Issue 19

ELEMENTS A MAGAZINE FOR SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND

ISSUE 19 - FALL 2016

PLASTIC POLLUTION - MARS

TAXIDERMY - STUDENT RESEARCH

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.�

-MARIE CURIE, 1867-1934

FROM THE EDITOR Here at Elements, we strive to make scientific knowledge accessible and interesting to the campus community at large, highlighting topics at both the local and global level. In this issue, we travel from the prep-room of the Slater Museum, where we learn about the fascinations of taxidermy, to the coasts of Washington in a quest to understand why and how plastic pollution impacts marine birds. We even jump into space, taking a look at exciting astronomical events for the year 2017 and dreaming up possibilities for travel to Mars.

We are also pleased to share the wide-ranging selection of summer research projects from Puget Sound’s very own talented students.

Special thanks to the Elements staff team for continually contributing their hard work and great ideas throughout this semester. I would also like to thank the ASUPS Media Board for their support and encouragement. This magazine also would not be complete without the beautiful photos and illustrations provided by UPS students and staff.

A shout-out to Hannah Robideaux, as well, for being willing to appear on our CosmoNerd cover.

As we continue to move forward into the next year, we hope that Elements can serve as an open platform for all who wish to share their curiosity for topics related to science, education, and the environment. If you are interested in contributing to Elements in some way - whether through a written article, illustration, photography, or simply sharing an idea, please reach out to us at elements@pugetsound. edu. Thanks, and enjoy the read!

Megan Reich

STAFF Megan Reich EDITOR IN CHIEF

Caroline Ronveaux DESIGN EDITOR

Hannah Floren COPY EDITOR

Kaitlyn Finlayson ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Shreeti Patel ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Melody Saysana ASSOCIATE EDITOR

The production of Elements Magazine is possible due to the funding and support of the Associated Students of the University of Puget Sound. We thank ASUPS and, by extension, the student body for making this publication a reality. This magazine was printing by Digital Print Services (Kent, WA) using FSC certified paper sourced from well-managed forests, controlled sources, and recycled fiber.

Cover photo by Hannah Floren

In this issue 6

The Age of Plastic Pollution and its Impact on Marine Birds - Hannah Floren

8

Modeling Ants on Uneven Terrain - Matthew Moreno

9

Mercury Accumulation in the Red-Tailed Hawk - Lauren Ulbricht

10

From Then to Now: An Interview With Elements Founders - Megan Reich

13

The Effect of Synthetic Cathinone on GnRH Neurons in Zebrafish - Alicia Goin

14

Live Data Compression Using Word-Aligned (WAH) Algorithim - Rachel Hirsch

16

Taxidermy: Where Science and Art Collide - Lara Webster

19

Purging in Mixed-Mating Populations of the Yellow Monkeyflower - Toshiro Newsum

20

Minocycline Antibiotic and Parkinson’s Disease in Bumblebees - Adam Herbertson

22

Dreams of Mars - Eric Ralph

27

Save the Date: Upcoming Astronomical Events of 2017 - Amanda Johnson

30

Synthesis of Model Complex of Lactate Racemase - Janna Berman

32

Russell’s Paradox - Jesse Jenks

36

The Allium

37

CosmoNerd

38

QUIZ: Which Familiar 50 Are You?

39

Twitter Feed: Science Edition

40

WANTED: Invasive Species, Dead or Alive

The Age of Plastic Pollution and its Impact on Marine Birds

BY HANNAH FLOREN

Plastic pollution in the Earth’s oceans is a familiar topic to many and evokes distressing images of marine wildlife being threatened by our garbage. We’ve all seen photographs of sea turtles chowing down on plastic grocery bags, or flipped past a Discovery Channel special showing a sea lion entangled in netting. The damage of plastic waste goes even deeper than entangling larger animals or serving as an unintentional snack; dissection of seabird stomachs reveals that many species ingest tiny plastic particles they find floating on the ocean’s surface. These particles range from microscopic beads found in exfoliating soap, small chunks of plastic broken off from products like toothbrushes or toys (hereby referred to as user plastic), or plastic resin pellets manufactured by plastic producers to be melted down into consumer items (hereby referred to as manufacturer plastic). Research in the Slater Museum of Natural History

and at other institutions has revealed that Pacific Northwest seabirds ingest a wide variety of plastic. Student staff at the Slater Museum, including myself, have studied stomach content samples of three species in particular—Northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis), Short-tailed shearwaters (Puffinus griseus), and Cassin’s auklets (Ptychoramphus aleuticus)—to examine how much plastic marine birds ingest.

The Slater Museum receives many donations of deceased birds that are found washed up on beaches or that die in wildlife rehabilitation centers. Upon dissection, the contents of their stomachs and intestines are surveyed for any abnormalities. The fulmars, shearwaters, and auklets from the Washington and Oregon coasts that have been processed in Slater since 2012 indicate a shift in ingested plastic from historical trends. In the 1960s when research on plastic

ingested by seabirds began, digestive tracts contained more manufacturer plastic than user plastic (1). The fulmars, shearwaters, and auklets studied in Slater indicate that now, the majority of plastic ingested is user plastic (2, 3). These birds contained an appalling amount of debris, including candy wrappers, balled up netting, manufacturer pellets, and unidentifiable plastic shards. I can say from first-hand experience that it is very startling to slice open a bird’s stomach and find easily identifiable pieces of anthropogenic waste. One might assume that the garbage wildlife consumes will inflict harm upon them. However, studies involving plastic ingestion in seabirds have been unable to identify a discernible negative impact.

There is a slew of possibilities as to how ingesting plastic could cause internal damage to birds and result in declining health or death. Plastic is loaded with chemicals, which could potentially be physiologically harmful to birds once ingested. Larger plastic pieces may block the digestive tract at the passage from the chemical stomach into the mechanical stomach, and from the mechanical stomach to the small intestine. Birds may be deceived into feeling full when their stomachs are loaded with plastic instead of food, resulting in starvation. Chicks may also be affected by receiving regurgitated plastic from their parents (4). The scientific community has identified that plastic ingestion is unmistakably a prevalent behavior in many species of seabirds. Next, we must investigate why birds are doing this and how it impacts them, so we can understand the harm the current era of plastic pollution is inflicting upon species worldwide.

ABOVE: Photo by Hannah Floren

ABOVE: Photo by Lydia Kleine, student researcher in 2012

“It is very startling to slice open a bird’s stomach and find easily identifiable pieces of anthropogenic waste.”

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OPPOSITE: Rhino Auklet gliding on the water.

ABOVE: Great White Pelican in flight.

RIGHT: California Gull chowing down.

Photos by Nico Heyning UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | 7

Modeling Ants on Uneven Terrain

Mercury Accumulation in the Red-Tailed Hawk

BY MATTHEW MORENO

BY LAUREN ULBRICHT

Ant foraging behavior is fascinating because colonies regulate it through a collective decision making process; when an ant colony scavenges its environment for food to collect and carry back to the nest, no individual ant has complete information about the terrain they are exploring. This contrasts with the traditional way a human approaches decision-making, which typically centralize information, process it, then redistribute instructions. Consider, for example, traffic-aware navigation tools such as Waze or Google Maps; the distribution of traffic across a geographic region is collected from users, centrally processed, and then routing instructions are redistributed to individual users. In contrast, collective intelligence on the level of the ant colony emerges from parallel execution of a simple set of individual behaviors. Among other feats, foraging ants will tend to choose the shortest path between nest and food and to selectively exploit the richest of an array of food sources.

The goal of this project was to extend mathematical models of ant foraging, which are well-developed flat terrain arenas, to uneven terrains. On flat terrain the shortest-distance path, the most energy-efficient path, and the quickest-trip path are all identical; however, this is no longer necessarily the case on uneven terrains. Therefore, the questions of which, if any, of these paths the ants will choose to follow and, if they reliably select for a particular characteristic in their nest-to-food path, by what mechanisms this collective decision emerges from the behaviors of individual ants, are of great interest. After surveying existing models of ant foraging behavior on flat terrain and individual ant behavior on inclined surfaces, an TOP: Tetramorium caespitum ants. Photo: Alexander Wild RIGHT: A comparison of ant to human traffic. Photos:

Alexander Wild (top), Patrick T. Fallon (bottom)

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individual-based set of differential equations to model the foraging behavior of ants over uneven terrain was designed and numerically evaluated. Through analysis of simulated foraging paths over various terrains, the model was found to predict that as the severity of incline the ants traverse between their nest and food increases, the ants will tend to favor a straighter and less variable foraging path. It is ultimately hoped that research into the collective intelligence of insects will catalyze advances in swarm robotics projects such as NASA’s ant-inspired “Swarmies,” which may one day harvest resources for Martian colonies and, especially with the advent of autonomous vehicles, distributed traffic management schemes.

