David Thomas - US grants

This proposal is for two international conferences to exchange information on the status of curriculum reform in science, mathematics, and technology education among industrialized nations. At least twenty nations will be involved in the OECD meetings. This proposal does not need an external merit review since it falls under NSF Manual 10, Proposal and Award Manual, Chapter 1, Sec. 122 "Use of Peer Review" subsection 122.1 "General Policy" -- c.3. waiver of peer review in "case where travel grants to either an organization and (b) awards for SEE, clarified in a recent letter from the P.I., and approved by the Assistant Director SEE. Cost Sharing Period The OECD Director and in - kind contribution equal $148 thousand.//

ABSTRACT This research is focused on the relation between stress, cortisol release (a physiological indicator of stress), and measures of behavioral distress in infants. It promises to produce new data on this relationship, for although research on the relation between stress and cortisol has been a part of the infant research literature for many years, such research has not included behavioral measures. Intensity of discomfort and cortisol release has also been studied in past research, but again, the behavioral correlates have been neglected. Bringing standardized behavioral observations into the study of infant stress promises to provide a better understanding of the factors that influence infants' stress reactions. This program of research promises much information on the relationship between stress and physiological and behavioral reactions to it. Studied over varying stress intensities, and over children of different ages, the study promises to tell us much about the effects of stress on infants. This information is important both theoretically and practically, and will enrich our understanding of fundamental developmental processes in infancy. ***//

This project will bring six undergraduate students to the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute in each of the summers of 1993, 1994 , and 1995. The students will work on ongoing, and new research in biophysical computing and computational dynamics, and in new software development efforts for scientific computing and graphics support for such research.

The objective of the Undergraduate Internship Program in High- Performance Computing in Fluid Dynamics at the University of Minnesota is to promote and help support undergraduate involvement in ongoing and new research on high-performance computing in fluid dynamics, and in new software development efforts for scientific computing and graphics support for such research. The program provides a special opportunity for undergraduates to participate in the research programs and enrich their experience. Undergraduates will work with faculty on a wide variety of projects on high-performance computing in fluid dynamics. Faculty from various disciplines have individually contributed projects on a variety of closely related topics in fluid dynamics and will be responsible for supervising undergraduate students. The program will be administered by the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute and will be open to undergraduate student participants who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States and its possessions. The projects are unified by their common elements of high- performance computing and graphics development for the fluid dynamics applications.

9454691 Thomas Network Montana is a collaborative, systemic research and development project constituting Montana's response to NSF's Networking Infrastructure for Education (NIE) RFP #94-5. The goal of the NSF/NIE program is to build synergy between technology and educational researchers, developers, and implementers in the use of network and telecommunications technologies in education, with a particular focus on the development of flexible, sustainable approaches to network infrastructure. This proposal seeks funding for a one-year planning grant aimed at developing a systemic approach to K-16 networking in Montana. The partners in this enterprise will include teachers, administrators, and researchers from the state's educational system, leaders in state government, and individuals from a variety of community, professional, and private sector organizations. Commitments of talent and resources from all partners will be focused on the development of a lasting infrastructure capable of supporting the development of a variety of educational telecommunications services. Specifically, at the end of the planning period, the Network Montana Project will: 1. Define a state-wide coalition of partners from academia, government, and the private sector responsible for directing a wide variety of K-16 educational networking activities during the period of NSF/NIE funding and in subsequent projects; 2. Make use of Montana Information Services Division (ISD) leased lines and Big Sky Telegraph capabilities to pilot Internet access for select K-12 schools and their local libraries; 3. Encourage and facilitate long-term partnerships with computer equipment and software manufacturers, aerospace industries, and other private sector organizations interested in educational reform; 4. Facilitate cooperative partnerships with NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey and other national and international scientific organizatio ns; 5. Cooperate with and support a number of nationally significant mathematics and science education projects already underway in Montana; 6. Focus on the development of educational and informational resources deliverable over the Internet and of interest to Montanans of all ages, and; 7. Develop a position paper on the networking implications for mathematics and science education reform. The foundation of the Network Montana Project is cooperation and collaboration. All major organizations and institutions involved with mathematics education, science education, telecommunications, or networking across Montana are participants in this planning grant. Industry support from TCI, Digital Equipment Corporation, Microsoft, Square One TV and others also plays a significant role.

