#udresearch

[udelaware]

Methane detectives get the goods on tree trunks

They were just standing around, not saying much, trying to look like innocent bystanders. We are just trees, they said, stately sentinels of the forest, dignified darlings that dwell off the beaten paths. Do we look like methane gas factories?

Busted! Researchers at the University of Delaware have tapped into one of the mysteries of methane - a powerful greenhouse gas - in one of the first studies in the world to show that tree trunks in upland forests actually emit methane rather than store it. They are a previously unaccounted for source of this gas, which is about 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide. Read more

[udelaware]

The chummy side of sharks

So they may not be schooling anyone on Fangbook or Finstagram, but it turns out sharks can be quite a social bunch - except when they’re not. University of Delaware researchers have been tracking about 300 sand tiger sharks along the Eastern Seaboard, collecting information about thousands of their interactions. Snapchat that! Read more.

[udelaware]

Night moves on the research radar

A pair of University of Delaware researchers have birds on their radar. Sergio Cabrera-Cruz, a student in the Fulbright Program, has spent many a night collecting information about how streetlights affect bird migratory patterns. He is working with UD wildlife ecologist Jeff Buler, using the unique tracking capacity of a World War II-era device to understand bird behavior during this critical part of their life cycle. Read more.

[udelaware]

Zero-emission face-off

There’s a fork in the road to zero-emission vehicles - one that leads to battery-powered electric cars like the Tesla and the other that leads to fuel-cell-powered automobiles like the Toyota Mirai. Take the fuel-cell option, says University of Delaware researcher Yushan Yan. Those vehicles best preserve the advantages of gasoline-powered engines - with low upfront cost, long driving range and fast refueling. Read more.

[udelaware]

Circuits in space

Tingyi Gu, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received an Early Career Faculty (ECF) Award from NASA for her research using integrated photonic devices for low power space photonic communication and sensors for space weather observations.

Gu is developing lightweight silicon photonic chips that can withstand harsh atmospheric conditions in space, monitor gamma ray and UV radiation, and send communication signals between space and the ground.

Silicon photonics is still a relatively new field—its infancy dating back to just the 1980s. There’s plenty of room for innovation, especially when it comes to the devices Gu is working on.

[udelaware]

Sika balance

On first glance, Yakushima Island in Japan and Dorchester County, Maryland, wouldn’t appear to have a lot in common, but a closer ecological look reveals one stark similarity: both are home to populations of sika deer.

A new paper by the University of Delaware’s Jake Bowman and David Kalb of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries looks at the history behind the rise of sika deer populations in Dorchester County over the past 100 years. Read more.

[udelaware]

Equatorial bloodlines

University of Delaware undergraduate student Blair Schneider spent time in Brazil earlier this year getting samples from chickens to help with research looking to see if there is something genetically that allows the Brazilian birds to better deal with heat stress than American broiler chickens.

The research is being led at UD by Carl Schmidt, professor and genome scientist in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and is part of a five-year, $4.7 million National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) climate change grant for a project titled “Adapting Chicken Production to Climate Change Through Breeding,” which includes Iowa State University and North Carolina State University, as well. Read more

[udelaware]

From farm to road

Synthetic rubber and plastics – used for manufacturing tires, toys and myriad other products – are produced from butadiene, a molecule traditionally made from petroleum or natural gas. But those manmade materials could get a lot greener soon, thanks to the ingenuity of a team of scientists from three U.S. research universities.

The scientific team – from the University of Delaware, the University of Minnesota and the University of Massachusetts – has invented a process to make butadiene from renewable sources like trees, grasses and corn. Read more