With increasing coal combustion in recent years, Nippon MA-3000 Hg analyzer. 4.0 to 8.0 mg of studies have shown higher levels of mercury in material was snipped lengthwise along the rachis marine and arctic species. These increased levels of a single feather for each bird for homogeneity can have negative impacts on breeding success and and analyzed via cold vapor atomic absorption survival due to mercury being a potent neurotoxin. spectroscopy. The samples were then combusted Mercury has a tendency to bioaccumulate, to 80 °C and volatilized Hg wash concentrated via especially in predators. Animals at or near the top gold amalgamation prior to spectroscopic analysis. of a food chain, which Additionally, every eighth sample includes predators, was replicated to measure carryexperience the effects over rate. Standards of the of bioaccumulation machine were checked for every more strongly. The ninth and tenth sample using increased build up a standard reference material can be attributed to (NIST 175a pine needle). In order harmless substances to prevent cross-contamination, being excreted from Ulbricht washed the utensils and one trophic level to the work area with ethanol between next, but toxins do not feathers. get excreted causing the toxins to become Ulbricht’s research shows that more concentrated at there was a significant decrease each level. By looking of total mercury in adults at the bioaccumulation over time. Additionally, the TOP: An adult Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo of mercury in Red-tailed decrease was greater west of the jamaicensis) in flight. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Hawks, Ulbricht hopes to Cascade Mountains than it was determine how mercury east of the Cascade Mountains. concentrations have changed over time and if there Adult Red-tailed Hawks also had higher mercury is any difference in concentration based on area concentrations if they were from west of the and sex of the bird. Red-tailed Hawks act as good Cascades compared to east of the Cascades. She indicator species for mercury accumulation because also found that there was no significant difference they have relatively sedentary, widespread predators. in amount of mercury accumulated between the sexes. However, adult Red-tailed Hawks had Ulbricht carried out this experiment by gathering greater mercury loads than juvenile Red-tailed breast feathers from deceased Red-tail Hawks at Hawks. the Burke Museum (University of Washington) and the Slater Museum (University of Puget Sound).

Future research will be continued by Sonya Maple She then washed the feathers with 1:1 methanol and will be focused on gathering additional chloroform, to avoid any additional contamination specimens from other museums in order to skewing results, and let air dry before analysis. fill temporal and geographic gaps in the data.

The total amounts of mercury in the feathers were Additionally, more feathers will be analyzed from measured at The Evergreen State College using a each hawk to refine sample estimates.

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | 9

From Then to Now

An Interview With an Elements Founder

BY MEGAN REICH

In honor of the 10th anniversary of Elements, we reached out to Marissa Jones ‘08, who set out with some of her fellow classmates to produce the first issue of the magazine in the spring of 2006. We talk to Marissa about her experience starting up the student-run production, as well as her current work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Megan: What initially motivated you and your fellow students to create Elements Magazine?

Marissa: The seed of the idea for Elements was inspired, perhaps fittingly, by some seeds. We were trying to measure respiration in germinating peas in BIO101, but we must not have set things up correctly because our control (glass beads) actually appeared to be metabolically active. My labmates, Keaton Wilson and Alison Baur (Riveness), and I joked that glass beads were showing signs of life! We thought it would be fun to create a spoof scientific journal that chronicled lab errors as legitimate findings. This idea grew into the plan to create not a joke, but a real science magazine for the university. (We held onto the spoof aspect; it later became “The Allium.”)

I had considered studying journalism or English before deciding to major in biology, but I still wanted to write. In many ways, my desire to create Elements was all an elaborate scheme to create

ABOVE: Marissa at NOAA’s office of

education. Photo: Marissa Jones

opportunities for science writing. (In retrospect, there would have been simpler ways of accomplishing this, but I’m very glad I pursued Elements instead.)

Megan: What were some of the initial challenges you faced with the production of the magazine?

Marissa: We wanted to make a magazine, but we didn’t really know how to do it. (Fortunately, we didn’t know how much we didn’t know and were, therefore, mercifully undaunted.) But more importantly, it helped to have talented friends. My childhood friend, Nick Kiest, happened to see that some fellow students had started a science magazine club in the minutes of the student government and he reached out to join. We all had enthusiasm in spades; he brought

technical know-how in addition. Nick was, even back then, selling photographs professionally, building his own computers, and constantly acquiring knowledge. When I would have hemmed and hawed and tried things twelve different ways, Nick just DID things. That was a major turning point for Elements - the magazine was fast-tracked to becoming a reality.

Along these same lines, I can tell you something that was never a challenge: finding talented and enthusiastic staff. It’s amazing to see the abilities and experiences that pop up among friends and friends of friends. It seemed that almost as soon as we could say, “Let’s start a science magazine,” writers, copy editors, photographers, designers, and science geeks extraordinaire came out of the woodworks. The founding Elements team was a creative, hardworking, and hilarious group - even still, I marvel at how lucky I was to have such talented friends! The professors were similarly supportive; first Alyce DeMarais gave us her blessing as our official sponsor and later Mark Martin took over.

The second major challenge was funding.

Although I had nominally started a magazine because I wanted to write for it, it turned out to be a lot more involving than I anticipated (if you can believe it). We needed to raise thousands of dollars to print the magazine. We were working on it until the eleventh hour and so didn’t have a working draft to prove we were serious until very late in the game. I am not a natural salesperson and so reaching out to a bunch of professors and university staff to ask for money was well outside of my comfort zone. I am eternally grateful to the admissions department and science department chairs who gave us a chance by “purchasing” copies of a student-run magazine, sight unseen.

ABOVE: Covers of the first and second Elements issues.

Megan: It what ways has your experience at University of Puget Sound and Elements Magazine informed the work you do today?

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | 11

Marissa: In a very direct sense, I use the specific

skills I gained working on Elements in my current job because I still design and edit reports. On a more conceptual level, I think I developed an appreciation for the importance of the unglamorous aspects of making something. Setting up meetings, asking for money, sending reminders, and planning are never the most exciting items on a to-do list, but most important projects wouldn’t happen without them. However, the main lesson I learned from Elements was that I most certainly did not make it happen on my own. It turns out that I love the role of helping to kick things off and giving other people an opportunity to share their work.

Megan: Could you share a little bit about your role as Education Specialist at NOAA? Marissa: After I completed my master’s degree at the University of Washington, I was accepted into the Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship. The program brings recent science and environmental policy grads to Washington, DC, for a year to work in federal agencies or with members of Congress.

I was placed with NOAA’s Office of Education, where I still work today. Contrary to my job title, I don’t actually do much education in the traditional sense. Instead, I do more coordination, policy, and planning. NOAA is a large organization. It takes a lot of work to make sure that people are on the same page and that we can tell a strong story about the work that we do. (Side note: UPS students should consider applying to NOAA’s Hollings Scholarship!

It’s a great opportunity.)

Megan: What is one of your favorite memories from your time in the biology/ science department at UPS? Marissa: There are so many that I could choose from, but one that comes to mind was working on an “Elements Investigates” piece with my friend, Matt Loewen. We happened to be foraging extensively on the Himalayan blackberries that grew around

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Tacoma. We had heard so much about the toxic legacy of the ASARCO smelter and superfund site along the Ruston Way waterfront, that we had to wonder, were we consuming heavy metals along with our berries? We designed a research project to measure the concentration of heavy metals in washed and unwashed berries. Matt was a geology major - now with a PhD in geology - and he devised a way of measuring heavy metals on fruit using the equipment in the Geology Department. (Having talented friends is clearly a major theme for me).

I loved how independent this work was - we just came up with a question, attempted to answer it, and learned a ton along the way. We also ate a lot of berries. (If you want a spoiler, the berries seemed safe, even the ones collected across the street from the superfund site. We should have tested the roots and leaves, as plants tend to be very selective about what they incorporate into their fruit. But I encourage you to read the original story if there are any old copies of Elements lying around.)

ABOVE: Marissa (left) in her freshman year, in her BIOL 101 class with her classmates. Photo: Marissa Jones

The Effect of Synthetic Cathinone on GnRH Neurons in Zebrafish

BY ALICIA GOIN

Substance abuse is a dangerous and prevalent problem in the United States that has rapidly increased in the last decade. New psychoactive substances have saturated the market, growing in popularity since the mid-2000’s because of their ability to be sold as “legal” highs under names like the name “bath salts” - , with one of the most frequently abused substances being from the synthetic cathinone family . Synthetic cathinones have an analogous chemical structure to that of natural cathinone. Both , and both chemicals produce similar short-term effects, inducing euphoria and hyperactivity caused by increased through an increase in dopamine levels. The long-term effects of synthetic cathinones are poorly understood, but natural cathinones have (do you mean to refer to a specific type of natural cathinone, or natural cathinones as a whole?

Natural cathinone is singular for the whole article) been shown to produce reproductive irregularities such as including reduced sperm count, low fetal birth weight, and significant changes in steroid hormone concentrations.

To investigate if synthetic cathinone caused reproductive changes to occur, gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons were analyzed. GnRH neurons are a population of neurons responsible for regulating the neurotransmitter GnRH, which coordinates pituitary function through selective binding. Recent research shows that dopamine directly stimulates GnRH neurons by binding to dopaminergic receptors. Because natural cathinone has been documented as altering both dopamine and hormone levels, and because synthetic cathinones have similar properties due to their analogous structures. Therefore, GnRH neurons provided an excellent model for studying reproductive changes with synthetic cathinone use.

GnRH:GFP transgenic zebrafish (Danio rerio) were used in this experiment, with the characterization of neuron diameter and shape (explain how/why this characterization is necessary) investigated after synthetic cathinone exposure. I also examined differences in early embryonic development, by measuring eye size, brain size, and body length at 3 days post fertilization (dpf ). This was performed by exposing 20 fertilized eggs (Day 0) to synthetic cathinone for 60 minutes in embryo medium. This treatment was

repeated for 2 days, with a total of 3 exposures. Embryos were fixed using paraformaldehyde (PFA), followed by visualization and measurement of GnRH neurons using fluorescent microscopy. My work established a correlation between 52 mM synthetic cathinone exposure and the diameter of GnRH neurons becoming significantly smaller (p < 0.01). Along with this, it was found that synthetic cathinone exposure also affected early development, with eye size and body length being significantly smaller (p < 0.05), than the control group.

To further confirm that synthetic cathinone was acting upon GnRH neurons via a dopaminergic system, the positive control L-dopa and the negative control sulpiride were used. L-dopa is the precursor molecule to dopamine, which would increase internal dopamine levels, while sulpiride is a dopamine antagonist that blocks dopamine receptors from activating. It was found that exposure to L-dopa did cause GnRH neurons to decrease in diameter, in a manner similar to synthetic cathinone exposure and also affected early development, with a decrease in both eye size and body length. When synthetic cathinone was paired with sulpiride, this effect was negated and GnRH neuron size, eye size, and body length were similar in size to that of the controls.

