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Research at Boston University 2003
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Deadly Duo |
What do aging and cancer prevention have in common? According to work by Professor Barbara Gilchrest, both result from a mechanism that swings into action when a specific repeated sequence of DNA bases is detected in a cell. |
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Engineering Better Medicine |
Jim Collins is well known for applying engineering tools to biological problems and arriving at creative and effective solutions. In fact, this work won him a 2003 MacArthur "Genius" Award. |
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Green Enough? |
| Earth has grown significantly greener over the past 20 years, according to a recent investigation by Ranga Myneni, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of geography, and coinvestigators. |
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Watching Memory Work |
| Translating a sentence from an unfamiliar language or figuring a math problem in your head relies on working memory — the capacity to keep information in memory while using the information. At BU’s new Center for Memory and the Brain, several scientists are studying how this memory process operates. |
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Quantum Leap |
| Researchers at the College of Engineering have added a new twist to a three-dimensional diagnostic imaging technique known as optical coherence tomography (OCT). This technology is widely used in ophthalmology and in creating cross-section images of biological tissue for noninvasive optical biopsy. |
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Radical Research |
| Tom Tullius, a chemistry professor and chairman of the chemistry department, is interested in how DNA repair is initiated. In particular, he has focused on how a single strand break -- a single missing base and sugar on one of the two strands -- is detected. |
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Building Brain Power |
| It remains a mystery how humans, with roughly the same number of genes as, for instance, puffer fish, are able to develop the complex brain that characterizes our species. James Deshler, an assistant professor of biology, suspects that the answer may lie not in the types and numbers of genes, but in how human cells regulate the synthesis of proteins (gene products). |
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Surf's Up |
| A team of scientists led by Larry Kepko, a research associate at the Center for Space Physics, combined observations from NASA’s Polar and Wind Satellites as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite to better understand how
electrons in earth’s Van Allen belt, believed to surf magnetic waves driven by the solar wind, are generated. |
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Springing into Motion |
| Many children with cerebral palsy (CP) develop a typical walking pattern that incorporates their disability. They employ the stiffness of the affected leg as a kind of vertical spring, or pogo stick, and the nonaffected leg as a pendulum to propel themselves foward. Although this adaptation allows the child to walk, says Ken Holt, an associate professor of physical therapy and director of the program in movement and rehabilitation sciences at Sargent College, it is not an ideal solution. |
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Growing Things |
| Research by Anna Hull (GRS’02), a doctoral student in the laboratory of John Celenza, assistant biology professor, and collaborators from the Salk Institute and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has shed new light on the process of plants adapting to their environments.
Hull and her colleagues, working with the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana, identified two cytochrome P450 enzymes, encoded by two genes they had previously identified in the species, and demonstrated the critical role they play in auxin synthesis. |
With a record number of outstanding presentations, Science and Technology Day 2003 demonstrated the excellence of graduate student research across all the sciences, mathematics, and engineering disciplines.
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