This story was written by Sarah Hansen and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

Sebastian Deffner plans to spend his career expanding on the work of physics giants to refine our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature, from the inner workings of the tiniest cells to the dynamics of the largest cosmic phenomena. Deffner, an assistant professor of physics at UMBC, recently moved forward in this work through a pioneering paper in Physical Review X with CalTech collaborator Anthony Bartolotta, and now has a new grant to push the envelope even further.

As their paper describes, Deffner and Bartolotta have developed more accurate ways to determine how energy is used, released, and transformed in very small systems with very high energy, which had previously been poorly understood. Deffner’s new grant from the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) will enable him to further develop a new field of physics that focuses on energy and information processing.

The origin of intelligence

The FQXi sought research projects that would address the question of agency in the physical world. It’s common to think about actions as being caused by some external force—flipping a switch, pushing a lever—but those levers and switches “are all part of the same universe,” Deffner explains. “We don’t have any scientific idea that there could be something acting on the universe from the outside, which means that anything that happens within the universe actually arises from interaction of different parts of the universe. Nothing comes for free.”

“Now, if this is true, how does something like intelligence or agency actually arise from the very fundamental laws of physics that describe the universe?” he asks. To address that question, Deffner has turned to a new field of physics known as the thermodynamics of information. Classic thermodynamics considers how energy in the forms of heat and work is transformed in physical systems. But Deffner thinks there’s more to it.

Including information

“We don’t get a complete thermodynamic picture if we neglect information. If we only think about heat and work, we will always end up with statements that seem to violate the axioms of thermodynamics,” Deffner says. “Only if we include information processing, and understand what that actually means, do we get a complete thermodynamic picture.”

The idea is that writing and erasing information in a system involves energy, so evaluations of the overall energy in a system must consider information processing. Understanding energy and information processing is important for describing the universe, but it’s also important for more practical applications.

Scientists and engineers are working to develop the next generation of information storage, and it may take the form of “quantum memory”—systems that rely on quantum mechanics and the stability of extremely cold groups of atoms (near absolute zero) to store information.

“If you want to build a quantum memory out of these ultra-cold atoms,” Deffner explains, “you have to understand how information actually is written and how you can stabilize the information content of these systems.”

A universe in flux

Current theories, such as thermodynamics, work well when a system is in equilibrium. However, “if you look at the universe, it’s not in thermal equilibrium. It’s not even close,” Deffner says. For example, think of a star like our Sun constantly releasing heat and light through extremely high-energy reactions.

So, “What I want to do is to take stochastic thermodynamics that we’ve developed for small quantum systems and small biological systems, and apply these concepts and notions to cosmology to get a better understanding of the extremes of the universe,” Deffner says. He’ll be charting new territory in the extraordinarily complex math that describes, at a fundamental level, how the world works.

Following the dream

As his career progresses, Deffner hopes to help generate “a better, more concise understanding of the universe,” he says, “but for that we need a lot of bits and pieces, and almost nothing like this has been done yet.”

The Physical Review X paper took the first baby steps toward developing the basis to move forward with this work. Now, Deffner is off and running, but he recognizes the journey will be a marathon, not a sprint.

“We know which direction we’re going now, and we know which steps to take,” he says, “but we will not be able to describe the universe in 2020. If we’re lucky, that’s something for 2050.”

One thing Deffner does know is that he’s committed to the marathon. “If you don’t dream big, what are you going to do?” he asks. “Sometimes you have to take a risk and follow the dream.”

This story was written by Megan Hanks and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

UMBC’s Lee Blaney is known for his innovative research on water and soil contamination, working to keep people and the environment healthy. His latest project takes that focus in a new direction by developing an innovative system to recover nutrients from an unexpected source: human urine.

Blaney, associate professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, received a phase one grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s People, Prosperity, and the Planet (P3) program to investigate the ability of his Nutrient Extraction and Recovery Device (NERD) technology to recover nutrients from human urine.

