Science Nation

When the water along Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay is thick and green, it may be a bad day for a swim, but it's an excellent day for University of Rhode Island marine ecologist Carol Thornber. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Thornber and her team are conducting a long-term study of the impacts of climate change on macroalgae, or seaweed, and algal blooms.

Researchers at New York University are tackling one of the major challenges in agriculture: How to raise healthy plants while minimizing the use of fertilizer and the leaching of fertilizer chemicals into the environment. With support from the National Science Foundation, a team led by plant genomic scientist Gloria Coruzzi and computer scientist Dennis Shasha is using the latest genomic tools to develop new plant varieties that don't need as much nitrogen to grow. The researchers are also investigating which of the plant's genes control fertilizer uptake and which combinations of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium--the main nutrient chemicals in traditional commercial fertilizers--produce the heartiest plants.

The world's largest scientific archive of animal signal recordings, the Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds, is partnering with other institutions to co-curate and digitize an enormous archive of animal audio and video recordings from the library's vaults. The analog material in the library's collection at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology includes recordings of mainly birds, but also frogs, fish and insects, going back a few decades. The collections are a bonanza for animal behaviorists, who use the archives to study birds and other animals from all over the world, including some that are now extinct, such as the imperial woodpecker. Accessible digital audio recordings of animal signals will make it easier for researchers to investigate a host of scientific questions, including what can scientists learn about the responses of animals to anthropogenic noise and other human activities. By providing a useful co-curation system and encouraging collection of recordings along with physical specimens, this project is expected to transform the way researchers collect and use biological specimens in the future.

Optical scan technology is helping researchers at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, preserve audio of 78 indigenous California languages, most of which were recorded more than a century ago. The recordings are on approximately 2,700 wax cylinders that are now barely audible due to issues such as mold. These are the only known sound recordings for several of the languages, and in many other cases, the recordings include unique speech practices and otherwise unknown stories and songs.

For more information and access to available recordings, visit http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~garrett/archives.html.

Real world problem solving through "Making" is a new and popular way to engage youth in STEM education, frequently in after-school programs. Unfortunately, not all youth are able to participate in after-school activities due to financial pressures and may instead take jobs in non-technical fields, such as food service or retail. These non-technical jobs take time away from Making, designing, and tinkering, which can leave them behind peers who are honing skills for a technical career path. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Amy Hurst and her team at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, partnered with the Digital Harbor Foundation (DHF) to create a living laboratory print shop to study the impact of Maker employment on underserved youth. Teens can now come to the DHF Tech Center in their free time to learn the design and programming skills necessary for 3-D printing. In addition, this is a working print shop that is open for business and taking orders, so the more experienced teens also get work experience in a STEM-related job.

Northwestern University mechanical engineering professor Todd Murphey and his team are engineering robots that one might say could make robotic assistance as seamless as "humanly" possible. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the team is using novel algorithmic tools, such as a drawing robot, to develop the algorithms, or rules of behavior, that would greatly enhance a robot's ability to adapt to human unpredictability.

Wind engineer and 13th generation Floridian Forrest Masters knows how to ride out a hurricane. In fact, hurricanes have become his life's work. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Masters and a team at the University of Florida are developing a world-class facility with new technology to help engineers and scientists better understand the high wind storms that batter communities along U.S. coastlines. This facility is part of NSF's $62-million investment in Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI).

Architect Maria Paz Gutierrez is a woman on a mission. In addition to mentoring student building designers at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, Paz Gutierrez is putting her own design skills to work to address a key environmental and socioeconomic issue around the world--water scarcity. Together with environmental engineer Slav Hermanowicz and bioengineer Luke Lee, Paz Gutierrez is hoping to take the recycling of wastewater from sinks, baths and laundry, known as greywater, to a whole new level.

Research consistently shows that children who have opportunities to actively investigate natural settings and engage in problem-based learning greatly benefit from the experiences. They gain skills, interests, knowledge, aspirations and motivation to learn more.

But how can educators provide these rich opportunities in densely populated urban areas where resources and access to natural areas are limited? With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Pace University educator Lauren Birney and her team are getting middle school students involved in an ambitious restoration program called the "Billion Oyster Project." The students study New York Harbor and the extensive watershed that empties into it, and conduct field research in support of restoring native oyster habitats.

"This National Science Foundation grant has made the 'Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (CCERS) Project' possible, advancing environmental restoration through experiential and inquiry-based learning with New York City students and teachers involved at the core of the research," explains Birney, director of Pace University's STEM Collaboratory. "Pace University serves as the prime research institution leading a city-wide collaboration emphasizing the benefits of citizen science to underrepresented students in New York City. We are enormously grateful to the NSF for supporting this work and creating such outstanding digital imagery depicting the 'real work' of the project!"

This research involves a broad partnership of institutions and community resources, including Pace University, the New York City Department of Education, the Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the New York Academy of Sciences, the New York Harbor Foundation, the New York Aquarium, The River Project, Good Shepherd Services, University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science, Smartstart Evaluation and Research, Gaylen Moore Program Evaluation Services, and others.

This cotton candy machine has a higher calling than satisfying a sweet tooth. It's whipping up polymer fibers that may one day be a key ingredient in life-saving medical technologies.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), engineers Hak-Joon Sung and Leon Bellan, and their team at Vanderbilt University, are working to regrow body tissue that has been damaged by trauma or disease. But, regenerating tissue needs blood to survive. In living systems, that's done by capillaries, branching networks of tiny blood vessels--each ten times thinner than a human hair.

That's where the cotton candy machine comes in. The size of fibers it produces are very close to the size of capillaries. The researchers pour hydrogel over the fibers, harden the hydrogel in an incubator and then dissolve the fibers, leaving a network of tiny channels behind that works very much like a network of capillaries.

The researchers say there's much more to be done before this artificial tissue is ready for use in patients, but the team has high expectations that the field of regenerative medicine will eventually prove to be a game changer.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1506717, Engineering a Pro-Vasculogenic Capillary Network Regulating Host Responses