University of Delaware

Your place for all things visual from the University of Delaware 

[udelaware]

When gamer gear goes to the Arctic

Scott Sorensen’s experiences as a computer science student at the University of Delaware were hardly typical.

Sure, he spent his share of time in windowless rooms staring at computer screens. But he also made five trips to the Arctic Ocean as part of his doctoral research. And those travels put Sorensen, who received his Ph.D. from UD this past May, on a different career course than he originally imagined for himself.

Sorensen was part of a research group led by Prof. Chandra Kambhamettu, who directs the Video/Image Modeling and Synthesis (VIMS) Lab in UD’s Department of Computer and Information Sciences. Kambhamettu is particularly interested in applying big data computer vision and graphics to problems that impact life on earth, including climate change and the assessment and quantification of marine mammal habitat. 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]

A better bean

When downy mildew epidemics strike, they are a plague to lima bean growers in Delaware, which produces over 60 percent of the nation’s crop for canning and freezing.

At the University of Delaware, researchers have developed genetic markers to detect Race F resistance in lima beans, which were validated and used to predict resistance to the disease using a diversity panel consisting of 256 different genotypes of lima bean, the first time these methods have been used in lima bean breeding.Read more

[udelaware]

Designer labels for bacteria cell jacket

You have three to five pounds of bacteria living in and on your body right now. That’s some 38 trillion bacteria, researchers estimate. Your immune system has to manage all of them, sorting out the good from the bad bugs.

When a beneficial bacterium is mistakenly identified as a harmful one, the immune system’s attack can trigger chronic inflammatory diseases such as asthma, Crohn’s disease and other disorders. Why this misidentification occurs is a mystery, but Grimes and her research team at the University of Delaware have invented a promising new method to literally help illuminate what happens. The advance is published in Nature Communications. Read more

[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]

Today, the University of Delaware broke ground on its Biopharmaceutical Innovation Building - a six-story, 200,000 square foot facility at UD’s STAR Campus. The building willl be home of the new headquarters for the National  Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) as well as other UD research programs. 

[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

[udelaware]

Bullying's lasting harm

Peer victimization in fifth grade increases health risks later on Kids, don’t let the bullies in school ruin your life.

Being kicked or shoved intentionally by a schoolmate, being hurt by constant taunting — such instances of aggression, which psychologists refer to as “peer victimization” — can have lasting, harmful impacts.

A new study led by the University of Delaware and involving researchers from universities and hospitals in six states analyzed data collected from 4,297 students on their journey from fifth through tenth grade. The findings, published online in the medical journal Pediatrics, document the disturbing associations between peer victimization, depression and substance use. Read more

[udelaware]

Honey, I shrunk the lab!

What happens when a single virus meets a single microbial cell? To find out, you need a very tiny arena. The University of Delaware’s K. Eric Wommack, deputy dean in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, will lead a research team from four universities to develop technology that will help scientists examine such things. The team has received $6 million in National Science Foundation support for the work. Read more

[udelaware]

It figures: Math could help make bones stronger

What happens when a biologist and a mathematician put their brain power together? Innovation!

When University of Delaware biologist Anja Nohe showed that a new treatment could restore healthy bone density in mice with osteoporosis, colleague and mathematician/engineer Prasad Dhurjati figured out the dosage levels that would be effective for humans. And that could add up to great news for the more than 10 million humans in the United States who live with osteoporosis. Read more

[udelaware]

Mapping deep reefs produces valuable data for researchers, conservationists

A study authored by University of Delaware professor Art Trembanis and colleagues reveals new details about deep sea reefs — known as mesophotic reefs — near the island of Bonaire in the Dutch Caribbean.

While coral reefs worldwide are in decline, the waters surrounding Bonaire comprise a marine park known as a scuba “diver’s paradise” because it contains some of the most well-preserved coral reefs in the Caribbean basin.

Trembanis and colleagues used autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to map these deep sea reefs, situated 100 to over 500 feet (30 to over 150 meters) below the ocean surface, which are considered a lifeline for shallow reef recovery due to stressors like warming (bleaching), ocean acidification, over fishing and other deteriorations. Read more

[udelaware]

Happy #WorldEmojiDay from UD! Learn more about our expert: http://ow.ly/YwhQ30dGQb1

[udelaware]

Where the (re)action is

To really understand something you usually have to get out that fine-toothed comb and get into the details. What happens in the nitty-gritty can dictate how big systems function.

So a new way of seeing what’s really happening when solids and liquids meet - the chemical reactions occurring at that intersection - could bring important new insights to bear on many challenges, such as water purification or making better batteries.

The new method, developed by University of Delaware Professor Neil Sturchio and colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Chicago, provides real-time observations at the scale of the atom. Read more

[udelaware]

Botanical bodyguards

Plants in peril have some decidedly heroic tendencies, a Delaware high school student discovered recently while working in the lab of his mentor, University of Delaware botanist Harsh Bais.

Connor Sweeney was surprised to see that plants, when wounded, sent out chemical signals to warn their neighbors. The neighbors, being plants, couldn’t run away. But they could - and did - beef up their defenses by sending out longer, stronger roots. Read more

[udelaware]

Phosphorus forensics

Just as fingerprints help criminal forensic scientists identify perpetrators, isotopic fingerprints help the University of Delaware’s Deb Jaisi locate the sources of phosphorus compounds in soil and water. A new Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation will provide traction as he zeroes in on phytate, the most common form of organic phosphorus in the environment. Read more

[udelaware]

University of Delaware’s Class of 2017, by the numbers.