This project will advance knowledge about how sustainable resource recovery technologies can be implemented. “Human urine accounts for the majority of nutrients in municipal wastewater, but only a small fraction of the flow,” explains Blaney. “When urine gets diluted into the wastewater system, it makes it more difficult to treat and recover these nutrients. So, we wanted to go to the source — toilets.”

Blaney worked with co-PI Marc Zupan, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and ten UMBC students to develop a system that can recover around 90% of the phosphorus, an ecologically important nutrient, and some of the nitrogen and potassium from collected urine samples. These nutrients can impair water quality by causing the formation of dead zones in places like the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico, so developing a low-cost way of removing them from urine could have a major impact.

Once removed, those nutrients can then be used in ways that are beneficial rather than harmful to human and environmental health. “The recovered nutrients can be used as a fertilizer,” says Blaney. “By ‘recycling’ these nutrients, we also avoid the economical and energy costs associated with traditional fertilizers. It’s a win-win for the environment and our wallets.”

All P3 projects are required to include an educational component, to ensure researchers are sharing knowledge about the environment and sustainability. The student role in this particular project is significant.

Both undergraduate and graduate students have worked to develop and institute the NERD technology, which modified portable toilets to collect and process urine samples. In April, several students presented their work at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C.

Students in Lee Blaney’s lab presenting at USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Lee Blaney.

“I would say the biggest impact our work had at the USA Science and Engineering Festival was getting people to think differently about ‘waste’ by raising their awareness of nutrient recovery,” says Josh Benoit ‘18, chemical engineering. “Most people had never heard of the term ‘nutrient recovery’ and once they learned about it were excited about the potential of the Porta-NERDS system.”

Charles Portner ‘18, chemical engineering, who worked with Blaney and Benoit, says that presenting their work in Washington D.C. allowed the group to explain the simplicity of the technology and how it can be implemented easily. “Folks could potentially have fixtures operating on this technology installed in their private homes or schools without having to wait for municipal adoption,” Porter says, explaining that the system could decrease the burden on municipal treatment systems and empower “average folks who wanted to do their part.”

In the future, Utsav Shashvatt Ph.D ‘19, environmental engineering, hopes this work will impact communities globally. “I am excited about the potential of bringing these cost-effective portable nutrient recovery technologies to communities around the world.”

And, as Sophia Lopresti ’18, global studies, states “There are so many ways that human waste disposal affects our environment and our future health, yet urine continues to be a ‘taboo’ topic, but not to those who stopped at our table.”

NSF recently produced a video about research being done in Blaney’s lab. The full video can be viewed on the NSF website.

Banner image: Lee Blaney. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

This story was written by Sarah Hansen and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

Imagine a sheet that’s only one atom thick. It won’t keep you very warm, but single-atom-thick materials under development might soon do extraordinary things, like filter salt from water, collect and store solar energy, or protect you from a poisonous gas. These sheets are referred to as two-dimensional materials, and they’re Can Ataca’s specialty.

Ataca, a computational physicist at UMBC, and his collaborator Brenda Rubenstein, a physical chemist at Brown University, have just received a three-year National Science Foundation grant to develop new methods to speed up and reduce the cost of developing new 2D materials. Ataca and his lab members use supercomputers to model possible new 2D materials and predict their properties—magnetic, mechanical, electrical, optical, chemical, and more.

“We can predict the material’s properties before experimentalists can even synthesize it,” says Ataca.

That’s a good thing, because generating a single sample of one of these cutting-edge materials can cost up to $1 million and require highly advanced technical skills and equipment.

New tech, new methods

Modeling 2D materials is not entirely new. In the 1990s, researchers started with models that treated the chemical bonds between atoms like simple springs and completely ignored quantum mechanics, which become very important at small scales—like a one-atom-thick structure.

Why did those early models make assumptions that ignored quantum mechanics? Limited computing power was the culprit, but “even though these assumptions make life easier computationally, they come with lower accuracy,” Ataca explains.

