California oil spill: Disaster researcher shares field experience during BP oil spoil
University of Delaware
Chemical engineer Catherine Fromen has been awarded a $2 million federal grant to study how medicines overcome mucosal barriers in the body, such as in the lungs or the gut. “Think about vaccines … if we can better understand how to deliver medicines to treat cells directly at the site, it will be even better than getting a shot in the arm,” Fromen said.
Worms lose their wiggle when they get Alzheimer’s disease, but UD researchers found that worms fed a diet of E. coli with higher levels of vitamin B12 were given a layer of protection from the dreaded degenerative brain disease
University of Delaware materials scientist Xinqiao Jia has received a combined $4.85 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research to develop new approaches in tissue engineering. Jia and colleagues will explore ways to regenerate salivary glands damaged by radiation therapy for head and neck cancers. She also will focus on understanding what causes damage or scarring to vocal folds, the pliable tissue that enables our ability to talk.
University of Delaware chemists have discovered an efficient and sustainable way to produce iron-based metal organic framework (MOF) materials directly using renewable electricity at room temperature. Previously, MOFs—which have applications as catalysts, sensors and for gas storage—were typically produced using processes that required high heat and high pressure.
Arthi Jayaraman leads a computational materials research lab as a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and materials science at UD. She has recently been honored by professional societies in three different disciplines, recognizing her work and its value in the fields of physics, chemistry and engineering.
Anjana Bhat, associate professor in the University of Delaware’s Department of Physical Therapy, has been awarded a research project (R01) grant through the National Institutes of Health for the next three years.
A little understood species of shark, known for taking cookie cutter-shaped bites out of everything from white sharks and whales to the rubber coated sonar sensors on submarines and even underwater electrical cables, is the subject of a new study.
Children are wildly over scheduled being rushed from this lesson to that practice, on top of academic preparation. UD researchers speak to the value of unstructured play that teaches skills such as creativity and self-direction.
A tally by the authors of the book Olympic Television: Broadcasting the Biggest Show on Earth found women athletes received the majority of the coverage within the 17 nights of NBC’s Tokyo Summer Olympic primetime broadcast.
Earthquakes shake and rattle the world every day.
Instead of simply employing the practice of multiple cropping — producing crops multiple times during the year and not just in one growing season — a new study led by the University of Delaware’s Pinki Mondal shows that smallholder farmers in India should instead look toward different nutrition strategies. These strategies can be on the individual level, such as growing more diverse crops for personal consumption in their home gardens, or on a community-level, where individuals would work with their local communities and arrange to have farmers bring in different vegetables each week to the local markets.
A new study by UD researcher Julie Maresca and her students found that even in a harsh concrete habitat, bacterial communities can survive, thrive and do what all living things do—change. Bacterial communities within concrete could provide early warning of alkali-silica reactions that degrade concrete but are difficult to detect. Typically, these reactions are only recognized when cracks are forming in the concrete. Bacteria may also have the potential to provide “biorepair” of concrete.
A recent study by University of Delaware researchers suggests exercise can boost kids’ vocabulary growth. The article, published in the Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, details one of the first studies on the effect of exercise on vocabulary learning in children.
Similar to the election needle and the stock market index, scientists have developed a new tracking system to detect danger to rainforests around the world. The data to build the index was culled from advanced satellite measurements of climate and vegetation of each tropical region on Earth.
University of Delaware’s Aditya Kunjapur, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and an emerging leader in biosecurity with expertise in teaching cells to create and harness chemical building blocks not found in nature, is the lead author of a new paper published in Science Advances that describes progress on the stability of a biocontainment strategy that uses a microbe’s dependence on a synthetic nutrient to keep it contained.
In a new issue of Science, devoted to the plastics problem, University of Delaware researchers LaShanda Korley and Thomas Epps, III, join collaborators in calling for new approaches to plastics design, production and use, with the goal of keeping plastics out of landfills and waterways, reusing the valuable resources they represent indefinitely in a “circular” plastics economy.
With a $2.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), UD Professor Eleftherios (Terry) Papoutsakis is developing a system to produce bioenergy from a mix of microbes that can convert carbon dioxide into useful chemicals.
Climate change will shape the future of coastal communities, with flood walls, elevated structures and possibly floating cities used to combat sea level rise. New research has found that managed retreat must be part of the solution now, and not a last resort.
The new book "All Creatures Safe and Sound" examines how pets are managed during disasters and provides tips for keeping them safe. Sarah DeYoung, core faculty in the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center, talks about previous studies and the work that still needs to be addressed.
