David Robinson, Ph.D - US grants

The long-term objectives are to work out the neural wiring of the oculomotor system. Data are collected from human and animal experiments and interpreted in the form of control-systems models to try and provide mechanistic explanations for human oculomotor disorders. One specific aim is to try and locate the neural integrator that converts eye-velocity to eye-position commands. Lesions of the vestibular nucleus in monkeys may implicate this nucleus and recording from tonic cells in the reticular formation may reveal their involvement. The feasibility of the reverberating-collateral hypothesis for the integrator will be tested by a computer model. Another specific aim is to find whether or not plasticity of the vestibulo-ocular reflex (vor) is in the flocculus by surveying cell types in the cat flocculus, studying the appropriate types during visually-induced changes in the gain of the vor and the response of such cells to an interruption of climbing fiber signals from the inferior olive by injection of a local anesthetic. Another aim is to demonstrate plasticity in the human pursuit system by utilizing the dissociation of neural commands and eye movements that occur in muscle palsy and to incorporate the findings in a model of pursuit. Another aim is to record from burst neurons in the monkey that create vertical saccades and find out if their planes of action lie near those of the canals or eye muscles by rotating them in and around such planes to evoke quick phases. Another aim is to utilize very large eye and head movements to study and model the interaction of the vor and neural saccadic commands. The final aim is to demonstrate that subjects can cancel (suppress) their vor in roll. Since there is no torsional pursuit, this implies that there must exist a neurological system distinct from pursuit to cancel the vor. These projects are designed to quantify the behavior of human oculomotor subsystems, identify and describe new subsystems, describe interactions between them, and provide a neural scheme in the form of a model to explain their normal behavior. These measurements form a basis for the diagnosis of eye movement disorders in human beings and our hypotheses of signal processing by the neural substrates of these systems can often provide a hypothesis for the etiology of those disorders. These projects are also directed to studying the extent to which these systems can recover normal function following dysmetria caused by trauma or disease and the neural mechanisms underlying this plasticity.

This project funds a six-week summer Physical Science Workshop for teachers of grades 7-9. The workshop will be an opportunity for 24 teachers from an 11-county area of Central Iowa to participate in an in- depth program to update their skills. The workshop will do the following: (a) update knowledge of participants in physical science, (b) advance skills in physical science instruction and experimentation, (c) prepare diverse curriculum materials that cover a complete physical science course and (d) make equipment for schools which have a minimal quantity of laboratory materials. During the academic year, the participants will meet for post-sessions with the workshop staff, principals of participating schools, and science consultants to discuss progress and problems in implementing the workshop concepts and materials. The workshop staff will visit each teacher's local school to assist in implementing new materials.

An analysis of need of groups revealed that science teachers need additional training to effectively teach ecological concepts, principles, related process skills and environmental issues to their students. To help meet this specific need, an ecological institute is being offered for twenty-five middle grades and high school teachers per year for two years. The proposed objectives of the institute are: (1) To develop and assess a course in ecology for science teachers that emphasizes acquisition of concepts, principles, and inquiry processes; (2) To teach the course to selected teachers using the Keller Plan and modular techniques for acquiring an understanding of environmental issues, ecological knowledge, and process skills; and (3) To provide the teachers with ecological activities that permit "hands-on" experiences in studying, collecting, identifying and preserving terrestrial and aquatic organisms. To ensure the achievement of the objectives, the institute will be conducted for six weeks each year during the summer (8:00 a.m. Mondays - 5:00 p.m. Fridays) and during the academic year. The institute will be composed of two segments. The first will occur on Albany State College's campus and on Sapelo Island, Georgia. During the first four weeks of the summer, participants will be engaged in the modular/ discussion part of the course, including laboratory activities. The last two weeks will involve activities conducted at Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island. The second segment of the institute (workshops) will be conducted at the schools of the participants during the following academic year. During this time, the institute staff will teach ecological concepts and process skills of the institute to the in- service teachers' colleagues. Additionally, at these workshops, the staff will conduct local field trips for the teachers, and provide advice to them while they develop teaching materials that reflect information learned in the institute.

