Faculty

Jessica Haskins

March 1, 2023

Jessica Haskins

Answering fundamental questions about the chemistry that drives variability in air pollution formation & impacts climate.

There may not be a lot in common with Salt Lake City and Forsyth, GA, population 4,239, but Monroe County’s seat­­–other than being home to the county’s only high school­–does have a small community theater with the same name as one of Salt Lake City’s most notable venues: “The Rose.”

The Rose Theater

In Forsyth, the Rose Theater appears to stage family-friendly shows: “Four Weddings and An Elvis” closes in February. Later, this November 11th, there’s a single-night engagement that looks like an annual outing, “Hometown Gospel Sing.”

The theatre located on Forsyth’s town square is emblematic of the small-town life in which Jessica Haskins grew up before winning a full-ride, need-based scholarship to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And her move from rural Georgia to the east coast megalopolis was shocking for reasons other than just the differences in weather and academic rigor. "It was a punch in the face” says Haskins, “coming to MIT, and realizing that the experience of most Black Americans outside the southeast, particularly in STEM fields, is one where they often find themselves the only non-white person in the room.”

In fact, Haskins' time at Mary Persons High School was much more diverse than MIT, ranked at the time by the Princeton Review as the toughest school to get into. “None of the places I have worked at in the last 13 years since I graduated high school have come close to mirroring the racial and socioeconomic diversity I grew up thinking was the norm in all of America,” she says. “As such, it’s never been difficult for me to see the power of privilege and the persistence of systemic racism at every stage of the STEM pipeline as I progressed through it.”

Mary Persons High School

Now an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, Haskins is savvier about her own seemingly unlikely journey into higher education. More importantly, perhaps, she’s keenly aware of the challenges “first-gen” college students and other underrepresented populations still face, having to navigate hurdles referred to as the “hidden curriculum” of academia. The term refers to things a neophyte in the academic world should know to maximize their experience and success but doesn’t­. These are things that more privileged students tacitly understand or have been made aware of, like the norm of emailing potential professors to work with in graduate school before they submit their graduate applications or cluing into the notion that graduate students in STEM fields are often actually paid to go to school and do so without accruing debt from tuition.

Paying it Forward
Haskins’ unique perspective of these issues inspired her to use her second government stimulus check during the pandemic to fund a modest scholarship for an underrepresented minority student interested in pursuing an undergraduate STEM degree from her high school. This year, the scholarship went to Maleisha Jackson who is studying computer and robotics engineering at Kennesaw State University, located in north Georgia. “I think people really underestimate the impact that even receiving a 1,000 dollars can do for a student who needs it. I don’t know how I would have afforded a laptop and school supplies for my first year at MIT if I hadn’t received local scholarships like this one, and I want to pay that forward,” Haskins says.

Professor Susan Solomon

Fortunately, MIT treated Haskins well, brokering an “externship” with NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center and providing an opportunity to work with Professor Susan Solomon, a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient and a National Medal of Science winner awarded by the President. Solomon is best known for being the first to propose the chemical mechanism that is the cause of the Antarctic ozone hole. In the Solomon lab, the budding atmospheric scientist used MLS satellite data & balloon observations to explain fundamental chemical and meteorological differences that prohibit Arctic ozone loss from becoming as severe as Antarctic ozone loss, ultimately resulting in the publication of Haskins’ undergraduate research in the high impact journal, PNAS.

But even with the scholarship to MIT, Haskins required four years of Federal Pell grants and multiple campus jobs to make ends meet and says that even covering graduate application fees was difficult for her. When she was accepted to the University of Washington for graduate school, she was lucky enough to receive an ARCS Foundation fellowship she used to get herself cross-country to Seattle.

Compelling Challenges
Furnished with a PhD, she returned to MIT for a short stint as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow  before being hired by the U. Needless to say, it wasn’t for the theater that she and her wife moved to Utah’s capital city, but rather the unique (and to her, compelling) challenges facing the state, particularly the winter PM2.5 and summer ozone air quality issues impacting the Wasatch Front, especially during periodic weather “inversions” that trap emissions along the metropolitan valley. An expert in the chemistry of how chloride present in salt impacts air quality, particularly in the winter, Haskins noted, “there is no place in the United States that my research on air quality is more relevant to science and policy than it is in Salt Lake City."