Computers today are vastly more powerful than in the 1990s, and Ataca is taking advantage of that to develop more accurate methodology that accounts for quantum mechanics. Methods that incorporate quantum mechanics are currently available, but the new methodological framework Ataca’s lab is developing, called Quantum Monte Carlo, is an order of magnitude more accurate than existing quantum methods. Its results get extremely close to what experimental physicists would find in the lab with the real material.

The older methods are currently easier to implement because the computer code to run tests with them already exists: Enter a handful of parameters, click a button, and come back a day later to collect your results. The newer techniques that Ataca, Ph.D. students Daniel Wines and Gracie Chaney, and postdoctoral researcher Fatih Ersan are working to develop “are a much more hands-on process,” Ataca says. “In order to reach one result, you need to do around 100 different calculations, which require rigorous processing after each step.”

Next stop, applications

The current project is a proof-of-concept to show that the new methods work. “First, we are going to show the world that Quantum Monte Carlo is doing a better job. We’re trying to come up with a kind of recipe,” Ataca says. After that, they may collaborate with researchers seeking materials for specific applications.

Scientists who physically create these materials in their labs will rely on the results of models like Ataca’s to make major investment decisions in their labs, so it’s critical that the new method’s predictions can be trusted. To verify that results generated with the new code are accurate, the research team will compare them against existing experimental data for 2D materials.

“After we’ve done lots of this, and get the same results as the experiments, we are going to make these codes available to anyone,” Ataca says. He hopes that their work will eventually be used to create a wide variety of novel materials.

“With this methodology we can get the optimal properties of these materials with a very high accuracy,” Ataca explains, “so we can definitely say, ‘Hey, this material is good for photovoltaics [solar cells], that material is good for hydrogen generation, this material can bind this kind of poisonous gas.’”

By shortcutting the discovery process, the new methods could be a game-changer for developing not only 2D materials, but also any crystal structures or molecules.  As Ataca says, “This could be the beginning of a new computational era.”

Image: Can Ataca, second from left, meets with some of his students. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

This story was written by Sarah Hansen and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

Two years ago, developmental biologist Rachel Brewster embarked on a journey to learn more about how zebrafish embryos manage to survive for up to 50 hours without oxygen, with support from a Department of Defense Idea Discovery Grant. The ultimate goal was to develop new methods to preserve organs for transplant, allowing them to last longer and travel farther to those in need. NIH has now rewarded the noteworthy progress of Brewster’s research team with a $400,000, two-year Exploratory Research Award to continue the work.

When human cells are deprived of oxygen, their energy production drops dramatically—but demand for energy stays high. This leads to tissue damage and death, sometimes within only a few minutes. When zebrafish are faced with low-oxygen conditions, however, the amount of energy they demand also drops. “Even though the level of ATP [cellular energy] drops, it is met by an equivalent drop in ATP consumption,” Brewster explains. “It’s the equivalent of reaching a new status quo.”

Figuring out how zebrafish activate that shift has been central to the research team’s efforts. If the same pathway could be induced in human tissue, there is potential to significantly delay tissue deterioration.

Graduate students Jong Park and Tim Hufford and many undergraduates, including Austin Gabel ‘17, Bryanna Canales ‘19, Afia Osei-Ntansah ‘20, Darius McKoy ‘20, Nguyet Le ‘20, and Neil Tran ’20, have majorly contributed to the lab’s work so far. Brewster will continue to rely on their commitment to the project moving forward.

Clues from cancer

In collaboration with Young-Sam Lee at Johns Hopkins, Brewster found that when cells were deprived of oxygen, the amount of lactate in the cells quickly increased. Once thought to be nothing more than a byproduct of anaerobic energy production (often induced by intense exercise), some researchers have found that lactate “might be doing more than we thought,” Brewster says.

For example, in cancer cells, scientists have found that lactate stabilizes a protein called NDRG1. That induces blood vessels to grow toward the cells, delivering more oxygen and allowing them to multiply quickly even in low-oxygen environments.

Growing more cells takes a lot of energy. That’s the opposite of what Brewster is looking for, but still interesting. “We wondered if maybe cancer cells hijack this pathway,” Brewster says, “and if in normal cells the response…would be different but nevertheless adaptive.”

