The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Office of Research has launched a new website highlighting various faculty and staff research and scholarly activities taking place at the campus.

Keaohou is an online magazine featuring photos and profiles of initiatives being undertaken by Hilo faculty, students and staff along with a link to the Office of Research that contains information about seed money grants, intramural programs, travel awards, the new myGRANT system and other research information.

For Daniel Brown, interim vice chancellor for research and economic development, the website is the fulfillment of a longtime dream.

“We all talk about how small UH Hilo is, but we are no longer all that small, and we often don’t know about the interesting work our colleagues are doing,” Brown said. “It is really surprising, even to people on campus, the quality and quantity of first-class scholarship that takes place here in Hilo.”

Brown hopes greater understanding of the work taking place on campus will lead to collaborative efforts with other members of the UH Hilo community and outside scholars.

Haining Yang

An international team of researchers led by University of Hawaiʻi Cancer Center Assistant Professor Haining Yang has identified HMGB1 as a critical protein in the pathogenesis of malignant mesothelioma, one of the most dangerous forms of cancer. These findings were published in May’s online issue of Cancer Research.

This discovery outlines the process that causes the growth of these cancers and offers scientists a unique opportunity to develop specific therapies to treat mesothelioma.

“We are very excited about this discovery,” said Yang. “The next step is to translate this discovery into actual treatments for mesothelioma patients.”

Mesothelioma is a very aggressive cancer usually diagnosed at late stages and is resistant to current treatments. The average survival is less than one year. However, 5 percent of patients diagnosed at an early stage have survivals of 5 to 10 years or more. Therefore, the identification of new biomarkers for early detection and novel targets for mesothelioma prevention and therapy are sorely needed. The discovery will help shed lights on these aspects.

The UH Cancer Center is a global leader in mesothelioma research. The center’s thoracic oncology team, led by Director Michele Carbone and Yang, has also been instrumental in several other recent discoveries including the identification of the gene that causes mesothelioma, BAP1.

The current study was an international effort and included investigators from the UH Cancer Center, UH Mānoa’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, the San Raffaele University and Research Institute in Milan, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and the New York University School of Medicine.

For more information, read the news release or the abstract.

The Kilo Moana

Commercial ships travel across most of the globe and could provide better warnings for potentially deadly tsunamis, according to a study published May 5 by scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

James Foster, lead author and assistant researcher at UH Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), and colleagues were able to detect and measure the properties of the tsunami generated by the magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Maule, Chile (February 2010), on the research vessel Kilo Moana, which was on its way from Hawaiʻi to Guam at the time of the tsunami, and was equipped with geodetic GPS system recording data as the tsunami passed by.

Careful analysis of this data showed that the researchers were able to detect changes in the sea-surface height very similar to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center predictions. “Our discovery indicates that the vast fleet of commercial ships traveling the ocean each day could become a network of accurate tsunami sensors,” Foster said.

Commercial shipping lines run all around the Pacific basin and provide great coverage globally around tsunamigenic regions (areas of the Earth that produced tsunamis). “If we could equip some fraction of the shipping fleet with high-accuracy GPS and satellite communications, we could construct a dense, low-cost tsunami sensing network that would improve our detection and predictions of tsunamis—saving lives and money,” Foster commented.

Foster and fellow SOEST researchers plan to deploy a demonstration system, which will stream GPS data from one or two ships, thus generating accurate real-time heights and confirming that this approach can achieve the accuracy needed for tsunami detection.

Read the news release for more.

Shoreline at Makapuʻu, Oʻahu (photo by Brad Romine, UH Sea Grant / DLNR)

An assessment of coastal change over the past century has found 70 percent of the beaches on the islands of Kauaʻi, Oʻahu and Maui are undergoing longterm erosion, according to a report released by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Scientists from UH Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology and USGS studied more than 150 miles of island coastline and found the average rate of coastal change was 0.4 feet of erosion per year from the early 1900s to 2000s.

Of the three islands, Maui beaches experienced the highest rates and greatest extent of beach erosion, with 85 percent of beaches eroding. Erosion is the dominant trend on all three islands with 71 percent of beaches eroding on Kauaʻi and 60 percent of beaches eroding on Oʻahu.

Researchers used historical data sources such as maps and aerial photographs to measure shoreline change at more than 12,000 locations. This analysis of past and present trends of shoreline movement is designed to allow for future repeatable analyses of shoreline movement, coastal erosion and land loss.

“Over a century of building along the Hawaiian shoreline, without this sort of detailed knowledge about shoreline change, has led to some development that is located too close to the ocean,” said Charles Fletcher, UH Mānoa geology and geophysics professor and lead author. “A better understanding of historical shoreline change and human responses to erosion may improve our ability to avoid erosion hazards in the future.”