Jessica Haskins

Haskins’ research group at the U is focused on understanding and accurately modeling heterogeneous and multiphase chemistry that transforms natural and anthropogenic (human-derived) gas phase emissions into aerosol particles. These particles make up a key component of smog known as particulate matter (PM2.5). It turns out that, globally, exposure to PM2.5 is the fifth greatest risk factor for death, ranking only behind tobacco use and several other factors related to obesity. But in addition to their impact on human health, these aerosols formed through chemical reactions in the atmosphere also have direct impacts on climate and the Earth’s temperature by reflecting and absorbing light.

Today, more episodes of unhealthy air quality in the U.S., including in Salt Lake City, are experienced in the winter rather than summer, pointing to a shift in the chemistry responsible for formation of secondary pollutants like PM2.5, and ozone. This chemical regime shift has the unintended consequence of rendering past policy solutions to summer air quality issues largely ineffective in the winter. The ineffectiveness left scientists and policy makers with questions about how well they understand the underlying chemistry and what the most effective means are to mitigate such issues now and in a changing world.  Haskins’ past and future research focuses on understanding this type of chemical shift through the lens of atmospheric chemistry with an eye towards understanding how future policy and climate solutions will impact the Earth’s temperature and air pollution formation.

Global Implications
The relevance of such research is not restricted to the intermountain west but has global implications. Large-population countries, like India and China, may have fewer interventions to maintain quality air such as EPA-recommended “scrubbers” on power plants, less stringent policies around automobile emissions and higher rates of open-air waste incineration. “I think what’s most exciting about the prospect of being here at the U,” says Haskins, “is the fact that what we learn about the drivers of variability in air pollution formation and how to control them here in Utah have a global relevance that can help inform policy makers in the East on the fastest and most effective ways to clean up their air quality.”

Haskins' interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of atmospheric science and chemistry and strives to deepen our understanding of the complex cascade of reactions between our emissions and atmospheric oxidants. Those oxidants control how long gases like methane stay in the atmosphere. It’s a gumbo of considerations that turns, for Haskins, on her understanding of concentrations of common atmospheric oxidants like OH, O3, NO3, and Cl radicals that are dependent on everything from atmospheric water vapor concentrations, exposure to sunlight, temperature, aerosol surface area, emissions of gases like NOx from combustion, etc. She notes that “these processes are challenging to measure and therefore challenging to represent in models, and much remains to be discovered!”

Perhaps unique to her approach is the determination to centralize, assimilate and “exploit” the data already collected from satellites, observation networks, aircraft campaigns, government records and relevant available datasets to improve models. “One of the largest looming challenges our field faces now and, in the future, will be connecting an ever-growing dataset of highly localized measurements to scientifically accurate, but computationally efficient representations in predictive global models,” Haskins has written.

A Lot of Data
All of those data sets along with new ones yet to be collected are key to improving the accuracy and speed of global models of atmospheric composition. “Drawing on my experience in both the measurement and modeling community, my research program will serve to bridge this already significant but growing gap between the data we have and the data we use to inform predictive models and decision makers. Basically, we have a lot of data, and I want to use it,” Haskins says.

The upcoming projects in her group include re-analyzing old measurements to extract new constraints for models, new applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence to atmospheric chemistry problems and integrating data from product databases, patent applications, and other public records. “We’re still catching up with being able to efficiently use data from a variety of sources beyond just measurements made by those of us in academia–especially when you consider how rapidly new computation methods like machine learning have evolved,” she states.  The application of artificial intelligence methods has only just begun to be applied to atmospheric chemistry problems, she explains, “but could greatly improve the speed and accuracy of our models.”

It's an exciting time to be an atmospheric scientist rooted in chemistry, and Jessica Haskins is looking forward to better understanding and communicating the relevant chemical drivers of variability in air pollution formation. But here in the high desert climate that has precious little in common with her Georgian home–except for that community theater thing–she is enthusiastic about building a diverse and collaborative research group in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the U and looks forward to preparing others for an auspicious career in science.

by David Pace

Research Funding

September 16, 2022

Research Funding Tops $686 Million

Growth of Research Funding

For the ninth year in a row, research funding at the University of Utah grew, totaling $686 million in fiscal year 2022, which ended on June 30. The total is a new record high for the university. The U achieved milestones of $600 million in funding the last two years and $500 million four years ago.

“Research is one of our key foundations of our university,” said Dr. Erin Rothwell, interim vice president for research. “Our students, faculty, staff and donors are continuously working together to bring solutions to some of the biggest challenges we face today as a society.”