ABOVE: Zebrafish (Danio rerio). Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Live Data Compression Using Word-Aligned Hybrid (WAH) Algorithim

BY RACHEL HIRSCH

“Big Data” is the term used for the huge amounts of data that streams into sites like Google and Facebook every second and cannot be processed using traditional applications.

In the day and age of near-immediate data access, live file compression is incredibly important. One of the biggest challenges of working with Big Data is how to deal with this influx of information without running out of computer memory or dramatically slowing down data query time (i.e. the time taken to search through a file for some specified data).

This is often done using bitmap compression algorithms - that is, representing a bitmap in such a way that the file size is smaller but the same information is still provided. My research project this summer builds on previous research on the handling of Big Data, data management, and data compression algorithms, focusing on compression of live-streaming bitmap data.

Simply put, bitmaps are a representation of raw data. Attributes in the data set are grouped into “bins,” spanning a range of values, representing the values within each row as 0 (False) or 1 14 | ELEMENTS

(True). This raw census data, for example: To build a bitmap index of this database table we put the “Sex” and “Age” attributes into separate bins. For the purposes of this example, the Sex column is split into two bins (“M[ale]” and “F[emale]”), while the Age category gets three bins (1-17, 18-65, and 65+). Each column gets only 0 or 1, depending on whether the original data falls into the given bin.

So the example above translates to this bitmap representation:

Bitmap compression algorithms are used to make querying faster by condensing data, thereby making it easier to store more data in one place.

The primary part of this research investigates the optimal speed of streaming in data before compressing it using the Word-Aligned Hybrid (WAH) bitmap compression algorithm. To read more about the implementation of this algorithm, see Alexia Ingerson’s poster hanging in the 400 floor of Thompson.

Disk access takes an exceptional amount of time, compared to searching for data in a buffer in RAM (Random-access Memory). Usage of fast storage and retrieval mechanisms are critical in order to accelerate query time. To reduce disk access, two threads and a sliding-window data buffer were used to deal with incoming live data. This buffer is comprised of two buffers of the same size – one buffer is filled by one thread while another thread compresses the remaining buffer. The first thread reads each line of the original data file, turns it into a bitmap representation of said data, then writes that bitmap to the read buffer. Once this buffer is full, it gets compressed using the WAH algorithm and the second buffer becomes the read buffer.

Once compression finishes, the buffers swap positions again and the process continues until the incoming data finishes being read in.

We used a 4177-line raw data file obtained from UC Irvine’s Machine Learning Database to test the live-streaming compression. We found the size of the input buffer only matters up to approximately 750 lines of data compressed at one time. From that point on, the time taken to compress this file effectively flatlined.

When changing the size of the bitmap line representation, it seems the longer the line, the longer compression takes to run.

This research, titled Live Data Compression Using Word-Aligned Hybrid (WAH) Algorithm, was chosen to be presented at the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Conference (CCSC NW-2016) in Portland, Oregon on October 7-8, 2016. I am planning on attending graduate school, so this conference was a wonderful thing to attend, both as fodder for my resume as well as for my own educational purposes. Getting to meet other students with similar interests was an incredible experience and greatly heightened my interest in all things computing.

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Taxidermy: Where Art and Science Collide

BY LARA WEBSTER

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Taxidermy was once used as a window into new worlds, but is currently clouded in a haze of confusion and controversy. Taxidermy grew in popularity in the Victorian era as the mounts of exotic animals transported viewers to faraway places while remaining out of harm’s way. Now when we view taxidermy, we are looking at death and life simultaneously in something that is not quite an animal, but not quite an object either. This dichotomy between the realms of life and death unnerves many viewers, and while the dichotomies should be acknowledged, they should not overshadow taxidermy as an art and a science.

One can argue the purpose of taxidermy is to physically preserve a memory that can transcend generations. Taxidermy is used to preserve an animal’s beauty, its diversity, its existence, and its story. In order to preserve the memory of an animal, the taxidermist must intimately know the animal’s behavior and its physical form. To understand the physical limits of an animal, they must know how the skeleton articulates together and which muscles have to be tense or relaxed for a particular pose. It is painstaking work, and a lot of attention to detail is required to make an animal appear as though it is about to breath and walk off the work table.

There are many types of taxidermy, two of which can be found at our Slater Museum of Natural History on the second floor of Thompson Hall. The most abundant form of taxidermy found in the Slater is taxidermy that is used for scientific purposes. This takes the form of round-body specimens. For the most part, round-body specimens consist of a very simple body form made of rolled cotton and cotton eyes. For each round-body specimen, the date the animal was found, where it was found, and its sex are recorded on a data tag. With these specimens, one is able to track changes in a species over time and location.

The other type of taxidermy found in the Slater is live-mounted taxidermy. This is the type of taxidermy most are familiar with, in which animals are posed in positions that replicate their natural behavior. This type of taxidermy uses a rigid body form with musculature and bone structure carved

ABOVE: Some examples of live-mounts prepared by Lara. The middle photo depicts Lara’s recreation of James Audubon’s American Coot plate. Photos: Ross Mulhausen, University of Puget Sound.

OPPOSITE: Lara at work. Photo: Ross Mulhausen, University of Puget Sound.

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | 17

and molded into the body, and glass eyes. While was extraordinarily surprised to see my birds place live-mounted taxidermy may not seem as scientifand receive excellent feedback from the judges. ic as round-body taxidermy, it helps viewers get a Now as I finish up my last semester at the Univerglimpse of the natural form of the animal as well sity of Puget Sound, I am continuing my indepenas its natural behavior. dent study in taxidermy. Using the critiques I reI have prepared over 120 round-body specimens ceived from the judges, I am now producing some and about 40 live mounts at the Slater. I started of my best work. As I am a huge fan of John James preparing round-bodies in the fall semester of my Audubon, who is famous for illustrating and writfreshmen year. It was not until the spring semesing “Birds of America,” I am recreating his images ter of my junior year that I started preparing livewith taxidermy. Audubon would shoot birds and pin mounts as part of an independent study. During them into the desired position in which he wanted to this time, I repaint them. I can searched various not help but think types of taxiderhow vital it is for my and different artists to paint techniques to prefrom dead or still pare live-mounts. forms. My project This eventually aims to reverse led me to a taxithis tradition by dermy competireflecting painttion in Ellensburg, ings through taxiWA, in May 2016— dermy. the first taxidermy As of now I have competition held recreated four of in Washington in Audubon’s plates: over 10 years. The “American Coot”, competition was “American Crow”, to be judged by na“Pigeon Hawk” tionally awarded (a.k.a.

Merlin), taxidermists who “Barred Owl”, offered to give and “Little Owl” feedback to compet- ABOVE: Lara handling Sol, her Harris’ Hawk. Lara has been a licensed (a.k.a.

Saw-whet ing taxidermists on falconer for seven years, and regularly goes out hunting for rabbits owl). Hopefully I their work. I saw this with Sol for farmers in Eastern Washington. Photo: Ross Mulhausen, will be able to recas an extraordinary University of Puget Sound. reate several more learning opportunity plates before leaving and decided to enter the competition. the Slater Museum and Puget Sound. I will take the I entered 5 bird mounts into the competition: skills that I gained during my time here and apply a Peregrine falcon, a Dusky-headed parakeet, a them in my future endeavours as I work to complete Great-horned owl, and two Cooper’s hawks. The all of Audubon’s plates.

Peregrine falcon took 1st place, Best Bird in the Open Category, Best Bird, and Taxidermist’s Choice Bird. The Dusky-headed parakeet took 1st place as well and the three other birds all took 2nd place. I

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Purging in Mixed-Mating Populations of the Yellow Monkeyflower

BY TOSHIRO NEWSUM Plants often have multiple options when it comes to reproduction. Sexual reproduction is common, as is vegetative reproduction. Additionally, many plants also have the ability to self-fertilize (known as selfing), and the development of selfing in plants is arguably the most common trend in plant evolution.

Selfing has a number of short term advantages, especially for areas with low population density or pollinator numbers. Selfing helps combat such problems, as it frees plants of the need to exchange genetic material, ensuring some amount of reproductive success.

However, over time it also causes inbreeding depression and therefore lowered fitness.

is a relatively small plant, making it ideal for conducting studies. Inbreeding has already been documented multiple times in wild populations, so studying selfing is biologically relevant, and the genome has been sequenced in full. It also is found all over the western half of North America and its expansive territory has led to a high degree of variability among populations.

A greenhouse study has already been done on five generations of M. guttatus comparing selfing lineages to outcrossing lineages, and found evidence of purging.

There is therefore reason to believe that my study will be able to capture some evidence of purging in the different wild populations that were sampled.

We know that the populations of M. guttatus sampled are mixed-mating, Fortunately for plants, a phenomenon and therefore should be experiencing known as purging may help keep such some degree of inbreeding depression. drawbacks at bay. Purging is a process However, if purging is occurring, then wherein deleterious recessive alleles the degree of inbreeding depression are removed from the population. should decrease with each generation It works because inbreeding causes of selfing plants. SNPs universal to the lineages to become more homozygous populations have been identified, and over time, preventing deleterious over the summer I used PCR and DNA recessive alleles from hiding in sequencing to check for their suitability heterozygotes. In contrast, populations as genetic markers on a subset of with higher levels of heterozygotes ABOVE: I was able to locate several

individuals (10 each from 5 populations). allow the continued existence of local wild populations of Mimulus. Here is The genetic markers can then be used to unfavorable recessive alleles because one plant from a population southeast of genotype our samples, and from there we they are masked by healthy dominant Tacoma. Photo: Toshiro Newsum will be able to explore inbreeding effects, alleles. However, while researchers which can be used to draw conclusions have previously documented purging in about purging. The research is ongoing, and I am currently laboratory experiments, field studies have proven harder engaged in measuring the DNA concentration of our samples to conduct. And, while purging does work in greenhouse and optimizing conditions for PCR. We are hoping to get experiments, such studies are not enough to conclude that results back during the spring semester. wild plant populations benefit from purging. The research I am involved in with Dr Koelling will answer some of the need for field work, especially as it is on a scale that ,until recently, was impractical due to data processing limitations.