Brewster’s lab put the scientific process to work—conducting experiments, consulting existing research, and talking with fellow scientists—to help clarify the connection between lactate, NDRG1, and survival without oxygen.

Pieces of the puzzle

Brewster had an “epiphany moment” when she realized that the protein NDRG1 is found in the same cells that express a component of sodium-potassium pumps—structures that use large amounts of cellular energy. “Isn’t it intriguing,” she reflects, “that we were looking for a protein that may save energy, and we find it expressed in the exact same cells that have this super energy-demanding pump?”

Brewster explains that because these pumps are so energy-demanding, under long-term low-oxygen conditions many organisms degrade them to preserve energy. NDRG1 is generally found floating in the fluid inside cells, but when oxygen levels drop, it migrates to the cell membrane, where the pumps are embedded. Could it be part of the mechanism responsible for degrading the pumps?

Brewster’s lab took cells that didn’t produce NDRG1 and exposed them to an environment without oxygen to test that idea. “Much to our surprise and delight, we found that the pump was no longer degraded,” Brewster says. “So this is very exciting to us. It also opens up a whole series of other questions.”

Other scientists pointed out that if all NDRG1 did was degrade the pumps, the cell would eventually fill with water and burst open, so now the lab is wondering if NDRG1 does other things, too. For example, maybe it degrades other proteins embedded in the cell membrane that transport molecules in and out of the cell, such as water.

“In essence,” Brewster’s hypothesis goes, “NDRG1 renders the membrane impermeable. And of course, if the cell is to survive this, it would have to be able to reverse it.”

Next steps

Brewster’s collaborator at Harvard, Ryuji Morizane, has found that NDRG proteins are also found in human kidney organoids, and they appear to move to the cell membrane under low-oxygen conditions. So, “We’re left with the big question of why is this pathway protective in fish, and not in humans,” Brewster says. “And this is a very difficult question to answer.”

The lab’s goal is to learn enough about this pathway to harness it to improve organ transplant procedures and increase the number of lives saved by transplants.

Today, organs are preserved by making them very cold, which artificially slows down metabolism and the process of tissue degeneration for a few hours. However, that protocol may “bypass the NDRG response,” Brewster says. “If one could find a different way to prep the tissue, so that the response was triggered right before organ harvest, it could induce a protective state.”

“Maybe lactate is the molecule that triggers the response,” Brewster says. “Maybe it could be as simple as artificially modifying lactate levels before you harvest the organ, and that would do the job. But we don’t know if lactate does that yet.”

That’s what Brewster’s lab aims to find out next. With the new grant, they’ll explore what triggers NDRG to move to the cell membrane—lactate or another factor—and what mechanism degrades the pumps. “We want to know if lactate is that magic molecule that does it all,” Brewster says. “And if it isn’t lactate, we want to be searching for that other molecule.”

Even if they don’t find all the answers, each step in the research brings Brewster’s team closer to solving a cellular mystery and saving lives.

Image: Rachel Brewster in her lab. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

This story was written by Sarah Hansen and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

This summer, students and faculty from UMBC and three additional universities teamed up with NASA researchers and Maryland’s Department of the Environment to collect huge amounts of data that will provide a snapshot of air quality in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area and over the Chesapeake Bay. The study measures factors ranging from wind speed to ozone concentration.

“In trying to understand air quality near the coast, it’s critical to obtain measurements over the water and over the land simultaneously with as wide of a variety of instruments as possible,” says John Sullivan, Ph.D. ’15, atmospheric physics, and the lead NASA researcher on the project.

UMBC serves as the primary land-based site, and equipment placed on remote Hart Miller Island in the Bay collects data over water. “With two sites, you can begin to really answer questions pertaining to differences in air pollution and understand the mechanisms driving these differences,” Sullivan explains.