As a member of the prestigious American Association University, the U is known for its diverse disciplines in medicines, science, social work, arts and more. This fiscal year, research grants were awarded to more than 18 colleges in diverse disciplines across campus.

Highlights from our research funding

From medicine to fine arts, research at the U spans across many studies, as growth in funding continues moving upward. The School of Medicine grew the most in funding dollars with $331 million, a 15% growth from the previous fiscal year. The College of Education has a 43% funding growth from FY2021, with $5.6 million in funding. The Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute saw an 88% growth, with $16 million in FY2021. In addition, the College of Fine Arts saw its total funding dollar grow to $1.8 million, a 23% funding growth from the previous year.

Sources of Federal Funding

Although these are some of the highlights, studies by our researchers from multiple disciplines were awarded research funding in data generation, parent-child relationships, cyberinfrastructure, and integrative health. Some of the many funding sponsors include the National Institutes of Health, the United States Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation.

U research’s impact on Utah’s economy

U research is a major contributor to our local economy. The institution has almost 8,000 employees who are compensated by research dollars.

“Research funding is not only helping make progress in the research itself, but also helping many Utahns personally and economically,” said Rothwell. “Over the last three years, research has supported $598 million in wages that contributes to the economic engine across the state of Utah.”

Economic Impact

Discovering solutions for a better future 

Thanks to its dedicated researchers and generous donors, the U continues to move forward in breaking new ground, innovating, and discovering solutions to issues that impact the global community.

“Research is all about helping people,” said Rothwell. “The continued growth of our university’s research funding shows that many are excited and want to be a part of the solutions to the issues we face locally, nationally and globally.”

University President Taylor Randall said the U’s goal of reaching $1 billion in research funding annually will help the institution strive toward an objective of becoming a top-10 public university.

“Research funding at the university has increased annually for the past nine years. This is the trajectory we need to be on to have unsurpassed societal impact,” said Randall. “Through the hard work and dedication of our research community, the U is positioning itself to be a major player in developing solutions to the world’s grand challenges like climate change, mental health, cancer and more.”

 - First Published in @theU

 

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E.D.I. Committee

August 8, 2022

Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Committee

The College of Science's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee promotes awareness and active practices to increase equity and inclusion on our campus, creating a welcoming environment for all members of our community.  The CoS EDI Committee is open to all students, staff, faculty, and postdocs in the college and meets 2-3 times per semester.

This is a forum for:

      • raising issues;
      • bringing forward solutions;
      • generating ideas for increasing access, inclusivity, and belonging; and
      • strengthening our community.

The EDI Executive Committee serves in an advisory role to the Dean of the College of Science, facilitates communication and sharing of information among units and coordination with institutional priorities, and also pursues college-level initiatives to improve experiences and opportunities for students, postdocs, faculty, and staff across the College.

2022-2023 CoS EDI Committee

Executive Committee

Pearl Sandick (chair), CoS
Mary Anne Berzins, CMES
Julie Hollien, SBS
Sean Lawley, Math
Shelley Minteer, Chemistry
Dan Wik, P&A

Members

You! Students
You! Staff
You! Postdocs
You! Faculty


To join the committee or be notified of CoS EDI events, please fill out the form below.

 

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Campus-wide EDI Events

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Distinguished Service

April 14, 2022

Distinguished Service

Pearl Sandick

Pearl Sandick receives Distinguished Service Award.

Pearl Sandick, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs for the College of Science, has received the Linda K. Amos Award for Distinguished Service to Women. The award recognizes Sandick’s contributions to improving the educational and working environment for women at the University of Utah. Amos was the founding chair of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, was a professor of nursing, and served for many years as Dean of the College of Nursing and as Associate Vice President for Health Sciences. Throughout her career, Amos was the champion for improving the status and experience of women on campus.

“This is a great honor. I’m privileged to work with amazing students and colleagues who understand the value of a supportive community,” said Sandick. “I am really proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, and I’m excited to start to see the impact of some more recent projects.”

Sandick is a theoretical particle physicist, studying some of the largest and smallest things in the universe, including dark matter, the mysterious stuff that gravitationally binds galaxies and clusters of galaxies together.

Upon her arrival as an assistant professor in 2011, Sandick founded the U’s first affinity group for women in physics and astronomy. For the last two decades, the national percentage of women physicists at the undergraduate level has hovered around 20%. The percentage at more advanced career stages has slowly risen to that level, thanks in part to supportive programming designed to increase retention. The goal of the affinity group within the department is to foster a sense of community and provide opportunities for informal mentoring and the exchange of information, ideas, and resources. The group has also been active in outreach and recruiting. As of fall 2021, the group is now known as PASSAGE, a more inclusive group focused on gender equity in physics and astronomy.

