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ENHANCING TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY AT NSF

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

New Steps to Enhance Transparency and Accountability at the National Science Foundation

Important Notice No. 137

January 13, 2015

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PRESIDENTS OF UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES AND HEADS OF OTHER NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION GRANTEE ORGANIZATIONS

Subject: New Steps to Enhance Transparency and Accountability at the National Science Foundation

Over the last year, the National Science Foundation has taken new steps to enhance transparency and accountability. This notice focuses on efforts to clarify NSF's award abstracts, which serve a different purpose than the project summary that is submitted as part of a proposal.

Effective December 26, 2014, NSF's updated Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 15-1) includes the following statement about award abstracts: "Should a proposal be recommended for award, the PI (Principal Investigator) may be contacted by the NSF Program Officer for assistance in preparation of the public award abstract and its title. An NSF award abstract, with its title, is an NSF document that describes the project and justifies the expenditure of Federal funds."

While our update to the PAPPG clarifies the possible role of the PI in helping NSF prepare award abstracts, NSF would like to share the Foundation's guidelines about NSF award abstracts with the science, engineering and education communities to help improve communication about the nature of the award to the public.

The NSF public award abstract consists of both a nontechnical and technical component. The nontechnical component of the NSF award abstract must:

explain the project's significance and importance; and
serve as a public justification for NSF funding by articulating how the project serves the national interest, as stated by NSF's mission: to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; or to secure the national defense.
By sharing these guidelines, NSF is clarifying the nature of requested assistance from PIs in this valuable effort in helping the agency adhere to its newly established guidelines. This collaborative effort also helps foster stronger public communication about the value of federal investments in fundamental research.

France A. Córdova
/s/
Director

THE FUTURE OF HYDROPONICS

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 
Soil-free farming prepares next generation for Green Energy future

In a cramped city, growing a garden is a luxury. For some Boston teens, two square feet of space is all they need to grow up to 40 plants--without any soil. Boston College, with funding from NSF, is teaching teens the power of hydroponics
When Boston College Professor Mike Barnett first got students involved in hydroponics, he couldn't get them to go home.

"We charged them with the task of building a hydroponic system to grow 50 plants that would fit in a closet, and they wouldn't leave the lab." Barnett said. "At that point, we knew we were on to something."

Hydroponics is the process of growing food with nutrient-rich water instead of soil and is the basis for a project that high school students have been working on at Boston College since 2012.

Boston College's Urban Hydrofarmers project is part of its College Bound program, which prepares high school students for college by teaching them valuable skills in business and science.

With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and in partnership with the STEM Garden Institute, Boston College chose to pursue hydroponics with teenagers because it involves all the basic disciplines students learn in high school.

The goal of the project is to motivate students to pursue science in higher education, according to NSF Program Director David Campbell.

"It addresses the ultimate goals of NSF by engaging young people in science and preparing the next generation of the scientific workforce," Campbell said.

About 60 high school students come to learn at Boston College's greenhouse every year. The program targets teens with average grades, Barnett said, and many of the students come from immigrant families. Some of these students would not reach college without the aid and skills the program provides, according to Campbell.

Students are a part of the growing process from start to finish, from designing the hydroponic systems to selling the produce they grew.

The greenhouse is 1200 square feet of growing space, Barnett said and can produce about 1,000 plants every two weeks. The produce is then sold at a farmers market.

Students run a stand at local farmers markets almost every Saturday, and have to step up to answer questions from customers who are skeptical about hydroponics, Barnett said.

For Stonehill College student Lori Phillips, these questions were both her favorite and most challenging experiences while in the program.

"The very first time the Hydroponics team went to sell at a farmers market, it was a hot, slow day, and we couldn't get any one to stop and hear us out," Phillips said. "I swallowed my fear and spoke out to an older woman about College Bound and the Hydroponic team's goal."

When the woman she spoke to that first day asked for Barnett's contact information to tell him how impressed she was, Phillips became more confident in her public speaking and now enjoys speaking up.

Students not only gain experience in public speaking by running the stand, but also business planning, according to Barnett.

The program lets the students decide how to spend the money made from the farmers markets. They learn how to run a business, according to Barnett, because they come to understand that they have to save up and invest in materials.

This business savvy, coupled with science learning, gives students a foot in the door in the green energy industry, Barnett said.

The project teaches the students how both wind and solar power can create a reliable source of energy for the hydroponics systems. Green energy also opens up the possibility to expand the hydroponics outside the greenhouse, Barnett said. Students have started five hydroponics systems on campus and a few more in the city, all powered by solar panels.

By combining green energy and hydroponics, students are taking part in an emerging market for locally grown produce.

Green energy, such as wind and solar, can heat greenhouses during off-seasons, so produce can be grown anywhere year-round, according to Barnett.

Barnett cited the increasing number of farmers markets and the farm-to-table movement as evidence of hydroponics' bright future.

"Now you can grow the produce for the same price as it's being shipped from California, but the difference it is it ends up being healthier, tasting better and being more nutritious," Barnett said. "It's not been picked and shipped for 3,000 miles. It's local."

With hydroponics, the space constraint and soil contamination found in urban areas is no longer a deterrent for growing local. According to Barnett, a person can grow 40 plants within a space of two square feet.

The project has given some young people the idea of starting hydroponics businesses of their own to bring local produce to their neighborhoods, according to Barnett.

For Phillips, the project has inspired her to get other students involved in hydroponics and even start a major for it at her college.

"I think that we've got the kids right at the cusp of what could be a really nice place for them to be," Barnett said, "in terms of capitalizing on an emerging market."

-- Kierstyn Schneck
-- Maria C. Zacharias, (703) 292-8454 mzachari@nsf.gov
Investigators
George Barnett
Eric Strauss
Elizabeth Bagnani
Catherine Wong
David Blustein
Related Institutions/Organizations
Boston College

NEWLY FOUND GROUNDHOG-LIKE SKULL MAY CHANGE VIEWS ON EARLY MAMMAL EVOLUTION

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Scientists discover fossil of bizarre groundhog-like mammal on Madagascar
Newly discovered fossil alters thinking on evolution of early mammals
Paleontologists have discovered an almost complete skull of a previously unknown mammal that likely resembled a large modern-day groundhog and lived alongside dinosaurs.

The species, found on Madagascar, is shaking up theories of early mammal evolution and diversity.

Stony Brook University paleontologist David Krause led the research team, which reports its findings in today's issue of the journal Nature.

The new fossil mammal is named Vintana sertichi.

Vintana belongs to a group of early mammals called gondwanatherians, which had been known only from a few teeth and jaw fragments.

Because of this fragmentary understanding, the mammals' evolutionary placement hadn't been clear. The well-preserved skull of Vintana sertichi is giving researchers their first clear insights into the life habits and relationships of gondwanatherians.

"We know next to nothing about early mammalian evolution on the southern continents," says Krause. "This discovery underscores how little we really know. No paleontologist could have come close to predicting the odd mix of features this cranium exhibits."

The skull measures almost five inches long, twice the size of the largest known mammal skull from the Age of Dinosaurs in the Southern Hemisphere.

At a time when the majority of mammals were shrew- or mouse-sized--mere shadows of dinosaurs--Vintana was a super heavyweight, estimated to have had a body mass of about 20 pounds, two or three times the size of an adult groundhog today.

Vintana's skull has an unusual shape, with deep, huge eye sockets, and long, scimitar-shaped flanges for attachment of massive chewing muscles.

"This is the first discovery of a cranial fossil from the extinct group of mammals called Gondwanatheria in the Southern Hemisphere," says Yusheng (Chris) Liu, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research along with the National Geographic Society.

"The finding will help us better understand the early evolution of this mammal group," says Liu.

The initial discovery came about by chance, says Krause.

Vintana means luck and refers to the good fortune its discoverer, researcher Joe Sertich, then of Stony Brook University, had in finding the fossil.

Sertich collected a 150-block rock matrix filled with fish fossils. When the block was CT-scanned at Stony Brook, the images revealed something rare inside--a nearly complete skull of a previously unknown ancient mammal.

"When we realized what was staring back at us on the computer screen, we were stunned," says scientist Joe Groenke of Stony Brook, the first to view the CT images.

Groenke spent the next six months extracting the skull from the surrounding rock matrix, one sand grain at a time.

Krause and colleagues conducted a comprehensive analysis of the skull, much of it using micro-computed tomography and scanning electron microscopy to reveal minute aspects of its anatomy.

They compared the skull to those of hundreds of other fossil and extant mammals.

Its teeth, eye sockets, braincase, and inner ear revealed that Vintana was likely a large-eyed herbivore that was agile, with keen senses of hearing and smell.

These and other features were also used to analyze its relationships to other early mammals.

Vintana and other gondwanatherians were probably close relatives of multituberculates, the most successful mammalian contemporaries of dinosaurs on Northern Hemisphere continents.

Krause says that a major question remains for scientists: How did such an unusual creature evolve?

Madagascar was an island for more than 20 million years before the time in which the rock strata containing Vintana were deposited.

