Summer work opportunities

By: Emily Reynolds

 

Summer is about to approach the students of UMass, and what better way to spend it than getting work experience in your field? Science majors of all kinds are looking for research projects to get their foot in the door. One student’s project made the UMass website for his achievement.

Earlier this week, UMass was proud to announce that sophomore biochemistry and molecular biology major, Eric Johnson, got a $3,000 grant to do research this summer for the American Society of Plant Biologists.

Students can also find research projects on their own. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds 11,000 projects a year, and some of the funding goes to students who are working on their own or with a professor on research. The website for the foundation literally has an A to Z guide for projects funded in nearly all science and engineering fields.

As it is, the NSF gives close to $10 million in research funding to UMass already.

Created by the NSF, the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) has research projects and grants that are on a more global scale. The CRDF has research that can be in science, engineering or even the health field. All you have to do is look for the opportunity.

Of course, one of the best places to look for a research opportunity is by asking professors what they will be working on over the summer vacation.

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu.

 

Green fuel research at UMass

By: Emily Reynolds

 

The movement for green fuels has reached UMass. Chemical engineering professor George Huber has received a grant with three other universities to research the creation of fuel from wood and corn waste.

The funding comes from a $1.9 million dollar grant from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), part of the Department of Defense. Huber will use the products that come from the wood and corn waste to create a product that will become a liquid fuel, such as JP-8, or jet propellant 8, which is used in military operations.

While making the waste into a liquid has been done before, Huber and his colleagues are trying to make the system more efficient. Their goal is to get more fuel with less product and in a more cost efficient manner.

While biomass products, organic material from plants or animals, could replace a lot of petroleum and fossil fuel products, there are not many ways to cost-effectively get these new fuels. Today, about 3 percent of energy used in the United States comes from biomass products.

Huber’s main goal is to look at the creation process and find new ways to reach the same result, making the transformation of the biomass into liquid fuel more efficient.

Huber is working with W. Curtis Conner Jr. and Geoff Tompsett of UMass, along with researchers from the Universities of Wisconsin, California, and Delaware.

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu.

The search for Vice Chancellor of Research and Engagement

By: Emily Reynolds

Chancellor Holub is on the lookout for a new Vice Chancellor of Research and Engagement, and it seems that he is willing to let the entire campus chime in, including students.

Steve Goodwin, Dean of the College of Natural Resources and Environment and chair of the search committee, sent an e-mail last week to everyone with a UMail account asking for nominations.

Not only did Goodwin cover the campus looking for nominations, but it seems, “The search committee also wants to solicit your ideas, comments, and opinions on the skills, character, and experience that you believe are most important in a Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement.”

The nomination deadline is Wednesday, April 15, but applications are not due in until April 24, at the end of the following week.

In the e-mail, Goodwin wrote that, “It is obvious to all that this position is critical to the research success of the campus.”

This falls in line with the multitude of e-mails that Chancellor Holub has been sending out over the past year, wanting UMass to become a premier research university.

This search comes after months of talking about budget cuts and restructuring the University, which may lead certain Deans whose colleges are being combined with others out of a job.

While it’s uncertain whether the Chancellor actually wants everyone on campus to be involved or if it’s a courtesy call, the chosen Vice Chancellor will have a lot on their hands, overseeing a program that received funding of over $135 million this year on projects given by private and public donors.

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu.

 

Molecular Playground debuts next semester

By: Emily Reynolds

Any time someone visits the Museum of Science in Boston, the one place he or she must go is the virtual volleyball, to let their shadows play the game. Now there will be something similar on the UMass campus.

Next fall, when the Integrated Science Building opens, there will be a “Molecular Playground,” a 3-D virtual molecule simulator that you can play with. You’ll be able to push and turn the molecule, as well as enlarge it or shrink it. An infra-red camera will base the movements off of hands and shadows.

Viewers will be able to watch how molecules are affected by many bodily changes, such as allergic reactions, interaction with medicine and other factors. 

The molecule will change on a regular basis, and will be shown on a 6 foot by 9 foot wall in the lobby of the building.