We are working with Mimulus guttatus, a wildflower native to North America. It’s an ideal species to study the effects of inbreeding. This flower has a short lifecycle and

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Unexpected Potential in a Common Antibiotic: Using Minocycline to Treat Parkinson’s Disease

BY ADAM HERBERTSON EDITED BY SHREETI PATEL

The research done by Adam represents how the antibiotic minocycline can mitigate the locomotor symptoms in the paraquat model of Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease occurs when dopamine-producing (dopaminergic) neurons in the brain die, leading to increasingly severe locomotor impairment. Because it leads to similar neurological symptoms and targets the same type of neurons, paraquat has become one of the most commonly used animal models for Parkinson’s disease. Paraquat is a pesticide used to kill plant cells by producing reactive oxygen species, leading to lethal amounts of oxidative stress. Unfortunately, paraquat is also toxic to animals. This pesticide gets into the brain by crossing the blood-brain barrier where a chemical process related to neuroinflammation allows it to mimic dopamine and enter dopaminergic neurons, leading to their death.

Adam worked with Professor Sue Hannaford to produce a study to see whether or not the antibiotic minocycline could reduce the neurotoxic symptoms of paraquat.

Minocycline, unlike other tetracyclic antibiotics, can pass through the blood-brain barrier where it has been shown to demonstrate diverse and powerful

neuroprotective effects such as antioxidant, antiapoptotic, and anti-neuroinflammatory properties. It is no surprise that minocycline has been investigated as a potential treatment for many neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, especially as neuroinflammation and oxidative stress appear to play a role in its pathology. The experiment was done with bees that had been exposed to paraquat. The process was relatively simple. Adam used five different beehives and selected groups of 10 to 12 bumble bees that had given a placebo, paraquat, or paraquat with the addition of minocycline. To test their ability to move, he performed locomotor assays after dosing them for four days. Locomotor assays are experimental tests used to measure an organism’s ability to move. And in the case of this experiment, it demonstrates the severity of paraquat’s toxicity. Adam used one of the more simple assays used to test insects in which the specimen—in this case, a bumblebee—was free to walk around a large 1 cm2 grid lined petri dish for one minute as the number of lines it crossed was recorded.

These locomotor assays not only showed that paraquat leads to noticeable decreases in locomotion, they also demonstrated that minocycline was able to lessen this effect and increase the total amount bumblebees were able to move. These locomotor assays results showed that paraquat leads to noticeable decreases in locomotion and that minocycline is able to attenuate paraquat’s neurotoxicity. The overall results of this experiment showed that in bees that had been subjected to paraquat, minocycline actually helped inhibit the paraquat getting into the neurons and helped stop spread disease.

Although the study does not 100% confirm that the minocycline is doing this well in inhibiting factors caused by this disease, the study does give off information that minocycline certainly is a contributing factor.

COVER PHOTO: Bumblebee and flower. Illustration:

Angela Mele LEFT: Representative traces of select bees in locomotor assay. Screen captures are from the bees whose number of grid lines crossed in a minute was closest to their respective groups’ mean. The blue line is the path the bee took in one minute, from the green dot to the red dot. Photo: Adam Herbertson

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Dreams of Mars A Brief History of a Troubled Pursuit in the Age of Commercial Spaceflight

BY ERIC RALPH

if these programs and their subsequent accomplishments occurred not out of the desire to explore and discover but rather as a means to demonstrate the superiority of a political and economic ideology, it was nevertheless an awe-inspiring period for human exploration, technological development, and scientific inquiry.

Jump approximately half a century forward after Apollo 17 and one will find that the state of astronautics and space exploration are truly difficult to believe, in a sense of both intense disappointment and esteem. The impact of the United States Congress’ complete and utter failure to properly take advantage of the technology developed over the course of the Apollo Program is ever so painfully evident to this day, having led to a series of connected missteps over the course of NASA’s existence. The premature cancellation of the Apollo Program and complete dismissal of the Saturn family of rockets resulted in a five-year period wherein the U.S. was incapable of launching its own astronauts.

This event marked the beginning of an apparent trend that saw itself repeated following the shuttering of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011 – the development of which led to the premature retirement of the Saturn family of rockets – in order to free up NASA’s budget to inexplicably allow for the development of another series of rockets as part of President Bush Jr.’s Constellation Program, which later found itself cancelled (for good reason) and again largely revived with the present Space Launch System.

Upon further examination of the Apollo, Space Shuttle,

If you had asked me five years ago what my ultimate goal in life was, I would have undoubtedly stated with confidence that it was to take part in the human exploration of Mars. Uplifted, brimming with optimism, and nostalgic for futures yet to pass after reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s unprecedented Mars Trilogy for the second time, I was dead set upon this singular goal. Amidst the throes of life and labor, my longing to live on Mars and personally experience our Solar system in general has remained steadfast and has continued to be fueled by a broad range of science fiction and space opera, among other things.

Now, it has been no easy task to keep those goals intact, and I cannot begin to count the number of times I have communicated those goals to others and experienced something akin to what someone in 1960 maintaining

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serious goals of visiting space and the Moon might have experienced – usually disdain, sometimes mild interest, and mostly polite dismissal and change of subject. I cannot blame people for this response, for all significant leaps made by humankind have been figuratively laughed out of the room at one time or another, and often just before they succeeded. Spaceflight is one of the best examples, with science fiction initially probing the willingness of the public’s imagination, central scientific and scholarly figures dismissing the possibility outright, and ups and downs of initial experimentation demonstrating both its futility and potential. Ultimately, the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Soviet space programs invalidated a great deal of criticism and doubt while simultaneously demonstrating space exploration’s ability to capture the attention of a great many people, albeit under the iron curtain of the Cold War. Even

Constellation, and SLS programs, some rather disturbing realities set in. Following the cancellation of Apollo, Congress, the President, the Air Force, and the Department of Defense in general all had significant interest in the pursuance of much more affordable and rapid access to space by way of reusability, something that they all viewed was best achieved by way of a space plane. Each party had their own explicit and varied concepts for what that space plane might look like, and the Air Force, DoD, and NASA were all engaged in scaled studies of demonstrators. To simplify a complex series of events, Congress and President Nixon ultimately decided that there should only be one spaceplane developed, and that that singular vehicle would be required to satisfy the goals of all parties to the greatest extent possible in order to allow its development to tap into the DoD’s budgetary surplus. Furthermore, in order to satisfy the Senators and Congresspeople central to the development of the Apollo Program hardware, NASA was required to make use of all presently existing facilities, hardware, and expertise in their efforts to design and develop what would eventually become the Space Shuttle.

As a consequence of this, the Space Shuttle was in no way an optimal design, as it first and foremost was the innate result of political and bureaucratic compromise on a vast scale. In fact, at least one of the two complete failures of the Shuttle (making it the deadliest spacecraft to have ever flown) can in large part be linked directly to one of those compromises, namely the general requirement that the Shuttle be completely reusable, resulting in the use of an exceptionally fragile (it could be broken by falling foam

LEFT: The view from SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System spaceship. Photo: SpaceX RIGHT: EA colossal, full-size carbon composite tank SpaceX manufactured to thoroughly vet the technology. Initial tests have been successful. Photo: SpaceX

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from the Shuttle’s external fuel tank) and complex thermal protection system being flown.

The Constellation Program, enacted by President Bush Jr. and pursued from 2005 to 2009, was even worse off.

More or less the political pet project of a Presidential administration in their final term, Constellation was intended to take humans back to the Moon and eventually to Mars, and entailed the development of a super heavy launch vehicle and smaller launch vehicle for crews.

Both of these were required to make use of Shuttle hardware and research, thus paving the road for the Space Launch System that was to follow after Constellation was cancelled, largely due to massive budget overruns, gross safety concerns, and a NASA budget that was many times too small to support such ventures on a reasonable timescale. Arising from the grave of Constellation, the Obama administration’s Space Launch System and #JourneyToMars Campaign began in earnest. Examined

now, it is clear that all SLS learned from the failure of the Constellation Program was a strategy of legal obfuscation and legislated requirements of non-transparency, thus making the SLS Program extraordinarily difficult to characterize or cancel. Of course, the hints of commercial lobbyist fingers pulling strings can be easily observed, given that both Constellation and SLS heavily rely upon Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital-ATK, and Aerojet Rocketdyne; as well as the fact that the districts of the legislative members of space-related committees featured in Congress and the Senate tend to host large manufacturing and testing facilities developed by NASA and the commercial entities listed above. A mere coincidence this is not.

Nevertheless, the subject of commercial involvement in NASA and aerospace endeavors in general brings me to a more positive topic: the modern renaissance being experienced throughout the aerospace industry.

ABOVE: The first firing of a scaled test article of SpaceX’s Raptor engine, designed to power both the ITS booster and spaceship. Photo: SpaceX.