The long-term objective is to understand the oculomotor system. The applied goals are to provide data for more quantitative and sensitive clinical tests that will help in determining eh locations of brain lesions. We also seek the basic mechanisms by which the nervous system repairs dysmetria after disease or trauma. The basic goals are to discover how the nervous system processes neural signals in regulating the control of movement; in particular, how this is accomplished by networks of neurons that can learn. Four initial projects are aimed at these goals. The first uses a new theoretical approach: a backward-propagating model of a learning neural network. A major feature of this network is that the tasks are distributed among its neurons just as we observed in the oculomotor system. Pursuit, saccadic and vestibular commands are distributed over the vestibulaR-oculomotor regions of the caudal pons. Action directions of second-order anal afferents are distributed over all directions as are the action directions of burst neurons that create saccades. These patterns can be accounted for with this learning network. This is the first attempt to model at the nerve-network level in the oculomotor system and we hope that it will initiate a major move in this direction. A second project addresses the neural integrator which changes eye-velocity into eye-position commands. We have located it in the nucleus prepositus hypoglossi and vestibular nucleus and believe that it depends heavily on commissural connections. We will investigate this in the alert monkey by microstimulation and micro injections of a local anesthesia in this region to provide evidence that may suggest how the neural integrator works. A third project investigates predictive tracking of the saccadic and pursuit systems and how they interact. We first explore how many state changes (change in target position or velocity for given durations) can be stored in their internal pattern generators. We next ask to what extent random fluctuations in one system interfere with the ability to predict but we have very little by way of a normal data base. The fourth project involves motor learning in the control of the gain of the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) in the cat with emphasis on the role of climbing fibers. We intend to record form Purkinje cells in the flocculus and measure the gain of the VOR in normal or gain-adapted animals while either stimulating or anesthetizing the climbing fibers. We hope to provide information to test the hypothesis that motor learning is stored in the cerebellum.

This award supports collaborative research on the interaction between the cryosphere and climate to test hypotheses concerning relationships of snow with other climate variables in western China. Dr. George Kukla, Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, Columbia University, Dr. David Robinson, Rutgers University and professor Lo Peiji, Lanshou Institute of Glaciology and Geocryology will use ground truth data gathered in western China, a ten year long satellite derived record of snow cover, and a thirty-year climate record to define the mean characteristics and variability of snow cover and surface albedo, and to test certain hypotheses about relationships between snow and other climate variables in western China and adjacent regions. It is anticipated that through this combination of remote sensing historical data and on-site observations, valuable data sets will be collected which may lead to improved forecasts of seasonal weather, including summer monsoons, throughout central and eastern Asia. This project is jointly supported by NSF and the Chinese Academy of Sciences under the Protocol on Cooperation in Basic Sciences.

Using a unique data set of ten spring-summer seasons, a series of hypotheses will be tested to define more precisely the seasonal and interannual variability of snow melt, surface albedo and late-summer ice extent, its climatic significance, and relationships with surface pressure fields and heights, temperature anomalies and other atmospheric indices. This will constitute an expansion of previous work under NSF support for 1) an initial study of snow melt/climate interactions based on four seasons (1977, 1979, 1984, 1985) of data and 2) the basic data set preparation only (no analysis) of six additional seasons (1975, 1978, 1980, 1986-1988). The analysis will be performed using digitized ten-season data sets of snow melt stages and parameterized surface albedo constructed from Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) imagery for May through mid-August and coincident sea ice and atmospheric data from other sources. The timing and extent of snow melt atop the Arctic pack ice is an important climatic forcing factor of northern high latitudes, with implications for the long-term mass balance and stability of the ice and potential climatic impacts in other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. It may also serve as an indicator of climatic change forced by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.

Although much of the concern about possible global warming has focused on changes in temperatures, some climatologists, geographers, and other atmospheric scientists have noted that substantial changes in the amount, form, and timing of precipitation also may occur. The extent and duration of snow cover is one measure by which changing precipitation and temperature patterns may be identified, and snow cover is a variable for which many nations have historical data that extends over decades. Analyses of these historical data are essential to help identify natural variability in snow cover, a pattern that must be distinguished if changes in snowfall resulting from human activities or other factors are to be identified. This project will integrate into a single, coherent database the daily measurements of snow cover and related variables for roughly 1,000 observation stations in the United States, Soviet Union, Canada, China, and several European nations. Records in the USA and USSR extend back to the early years of the 20th Century. These integrated data will be statistically analyzed to test hypotheses about the spatial and temporal variability of snow cover and to differentiate random variability from long-term trends. The most valuable contribution of this project will be the integration of historical data into a single database, which will be available for use by this investigator and by other scientists for a wide range of inquiries into climatic variability and change. The project also will provide analyses of fundamental variations in snow cover across the Northern Hemisphere during the 20th Century, thereby enhancing general understandings of changing climatic patterns over the last 100 years.