Within the department and in the College of Science, Sandick has improved a number of processes, including writing an effective practices document for faculty hires, based in large part on research related to equitable and inclusive recruitment practices and application review. As Associate Dean, she worked with the College of Science Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee (which she currently chairs) to create college-wide faculty hiring guidelines, which were adopted in 2020. She was also instrumental in several other structural and programmatic initiatives to create a supportive environment in the department, such as the development of a faculty mentoring program and the establishment of “ombuds liaisons” to connect department members with institutional resources.

Through her national service related to diversity and inclusion, Sandick has gained a variety of expertise that she has brought back to the campus community. For example, she has given workshops in the department, the college, and across campus on communication and negotiation, implicit bias, conflict management, and mentorship.

Here are comments from women in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, who have participated with Dr. Sandick in activities sponsored by PASSAGE:

“Being part of PASSAGE has allowed us to connect with others who share similar experiences in the department. It has also helped us connect with people, both within the university community and at other institutions, who have served as role models and mentors.” –Tessa McNamee and Callie Clontz, undergraduates

"PASSAGE became a lifeline during the pandemic and continues to be so. It helps equip members with the tools that they need in various aspects of academia. Professor Sandick makes it her mission to guide us, especially in a time of crisis. I am personally thankful to her and to all of the group members.” –Dr. Ayşegül Tümer, Postdoctoral Research Associate

In addition to her research, Sandick is passionate about teaching, mentoring, and making science accessible and exciting for everyone. She has been recognized for her teaching and mentoring work, with a 2016 University of Utah Early Career Teaching Award and a 2020 University of Utah Distinguished Mentor Award. In 2020, she also was named a U Presidential Scholar. As discussed earlier, women are still widely underrepresented in physics, and Sandick is actively involved in organizations that support recruitment, retention, and advancement of women physicists. She has served on the American Physical Society (APS) Committee on the Status of Women in Physics and as the chair of the National Organizing Committee for the APS Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics. She is currently chair of the APS Four Corners Section, which serves approximately 1,800 members from the region.

- by Michele Swaner, first published at physics.utah.edu

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Carbon Nanotubes

April 4, 2022

Carbon Nanotubes

Vikram Deshpande

Long carbon nanotubes reveal subtleties of quantum mechanics.

Vikram Deshpande had a hunch that carbon nanotubes held a lot of promise as a building block. He suspected that their unusual electrical and thermal properties and extraordinary strength could be modified for specific purposes by adding nanofabricated structures.

Working with nanotubes more than a micron long, the University of Utah physicist and his team found that the nanotubes held surprises, even without being adorned with those structural bells and whistles. “We started seeing all this richness in the data and had to investigate that before making the experiment more complicated,” Deshpande says. “Because they are only a nanometer or so in diameter, they are excellent playgrounds for studying the quantum mechanics of electrons in one dimension.”

But thin walls also mean little shielding. Impurities on the surface scatter electrons in the nanotube, and that initially prevented Deshpande from getting clean data.

His solution was to both clean the nanotubes and run his experiments in a DRY ICE 1.5K 70 mm cryostat made by ICEoxford. The UK-based company’s cryostat allows him to suspend nanotubes between supports and run a current through them. The nanotubes heat up to several hundred degrees, and the impurities are knocked off the surface.

ICEoxford cryogenic equipment.

The setup is cooled by pumped helium-4 at around 1.5 K, which is important, says Deshpande. “A lot of cryogenic equipment is vacuum-based, but the heat injected into the nanotube has no way out except along the tube, which is very ineffective.” Another boon is the fact that the cryostat is top loading so it’s easy to access. Within 12 hours of installing a new sample, the entire system is cooled and ready for testing.

With a good nanotube in place and thoroughly clean, Deshpande applies voltage to inject electrons and explore their quantum behavior.

A major influence on electron behavior inside the nanotube is the quality of the end contacts. The electrons travel unimpeded within the tube, known as the ballistic regime. But the ease at which they can escape the tube affects their behavior radically.