Krause theorizes that the primitive features of the skull are holdovers from a time when an ancient lineage that ultimately produced Vintana was marooned on the island.

It was this isolation, he believes, first from Africa, then Antarctica/Australia, and finally the Indian subcontinent that allowed the evolution of Vintana's unique and bizarre features.

-NSF-

Media Contacts
Cheryl Dybas,

NSF FUNDS PROJET INVESTIGATING COMPUTER SECURITY

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Experts identify easy way to improve smartphone security
Assigning risk scores to apps may slow down unwarranted access to personal information

What information is beaming from your mobile phone over various computer networks this very second without you being aware of it?

Experts say your contact lists, email messages, surfed webpages, browsing histories, usage patterns, online purchase records and even password protected accounts may all be sharing data with intrusive and sometimes malicious applications, and you may have given permission.

"Smartphones and tablets used by today's consumers include many kinds of sensitive information," says Ninghui Li, a professor of Computer Science at Purdue University in Indiana.

The apps downloaded to them can potentially track a user's locations, monitor his or her phone calls and even monitor the messages a user sends and receives--including authentication messages used by online banking and other sites, he says, explaining why unsecured digital data are such a big issue.

Li, along with Robert Proctor and Luo Si, also professors at Purdue, lead a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project "User-Centric Risk Communication and Control on Mobile Devices," that investigates computer security. The work pays special attention to user control of security features in mobile systems.

Li, Proctor and Si believe they may have a simple solution for users, who unknowingly allow voluntary access to their personal data.

Most users pay little attention

"Although strong security measures are in place for most mobile systems," they write in a recent report inthe journal IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, "the area where these systems often fail is the reliance on the user to make decisions that impact the security of a device."

Most users pay little attention, say the researchers, to unwanted access to their personal information. Instead, they have become habituated to ignore security warnings and tend to consent to all app permissions.

"If users do not understand the warnings or their consequences, they will not consider them," says Proctor, a Distinguished Professor of psychological sciences at Purdue.

"If users do not associate violations of the warnings with bad consequences of their actions, they will likely ignore them," adds Jing Chen, a psychology Ph.D. student who works on the project.

In addition, there are other influences that contribute to users ignoring security warnings. In the case of Android app permissions, of which there are more than 200, many do not make sense to the average user or at best require time and considerable mental effort to comprehend.

"Permissions are not the only factor in users' decisions," says Si, an associate professor of Computer Science at Purdue, who also led research on a paper with Li that analyzed app reviews.

"Users also look at average ratings, number of downloads and user comments," Si says. "In our studies, we found that there exist correlations between the quality of an app and the average rating from users, as well as the ratio of negative comments about security and privacy."

"This is a classic example of the links between humans and technology," says Heng Xu, program director in the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program in NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate. "The Android smartphones studied by this group of scientists reveals the great need to understand human perception as it relates to their own privacy and security."

"The complexity of modern access control mechanisms in smartphones can confuse even security experts," says Jeremy Epstein, lead program director for the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program in NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, which funded the research.

"Safeguards and protection mechanisms that protect privacy and personal security must be usable by all smartphone users, to avoid the syndrome of just clicking 'yes' to get the job done. The SaTC program encourages research like Dr. Li's and colleagues that helps address security usability challenges."

Numbers speak to the amount of unsecured personal data

According to Google, the current developer of the Android operating system, more than 400 million Android devices were activated in 2012. As of July 2013, users had downloaded more than 50 billion apps from Google Play, Android's official app store.

The numbers speak to the amount of unsecured personal data now available for offsite storage and use by third parties.

In an effort to make it easier for users to understand what information an app can access, the online Google Play store arranged app permissions into categories available for review before an app is purchased.

One category, "Contacts/Calendar," warns that when users are faced with giving permission for this group, the app may use the device's contacts and/or calendar information to "read your contacts, modify your contacts, read your calendar events plus confidential information, add or modify calendar events and send email to guests without owners' knowledge."

Another category, "Cellular data settings" warns the app "can use settings that control your mobile data connection and potentially the data you receive."

Smartphone security researchers identify these requests as "dangerous permissions," because they come with associated risks. Furthermore, Li and colleagues argue that nearly all apps make permission requests with such risks.

Including a risk score has "significant positive effects"

The researchers believe, however, that assigning a risk score to each app and displaying a summary of that information may slow down unwarranted access to personal information by making the risk more transparent and by giving incentive to developers to use less personal information.

Li and his team conducted several experiments that employed a risk score strategy. They found including a risk score had "significant positive effects" for those selecting apps to install on a user's Android smartphone. They also reported that risk scores could lead to more user curiosity about security-related information thereby reducing how often security warnings are disregarded.

Experiments asked participants to select between two apps presented to them in three ways: with risk summary information not displayed, with risk summary information displayed as text and/or with risk summary information displayed as a series of filled ovals similar to the one to five stars used to present consumer ratings.

In a first experiment, the researchers verified that the presence of risk-summary text could influence participants' decisions as to whether to install an app. Participants chose the app identified as less-risky 77 percent of the time.

In another experiment, the researchers focused on how risk information is communicated to the consumer. They wanted to know whether users would be more responsive to "risk information" or "safety information." Li and colleagues tested the question using a number of filled circles--for half of the participants, they framed the filled circles to mean more risk. For the other half, they framed the filled circles to mean less risk or more security.

The researchers compared the response times for the two different ways of communicating risk. They found consumer decisions to install the app were faster when information was presented in the safety condition, indicating people have a natural tendency to react to safety information over risk information.

The outcome suggests it may be better to present permission warnings as safety information rather than the more common risk assessments.

"This result is surprising in one sense because security warnings typically are conveyed as risks," says Li. "However, in another sense it is not too surprising because the positive framing of safety is more compatible with other aspects of selecting a desirable app."

"When technologists design and implement security mechanisms for systems used by the mass population, they should not design for other technologists," Li says. "Instead, they need to understand what can be comprehended and effectively used by the mass population."

Christopher Gates, a Computer Science Ph.D. student now with Symantec, Inc.; Jing Chen, a Psychology Ph.D. student and Lei Cen, a Computer Science graduate student also contributed to the research.

-- Bobbie Mixon,
Investigators
Luo Si
Ninghui Li
Robert Proctor
Related Institutions/Organizations
Purdue University

NSF FUNDS SIMULATIONS TO TRAIN STUDENTS IN CYBERSECURITY

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 
Cybersecurity: It's about way more than countering hackers
Growing professionals in cybersecurity means supporting an interdisciplinary approach that develops sophisticated thinkers

It's tense in the situation room. A cyber attack on the electrical grid in New York City has plunged Manhattan into darkness on a day that happens to be the coldest in the year. Concurrently, the cellular phone network has been attacked, silencing smartphones and sowing confusion and panic. A foreign power has claimed responsibility for the attacks and says more are coming. Your job is to look at geopolitical factors, intelligence feeds, military movements and clues in cyberspace to predict what may be happening next. Your goal is to make a recommendation to the President.

This scenario is thankfully not real, but it is the kind of simulation planned for students in the cybersecurity program at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). With funding from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) CyberCorps®: Scholarships for Service (SFS) program, undergraduate and graduate students take an interdisciplinary approach to cybersecurity.

"We provide an environment where business students can work with engineers on drones, and students from political science can work on predictive modeling," said Principal Investigator (PI) Tony Coulson. "Our students can major in business, public administration, criminal justice, computer science, intelligence, all with cyber security as an option. We produce students who can problem-solve--people who can understand politics and finance as well as computer science."

Cybersecurity is a field that has received a lot of attention in recent years because of hacking episodes that have compromised networks, and in turn, the personal information of citizens who depend on a safe cyberspace to do such activities as banking and shopping. Following such a breach, attention is generally focused on identifying the hackers and their methods.

Among the options for students supported through San Bernardino's SFS program is being educated in cyber intelligence to deal proactively with cyber threats--to predict malicious behavior before it happens. Doing so draws not only on a background in computer and information science, but also on an understanding of human behavior and psychology and the political and economic environment. About 50 students have gone through the program, including completing internship requirements, and Coulson reports 100 percent placement with employers.

"The San Bernardino project is one of 166 active projects around the country fully or partly funded by SFS," said SFS Lead Program Director Victor Piotrowski. "Cybersecurity is a dynamic and evolving field, and the country needs talented people with the skills to protect U.S. interests around the world. Through SFS, we prepare students for high-paying careers in government, and increase the capacity of institutions to offer quality course work in this area."

A condition of students' receiving support through SFS is that they put their skills to work in a government agency for a period equal to the duration of their scholarship. Coulson says that after completing the program at CSUSB, students often have to choose from multiple offers. The program boasts having students placed in many areas of government.

"CSUSB students have a depth of skills and often pick their dream jobs," said Coulson, including a student who got a job at his first-choice agency--the National Archives.

San Bernardino is a poor community, and the good jobs available to SFS graduates can make a huge difference to them and their families. To promote their success in finding and keeping employment, the professional development offered to students goes beyond their academic work to include business etiquette, mentoring, how to succeed at an internship, and how to conduct oneself successfully in an office. The goal is to produce a graduate ready to be hired.

In addition to traditional essay-based projects, students have to complete a very hands-on final exam, requiring that they pick locks and use digital and biometric information to hack into a network. According to Coulson, they enjoy the challenge.

Along with running the SFS project, Coulson is co-PI on another NSF-supported project, CyberWatch West, funded through the Advanced Technological Education program (ATE).

"Despite Silicon Valley being on the West coast, and California having the largest population of community colleges in the country, there are very few cybersecurity programs here," said Coulson.

So CyberWatch West aims to help community colleges, K-12 schools and universities link together in 13 western states to develop faculty and students in cybersecurity. The project is a resource for faculty to identify curriculum pathways and outreach, find mentors and engage students in competitions, events and presentations.

"There's such a need in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas," said Coulson. There are something like 2,500 open positions, and we're graduating 200 kids."

Bringing together cybersecurity, law and digital forensics

Also responding to the need for a cybersecurity workforce prepared to deal with today's complex problems is an SFS project for undergraduates and graduate students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The project has graduated 25 students who are already working in government (reflecting another 100 percentage placement rate), and another 20 are set to graduate next May.

Since last year, this project offers scholarships to law students as well as engineering and computer science students. According to PI Roy Campbell, few lawyers understand cybersecurity and few computer scientists understand the legal framework involved in prosecuting and preventing cyber crimes.

The first law student to be accepted in the program, Whitney Merrill, is a recent law school graduate currently practicing as an attorney while completing her master's in computer science at UIUC. She found the combination of cybersecurity and law in the UIUC program to be valuable.

"The two fields are fiercely intertwined," said Merrill. "Understanding both fields allows me to better serve and advocate for my clients. Additionally, I hope to be able to help the two communities more effectively communicate with each other to create tools and a body of law that reflects accurately an understanding of both law and technology."

Merrill found the program challenging at first.

"But my interest and love for the subject matter made the challenging workload (29 credits last semester) enjoyable," she added. "Working towards a mastery in both fields has also helped me to spot legal issues where I would not have before."

Next summer Merrill will be working as a summer intern at the Federal Trade Commission in their Division of Privacy and Identity Protection. She graduates in December 2015.

With additional NSF support, a new related program in digital forensics at UIUC has the goal of building a curriculum that will teach students about cybersecurity in the context of the law enforcement, the judicial system, and privacy laws.

"Digital forensics is not the sort of area a computer scientist can just jump into," Campbell said. "It's not just malware or outcropping of hacking techniques. It has to be done in a deliberate way to produce evidence that would be acceptable to courts and other entities."

Co-PI Masooda Bashir says digital forensics gets to the heart of the multidisciplinary nature of cybersecurity.

"If you think about the amount of digital information that is being generated, exchanged, and stored daily you begin to understand the impact that the field of Digital Forensics is going to have in the coming years, " she said. "But Digital Forensics (DF) is not only a technical discipline, but a multidisciplinary profession that draws on a range of other fields, including law and courtroom procedure, forensic science, criminal justice and psychology."

She added, " I believe it is through integration of such relevant nontechnical disciplines into the DF education we can help students develop the comprehensive understanding that they will need in order to conduct examinations and analyses whose processes and findings are not just technically sound, but legal, ethical, admissible in court, and otherwise effective in achieving the desired real-world goal."

As the new program evolves, Masooda is drawing on her background as a computer scientist/psychologist to add the psychology of cybercrime to the curriculum. She's also working on a project examining cybersecurity competitions to understand their impact on the cybersecurity workforce and also to better understand the psychological factors and motivations of cyber security specialist and hackers.

Students with an interest in cybersecurity can start planning now

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management maintains a website where students can get information of SFS and the institutions that are participating in it. Meanwhile, PIs can update their project pages and agency officials can check resumes for students with the qualifications they need.

In the evolving field of cybersecurity, individuals with technical skills and knowledge of the social and legal context for what they do will continue to be highly desirable workers

NSF ARTICLE: TESTING FOR PATHOGENS

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Testing for pathogens

Innovation Corps researchers focus on medical applications rather than food safety in response to customer needs

When Sunny Shah and his research colleagues at the University of Notre Dame developed a new diagnostic tool for detecting the presence of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens, they assumed that the food industry would be the perfect market.

It made sense, particularly amid ongoing concerns over food safety. The test could identify, among other things, E. coli 0157, which has caused a number of deadly outbreaks in the United States, as well as the bacterium responsible for brucellosis, a disease caused by eating undercooked meat or unpasteurized dairy products.

Their test was accurate and inexpensive. It just wasn't fast enough.

"Even though we could provide a cheaper test than what is already available, they said they would be willing to pay more for a faster test," Shah says, referring to his conversations with representatives from food processing plants, health agencies and food testing labs. "They said we needed to produce results within two hours, not two days, because they wouldn't be able to ship anything out, and had to pay for refrigeration, while waiting for test results."

So the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientist switched his focus--he likes to call it a "pivot"--from food safety to medical applications. In addition to food-borne bacteria, the test also can recognize the virus that causes Dengue fever, potentially valuable for surveillance activities both here and abroad, and human papillomavirus (HPV), which is linked to cervical and oral cancers.

Shah, who also is assistant director for the ESTEEM graduate program, which exposes those with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) backgrounds to business and entrepreneurial courses, received $50,000 in 2013 from NSF's Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program. I-Corps helps scientists assess how, and whether, they can translate their promising discoveries into viable commercial products.

The award supports a set of activities and programs that prepare scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory into the commercial world, with the idea of providing near-term benefits for the economy and society.

It is a public-private partnership program that teaches grantees to identify valuable product opportunities that can emerge from academic research, and offers entrepreneurship training to student participants.

Although things did not turn out as originally planned in this case, Shah's experience nevertheless actually embodies the I-Corps philosophy, since one of its major goals is to mentor scientists in ways that allow them to evaluate the commercial potential of their discoveries, and send them in different directions if necessary to ensure their research ends up in the best possible place to do the most good at an affordable price.

"It doesn't matter what we, as researchers, think is the value of our technology," Shah says. "It's what the customer thinks that is important and the only way to identify this customer need is by getting out and interviewing them."

NSF also earlier supported the research that developed the test in 2011. Shah's research colleagues on this project include Hsueh-Chia Chang, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, Satyajyoti Senapati, research assistant professor, and Zdenek Slouka, postdoctoral associate in the Chang group. For the I-Corps grant, Kerry Wilson, managing director of Springboard Engineers, played the role of the business mentor, while Shah was the entrepreneurial lead

The test uses a biochip that can detect the DNA or RNA of a particular pathogen.

"Every pathogen has a unique biomarker, and what we do is put a probe on our biochip that captures that biomarker," Shah says. "If the sample has that particular pathogen, then its biomarker will bind to this probe and give us a signal. There are changes in the electrical properties, so it gives us a visual electrical signal that can easily be translated into a target present/absent signal."

Each chip is programmed for a specific pathogen, "but in the future we hope to develop what we call a multiplex biochip that can detect numerous pathogens all on the same device," Shah adds.

The plan now is to develop the tool for future use by dentists to test their patients during office visits for early detection of HPV-related oral cancer before there are visible signs of disease.

"Usually dentists now just examine you visually for lesions, but this would be a sample swab that could give you advance warning," he says.

The test also might be useful as a diagnostic tool for food-borne disease after infection, that is, in testing an already ill patient's blood, he says.

The team recently received a National Institutes of Health grant to study a possible future surveillance role for the test in screening mosquitoes for the presence of Dengue Fever.

"This is not a huge problem for the United States, although there have been a number of cases in parts of Florida in recent years, but it is an issue in South America, Brazil and India, and other areas, " he says.

The impact of I-Corps allowed Shah to make the transition. "Knowing the market and the customer early is extremely important in the technology commercialization process," he says. The program helped him to "quickly assess a particular market to identify customer need and be ready to pivot from one market to another, if needed."

-- Marlene Cimons, National Science Foundation
Investigators
Sunny Shah
Li-Jing Cheng
Hsueh-Chia Chang
Satyajyoti Senapati
Related Institutions/Organizations
University of Notre Dame

USING COMPUTERS CAN MAKE EASIER COMPLICATED WATER RIGHTS TRADING

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Selling and buying water rights

NSF Innovation Corps awardees founded the company Mammoth Trading to provide a neutral, centralized resource

Trying to sell or buy water rights can be a complicated exercise. First, it takes time and effort for buyers and sellers to find each other, a process that often relies on word-of-mouth, local bulletin boards, even calling friends and neighbors to get the word out. Then they must deal with the maze of rules and regulations involved. Finally, they must reach a fair price.

It would be much easier if a computer could do it. Now, one can.

Scientists at the University of Nebraska and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed an algorithm that can match potential buyers and sellers, sift through the complexity of local physical and regulatory systems, and reach a fair deal designed especially for them. It also allows the negotiating parties to provide information confidentially during the process.

"It's a different way of matching buyers and sellers in places where there aren't established markets," says Nicholas Brozoviæ, director of policy at the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute and associate professor of agricultural economics at the University of Nebraska. "It's a different way of building a market for potential buyers and sellers of natural resources. It maintains confidentiality and it is structured in a way that is neutral and fair."

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Brozoviæ's research focuses on using economic analysis to understand natural resource systems, with a special emphasis on water resources. He designs and evaluates management policies that can maintain or improve the condition of natural resources. Much involves collaborations with engineers, urban planners and others.

Mammoth Trading, a new company that grew out of his research, hopes to provide a neutral centralized place for both buyers and sellers interesting in trading water rights and other resource use rights. The goal is to craft each transaction by taking local community needs into account, as well as factors unique to the individuals involved.

There is a transaction fee associated with the market and any benefits from trading are split between buyer and seller, "which is not typically how brokerage works," Brozoviæ says. But "we view ours as a fairer system."

The company currently is developing a certified irrigated acreage market for groundwater rights in the Twin Platte Natural Resources District in Nebraska, as well as working on developing other systems, mostly in water quantity and quality, as well as other natural resources.

"Before we started, it was really difficult to identify those interested in buying or selling their rights," says Richael Young, company president, and an expert in environmental engineering and agricultural economics. "We provide a central hub for people. Right now, they spend a lot of time either calling up people, seeing if someone is interested in trading, or hiring a realtor, which can take months, and still may not tell you whether or not a person is eligible to trade."

Although the company is just getting started, the researchers see a future where the system will expand to other areas and natural resources.

"Part of our thinking is how we can scale this idea and broaden this scope to other environmental markets," Brozoviæ says. "Beyond this relatively narrow market of trading groundwater rights, there are many other natural resources that have the same features where a similar system could work, such as habitat markets or wetland mitigation markets, storm water management in urban areas, water quality in waste water treatment plants.

"There is a broader move within environmental regulations to move to market based systems," he adds. "If done correctly, it may be a cheaper way to achieve a better environmental outcome."

However, there can be considerable complexity in implementing environmental and resource use regulations using markets.

"For carbon, it's a pretty simple process, since the atmosphere is well mixed so it doesn't matter where carbon emissions occur," Young says. "But when you think about ground or surface water, those are highly localized resources. You can't have a trading scheme that allows people to trade wherever they are located, since there are physical laws that govern the movement of groundwater and surface water.

"So those are the kinds of rules we incorporate into the system to allow people to trade more effectively," she adds. "Our goal is to help businesses operate more efficiently within existing regulations. For now, we are focusing on groundwater. In the future, we hope to enter into markets for surface water and air pollutants."

One incentive for expansion to other areas is the fact that the market for trading groundwater permits is highly seasonal. "Once you've planted your seeds and made those decisions, you may not be interested in trading for more water rights," Young says.

NSF has supported their efforts with a $50,000 Innovation Corps (I-Corps) grant, awarded in 2013, which provides a set of activities and programs that prepare scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory into the commercial world.

The goal of the I-Corps program is to help researchers translate their discoveries into technologies with near-term benefits for the economy and society. It is a public-private partnership program that teaches grantees to identify valuable product opportunities that can emerge from academic research, and offers entrepreneurship training to student participants.

Mammoth Trading recently completed its first deal, and is working on others. "We expected it would take time for people to become familiar with our system, and how it works," Young says. "It surprised us how quickly people did hear about us. We got some trades earlier than expected, and we were able to get them through."

Brozoviæ agrees. "We now have the first trades in our system, which is exciting," he says. "Eventually we could do this nationwide, and potentially internationally."

-- Marlene Cimons, National Science Foundation
Investigators
Nicholas Brozovic
Ximing Cai
John Braden
Albert Valocchi
Stephen Gasteyer

SCIENTIST SAYS DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL LOCATED

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Where did the Deepwater Horizon oil go? To Davy Jones' Locker at the bottom of the sea

New analysis traces oil to its resting place on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor
Where's the remaining oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?

The location of 2 million barrels of oil thought to be trapped in the deep ocean has remained a mystery. Until now.

Scientist David Valentine of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of California, Irvine, have discovered the path the oil followed to its resting place on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor.

The findings appear today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This analysis provides us with, for the first time, some closure on the question, 'Where did the oil go and how did it get there?'" said Don Rice, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research along with NSF's Division of Earth Sciences.

"It also alerts us that this knowledge remains largely provisional until we can fully account for the remaining 70 percent."

For the study, the scientists used data from the Natural Resource Damage Assessment conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The U.S. government estimates the Macondo Well's total discharge--from April until the well was capped in July--at 5 million barrels.

By analyzing data from more than 3,000 samples collected at 534 locations over 12 expeditions, the researchers identified a 1,250-square-mile patch of the sea floor on which four to 31 percent of the oil trapped in the deep ocean was deposited. That's the equivalent of 2 to 16 percent of the total oil discharged during the accident.

The fallout of oil created thin deposits that are most extensive to the southwest of the Macondo Well. The oil is concentrated in the top half-inch of the sea floor and is patchily distributed.

The investigation focused primarily on hopane, a nonreactive hydrocarbon that served as a proxy for the discharged oil.

The researchers analyzed the distribution of hopane in the northern Gulf of Mexico and found that it was concentrated in a thin layer at the sea floor within 25 miles of the ruptured well, clearly implicating Deepwater Horizon as the source.

"Based on the evidence, our findings suggest that these deposits are from Macondo oil that was first suspended in the deep ocean, then settled to the sea floor without ever reaching the ocean surface," said Valentine, a biogeochemist at UCSB.

"The pattern is like a shadow of the tiny oil droplets that were initially trapped at ocean depths around 3,500 feet and pushed around by the deep currents.

"Some combination of chemistry, biology and physics ultimately caused those droplets to rain down another 1,000 feet to rest on the sea floor."

Valentine and colleagues were able to identify hotspots of oil fallout in close proximity to damaged deep-sea corals.

According to the researchers, the data support the previously disputed finding that these corals were damaged by the Deepwater Horizon spill.

"The evidence is becoming clear that oily particles were raining down around these deep sea corals, which provides a compelling explanation for the injury they suffered," said Valentine.

"The pattern of contamination we observe is fully consistent with the Deepwater Horizon event but not with natural seeps--the suggested alternative."

While the study examined a specified area, the scientists argue that that the observed oil represents a minimum value. They believe that oil deposition likely occurred outside the study area but so far has largely evaded detection because of its patchiness.

"These findings," said Valentine, "should be useful for assessing the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon spill, as well as planning future studies to further define the extent and nature of the contamination.

"Our work can also help assess the fate of reactive hydrocarbons, test models of oil's behavior in the ocean, and plan for future spills."

Co-authors of the paper are G. Burch Fisher and Sarah C. Bagby of UCSB; Robert K. Nelson, Christopher M. Reddy and Sean P. Sylva of WHOI and Mary A. Woo of University of California, Irvine.

-NSF-

STOPPING EBOLA: NSF FUNDS RESEARCH ON STOPPING EBOLA

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Halting the spread of Ebola: Nigeria a model for quick action, scientists find

Rapid control measures critical to stopping the virus in its tracks

Ebola. The word brings fear of an unseen and potentially lethal enemy. But there are ways to stop its spread, say infectious disease scientists.

Quick intervention is needed, according to the researchers, who recently published their findings in the journal Eurosurveillance.

Analyzing Ebola cases in Nigeria, a country with success in containing the disease, the scientists estimated the rate of fatality, transmission progression, proportion of health care workers infected, and the effect of control interventions on the size of the epidemic.

Rapid response needed

"Rapid control is necessary, as is demonstrated by the Nigerian success story," says Arizona State University (ASU) scientist Gerardo Chowell, senior author of the paper.

"This is critically important for countries in the West Africa region that are not yet affected by the Ebola epidemic, as well as for countries in other regions of the world that risk importation of the disease."

The research is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-National Institutes of Health (NIH)-Department of Agriculture (USDA) Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) Program.

"Controlling a deadly disease like Ebola requires understanding how it's likely to spread, and knowing the ways of managing that spread that are most likely to be effective," says Sam Scheiner, NSF EEID program director.

"Being able to respond quickly needs a foundation of knowledge acquired over many years. The work of these scientists is testimony to long-term funding by the EEID program."

Control measures in Nigeria

The largest Ebola outbreak to date is ongoing in West Africa, with more than 8,000 reported cases and 4,000 deaths. However, just 20 Ebola cases have been reported in Nigeria, with no new cases since early September.

All the cases in Nigeria stem from a single traveler returning from Liberia in July.

The study used epidemic modeling and computer simulations to project the size of the outbreak in Nigeria if control interventions had been implemented during various time periods after the initial case, and estimated how many cases had been prevented by the actual early interventions.

"This timely work demonstrates how computational simulations, informed by data from health care officials and the complex social web of contacts and activities, can be used to develop both preparedness plans and response scenarios," says Sylvia Spengler, program director in NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, which also supported the research.

Control measures implemented in Nigeria included holding all people showing Ebola symptoms in an isolation ward if they had had contact with the initial case. If Ebola was confirmed through testing, people diagnosed with the disease were moved to a treatment center.

Asymptomatic individuals were separated from those showing symptoms; those who tested negative without symptoms were discharged.

Those who tested negative but showed symptoms--fever, vomiting, sore throat and diarrhea--were observed and discharged after 21 days if they were then free of symptoms, while being kept apart from people who had tested positive.

Brief window of opportunity

Ebola transmission is dramatically influenced by how rapidly control measures are put into place.

"Actions taken by health authorities to contain the spread of disease sometimes can, perversely, spread it," says NSF-funded scientist Charles Perrings, also of ASU.

"In the Nigeria case, people who tested negative but had some of the symptoms were not put alongside others who tested positive," says Perrings. "So they had no incentive to flee, and their isolation did nothing to increase infection rates. Elsewhere in the region isolation policies have had a different effect."

The researchers found that the projected effect of control interventions in Nigeria ranged from 15-106 cases when interventions are put in place on day 3; 20-178 cases when implemented on day 10; 23-282 cases on day 20; 60-666 cases on day 30; 39-1,599 cases on day 40; and 93-2,771 on day 50.

The person who was initially infected generated 12 secondary cases in the first generation of the disease; five secondary cases were generated from those 12 in the second generation; and two secondary cases in the third generation.

That leads to a rough estimate of the reproduction number according to disease generation declining from 12 during the first generation, to approximately 0.4 during the second and third disease generations.

A reproductive number above 1.0 indicates that the disease has the potential to spread.

Recent estimates of the reproduction number for the ongoing Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone and Liberia range between 1.5 and 2 (two new cases for each single case), indicating that the outbreak has yet to be brought under control.

The effectiveness of the Nigerian response, scientists say, is illustrated by a dramatic decrease in the number of secondary cases over time.

The success story for Nigeria, they maintain, sets a hopeful example for other countries, including the United States.

Co-authors of the Eurosurveillance paper are Gerardo Chowell, Arizona State University; Folorunso Oludayo Fasina, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Aminu Shittu, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Nigeria; David Lazarus, National Veterinary Research Institute, Plateau State, Nigeria; Oyewale Tomori, Nigerian Academy of Science, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria; Lone Simonsen, George Washington University, Washington, D. C.; and Cecile Viboud, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.

-- Cheryl Dybas, NSF (
-- Julie Newberg, ASU
Related Programs
Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease

NSF VIDEO SCIENCE NATION: IMMERSIVE ROBOTICS EXPERIENCE INSPIRES FUTURE ENGINEERS

BROWN DOG AND THE UNSTRUCTURED WEB

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Brown Dog: A search engine for the other 99 percent (of data)

Illinois-led team develops tools to search the unstructured Web

We've all experienced the frustration of trying to access information on websites, only to find that we can't open the files.

"The information age has made it easy for anyone to create and share vast amounts of digital data, including unstructured collections of images, video and audio as well as documents and spreadsheets," said Kenton McHenry, who along with Jong Lee lead the Image and Spatial Data Analysis division at the National Center for Supercomputing Application (NCSA). "But the ability to search and use the contents of digital data has become exponentially more difficult."

That's because digital data is often trapped in outdated, difficult-to-read file formats and because metadata--the critical data about the data, such as when and how and by whom it was produced--is nonexistent.

Led by McHenry, a team at NCSA is working to change that. Recipients in 2013 of a $10 million, five-year award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the team is developing software that allows researchers to manage and make sense of vast amounts of digital scientific data that is currently trapped in outdated file formats.

The NCSA team, in partnership with faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Boston University and the University of Maryland, recently demonstrated two services to make the contents of uncurated data collections accessible.

The first service, the Data Access Proxy (DAP), transforms unreadable files into readable ones by linking together a series of computing and translational operations behind the scenes.

Similar to an Internet gateway, the configuration of the Data Access Proxy would be entered into a user's machine settings and then forgotten. From then on, data requests over HTTP would first be examined by the proxy to determine if the native file format is readable on the client device. If not, the DAP would be called in the background to convert the file into the best possible format readable by the client machine.

In a demonstration at the Brown Dog Early User Workshop in July 2014, McHenry showed off the tool's ability to turn obscure file formats into ones that are more easily viewable. [Watch a video of the demo.]

The second tool, the Data Tilling Service (DTS), lets individuals search collections of data, possibly using an existing file to discover other similar files in the data. Once the machine and browser settings are configured, a search field will be appended to the browser where example files can be dropped in by the user. Doing so triggers the DTS to search the contents of all the files on a given site that are similar to the one provided by the user.

For example, while browsing an online image collection, a user could drop an image of three people into the search field, and the DTS would return images in the collection that also contain three people. If the DTS encounters a file format it is unable to parse, it will use the Data Access Proxy to make the file accessible.

The Data Tilling Service will also perform general indexing of the data and extract and append metadata to files to give users a sense of the type of data they are encountering.

McHenry likens these two services to the Domain Name Service (DNS), which makes the Internet humanly navigable by translating domain names, like CNN.com, into the numerical IP addresses needed to locate computer devices and services and the information they provide.

"The two services we're developing are like a DNS for data, translating inaccessible uncurated data into information," he said. According to IDC, a research firm, up to 90 percent of big data is "dark," meaning the contents of such files cannot be easily accessed.

Rather than starting from scratch and constructing a single all-encompassing piece of software, the NCSA team is building on previous software development work. The project aims to potentially bring together every possible source of automated help already in existence. By patching together such components, they plan to make Brown Dog the "super mutt" of software.

This effort is in line with the Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBS) program at NSF, which supports the development of McHenry's software. DIBBS aims to improve data science by supporting the development of the tools, technologies and community knowledge required to rapidly advance the field.

"Brown Dog today is developing a 'time machine' set of cyberinfrastructure tools, software and services that respond to the long-standing aspiration of many scientific, research and educational communities to effectively access, share and apply digital data and information originating in diverse sources and legacy environments in order to advance contemporary science, research and education," said Robert Chadduck, the program director at NSF who oversees the award.

Projects supported by DIBBS involve collaborations between computer scientists and researchers in other fields. The initial collaborators for the Brown Dog software were researchers in geoscience, biology, engineering and social science.

Brown Dog co-principal investigator Praveen Kumar, a professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the director of the NSF-supported Critical Zone Observatory for Intensively Managed Landscapes is developing ways to exploit Brown Dog for the analysis of LIDAR data. He hopes to characterize landscape features for the study of human impact in the critical zone.

"These technologies will enable rapid investigation of large high-resolution datasets in conjunction with other data such as photographs and ground measurements for modeling and cross comparison across study sites," Kumar said.

McHenry is also a team member on a new DIBBS project that applies some of the insights from his work to data-driven discovery in materials science.

Brown Dog isn't only useful for searching the Deep Web, either. McHenry says the Brown Dog software suite could one day be used to help individuals manage their ever-growing collections of photos, videos and unstructured/uncurated data on the Web.

"Being at the University of Illinois and NCSA many of us strive to create something that will live on to have the broad impact that the NCSA Mosaic Web browser did," McHenry said, referring to the world's first Web browser, which was developed at NCSA. "It is our hope that Brown Dog will serve as the beginnings of yet another such indispensible component for the Internet of tomorrow."

-- Aaron Dubrow, NSF
Investigators
Jong Lee
Praveen Kumar
Kenton McHenry
Michael Dietze
Barbara Minsker
Related Institutions/Organizations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

NSF ON HARVESTING HOME INSTALATION: A FIBERGLASS ALTERNATIVE

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Plant-based building materials may boost energy savings

Insulation for homes of the future may be harvested from fields of kenaf, an alternative to fiberglass

September 23, 2014

Scientists worldwide are turning to plants as a resource for biodegradable, renewable and environmentally friendly products and materials that can reduce landfill waste, help the environment and cause little to no damage to natural ecosystems.

Over a three-year period, University of North Texas researchers developed and tested structured insulated panel building materials made from kenaf, a plant in the hibiscus family that is similar to bamboo. Kenaf fibers are an attractive prospect because they offer the same strength to weight ratio as glass fibers.

The researchers found that the kenaf materials, including composite panels, provide up to 20 percent energy savings, reduce energy consumption and reduce overall carbon footprint, compared to fiberglass or steel and Styrofoam products.

The study to develop kenaf-based building materials was led by Nandika D'Souza, a professor in UNT's College of Engineering, with grant funding from the National Science Foundation. The building materials were tested at UNT's Zero Energy Laboratory in 2012. The laboratory is a testing ground for current and future sustainable materials and technologies.

A low-cost process to prepare kenaf for use as a building material was developed by UNT Associate Professor of Biology Brian Ayre and University of California Riverside Professor Michael Allen. The process involved using a microbial solution to extract and prepare plant fibers. Kenaf is soaked in the microbial solution, and the microbes dissolve everything but the essential plant fibers.

Researchers found that using the microbial solution minimized water absorption and created a 40-percent increase in mechanical properties over steam-processing the plant fibers, a common alternative used to create other plant fiber products.

"The development of natural fiber alternatives to fiberglass, and plant-modified structural foam, offers a zero volatile compound option for home, automotive and consumer applications," D'Souza said.

"None of this would have been possible without the collaboration of our interdisciplinary team of plant biologists; construction engineers; and materials, mechanical and energy engineers and their collective recognition of, and contribution to, the intellectual value of this work," she said. "Plant biologists determined a new method to process grown fiber that materials and mechanical engineers determined had remarkable physical properties and architectures. Construction engineers enabled the building of the housing using the panels."

D'Souza and her research team have been studying kenaf as an alternative to glass and other synthetic fibers for years.

This work is a project in the Farmer-Academic-Industry Partnership for the Development of Sustainable, Energy Efficient, Multifunctional Bioproducts for the Built Environment. Hands-on activities with fourth to 12th-grade children through outreach camps, undergraduate and graduate student education and scholarship further broadened the project's impact.

The team also worked with industrial partners as part of the National Science Foundation's Partnership for Innovation program. Kengro, based in Mississippi, is a bioremediation and absorption product manufacturer, and Rubberlite, based in Virginia, is rubber and plastic manufacturer.

Kengro grew fibers over multiple acres to help scale up the project and Rubberlite provided a recycled tire-based structural foam for the panels that led to reduced energy consumption in the zero net energy model.

The research team's next step will be to use the materials in a zero net energy model home construction at UNT's Discovery Park campus.

-- Leslie Minton, University of North Texas
Investigators
Yong Tao
Brian Ayre
Michael Allen
Nandika D'Souza
Vishwanath Prasad
Related Institutions/Organizations
Kengro
Rubberlite
University of North Texas
University of California Riverside

A MEASURE OF OCEAN PROTEINS MAY REVEAL HOW OCEAN SYSTEMS OPERATE

FROM:  THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Scientists apply biomedical technique to reveal changes in body of the ocean
Researchers look at biochemical reactions happening inside ocean organisms
For decades, doctors have developed methods to diagnose how different types of cells and systems in the body are functioning. Now scientists have adapted an emerging biomedical technique to study the vast body of the ocean.

In a paper published in the journal Science, scientists demonstrate that they can identify and measure proteins in the ocean, revealing how single-celled marine organisms and ocean ecosystems operate.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation funded the research.

"Proteins are the molecules that catalyze the biochemical reactions happening in organisms," says Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) biogeochemist Mak Saito, the paper's lead author.

"Instead of just measuring what species are in the ocean, now we can look inside those organisms and see what biochemical reactions they're performing in the face of various ocean conditions.

"It's a potentially powerful tool we can use to reveal the inner biochemical workings of organisms in ocean ecosystems--and to start diagnosing how the oceans are responding to pollution, climate change and other shifts."

The emerging biomedical technique of measuring proteins--a field called proteomics--builds on the more familiar field of genomics that has allowed scientists to detect and identify genes in cells.

"Proteomics is an advanced diagnostic tool that allows us to take the pulse of, for example, phytoplankton cells while they respond to environmental cues," says paper co-author Anton Post, currently on leave from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and a program officer in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences.

The new study is an initial demonstration that proteomic techniques can be applied to marine species not only to identify the presence of proteins, but for the first time, to precisely count their numbers.

"We're leveraging that biomedical technology and translating it for use in the oceans," Saito says.

"Just as you'd analyze proteins in a blood test to get information on what's happening inside your body, proteomics gives us a new way to learn what's happening in ocean ecosystems, especially under multiple stresses and over large regions.

"With that information, we can identify changes, assess their effects on society and devise strategies to adapt."

For their study, the scientists collected water samples during a research cruise along a 2,500-mile stretch of the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii to Samoa.

The transect cut across regions with widely different concentrations of nutrients, from areas rich in iron to the north to areas near the equator that are rich in phosphorus and nitrogen but devoid of iron.

Back in the lab, the scientists analyzed the samples, focusing on proteins produced by one of the ocean's most abundant microbes, Prochlorococcus.

They used mass spectrometers to separate individual proteins in the samples, identifying them by their peptide sequences.

In subsequent steps, the scientists demonstrated for the first time that they could precisely measure the amounts of specific proteins in individual species at various locations in the ocean.

The results painted a picture of what factors were controlling microbial photosynthesis and growth and how the microbes were responding to different conditions over a large geographic region of the sea.

For example, in areas where nitrogen was limited, the scientists found high levels of a protein that transports urea, a form of nitrogen, which the microbes used to maximize their ability to obtain the essential nutrient.

In areas where iron was deficient, they found an abundance of proteins that help grab and transport iron.

"The microbes have biochemical systems that are ready to turn on to deal with low-nutrient situations," Saito says.

In areas in-between, where the microbes were starved for both nutrients, proteins indicated which biochemical machinery the microbes used to negotiate multiple environmental stresses.

The protein measurements enabled the scientists to map when, where, and how ecosystem changes occurred over broad areas of the ocean.

"We measured about 20 biomarkers that indicate metabolism, but we can scale up that capacity to measure many more simultaneously," Saito says.

"We're building an oceanic proteomic capability, which includes sampling with ocean-going robots, to allow us to diagnose the inner workings of ocean ecosystems and understand how they respond to global change."

Along with Saito and Post, the research team included Matthew McIlvin, Dawn Moran, Tyler Goepfert and Carl Lamborg of WHOI and Giacomo DiTullio of the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

-NSF-

$12 MILLION IN NEW RESEARCH GRANTS AWARDED TO HELP FIGHT DISEASE OUTBREAKS LIKE EBOLA, MERS

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Racing ahead of disease outbreaks: $12 million in new research grants

NSF, NIH, partners support studies of how diseases spread among humans, other animals and the environment

Ebola, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), malaria, antibiotic-resistant infections: Is our interaction with the environment somehow responsible for their increased incidence?

The joint National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) program is providing answers.

The EEID program supports efforts to understand the ecological and biological mechanisms behind human-induced environmental changes and the emergence and transmission of infectious diseases.

Now NSF, NIH and USDA--in collaboration with the U.K.'s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)--have awarded more than $12 million in new EEID grants.

"Recent outbreaks such as the Ebola and MERS viruses, as well as growing threats such as Lyme disease, demonstrate the need for fundamental understanding of pathogen movement and evolution," says Sam Scheiner, NSF program director for EEID.

"This year's EEID awards will contribute to the broader understanding of these threats the program has provided. Because of this increasing body of knowledge, we're able to respond to these new threats more efficiently and effectively."

Now in its 14th year as an interagency partnership, the program has supported 124 research projects.

Projects funded through the EEID program allow scientists to study how large-scale environmental events--such as habitat destruction, invasions of non-native species and pollution--alter the risks of emergence of viral, parasitic and bacterial diseases in humans and other animals.

"The EEID program allows us to access predictive power to more effectively respond to infectious disease," says Daniel Janes, an EEID program director at NIH. "EEID's lines of research seek to identify common dynamics of pathogens that can lead to better prevention of future threats to human health."

Researchers supported by the EEID program are advancing basic theory related to infectious diseases and improving understanding of how pathogens spread through populations.

The benefits of research on the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases include development of theories about how diseases are transmitted, improved understanding of unintended health effects of building projects, increased capacity to forecast disease outbreaks, and knowledge of how infectious diseases emerge and re-emerge.

"Agriculture is inextricably linked to the health of the people of the United States and the world--a fact that is made clear as we fight animal and plant diseases," says Sonny Ramaswamy, USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture director.

"Research on the evolution and spread of infectious diseases will have a profound effect on our understanding of how to develop solutions that ensure safe and secure food and health for the American people."

This year's EEID awardees will conduct research on such topics as: the effects of landscape structure on disease dynamics; the risk of animal and plant infectious diseases through trade; ants as a model system to study processes influencing the transmission of infectious diseases; mycobacterial transmission in agricultural systems; and the effect of host vaccinations and genetic disease resistance on pathogen transmission, ecology and epidemiology.

"In addition to human health, the health of our livestock and crops is dependent on fundamental research on infectious diseases," says Jackie Hunter, BBSRC chief executive.

"As new threats emerge, this knowledge will enable us to respond more rapidly and effectively to safeguard health and food security."

WASTEWATER GETS A COLD

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Harnessing the power of viruses to improve wastewater treatment

Researcher developing a system to isolate and replicate a natural phenomenon 

that removes pollutants and other contaminants

Just as certain viruses infect humans, there also are viruses that infect only bacteria. Unlike human viruses, however, which are non-discriminatory and will infect any number of different people, these viruses, known as bacteriophages, are "host-specific,'' meaning each will attack only one particular bacteria.

"Wherever bacteria exist, there are bacteriophages,'' says Ramesh Goel, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Utah. "If we go to any wetland, or streams or wastewater treatment process, bacteria are there, and so are bacteriophages."

Goel believes he can put this phenomenon to good use.

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientist, who studies the microbial ecology of natural and engineered systems, particularly those that use microbes to remove pollutants and other contaminants from waste water, is trying to harness the power of bacteriophages to rid treated wastewater of problematic bacteria that cause operational problems during treatment.

The use of bacteria in wastewater treatment has become increasingly popular in recent years, but it is not without challenges. Certain bacteria involved in the process, for example, called filamentous bacteria, continue to float on the surface of the water when the treatment is complete, rather than settle on the bottom where they can be removed through a simple physical process known as gravity settling.

"On the one hand, we use the bacteria to treat the water, but some are not cooperating and create problems," Goel says. "We end up having bacteria in our final, treated water."

The problem-causing bacteria are non-toxic to humans, making them harmless, but can cause problems if the treated water is discharged into streams or rivers, where they will consume oxygen and pose a threat to aquatic life.

"The danger is in having them escape with the treated water,'' he says, adding that to otherwise kill the bacteria "requires a lot of chlorine,'' as well as other challenges.

Goel is developing a system to isolate and replicate the viruses that infect several filamentous bacteria known to cause settling problems in biological wastewater treatment processes.

"The idea is to use either single or a mixture of phages to kill unwanted filamentous bacteria up to their optimum concentration, a process we call phage therapy for filamentous bulking," he says. "We have been able to demonstrate phage therapy for filamentous bulking in laboratory scale reactors. The next challenge is to bring it into practice for full scale applications."

In a related project, Goel also is trying to use phages to solve the problem of biofilm formation in wastewater treatment systems that use membrane filtering, rather than gravity settling. During this process, which sends treated wastewater flowing through a membrane to separate it from bacteria, the bacteria often form biofilms on the surface of the membranes, which are substances that resemble slime, a problem known as biofouling. Goel hopes to use bacteriophages to eliminate biofilms, thus preventing biofouling, either by direct application of phages or by using intermediate chemicals produced by phages that are capable of degrading biofilm.

If successful in these water treatments, the use of bacteriophages "will have tremendous impact, unimaginable impact, since these are worldwide problems," he says.

Goel thinks there may be additional future practical applications for bacteriophages separate from wastewater treatment. He sees potential for them in the health field, for example, in drug delivery or in using them to treat external bacterial infections, such as on skin, or on medical devices, such as catheters, "which sometimes get biofilms," he says. "You end up using expensive chemicals. Could we use phages to remove these biofilms?

"Can we use phages to deliver drugs?" he adds. "There may be some antibiotics we want to deliver that aren't reaching the person--the phages will not only kill that particular bacteria, but deliver the drug. These are all new ideas we are exploring."

Goel is conducting this research under an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, which he received in 2011. The award supports junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organization.

As part of the grant's educational component, Goel is hosting a number of local K-12 students in his lab, exposing them to the field of wastewater engineering and microbiology. He also is working with three women undergraduates in his lab; one of them, from the computer science department, is creating computer animations for public outreach.

"The whole idea is to use animations to create a virtual lab, something that will go beyond our borders and that we can share with other countries," he says. "The animations will show how phages infect bacteria, and we think they will really help students better understand these concepts."

-- Marlene Cimons, National Science Foundation
Investigators
Ramesh Goel
Related Institutions/Organizations
University of Utah

NSF VIDEO: SCIENCE NATION - SECRETS OF SLITHERING SNAKES

NSF FUNDS SCIENTIST STUDYING USE OF LIQUID METALS IN ELECTRONICS

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Changing the shape and function of liquid metal

Researchers study gallium to design adjustable electronic components, including new types of antennas

Gallium is one of the few metals that turns into a liquid at room temperature. When that happens, its surface oxidizes, forming a "skin" over the fluid, almost like a water balloon or a water bed. Years ago, scientists often thought the coating a nuisance. Today they consider it an opportunity.

"We are trying to flip conventional wisdom on its head," says Michael Dickey, associate professor of chemical and bio-molecular engineering at North Carolina State University. "We are taking an old material and using it in a new way."

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientist is exploring ways to manipulate and modify this liquid metal in order to mold it into functional structures, in electronics, for example, that result in soft, flexible and stretchable and reconfigurable components, such as antennas.

One potential application could be to find a way to put the liquid gallium (actually an alloy of gallium and indium, the latter keeps the gallium from freezing) into already stretchable material in order to provide conductivity.

"If you put aluminum into a rubber band, it will behave mechanically like aluminum," Dickey explains. "But if you put liquid metal into a rubber band, you have the metal conductivity, which you want, but you still have the properties of the rubber band. We are taking advantage of the fact that this metal forms this oxide layer in order to control its shape."

By better understanding the mechanical properties of the liquid gallium, including learning whether it is possible to modify the "skin" itself--by making it stronger or even weaker, for example--it might be possible to design electronic components that can be "adjustable," that is, that can alter their functions as needed, he says.

"If you can change the shape, you can change the function," he says, adding that new types of antennas with this kind of flexibility could transform smartphones, navigation systems and Wi-Fi. "We could develop potentially better antennas for cell phones that can respond to changing conditions."

Other applications could include wearable items, such as watches or medical devices, or in the field of soft robotics. "Most robots that work in factories are made out of stiff materials and aren't good interfacing with humans," he says. "Taken to the extreme, imagine an octopus with large freedom of motion that could perform delicate tasks."

In medicine, "we could see embedded electronics in gloves that a doctor or lab technician might wear, such as feedback sensors or prosthetics, and the doctor wouldn't even know that they were there," he adds.

Dickey is conducting his research under an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, which he received in 2010. The award supports junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organization.

"We're trying to understand what is happening at the surface of the metal," he says. "I look at this metal as being like a composite material. It's a metal that forms this oxide on its surface, and the combination is interesting to me."

He and his team are trying to characterize the mechanical properties of the liquid metal, and "how to harness them," he says. "Also, we've been doing some chemical characterization in order to understand what is actually on the surface, and how we can modify it. And we are trying to reconfigure the shape of the metal."

His team is studying the way the metal flows in response to pressure.

"In a sense, the metal behaves like ketchup," he says. "It only flows when the skin breaks, due to application of a critical pressure."

The team harnessed this property to print the metal into freestanding 3D shapes despite the metal being a liquid.

As part of the grant's educational component, the research will be integrated into a new course at NC State for both undergraduate and graduate engineering students. Also, the researchers developed an interactive module that discusses the work within the context of popular movies designed to attract middle school minority children to higher education and careers in science. Among other things, they participate in a summer camp for about 200 middle school youngsters, "where we talk about the research, liquid metal and different fluids."

In preparing for this presentation, in fact, Dickey spoke at length to Gene Warren Jr., who created the special effects for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in which "the bad guy turns into liquid metal, and then reassembles," Dickey says. "He said that they used liquid metal to do it. We show the kids a clip from the movie and they really get a kick out of it."

-- Marlene Cimons, National Science Foundation
Investigators
Michael Dickey
John Lach
John Muth
Veena Misra
Thomas Jackson
Shekhar Bhansali
Related Institutions/Organizations
North Carolina State University
Related Programs
Engineering Research Centers

CLIMATE CHANGE AND MAMMALS OF THE PAST

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Understanding how ancestors of today's mammals responded to climate change
Research provides valuable insights for future environmental challenges
About 10 million years into the current Cenozoic Era, or roughly 56 million years ago, during a climate that was hot and wet, two groups of mammals moved from land to water. These were the cetaceans, which include whales, dolphins and porpoises, and the sirenians, with its sea cows, manatees and dugongs.

Over time, their bodies began to adapt to their new environment. They lost their hind limbs, and their forelimbs began to resemble flippers. Their nostrils moved higher on their skulls. The cetaceans became carnivores, eating fish and squid, while the sirenians became herbivores, living on sea grasses and algae.

"It's an interesting example of evolution, and a natural experiment you don't normally have," says Mark T. Clementz, an associate professor of paleontology in the University of Wyoming's department of geology and geophysics. "The changes are so extreme, you can't really ignore them. By studying these groups, we can tease out the main environmental factors that affect mammalian groups as they move into a new environment, and a new ecosystem."

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientist believes that understanding how the ancient ancestors of today's mammals responded to climate change will provide valuable insights that will help in dealing with environmental challenges.

"A better understanding of how these mammals responded in the past will give us a more informed idea of how they will respond to climate change in the future," he says. "This could benefit conservation efforts down the road, for example, what to look out for, what things could benefit these groups, and what will hurt them if climate change goes as we project."

Moreover, "these mammals are like data loggers," he adds. "You can infer what the environmental conditions of the past were like, and how they changed over time, and you can say something about how marine ecosystems have changed over time."

The primary goal of his project is to compare the evolutionary ecology of these two orders, the Cetacea and the Sirenia, in the context of Cenozoic climate change.

The Cenozoic Era is made up of two time periods, the Paleogene and the Neogene, with each of those divided into epochs, which are smaller subdivisions of geologic time.

"With the appearance of whales and sea cows in the Early Eocene [the second epoch of the Paleogene], the evolution and diversification of both groups occurred across major episodes of significant climate change as the Earth moved from the greenhouse conditions of the early Paleogene and into the icehouse conditions of the Neogene, and today," he says.

Clementz is conducting his research under an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, which he received in 2009. The award supports junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organization.

In order to evaluate the impact of climate change on each group, Clementz is examining fossil specimens of these ancient whales and sea cows as part of marine food webs, analyzing the stable isotopes of calcium, carbon, oxygen and strontium, with an emphasis on, among other things, each group's ecological status, including diet and salinity tolerance.

"When we look at the sirenians, it appears that they had a relationship with sea grasses, which are found only in salt water, that extends far in the past," he says, noting that it is unusual for mammals to move from land to saltwater without first spending a transitional period in freshwater. "The isotopes suggest they were feeding in sea grass beds while still capable of walking on land, and skipped the freshwater phase."

However, these conclusions may change upon examining recently acquired additional specimens.

"We now have some new fossils that imply that some sea cows might have been living in freshwater, but we haven't been able to fully analyze them yet," he says. Should that be the case, "it might have been a really fast transition," he says. "They might have spent a very short amount of time in freshwater, then moved quickly into a marine habitat."

The cetaceans, on the other hand, "do show a freshwater phase," he says.

Interestingly, the sirenians are very sensitive to environmental temperatures, staying where the water is warm--20 degrees Celsius (about 68 degrees Fahrenheit) or warmer. Today's global warming may, in fact, support them but possibly only to a certain extent.

"They like it warm," he says. "In the past, when conditions were warm, their range was greater. They went further north and further south. So, from a temperature perspective, today's climate change warming could benefit them. There is some question about how the climate could affect sea grasses and algae. It could be worse for them if it hurts their food supply."

Cetaceans, being more diverse, are more complicated, he says.

"They have about 80 different species, compared to the sirenians' four," he says. "They have been more successful at taking advantages of changes. It could be related to their diet of fish and squid. In cooler environments, they had higher food productivity They exploited those periods and diversified. Now that things are getting hotter, we're not sure how this will affect them."

As part of the grant's educational component, Clementz is taking an integrative big-picture approach to teaching K-12 and college students the concepts of evolution, ecology and climate change.

For example, he wrote a children's play that explains what occurred during the evolution of whales. Later, with the input of a choreographer and dance instructor, the play expanded to include a dance recital. It has been performed multiple times on campus, and many outside groups of young children have seen it.

"The children studied the movement of whales, then learned about their movements through dance," he says. "They got to see how whales move, and how it affects their bodies, and they got to dance, using dance moves that simulate whale movement. Visually, it really was stunning, and the kids learned a lot this way."

-- Marlene Cimons, National Science Foundation
Investigators
Mark Clementz
Related Institutions/Organizations
University of Wyoming

NSF-FUNDED PSYCHOLOGISTS LOOK TO UNDERSTAND HOW KIDS THINK

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Harvard University psychologists seek to unlock secrets of children's complex thinking

Study aims to uncover processes that help improve theoretical knowledge
What is it about the human mind, as opposed to those of other animals, that makes it able to comprehend and reason about complex concepts such as infinity, cancer or protons?

That is what National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research conducted by Harvard University professors Susan Carey and Deborah Zaitchik seeks to find out.

The two investigators are leading a new project that explores how children develop understanding of abstract concepts over time, specifically in mathematics and in science--biology, psychology and physics. Their research could prove transformative to the practice of education.

Carey and Zaitchik's project, "Executive Function and Conceptual Change," is one of 40 projects funded in the first round of an NSF initiative called INSPIRE that address extremely complicated and pressing scientific problems.

Specifically, the project aims to determine how children develop theoretical concepts of science and math and how the learning process might be modified to increase their level of understanding.

NSF's Developmental and Learning Sciences Program in its Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences partially funds the research. It is one item in a program portfolio that strives to understand how children learn, and what factors influence their social and thinking skills as they become productive members of society.

Past research shows children have intuitive theories about science and math before they begin formal learning. Their intuitive theories are often radically different from the theories taught in school, but through schoolwork, are transformed into standard, often abstract ideas that were previously unknown to the students.

For example, children believe the earth is flat and draw conclusions about the world based on that assumption. When they become aware the world is round, they must update their knowledge about the shape of the earth and also update the kinds of conclusions they can draw about the world in light of this new information, such as that it is impossible to fall off its edge.

This transformation involves what Carey and Zaitchik call conceptual change--a process by which a person's knowledge and beliefs are modified over time and evolve into a new conceptual system of interconnected knowledge and reasoning.

Conceptual change is extremely difficult to achieve. Studies show it requires more than gathering new facts to replace or modify old facts; it demands, in addition, sustained mental effort to integrate all related pieces of information into a coherent body of knowledge.

"The kind of knowledge we are talking about is hard to construct," says Carey, a Harvard psychologist and the project's lead principal investigator. "You just don't get it for free."

The difficulty of conceptual change is one of the reasons teaching science and math is such a challenge. It is also a reason the Research on Education and Learning program within NSF's Directorate for Education and Human Resources co-funds the project.

Carey and Zaitchik believe that if the cognitive processes needed to produce conceptual change can be identified, better understood and successfully manipulated through simple training, it might make a big difference in a student's academic success, whether that student is in kindergarten or college.

They are especially concerned with how a suite of cognitive processes called "executive function" impacts children's ability to both build new abstract knowledge and use it throughout their lifetimes.

The components of executive function under investigation by the research team include working memory, inhibitory control and set-shifting. Working memory involves the ability to actively hold information in mind, update it and mentally work with it. Inhibitory control is the ability to suppress interference, distractions and inappropriate responses, which is important for completing cognitive tasks. Set-shifting involves the ability to flexibly switch goals or modes of operation, such as recognizing that different problem-solving approaches will be more successful in different settings.

Previous research has shown that executive function is more predictive of school readiness than entry-level reading skills, entry-level math skills or IQ. In addition, executive function has been shown to play an important role throughout a person's school years, with working memory and inhibitory control independently predicting math and reading score success in every grade from preschool through high school.

Carey and Zaitchik say there is already a good deal of empirical evidence that these processes play a strong role in school children's ability to learn and express theoretical knowledge that does not require conceptual change. In this project, however, they are testing the hypothesis that executive function also underlies the ability to achieve conceptual change.

"For cognitive change, one needs to 'think outside the box,' look at things differently from the way one had been looking at them," says Adele Diamond, one of the founders of the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience and an expert on executive function. "To get to that point, it helps to be able to try out different perspectives and experiment with looking at things this way and that.

"Playing with ideas, relating things in new ways relies heavily on working memory," she says referencing one component of executive function examined in Carey's and Zaitchik's research project. Additionally, "to think in new ways, to see things in new ways, one needs to inhibit old ways of seeing things, old habits," she notes referencing inhibitory control, which the project leaders are also examining.

Diamond is an outside project observer at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she is the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair for Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience within the Psychiatry Department there.

Work by Diamond and her colleagues provides a backdrop for Carey's and Zaitchik's approach. In pioneering research, Diamond found school activities in early childhood--including play--could improve children's executive function and better their performance on standard academic testing. Her research also shows executive function can be improved in 4-5 year olds, ages that some researchers had thought was too early to try to improve executive function.

Carey and Zaitchik are conducting several experiments that explore how executive function relates to conceptual change. They are interested in exploring the possibility that providing training to enhance executive function can also facilitate conceptual change. They are also exploring whether diminished executive functioning might explain science and math difficulties in children at risk for school failure. (For more information on these studies see the article titled "Unlocking the secrets of children's complex thinking: the studies")

They are testing the hypothesis that executive function underlies the ability to achieve conceptual change in two very different groups. The first group is children who are engaged in new learning of specific science and math theories. The second group is healthy elderly adults who, despite decades of experience holding and using the theories involved, nonetheless make many of the same errors in reasoning that children do.

"This work has the potential to support and promote executive function in children in ways that will have broad and deep impacts on their learning and achievement," says Laura Namy, Developmental and Learning Sciences program director at NSF, pinning the research to important child development priorities.

Moreover, the research could have far-reaching importance to populations with particularly weak executive function, such as children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a population also studied in the project, as well as disadvantaged children, aging adults and patients with Alzheimer's disease.

"That executive function enhancement can directly impact a mental process so far downstream as conceptual reasoning is potentially extraordinarily transformative," says Namy. "It implies that a relatively straightforward intervention, such as executive function training, has the potential to ‘level the playing field' for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, for those with attention deficits and those experiencing age- and disease-related cognitive decline."

The relationship between executive function and conceptual change appears to be powerful, she says. "The goal of this investigation is to begin to discover why."

-- Bobbie Mixon, (
Investigators
Susan Carey
Deborah Zaitchik
Related Institutions/Organizations
Harvard University
Related Programs
Developmental and Learning Sciences
Related Awards
#1247396 INSPIRE: Executive Function and Conceptual Change
Years Research Conducted
2012 - 2017

Total Grants
$799,862