2018-19

A year in the ice

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:24:00 +0000

A year in the ice Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:24

Trent Knoss

Atmospheric scientist Matthew Shupe.

The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on the planet, with enormous implications for the future of global climate. This year, CU ��«��Ƶ researchers will play a leading role in a historic expedition to study one of the Earth’s most remote environments firsthand.

The unprecedented Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAIC) will send the German icebreaker RV Polarstern from Tromsø, Norway, into Arctic waters, where it will freeze itself into the winter pack ice to drift for an entire year, allowing more than 500 scientists from 17 countries to take detailed measurements of the ice, ocean and air. Heavy aircraft and ships will periodically ferry researchers and supplies to and from the mainland.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that comes after more than a decade of planning from atmospheric scientist Matthew Shupe. When the ship departs in September, he will be aboard for the mission’s first two-plus months.

“The foundation of MOSAIC is seeing the entire Arctic system in different ways, from many different angles,” said Shupe, a researcher with CU ��«��Ƶ’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and NOAA.

The goal, Shupe said, is to untangle what are known as coupled processes, or the complex energy interactions between clouds, water, ice and air. While data of that kind is usually collected remotely, this mission will allow for advanced experimentation to be done in person.

“Scientists will be using sophisticated instruments like cloud radar that can’t be operated autonomously,” said Shupe, who will deploy a metal sled loaded with heat and wind speed sensors—all of which must be winterproofed and polar-bear-proofed.

The expedition, which is being spearheaded by the Germany-based Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar Research, will have a total budget over $130 million. More than two dozen CU ��«��Ƶ researchers will participate in MOSAIC, funded with more than $10 million from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Alfred Wegener Institute and others.

“CIRES, CU and NOAA are at the forefront of polar research, so it was a natural fit for us to take part in this truly exciting international collaboration,” Shupe said.

In addition to the primary scientific mission, which will help improve and refine climate models worldwide, CU educators will also use MOSAIC to develop new STEM learning tools by creating workshops, curricula and online courses.

“Polar regions are fascinating because they’re so far away and have inspired multiple generations to seek out knowledge,” said Anne Gold, director of CIRES Education & Outreach. “We see tremendous opportunity to engage student interest around this kind of exploration and engineering.”

Gold will be aboard the Polarstern’s sister vessel, the RV Akademik Federov, during the first leg of the mission. The Federov will host 20 international graduate students (including CU ��«��Ƶ engineer Sean Horvath), and K–12 students from around the world will be able to submit questions to scientists on board to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at field research. Through a partnership with Fiske Planetarium, cinematographers will collect stunning high-definition footage to create a full-length planetarium show to be released internationally in 2020.

The hope, Gold says, is that MOSAIC’s scientific and educational impact extends far beyond a single year in the ice.

“We will come home with a wealth of rich materials to fill out lesson plans and demonstrate the relevance of these Arctic processes,” Gold said. “We’re also building bridges to the next group of young polar scientists.”

Photo credits: JR Ancheta / University of Alaska Fairbanks. The R/V Polarstern: Mario Hoppmann / Alfred Wegener Institute.

Principal investigator
Matthew Shupe

Funding
National Science Foundation; Department of Energy; Alfred Wegener Institute; NASA; NOAA

Collaboration + support
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences; Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences; Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research

The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on the planet, with enormous implications for the future of global climate.

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CU ��«��Ƶ researchers walking in the Arctic.

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Cleaner water and air for rural populations

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:23:00 +0000

Cleaner water and air for rural populations Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:23

Trent Knoss

Unsafe drinking water and household air pollution are deadly in the developing world, where an estimated 1.1 billion people lack safe drinking water and cook indoors with an open flame.

Last year, CU ��«��Ƶ engineers partnered with nonprofit groups and local officials in Rwanda to deliver water filters and cleaner biomass-burning cookstoves to over 100,000 homes. The effort reduced diarrhea and respiratory infections in children under 5 years old by 29 percent and 25 percent, respectively, suggesting that large-scale distribution provides a scalable solution for rural populations.

“These results should have important policy implications in Rwanda and beyond,” said Evan Thomas, director of the Mortenson Center for Global Engineering, which supports students in 24 countries globally on water, sanitation, energy and infrastructure. “We see strong evidence that the intervention provides significant benefits that might continue to accrue with continued support.”

Principal investigator
Evan Thomas

Funding
DelAgua Health

Collaboration + support
Mortenson Center for Global Engineering; University of Arkansas; Emory University; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; University of Rwanda; Rwanda Biomedical Center and East African Health Research Commission; Rwanda Ministry of Health

Unsafe drinking water and household air pollution are deadly in the developing world, where an estimated 1.1 billion people lack safe drinking water and cook indoors with an open flame.

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Your showerhead slime is alive

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:22:00 +0000

Your showerhead slime is alive Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:22

Katie Weeman

Every time you hop in the shower, you are in the company of millions of microorganisms, most of which probably won’t hurt you.

However, researchers from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) have identified Mycobacterium as the most abundant genus of bacteria growing in the slimy “biofilm” that lines the inside of showerheads. Some of those bacteria can cause lung disease in the immunocompromised.

Matt Gebert, a CIRES researcher and lead author of the 2018 mBio study, and his colleagues analyzed DNA extracted from slime samples collected from hundreds of citizen scientists’ showerheads across the United States and Europe.

They found that mycobacteria: are more prevalent in the United States than in Europe; thrive more in municipal tap water than in well water; are more abundant in metal showerheads than in plastic ones; and are more common in “hot spots” where certain types of lung disease caused by mycobacteria are also common—namely, parts of Southern California, Florida and New York.

Principal investigators
Matt Gebert; Noah Fierer

Funding
CIRES; CIRES Innovative Research Project grant

Collaboration + support
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; BioFrontiers Institute; North Carolina State University; National Jewish Health; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Every time you hop in the shower, you are in the company of millions of microorganisms, most of which probably won’t hurt you.

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Climate adaptation center to benefit resource managers

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:21:00 +0000

Climate adaptation center to benefit resource managers Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:21

Katy Human

Resource managers face mind-boggling challenges: How do you protect an endangered species when the climate is changing around it, or support resilient water management as temperatures rise? Enter the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, hosted at CU ��«��Ƶ since 2018.

The center is a partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and one of eight regional climate adaptation science centers around the country. They’re all focused on science in support of natural resource management, and they work with academic researchers and resource management experts in tribal, federal, state and local governments.

The new CU ��«��Ƶ climate center is co-located with Earth Lab, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) data analytics innovation hub where scientists use big data to assess environmental challenges. “The key advantage of having Earth Lab and the climate adaptation science center at CU ��«��Ƶ and CIRES is that we can tightly couple useable science and innovation to better serve resource managers,” said Jennifer Balch, the CU ��«��Ƶ geographer who directs both.

Principal investigator
Jennifer Balch

Funding
U.S. Geological Survey

Collaboration + support
CIRES; USGS; Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance; Wildlife Conservation Society; Conservation Science Partners; South Dakota State University; University of Montana

Resource managers face mind-boggling challenges: How do you protect an endangered species when the climate is changing around it, or support resilient water management as temperatures rise?

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A secret pollution hot spot: your home

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:20:00 +0000

A secret pollution hot spot: your home Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:20

Trent Knoss

What’s in the air inside your home? More than you think.

Cooking, cleaning and other routine household activities generate significant levels of volatile and particulate chemicals inside the average home, leading to indoor air quality levels on par with a polluted major city, CU ��«��Ƶ researchers have found.

What’s more, airborne chemicals that originate inside a house don’t stay there. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from products such as shampoo, perfume and cleaning solutions eventually escape outside and contribute to ozone and fine particle formation, making up an even greater source of global atmospheric air pollution than cars and trucks do.

Researchers from CU ��«��Ƶ’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the Department of Mechanical Engineering decided to look into the underexplored relationship between households and air quality.

“Homes have never been considered an important source of outdoor air pollution, and the moment is right to start exploring that,” said Marina Vance, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “We wanted to know: How do basic activities like cooking and
cleaning change the chemistry of a house?”

In 2018, Vance co-led the collaborative HOMEChem field campaign, which used advanced sensors and cameras to monitor the indoor air quality of a 1,200-square-foot manufactured home on the University of Texas Austin campus. Over the course of a month, Vance and her colleagues conducted a variety of daily household activities, including cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of the Texas summer.

While the HOMEChem experiment’s results are still pending, Vance said it’s apparent that homes need to be well ventilated while occupants cook and clean, because even basic tasks like boiling water over a stovetop flame can contribute to high levels of gaseous air pollutants and suspended particulates that harm health.

To her team’s surprise, the measured indoor concentrations were high enough that their sensitive instruments needed to be recalibrated almost immediately.

“Even the simple act of making toast raised particle levels far higher than expected,” Vance said. “We had to go adjust many of the instruments.”

Indoor and outdoor experts are collaborating to paint a more complete picture of air quality, said Joost de Gouw, a CIRES visiting professor. Last year, de Gouw and his colleagues published results in the journal Science showing that regulations on automobiles had pushed transportation-derived emissions down in recent decades while the relative importance of household chemical pollutants had only gone up.

“Many traditional sources like fossil-fuel-burning vehicles have become much cleaner than they used to be,” said de Gouw. “Ozone and fine particulates are monitored by the EPA, but data for airborne toxins like formaldehyde and benzene and compounds like alcohols and ketones that originate from the home are very sparse.”

While de Gouw says it’s too early to make recommendations on policy or consumer behavior, he said it’s encouraging that the scientific community is now thinking about the “esosphere,” derived from the Greek word “eso,” which translates to “inner.”

“There was originally skepticism about whether or not these products actually contributed to air pollution in a meaningful way, but no longer,” de Gouw said. “Moving forward, we need to re-focus research efforts on these sources and give them the same attention we have given to fossil fuels. The picture that we have in our heads about the atmosphere should now include a house.”

Principal investigators
Marina Vance; Joost de Gouw

Funding
National Science Foundation; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Collaboration + support
College of Media, Communication, and Information; Information Science; National Center for Atmospheric Research

What’s in the air inside your home? More than you think.

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The hidden risk of nail salons

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:19:00 +0000

The hidden risk of nail salons Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:19

Trent Knoss

When CU ��«��Ƶ Professor Lupita Montoya walked into a nail salon years ago, she was struck by the pungent smell of open chemicals used in gel and acrylic nail applications. The air quality couldn’t be very good in such a confined space with poor ventilation, she suspected, and decided to use her background as a mechanical engineer to investigate further.

This year, her research group in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering conducted a study confirming high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in six Colorado nail salons. The findings are among the first to illustrate the serious health risks prevalent in the industry, where technicians commonly work long hours and report symptoms such as headaches, respiratory difficulties and skin irritation.

Working in a nail salon, Montoya concludes, is akin to working at an oil refinery or an auto garage.

“The study provides some of the first hard evidence that these environments are dangerous for workers and that better policies need to be enacted to protect them,” she said.

Securing a testing location was her first challenge. More than 90 percent of nail salons nationwide are small businesses, employing a predominantly minority workforce and lacking the resources to adequately address worker health and safety. Fearing consequences, many declined to participate.

“This is an issue that requires tremendous sensitivity and a respectful approach to the communities being served,” Montoya said.

In 2017, four undergraduate students working with Montoya used personal connections to help secure access to six salons for a monitoring test over the course of 18 months. The salons agreed to participate on the condition of anonymity.

The researchers set up equipment to monitor known VOCs such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX, collectively), along with formaldehyde. The study found that for workers in some salons, lifetime cancer risk was up to 100 times higher than baseline EPA-issued levels. Salon customers, by contrast, face significantly fewer risks.

“It really depends on how much time you spend in and around that environment,” Montoya said. “Customers spend a fraction of the time in salons that workers do. Unless they have pretty severe allergies or asthma, there’s not much for customers to be concerned about.”

With the health hazards readily apparent, Montoya and her colleagues are already working on a solution.

In 2016, mechanical engineer and PhD candidate Aaron Lamplugh began working with Montoya on ways to reduce VOC concentrations passively using low-cost, absorbent materials like heat-treated coal or wood with strong affinity for organic molecules like BTEX compounds. These activated carbon materials can remove harmful VOCs through passive diffusion, but it takes a long time. Air jets that direct polluted air toward the absorbent material with greater flow provide far more efficient removal.

“We’ve seen high rates of VOC removal with this method in controlled lab settings—nearly 100 percent,” Lamplugh said.

In an ideal real-world setting, the absorbent materials would hang on the salon wall, incorporated into artwork. Small jets would sit at the end of each table, fanning the chemical fumes directly toward the artwork, eliminating lingering VOCs unobtrusively.

“These materials can be beautiful, affordable and effective,” Montoya said.

The project is an example of why it’s crucial to bring engineering innovations out of the lab and into the communities that will benefit from them most, the researchers said.

“So often, technology gets stuck in the theoretical,” Montoya said. “I think our students want to help right now. It’s this new kind of engineering that will attract the next generation.”

Principal investigator
Lupita Montoya

Funding
Nature, Environment, Science and Technology (NEST) studio for the arts fellowship

Collaboration + support
Department of Mechanical Engineering; Department of Art and Art History

When CU ��«��Ƶ Professor Lupita Montoya walked into a nail salon years ago, she was struck by the pungent smell of open chemicals used in gel and acrylic nail applications.

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Kryptonite for superbugs?

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:18:00 +0000

Kryptonite for superbugs? Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:18

Lisa Marshall

With antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” infecting 2 million people per year, and a dearth of new medications in the pipeline to treat them, CU ��«��Ƶ researchers are taking a novel approach to addressing the looming public health crisis:

They’re developing new drugs to make old drugs work better.

“We believe the compounds we’ve discovered have the potential to rejuvenate existing antibiotics—to make bacteria that are now insensitive to multiple drugs sensitive again,” said Corrie Detweiler, a professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) who recently launched a new company, Bactria, to turn her laboratory discoveries into life-saving new treatments.

More than 23,000 people die annually in the United States from bacterial infections that have evolved to resist antibiotics. Thousands more suffer life-threating bouts with once-easily-treatable illnesses like strep throat, urinary tract infections and pneumonia. And some forms of tuberculosis and gonorrhea are now resistant to all available drugs.

“As our antibiotics work less and less, we risk essentially going back to a period 200 years ago when even a minor infection could mean death,” Detweiler said. “Even the risk from routine procedures like knee surgery is going to go up.”

Most antibiotics in use today were developed in the 1950s, and the last time a new class of antibiotics hit the market was in 1984, according to the Pew Charitable Trust.

“With industry largely turning away, it’s up to academic labs like ours to step up and help feed the pipeline,” Detweiler said.

A new way to fight superbugs

With help from a $50,000 Research & Innovation Seed Grant in 2015, Detweiler developed a new technique called SAFIRE for screening for new compounds with anti-microbial properties.

“The old way of discovering antibiotics helped us get to the low-hanging fruit, but that stopped working a long time ago,” she said.

Rather than pour potential new antibiotics into a test tube teeming with bacteria, as in the past, SAFIRE uses cutting-edge cell imaging techniques to observe what the compounds do to mammalian cells infected with bacteria over 18 hours.

Of 14,400 candidates screened, her team has zeroed in on five with strong potential.

They work not by killing the bacterium itself, but by getting inside it and shutting off cellular machines called “efflux pumps,” which bacteria use to protect themselves from both antibiotic medications and the body’s own immune-boosting proteins.

“Bacteria are really smart, and they have learned to use these pumps to pump out whatever we throw at them to kill them,” said Edward Yu, a professor of pharmacology at Case Western Reserve University. “The compounds Corrie is working on inhibit those pumps.”

From bench to bedside

Because the compounds don’t kill the bacteria themselves, the bacteria don’t learn to resist them, a fact that could give the treatments more staying power than conventional antibiotics.

The compounds are also potent.

In one study, they synergized with the common antibiotics erythromycin and ciproflaxin to reduce replication of Salmonella in cells by 20-fold. Preliminary results also show they work in animals, reducing bacterial load eight-fold.

Since earning that first seed grant, Detweiler has raised $2 million in additional National Institutes of Health funding.

She recently filed for an international patent. And through her new company she hopes to move to the next phase of testing. The ultimate goal: To save lives.

“If you had a patient who had an infection that was resistant to available antibiotics, you might someday be able to treat them by giving them one of our compounds in addition to the antibiotic,” she said. “It could not only make the old antibiotic work better but also make the patient’s own immune system work better. It’s exciting.”

Principal investigator
Corrie Detweiler

Funding
National Institutes of Health (NIH); CU ��«��Ƶ Research & Innovation Seed Grant; Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ (formerly Technology Transfer Office)

Collaboration + support
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB); Bactria

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A 5-minute workout that can strengthen your heart and brain

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:17:00 +0000

A 5-minute workout that can strengthen your heart and brain Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:17

Lisa Marshall

Working out 5 minutes a day, without lifting a weight or jogging a step, may be able to reduce your heart attack risk, improve your thinking and boost your sports performance, preliminary CU ��«��Ƶ research suggests.

“It’s basically strength training for the muscles you breathe in with,” explains Daniel Craighead, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Integrative Physiology who is leading a clinical trial of so-called inspiratory muscle strength training (IMST).

IMST involves breathing in vigorously through a hand-held device that provides resistance. Imagine sucking hard through a straw that sucks back.

In the 1980s, patients with lung diseases performed a 30-minute, low-resistance regimen daily to wean themselves off ventilators. But recent research has shown that if the resistance is cranked up, just 30 inhalations per day for six weeks can reap a host of other benefits for time-crunched older adults.

Thus far, in a trial of about 50 people, Craighead’s team has found that those using the device have seen blood pressure improvements greater than some medicines can deliver, have healthier arteries, and are scoring higher on cognitive and exercise tests.

And you don’t even have to change into workout clothes.

Principal investigators
Daniel Craighead; Douglas Seals

Funding
National Institute on Aging

Collaboration + support
Department of Integrative Physiology

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Mighty morphin’ shape shifter

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:16:00 +0000

Mighty morphin’ shape shifter Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:16

Trent Knoss

How can a square peg fit into a round hole? Pretty easily, thanks to a new shape-shifting material developed by CU ��«��Ƶ engineers.

Researchers in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering used liquid crystal elastomers—the same technology underlying modern television displays—to develop a surface capable of programmable two-way transformations. By using heat and particular wavelengths of light, the researchers can make the material fold and unfold on command.

“The ability to form materials that can repeatedly oscillate back and forth between two independent shapes by exposing them to light will open up a wide range of new applications and approaches to areas such as additive manufacturing, robotics and biomaterials,” said Distinguished Professor Christopher Bowman.

Principal investigator
Christopher Bowman

Funding
National Science Foundation (NSF)

Collaboration + support
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

How can a square peg fit into a round hole? Pretty easily, thanks to a new shape-shifting material developed by CU ��«��Ƶ engineers.

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A robot may one day perform your colonoscopy

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:15:00 +0000

A robot may one day perform your colonoscopy Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:15

Daniel Strain

A team from CU ��«��Ƶ is out to change the way millions of Americans get their regular colonoscopy screenings—with the goal of making these notoriously uncomfortable procedures easier for doctors and patients alike.

The trick: It’s all about robots. Associate Professor Mark Rentschler and his colleagues in the Department of Mechanical Engineering have designed a prototype medical device they call Endoculus. the size of a C battery, Endoculus moves using skid steering, much like a tank, allowing it to get a grip on slippery tissue.

Rentschler hopes that robots like it will one day crawl through the large intestines of human patients to seek out and biopsy worrying signs of disease—part of his self-professed goal of creating “the operating room of the future.”

Principal investigator
Mark Rentschler

Funding
National Science Foundation (NSF)

Collaboration + support
CU Anschutz

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