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While incredible things are being done with satellite miniaturization among other things, my main focus lies upon Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, more commonly known as SpaceX. Founded by the same individual who co-founded Tesla Motors, popularized a concept known as the Hyperloop, and created Paypal, SpaceX has from the outset operated towards a single goal of colonizing Mars in order to better ensure the survival of humanity, while also inherently disrupting the aerospace industry (which was at the time ruled by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, later to become the United Launch Alliance monopoly). One could argue that they have thoroughly accomplished the latter goal, as SpaceX currently offers the most affordable launch prices (by a factor of two or more in the U.S.) and is also relentlessly pursuing a strategy of reusability in order to make their launch pricing magnitudes more affordable.

Furthermore, SpaceX developed their second launch vehicle and orbital capsule, Falcon and Dragon, so fast and so efficiently that an optimistic NASA-produced estimate of development cost was more than 10 times higher than the reality. Nevertheless, there have been missteps along the way. SpaceX’s recent on-pad failure, captured in a dramatic and highly popularized video, has not been easy and simply demonstrates the inherent difficulties and risks that must be faced when attempting to push the margins with something as sensitive as spaceflight. This is thankfully accepted by the industries who rely upon access to space, and thus SpaceX’s many customers have responded pragmatically, and SpaceX has been treating this failure as another method of examining their vehicle in detail in order to better understand potential routes of failure and consequently ensure that they have the safest possible vehicle to conduct their initial upcoming manned launches.

Most importantly, this mishap has clearly failed to phase SpaceX. In late September 2016, after more than a year and a half of anticipation in the aerospace community, Elon Musk took to the main stage of the International Aeronautical Conference and revealed the spacecraft and launch vehicle that SpaceX intends to use to construct a vast, self-sustaining colony on Mars. Deemed the Interplanetary Transport System, it hopes to exploit complete reusability and the benefits of mass production already demonstrated with the Falcon 9 in order to decrease the cost of trip to Mars by five million percent, thus optimistically opening the figurative gates to Mars by offering a ticket price equivalent to a modern luxury car or averagely priced house ($100,000 to $500,000).

The shock value alone is enough to sow doubt in many. The combined spaceship and booster will stand 10 meters taller and 2 meters wider than Saturn V, the currently largest rocket to have ever flown successfully. Used expendably, it will be capable of lofting more than four times the payload of Saturn V (550 meter tons), and more than twice the payload to low Earth orbit while operating as a fully reusable system (300 metric tonnes). The entire system will have a liftoff mass of 10,500 metric tons and produce 13,000 metric tons of thrust, both nearly four times as much as Saturn V. Termed in a fittingly staggering manner, the ITS booster at launch would momentarily produce as much power as the entire grid of the United States produces on average, 500 gigawatts.

Seated in the audience of the Guadalajara Expo events room, I will admit that even I was quite skeptical.

If successful, SpaceX would be leaping ahead of all competition and truly opening space to the masses, while also completely upsetting current accepted norms of what can be done in space. For perspective, the downright vast International Space Station, constructed over the course of more than a decade with more than 100 launches required at a cost of possibly $100 billion or more, masses in at about 430 metric tons. A single ITS ship could theoretically loft that mass and then some in a single launch, and at a cost of approximately $250 million. Their timescale noted that the ITS structure and propulsion are expected to be completed by the end of 2018, with complete ITS ship and booster test articles entering test phases in mid-2018 and early 2019 respectively. In this theoretical schedule, cargo flights to Mars would begin in 2022, and the first ITS with passengers would depart for Mars in late 2024 (approximately 8 years from today) for a landing in early 2025. The next likeliest “competitor”, NASA, has no public schedule or plan whatsoever for their #JourneyToMars and have at best hinted at manned missions beginning in the late 2030s or early 2040s, although such an accomplishment would require massive budget increases for the agency. SpaceX’s claims are truly extraordinary in their audaciousness. Their ultimate goal in creating this rocket and vehicle are to eventually allow for the creation of a self-sustaining colony of hundreds of thousands of people on Mars, an outpost that would optimistically act as a failsafe for humanity in the event of a global catastrophe on Earth. They hope to make this possible by lowering the ticket price per individual to something under $200,000, or much lower than the average

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Save the Date:

price of a single family home in the United States.

Yet still, two major features of the presentation allayed the majority of my skepticism: not only has the company completed an ITS engine test article and begun to test fire it, they have also completed a full scale carbon composite propellant tank for the spaceship and successfully put it through an initial series of tests. Examined as a technological system, these two aspects are arguably the biggest hurdles for the ITS to solve, as neither technology has ever flown successfully. These successful hardware demonstrations act as a massive source of optimism for SpaceX’s bold goals and timeline, as the breadth of their present-day accomplishments nearly match the sheer boldness of their ambitions. Furthermore, Elon Musk’s incredible desire to make this happen encourages even more optimism when regarding the financing of the development of the ITS, as he has a track record of putting every last penny of his liquid assets into his projects, up to the last day he expects to be able to fund them (evidenced by Tesla and SpaceX). He is now worth upwards of $10 billion and could undoubtedly fund the development of the ITS himself, in the unlikelihood of interested third-party investors.

I was lucky enough to experience this extraordinary keynote in person, and even luckier to have had my group recognized by SpaceX and the congress organizers and been given reserved seating near the front row, alongside heads of state, agencies, and commercial aerospace behemoths, not to mention astronautical celebrities like Buzz Aldrin. I was also able to attend dozens of other technical talks, many focused on current robotic exploration of Mars, as well as research into closed habitats intended to allow humans to live comfortably away from Earth while also producing a large percentage of the food they would need. The researcher presenting on habitats also revealed that SpaceX had already approached his group and another.

All told, the 2016 International Astronautical Congress offered a cautiously optimistic view of the future of spaceflight. Elon Musk ended his keynote on the ITS by emphasizing that SpaceX wanted to encourage other companies to begin developing the systems necessary for humans to comfortably journey to and thrive on Mars. SpaceX has no interest in creating a monopoly, the company’s singular desire is to better ensure the survival of humanity, and as Musk said himself, to encourage people to do things that make them excited to get out of bed in the morning. More than ever before, I am all but certain that I will find my way to Mars well within my lifetime, and I have never been more thrilled to be alive.

RIGHT: Example of a spaceship

model from the SpaceX aerospace company. Photo: SpaceX 26 | ELEMENTS

Upcoming Astronomical Events of 2017

BY AMANDA JOHNSON

H

ave you looked into the skies lately? There’s no better way to take a break than going outside and gazing at the stars. Though the cloudy Tacoma skies can make it challenging at times, there are many exciting astronomical events that occur every night and some particularly notable events coming up this next year. Our two astronomers on campus, Prof. Tsunefumi Tanaka and Prof. Bernie Bates told Element’s what they consider to be their “must see” events on any night or coming up in 2017. Listed are also some great resources they suggested looking at in order to stay updated on what is happening above our heads.

covers the Sun in a total eclipse whereas the moon slightly smaller so that you can see the rim of the Sun as a ring around the moon during an annular.

Now, you may be asking why this eclipse is unique?

Well that’s because umbra, the moon’s inner shadow, will be directly passing over the United States creating a band for visibility of total coverage (see map).

Unfortunately, we will be unable to see complete coverage in Tacoma, but we will still see 90-95% of the Sun covered by the moon. When viewing, be sure to wear filters specifically designed for Sun observation. Viewing the Sun directly or through an inadequate filter can damage your eyes. For viewing times and more information about the Great American Total Solar Eclipse visit http://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/.

Professor Tanaka’s must see: 2017 Total Solar Eclipse If you have passed through Thompson Courtyard on a sunny day you have probably seen Prof. Tanaka with his telescope looking at the sun. You should stop by and ask what he’s looking at if you’re want an update on solar activity. Tanaka’s notable event is a rarity that you can’t see that often. So, save the date! There will be a total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon’s orbit crosses the line between the Sun and the Earth. Although the Sun is 400 times larger than the moon, the Sun and moon appear to be relatively the same size in the sky because the moon is so much closer to the Earth. Therefore, the silhouette of the moon completely covers the intense light of the Sun leaving only a ring of light, called the corona, uncovered (1). Total solar eclipses differ from the more common annular solar eclipse, in that the moon completely

ABOVE: Solar eclipse taken by the Apollo 12 spacecraft during its retrun to the Earth from the Moon. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Bernie Bate’s must see: Orbiting Satellites and Iridium Flares Bernie’s suggestion is something that you can see on any given night, even in areas with a lot of light pollution. There are over a thousand satellites currently orbiting the Earth (2). On any given night, if it’s not too cloudy of course, you can spot dozens of satellites.

Bernie suggested source for the most up to date information about viewing times and locations for seeing satellites or the international space station is http:// www.heavens-above.com/. Just change the location to Tacoma or wherever you are, and you can find out the exact times and positions that you can view satellites.

Most of the time satellites appear to be dim and slow moving stars. However, Bernie also mentioned a special kind of satellite that creates a spectacular and strange phenomenon. Iridium flares are 66 controlled iridium communication satellites. Iridium is a chemical element that makes up the antennas of the satellite. The satellites have a special shape that at certain positions of their orbit, will reflect the sunlight directly at the Earth which generates a sudden intensely bright spot for a matter of seconds. Bernie says, “the glint will go from basically invisible, to extremely bright”. Using the same website, you can find the exact times and position of those iridium satellites to see this phenomenon. Search for ones with a brightness with a large negative number for the best view.

Other Notable Events For tracking other events, Professor Tanaka suggests using www.skyandtelescope.com or www.seasky.org.

However, here a few featured events coming up next spring!

January 3-4: Quadrantids Meteor Shower. The best time to view this meteor shower is in the early morning of Jan. 4 in a dark location though it is possible to see in Tacoma. The meteors are thought to originate by dust from an extinct comet called 2003 EH1 in the direction near the Big Dipper.

ABOVE: The moon appears a darker shade during a penumbral lunar eclipse. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

ABOVE: Composite image of the Perseid Meteor Shower. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

January 19: Mercury is at its greatest west elongation. This means that Mercury, which is usually difficult to see due to its close proximity to the sun, will be the furthest away from the sun during its orbit. This is the best time to see Mercury, specifically just before sunrise.

ABOVE: Example of an iridium flare.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons 28 | ELEMENTS

February 10-11: Penumbral lunar eclipse. When the moon moves in the line of earth’s outer shadow, so that the moon appears darker. The peak of the eclipse will take place after midnight on Feb. 11.

April 22-23: Lyrids Meteor Shower. A smaller annual meteor shower that produces approximately 20 meteors at the peak. The best time to view will be late on April 22 and early morning April 23. The meteors are thought to originate by dust from a comet called C/1861 G1 Thatcher in the direction of the Lyra constellation.

ABOVE: Noctilucent clouds over Lake Saimaa,

Finland. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Be on the lookout for…

Noctilucent Clouds: Strange cloud formations viewed at night that are made from ice crystals.

The cause of them is still un-

LEFT: Real-color image of Mercury taken by the Mariner 10. Photo: NASA, Wikimedia Commons.

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Synthesis of Model Complex of Lactate Racemase

LEFT: Janna in the office area of the Schley lab at Vanderbilt with her graduate mentor, Ben. Photo: Janna Berman

BY JANNA BERMAN

This past summer I participated in Vanderbilt University’s program called the National Science Foundation Vanderbilt Research Experience for Undergraduates in Chemical Biology (VU NSF-REU). As a chemistry major fascinated by organic chemistry, I applied to this program so I could engage in organic chemistry research by making biologically relevant compounds. During this internship, I worked under the guidance of professor Nathan D. Schley to synthesize a model of an enzyme called lactate racemase.

Lactate racemase converts lactic acid between its two structural isomers, which are compounds that contain the same number and type of atoms, but different bonding. The overarching goal of my work was to synthesize a model compound of lactate racemase to test a hypothesis of how this enzyme isomerizes lactic acid. Desguin et al. hypothesized that the pincer structural feature in lactate racemase could enable catalytic behavior of the enzyme (1). In other words, lactate racemase may increase the rate of isomerization of lactic acid by a reaction pathway that takes advantage of

the pincer ligand bonded to the enzyme’s nickel center. A pincer ligand is an organic compound that crudely resembles a claw because three bonded atoms lie in the same plane and each one surrounds and forms a bond to the metal in a complex. My work this past summer focused on synthesizing a pincer ligand resembling the one found in lactate racemase.

I spent the first weeks of the internship following procedures written by my graduate student mentor Ben Mueller. I started with commercially available reagents to make an enamine (the nitrogen analogue of an enol) and an oxazolidine (a type of five-membered cycle). I then combined both of these compounds in a reaction to form a Hantzsch ester. Hantzsch esters are a particular type of unsaturated, six-membered cycles that notably contain a nitrogen atom and two ester functionalities. An ester (abbreviated RCO-OR′) contains a carbon atom double bonded to an oxygen atom, where that same carbon atom is also attached to an oxygen atom bound to a carbon atom chain.

An additional synthetic step created an asymmetric

LEFT: Janna showing her labspace with her sister, Daria. Photo: Janna Berman

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Hantzsch ester by replacing the alkoxy group (-OR′) of one ester with a hydroxyl group (-OH) to make a carboxylic acid (RCO-OH). The next step involved converting that carboxylic acid into an amide (RCO-NR′R′′), but this transformation was less straightforward. Despite a month of trying, Ben had not been able to achieve this transformation.

At this point, I became a collaborator with Ben on the project. I designed synthetic pathways and conducted reactions of my choice to make our target molecules, beginning with the amide-containing Hantzsch ester. Interestingly, I determined the reaction conditions to successfully form the amide only a couple days after I became a collaborator. I definitely made a good impression on my research advisor after this accomplishment and my ideas carried a little more weight in our meetings. I achieved this astonishing result with some luck, but mainly because I was proactive. I voluntarily researched alternate reaction conditions before becoming a collaborator and I was not discouraged after my first attempt failed to produce the amide.

My next attempts to thionate the amidecontaining Hantzsch ester, whereby replacing a double bonded oxygen atom with a doubled bonded sulfur atom, were unsuccessful. I stayed motivated though and was thrilled to eventually

thionate a simpler compound to show proof of concept for the particular reaction condition.

This part of my experience reinforced to me the interesting challenges and gratification of organic chemistry research. Moreover, assuming the role of a collaborator increased my confidence to work independently and clearly communicate my ideas about what strategies might be successful.

In all, my research experience in the VU NSF-REU promoted my strong interests in organic chemistry that are now central to my decision to earn a Ph.D. in organic chemistry. I highly encourage natural science majors and minors to embrace research opportunities on and off campus. I found it very beneficial to work at Vanderbilt University because I was able to experience a research institution with impressive lab spaces and be immersed in their research community of faculty, post-doctoral scientists, and graduate students. This type of research experience lets you engage in the exciting world of scientific research, build valuable connections with people in the discipline, and envision yourself doing the work that excites you.

Contact Janna at jlberman@pugetsound.edu for more information on her research experiences or for advice on applying for research internships.

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Russell’s Paradox

BY JESSE JENKS

One of our most basic and deeply held beliefs about the world is that contradictions can never happen.

Logicians like to call this simple observation The Law of Non-contradiction. For example, if I said “This table is square and circular” you would not assume that the table is somehow square while simultaneously not being square, you would just assume I was wrong. Surely this is obvious, you might say, it could never happen! But why do we think this? Is it only because we have never seen it happen, or is it really impossible for this to happen?

Intuitively it seems ‘impossible’ in more than just a practical sense; it is somehow truly impossible. But why is this? This idea that contradictory things are impossible is so simple we often take this for granted, but it is important to recognize that this really is an assumption. There is no real reason, to decide right off the bat that contradictions are impossible, and yet it seems so obvious that they can’t happen! This is what makes paradoxes so fascinating. They force us to question one of our most basic assumptions about the world.

One of the most famous and philosophically puzzling paradoxes is known as “The Liar Paradox”.

The so-called liar sentence says “This sentence is false.” Is the liar sentence true? If it is, then it would have to be false. But if it’s false, it would have to be true! This simple paradox has been extensively argued about for decades (see 1). A very closely related mathematical paradox is known as Russell’s paradox. Russell’s paradox comes from “naive” or informal set theory, first described by Georg Cantor.

In the very beginning of his first essay on the theory of transfinite numbers (2), Cantor describes “an ‘aggregate’(set) [as] any collection into a whole S of definite and separate objects s of our intuition or our thought” 1 . So a set is just any grouping of things we can think of. For example, the set of pencils on my desk, or the set of all dogs on earth, or maybe the set of all strands of hair on my head. I can see that there are three pencils on my desk, so without needing to physically touch the pencils, I can group them together in an abstract set.

Several years after Cantor published his memoirs, Russell and others noticed that trying to define the set 32 | ELEMENTS

S of all sets which do not contain themselves seems to be contradictory. The paradox arises when we ask if S contains itself. This would amount to saying “S contains itself if it doesn’t contain itself,” just as the liar sentence says “This sentence is true if it isn’t true.” Does this mean set theory is useless? Set theory is so intuitive and useful in mathematics that it seems silly to throw it all away over such a strange problem.

In fact, almost any branch of modern mathematics makes use of set theory. So many people, including Russell tried to create their own versions of set theory (see 3). Unfortunately there always seems to be a tradeoff between having a powerful and more intuitive set theory, and having a set theory which avoids paradoxes altogether. Russell himself noticed that the problem seemed to lie in the self referential nature of the paradox, so he included what he called the “vicious circle principle” into his set theory in an attempt to solve this problem2. Unfortunately, it seems that in any set theory, there is a tradeoff between preventing paradoxes and keeping the intuitive notion of a set. The most widely accepted set theory is known as Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice, or simply ZFC. Interestingly, in chapter 4 of Foundations of Set Theory, the authors make it clear that their axiomatization of set theory “undertakes to avoid the antinomies that arise from the classical theory by restricting the concept of set or its mathematical use” (6). In ZFC set theory, there is an axiom similar to the comprehension principle known as the axiom of subsets, which says that ‘for any set S, there is a set that contains only the members s of S that satisfy P(s).’ However, the authors immediately follow it by saying “[The axiom of subsets] has the awkward property of being impredicative” (6). So, while ZFC avoids other problem, it still has lingering concepts of ‘presupposition.’ The advantage it has over type theory is that it preserves our intuitive understanding of what a set is.