A new study published in Nature Food quantifies for the first time the impact that double-cropping had on helping Brazil achieve its national grain boom. The University of Delaware's Jing Gao was a co-author on the study that included collaborators from institutions in China and Brazil.
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Chair and professor in the School of Education (SOE) and in the departments of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware, has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Education.
Iva Obrusnikova, an associate professor in the Department of Behavioral Health and Nutrition, has been selected as a Fellow with the International Federation of Adapted Physical Activity (IFAPA). The IFAPA Fellows Recognition Program recognizes and promotes outstanding accomplishments in scholarship and service by IFAPA members.
Travel experts predict a strong summer tourism season fueled by pent-up demand and eased COVID-19 restrictions. But increased bookings and revenue for restaurants will depend on continued success with controlling the pandemic and the ability of businesses to find labor.
University of Delaware’s Swati Singh is among a small group of researchers across the dark matter community that have begun to wonder if they are looking for the right type of dark matter. Singh, Jack Manley, a UD doctoral student, and collaborators at the University of Arizona and Haverford College, have proposed a new way to look for the particles that might make up dark matter by repurposing existing tabletop sensor technology.
Vaccine distribution, stimulus checks and reopenings have helped to revitalize the economy in the face of the pandemic. But challenges remain, including vaccine reluctance, inflation and the capital gains tax, says University of Delaware economist Jim Butkiewicz.
Industrial fleets from countries around the world have been increasingly fishing in African waters, but with climate change and increasing pollution threatening Africa’s fish stocks, there is a growing concern of the sustainability of these marine fisheries if they continue to be exploited by foreign countries.
Researchers at the University of Delaware’s Center for Plastics Innovation (CPI) have developed a process called hydrocracking to convert single-use plastic waste into ready-to-use molecules for jet fuels, diesel and lubricants. The process requires 50% less energy than other technologies and doesn’t add carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And it can treat a variety of plastics, even when they are mixed together.
A new study suggests the white shark population for the eastern north Pacific, especially those listed in the Gulf of California, might be underestimated. Researchers found that the mortality rates for these white sharks might be underestimated as well, as an illicit fishery for the species was uncovered in the Gulf of California, suggesting that fishers were killing many more white sharks than has been previously understood.
As Earth Day approaches, a promising startup that grew out of University of Delaware research is on the cusp of making sustainable green hydrogen a reality. Versogen, a UD spinoff company led by Professor Yushan Yan, is one of three startups selected for the fourth cohort of the Shell GameChanger Accelerator (GCxN) program.
David C. Martin, the Karl W. and Renate Böer Chaired Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, has been named a 2021 Fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS) “for the design, synthesis, and characterization of conjugated polymers for interfacing electronic biomedical devices with living tissue; and for service to the MRS and broader materials community.”
Just as the beneficial bacteria living in yogurt and sauerkraut are good for your gut, tiny organisms living in the soil help plants and intense research is underway on natural “probiotic” soil treatments containing living microorganisms. Developers of these products have been including multiple species of beneficial bacteria in their formulations, aiming to boost crop growth and yield. But new research from the University of Delaware suggests these selections must be made very carefully, because not all good bacteria get along.
Researchers monitored the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted food purchasing, pantry management and food waste and shaped our concerns about environmental regulatory changes and virus transmission. They found that the food system is a lot more fragile than previously thought.
The discovery of a new gene linked to eye disorders of cataract and small or reduced eye tissue at the University of Delaware has earned a four-year grant to support further work exploring the role of the gene, Elav11 and its partners in eye development.
University of Delaware researchers William Shafarman (left) and Jeremy Firestone each will lead new studies, each supported by $2 million in new grants from the U.S. Department of Energy. Shafarman, director of UD’s Institute of Energy Conversion, will focus on solar panel manufacturing and efficiency. Firestone, director of UD’s Center for Research in Wind, will look at factors that affect consumers’ decisions about solar rooftop panels and/or electric vehicles.
Dawn Elliott, Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware, has won an $11.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the Delaware Center for Musculoskeletal Research -- an NIH-designated Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE). From tendonitis to osteoarthritis, the center will focus on uncovering what happens at the cellular level when injuries and inflammation occur and will test potential therapeutic interventions.
The University of Delaware's Donald Sparks, a global leader in environmental soil chemistry for more than 30 years, has won the 2021 Philippe Duchaufour Medal given by the European Geosciences Union.