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The December 2009 issue of IU Home Pages featured stories inspired by the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' inaugural Themester.
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The Hallelujah Mountains in James Cameron's Avatar may seem total fantasy, but a miniature version of the mountains can be induced in laboratories. Superconducting materials, when cooled to their transition temperatures, expel magnetic fields from the space they occupy, a phenomenon named the "Meissner Effect" after one of its discoverers. The physics are complex, but the gist is this: Magnets or perhaps . . . magnet-containing rocks can be made to float above superconductors.
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Context-Linked Intelligent User Interfaces for Collaborative Science Discovery
Jan. 22, 2010
3-4 p.m.
Informatics East 130
As part of the School of Informatics and Computing Colloquium Series, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Staff Scientist Cecilia Aragon will discuss the growing need for distributed teams to analyze complex and dynamic data streams and make critical decisions under time pressure. Aragon will talk about potential guidelines for the design of software tools to facilitate such collaborative decision-making, and introduce the term context-linked to characterize systems where both task and context information are included in a shared space.
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Scientist at Work: Alessandro Vespignani
Alessandro Vespignani arrived at Indiana University Bloomington little more than five years ago as part of a gamble by now retired IU School of Informatics Dean Mike Dunn to develop what Dunn hoped would be the foundation for a world-class research group for the study of complex systems and networks.
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Indiana University has announced a restructuring at its IU Cyclotron Facility that creates a new physics research center and moves operational responsibility for the cyclotron to the Indiana University School of Medicine. The new center, called the Indiana University Center for Matter and Beams (IUCMB), will be devoted to inquiry-based research in nuclear, condensed matter and accelerator-based physics.
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A bacterial species that depends on cooperation to survive is discriminating when it comes to the company it keeps. Scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and Netherlands' Centre for Terrestrial Ecology have learned Myxococcus xanthus cells are able to recognize genetic differences in one another that are so subtle, even the scientists studying them must go to great lengths to tell them apart. The scientists' report, which appears in a recent issue of Current Biology, also provides further evidence that cooperation in nature is not always a festival of peace and love.
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Indiana University Bloomington biologist Ellen Ketterson is IU's newest fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the organization announced last month. Ketterson is invited to attend a special ceremony at the AAAS annual meeting in San Diego on Feb. 20, 2010. Honorees are selected for "their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications," according to the AAAS press release. Ketterson was chosen for her "contributions to novel research in animal behavior and evolutionary biology, especially for experimental field research involving 'phenotypic engineering.'"
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The National Institute of General Medical Sciences has awarded Indiana University Bloomington biologist Joe Pomerening $1.39 million over five years to study the biochemical controls of cell division, otherwise known as mitosis. The NIGMS is a division of the National Institutes of Health. Pomerening is an expert on the regulation of the cell cycle, a complex network of genetic and biochemical interactions that directs cells to grow in size and divide -- or not, in the case of cells instructed to stop dividing. When something goes wrong with the cell cycle, the result can be cancerous, uncontrolled growth.
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Deep underground aquifers in the American Southwest contain gases that tell of the region's ancient climate, and support a growing consensus that the jet stream over North America was once split in two. The discoveries were made with a new paleohydrogeology tool, developed by Indiana University Bloomington geologist Chen Zhu and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology geologist Rolf Kipfer, that depends on the curious properties of noble gases as they seep through natural underground aquifers. Noble gases (neon and helium, for example) are elements that resist chemical reactions, and therefore have the potential to record information from Earth's past. In the January issue of Geology, the scientists report the results of their tool's first serious test amid the Navajo sandstone aquifers of northeast Arizona.
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Remotely monitored in-home virtual reality videogames improved hand function and forearm bone health in teens with hemiplegic cerebral palsy, helping them perform activities of daily living such as eating, dressing, cooking and other tasks for which two hands are needed. The project was done in collaboration with the Rutgers University Tele-Rehabilitation Institute, headed by Grigore Burdea, professor of electrical and computer engineering. The study appears in the January 2010 issue of Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
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The Dec. 15, 2009, issue of Discoveries, featured IU Bloomington statistician Karen Kafadar and her work to make complex, real-world phenomena -- from pathogen epidemics to high-energy particle physics -- easier to understand. Also featured were stories on the IU Vice President for Research finalists, introns, renewable energy, blood tests for hallucinaters, a new mathematical theory, and IU research at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
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Some recent titles by IU researchers
"Estrogen receptor-alpha-interacting cytokeratins potentiate the antiestrogenic activity of fulvestrant," Cancer Biology and Therapy, March 2010, by X. Long X, M. Fan M, and K.P. Nephew
"Uncovering mental representations with Markov chain Monte Carlo," Cognitive Psychology, March 2010, by A.N. Sanborn, T.L. Griffiths, and R.M. Shiffrin
"Small cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder," Histology and Histopathology, Feb. 2010, by M. Pant-Purohit, A. Lopez-Beltran, R. Montironi, G.T. MacLennan, and L. Cheng
"Conformational changes in the hepatitis B virus core protein are consistent with a role for allostery in virus assembly," Journal of Virology, Feb. 2010, C. Packianathan, S.P. Katen, C.E. Dann 3rd, and A. Zlotnick
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Organizers of an Indiana University Haiti relief effort have organized a material aid drive. Find out more about how to help "Cram the Container!" -- a 1,280-cubic-foot container provided by the university.
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