Joseph Williams - US grants

This is a Shannon Award providing partial support for research projects that fall short of the assigned institute's funding range but are in the margin of excellence. The Shannon award is intended to provide support to test the feasibility of the approach; develop further tests and refine research techniques; perform secondary analysis of available data sets; or conduct discrete projects that can demonstrate the PI's research capabilities or lend additional weight to an already meritorious application. Further scientific data for the CRISP System are unavailable at this time.

This project brings together a team of ecologists and physiologists to investigate how physiological mechanisms constrain the evolution of parental investment and self-maintenance in tropical and temperate environments. Life-history theory predicts that long-lived organisms should allocate more resources to enhancing survival, thereby protecting future reproduction, at the expense of current reproduction. Many of the predicted responses of physiology and behavior are controlled by endocrine and immune system mechanisms that establish incompatible physiological states and limit individual responses of organisms and evolved responses of populations. This collaborative study will compare related species of birds living in contrasting tropical and temperate environments to determine population parameters (adult survival and reproductive rate) and physiological and behavioral responses. Incorporating a strongly developed student-training component in the project, measurements will include activity, metabolism, health status, and endocrine profiles in the field, and metabolism, hormonal stress response, and immune system response in the laboratory. Analysis and interpretation of these data will relate variation in life-history attributes to phylogenetic relationship, region, and ecological measures of habitat, diet, and predator environment. This project is unique in that it integrates studies in ecology, physiology, and demography to focus on major patterns of diversification of life histories.

This award will permit Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU) to acquire a 64 Channel electroencephalographic (EEG) recording system to examine correlates between brain activity and cognitive factors such as memory performance, language acquisition, social rejection and the potential benefits of exercise on long-term brain functioning. With the capability of recording from only three brain regions simultaneously, the current EEG acquisition system at IWU is not sufficient to address complex issues in the field of behavioral neuroscience. A literature review of published studies utilizing EEG technology reveals that a majority of research laboratories utilize a 64 channel EEG acquisition system. Thus, the proposed acquisition will represent an important step forward in the quality of undergraduate research at IWU.

Two current ongoing studies at IWU illustrate the rich intellectual potential of EEG technology. In the first study, preliminary results indicate a strong correlation between EEG changes and correct/incorrect working memory performance. Given the memory decline associated with aging and other brain injuries, understanding the mechanisms by which the brain processes stimuli is essential. In the second study, preliminary results suggest a strong correlation between EEG activity and social rejection in a chat room conversation. Early results suggest that social rejection leads to changes in brain activity that can be detected using EEG technology and that personality differences (e.g. introversion vs. extroversion) might affect how the brain reacts to this social rejection. Though these preliminary results are exciting, the limitations of the current EEG acquisition system does not permit a deeper exploration of several critical variables, such as how multiple brain regions work together to process information.

This award will also significantly impact the broader IWU community. For instance, the proposed EEG system will strengthen emerging programs, such as a recently approved Cognitive Science Minor (an interdisciplinary program involving the Psychology, Mathematics, Computer Science and Philosophy departments). IWU has shown a strong commitment to interdisciplinary programs, providing internal research funding for collaborations between the Psychology Department and Computer Science and the Psychology Department and Nursing. The proposed EEG acquisition system will represent an important step towards strengthening interdisciplinary collaborations at IWU. In addition, this award will also assist IWU's overall commitment to diversity, a key component of the university's recently-approved strategic plan. Of the 17 students participating in EEG collection this year, 15 students (88%) were female and 4 were minority students (24%). Given the traditional disparities in gender and minority participation in neuroscience relative to other fields of psychology, these numbers show the broad appeal of EEG data collection with underrepresented populations.

Overall, this award will represent a significant step forward on both an intellectual level by allowing more complex research issues to be examined and on a broader level by allowing IWU to strengthen several key initiatives, such as developing interdisciplinary programs and improving campus diversity.

Evolution of development of the progamic phase in Nymphaeales

A defining feature of angiosperms is the flower, and flowers are tremendously diverse in the way they look and develop. Much of the diversity of flowers may arise from their role in attracting pollen and/or pollinators. At the same time, flowers must also allow pollen to germinate and form a compatible pollen tube that carries sperm to egg. Although pollination has to occur before a pollen tube can grow, little is known about how evolutionary changes in pollinator attraction correlate with events that happen afterward from pollen tube growth to fertilization. This research uses natural- and hand-pollination experiments to describe fertilization biology in the water lilies (Nymphaeales), a group with diverse flowers and pollination mechanisms. Such data will then be used to correlate evolutionary changes in floral form with post-pollination biology. The specific goal of this award is to gather data from Trithuria (Hydatellaceae), a tiny and poorly understood Australasian plant that is remarkably different from other water lilies.

The water lilies represent an independent flowering plant lineage that diverged from the rest of angiosperms over 125 million years ago, and so evolutionary transitions in floral and fertilization biology within this lineage are of great interest to comparative biologists. This project has provided research opportunities for three undergraduates and one local educator, and will provide funding for two additional students to assist with fieldwork in Australia and lab work in the USA. It also facilitates collaboration between University of Tennessee and Western Australian researchers.

Joseph B. Williams
Proposal # IOS-1036914
Mechanistic linkages for the pace of life, life-history, and environment in birds

In comparison with a similar sized mammal, birds are remarkable in that they have a higher rate of metabolism, higher body temperature, higher blood glucose levels, and higher life-time energy expenditure, all traits thought to reduce life span. Yet, birds live longer than a similar-sized mammal. This proposal investigates how the metabolic rate of birds and of their cells relates to their longevity. The authors will study underlying mechanisms for differences that they have identified in whole-animal metabolism between tropical and temperate birds, species assemblages with well-documented, distinct, life-histories including life-span. They show that tropical birds have low rates of basal and peak metabolism and that this is related to long life span and low rates of reproduction, which contrasts with temperate birds which have high rates of metabolism, high rates of reproduction, all associated with high rates of mortality. The authors use an integrated approach that focuses on identifying mechanisms at the whole-organism, cellular, and molecular levels that can account for the differences in life-histories such as longevity. The project employs phylogenetically-paired comparisons of tropical and temperate birds, which factors out phylogeny and body mass from analyses, to investigate differences in intrinsic properties of cells between tropical and temperate birds, such as their cellular metabolic rates, their resistance to oxidative stress and heavy metal toxicity, and membrane lipid peroxidation. Further the investigators examine the kinds of lipids and their degree of unsaturation in cell membranes using mass spectrometry because lipid unsaturation has been related to the aging process. This investigation will train a postdoctoral fellow, and will yield insights into how cell membranes might be altered to influence life-span.

The great lability of their reproductive systems is central to the adaptability and rapid diversification of the flowering plants. With the origin of the group, ovules (future seeds) became enclosed within female tissues, necessitating a new site of pollen reception (the stigma) far removed from the site of fertilization (the egg). A critical innovation enabling this stigma-egg dissociation was the origin of a new pollen tube growth pattern in which sperm could be carried to the egg rapidly and through novel maternal tissues. The primary goal of this project is to understand the relationship between the evolution of pollen tube growth rates and reproductive cycles. The outcomes will bear on our understanding of ancient pollen-pistil interactions and floral biology, the focus of a great number of studies on more recently-evolved model and crop systems.

The project will involve detailed and comprehensive quantitative characterizations of early and late pollen tube development in four angiosperm taxa that span the deepest divergences among extant angiosperms using in vivo and in vitro field and lab experiments. The goal is to identify underlying developmental causes of variation in pollen tube growth rates. These fine-scale mechanistic studies will be accompanied by broad-scale comparative analyses probing the relationship between pollen development and important ecological traits, such as the speed of reproduction, floral sizes and longevity, and vegetative metabolic rates.

The PI has developed a synergistic teaching program in plant development and evolution that will provide graduate students with a focused intellectual environment. Training for a postdoctoral researcher and multiple undergraduate students is included. The project also features international collaborations, outreach, and teaching. The project bridges conceptual disciplines: the PI serves as a liaison between two NSF Research Coordination Networks, and is a founding board member of the Tennessee Plant Research Center. Outreach activities include public lectures and news media interviews.

Social exclusion has powerful negative consequences and harmful costs affecting mental and emotional well being. This research project advances understanding of social exclusion by examining the patterns of brain activation present during social interactions that lead to exclusion in combination with self-reported emotions measured after exclusion has occurred. In order to accomplish this, the current project will vary the nature of exclusionary social interactions by altering: how frequently participants are included, how long the periods of exclusion last in each interaction, and when exclusion takes place during the social interactions. In addition, participants' social exposure to exclusion is varied prior to their own interactions by having them witness others' social exclusion. After witnessing others' social exclusion, participants engage in a social interaction with those who were previously excluded in the observed interaction or they interact with the people who caused the observed exclusion. Ultimately, this research examines the effects of the degree of exclusion and the subsequent amount of social re-inclusion on patterns of brain activation and measures of participants' feelings to learn more about how people recover from being socially excluded by others. By investigating how exclusion develops, these researchers will be able to understand and eventually predict the subtle cues or changes in social interactions that lead to perceptions of exclusion as well as the negative consequences of those perceptions over time.

Findings from this research will benefit the larger scientific community and society, and will also enhance the training and learning of the undergraduate students who are involved in the research by exposing them to opportunities to present the data, field questions, and explain the impact of the findings. Because Illinois Wesleyan University is a four-year liberal arts school, undergraduates will carry out all of the proposed research projects. At least half of these students have been women and this contributes to gender diversity in neuroscientific research. This proposal will increase awareness of the psychological impact of social exclusion as well as increase enthusiasm for graduate school and careers in science among students. These findings will be disseminated broadly through the preparation of manuscripts, abstracts, and conference presentations.

ASSISTments is a free, university-based platform created to perform controlled experiments with the potential to help increase the quality, speed, and reliability of results related to K12 education. ASSISTments' mission is "to improve education through scientific research while not compromising student learning time." Each day, teachers assign problems to thousands of students (currently 50,000 students) in ASSISTments. These problem sets often contain controlled experiments. ASSISTments has used this platform to do controlled experiments that have resulted in 17 peer-reviewed publications. For a typical education researcher, developing relationships with schools is costly. ASSISTments has built relationships with teachers and researchers to run experiments to improve education without disrupting classrooms. This project will add researcher accounts to ASSISTments to better facilitate the research process. Researchers will create their own experiments, get approval from WPI for release to teachers, and get anonymized data. ASSISTments will reach out to its community of teachers who trust ASSISTments, to invite them to run the study in their classrooms. The intellectual merit of this work will be the contribution of the studies that this system would support. ASSISTments' ten-year goal is to have a community of hundreds of scientists that use this tool to do their studies.

Psychologists tend to study human learning in lab studies; researchers in education and learning sciences point out that it's not clear if those studies generalize to K12. These communities need to work together, but are lacking common ground. Thousands of researchers in psychology, mathematics education, and learning sciences care about using science to better understand human learning. Some researchers study how to help students with motivational messages, spaced retesting, or comparing feedback. Many researchers have used thousands of psychology undergraduates as subjects, but want their ideas tested and validated in authentic K12 settings. Everyone understands physicists need a shared scientific instrument to do their work, but so do educational psychologists. The broader impact of this work will be as a demonstration, showing how a tool could be built that helps many researchers conduct controlled experiments. This will include showing how the project can increase the efficiency of the scientists? work.

People are constantly learning – whether formal education of homework problems & videos, or reading websites like Wikipedia. This project develops the Experiments As a Service Infrastructure (EASI), which lowers the barriers to conducting randomized experiments that compare alternative ways of designing digital learning experiences, as well as analyzing the data derived from the systems to rapidly change what future people receive. It does this by bringing together multidisciplinary researchers around the shared problem of testing ideas for improving and personalizing educational resources. The research also advances (1) the science of learning and instruction; (2) methods for analyzing complex educational data, and (3) machine learning algorithms that use data to improve educational experiences. Improving learning and teaching increases people's knowledge and gives them the ability to solve problems they care about, driving their personal and career success and increasing society's human capital.<br/><br/>Instructional decisions about digital educational resources impact all students, from practice problems in K12 systems to tutorial webpages in university and community college online courses. The current versions of resources are too infrequently compared against alternative resources, which may provide better learning. With this in mind, the project has the goal of using data to test hypotheses about what is most helpful to students, and then use that data to change the experience for future students. The Experiments-As-a-Service-Infrastructure supports three complementary types of multi-disciplinary, collaborative research. A–Design: the infrastructure helps researchers investigate theories of learning and discover how to improve instruction by designing randomized field experiments on components of real-world digital educational resources. This provides more ecologically valid research on learning and instruction, in subfields of education, psychology, policy and discipline-based education research. B–Analysis: the infrastructure facilitates sophisticated analysis of experiments in the context of large-scale data about student profiles, such as to discover which interventions are effective for different subgroups of students. This can advance the use of innovative data-intensive methods for gaining actionable knowledge in education, learning analytics, educational data mining, and applied statistics. C–Adaptation: the infrastructure enables research into adaptive experimentation by providing a testbed for algorithms that dynamically analyze data from experiments, to enhance learning by presenting future students with whichever version of a resource (condition) is more effective, or to personalize learning by presenting different subgroups of future students with the version of a resource that is most effective for their subgroup. The infrastructure provides a testbed for empirical evaluation of which algorithms enact effective adaptive experimentation in education to inspire the development of new algorithms. Finally, the work aligns many educational communities around the shared problem of enhancing and personalizing education through experimentation and spurs multidisciplinary research by providing extensive support for collaboration and sharing of designs, data, analysis scripts and algorithms while fostering an online community for training and collaborations, to promote high-quality, innovative, impactful experiments.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.