Using low-conductivity contacts, Deshpande’s team measured the energy required to add individual electrons to the tube. Subtle changes in the energy showed that the electrons were falling into an ordered pattern called a Wigner crystal—effectively a solid made of pure electrons—which occurs only at very low density. “Lower electron density is obtained with longer lengths, which make our experimental signature possible,” Deshpande says. His team reported their results in Physical Review Letters (volume 123, page 197701, 2019).

Last year the team published another paper in Physical Review Letters (volume 126, page 216802, 2021) with results from high-conductance contacts. They found the electrons’ wave-functions spread along the tube, creating quantum interference, analogous to light in an interferometer. There was not only interference similar to the Fabry-Perot effect between electrons bouncing back and forth, but also a more subtle interference caused by slight variations in the nanotubes, such as chirality. “These are exquisite measurements of delicate quantum effects that we can only see because our long nanotubes accumulate measurable phase difference between these modes,” Deshpande says.

He has also made use of the DRY ICE cryostat’s ability to apply magnetic fields up to 9 teslas. “If you thought the data so far were rich, you should see what happens in a magnetic field!” he says.

Phil Dooley is a freelance writer and former laser physicist based in Canberra, Australia.

 

- by Phil Dooley, first published in Physics Today

 

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IF/THEN Ambassador

March 16, 2022

IF/THEN Ambassador

Janis Louie

IF/THEN is designed to activate a culture shift among young girls to open their eyes to STEM careers.

The august statuary of Washington, D.C. will soon include a University of Utah chemistry professor. A 3D-printed statue of Janis Louie will stand with 119 other statues of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in and around the National Mall from March 5-27.

The exhibit places Louie among the largest collection of statues of women ever assembled, according to the Smithsonian Institution, and celebrates the participants in the IF/THEN Ambassador program that is “designed to activate a culture shift among young girls to open their eyes to STEM careers,” according to the initiative’s website.

“I hope visitors feel inspired, encouraged and empowered,” says Louie. “For me, the exhibit is meant to show that STEM isn’t for one type of person, STEM is for everyone!”

Inspiring a Generation

The IF/THEN Ambassador Program is sponsored by Lyda Hill Philanthropies as part of the IF/THEN initiative. The initiative aims to “advance women in STEM by empowering current innovators and inspiring the next generation of pioneers.”

The Ambassadors program is a part of that initiative, and assembled high-profile women in STEM to act as role models for middle school-age girls. Ambassadors received media and communications training and then engaged in outreach work nationally.

Dr. Louie and family.

After selection in 2019, Louie traveled to a three-day conference with the other Ambassadors. “It was amazing!” she says. “It is the only conference I have ever been to that was 100% female scientists!”

It was a diverse group. “The featured women hail from a variety of fields,” she says, “from protecting wildlife, discovering galaxies and building YouTube’s platform to trying to cure cancer.”

Later, Louie appeared on an episode CBS’ Mission Unstoppable to draw connections between chemistry and the world around us. She also pitched in when another Ambassador’s summer STEM camp needed to go online with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“She asked a variety of the Ambassadors to present to the girls over Zoom, so that the STEM camp could still be impactful,” Louie says. “I was delighted to be one of the presenters!”

Meeting her statue

The process of creating the 120 statues was very different from the traditional sculpture techniques that created the hundreds of other statues in Washington, D.C. At the initial conference, Louie and the other Ambassadors each took a turn being digitally scanned in a booth with 89 cameras and 25 projectors so that the statues could later be 3D printed. (Learn more about the process of creating the exhibit here.)

When completed, the orange statues appeared in Dallas and New York City before the full exhibit was first unveiled in Dallas, Texas in May 2021. Washington, D.C. is the exhibition’s second stop.

Louie and her family traveled to Dallas to see her statue.

“It was surreal, in the best way!” she says, of meeting her doppelgänger.  “My children were able to see not only myself but a field of orange statues of women pioneers—and I was thanked by someone visiting the exhibit for making a difference.”

Meet the other Ambassadors featured in the exhibit here.

 

by Paul Gabrielsen, first published in @theU

 

Photos courtesy of the IF/THEN® Collection

 

Student Spotlights

Luke Reuschel

Anna Tang

Jessica Venegas

Melissa Hardy

Amir Hosseini

Ty Mellor

Sage Blackburn

Research Scholar

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ASBMB Fellow

March 1, 2022

2022 ASBMB Fellow

Vahe Bandarian

Vahe Bandarian, professor of chemistry, has been named a 2022 fellow of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB).

“Fellows are recognized for their contributions to the ASBMB, as well as meritorious efforts to advance the molecular life sciences through sustained outstanding accomplishments in areas such as scientific research, diversity, education, mentorship and service to the scientific community,” according to the ASBMB.

Bandarian’s research interests are “centered in developing molecular level understanding of biosynthesis of complex natural products.” Specifically, he and his colleagues have studied how queuosine, a component of transfer RNA, is synthesized and used by organisms. He also studies how enzymes participate in complex chemical reactions.

A nominator wrote that Bandarian’s career displays “example after example of newly discovered chemistry, newly discovered enzymes and biochemical mysteries solved.”

He serves on the Minority Affairs Committee, the Women in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Committee and the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Bandarian is the second U faculty member to be named an ASBMB Fellow. Wesley Sundquist, distinguished professor of biochemistry, was a part of the inaugural class of fellows in 2021.

The fellows will be recognized in April at the 2022 ASBMB Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

 

Story originally published in @theU

Extraordinary Black Hole

January 31, 2022

A Different Kind of Black Hole

Astronomers discovered a black hole unlike any other. At one hundred thousand solar masses, it is smaller than the black holes we have found at the centers of galaxies but bigger than the black holes that are born when stars explode. This makes it one of the only confirmed intermediate-mass black holes, an object that has long been sought by astronomers.

Anil Seth

“We have very good detections of the biggest, stellar-mass black holes up to 100 times the size of our sun, and supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies that are millions of times the size of our sun, but there aren’t any measurements of black between these. That’s a large gap,” said senior author Anil Seth, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Utah and co-author of the study. “This discovery fills the gap.”

The black hole was hidden within B023-G078, an enormous star cluster in our closest neighboring galaxy Andromeda. Long thought to be a globular star cluster, the researchers argue that B023-G078 is instead a stripped nucleus. Stripped nuclei are remnants of small galaxies that fell into bigger ones and had their outer stars stripped away by gravitational forces. What’s left behind is a tiny, dense nucleus orbiting the bigger galaxy and at the center of that nucleus, a black hole.

“Previously, we’ve found big black holes within massive, stripped nuclei that are much bigger than B023-G078. We knew that there must be smaller black holes in lower mass stripped nuclei, but there’s never been direct evidence,” said lead author Renuka Pechetti of Liverpool John Moores University, who started the research while at the U. “I think this is a pretty clear case that we have finally found one of these objects.”

The study published on Jan. 11, 2022, in The Astrophysical Journal.

A decades-long hunch

B023-G078 was known as a massive globular star cluster—a spherical collection of stars bound tightly by gravity. However, there had only been a single observation of the object that determined its overall mass, about 6.2 million solar masses. For years, Seth had a feeling it was something else.

“I knew that the B023-G078 object was one of the most massive objects in Andromeda and thought it could be a candidate for a stripped nucleus. But we needed data to prove it. We’d been applying to various telescopes to get more observations for many, many years and my proposals always failed,” said Seth. “When we discovered a supermassive black hole within a stripped nucleus in 2014, the Gemini Observatory gave us the chance to explore the idea.”

A wide-field image of M31 with the red box and inset showing the location and image of B023-G78 where the black hole was found.

With their new observational data from the Gemini Observatory and images from the Hubble Space Telescope, Pechetti, Seth and their team calculated how mass was distributed within the object by modeling its light profile. A globular cluster has a signature light profile that has the same shape near the center as it does in the outer regions. B023-G078 is different. The light at the center is round and then gets flatter moving outwards. The chemical makeup of the stars changes too, with more heavy elements in the stars at the center than those near the object’s edge.

“Globular star clusters basically form at the same time. In contrast, these stripped nuclei can have repeated formation episodes, where gas falls into the center of the galaxy, and forms stars. And other star clusters can get dragged into the center by the gravitational forces of the galaxy,” said Seth. “It’s kind of the dumping ground for a bunch of different stuff. So, stars in stripped nuclei will be more complicated than in globular clusters. And that’s what we saw in B023-G078.”

The researchers used the object’s mass distribution to predict how fast the stars should be moving at any given location within the cluster and compared it to their data. The highest velocity stars were orbiting around the center. When they built a model without including a black hole, the stars at the center were too slow compared their observations. When they added the black hole, they got speeds that matched the data. The black hole adds to the evidence that this object is a stripped nucleus.

“The stellar velocities we are getting gives us direct evidence that there’s some kind of dark mass right at the center,” said Pechetti. “It’s very hard for globular clusters to form big black holes. But if it’s in a stripped nucleus, then there must already be a black hole present, left as a remnant from the smaller galaxy that fell into the bigger one.”