This interactive project was created by Craig Martin, a chemistry professor here at UMass, along with the help of Allen Hanson from the computer science and Eric Martz from the microbiology department. The funding comes from a $45,000 grant awarded by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

According to the Molecular Playground website, the program is intended for non-science persons to promote interest and see the beauty of molecules. Martin hopes the animation of the project will be the biggest attention grabber.

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu.

 

New weather tracking system in the works at UMass

Emily Reynolds

 

Paul Siqueira, courtesy of the UMass Office of News and Information

Everyone saw that movie “Twister” when we were younger; where tornado chasers had barrels with trackers in them, trying to use whatever data they got so they could know more about the storm and predict when they would be coming. What they never thought of was using the sky instead of the ground.

 

Scientists from UMass and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA are designing a tracker that NASA will put into orbit and use for data that cannot be matched by anything on Earth.

The tracker will collect data on ocean temperature, current shifts and circulation patterns to figure out if the differences will create a storm or just be another nice day at the beach.

NASA gave a three-year, $1.08 million grant to Paul Siqueira, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Siqueira, along with some colleagues, will be building an 18-inch receiver that will bounce microwaves off the Earth to collect the data. It is part of a larger piece of equipment that will make its outer space debut sometime in between 2013 and 2016.

This project is an update of an earlier one, and there are many improvements. It is more accurate, which means that the satellite carrying the receiver will be higher in the sky. It is going to be smaller than the previous model, making it lighter. It will also use less power, which means it will cost less. On top of that, all the gadgets and gizmos being used will be state-of-the-art.

This new technology will not track tornadoes specifically, but it will track any weather that changes due to the ocean, including droughts, heat waves, hurricanes and El Nino.

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu.

UMass mandates new pesticide protocol

By: Emily Reynolds

A lot of research going on at UMass falls under the headings of science, engineering and health. Some of them are breakthrough research topics. Rest assured, Sports Management and Landscape Architecture can now claim some research as their own.

The UMass Extension Turf Program is releasing the Integrated Pest Management Protocols for Turf on School Properties and Sports Fields.

The manual is based off of scientific research and lots of fieldwork. It’s basically a pest control system that is more efficient and less dependent on pesticides, which means that it protects the environment, the people and their wallets.

Part of the reason the manual was put together with less reliance on pesticides was to comply with the Massachusetts Children and Families Protection Act, put in place in 2000 as a way to reduce children’s exposure to harmful chemicals that are found in pesticides.

Since UMass is a public school, it has to comply with the act, including the Integrated Pest Management portion, which looks for alternatives for pesticides.

Although the Protection Act was put out before the big push to save the environment, it still had a few environmental provisions in there, which keeps it relevant for today.

The manual was put together by the Extension Turf Program and the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources.

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu.

 

 

STAR Fellowship makes UMass’ water safer

By: Emily Reynolds                     

 

Remember last spring when there were a whole lot of stories about how the water we’re all drinking is contaminated with different pharmaceutical drugs? There are antibiotics, anti-depressants, pain medications and a whole myriad of other drugs that make their way from human bodies to the water supply.

It turns out that there are enough drugs in the water to actually concern scientists about what kind of effect it will have on the ecosystem, including humans, plants and animals.

Luckily, there are lots of people working on this problem, and one of them happens to be University of Massachusetts graduate student Kirsten Studer. Studer is getting $37,000 a year from the Environmental Protection Agency’s STAR fellowship to study estrogen in the water supply.

Studer is part of a larger group from the civil and environmental engineering department, which is studying drugs in the water.

While each individual drug in the water may not be harmful, the interaction between drugs can cause a lot of problems. Estrogen can screw up all of the hormones and glands that go along with puberty, and can cause cancer.            

That is why Studer is not just studying what the estrogen does, but also how to get it out of the water supply without doing any more damage.

So, next time there’s a glass of water sitting on the counter, think of all the drugs that could be going into the body by mistake, even if it is filtered by Brita.

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu. 