Read the news release for more information.

Representing the UH Mānoa Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit and the Invasive Species Committees at the State Capitol are Keren Gundersen, Lori Buchanan, Lynnette Kinoshita, David Duffy, Teya Penniman, Rachel Neville and Jan Schipper.

The county-based Invasive Species Committees, projects of the Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit at UH Mānoa, were among those honored recently by Hawaiʻi State Senator Mike Gabbard for their work on the front lines combating invasive species.

In a floor presentation, Senator Gabbard said, “Mahalo to the dedicated men and women of the Invasive Species Committees for their diligence in preventing, controlling and eliminating the most threatening invasive plant and animal species to preserve our native biodiversity. They work hard to keep Hawaiʻi naturally beautiful as it should be.”

The Invasive Species Committees are island-based partnerships on Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Maui, Molokaʻi and the Big Island that work with government agencies, non-profit organizations and private businesses and landowners to protect each island from the most threatening pests with a proactive approach.

Each committee has a staff that includes a field crew who works across thousands of acres every year to rapidly respond to and control new invasive pests. The groups target species that have high potential to severely impact the economy, environment, agriculture, human health and quality of life, such as fast-spreading miconia trees, noisy coqui frogs and stinging little fire ants.

The Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit, working with the Research Corporation of the University of Hawaiʻi, provides logistic and personnel support for the committees. The unit has a 34-year history of working to protect cultural and natural biodiversity in the Pacific while encouraging a sustainable economy through basic and applied research on conservation biology and management of Hawaiʻi’s natural resources.

Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute research classroom at Ilima Intermediate School (photo by Priscilla Thompson, HNEI)

Students at ʻIlima Intermediate School will have the opportunity to learn in a classroom that is itself a learning platform. The Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute will test the effectiveness of an innovative energy efficient building powered by renewable energy.

A 1,200-square-foot, state-of-the-art structure has been installed at Ilima Intermediate School, the first of three sites selected for the project. HNEI, of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, is leading the research study to analyze the performance of these energy systems for potential future Navy applications in the Pacific region.

Energy efficient classroom

The test platform, created by California-based Project Frog, Inc., incorporates passive design elements to decrease energy demand, thus increasing the effectiveness of its photovoltaic systems. The structure will be outfitted with high tech energy monitoring instruments providing valuable research data on the performance of design and material components.

Project Frog’s design provides air quality management through the use of natural convection and air displacement to reduce the requirements for mechanized systems. Optimized daylight and glare reduction provides high quality illumination for over 95 percent of daylight hours, keeping the electrical lights off during most of the school year. The design reduces energy consumption, construction waste and operating expense.

HNEI will also compare the performance of two different photovoltaic systems, one using a high efficiency crystalline technology, and the other using a newer thin film technology.

Read the news release for more about the program.

The path of a simulated minimoon that is temporarily captured by Earth (illustration by K. Teramura, UH Mānoa Institute for Astronomy)

Earth usually has more than one moon, according to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Institute for Astronomy Specialist Robert Jedicke, Mikael Granvik (formerly of Mānoa and now at the University of Helsinki) and Jeremie Vaubaillon (Paris Observatory). The 2,000-mile-diameter Moon’s much smaller cousins, dubbed minimoons, are thought to be only a few feet across and usually orbit our planet for less than a year before resuming their previous lives as asteroids orbiting the Sun. Their research was published in the March issue of the journal Icarus.

The researchers calculated the probability that at any given time Earth has more than one moon. They used a supercomputer to simulates the passage of 10 million asteroids past Earth and tracked the trajectories of the 18,000 objects that were captured by Earth’s gravity. They concluded that at any given time there should be at least one asteroid with a diameter of at least one meter orbiting Earth.

Minimoons follow crazy path

According to the simulation, most asteroids that are captured by Earth’s gravity would not orbit Earth in neat circles. Instead, they would follow complicated, twisting paths because a minimoon would not be tightly held by Earth’s gravity so it would be tugged into a crazy path by the combined gravity of Earth, the Moon and the Sun.

A minimoon would remain captured by Earth until one of those tugs breaks the pull of Earth’s gravity, and the Sun once again takes control of the object’s trajectory. A typical minimoon orbits Earth for about nine months but some could orbit our planet for decades.

“Minimoons are scientifically extremely interesting,” said Jedicke. “A minimoon could someday be brought back to Earth, giving us a low cost way to examine a sample of material that has not changed much since the beginning of our solar system over 4.6 billion years ago.”

Read the news release for more.

Trifolium repens has spread to high elevation and cold environments in Hawaiʻi as predicted by climate matching it with Europe where it came from.

Why are some plant species so successful at invading new territories? Can we use a species’ native range to predict its invasive range?

Invasive plants have attracted a lot of attention because of their strong and often undesirable economic and ecological impacts. A new study coauthored by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Professor of Botany Curt Daehler examined dozens of serious invasive plants that have been exchanged between Europe and North America. The study, published in Science in March, found that in most cases, a simple climatic match between the native and introduced range is an outstanding predictor of where an invader will spread.

There are amazing cases of invaders that expand seemingly without bounds or in unexpected ways. This new study acknowledges that such cases do exist, but they only represent approximately 15 percent of invasive plants. The vast majority of serious invasive plants simply invade areas that are a climatic match with their native ranges.

This study represents the strongest empirical evidence to date that climate is the most important factor determining the geographic distribution of invasive plants. This has two important implications for management. First, simple models that rely on the climatic matching can effectively predict invasion risks, and climate change will lead to new areas at risk. Second, the study shows for the first time, using an extensive dataset, that contemporary plant species are generally restricted by climate.

If successful invaders generally cannot colonize outside their historic climate ranges, it is likely that most plant species, including rare endemic plants will not be able to tolerate climate change. This leads to their declines within their current geographic ranges, unless their populations can be moved to track their historic climate ranges.

Active movement of rare plants has been proposed to help ensure their survival in the face of climate change, but such translocations can be difficult, especially on islands where suitable climate ranges may essentially disappear due to small geographic spaces and ongoing habitat fragmentation. Because of the predominant role that climate plays in plant distributions, major effects of climate change on both rare and invasive plants can be expected.

Mercury’s path across the solar disk as seen from SOHO on November 8, 2006 (image from NASA)

A group of scientists from Hawaiʻi, Brazil and California has measured the diameter of the Sun with unprecedented accuracy by using a spacecraft to time the transits of the planet Mercury across the face of the Sun in 2003 and 2006. Their scientific paper has been accepted by the Astrophysical Journal.

The measurements of the Sun’s size were made by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Institute for Astronomy scientists Marcelo Emilio (visiting from Ponta Grossa, Brazil), Jeffrey Kuhn and Isabelle Scholl in collaboration with Rock Bush of Stanford University. They used the Michelson Doppler Imager aboard NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory to make the measurements.

They measured the Sun’s radius as 696,342 km (432,687 miles) with an uncertainty of only 65 km (40 miles). This was achieved by using the solar telescope aboard a NASA satellite, thereby bypassing the blurring caused by Earth’s atmosphere that occurs when observations are made from the ground.

“Transits of Mercury occur 12–13 times per century, so observations like this allow us to refine our understanding of the Sun’s inner structure, and the connections between the Sun’s output and Earth’s climate,” said Kuhn.

The team is preparing to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun on June 5, 2012. They expect these observations will improve the accuracy of their solar size measurement even further.

Read the news release for more.

Comet 81P/Wild 2 (credit—NASA/JPL/Caltech)

A study by researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology found that particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 brought to Earth in 2006 by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft indicate that Jupiter formed more than three million years after the formation of the first solids in the solar system.

The new finding helps test solar system formation theories, which do not agree on the timing of Jupiter though it is certain the formation of this giant planet affected how materials moved, collided and coalesced during the complex planet-forming process.

Ryan Ogliore, a HIGP postdoctoral researcher, conducted the study with Researcher Gary Huss and Specialist Kazuhide Nagashima and colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley, University of Washington and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The results were published in the February 1, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Comets formed in the frigid Kuiper belt out beyond Neptune, but analyses of the Wild 2 samples showed that comets are composed of low-temperature and high-temperature materials that must have come from completely different environments.

The team analyzed a chondrule fragment known from previous research to have formed by high-temperature processes in the inner solar nebula—the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the infant Sun from which the planets formed. What could be more contradictory than high-temperature objects from the innermost regions near the Sun becoming the predominant dust components of an icy comet in the outer solar nebula? Ogliore and colleagues set out to determine when this grand, outward migration of materials occurred.

Their results suggest the fragment formed at least three million years after the first solids formed.

“We were surprised to find such a late-forming, high-temperature little rock in these cometary samples,” said Ogliore. “That we are able to test theories about the formation time of Jupiter and consequently, the origins of our Solar System is really a testament to the importance of sample-return missions like Stardust.”

For more information, read the news release or the Planetary Science Research Discoveries summary.