The researchers are hoping to observe more stripped nuclei that may hold more intermediate-mass black holes. These are an opportunity to learn more about the black hole population at the centers of low-mass galaxies, and to learn about how galaxies are built up from smaller building blocks.

“We know big galaxies form generally from the merging of smaller galaxies, but these stripped nuclei allow us to decipher the details of those past interactions,” said Seth.

Other authors include Sebastian Kamann of the Liverpool John Moores University; Nelson Caldwell, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Jay Strader, Michigan State University; Mark den Brok, Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam; Nora Luetzgendorf, European Space Agency; Nadine Neumayer, Max Planck Institüt für Astronomie; and Karina Voggel, Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg.

- by Lisa Potter, published in @theU and the Deseret News

 

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Of Mice and Monarchs

January 20, 2022

Of Mice and Monarchs

Sara Weinstein, Postdoctoral Researcher

Monarch butterflies possess a potent chemical armor. As caterpillars, they eat plants filled with toxic cardenolides that build up in their bodies and make them unpalatable to most—but not all—predators. In central Mexico, where the largest winter monarch aggregations occur, scientists observed that rodents attack monarchs that fall to the ground. In particular, the black-eared mouse (Peromyscus melanotis) specializes in these bitter-tasting insects, eating as many as 40 per night.

In a new study, University of Utah biologists found that mice at California monarch overwintering sites can also consume monarch butterflies. Working at one of the largest monarch aggregations outside of Mexico, Pismo State Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove, the researchers discovered that the western harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys megalotis) also ate the grounded monarchs. However, with the precipitous decline in western monarch populations, this butterfly buffet may be in jeopardy.

A harvest mouse munching on a monarch.

The authors do not think that rodents are contributing to the western monarch decline, nor that the monarchs are the only thing that mice can eat. Rather, documenting this new feeding behavior is a reminder of how little we know about the interactions that may be lost as insect populations decline.

“We are in an insect apocalypse right now. There are estimates that 40% of studied invertebrate species are threatened and that over 70% of flying insect biomass is already gone. This is devastating on its own and is also going to have enormous impacts on the other organisms that feed on insects,” said Sara Weinstein, the postdoctoral researcher who led the study.

“Western monarchs and other western butterflies need conservation attention and part of that awareness-raising is illuminating the many ways these animals are interconnected to other insects, birds, mammals, as well as our human communities. This study helps us appreciate more deeply how fewer butterflies means less food for other native animals” said Emma Pelton, senior conservation biologist at the Xerces Society.

Weinstein with a lab-reared monarch.

The study published in the journal Ecology on Dec. 12, 2021.

To study mouse-monarch interactions, the researchers first trapped rodents in the grove in February 2020. The rodents were released, but their feces were kept to screen for monarch DNA—which they found in one sample. This first survey occurred in late winter as monarchs were leaving the aggregation and few remained for mice to munch. Weinstein and colleagues intended to return the following fall during peak monarch season. However, after years of decline, the western monarch population crashed.

“At a site where 100,000 butterflies used to roost, in 2020 there where were fewer than 200 monarchs. So, we had to change tactics,” Weinstein said. “We tested whether rodents would feed on the butterflies using captive-reared monarchs.”

Weinstein set up lab-reared monarch carcasses under camera traps and captured footage of wild harvest mice eating butterflies. She also caught a half dozen mice and offered them monarchs. The mice ate monarchs, typically favoring the abdomen or thorax, high-calorie parts with fewer toxins.

“Many rodent species are likely to have some resistance to cardenolides in monarchs, due to genetic changes at the site where these toxins bind,” said Weinstein. “The Pismo Grove is one of hundreds of western monarch aggregation sites, and it seems likely that, at least in the past, rodents throughout the western monarch range may have supplemented their winter diets with monarchs. If you can handle the cardenolides in a monarch, their bodies are full of fat and offer a pretty good meal.”

Animation of mouse eating a butterfly.

Mouse eating an entire monarch butterfly.

This meal will be a lot harder to find, as over 90% of western monarchs have disappeared in the last 40 years. The missing beauties will surely impact the ecosystem that depends on them for food.

Denise Dearing, Distinguished Professor at the U, was senior author of the study. Photos and animations by Sara Weinstein.