Psych department looking for subjects

By: Emily Reynolds

 

Have you ever noticed the colorful papers that litter every table in the dining commons? They’re advertisements requesting students to e-mail or call the psychology department to provide them with subjects to collect data from. On the bulletin boards in each building, there are ads for eye-tracking testing to study how people read material.  Online, the kinesiology department has posted bulletins to look for people to participate in a diabetes experiment. Even in the advertisements of newspapers like The Daily Collegian, there are requests for students to participate in studies and experiments.

 

College professors all over the country are doing research on their own campuses. They’re hoping to make better medicine, figure out how the body works, how languages develop and much more. Students do a lot of research as well, especially graduate students or seniors working on their theses.

 

Both professors and students alike are performing experiments that require people, and they advertise to you. A lot of them even include a monetary compensation.

 

Some that don’t include compensation or a small amount are non-invasive and take very little time, like eye-tracking experiments in Tobin. These usually take about 30 minutes and simply require the subject to read and answer questions. Other experiments include larger compensation, but those can include taking blood or biopsies, and they’re usually done over an extended period of time. 

 

However, the studies aren’t just for college students. Many have larger age ranges from 18-65 years old, and college students happen to fall into the age range.

 

So, the next time you’re sitting at the dining commons or waiting for a friend next to a bulletin board, take a look. There might be some ads for help needed in a study, and it might be something really interesting.

 

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu.

Qteros works towards carbon-neutral energy

By: Emily Reynolds

Collegian Staff

*originally posted Tuesday, December 2, 2008

 

The Department of Energy has given four research grants to local company Qteros, formerly SunEthanol, who will be building a plant in Springfield starting next year.

The company is based around “Q,” a microbe found in the Quabbin Reservoir by UMass microbiologist Thomas Warnick. Professor Susan Leschine, chief scientist and cofounder of the company, found the qualities of “Q” that will apparently revolutionize energy.

Basically, “Q” will eat plant waste from cars that use ethanol, and then will create more ethanol from the waste, making it a carbon-neutral source of energy.

Qteros has already made huge leaps in the field, increasing productivity by 15 times. According to their website, www.qteros.com, the expense of breaking down plant material has been reduced with a new process, called C3. Complete Cellulosic Conversion makes it so that “Q” can multitask. A four-step process has been turned into a three-step process by making “Q” decompose the plant waste and convert it into ethanol at the same time.

Qteros is being recognized as a contributor to reaching the goals set by president-elect Obama of reducing dependence on foreign fossil fuels. He plans to invest $150 billion into researching clean energy technology, which is great since Congress mandated that 16 billion gallons of biofuels need to be advanced cellulosic biofuels by 2022.

Some people are hoping that the cheaper and energy efficient “Q” will save money, and maybe even spur some economic growth in fields like farming where additional supplies will be used in the lab.

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu. 

Department of Defense funds experiments at UMass

By: Emily Reynolds
Collegian Staff

*originally posted Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The University of Massachusetts Amherst gets a lot of funding from the federal government. Close to 70 percent of the money for research on campus comes from federal agencies. Just over $6.5 million of that funding comes from the Department of Defense.

Research from the DOD comes from four places, Navy, Army, Air Force, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). While most students have heard of the three branches of military that give the school money, very few have probably heard of DARPA.

The point of DARPA is to imagine what the US military will need in the future for any endeavor that they take on, and start planning and building for it today. In their words, they want to stop technological surprises for our military and create them for adversaries. Basically, they take a lot of different science and research and see how it can be used for the military.

The agency has five offices: Defense Sciences Office, Information Processing Techniques Office, Microsystems Technology Office, Strategic Technology Office, and Tactical Technology Office.

Each office has dozens of ongoing projects. According to a chart on their website,www.darpa.mil, the agency has around a $7 billion budget for science and technology programs for the armed services.

At UMass, DARPA funded a Disruption Tolerant Networking project, which put devices into 40 buses on the UMass campus in 2005. The point was to “provide network services when no end-to-end path exists through the network.” Basically, it creates a way to communicate in areas where the normal means of communication can be destroyed or degraded for long periods of time. It can be used in war zones or during natural disasters.

Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu.