New Designs on Screening
Christopher Merola ’09, a senior
in the electrical and computer
engineering department, is working
on a microwave array chamber for
detecting breast cancer projected
to be significantly more portable,
accurate, non-invasive, safe and
comfortable than any imaging
equipment in use. What’s more, the
new instrument would cost a tiny
fraction of what any current breast screening
equipment costs. Merola
is helping Anatoliy Boryssenko, a
research associate in the department,
by doing much of the testing,
calibrating, and actual fabrication of
the microwave array chamber. “I’m
interested in microwave arrays and
radar design as a career,” Merola
says about his long-term goals.
“Now I’m working in a lab that does
experiments with all that equipment.”
Life Made Bright
Lila Gierasch and Beena Krishnan,
biology, have found a way to slip
a fluorescent marker into one of
a cell’s molecular machines so
it lights up when it has formed
the proper shape to carry out the
cell’s “work orders.” Cells, once
thought to be simple watery bags,
are now understood to be more like
a thick porridge of protein chains,
nucleic acids, membranes and other
components, making it extremely
difficult cult to observe the delicate
protein-folding process. Gierasch
says it’s like trying to watch knot tying
in a microscopic bowl of
spaghetti. Fluorescent marking isn’t
new, but this new application of it
should allow labeling of correctly
folded proteins in a living cell
in order to study the origins of
protein-misfolding diseases such
as cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s, and
Parkinson’s.
UMass
Bed Bugs Are Back
Bed bugs, once nearly eradicated in the built environment, have made a big comeback,
especially in urban centers such as New York City. In the first study to explain the failure
to control certain bed bug populations, John Clark, veterinary and animal sciences, with
colleagues at Korea’s Seoul National University, shows that some of these nocturnal
blood suckers have developed resistance to pyrethroid insecticides, in particular
deltamethrin, that attack their nervous systems. As these pests have evolved to outsmart
the latest generation of chemicals used to control them since DDT was banned, the
researchers summarize that diagnostic tools to detect the relevant mutation in bed bug
populations remain “urgently needed for effective control and resistance management.”
New Hands on Old Bridges
Walk the footpath between the McGuirk Alumni Stadium and the track. That 40-foot bridge is a 1906 Warren Pony Truss Bridge. So? Thanks to Alan Lutenegger and Sanjay Arwade, faculty in the civil and environmental engineering department, this bridge was brought to campus, giving students in the department some hands on experience in preservation studies. “It’s not unusual for towns and villages to preserve these smaller old bridges for pedestrian uses,” Arwade says, “but it is very unusual to preserve them as we are for engineering education.” Lutenegger has been collecting retired New England bridges since 2001, hoping to advance understanding of their technological heritage. Student engineers will repair and relocate at least two old iron and steel truss bridges to footpaths around the campus over the next couple of years.
Thereʼs Old
Almost impossibly remote, Lake El’gygytgyn, 11 miles in diameter, was formed 3.6 million years ago when a monster meteor, more than a half-mile across, slammed into the Earth between the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea. Geosciences professor Julie Brigham-Grette and Martin Melles of the University of Cologne, Germany, are burrowing back in time, retrieving core samples more than three million years old and answering questions about Earth’s ancient and climatic past. Comparing cores from under Lake El’gygytgyn with those from lower latitudes will help the climate scientists using a high-resolution tool to study climatic change across northeast Asia “at millennial timescales,” Brigham-Grette says.
…and Thereʼs Really Old
James Holden, microbiology, says his oceanographic visits to volcanic vents on the Pacifi c Ocean fl oor let him imagine what life might have been like more than three billion years ago when the Earth’s crust was young. Holden was chief scientifi c offi cer on the most recent voyage of the research vessel, Atlantis, and its deep-sea submersible, Alvin. He took samples near underwater “black smokers,” volcanic vents that spew hot gas and heavy metals into the ocean from beneath the Earth’s crust, located 1.4 miles beneath the Pacifi c Ocean. Research by Holden, along with doctoral candidate Helene Ver Eecke, describes the abundance of three anaerobic microorganisms that grow optimally near 200 degrees Fahrenheit. UMass Amherst researchers grow a number of these hot-waterloving organisms in the laboratory or “microbial zoo” allowing longer-term study.
