funded researcher Dr. Gregory J. Pec, an early career faculty member at University of Nebraska at Kearney, co-authored, “Choices on sampling, sequencing, and analyzing DNA influence the estimation of community composition of plant fungal symbionts,” in Applications in Plant Sciences.

Wyoming Space Grant was able to launch a balloon launch at Shoshoni High School with Arduino payloads. After bursting at a relatively low 82,000 feet, the payload returned to Earth and landed on BLM near Arminto. They were able to collect a nearly full dataset of ozone and UV measurements in the stratosphere.

This flight was part of the LIFT Project, the space grant’s undergrad outreach program that focuses on high-altitude ballooning.

A new, retrospective study of medical and insurance records indicates health care costs for people with a rare disease have been underestimated and are three to five times greater than the costs for people without a rare disease. The study, led by the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), provides new evidence of the potential impact of rare diseases on public health, suggesting that nationwide medical costs for individuals with rare diseases are on par with those for cancer and heart failure.

The pilot study included Sanford Health, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The study’s results were published Oct 21 in the Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases.