UChicago News

Angela Olinto named dean of Physical Sciences Division

Thu, 07 Jun 2018 12:00 -0500

Angela V. Olinto, the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, has been appointed dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago.

Olinto is a leading scholar in astroparticle physics and cosmology, focusing on understanding the origin of high-energy cosmic rays, gamma rays and neutrinos. Her appointment as dean is effective July 1.

“Angela brings depth of University experience and scholarly expertise to this leadership role, making her an excellent choice as dean,” wrote President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Daniel Diermeier in announcing her appointment.

Olinto’s research includes important contributions to the physics of quark stars, inflationary theory and cosmic magnetic fields. She currently leads NASA sub-orbital and space missions to discover the origins of high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos. This includes a NASA-funded balloon mission planned for 2022 that will use an ultra-sensitive telescope to detect cosmic rays and neutrinos coming from deep space.

“I am thrilled and humbled to be appointed to lead this historic and dynamic division, home to visionary scholars who constantly redefine the boundaries of the physical and mathematical sciences. I look forward to collaborating with faculty, students and staff to advance the important work of the division,” Olinto said.

Olinto joined the UChicago faculty in 1996 and served as chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics from 2003 to 2006 and from 2012 to 2017. She is the leader of the POEMMA and EUSO space missions and a member of the Pierre Auger Observatory, which are international projects designed to discover the origin of high-energy cosmic rays. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society, was a trustee of the Aspen Center for Physics, and serves on advisory committees for the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and NASA.

Olinto’s awards and honors include the Chaire d'Excellence Award of the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche in 2006, the University’s Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2011, and the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring in 2015. Olinto received her undergraduate degree from Pontificia Universidade Catolica in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and her doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Olinto succeeds Edward “Rocky” Kolb, the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics, whose work over the last five years enhanced the division’s historic strengths as a leading center of scientific discovery. Kolb will return to his full-time work on the faculty next month.

The selection of the new dean by Zimmer and Diermeier was informed by the recommendations of an elected faculty committee chaired by Stuart A. Kurtz, professor in the Department of Computer Science.

Changes in Earth’s orbit could explain rise and fall of ancient species

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 16:40 -0500

New research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looks back 450 million years to reveal an important link between changes in our planet’s motion through space, and the extinction and evolution of life on Earth.

A team of researchers, including paleontologist Michael Foote at the University of Chicago, examined the fossils of graptoloids, an extinct type of plankton that floated in ancient oceans. They found evidence that regular changes in the Earth’s orbit and axis of rotation caused significant changes in both the evolution and extinction rates of these creatures.

“This research is very exciting because the relationship between these orbital changes and extinction has never been shown before in truly ancient ecosystems,” said Prof. James Crampton of Victoria University of Wellington, who led the study. “There’s a strong debate in science about the impact on extinction and evolution of environmental change versus interactions between species (such as competition for food). With this study we can provide evidence of the impact of environmental changes on life on Earth.”

As it travels around the sun, Earth’s orbit fluctuates slightly in cycles of tens of thousands to millions of years. These cycles change the axis and tilt toward the sun, which changes the sunlight and climate on Earth. It seems likely this affected evolution on Earth, but the details remain unclear—especially further back than a few hundred thousand years.

But the fossil plankton data was so rich that they could see clear evidence of cycles. Between 9 percent and 16 percent of the variance in plankton species extinctions could be explained by such astronomical cycles, over a span of 60 million years, the study found.

“This kind of cyclicity has been difficult to document in such ancient records—that is, going back hundreds of millions of years rather than hundreds of thousands,” said Foote, a professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago and a co-author on the paper.

The analysis was possible due to the extensive fossil graptoloid dataset developed by New Zealand’s GNS Science and the University of California-Riverside, researchers said. It covers the entire globe, and the average resolution in the record is about 40,000 years, rather than the multiple millions that Foote is used to dealing with. “As exciting as this result is, I’m equally excited for the potential for other studies that one could do with the fabulous level of detail in this dataset,” he said.

—Adapted from a release originally posted by Victoria University of Wellington.

Citation: “Pacing of Paleozoic macroevolutionary rates by Milankovitch grand cycles,” Crampton et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 15, 2018. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1714342115

Funding: National Science Foundation

Earth could have supported crust, life earlier than thought

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 16:30 -0500

The early Earth might have been habitable much earlier than thought, according to new research from a group led by University of Chicago scientists.

Counting strontium atoms in rocks from northern Canada, they found evidence that the Earth’s continental crust could have formed hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought. Continental crust is richer in essential minerals than younger volcanic rock, which would have made it significantly friendlier to supporting life.

“Our evidence, which squares with emerging evidence including rocks in western Australia, suggests that the early Earth was capable of forming continental crust within 350 million years of the formation of the solar system,” said Patrick Boehnke, the T.C. Chamberlin Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geophysical Sciences and the first author on the paper. “This alters the classic view, that the crust was hot, dry and hellish for more than half a billion years after it formed.”

One of the open questions in geology is how and when some of the crust—originally all younger volcanic rock—changed into the continental crust we know and love, which is lighter and richer in silica. This task is made harder because the evidence keeps getting melted and reformed over millions of years. One of the few places on Earth where you can find bits of crust from the very earliest epochs of Earth is in tiny flecks of apatite imbedded in younger rocks.

Luckily for scientists, some of these “younger” minerals (still about 3.9 billion years old) are zircons—very hard, weather-resistant minerals somewhat similar to diamonds. “Zircons are a geologist’s favorite because these are the only record of the first three to four hundred million years of Earth. Diamonds aren’t forever—zircons are,” Boehnke said.

Plus, the zircons themselves can be dated. “They’re like labeled time capsules,” said Prof. Andrew Davis, chair of the Department of Geophysical Sciences and a coauthor on the study.

Scientists usually look at the different variants of elements, called isotopes, to tell a story about these rocks. They wanted to use strontium, which offers clues to how much silica was around at the time it formed. The only problem is that these flecks are absolutely tiny—about five microns across, the diameter of a strand of spider silk—and you have to count the strontium atoms one by one.

This was a task for a unique instrument that came online last year: the CHicago Instrument for Laser Ionization, or CHILI. This detector uses lasers that can be tuned to selectively pick out and ionize strontium. When they used CHILI to count strontium isotopes in rocks from Nuvvuagittuq, Canada, they found the isotope ratio suggested plenty of silica was present when it formed.

The CHicago Instrument for Laser Ionization (CHILI) was used to count strontium isotopes in rocks from Nuvvuagittuq, Canada. (Photo by Thomas Stephan)

This is important because the makeup of the crust directly affects the atmosphere, the composition of seawater and nutrients available to any budding life hoping to thrive on planet Earth. It also may imply there were fewer meteorites than thought pummeling the Earth at this time, which would have made it hard for continental crust to form.

“Having continental crust that early changes the picture of early Earth in a number of ways,” said Davis, who is also a professor with the Enrico Fermi Institute. “Now we need a way for the geologic processes that make the continents to happen much faster; you probably need water and magma that’s about 600 degrees Fahrenheit less hot.”

The study is also confluent with a recent paper by Davis and Boehnke’s colleague Nicolas Dauphas, which found evidence for rain falling on continents 2.5 billion years ago, earlier than previously thought.

UChicago Research Prof. Thomas Stephan and postdoctoral scholar Reto Trappitsch (now with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) were also authors on the study, as well as Argonne Distinguished Fellow Mike Pellin with Argonne National Laboratory, who is also a professor (part-time) in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences and the Enrico Fermi Institute.

Other institutions on the study were UCLA and the Berkeley Geochronology Center.

Citation: “Potassic, high-silica Hadean crust.” Boehnke et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 4, 2018. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1720880115

Funding: NASA

Big Brains podcast welcomes Nobel-winning economist Richard Thaler

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 10:00 -0500

Editor’s note: This is the final episode of Big Brains, but stay tuned for several bonus episodes this summer, and a new season come fall with some of the pioneering minds at the University of Chicago.

It has been a long journey for economist Richard Thaler, from early days struggling to get his research published to being honored with the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in October.

Often dubbed as “one of the founding fathers of behavioral economics,” Thaler has worked to bridge the gap between psychology and economic theory to explain people’s often irrational economic decisions.

“Economics kind of, by design, leaves out the behavior,” Thaler said.

Thaler, the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics, came to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1995, but when he arrived, it was in many ways like entering the lion’s den.

“The University of Chicago was not a hotbed of behavioral economics, in fact, pretty much the opposite,” Thaler said. “But I thought this was a way to sharpen my tools—arguing with [UChicago professor and Nobel laureate] Gene Fama is a good way of improving your financial economics.”

Thaler made a career out of disrupting assumptions with his unusual approach to his research, which eventually went mainstream. In 2008, he published the best-selling book Nudge with colleague Cass Sunstein; and in 2015 published Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics. He also appeared in the 2015 Oscar-nominated film The Big Short, explaining economics alongside actress Selena Gomez.

Despite his success, there are still many who question the science of behavioral economics. But Thaler says he has two things to which he attributes his perseverance.

“I’m stubborn, and I don’t mind a fight,” Thaler said.

On this episode of Big Brains, Thaler discusses how a bowl of cashews inspired his early research, how psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky influenced his career, and what it’s like to get (and miss) a 4 a.m. Nobel wakeup call from Sweden.

Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play. New episodes will be available Monday mornings through the Spring Quarter.

Comprehensive care physician model improves care, lowers hospitalization

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 14:40 -0500

Patients who need frequent hospitalization account for a disproportionate amount of health care spending in the United States. In 2012, the University of Chicago Medicine—funded by a Health Care Innovation Award from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation—began enrolling patients in a clinical trial designed to test an imaginative way to reduce such hospital stays.

The study, featured in the May 20 New York Times Sunday Magazine, was designed to determine whether doctors who focus their practices on the care of patients in and out of the hospital, known as comprehensive care physicians, could improve care while reducing hospitalization for a highly vulnerable set of patients at high risk for being hospitalized.

The core element of the CCP model is that the same physician provides care for patients in the clinic as well as in the hospital. A few CCPs even make house calls. The CCPs also lead a team of nurse practitioners, social workers, care coordinators and other specialists selected for their ability to address the needs of high-risk patients. Each physician carries a panel of approximately 200 patients at a time, serving as their primary care physician during clinic visits and supervising their care whenever they are hospitalized.

From November 2012 to June 2016, 2,000 patients with chronic health problems enrolled in the study. Most came from the South Side of Chicago and most of them had at least one hospital stay in the previous year. All of these patients were covered by Medicare.

The model is built upon 15 years of research by study director David Meltzer, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and chief of hospital medicine, and colleagues, on the changing medical work force in the United States. The model was designed to provide better care at lower cost. In this pilot study, it was able to improve the continuity of patient care, especially during and after a hospital stay, as well as strengthen the bond between doctor and patient.

Half of the patients in the study were assigned to “standard care.” They connected with a hospital-based primary care physician who saw patients as needed in the clinic, but did not directly take care of them if they were admitted to the hospital. The other half were assigned to one of five CCPs, who saw them during clinic visits and also cared for them in the hospital.

When the study was completed, it was evident that the CCP model was both preferred by patients and economically beneficial in terms of reducing health care utilization.

“Hospitalization rates for CCP patients were 15 to 22 percent lower than for standard care patients,” Meltzer said. CCP patients also reported “a better experience,” he added. They gave their physicians higher ratings on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, a patient satisfaction survey required for all hospitals by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The University’s standard care physicians scored quite well, in the 80th percentile nationally, but the CCP doctors were in the 95th percentile. They also were ranked higher by patients dealing with mental health issues.

“There's a huge literature suggesting that elements of the doctor-patient relationship, including trust, interpersonal relations, communication and knowledge of the patient, are all associated with lower costs and better outcomes,” Meltzer said.

The trial, still underway, enrolls patients who are predicted to spend an average of 10 days a year in the hospital. Many of these patients have chronic diseases. Others are geriatric patients living in residence homes or patients with renal disease requiring regular dialysis treatment.

This program “may improve patient experience and health status while substantially reducing utilization for patients at increased risk for hospitalization,” the study authors conclude. “The CCP model warrants further exploration through efforts to implement it in additional settings and rigorously evaluate its effects on outcomes and costs.”

“Our goal is to understand patients’ needs so that we can give them the most appropriate care,” Meltzer said. “That should be better for them, produce better outcomes and ultimately be less costly for the health care system.”

The next step is an expanded program, the Comprehensive Care, Community & Culture Program, designed to reduce the unmet social needs of economically and socially disadvantaged patients. About 400 people have already enrolled.

Additional authors of the study are John F. Cursio, Andrea Flores, Robert Gibbons, James Zhang, Tom Best, Greg Ruhnke and the Comprehensive Care Research Group.

Less is more when it comes to predicting molecules’ conductivity

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 11:31 -0500

The smaller and smarter that phones and devices become, the greater the need to build smaller circuits. Forward-thinking scientists in the 1970s suggested that circuits could be built using molecules instead of wires, and over the past decades that technology has become reality.

The trouble is, some molecules have particularly complex interactions that make it hard to predict which of them might be good at serving as miniature circuits. But a new paper by two University of Chicago chemists presents an innovative method that cuts computational costs and improves accuracy by calculating interactions between pairs of electrons and extrapolating those to the rest of the molecule.

“Current models tend to overpredict conductance, but our theory outperforms traditional models by as much as one to two orders of magnitude,” said Prof. David Mazziotti, who coauthored the paper, published May 31 in Nature’s Communications Chemistry.

Everything from better computer chips and batteries to greener ways to produce chemicals depends on discovering new kinds of chemistries and materials, and scientists increasingly look to computers to search for new combinations more efficiently. Instead of trying permutations one by one, they can run models that predict the best options.

But it’s a delicate art, because in many cases these calculations can consume computing time alarmingly fast. In molecules with a lot of interacting electrons, “you can very quickly end up with the computation size increasing exponentially with the size of the molecule,” Mazziotti said.

Mazziotti and graduate student Manas Sajjan set out to simplify, creating a method for predicting molecular conductivity that uses the interaction between two electrons to represent all of the interactions. “To take one example, for a particular molecule the traditional method might require computing with 10²⁴ variables, whereas ours has 10⁹ variables—a quadrillion fewer variables,” Sajjan said. That’s the difference between a problem for which you need a supercomputer versus one you can do on a laptop.

This choice allows an unusual but powerful approach. Existing theories for molecular conductivity assign a set number of voltage applied to the molecule to predict a number for the current that could then flow through it. Sajjan and Mazziotti flipped this paradigm on its head. They fixed the current first, and then computed the voltage. This turns out to be much more accurate: When they checked their method with a well-known molecule, they saw it outperformed traditional methods by one-to-two orders of magnitude.

“What’s important is it’s really rigorous. Even with the conduction there’s still a one-to-one mapping with the many-electron system,” Mazziotti said. The process of making sure that the two-electron system still represents the many-electron system is a very challenging problem that’s been around for 50 years, but he said it’s worth the struggle.

“Almost all of the big problems that people are trying to solve involve working with materials that are difficult to explore with traditional methods,” he said. “If we can better predict the conductivity, we can more effectively design better molecules and materials.”

Citation: “Current-constrained density-matrix theory to calculate molecular conductivity with increased accuracy.” Manas Sajjan & David Mazziotti, Nature’s Communications Chemistry, May 31, 2018. DOI: 10.1038/s42004-018-0030-2

Funding: U.S. Army Research Office, National Science Foundation, U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

New theory finds ‘traffic jams’ in jet stream cause abnormal weather patterns

Thu, 24 May 2018 16:50 -0500

The sky sometimes has its limits, according to new research from two University of Chicago atmospheric scientists.

A study published May 24 in Science offers an explanation for a mysterious and sometimes deadly weather pattern in which the jet stream, the global air currents that circle the Earth, stalls out over a region. Much like highways, the jet stream has a capacity, researchers said, and when it’s exceeded, blockages form that are remarkably similar to traffic jams—and climate forecasters can use the same math to model them both.

The deadly 2003 European heat wave, California’s 2014 drought and the swing of Superstorm Sandy in 2012 that surprised forecasters—all of these were caused by a weather phenomenon known as “blocking,” in which the jet stream meanders, stopping weather systems from moving eastward. Scientists have known about it for decades, almost as long as they’ve known about the jet stream—which was explored in the last century by pioneering University of Chicago meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby, in fact—but no one had a good explanation for why it happens.

A wind map shows a typical blocking pattern in the Pacific, where the winds split and circle around. (Original image by earth.nullschool.net)

“Blocking is notoriously difficult to forecast, in large part because there was no compelling theory about when it forms and why,” said lead author Noboru Nakamura, a professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences.

Nakamura and Clare S.Y. Huang, PhD'17, were studying the jet stream, trying to determine a clear set of measurements for blocking in order to better analyze the phenomenon. One of their new metrics was a term that measured the jet stream’s meander. Looking over the math, Nakamura realized that the equation was nearly identical to one devised decades ago by transportation engineers trying to describe traffic jams.

“It turns out the jet stream has a capacity for ‘weather traffic,’ just as highway has traffic capacity, and when it is exceeded, blocking manifests as congestion,” said Huang, who performed the research for her thesis.

Just as car traffic piles up where speed limit is reduced or multiple highways converge, blocking often occurs where the background jet speed slows down due to mountains and coasts.

The result is a simple theory that not only reproduces blocking, but predicts it, said Nakamura, who called making the cross-disciplinary connection “one of the most unexpected, but enlightening moments in my research career—it was a gift from God.”

The explanation may not immediately improve short-term weather forecasting, the researchers said, but it will certainly help predict long-term patterns, including which areas may see more drought or floods.

Their initial results suggest that while climate change probably increases blocking by running the jet stream closer to its capacity, there will be regional differences: for example, the Pacific Ocean may actually see a decrease in blocking over the decades.

“It’s very difficult to forecast anything until you understand why it’s happening, so this mechanistic model should provide a useful guiding principle,” Nakamura said.

And the model, unlike most modern climate science, is expressed in simple math: “This equation captures the essence with a much less complicated system,” Huang said.

Citation: “Atmospheric Blocking as a Traffic Jam in the Jet Stream,” Nakamura and Huang, Science, May 24, 2018. DOI: 10.1126/science.aat0721

Funding: National Science Foundation.

Law School clinic co-authors report with ACLU on abuse of migrant children

Thu, 24 May 2018 10:31 -0500

A report released May 23 by the University of Chicago Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union’s Border Litigation Project reveals evidence of rampant child abuse by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, offering the public an unprecedented look at conditions experienced by unaccompanied migrant children who are apprehended upon arrival at the southern border of the United States.

The report, available on a new website launched by the ACLU, includes complaints in which children describe being kicked, shot with Tasers, sexually assaulted, deprived of food and water, held in freezing and unsanitary detention centers, threatened with rape and death, verbally abused, and more. It also offers evidence that children’s complaints of abuse were often ignored or mishandled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“These children are among the most vulnerable in the world: they are alone, having escaped violence and poverty in their home countries. When they arrive at our border, however, they often face shocking levels of neglect and abuse at the hands of U.S. officials—officials who are bound by law to keep these children safe and treat them in a humane way,” said IHRC Director Claudia Flores, who led a group of three Law School students in reviewing the complaints; researching human rights, immigration and child protection laws; and drafting the report in collaboration with the ACLU. “These complaints—which offer details never before available to the public on this scale—show institutional impunity by Customs and Border Protection officials and a disturbing lack of accountability.”

“These documents provide a glimpse into a federal immigration enforcement system marked by brutality and lawlessness,” said Mitra Ebadolahi, ACLU Border Litigation Project staff attorney. “All human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their immigration status—and children, in particular, deserve special protection. The misconduct demonstrated in these records is breathtaking, as is the government’s complete failure to hold officials who abuse their power accountable. The abuse that takes place by government officials is reprehensible and un-American.”

The report is part of a wider project by the ACLU’s Border Litigation Project—a joint project of the ACLU Foundations of Arizona and San Diego & Imperial Counties. Through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in late 2014, and over three years of subsequent litigation co-counseled with the law firm of Cooley LLP, the ACLU obtained more than 30,000 pages of documents from various DHS agencies. The documents—all of which are now being published by the ACLU—cover incidents that took place between 2009 and 2014 involving unaccompanied children, most of whom were fleeing violence and poverty in Mexico and Central America.

By law, CBP officials are not to hold unaccompanied children who are apprehended at the border for longer than 72 hours. These children are entitled to safe, secure and clean facilities; adequate food and water; proper medical care; and respectful treatment. Federal officials are also bound by law to report any incidents of child abuse to law enforcement, child protective services or the FBI.

But what the students and lawyers found as they reviewed complaints made to the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was a systemic pattern of abuse: children being stomped on or punched; fondled or made to strip naked; verbally abused; fed inedible or spoiled food; or denied necessary medical care.

These records also show that neither of two DHS oversight entities—CRCL and the Office of the Inspector General—fully or effectively investigated children’s complaints. Investigations were repeatedly closed due to agency delays and a lack of reliable record-keeping. The records offered no evidence of effective remedial or disciplinary measures taken by DHS.

“The ACLU Border Litigation Project has recovered these disturbing records, which reflect abuses that occurred during the Obama administration. The concern is that, as Trump has increased federal immigration enforcement at our borders and called for increased funding for DHS entities, such abuses could recur—or proliferate,” said Grace Paek, who worked with fellow Law School students Nabihah Maqbool and Chinwe Chukwuogo on the project.

“This clinic project was a serious eye-opener for us when it comes to holding government accountable,” said Chukwuogo. “No matter where they come from, children must be protected and have their basic needs met. These children were alone and had no one to advocate for them.”

Fossil reveals global exodus of mammals’ near relatives to major continents

Wed, 23 May 2018 14:18 -0500

A nearly 130-million-year-old fossilized skull found in Utah is an Earth-shattering discovery in one respect.

The small fossil is evidence that the super-continental split likely occurred much more recently than scientists had previously thought, and that a group of reptile-like mammals that bridge the reptile and mammal transition experienced an unsuspected burst of evolution across several continents.

“Based on the unlikely discovery of this near-complete fossil cranium, we now recognize a new, cosmopolitan group of early mammal relatives,” said Adam Huttenlocker, lead author of the study and assistant professor of clinical integrative anatomical sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

The study, published May 23 in the journal Nature, updates the understanding of how mammals evolved and dispersed across major continents during the age of dinosaurs. It suggests that the divide of the ancient landmass Pangea continued for about 15 million years later than previously thought and that mammal migration and that of their close relatives continued during the Early Cretaceous, 145 to 101 million years ago.

Paleontologists had once believed that the primitive precursors to mammals were anatomically similar, ecological generalists. “But now we know mammal precursors developed capacities to climb trees, to glide, to burrow into the ground for subterranean life, and to swim,” said Zhe-Xi Luo, senior author of the study and professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. “With this new study, we also know that they dispersed across from Asia and Europe, into North America, and farther onto major southern continents.”

The study reveals that the early mammal precursors migrated from Asia to Europe, into North America and further onto major southern continents, Luo said.

A new species

Huttenlocker and his collaborators at the Utah Geological Survey and UChicago named the new species Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch.

Recreation of the Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch. (Artwork by Jorge A. Gonzalez)

Found in the Cretaceous beds in eastern Utah, the fossil is named in honor of famed paleontologist Richard Cifelli. The species name, “wahkarmoosuch,” means “yellow cat” in the Ute tribe’s language in respect of the area where it was found.

Scientists used high-resolution computed tomography scanners to analyze the skull.

“The skull of Cifelliodon is an extremely rare find in a vast fossil-bearing region of the Western Interior, where the more than 150 species of mammals and reptile-like mammal precursors are represented mostly by isolated teeth and jaws,” said James Kirkland, study co-author in charge of the excavation and a Utah State paleontologist.

With an estimated body weight of up to 2.5 pounds, Cifelliodon would seem small compared to many living mammals, but it was a giant among its Cretaceous contemporaries. A full-grown Cifelliodon was probably about the size of a small hare or pika (small mammal with rounded ears, short limbs and a very small tail).

It had teeth similar to fruit-eating bats and could nip, shear and crush. It might have incorporated plants into its diet.

The newly named species had a relatively small brain and giant “olfactory bulbs” to process sense of smell. The skull had tiny eye sockets, so the animal probably did not have good eyesight or color vision. It possibly was nocturnal and depended on sense of smell to root out food, Huttenlocker said.

CT scan of the skull of Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch. (Courtesy Huttenlocker et al.)

Supercontinent existed longer than previously thought

Huttenlocker and his colleagues placed Cifelliodon within a group called Haramiyida, an extinct branch of mammal ancestors related to true mammals. The fossil was the first of its particular subgroup—Hahnodontidae—found in North America.

The fossil discovery emphasizes that haramiyidans and some other vertebrate groups existed globally during the Jurassic-Cretaceous transition, meaning the corridors for migration via Pangean landmasses remained intact into the Early Cretaceous.

Most of the Jurassic and Cretaceous fossils of haramiyidans are from the Triassic and Jurassic of Europe, Greenland and Asia. Hahnodontidae was previously known only from the Cretaceous of northern Africa. It is to this group that Huttenlocker argues Cifelliodon belongs, providing evidence of migration routes between the continents that are now separated in northern and southern hemispheres.

“But it’s not just this group of haramiyidans,” Huttenlocker said. “The connection we discovered mirrors others recognized as recently as this year based on similar Cretaceous dinosaur fossils found in Africa and Europe.”

Citation: “Late-surviving stem mammal links the lowermost Cretaceous of North America and Gondwana.” Huttenlocker et al, Nature, May 23, 2018. Doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0126-y

More than 1.1 million names installed on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe

Tue, 22 May 2018 16:33 -0500

Throughout its seven-year mission, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will swoop through the Sun’s atmosphere 24 times, getting closer than any spacecraft has gone before. The spacecraft will carry more than scientific instruments on this historic journey, though; it also will hold more than 1.1 million names submitted by the public to go to the Sun.

“Parker Solar Probe is going to revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, the only star we can study up close,” said Nicola Fox, project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. “It’s fitting that as the mission undertakes one of the most extreme journeys of exploration ever tackled by a human-made object, the spacecraft will also carry along the names of so many people who are cheering it on its way.”

In March 2018, the public were invited to send their names to the Sun aboard humanity’s first mission to “touch” a star. A total of 1,137,202 names were submitted online, and a memory card containing the names was installed on the spacecraft on May 18—three months before the scheduled July 31 launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The card was mounted on a plaque bearing a dedication to and a quote from the mission’s namesake, University of Chicago physicist Eugene Parker, who first theorized the existence of the solar wind.

This memory card also carries photos of Parker and a copy of his groundbreaking 1958 scientific paper. Parker proposed a number of concepts about how stars—including our Sun—give off material. He called this cascade of energy and particles the solar wind, a constant outflow of material from the Sun that we now know shapes everything from the habitability of worlds to our solar system’s interaction with the rest of the galaxy.

Parker Solar Probe will explore the Sun’s outer atmosphere and make critical observations to answer decades-old questions about the physics of stars. The resulting data may also improve forecasts of major eruptions on the Sun and subsequent space weather events that impact life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space.

A plaque mounted on the Parker Solar Probe contains the memory card and the inscription: “The Parker Solar Probe mission is dedicated to Dr. Eugene N. Parker whose profound contributions have revolutionized our understanding of the Sun and solar wind. ‘Let’s see what lies ahead’ Gene Parker, July 2017.” (Photo courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman)

A commemorative reproduction of the plaque bearing an identical memory card—minus the submitted names—was presented to Parker at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in October 2017 by the mission team.

"From the experience of seeing the probe up close, I understand now the difficult task you are undertaking, and I am sure you will succeed,” said Parker after visiting the spacecraft in the clean room.

—This release was adapted from an article originally posted by NASA.

Startups with societal impact compete in Social New Venture Challenge finals

Tue, 22 May 2018 10:40 -0500

Seven teams have been selected to pitch their social impact startups during the finals of the John Edwardson, ’72, Social New Venture Challenge on May 22.

The SNVC, a track of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation’s nationally ranked Edward L. Kaplan, ’71 New Venture Challenge, is one of the nation’s first social venture competitions and has helped more than 90 companies and nonprofits since it began in 2011.

“Every year, we’re impressed by the creativity of our teams in addressing their stated challenges,” said Robert H. Gertner, the Joel F. Gemunder Professor of Strategy and Finance at Chicago Booth and the John Edwardson Faculty Director of the Rustandy Center. “But this year they’ve pleased us with the degree to which they’ve proven their viability in the market.”

Past winners of the Social New Venture Challenge, which is run in collaboration with Chicago Booth’s Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation, include BallotReady, the online voter guide founded by Alex Niemczewski, AB’09, and Aviva Rosman, MPP’16; and LuminAID, the solar-powered lamp for disaster relief founded by Andrea Sreshta, MBA’16.

SNVC finalists will present to a panel of distinguished judges and compete for $75,000 in startup capital and $40,000 in additional specialized awards during the eighth annual competition. Doors open for SNVC finals at 9:15 a.m. in Harper Center, C-25, and remarks will start at 10 a.m.

Winners will be announced at the Taste the Impact Reception in Harper Center, Room 104. The SNVC Finals also will be streamed live. Register to attend or livestream the 2018 SNVC Finals and the Taste the Impact Reception here.

The finalist teams that will be presenting include:

Unbreakable, a 10-week, anti-bullying online video program that focuses on empowering youth by improving their self-confidence and coping skills using scientifically proven psychological techniques.
VouchCircle, a professional networking platform for underserved communities.
Shakti, which empowers functionally illiterate women in India to enforce their rights and access legal and public health resources.
Insights for Impact, a for-profit social enterprise that helps small to medium nonprofit organizations realize the use of data within their organizations.
Gather Activism, a digital platform for political activism.
Mighty, a free online and mobile marketplace for the public to deposit money in secure, community-investing banks.
AIM Clinics, which provides the gold standard autism therapy to children in rural U.S. communities.

Behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan to join Booth faculty as University Professor

Mon, 21 May 2018 12:10 -0500

Influential economics scholar Sendhil Mullainathan will join the University of Chicago Booth School of Business faculty on July 1, 2018, where he has been appointed University Professor. He currently serves as the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Mullainathan’s research spans broad areas of economics: behavioral, labor, public economics and corporate finance, and most recently has focused on the intersection of machine learning and public policy. His seminal research includes topics ranging from the impact of poverty on mental bandwidth to showing that higher cigarette taxes make smokers happier.

“Sendhil is a phenomenal scholar, whose work has had great impact in a variety of fields,” said Madhav Rajan, dean of Chicago Booth and the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Accounting. “Sendhil’s history of collaboration across disciplines will strengthen ties among Booth’s research areas and deepen the school’s connections to the rest of the University.”

University Professors are selected for internationally recognized eminence in their fields as well as for their potential for high impact across the University. Mullainathan will become the 22nd person to hold a University Professorship, and the ninth active faculty member holding that title.

After completing his PhD in economics at Harvard in 1998, Mullainathan taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 2004, when he moved to Harvard, where he is a professor of economics and affiliate of Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“The University of Chicago has a grand tradition of defining new disciplines: the phrase ‘Chicago School of’ has its own resonance in many academic fields,” Mullainathan said.

“Today a new discipline is emerging at the intersection of human and machine intelligence. Algorithms are now capable of amazing feats, and fully harnessing their capacities requires integrating them equally with marvelous aspects of human cognition,” he added. “I’m excited to join Booth and be part of a team that will hopefully define another ‘Chicago School’ in this emerging discipline.”

Mullainathan has published more than 50 journal articles, including 14 papers in top economics journals. He recently co-authored Scarcity: Why Having too Little Means so Much and writes regularly for The New York Times. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and serves on the board of the MacArthur Foundation.

In 2012, Mullainathan was designated a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum; was labeled a “Top 100 Thinker” by Foreign Policy Magazine, and named to the “Smart List: 50 people who will change the world” by Wired Magazine.

He helped co-found the non-profit organization ideas42, which applies behavioral science to positively change lives; and co-founded Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a center to promote the use of randomized control trials in development. Mullainathan is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Polsky Center helps launch biotech company from lab to real world

Fri, 18 May 2018 10:11 -0500

When Yang Zheng decided to go to business school, he knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur. Instead of launching his own mobile application or consumer product, he sought an opportunity to join up with a University of Chicago doctor and begin work on bringing a technology to market that will change people’s lives.

An MBA student at Chicago Booth, Zheng is the chief operating officer of Oxalo Therapeutics, a biotechnology company that is developing a novel drug to prevent kidney stones. Oxalo is the latest in a series of research innovations that, with the help of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, is moving from the lab to making impact in the real world.

Oxalo’s drug is based on research conducted by Hatim Hassan, a UChicago assistant professor of medicine, who studies the gut microbe that exists in some people that helps prevent kidney stones. This microbe, found in around 60 percent of people, releases factors that stimulate the intestines to remove oxalate, the toxic molecule that, when combined with calcium, causes most kidney stones. By creating a drug that mimics the factors that this bug releases, the drug aims to remove oxalate in the body and prevent kidney stones. This type of microbiome-inspired therapy is sometimes referred to as “drugs as bugs.”

On May 22, Oxalo Therapeutics will find out if it is one of the teams selected to compete in the nationally renowned Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge, in which companies present to a panel of esteemed entrepreneurs and investors.

Getting involved

Zheng got involved with the Polsky Center through programs like the Collaboratorium, which connects University scientists and researchers with business students, and the Technology Venture Fellows program. While working as an intern in the Polsky Center’s technology commercialization office, Zheng decided he was ready to take his business expertise and join a company that could make an impact.

“My criteria for whatever business I joined or started was that it would make dramatic impact in people’s lives, and in reviewing these University technologies, it seemed like biotech was the way to do that,” said Zheng. “I wanted to focus on one technology that had good potential and a good cofounder, and at the same time, Hassan’s technology was just mature enough where it was ready to be commercialized. And the Polsky Center, knowing both of our paths and our goals for the future, connected us.”

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Oxala Gallery

“I was impressed with Yang’s commitment to the biotech entrepreneurship path,” said Matt Martin, microbiome innovation and ventures lead at the Polsky Center. “While Yang and I had been informally talking for a few months, he described his commitment at a time when I was looking for another person to join Hassan’s business team. It turned out to be a perfect fit.”

Zheng connected with Hassan, and they took Oxalo through the UChicago Innovation Fund in the fall of 2017, receiving $250,000 from the Polsky Center. The Innovation Fund provides funding to UChicago-affiliated ventures and technologies that have the greatest promise to benefit society. The Innovation Fund fills a critical gap in venture funding, providing early capital that is often unavailable, but is needed to help bring groundbreaking ideas to market. Oxalo also benefited from the UCGo! Startup License, a program that streamlines and simplifies the licensing process for University startup companies, shortening the timeline and minimizing the company’s legal costs.

Following the Innovation Fund, Oxalo prepared for the next step in their entrepreneurial journey: the Polsky Center’s capstone program, the New Venture Challenge.

The NVC experience

Zheng is leading Oxalo through the New Venture Challenge, which requires a UChicago graduate student as an integral part of the team. Oxalo was accepted to Phase II of the NVC in February and is now in the middle of the rigorous classroom portion—complete with mentoring, critical feedback from outside judges and investors, and business plan development.

The classroom portion of the New Venture Challenge calls for students to present their companies to the class and a rotating group of outside judges and investors multiple times throughout the quarter. A process that Zheng contends is about much more than just crafting the perfect pitch.

“Going through the process of forcing yourself to tell the story of your company to people that may or may not care, or may or may not be in your industry, is the most powerful tool of the NVC,” said Zheng. “You intimately know your business, so you get to the point where you can explain it in a million different ways for a million different audiences. If you don’t know your business to that level, you need to. And that’s what the NVC has forced us to do.”

“My criteria for whatever business I joined or started was that it would make dramatic impact in people’s lives.” MBA student Yang Zheng

While the New Venture Challenge has a 22-year history, it is only recently that the University’s venture creation and technology licensing operations were brought under one organization. The recent expansion of the Polsky Center has made companies such as Oxalo—the product of University research—even more common. While there might be a vast difference between companies such as Oxalo or past NVC winners Grubhub or Tovala, the program is designed to benefit companies, no matter their industry or background.

“Ultimately, everything is a business. It doesn’t matter if you are a new type of food or science or a mobile app, it’s a business,” said Zheng. “You need to tell a story and figure out your finances and operations and everything like that. The NVC forces you to do that, and to do it well.”

At the NVC finals, teams will compete for a comprehensive awards package totaling more than $1 million in prize and in-kind services. This year, as a result of a recent gift from Chicago Booth alum Rattan Khosa, MBA ’79, the first-place prize will be a record $150,000.

Following the New Venture Challenge, Oxalo is planning to spend the next few months fundraising and participating in additional accelerator programs to continue to build and grow their business.

“They’re at the beginning of what could be a long, 10-year journey to bring a new class of drug to market,” said Martin. “However, kidney stone prevention is a huge unmet need for those with recurrent stones, and this team is off to a great start. I’m confident that if anyone can turn this science into a new therapy, Yang and Hassan will.”

High above mountains of Nepal, detectors study impact of Asian monsoon on climate

Thu, 17 May 2018 16:45 -0500

As rain sheeted down on the roof of an airplane hangar in the mountains of Nepal, a group of researchers watched a small, strangely shaped airplane disappear into the clouds. The plane, laden with custom-built detectors and instruments, was headed for the top of the most powerful, organized weather system in the world: the monsoon over southeast Asia.

“We all had our hearts in our mouths,” said Assoc. Prof. Liz Moyer, a University of Chicago geophysical scientist who studies the atmosphere and the effects of climate change.

The mission had been scheduled with an ambitious goal: to better understand the monsoon structure and its role in the global climate. More than one such mission had already been canceled for weather, customs, regulations or other difficulties. But this one, held together with the hopes of more than 50 scientists, was headed for a different fate.

Accompanied by UChicago graduate and undergraduate students, Moyer was part of a July 2017 international collaboration funded by the European Commission to send a plane over the monsoon for the first time. Their results, which will be discussed this week at a meeting in Italy for the science teams in the project, reveal new details about how pollution and water from near the ground is transported to the stratosphere during the monsoon.

Their questions: How high do the clouds of the monsoon reach? Are they boiling up over into the stratosphere—the second major layer of the Earth’s atmosphere? And to what extent do they carry surface pollution high enough to contribute to ozone destruction? “These seem like simple questions, but no one had ever been to the top of the monsoon before,” Moyer said.

Clouded with mystery

The Asian monsoon is the most massive weather event on the planet, and even apart from the treacherous winds and temperature shifts across altitudes, it makes its own chaos on the ground.

Even getting equipment in had been a struggle for the scientists: They had shipped some of the equipment overseas to India, but trucks struggled to cross flooded roads on the way to Nepal. By go time, not everything had made it—they had to push the plane in and out of the hangar by hand, because that equipment was stalled—but the crucial parts were all there, and they could “MacGyver” the rest of it, Moyer said.

A Russian-made Myasishchev M-55 Geophysica flew to 65,000 feet to study the top of the monsoon. (Courtesy of Moyer lab)

Despite the challenges, the scientists felt the chance for knowledge was too important to pass up. Their work would not only help better understand the monsoon, which affects the livelihoods of billions of people, but also the climate for the entire planet.

“By far the biggest uncertainty in our global climate models today is clouds,” said Moyer. Much of this uncertainty is about lower clouds, but we also don’t know as much as we’d like about cloud formation at the highest altitudes and over the tropics, where the plane was headed. And it’s difficult to study, because clouds at such altitudes are often made up of ice particles invisible to the naked eye. But they may deeply affect the global climate, including storms, the ozone layer and how much heat is reflected from Earth.

Other scientists on the collaboration were studying whether particles from the lower layers of the atmosphere were being pulled up by the powerful winds of the monsoon. If so, pollution from the ground could be traveling into the upper atmosphere, which would affect cloud formation. Moyer’s lab, on the other hand, was tracking water on its journey to the stratosphere.

That led them to the hangar in Nepal. Borrowing a crane, they lifted the 330-pound detector, built over three years in Moyer’s lab, onto the plane. “That was probably the most terrifying two minutes of my life,” said undergraduate Clare Singer, a fourth-year who traveled with Moyer for the mission.

The plane, a Russian-made Myasishchev M-55 Geophysica, is one of just a few in the world suited to fly at that altitude: 65,000 feet into the atmosphere.

Fourth-year Clare Singer helps load the detector onto the plane. (Photo courtesy of Clare Singer)

After its four-and-a-half-hour trip, the plane finally came back into view. It landed, its Russian pilot unconcerned by the perilous trip. The scientists, less unruffled, rushed to download the data.

‘We could see it immediately’

Even without analysis, Moyer said they took one look and immediately knew their first question had been answered.

Their detector was looking for the isotopic makeup of water in the highest altitudes. Certain heavier isotopes would mark water as having recently come from the ocean, pulled up as ice by the powerful forces of the storm. Those signatures were all over the readings.

“We could see it immediately. There was just abundant evidence that the lid of the troposphere had been punctured,” she said. “What remains to be seen is how that influences the highest reaches, closest to the ozone layer. These are the questions we’ll tackle at the meeting in May.”

Buoyed by the results, Moyer recently received a five-year, $5 million National Science Foundation grant to study high-altitude sub-visible cirrus clouds. In conjunction with Princeton, Harvard and the University of Washington, her group will work to better model the formation and evolution of these thin ice clouds in the uppermost reaches of the troposphere, to understand how they may change in the future.

“I am concerned, though,” Moyer said. “Now the students might think you can do one run and always have new science come pouring right out the first time.”

Size-based standards incentivize automakers to increase size of cars, study finds

Tue, 15 May 2018 16:52 -0500

As the Trump administration weighs how to revise fuel economy standards, a new study finds footprint-based rules are less effective and more costly than a flat standard with credit trading.

At the heart of U.S. fuel economy standards currently being evaluated by the Trump administration is one attribute: a vehicle’s “footprint,” measured by the rectangle formed by the four points where a vehicle’s tires touch the ground. The attribute-based footprint standard is used to sort vehicles into bins with different compliance targets, with larger vehicles facing more modest requirements. Some have argued that this system incentivizes automakers to produce bigger vehicles, but there has been little concrete evidence to support this beyond a general trend toward light trucks and SUVs.

But a study in the May edition of The Review of Economics and Statistics evaluates attribute-based regulations, looking specifically at the weight-based standards in Japan. The study finds that the standards did indeed incentivize automakers to increase the weight of their vehicles. And while the weight-based standards are more efficient than a flat standard alone, they are twice as costly as a flat standard accompanied by credit trading.

“As automakers like Ford dramatically boost production of their pickups and SUVs, it’s clear that there is more driving their decisions than consumer preferences alone,” said co-author Koichiro Ito, an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy. “Policy plays a substantial role, as our study indicates.”

Ito and his co-author James Sallee, an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, studied Japan’s standards at a time when the government introduced an incentive for vehicles that exceeded their fuel economy target. This policy change—whereby vehicles were judged based on both weight, to be in compliance, and fuel economy, to receive the subsidy—allowed Ito and Sallee to examine how the targeted goal of the policy (i.e. fuel economy) changed relative to the attribute-based scheme (i.e. weight). They compared cars sold in 2008, before the policy change, to those in 2012.

The authors found that the weight-based system incentivized automakers to increase vehicle weight in order to fall into a less stringent compliance category. Ten percent of Japanese vehicles had their weight increased. Among the affected vehicles, the authors estimate that weight rose by 110 kilograms on average.

When comparing this to a flat standard, the flat standard reduced the weight of cars broadly, but cost more to comply. If those who achieve the flat standard are allowed to sell credits to those who do not, this credit trading reduced compliance costs, making the weight-based system twice as costly as the flat standard with credit trading.

“Having a flat standard with compliance trading where automakers can trade credits is the best option, improving fuel economy at a low compliance cost,” Ito said. “The U.S. fuel standards already have this trading scheme in place. Making a switch away from the footprint-based system and toward the most efficient policy option can be within reach.”

—This story first appeared on the EPIC website.

Big Brains podcast explores how world’s largest telescope might glimpse universe’s birth

Mon, 14 May 2018 10:40 -0500

Editor’s note: Big Brains is a new University of Chicago podcast in which some of the pioneering minds on campus discuss their groundbreaking ideas and the stories behind them.

Prof. Wendy Freedman spent much of her career measuring the age of the universe. Now she’s working on a project that may very well give scientists a chance to glimpse into its birth.

Freedman, the John & Marion Sullivan University Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics, works in the field of observational cosmology, measuring the expansion rate of the universe. In 2001, she and a team of scientists found that the universe is around 13.7 billion years old—far more precise than the previous estimate in the 10- to 20-billion-year-old range.

Freedman was the founding leader from 2003 until 2015 of an international consortium of researchers and universities (including UChicago) to build the world’s largest telescope high in the mountains of Chile. The Giant Magellan Telescope will be as tall as the Statue of Liberty when complete, and ten times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope—with the ability to look back at the dawn of the cosmos.

“In our field, the new developments have come with new technology,” Freedman said. “Without exception, from the time that Galileo first turned a telescope to the sky in 1609, every time we’ve built a new capability we’ve made new discoveries, which is why we’re so excited about this.”

The telescope, 80 feet in diameter and weighing more than 20 tons, will be the first of its kind to see fine details like a planet’s atmosphere, which could one day help discover life on other planets. The telescope is expected to be operational starting in 2024.

“If we really were able to show that there’s life on a planet outside of our own solar system, that will be one of the discoveries that will not only be exciting for astronomers but will change human kind’s perspective on our place in the universe,” Freedman said.

On this episode of Big Brains, Freedman discusses her research on measuring the age of the universe, her leadership of the Giant Magellan Telescope and the search for life outside our solar system.

Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play. New episodes will be available Monday mornings through the Spring Quarter.

In Brinson Lecture, astrophysicist to shed light on the early universe

Fri, 11 May 2018 15:23 -0500

The first billion years after the Big Bang were formative for the universe. But because there was so little light as the earliest stars began to shine, astronomers know very little about this epoch.

On May 17, astrophysicist Richard Ellis will deliver the 10th annual University of Chicago Brinson Lecture, entitled “Let There Be Light: The Observational Quest for the First Galaxies.” His talk will cover what scientists understand about this period and how new telescopes could fill in many of the gaps in their knowledge.

“The motivation is fundamental,” Ellis wrote in the description of the lecture. “The origin of starlight begins the process of chemical evolution, which ultimately leads to our own existence in this remarkable universe.”

The Brinson Lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 6 p.m. May 17 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Previous events have covered topics from the search for inhabited planets in other galaxies to underground ice telescopes, and have included decorated scientists from Prof. Wendy Freedman to newly minted Nobel laureate Kip Thorne.

Ellis is a professor of astrophysics at the University College London. The 2011 winner of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Ellis works primarily in observational cosmology, considering the origin and evolution of galaxies, the evolution of large-scale structures in the universe and the nature and distribution of dark matter. His most recent discoveries relate to searches for the earliest known galaxies, seen when the universe was only a few percent of its present age.

The lecture is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with generous support from the Brinson Foundation.

Researchers invent tiny, resealable packets to deliver materials on cue

Wed, 09 May 2018 16:40 -0500

Your body keeps its neurons firing, immune system working and serotonin flowing with a clever bit of engineering: tiny capsules that deliver signaling molecules from place to place in the body.

A team including University of Chicago engineer Juan de Pablo announced last week in Nature Chemistry that they have created a recipe to mimic these capsules. Their tiny, resealable synthetic packets, like Ziploc bags, release their contents on cue—in this case, when exposed to light of a particular wavelength. Such technology could be useful for medicine or other applications, scientists said.

“One could imagine making these to custom-deliver medicine to specific parts of the body, or to release fertilizer or cleanup chemicals in the soil, for example,” said de Pablo, the Liew Family Professor at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Molecular Engineering.

The team, which also included researchers from the University of Massachusetts, designed a hollow synthetic packet that is just tens to hundreds of nanometers across—so tiny that thousands could sit side by side in the period at the end of this sentence. Its skin is made up of a double layer of two long molecules called polymers: The outer rind is water-soluble, while the inner layer is a glassy material that forms a rigid wall. The two polymers are linked by a single molecule that responds to light by changing its shape.

When researchers shine light on the packet, the linking molecules change shape, softening the glassy material that sits below and allowing the contents of the packet to slip out. Once the light turns off, the glass solidifies again and the packet is resealed.

The researchers imagine applications such as targeted medical treatments: Fill the packets with medicine, wait until they’re circulating in the body, then shine a light on the specific part of the body and watch the packets release the medicine.

Both parts of the molecule are biocompatible and already used in implants and medical treatments: The outside is polyethylene oxide, a polymer used in cosmetics, toothpaste and medications today; and the interior lining is polylactic acid, which can be derived from corn starch and degrades to lactic acid, a natural compound in the body.

The collaboration is expanding to explore more molecules that could be designed to react to different triggers, such as light, pressure or chemical cues, which could expand the range of potential uses.

“The surprise was this insight that a single light-sensitive layer, measuring less than one nanometer but lying on top of otherwise very long molecules tightly packed onto a thick glass, can create a perturbation in the entire material,” de Pablo said.

A deeper understanding of such mechanisms could provide the foundations for more new materials with useful properties. De Pablo and his collaborators are using sophisticated molecular simulations to decipher those mechanisms, he said.

Citation: “Dynamic actuation of glassy polymersomes through isomerization of a single azobenzene unit at the block copolymer interface.” Moller et al, Nature Chemistry, April 30, 2018. doi: 10.1038/s41557-018-0027-6

Funding: U.S. Army Research Office.

UChicago Library receives medals and papers of Nobel-winning physicist James Cronin

Wed, 09 May 2018 14:00 -0500

The University of Chicago Library has received the medals and academic papers of Nobel-winning physicist James Cronin, SM’53, PhD’55, the late UChicago scientist who made defining contributions to physics and astronomical observation.

Cronin’s children, Emily Cronin Grothe and Daniel Cronin, donated six medals that recognize his extraordinary achievements, including the 1980 Nobel Prize Medal for Physics and the 1999 National Medal of Science. His widow, Carol Cronin, donated his professional papers, including lab reports, articles, lectures, speeches, teaching materials, correspondence and other items.

The two gifts join archival collections at the Library’s Special Collections Research Center containing the papers or medals of 20 other Nobel laureates, including UChicago-associated physicists Niels Bohr, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Arthur H. Compton, Enrico Fermi, James Franck, Albert A. Michelson, Yoichiro Nambu and Eugene Wigner.

“I am deeply grateful to the Cronin family for their invaluable gifts to the Library,” said Brenda Johnson, Library Director and University Librarian. “Making James Cronin’s papers and medals available to researchers and students not only helps us to understand the achievements of the past—it also fuels the rigorous inquiry of faculty and the transformative education we provide students. That is why the University of Chicago Library is committed to being the home of Nobel Prize winners’ research.”

Selected medals of James W. Cronin include (from left): the 1976 Franklin Institute John Price Wetherill Medal, the 1977 United States Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Memorial Award Medal, the 1999 National Medal of Science, the 1999 Collège de France Service Medal, the 1980 Nobel Prize Medal for Physics, and the 1999 French Légion d’Honneur Chevalier Medal. (Photo by Jean Lachat, courtesy of Special Collections Research Center)

Cronin earned his master’s degree and PhD in physics from UChicago in the 1950s. While conducting research in the 1960s at Brookhaven National Laboratory, he and colleague Val Fitch studied subatomic particles coming off collisions between protons and atom nuclei and found the first example of nature’s preference for matter over antimatter. It was the first observation of a mystery that had baffled scientists for decades, and the breakthrough would earn them the Nobel Prize in 1980.

This finding was later used to provide support for the Big Bang theory, explaining why the explosion would produce more matter than antimatter—leaving remnants that would eventually became stars, planets and human life.

Studying the origin of cosmic rays

Cronin joined the UChicago faculty in 1971 as University Professor of Physics. He soon shifted course to study the origin of cosmic rays: mysterious, highly energetic particles that strike the Earth from elsewhere in the cosmos. To search for them, he co-founded the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina—a massive international collaboration to build a system of giant water tanks spread over an area ten times the size of Paris. It took its first readings in 2005, and just last year discovered extragalactic origins for some of the cosmic rays that strike Earth.

Cronin saw himself as part of a long lineage of UChicago physicists. In 2001, he organized a symposium marking the 100th anniversary of Fermi’s birth and edited the book Fermi Remembered. Published by the University of Chicago Press in 2004, it explored the enduring significance of Fermi’s work.

“In his first year as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Cronin studied with Enrico Fermi and developed a great respect for him,” said Daniel Meyer, director of the Special Collections Research Center. “When he was working on the Fermi centennial and publication, Cronin came to Special Collections frequently to do his own research in the Fermi papers. He examined all of Fermi’s original laboratory notebooks and located key letters and documents from Fermi’s career.”

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Cronin papers and photos

Emily Cronin Grothe, LAB’78, said the University of Chicago Library was the right home for her father’s medals and papers.

“Our family has a long history with the University of Chicago, with my grandfather, father, mother, uncle and daughter all receiving advanced degrees from the institution,” she said. “Given that, and how proud my father was to be associated with the University and its remarkable approach and achievements in science, my brother Dan and I never wavered in our commitment to house my father’s papers and medals with the library.”

UChicago project archives decades of South Side home movies

Tue, 08 May 2018 15:32 -0500

From birthday parties to family holidays and picnics to parades, scenes from everyday life on the South Side of Chicago are featured in a new UChicago film preservation project that aims to reflect the history and diversity of families and communities.

More than 200 home movies shot from 1929 to 1982 make up the South Side Home Movie Project and its new digital archive. The project, founded and directed by Prof. Jacqueline Stewart, a renowned scholar of African-American film culture, is the culmination of 13 years of work to collect, preserve, repair and digitize home movie collections, including that of Stewart’s family, which lived in Princeton Park.

Although largely silent, the footage—shot on 8 mm, Super 8 mm and 16 mm film—speaks volumes to scholars like Stewart as well as the students and filmmakers who can benefit from these “unique documents of cultural and social history.”

“I’m interested in visual details of family and community life—the details that rarely make it into mainstream films or conventional histories of Chicago,” said Stewart, professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the College, who grew up in Hyde Park. “The movies we collect are intimate, first-hand visual records of work and play, of traditions and spontaneous acts. Scenes of families dancing or eating or traveling together personalize and illuminate aspects of our history that are often intangible, even in still photographs. And they activate memories, crucial knowledge and expertise that too often goes unrecognized.”

The free online archive contains film from Chicago neighborhoods ranging from Chatham to Bridgeport to Chicago’s East Side. Oral histories recorded by family members describing their home movies are available as companion works to the films. The digital archive is fully browseable and also allows visitors to add tags and comments to help identify places, people and events as part of the collective historical project.

“The movies we collect are intimate, first-hand visual records of work and play, of traditions and spontaneous acts…and they activate memories, crucial knowledge and expertise that too often goes unrecognized.”Prof. Jacqueline Stewart

Through this new digital archive, and an active program of screenings and exhibitions across the South Side, the project has worked to ensure that this archive will be available to students, teachers, researchers, artists and filmmakers today and in future generations. Film clips may be downloaded for research and creative projects with written permission from the project.

“We are frequently approached by documentary filmmakers who have difficulty finding footage of family life in Chicago, particularly among African-Americans, during this time period,” Stewart said. “Also, having worked with local musicians who find inspiration in the poetic silence of these films, and high school students who use SSHMP films to reflect on pressing issues of gentrification and activism, we welcome inquiries regarding creative projects as well as research projects.”

The project is actively seeking participants to contribute their films and stories to the archive.

The project is supported by the University of Chicago's Division of the Humanities, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, the Film Studies Center, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, the Women’s Board of the University of Chicago and the Office of Civic Engagement’s Community Program Accelerator.

Nationwide program launches to train new generation of quantum engineers

Tue, 08 May 2018 14:46 -0500

In the past decade, quantum technology took a leap out of the realm of science fiction and landed firmly in reality. As companies around the world race toward practical applications, however, they’ll need a new generation of scientists and engineers to fulfill its potential.

Funded by a $1.6 million award from the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and Harvard University will head a new nationwide graduate student training program for quantum science and engineering.

Called the Quantum Information Science and Engineering Network, the program will group select graduate students with both an academic adviser and one from a leading technology company or national laboratory. Over the course of four years, the “triplets” will each address a pressing research question for both academia and industry.

David Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor in Spintronics and Quantum Information at the University of Chicago, will oversee the program in partnership with Evelyn Hu, the Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and of Electrical Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“Professor Hu and I are extremely excited to help the NSF pioneer a different approach to graduate education and advance the frontiers of quantum science by creating a national workforce of quantum engineers,” Awschalom said. “Students selected for QISE-NET will benefit from the mentorship of both academic and industrial advisers on research topics that will pursue leading-edge science and engineering along with longer-term industrial goals.”

The students will serve as the principal “communicators-in-residence” at both universities and in industry, translating ideas into research results, Awschalom said.

“NSF is pleased to foster this novel approach to educate the future workforce for the needs of quantum engineering, industry and science,” said Anne Kinney, assistant director of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate at the National Science Foundation. “This important project responds to input from industry, research communities and other federal agencies. I look forward to the results of the QISE-NET project and to the mentorship and collaboration framework that it is expected to generate.”

Approximately 20 students will receive four years of funding under the first edition of the program.

In memoir, former President Hanna Holborn Gray reflects on groundbreaking career

Mon, 07 May 2018 15:45 -0500

Forty years ago, when Hanna Holborn Gray walked into the president’s office at the University of Chicago, she had a lot waiting for her.

In the late 1970s, universities were confronting a flagging economy, rising inflation fueled in part by an energy crisis that made campus costs soar and low levels of market performance that radically reduced the value of their endowments. Federal support was declining, and universities faced a crisis in graduate enrollments as cut backs reduced the number of academic positions for newly minted PhDs. UChicago was struggling with declines in undergraduate enrollment as well.

Over her 15 years as president, she steered the University through its troubles to improve both enrollment and its financial situation. Her tenure saw a revamping of the Core curriculum and graduation requirements, the establishment of the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and of the Department of Computer Science, the creation of the science quadrangle and new science buildings (the John Crerar Library and the Kersten Physics Teaching Center), as well as large-scale renovations of Ida Noyes, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and buildings on the Main Quadrangles.

Through it all, Gray writes in her new book, An Academic Life: A Memoir, she always strove to preserve the University’s essential spirit: “its powerful sense of mission, its uncompromising intellectual spirit, its insistence on intellectual freedom, its capacity for interdisciplinary discourse and scholarship, its exceptional students and the breadth and rigor of education they had on offer.”

An Academic Life details Gray’s time with the University as well as her journey—from the child of refugees from Nazi Germany to dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern, to provost (and then acting president) at Yale, and finally president of UChicago, all “firsts” for women in American higher education.

It also paints a portrait of UChicago life and characters, including the anti-sports riots in the 1960s; a “distinguished law professor” she caught in the shrubbery peeking into her garage to see what kind of car she drove; and Prof. William H. McNeill’s repeated petitions for the University to purchase the Chicago Bears in order to conduct academic lectures at halftime.

Gray, the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Early Modern European History, will speak about the memoir at a May 9 event in the Regenstein Library. The event, hosted by the Seminary Co-op and the University of Chicago Library Society, is free, but registration is required.

Big Brains podcast explores whether scientists can unlock nature’s design secrets

Mon, 07 May 2018 12:00 -0500

Editor’s note: Big Brains is a new University of Chicago podcast in which some of the pioneering minds on campus discuss their groundbreaking ideas and the stories behind them.

From the smallest proteins to entire ecosystems, nature might be the most sophisticated engineer on earth.

Researchers like UChicago molecular biologist Rama Ranganathan are trying to uncover the basic design principles that govern biology and apply them through engineering. He calls the field “evolutionary physics,” and the goal is to unlock the secrets of evolutionary history.

“Evolution has taken millions and millions of years,” Ranganathan said. “How do we reproduce that in the laboratory?”

Ranganathan is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Institute for Molecular Engineering. He joined the University of Chicago in late 2017 to lead the newly formed Center for Physics of Evolution, which brings together researchers from across disciplines to better understand biological systems designed by evolution.

Ranganathan said biology has built “high-performance” systems that can adapt to their environment in ways of which human-designed technology could never dream. He believes there is a unifying theory that can explain the phenomenon and be utilized in bioengineering—from designer medicines based on individual genomes to biofuels driven by the same processes as photosynthesis.

“The problem is: If you start taking apart biological systems, since they are evolved systems, we don’t necessarily understand their design,” Ranganathan said. “The question is: How do you learn the simple rules that are underneath these seemingly very complex systems?”

On this episode of Big Brains, Ranganathan shares his pioneering research on evolutionary physics, and explains why he believes biology is at a similar point today as engineering was two centuries ago during the Industrial Revolution.

Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play. New episodes will be available Monday mornings through the Spring Quarter.

Zebra finches’ social experiences alter their genomic DNA, changing ability to learn

Fri, 04 May 2018 16:25 -0500

Asst. Prof. Sarah London has long appreciated zebra finches for their unique learning characteristics. The males learn from another male tutor, but their ability to memorize the tutor’s song is restricted to a “critical period,” or CP. This offers a unique opportunity to study how the brain learns, and how brain processes affect whether or not a mentor’s song can be learned, London said.

Previous research has shown that males who had experienced a tutor in their first 65 days of post-hatch life could no longer learn a song after that, but that young males isolated from hearing song during this period were still able to learn a song after day 65. What researchers hadn’t deciphered until now was what preserved or prevented these late learning capabilities.

In a new study, London’s team found the first comprehensive explanation for this in an epigenetic mechanism, a process in the brain by which experience—in this case, tutor experience—can modify structural properties of the genomic DNA. London and her team demonstrate measurable and repeatable epigenetic differences between the brains of zebra finches who receive tutoring, and those that do not.

These epigenetic differences directly relate to levels and patterns of gene expression in the brains of finches that can still learn from a tutor compared to those that can no longer learn song.

London believes the results of this study could have future implications for helping trauma patients to prevent encoding those events into their long-term memory, as well as advancing our understanding of how young children learn, and what can be done to enhance learning capabilities among disadvantaged youth in order to level the playing field of learning among children entering school.

“These results help us understand complex genomes in the context of the everyday learning experience,” London said. “It decouples the actual experience from the genomic process happening in the brain, and this knowledge could be a guide to therapeutics.”

Never too old to learn

The primary goal of London’s lab is to identify the neural properties that promote and limit the ability to learn, and she emphasizes research on zebra finch neural development and learning behaviors to identify these traits.

The team took advantage of the natural CP for mentored song learning to test the hypothesis that tutor experience within the CP alters mechanisms in the brain that control genome function. They hypothesized that this would explain how the tutor experience ends the CP for learning, while isolation from song during the CP extends the age at which juveniles can memorize tutor song.

In the study, coauthored with Somayeh Ahmadiantehrani, a postdoctoral fellow at UChicago; and with Theresa K. Kelly and Adam Blattler from Active Motif, Asst. Prof. London and her team isolated one set of male juvenile finches from male tutors during the CP of song learning, which occurs between 30 and 65 days post-hatch. A second group of juveniles did experience a tutor during the CP.

After day 65, London’s team analyzed the brains of both groups of finches to compare epigenetic landscapes, patterns of gene expression and cellular properties of the brain between males who experienced a tutor and those who had not. The results show that learning a tutor song induces specific epigenetic changes that do not occur in the brains of the isolated males, and vice versa.

Among the findings was the fact that regulatory factors well-studied for their role in learning and memory in juvenile zebra finches and other animals, such as the extracellular-signal-regulated kinase (ERK) pathway, are overrepresented in the set of genes predicted to be more highly expressed in the isolated birds. Because gene expression triggered by experience is necessary for learning and memory, these findings raise the possibility that the gene expression required for tutor song memorization is mechanistically linked to epigenetic processes that control the ability for subsequent tutor experience to trigger gene expression, thus preventing future tutor song memorization after day 65.

Lessons for future research

The tiny songbirds have proven invaluable to London’s research into how animals learn.

“Developmental song learning in zebra finches is one of the most striking examples of a CP for complex learned behavior,” she said. “The learning experience has a profound and long-lasting effect on their neurological cognitive processes.”

Going forward she plans to conduct future experiments testing causal relationships between epigenetic processes, learning and memory, and the extended ability to learn, with the continued goal to advance understanding of how learning is regulated in developing and mature animals.

Citation: “Epigenetic regulation of transcriptional plasticity associated with developmental song learning,” by Theresa K. Kelly, Somayeh Ahmadiantehrani, Adam Blattler, Sarah E. London. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, May 2, 2018. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0160

$35 million in NIH funding launches health research accelerator with UChicago

Fri, 04 May 2018 09:19 -0500

The University of Chicago and UChicago Medicine are part of a new health research accelerator that has launched thanks to nearly $35 million from the National Institutes of Health.

The Institute for Translational Medicine will work to improve people's lives by pursuing research breakthroughs and getting those discoveries into the real world.

“This vital initiative will help drive research and discovery that can greatly and more efficiently benefit the health of our patients and surrounding communities,” said Kenneth Polonsky, dean and executive vice president of medical affairs at the University of Chicago. “We look forward to leveraging these new opportunities, technologies and the robust network of resources now available to our medical and academic communities—as well as to our local community partners—to continue to advance medicine that makes a difference in people’s lives.”

The ITM is a partnership between the University of Chicago and Rush in collaboration with Advocate Health Care, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola University Chicago and NorthShore University HealthSystem that’s fueled by millions of dollars in funding from the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Over the next five years, the funding will help researchers, the public, government, industry and nonprofits work together to improve the health of Chicagoland residents.

“The ITM supports clinical and translational research in so many ways,” said Julian Solway, dean for Translational Medicine at the University of Chicago and one of the ITM three principal investigators. “We’re thrilled to launch this organized effort and work with such great allies to speed up the innovation pipeline.”

(From left): Susan Cohn, UChicago dean for clinical research; Joshua Jacobs, vice provost for research at Rush; Sara Serritella, ITM director of communications; Gerald Moose Stacy, ITM administrative director; Prof. Eric Beyer, ITM career development core leader; and Julian Solway, UChicago Dean for Translational Medicine, visit the new ITM location at the UChicago campus. (Photo by Alan Klehr)

It currently takes an average of 14 years to get new treatments made and to the public, according to the NIH. The ITM will work to cut down that timeline and turn research findings into uses that can improve human health, ranging from social media messenger tools that are being developed to diagnose and help treat depression from your smartphone to school programs scientifically proven to reduce violence.

Opportunities for UChicago and beyond

The ITM offers faculty and staff from all UChicago schools and departments funding for any form of research that could be applied to improve human health. It also offers specialized facilities, discounted rates, insider connections to local and national collaborators, and other resources.

Students and junior researchers can take advantage of mentoring from world-renowned senior faculty. Free training and educational programming will also be available, ranging from basic research essentials to how to write successful grants taught by former reviewers themselves to science communications training.

The ITM is part of a network of more than 55 hubs across the country supported by NCATS’ Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program, bringing both local and national education, funding, and other opportunities to the UChicago community.

And those opportunities extend beyond campus: nonprofit organizations, South Side neighborhoods and others across Chicagoland will be able to partner with researchers from all six Chicago ITM institutions to build studies, make discoveries and raise awareness about the health areas they care about the most.

“We’re all in this together,” said Susan Cohn, dean for clinical research at the University of Chicago and a principal investigator on the ITM grant. “Everyone is invited to come to the table, share their voice and come up with creative solutions that we’ll help make a reality.”

The ITM will help those solutions live beyond the lab by providing connections to its network of partners that include industry, startup accelerators, venture capital firms, government agencies, patient advocacy groups and others.

One such partner is the Chicago Department of Public Health. The ITM will collaborate to address Chicagoans’ health needs identified in the City’s Healthy Chicago 2.0 report.

“The city of Chicago is very excited about this partnership and how it will directly impact the health needs of our communities,” said CDPH Commissioner Julie Morita. “We’ve put a lot of time and resources into identifying the problems, and this partnership will help address the problems with dynamic solutions. Being part of this team will help us make sure those solutions are backed by science and created with input from both the experts and the residents who are impacted by it.”

Patients and families will also benefit from being at the forefront of medicine so that they can take advantage of breakthroughs as soon as possible.

“Everyone benefits from health research, from finding new cures to finding ways to stay healthier in the first place,” Solway said.