While his set theory was not free of paradox, Cantor made enormous contributions to both mathematics and philosophy. In the very same set of papers on transfinite numbers, Cantor proved one of the most astonishing results in all of mathematics: there is more than one kind of infinity! In fact there are

infinitely many infinities bigger than the smallest in the sense that it has been defined. Some positivists infinity! More specifically, Cantor used the concept have a hybrid view. Perhaps these abstract concepts of a “bijection” to show that … For example, we can do exist independently of our minds, but, if they exist establish the fact that the set {1,2,3} has the same and are inaccessible to us, what use are they? “cardinality” or size as the set {a, b, c} by constructing What would it mean to prove the continuum a “bijective function” between the sets. This means hypothesis anymore if it cannot be done in the most that for each number in the first set we associate a widely accepted system of set theory? unique letter, and for each letter, we can associate a This idea of objective truth is what lead Gödel unique number. The fact that we can do this means and other ontological platonists to argue that the that both sets have the same amount of “stuff” in paradoxes that result from set theory are because them. Of course, for finite sets, we could just count the we perceive these independent abstract concepts number of items in each aet and see that they are the through our minds, in the same way we perceive same. But consider the set of “natural” or “counting” light through our eyes. Even Russell argued the numbers {1,2,3,4,...} and the set of even numbers consistency of our perception of sense-datum means {2,4,6,8…}. In some sense, we would expect there to that, in all likelihood, my cat exists independently be fewer even numbers since we remove every other of my perception of it. Platonists take this one step natural number. But the function f(n)=2n further and say that the same is true for associates a unique even number with “Unfortunately there abstract objects. And in the same way each natural number, and every even I cannot see infrared light, we are always seems to be that number is twice a natural number. So somehow limited in our perception of even though there are twice as many a tradeoff between abstract objects, like sets. natural numbers as even numbers, there So why does it matter to us whether having a powerful the are as many even numbers as natural set of all sets really exists? It makes numbers. Interestingly, it seems that and more intuitive set no difference to whether my toaster these different ‘infinities’ are discrete. or whether the sun will rise. And theory, and having works, These infinite values are described in there seems to be no way of resolving this terms of sizes of infinite sets, and it can a set theory which epistemological problem, because there be shown in a precise way that some to be no way of checking that we avoids paradoxes al- seems infinite sets have infinitely many more are right a posteriori. One problem I things in them than another infinite have is that it seems that because the together.” set. But it seems that there is a definite concepts of true and false and basic concept of a ‘next largest infinity’. That is, if S1 and logical operations are so intuitively obvious, I cannot S2 are infinite sets, but S2 is ‘larger’ than S1, it doesn’t imagine an alternative. So how do I know there seem to be possible to construct a set whose size lies isn’t some physical or psychological reason for this, strictly between S1 and S2. Cantor proposed that this instead of simply being objectively true? For example, is not possible at all, and this guess is now known as many people say that mathematics is the ‘universal the continuum hypothesis. Nearly 70 years later, a language.’ But what if it isn’t? What if there are even logician named Paul Cohen, building on the work of more primitive axioms which can give rise to our Kurt Gödel, was able to show that you cannot prove notions of logic, but could also give rise to others? If or disprove the continuum hypothesis in ZFC! we were to encounter an alien species, how could we These issues bring to light a very fundamental be sure that we could ever communicate with them? questions in the philosophy of mathematics. Do

I, much like agent Mulder, want to believe abstract objects exist? There are, broadly speaking that mathematics is objectively true. I cannot say I two schools of thoughts on this topic: the platonists would go so far as to say that sets are real but abstract and the positivists. Platonism, in this context is the objects independent of thought, but I would argue that belief that abstract objects, like sets and numbers mathematical statements can be objectively true. And exist independently of our minds. Positivists, on the from basic axioms, we can derive all of mathematics. other hand believe that abstract concepts are not In other words, there are potentially conceivable independent of our minds. A concept can exist only concepts. Even if nobody proves it or even knows UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | 33

about it, there are mathematical statements which must be true. I imagine a graph like fig. 1), where the vertices are ‘logically bound,’ so to speak, and thus proving things in mathematics is a process of finding these logical links. This way of illustrating an axiomatic system seems like a useful tool, but it still leaves open the question of how we know we have the right one? Or perhaps more importantly, how can we ever know that we have the right one?

A platonist would argue that there are concepts ‘floating around’ so to speak, which have not yet been conceived of, and perhaps never will. A positivist, on the other hand, would argue that of course there are concepts that will undoubtedly be conceived of in the future, but they only exist once they have been conceived of. The importance of whether an abstract concept is independent of thought is because this mind-independence means the concept can be objectively true.

In the case above, we are dealing with what is known as the ‘unrestricted’ comprehension principle.

That is, anything can be a member of a set so long as it satisfies P(s), which can be any propositional

function. (One thing to note is that the function does not necessarily define the set, only the members of the set do. So if two different functions produce sets with the same elements, they are considered the same set.) Russell argued that the essential problem with paradoxes like Cantor’s, Burali-Forti’s, Richard’s, etc. was that they invoked the idea of ‘all of some kind,’ like ‘all sets,’ and thus were “impredicative” because they presuppose knowledge about the sets. This idea, which he credits to Poincaré, was the justification for his famous ‘vicious-circle’ principle. Put simply, the vicious-circle principle (VCP) prevents sets from ever being members of themselves. This seems to solve all of our problems! There would be no confusion in the examples given, because we wouldn’t even care when, or if a set is included as a member of itself.

In his essay Mathematical logic as based on the Theory of Types, Russell outlines his attempt at an axiomatic set theory, based on the VCP. He spends quite a while in his introduction trying to stress the difference between ‘all’ and ‘any,’ which he credits to Frege. This can be a bit confusing, but one example he gives that makes it clearer is the difference

LEFT: Illustration of an

axiomatic system: finding logical links through bound vertices.

Diagram: Jesse Jenks

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between defining the law of noncontradiction as in the ‘x is lukewarm’ example, anything which could ‘all propositions are true or false’ which is itself a satisfy this expression could also satisfy ‘x is cold.’ But proposition, or as ‘p is true or false, where p is any Russell’s type theory requires these to be different proposition,’ which is a propositional function. types even though they have identical ranges. These One thing this example makes clear is that the problems mean his type theory does not preserve first definition is an instance of the second one. As our intuitive understanding of sets. For example, in Russell says, “There is no law of contradiction; there the first example of ‘the set of pencils on my desk,’ are only the various instances of the law” (3). This why would a different description of their collection allows him to define sets or types to be everything require an entirely different set? I believe the main that is a ‘valid’ argument to a propositional function. problem with Russell’s VCP is the universality of it. It This is a slightly different aspect of Russell’s is true that allowing sets to be members of themselves theory of types in that, unlike other set theories leads to contradictions in some cases, but it is not in which what the actual members of the sets are clear that it would lead to a contradiction in every is not important (4), Russell only allows either case. So perhaps sets being members of themselves propositional functions, or things that satisfy a is not where the problem lies. particular propositional function to be members

The reason we care about whether a of sets. For example, ‘my glass of water’ foundational mathematical statement is a valid argument to ‘x is lukewarm,’ “The question now presupposes something is not just thus ‘my glass of water’ is in its range, because we want a logical system is not whether new while ‘3’ is not, since it is meaningless that leaves out any ambiguity, but (neither true nor false). He uses this idea concepts can be also because it addresses an older of ‘valid arguments’ to justify his concept philosophical problem; platonism thought of, but of ordered types. So a type of order n can and positivism. Platonism is the belief be the range of a function of order n+1, whether the exis- that concepts, especially abstract but not of an order less than that. So when or logical concepts, exist tence of a concept mathematical you say ‘all of some kind’ you really mean independently of our knowledge of ‘all propositions in this type of order n.’ is independent of them. Positivism, on the other hand, This is a more, though still not satisfyingly is the belief that concepts do not exist thought.” precise way of saying ‘P(s) cannot lead to a independently of our knowledge of contradiction.’ them, and instead are constructed. In One criticism pointed out by Chihara is that other words, the concepts only exist in the sense that Russell relies on the idea that all antinomies can be they have been defined, but not before they have turned into just propositions, and statements about been defined. This description may sound more like propositions (5). For example, Russell’s solution constructivism, but in this paper I will refer to it as to the famous ‘Liar Paradox’ involves translating positivism. The kind of platonism I am referring to is the phrase “I am lying” into “It is not true for all what Chihara calls ‘ontological platonism’(5). That is, propositions P that I affirm P, P is true,” and by not only is mathematics about abstract concepts, but the VCP he cannot be making a statement about that these abstract concept are ‘real’ but not physical ‘all propositions.’ He does give a brief explanation things. of how he arrived at this translation, but it is not I would argue that the difference between these views obvious that this would work in all cases (Chihara can also be understood by the answer to the question gives other objections on pg. 8). How can we be sure ‘are there such things as potentially conceivable that all statements about sets can be reduced to his concepts?’ I am using ‘conceivable’ and ‘concept’ very type theory? vaguely, and many philosophers have gone in depth This brings into question the validity of the VCP. on these topics. Basically, by ‘conceivable concept’ I If we can’t be sure that we can justify equating mean any definite idea or, in the context of this paper, statements about abstract elements and sets, and a mathematical notion that someone has ‘thought of. statements about arguments to propositional The question now is not whether new concepts can functions, the whole structure of type theory is be thought of, but whether the existence of a concept questionable. Another problem is that for instance, is independent of thought.

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | 35

The Allium 2016 U.S. OLYMPIC ATHLETES BROUGHT HOME 121 MEDALS FROM RIO THIS SUMMER. THIS EDITION OF THE ALLIUM IS FULL OF BRONZE, SILVER, AND GOLD-WORTHY MATERIAL. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??

DIVE INTO THIS GOLDEN, CRISPY, ONION RING GOODNESS.

d COSMopolitan r e n

Tree Hugging Techniques Winter Sweepstakes: Enter to win a romantic weekend getaway to Thoreau’s cabin at

Walden Pond

Photo and Caption By Hannah Rosen

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Learn h susta ow to in nitrog your e night n cycle all long

10 new amendments to the National Environmental Policy Act that will make your head spin!

10 wild new log jam GREENIFY your pick-up lines! techniques to diversify you must be a garden, ‘cause I’m DIGGING you your riffle pools

FAMILIAR 50 QUIZ

Twitter Feed: Science Edition @doktormod:

1. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? a) Having a retirement party and EVERYONE is invited, but no bears. b) Trying to show my true color. c) Getting tired of everyone I hang out with.

2. What do you like to do in your free time? a) Eat and swim as much as I can. b) DRINK and get big.

Mostly a’s: Pacific Salmon You know you only have a few years, so you have to live every moment like there’s no tomorrow. You are a nomad and have left home, but you know you will always end up. The ocean is where you learn what life is really about, but you know home is where the river is.