9527932 Truhlar, Donald G Thomas, David D University of Minnesota Research Experiences for Undergraduates: Undergraduate Internship Program in Biophysical Computing and Computational Dynamics This Research Experiences for Undergraduates project will support nine students per year in programs carried out during the summers, for three years. The program's objective is to promote and help support undergraduate involvement in ongoing and new research in biophysical computing and computational dynamics and new software development efforts for scientific computing and graphics support for such research, as well as to carry out interesting and useful research. Undergraduates will work with faculty on a wide variety of projects. The Supercomputer Institute, an interdisciplinary research program spanning all colleges of the University, provides a focal point for the project and arranges sessions at which the students working on various subprojects share their work, visit each others' labs, and learn about related work. ***

Six major and four minor users at the University of Minnesota are requesting instrumentation needed to study the structure and function of enzymes, muscle proteins, apolipoproteins, bacterial toxins, and metalloproteins. These instruments will be used to provide a vital linkage of thermodynamic and dynamic properties to ongoing structural analyses. The investigators are studying biological function through mutagenesis and protein design, using the shared facilities of a recently established Structural Biology Core Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. A dynamic light scattering instrument will be employed by all of the users to analyze the aggregation state of proteins that are being designed and produced. Understanding the oligomeric state of a protein or protein complex is essential to NMR studies, to the preparation of crystals for X-ray diffraction, and to a variety of spectroscopic analyses. A titration calorimeter will be used by three major and three minor users to determine the energetics of protein ligand binding, which is often required for the functional characterization of mutant or covalently modified proteins in structural studies. A multifrequency phase fluorometer will be used by three major and three minor users to analyze protein dynamics, structure, and protein-protein interactions. This particular emphasis will be placed on the use of mutagenesis to engineer labeling sites for fluorescent probes in proteins, providing site-specific structural and dynamic information to complement x-ray and NMR structural studies.

9970177


Summary

Four major and five minor users at the University of Minnesota are acquiring an EPR
instrumentation upgrade to study the dynamics, structure, and function of proteins involved in muscle contraction, membrane calcium transport, photosynthesis, lipid binding and transport, and protein folding. The investigators are studying biological function and mechanism through mutagenesis, protein design, physiology, and enzyme kinetics, as well as a variety of structural techniques, using the shared facilities of a recently established Structural Biophysics Core Laboratory (SBCL). The new instrument has capabilities that will (1) allow experiments on small and precious samples, such as mutant proteins, single muscle fibers, and single protein crystals, and the capability for programmable data-acquisition for time-resolved EPR experiments, (2) include specialized resonators for small oriented samples and for time-resolved photochemical EPR experiments, and (3) has a second higher spectrometer frequency, to increase sensitivity and resolution and decrease ambiguity of data analysis. The structure and dynamics of muscle structural proteins will be detected by EPR simultaneously with muscle mechanics and correlated with the aging process. Transient and multi-frequency EPR will be used to probe the kinetics of turnover of the catalytic site of photosystem II, the photosynthetic water-oxidizing complex. The dynamic interaction between lipid binding proteins and bound lipids will be probed by EPR in solution and single protein crystals and coordinated with x-ray crystallography.

Contemporary concerns about climate change, global environmental change, and sustainability have rejuvenated interest in the development of an integrative theory of human-environment relationships. Montane mainland Southeast Asia is a region of great biological and cultural diversity that has come under close scrutiny in the last several decades as a result of both real and perceived deforestation, land degradation, and most recently, the conversion of traditional agricultural practices to more permanent cash crop agriculture driven by regional and global markets. This interdisciplinary research project will examine how resource management systems in montane mainland Southeast Asia are changing in the wake of commodification of resources in order to appreciate how these changes may affect sustainable resource use, landscape transformation, and land cover. A multidisciplinary team from the social and biological sciences will collect economic, demographic, institutional and cultural data in China, Laos, and Thailand and link these data with a multi-temporal high-resolution spatial database. These data will be analyzed to develop a narrative of land-cover and land-use change in the study area. The investigators will use cellular-automata and agent-based modeling to explore changes in social and biophysical variables and enhance insights beyond the available empirical data.

The project will enhance basic knowledge regarding the dynamic coupling between human societies and their ecosystems at scales that range from the local to district, national, and global. The project will further understanding of the roles of spatial information technology and modeling for understanding long-term processes of ecological restoration and land-use transition. The project will seek to further understanding of land-use change as part of the coupled human-environment system. The project will facilitate collaborations between U.S. and Asian scholars. The project will provide grad student field-base research opportunities, and it will permit numerous different ethnic groups found in montane mainland Southeast Asia to examine the social implications of land-cover and land-use change for these groups, and it will facilitate decision making by policy makers and stakeholders at local, regional, and national levels. An experienced and diverse multidisciplinary team including economists, foresters, geographers, and sociologists brings a broad range of skills to this project. The project will facilitate interactions among social and natural scientists examining the complex interaction among human and natural systems. This project is supported by an award resulting from the FY 2004 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD). Coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards involves all NSF directorates and offices.

This award, jointly funded by the Division of Mathematical Sciences and Chemistry, supports a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for the summers of 2005-2007. The program director is David Thomas. Twelve students per summer will be involved in this project at the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. The focus of the project is the application of computational approaches to the mathematical and physical sciences. The program's purpose is to stimulate the interest of participants in pursuing careers in research that involve the application of computer science and advanced computation to cutting-edge problems in physical sciences and mathematics. The selected interns will be supervised and advised by active faculty researchers at the Supercomputing Institute and work closely with the faculty members and their research groups. They will prepare a written report on their work and make a presentation about their research at the end of the program. Students will be recruited nationally, including those from institutions with high enrollment of women and minority students. Students with interests in computer science, scientific computation, visualization, physical or biological science, or engineering are the focus of this program.

This award supports the renewal of a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities for the summers of 2008-2010. This site is supported by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU program in the Division of Chemistry (CHE). The program will be directed by David Thomas of the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Seven additional faculty members, who are computational experts in the Institute of Technology and the Medical School, will serve as research advisors. This REU site will bring eight students to the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute for a ten-week period each summer to conduct-cutting edge research in the use of supercomputing methods in the physical sciences. Individual student projects have been developed around this theme of scientific visualization and graphics. Undergraduate students will be recruited nationally particularly from institutions with limited opportunities for undergraduate research.

With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Adam Watson and an interdisciplinary team of researchers will complete a three-year investigation of the social and economic organization of Ancestral Pueblo society in the Chaco Canyon region of present-day northwestern New Mexico. The team includes specialists in archaeology and mechanical engineering to explore the relationship between trends in craft production, manufacturing techniques, and microscopic wear-traces artifacts employed in different production processes.

The coalescence and transformation of many dispersed farming communities in and around Chaco Canyon during the Bonito phase (850-1140 CE) is one of the most widely cited examples of the emergence of politically complex society in pre-Columbian North America. The development of social stratification, the regional propagation of Chacoan ideology, great house construction, and thriving long-distance trade networks are among the principal changes associated with the Bonito phase. Despite more than a century of archaeological research in the canyon, however, the extent to which these social, political, and economic developments entailed corresponding shifts in the economic organization of the society remains unclear. Although previous studies have shown that large quantities of ceramics and raw materials flowed into the canyon from outlying regions, until recently there was little indication of what may have been produced locally and provided in exchange. Though largely invisible archaeologically, perishable craft industries such as basketry, textiles, and hide-working represented a major sector of the Chacoan economy.

This project investigates changes in the spatial organization and scale of craft production through the study of the previously unanalyzed collection of bone artifacts from Pueblo Bonito, an assemblage remarkable for both its size and diversity. Overall trends in tool manufacture and use can be assessed in terms of raw material choice and the relative intensity of basketry, textile, and hide manufacturing in which these tools were utilized. The study of bone artifacts using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), for example, permits the exploration of microwear patterns that can then be used to differentiate the types of crafts being manufactured. The introduction of texture analysis techniques originally developed for applications in mechanical engineering allows the identification of quantifiable parameters of variation in use-wear. On the basis of these data, the study will evaluate the hypothesis that the sociopolitical changes evident in Chacoan societal development was paralleled by increasing economic complexity in the form of craft specialization.

The implications of this study are far-reaching and extend beyond the ongoing regional debates with the potential to advance studies of political economy, hierarchy, craft specialization, prehistoric bone industries, and microwear analysis. Drawing upon recent advances in the fields of surface metrology and mechanical engineering this research applies new scientific methods to address longstanding archaeological questions. The creation of a web-based database that documents variation in microwear is a critical step for reducing inter-observer error, improving repeatability, and resolving key debates in the analysis of use-wear. Through the American Museum of Natural History Science Research Mentoring Program and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, high school, undergraduate, and graduate students will participate in data collection and laboratory analysis.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cachexia is a metabolic wasting syndrome that commonly affects cancer patients, and accounts for as many as 25% of cancer deaths. The root causes of cancer cachexia remain unknown, and as such there are presently no effective treatments for the disorder. We have developed the first-ever experimental system to study cancer cachexia, and we therefore propose here to use the system to discover the proteins secreted by tumors that cause the cachexia phenotype. We will use advanced proteomic approaches to identify high priority candidate proteins, and we will further validate those candidates based on their differential abundance in patient-derived plasma samples, and we will functionally validate them both in vitro and in vivo. These studies are expected to lead to the discovery of the biological basis of cachexia, and thereby establish a clear path toward the development of effective therapeutics.

To address the national need to increase the number of STEM graduates, this NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) project at the University of Great Falls will support 16 academically talented students who have expressed interest in STEM careers. Biology, chemistry, and mathematics majors will participate in comprehensive program of academic supports including (a) a course on STEM research preparation, (b) weekly professional development meetings, (c) science writing enrichment through the Learning Community, and (d) peer-led study sessions. Initiatives to recruit and retain Native American students will be reinforced by a counselor responsible for engaging these (and other interested students) in activities that will integrate them into the life of the college. Scholarships for academically strong STEM students, who may not otherwise be able to afford college, will increase the number of STEM graduates prepared to promote innovation and competiveness in national and regional industries.

The retention strategies proposed in this project are grounded in the current literature. The project elements are designed to promote students' intellectual growth and the development of skills that are highly valued in the workplace (communication, critical thinking, and collaboration). Students will also benefit from early exposure to research and career opportunities. The external evaluator will investigate the project's impact on student satisfaction, participation, and retention to graduation. Formative evaluation will include student feedback on the effectiveness of the recruitment plan, courses, and other academic supports (surveys and focus groups). Summative evaluation will consist of an analysis of motivation for students who persist in the project and students who do not. The active recruitment plan includes development of a video that will be disseminated by the Office of Admissions to multiple stakeholders (K-12 schools, industry, and community partners) and made accessible through a website and the Montana Office of Public Instruction. Project results should add to the knowledge base on effective tools for retaining a diverse community of students in STEM. Outcomes will be presented through a university website and at Regional Lilly Conferences on teaching and learning. A manuscript will be submitted to the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Learning Communities Journal, or Journal on Centers for Teaching and Learning.