9320786 ROBINSON Physical geographers, climatologists, and other scientists recently have come to understand the critical and highly variable role that snow cover plays in the global climate system. Recent research has gathered data over the last century from satellite images and ground station records. This research also has advanced analyses of relationships between the extent of snow cover and surface air temperatures. This collaborative research project will continue this line of inquiry by expanding the study of snow kinematics to include data on snow depths and by extending analyses to consider associations among snow cover and depth and other near-surface atmospheric conditions. Data will continue to be acquired from satellite and surface-based sources in order to better explore spatial and temporal patterns of the extent and depth of terrestrial snow cover throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The analyses also will identify and diagnose sensitivities of near-surface atmospheric variables to variations in snow cover across a range of spatial and temporal scales. The investigators also will test the capabilities of different general-circulation climate models to simulate observed patterns of snow cover and its relationships with other variables. This research will extend a productive line of inquiry on an important topic. The data-collection activities will expand a database of Northern Hemisphere snow cover over the last century, further improving a resource that already has been used by other researchers. These activities are complemented by analyses of relationships between snow cover and a range of atmospheric variables. More complete understandings of these relationships should advance general knowledge and help refine meteorological forecasting techniques. The evaluation of general-circulation models should also prove useful in assessing the possible consequences of continued increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other forms of global environmental change. ***

Abstract ATM-9314721 Robinson, David A. Rutgers University, New Brunswick Title: Atmospheric Controls on Northern Hemisphere Cryosphere Variability This award supports comprehensive study of relationships between atmospheric variability and fluctuations in the snow and sea ice covers the Northern Hemisphere. The primary thrust of the work is to provide a hemispheric synthesis of the sensitivity of the cryosphere to regional changes in the atmospheric circulation, and to diagnose this sensitivity with respect to associated interactions between precipitation, temperature, winds and the modes of large-scale teleconnection patterns. The PIs will identify those regions of the cryosphere warranting focused monitoring for potential climate change, and possible future responses of the cryosphere to changes in circulation regimes. As part of these efforts, they will perform a series of intercomparisons between observed snow cover patterns and those simulated by different GCMs under present and project future climatic conditions. The study will address at least six basic questions: 1) What are the relationships between variations in northern hemisphere sea ice extent and terrestrial snow cover? 2) What areas of the cryosphere exhibit strong or weak responses to atmospheric circulation changes and why? 3) Which areas contribute most strongly to northern hemisphere cryosphere variability? 4) What are the responses of the cryosphere to the modes of Large-scale teleconnections patterns, and how do these compare with parallel anomalies in synoptic activity, temperature and precipitation? 5) How well do different GCMs depict the present day distribution and variability of snow cover, and are changes in the cryosphere projected by GCMs in response to enhance CO2 warming reasonable from the viewpoint of modeled circulation changes? 6) Can the cryosphere be used as a robust indicator of climate change? For the snow and sea ice analyses, gridded NOAA charts of Northern Hemisphere snow extent and Navy/NOAA ice concentration data will be combined with available station records of snow depth, snow fall, precipitation and surface temperature. For atmospheric analyses, the PIs will use once to twice-daily NMC surface and upper-air fields from the early 1960s to present, used to calculate grid- point and regional time series of the frequency, position and strength of cyclones and anticyclones, storm tracks, and other indices of synoptic activity (e.g, positive vorticity advection), as well as temperature. Rawinsonde data from an existing archive will be used to analyze patterns of moisture flux convergence and their associations with snow cover and precipitation variations at high northern latitudes. Output from different GCMs will be obtained for doubled CO2 (equilibrium) runs, transient runs (in which CO2 is continually increased), as well as for runs using identical present-day boundary conditions. The research is a collaborative effort between University of Colorado (Drs. Mark Serreze and Roger G. Barry) and Rutgers University (Dr. David Robinson). The work is important because it seeks to clarify the role of the cryosphere in climate variability.

Abstract ATM-9714762 Robinson, David A. Rutgers University Title: Eastern United States Climate and Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature This proposal is for a comprehensive investigation, for all four seasons, of linkages between the western North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature (SSTAs) and regional scale climate anomalies in the eastern United States. The proposal aims at identifying and diagnosing, by a combination of methods, anomalies of temperature, precipitation, and snowfall associated with certain SSTA patterns. Results of the proposed research will lead to better understanding and prediction of the climate of the densely populated eastern seaboard.`

Abstract
ATM-9820920
Robinson, David A.
Rutgers University
Title: Evaluation of Snow Simulation in the Second Phase of the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP-II)

The overall goal of this project is to evaluate simulations of snow covered area and snow mass in General Circulation Models (GCM) submitted under the auspices of the second phase of the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP-II). AMIP is an international effort to determine the systematic errors in atmospheric climate models. Three main objectives are identified to evaluate AMIP-II snow simulations. These are: (1) evaluation of snow covered area (SCA) climatology and kinematics; (2) evaluation of snow mass climatologies; and (3) evaluation of atmospheric circulation patterns associated with snow. Snow is an important modulator of surface energy fluxes, and one of the largest seasonally varying surface parameters over the Northern Hemisphere. These investigations will help modelers evaluate their treatment of snow, from the perspectives of both atmospheric dynamics as well as surface parameterizations. By identifying regions, models, and model characteristics with biased snow simulations, this research will aid modelers in their diagnoses of surface fluxes, an important physical process relevant to climate prediction.

This project is entitled "Multi-Lingual Digital Library for West African Sources". It seeks to build a multi-media digital library of West African sources in multiple languages. Collaborating
organizations include several at Michigan State, the Institut Fondemental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) and West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar, Senegal. Four types of material will be archived
including historical manuscripts from the 19th and early 20th centuries (primarily in Arabic and French), oral sources (primarily in Wolof, Pulaar, and French), photographs and African language print
materials. The project will give careful attention to identifying and providing metadata that describe the provenance and content of the digital materials. A multiple-languages interface will allow
users to gain access to content through the use of standardized subject headings in the original languages. Caching proxy server technology will be used a local site servers in Senegal to address
low-speed international network connections common in African countries. It is hoped that this project will serve as a model for larger-scale efforts by African and US researchers to create new repositories for the broader research and education communities.

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The objective of the research is to define and conduct experiments on thin walled polymer matrix composite (PMC) tubular specimens having continuous reinforcement fibers at methodology for the class of long or continuous fiber PMC. An anisotropic, damaging, non-linear viscoelasticity model proposed earlier by the principal investigators is used to represent the deformation and failure behavior of the PMC composites. The experiments are exploratory and designed to test fundamental features of the macro-mechanical constitutive model, particularly the representation of strong anisotropy, and to guide further theoretical development.

This collaborative project involving Drs. A. Robock and D. Robinson of Rutgers University and Dr. K. Vinnikov of the University of Maryland will explore the connection between snow and soil moisture anomalies and the timing and strength of the Indian summer monsoon. This analysis will include examining the links among snow, soil moisture, rainfall and circulation anomalies, and sea surface temperatures using special observations and the NCEP reanalysis data. The principal investigators (PIs) will exploit a newly available data base of soil moisture observations, with more than 400 stations covering most of Eurasia, including the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, China, and India, along with an updated data set of snow extent and snow water equivalent observations. A critical part of the activity will be the PIs' careful assessment and quality control of the diverse observations that make up the data set. The data set will be made available to the wider community via the web.

ABSTRACT NOT PROVIDED

The lab has continued to do some neuron cell culture preparations as needed by these researchers. We also oversee maintenance of the JEOL 1010 transmission electron microscope and related equipment, as well as the Zeiss LSM710 laser confocal microscope and Leica Biowave System, which continued to be used here by some of these researchers, and others from adjacent NIDCD labs, in FY12. Ronald Petralia and Ya-Xian Wang continued on several projects begun in FY11 and which were described in last years annual report, and began some new ones in FY12. These are described in detail in the annual report of the new Advanced Imaging Core. However, we have included the associated published works here also in this report, since most of them were begun in FY11 in this project. Otherwise, we will summarize here specifically the work of Gail Seabold, Kai Chang, and Chan-Ying Zheng. Gail Seabold worked to finish two projects while she was here in FY12. She completed the revisions of her major paper on the synaptic adhesion-like molecule, SALM1, and the role of dileucine and PDZ-binding motifs in its trafficking in hippocampal neurons. This work was a collaboration with Ronald Petralia, Robert Wenthold, and Ya-Xian Wang, along with former members of the laboratory, Philip Wang and Kai Chang. It finally was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in early 2012, and was featured for the cover photo of the issue. She also worked with Ronald Petralia (and Martin Horak) on a large review paper on glutamate receptor trafficking and plasticity that was published on-line in the Spring of 2012. Gail also worked with Ronald Petralia on some preliminary new studies that are in progress. In addition, Gail was of great benefit in the laboratory, helping to organize and cull through antibodies, DNA plasmids, and other materials in the laboratory, as well as helping out in the laboratory in general. Kai Chang has used techniques of molecular biology, cell biology and histology, to characterize melanomas from several strains of transgenic mice for the metabotropic glutamate receptor, mGluR5 (Choi K.Y and Chang K., et al. PNAS 108 (37): 15219-15224, 2011). In the next phase of study on mGluR5-induced melanoma, he focused on the molecular mechanisms that lead to tumorigenesis of melanocytes by mGluR5 ectopic expression. His major accomplishments in this include: unraveled the signal pathways of ERK1/2 activation in mGluR5-transfected melanocytes, characterized proteins involved in melanomagenesis induced by mGluR5 (potentially useful in diagnosis and therapy), elucidated the function of different mGluR5 domains and showed that ectodomain shedding was associated with cell proliferation, established a melan-a transforming assay and stable melan-a cell lines expressing mGluRs, useful for in vitro tumorigenesis assays, and studied non-receptor tyrosine kinases that may bind to the C-tail of mGluRs and function as co-receptors. Chan-Ying Zheng had three papers with Ronald Petralia and Ya-Xian Wang during 2011, including 2 research papers published in collaboration with Drs. Wenthold and Kachar. These were follow-up papers to one published by these three in 2010. One was a description of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching of pEGFP vector in spines of cultured hippocampal neurons, published in the Journal of Visual Experiments. Another was a study on super resolution microscopy that revealed the slightly different localization of the MAGUKs (synaptic scaffolding proteins), SAP102 and PSD-95 a difference that required super resolution to identify. The third was a review article on the scaffolding proteins, MAGUKs, and their role in synaptic development and plasticity. This was published in the Neuroscientist, and also was used for the cover photo for that issue. After Chan-Ying joined the laboratory of Dr. Katherine Roche in NINDS, she began studying the trafficking and function of two AMPA receptor binding proteins, Gamma 8 and Cornichon 2. These projects are ongoing. Recently, she received two knockout (KO) mice. The Gamma 2 KO mice were purchased from Jackson Laboratories and Gamma 8 KO mice were gifts from Dr. Roger Nicolls group. Chan-Ying is working on Gamma 8 and Cornichon 2 projects using imaging and biochemistry methods. She recently contributed to a Cornichon 2 paper, which has been submitted by the Nicoll group last month. She is the third author of that paper. Also this year, Chan-Ying has been actively reviewing papers submitted to journals by other research groups. She has reviewed 10 manuscripts since November 2011. Half of them were referred by Ronald Petralia, who helped to review her comments in her reviews. The journals that she reviewed include: 2011-- Journal of Molecular Cell Biology, Science China, Frontiers in Biology. 2012-Plos One*(2 papers), Communicative & Integrative Biology, Neuropharmacology, International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience*(2 papers), Acta Pharmacologica Sinica. Chan-Ying will continue her work with Katherine Roche into FY13.

Business leaders and policy makers stress the importance of stimulating entrepreneurial activity for the continued vitality of the US economy, but many policies to promote entrepreneurship have had mixed effectiveness. One reason is the lack of exposure to the processes of innovation and starting a new firm. This research uses the idea that television is often credited for breaking new cultural ground, ushering in acceptance of minority groups, and shifting opinions on important social issues of the day, to assess if televised business plan competitions can shift opinions about the willingness and desirability of starting a business. The results have the potential to suggest a low cost means of introducing large numbers of individuals to the central challenges facing startups, and strategies to overcome them.

The study will combine data from a wide range of sources, such as Nielsen ratings, in-take data from the Small Business Administration, patent application data from the US Patent and Trade Office, and data on business creation, to explore whether exposure to a televised business plan competition affects rates of activity associated with new business formation across the United States. By exploring within-market variation in the show's popularity over time as measured by Nielsen ratings, as well as exogenous shocks to programming that arise when local sporting events or weather conditions disrupt the television-viewing patterns of the target demographic, which in turn impacts the size of the audience for given episodes, the study will assess how increasing familiarity with the ups and downs of starting a business affect individuals? willingness to actually start businesses.