Digital Books and Flying Cars

Peter Brantley discusses the wild and chaotic publishing environment of today, and why actions of publishers are rational, even as they threaten to destroy traditional models of library book lending.University Libraryhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90428/1/orgfieldsbook-ii-120314073914-phpapp01.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90428/2/1331733641-657-O.mov-

Cooperative approach in GPS training

As Global Positioning System (GPS) technology becomes more commonly used in many aspects of natural resource management, the need for education and training in this area has also increased. However, the high cost of the equipment and the high level of technical knowledge required has been a barrier to including GPS in forestry and other natural resources curricula. This fall the forest technology program at Penn State-Mont Alto and the Bartlett Tree Experts Company collaborated on a two-day training session in GPS using Trimble receivers and data collectors. Ten students and faculty from Mont Alto and ten Bartlett personnel participated in the program. The first day of field procedures and data processing was taught by a Trimble-certified trainer. The second day consisted of training by Bartlett Tree Research Laboratory staff in Bartlett’s tree inventory system and management plan writing. As a practical project over 400 trees in the campus’s arboretum were inventoried with the Bartlett tree inventory and appraisal system. The workshop was mutually beneficial to both groups. Bartlett was able to train its personnel in a well-equipped computer lab and typical landscaped environment on campus. The university students used the latest equipment and were able to get career and practical insights from arborists employing the technology in the field. The combined efforts of all the participants in the tree inventory facilitated a long-standing need in the arboretum’s management. Sharing resources in joint training exercises such as this one provides a realistic teaching opportunity in a time of budget restraint

Lithocholic Acid Is an Eph-ephrin Ligand Interfering with Eph-kinase Activation

Eph-ephrin system plays a central role in a large variety of human cancers. In fact, alterated expression and/or de-regulated function of Eph-ephrin system promotes tumorigenesis and development of a more aggressive and metastatic tumour phenotype. In particular EphA2 upregulation is correlated with tumour stage and progression and the expression of EphA2 in non-trasformed cells induces malignant transformation and confers tumorigenic potential. Based on these evidences our aim was to identify small molecules able to modulate EphA2-ephrinA1 activity through an ELISA-based binding screening. We identified lithocholic acid (LCA) as a competitive and reversible ligand inhibiting EphA2-ephrinA1 interaction (Ki = 49 µM). Since each ephrin binds many Eph receptors, also LCA does not discriminate between different Eph-ephrin binding suggesting an interaction with a highly conserved region of Eph receptor family. Structurally related bile acids neither inhibited Eph-ephrin binding nor affected Eph phosphorylation. Conversely, LCA inhibited EphA2 phosphorylation induced by ephrinA1-Fc in PC3 and HT29 human prostate and colon adenocarcinoma cell lines (IC50 = 48 and 66 µM, respectively) without affecting cell viability or other receptor tyrosine-kinase (EGFR, VEGFR, IGFR1β, IRKβ) activity. LCA did not inhibit the enzymatic kinase activity of EphA2 at 100 µM (LANCE method) confirming to target the Eph-ephrin protein-protein interaction. Finally, LCA inhibited cell rounding and retraction induced by EphA2 activation in PC3 cells. In conclusion, our findings identified a hit compound useful for the development of molecules targeting ephrin system. Moreover, as ephrin signalling is a key player in the intestinal cell renewal, our work could provide an interesting starting point for further investigations about the role of LCA in the intestinal homeostasis

Ideas and perspectives: strengthening the biogeosciences in environmental research networks

Many scientific approaches are improving our understanding and management of the rapidly changing environment. Long-term environmental research networks are one approach to advancing local, regional, and global environmental science and education. A remarkable number and wide variety of environmental research networks operate around the world today. These are diverse in funding, infrastructure, motivating questions, scientific strengths, and the sciences that birthed and maintained the networks. Some networks have individual sites that were selected because they had produced invaluable long-term data, while other networks have new sites selected to span ecological gradients. However, all long-term environmental networks share two challenges. Networks must keep pace with scientific advances and interact with both the scientific community and society at large. If networks fall short of successfully addressing these challenges, they risk becoming irrelevant. The objective of this paper is to assert that the biogeosciences offer environmental research networks a number of opportunities to expand scientific impact and public engagement. We explore some of these opportunities with four networks: the International Long Term Ecological Research programs (ILTERs), the Critical Zone Observatories (CZOs), the Earth and Ecological Observatory networks (EONs), and the FLUXNET program of eddy flux sites. While these networks were founded and grown by interdisciplinary scientists, the preponderance of expertise and funding have gravitated activities of ILTERs and EONs toward ecology and biology, CZOs toward the Earth sciences and geology, and FLUXNET toward ecophysiology and micrometeorology. Our point is not to homogenize networks, nor to diminish disciplinary science. Rather, we argue that by more fully incorporating the integration of biology and geology in long-term environmental research networks, scientists can better leverage network assets, keep pace with the ever-changing science of the environment, and engage with larger scientific and public audiences

The Center for Environmental Kinetics Analysis: an NSF- and DOE-funded Environmental Molecular Science Institute (EMSI) at Penn State

Physicochemical and microbiological processes taking place at environmental interfaces influence natural processes as well as the transport and fate of environmental contaminants, the remediation of toxic chemicals, and the sequestration of anthropogenic CO2. A team of scientists and engineers has been assembled to develop and apply new experimental and computational techniques to expand our knowledge of environmental kinetics. We are also training a cohort of talented and diverse students to work on these complex problems at multiple length scales and to compile and synthesize the kinetic data. Development of the human resources capable of translating molecular-scale information into parameters that are applicable in real world, field-scale problems of environmental kinetics is a major and relatively unique objective of the Institute's efforts. The EMSI team is a partnership among 10 faculty at The Pennsylvania State University (funded by the National Science Foundation Divisions of Chemistry and Earth Sciences), one faculty member at Juniata College, one faculty member at the University of Florida, and four researchers drawn from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (funded by the Department of Energy Division of Environmental Remediation Sciences). Interactions among the applied and academic scientists drives research approaches aimed toward solving important problems of national interest. The Institute is organized into three interest groups (IGs) focusing on the processes of dissolution (DIG), precipitation (PIG), and microbial reactions at surfaces (BIG). Some of the research activity from each IG is highlighted to the right. The IGs interact with each other as each interest group studies reactions across the molecular, microscopic, mesoscopic and, in most cases, field scales. For example, abiotic dissolution and precipitation reactions of Fe oxides as studied in the Dissolution IG provides the baseline for kinetic behavior as the BIG researches the interaction of microorganisms with these same minerals. The attachment of bacteria and redox chemistry that occurs between microorganisms and minerals are critical factors in maintaining groundwater quality and remediation of many toxic waste sites and is one of the main thrusts of research within our EMSI. The IGs also participate in using visualization tools to promote greater understanding of complex environmental data. As a whole, CEKA is also working to compile environmental kinetics data into a cyberinfrastructure and database. The database can be accessed at: http://keystone.ist.psu.edu/