Find the study, “Harvest mice (Reithrodontomys megalotis) consume monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), in the journal Ecology: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3607

 

by Lisa Potter, first published in @theU

 

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James Webb Space Telescope

January 4, 2022

James Webb Space Telescope

In December 2020 the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) finally launched. The $10 billion observatory is a twenty-year joint effort of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, and the most powerful telescope ever developed. Its mission—peer 13.5 billion lightyears back in time to the earliest stages of the universe.

Anil Seth

JWST’s launch date was December 25 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Longtime fans of the telescope are celebrating it as a Christmas miracle. It was the first planned to launch in 2007, but decades of delays and false hope drove the project from its initial budget of $500 million up to its current $10 billion cost.

You can watch recorded launch video and future NASA livestreams at  https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive.

The stakes are high for Anil Seth, associate professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. Out of more than 1,000 proposals for observation time on the telescope, Seth’s is one of 266 that were approved. He spoke with AtTheU to talk about this cosmic milestone.

What is the James Webb Space Telescope?

It is the largest and most powerful telescope that we’ve ever sent into space—the primary mirror is about the size of a typical house. It’s really big compared to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has a primary mirror the size of a bedroom. Hubble uses the ultraviolet and visible light to create jaw-dropping images of deep space that fundamentally changed our understanding of the cosmos. JWST will be much, much, much farther away than Hubble, located almost one million miles from Earth. From there, it can detect the faintest traces of infrared light, the wavelength of light emitted by everything that produces heat.

NASA assembly, July 2017

The telescope’s primary power is to detect faint galaxies far, far away. It’ll be able to pick up the infrared light spectrum of planets, newly forming stars, black holes, and other faint objects in ways that we’ve never been able to before. Almost every astronomer is probably going to want to use JWST for something. We saw so much using the Hubble Space Telescope. With JWST, we’ll be able to see more than we can imagine. It’s very exciting.

The launch date has been pushed back several times including once this week. Is the telescope launch tricker then usual?

The size makes it really hard to launch. The telescope has three big segments—a sunshield the size of a tennis court, the house-sized primary mirror, and the secondary mirror, Right now, it’s all packaged up like a Christmas present to fit inside the rocket. After launch, the segments will begin to unfold. It’s a complicated process involving hundreds of steps that have to work perfectly. This has never been done before—one error and the whole project could fail. That’s why people are so stressed out!

Where will JWST orbit in space?

It’s going to orbit the sun almost one million miles away from Earth. It will live at what is called a Lagrange point, a location where gravity from the earth and sun are equal. And will just sit there, orbiting with the Earth around the sun. This ensures that the telescope will always point away from the sun.

Full-scale model, September 2005

Anything warm emits infrared light—stars, humans, every other thing on Earth. To make an infrared-detecting telescope, the equipment needs to be extremely cold, so its heat doesn’t interfere with infrared readings from space. That’s what the sun shield is for. The massive mylar sail will create a shadow that prevents the telescope from absorbing heat. The sunshade will begin to unfurl a week after launch, starting with 107 release mechanisms that have to fire simultaneously. The sun shield will then always be between the telescope and sun, keeping the telescope really cold. If this doesn’t happen right…it’ll be bad.

JWST’s location also provides a wide-open view for observations. The Hubble space telescope orbits the Earth just over 300 miles up, which means the planet sometimes blocks the telescope’s vision as it orbits the earth every 90 minutes. At JWST’s Lagrange position, it’s much easier to keep a single orientation in the sky for a longer time and to make observations constantly. So we’ll end up getting more data each year from JWST than from Hubble.

You will be one of the first astronomers to get observation time on the JWST. Can you tell us about your research?

I study black holes. Every black hole has stuff falling onto it that emits light. It turns out that a lot of that light gets emitted at infrared wavelengths. This telescope is much, much, more sensitive to those wavelengths than any other previous telescope. The problem is that we’ve never seen what a faint black hole looks like at these wavelengths.

The Andromeda Galaxy, approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth.

I’m leading a project that will look at places where we know black holes exist, because we’ve measured them from the motions of the stars around them, but that are very faint. These are so much fainter than something like a quasar, which is where the black hole is devouring as much material as it can. The black holes I’m interested in are just sipping their material, and they’re much more typical of the average black hole in the universe. We’re basically looking unique signatures in this wavelength spectrum that will tip us off to a black hole is present. One of the objects we’ll focus on is the first one ever photographed.

- by Lisa Potter, first published at @theU

 

NASA J.W.S.T. VIDEO

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