Mostly b’s: Madrone Everyone knows who you are. You have a lot of siblings, but you strive to be the one that everyone remembers.

You can’t wait to shed your bark and show your red side.

c) Green, a guarantee that I can get fed.

Science is tricky, keeps you on your toes.

Oceanology? Study of oceans.

Meteorology? NOT ABOUT METEORS

An ex- @SilverVVulpes:

3. What is your favorite color?

b) Red – how I feel inside.

@AdamOfEarth:

Mineralogy? Study of minerals.

c) Hanging out with my fungus friends at the fungtion.

a) Pink! So I know when the ladies are ready ;).

“Stand up for myself? Get a spine? Dammit Karen! Its like you don’t even know what ‘invertebrate’ means!”

Mostly c’s: Lichen Your roommates Fungus and Cyanobacteria are constantly telling you that without them, you would be nowhere. It’s good to have supportive friends, but they can really get on your nerves. Especially when you’re stuck with them for the rest of their lives.

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I’m just sayin’, everyone that confuses correlation with causation eventually ends up dead…

@samknight

What if global warming *is* a hoax and we clean up our air and oceans, create millions of jobs, and become energy efficient for nothing?

@imdaintyaf:

You guys seriously haven’t lived until you’re capable of metabolism, growth, reproduction, and adaptation to your environment.

@johnbiehl: Alien: why should I not blow up this planet?

Human: we are an advanced species A: how do you travel?

H: we light old dinosaurs on fire

@emmkaff: Scientists: Don’t freak out about Ebola.

Everyone: *Panic!* Scientists: Freak out about climate change.

Everyone: LOL! Pass me some coal.

@TheToddWilliams [grocery produce aisle] ME: Hi, are theses genetically modified carrots? CLERK: No, why do you ask? CARROT: Yeah, why do you ask?

@AlexRogaski Biologist screws up: Mutant killer virus Physicist screws up: Deadly black hole Geologist screws up: Rock on table is now rock on floor

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | 39

By Melody Saysana, Photos: Wikimedia Commons

Wanted! DEAD OR ALIVE

If any of the above suspects are found, contact the Washington Invasive Species Council or your local noxious weed coordinator.

Its colors may look pretty, but don’t be fooled!

Purple Loosestrife has caused a lot of havoc throughout the United States, responsible for altering the structure of wetlands and negatively affecting waterfowl habitat. Like our friend the Himalayan blackberry, our friend “Petey” forms dense stands that can outcompete native plants for space and light. Even worse, pollinators are attracted to the the loosestrife over other native plants, reducing native diversity further.

“Scrubby” Scotch Broom - Cytisus scoparius The dreaded Scotch Broom has been accused of stealing the precious property of our beloved native species! Scotch Broom is ganging up in dense groups that degrade farmland and slow restoration of forest and wetland sites. These nasty guys are also producing toxic compounds that cause mild poisoning in animals and livestock who innocently mistaking it so a tasty treat.

Prevent spreading of this scoundrel! Wash any tools, clothing, or pets that have been exposed to infested areas. Scotch Broom is on the Washington Terrestrial Noxious Weed Seed and Plant Quarantine list - aka, the “bad” list. Do not dare to transport, buy, sell or distribute parts and seeds from this trickster!

Height: 3-12 feet Build: Narrow with angular brown branches, Complexion: Dark green leaves with hairy undersides, 1-inch long yellow flowers from March to June with flat pods Nationality: European, in the pea family Favorite Hangouts: Along roadsides and in open, dry meadows

By Megan Reich, Photos: Wikimedia Commons 40 | ELEMENTS

“Petey” Purple Loosestrife - Lythrum salicaria

Remove these plants from your garden, and refrain from planting! A Class B Noxious Weed in Washington, these guys originally arrived in America in the 1800s when settlers brought them for their gardens.

“Hillbilly” Himalayan Blackberry - Rubus armeniacus These little rascal thinks he’s all that, shading out smaller species from access to the sunlight they need to grow, replacing native diversity with a thorny monoculture. Those tasty berries? They act as a food source to other native mammals and birds here in the Pacific Northwest, like rats and the European Starling. Their nasty thorns trap helpless livestock in their grasp, decrease usable pasture, and block water sources for animals, farmers, and their livestock.

Control populations of this rogue fellow on your own property! Himalayan blackberries are a Class C noxious weed in Washington, meaning counties may or may not decide to implement education and control efforts… but it never hurts to go knock round and cut a few of these guys up. Just be sure to cut to the bttom of the stem and dig out that root!

Height: up to 15 feet Build: Shrub with thorny branches (He’s a trickster! Unlike native blackberries, its thorns and leaves are smaller straighter, and thinner).

Complexion: Evergreen leaves with 5 large oval leaflets, pinkish-white clustered flowers and purple, 1-inch long berries Nationality: Asian Favorites Hangouts: Haunts roadsides, riverbanks, parks, or other disturbed areas

Appearance Height: up to 6 feet tall Build: 4-5 feet wide, square stems Complexion: reddish-purple flowers, with spikes at the top of each stem, hairy lance-shaped leaves Nationality: European and Asian Favorite Hangouts: sunny wetlands, wet meadows, river and stream banks, pond edges, reservoirs, ditches. Because of its love for wet places, Purple loosestrife clogs waterways and irrigation systems, which can affect agricultural production and reduce livestock forage quality.

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | 41

CITATIONS The Age of Plastic Pollution and its Impact on Marine Birds (Floren) (1) Day, R. H., Coleman, F. C., Wehle, D. H. S. (1984). Ingestion of Plastic Pollutants by Marine Birds. Proceedings of the Workshop on the Fate and Impact of Marine Debris, 346.

(2) Terepocki, A. K., Brush, A. T., Kleine, L. U., Shugart, G. W., Hodum, P. (submitted). Size and Dynamics of Microplastic in Gastrointestinal Tracts of Northern Fulmars and Sooty Shearwaters. Marine Pollution Bulletin.

(3) Floren, H. P., Shugart, G. W. (submission in process).

Microplastic from Cassin’s auklets from the 2014 stranding along Washington coast. Marine Pollution Bulletin.

(4) Franecker, van J. A., Meijboom, A. (2002). Litter NSV, marine litter monitoring by Northern Fulmars: a pilot study.

Alterra-rapport, 21-22.

Modeling Ants on Uneven Terrain (Moreno) Moreno, M. (2016). Modeling ants on uneven terrain. Research poster.

Mercury Accumulation in the Red-tailed Hawk (Ulbricht) Ulbricht, L. (2016). Mercury accumulation in the red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) in the Pacific Northwest. Research poster.

The Effect of Synthetic Cathinone... (Goin) Goin, A. (2016). Effects of synthetic cathinone on GnRH neurons in zebrafish. Research Poster.

Live Data Compression... (Hirsch) Hirsch, R. (2016). Live data compression using word-aligned hybrid (WAH) algorithm. Research poster.

Purging in Mixed mating Populations... (Newsum) Newsum, T (2016). Purging in Mixed-Mating Populations of the Yellow Monkeyflower. Research poster.

Minocycline Antibiotic... (Herbertson) Herbertson, A. (2016). The antibiotic minocycline attenuates paraquat-induced locomotor deficits and its uptake into brain tissue in an animal model of Parkinson’s disease in bumblebees (Bombus impatiens). Research poster.

Dreams of Mars (Ralph) (1) “Constellation Program Lessons Learned.” Accessed August 29, 2016. http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs. nasa.gov/20110015803.pdf.

(2) Heimann, C. F. Larry. Acceptable Risks: Politics, Policy, and Risky Technologies. University of Michigan Press, 1997. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.14948.

(3) Logsdon, John M. “The Space Shuttle Program: A Policy Failure?” Science 232, no. 4754 (1986): 1099–1105.

(4) McDougall, Walter A. The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

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(5) Simberg, Rand. “Ending Apolloism.” Accessed September 5, 2016. http://transterrestrial.com/papers/EndingApolloism. pdf.

Save the Date: Upcoming Astronomical Events of 2017 (Johnson) (1) Zeiler M. (2016). Total solar eclipse of 2017. Total Sol Eclipse Aug 21 2017 Gt Am Eclipse.

(2) Union of Concernec Scientists. (2016). UCS Satellite Database.

Synthesis of Model Complex... (Berman) (1) Desguin, B., Zhang, T., Soumillion, P., Hols, P., Hu, J., Hausinger, R. P. (2015). Science, 349:66-69.

Paradox (Jenks) (1) Cantor, Georg. (1952). Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers. New York: Dover Publications.

Print.

(2) Russell, Bertrand. (1977). Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types. Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1905.

Ed. Robert Charles. Marsh. London: G. Allen & Unwin. Print.

(3) Chihara, Charles S. (1973). Ontology and the Vicious-circle Principle. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Print.

(4) Etchemendy, John, and Jon Barwise. (1987). The Liar: An Essay on Truth and Circularity. N.p.: Oxford UP. Print.

Wanted! Dead or Alive (Reich) (1) “Noxious Weeds Information and Services.” King County, WA. Web. http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/animalsand-plants/noxious-weeds.aspx. Accessed 31 October 2016.

(2) “Priority Species.” Washington Invasive Species Council, Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office. Web. http://www.invasivespecies.wa.gov/priorities.shtml.

Interested in writing or contributing art to Elements Magazine for our Spring 2017 issue? We are happy to work with a range of formats, including:

Journalism covering local and global issues

Reviews of recent research work (on campus or otherwise)

Conceptual or theoretical writing

Science culture Humor/satire Opinions

Visual art and poetry ...Get in touch with Elements (elements@pugetsound. edu) to beging planning, writing, and editing with us!

Back cover illustration by Kyrianna R Rayno UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | 43