Ozone in the forecast

This summer’s work is an extension of the Ozone Water-Land Environmental Transition Study (OWLETS), dubbed OWLETS-2, and it is particularly focused on tracking the presence of ozone in coastal cities. Ozone in the upper atmosphere helps maintain Earth’s temperature and absorbs harmful UV rays.

However, near ground level, breathing in ozone causes inflammation in the respiratory system, which can be dangerous for young children, the elderly, and those with asthma or other respiratory conditions. Plants also take up ozone, which can reduce crop yields.

Chemical reactions between sunlight and emissions from vehicles and industry generate smog-like ozone episodes, so one would expect the highest concentrations at midday, when the sun is at its brightest. However, wind over the Bay changes that.

“The Bay breeze is like a wall that doesn’t allow normal west to east airflow to happen,” explains Ruben Delgado, assistant professor at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (a UMBC-NASA partnership) and the lead UMBC OWLETS-2 researcher. That means the midday ozone heading out to sea comes back in during the late afternoon, causing a spike just as local residents are heading home from work and school. Other factors, such as smoke blowing over the city from wildfires in the West, can also have a real impact.

Better understanding how these issues influence the presence of ozone in Baltimore can help improve air quality forecasts and protect sensitive populations from ozone’s ill effects. “The National Weather Service is interested in this kind of data, because it allows them to push their models to a new frontier,” Delgado explains.

Students step up

Working with Delgado are students from UMBC, Howard University, City University of New York, and Hampton University. The students and their home-institution faculty mentors are all members of the NOAA-funded Center for Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing Technologies and Center for Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology.

Delgado finds mentoring these emerging researchers to be both personally rewarding and essential to the success of the project. “My favorite part of this project is giving the students hands-on experience,” Delgado says. “They get to contribute to the process from start to finish.”

Kat Ball ’21, chemical engineering, is one of those student researchers, and her experience has been transformative. “I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to participate in meaningful scientific research so early on in my academic career,” she shares. “I’ve only just completed my freshman year, and will be one of the authors on the publications that result from all the data we received, which is something I thought I would only be dreaming about for quite some time.”

Ball learned that field and lab research differ in important ways. “Not everything is easy to deal with when you’re miles away from an actual lab where you have all of the necessary parts, chemicals, and even just clean water that you need to deal with problems that arise,” she says.

Working with much more experienced team members, Ball was intimidated at first, but soon felt at home on Hart Miller Island. “Hearing from people with such impressive qualifications that your input on the situation truly matters expanded the confidence I had in myself as a researcher,” she shares.

Paying it forward

John Sullivan, the lead NASA researcher, was once in Ball’s shoes, and now he’s paying it forward. “As I moved toward planning larger-scale campaigns, I knew that I wanted to involve UMBC any way I could,” he says. “It wasn’t until I got to NASA that I realized how much of a leg up I had coming from UMBC, as some of my classes were taught by leading researchers in the atmospheric physics community.”

Under Sullivan and Delgado’s leadership, the participating students all took a very active role in the research. “They have been busy taking LiDAR measurements, launching weather balloons, taking mobile samples of pollution, and outfitting research vessels,” Sullivan says. He adds, “There is something very rewarding about bringing together active and engaged researchers to make a difference in public health, and training the next generation of scientists along the way.”

• October 22
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• November 28

This is a work of satire.

On the best of days, UMBC is a very crowded place. In between classes, Academic Row bears more resemblance to a mosh pit than an honors university. Take a look at the Commons during free hour: the lines for food are much too long, the tables far too full of students eating alone.

“You think I’m going to go to D-Hall instead?” said Poppy Jefferson, a junior computer science major. “Absolutely not! My body does not deserve such maltreatment. But the wait? It has to go.”

Indeed it does, Poppy. Some students, not willing to wait in line for a simple cup of water, have been found climbing the fence of the RAC to go drink water from the pool. “Tangy and surprisingly sweet,” one student said. “It makes you wonder where the campus’s water really comes from.” Other students scrape at the Commons’ toaster oven in an effort to gather sustenance in a more time-efficient manner.

The campus loop overflows with students on the quest for a parking spot. “It feels like purgatory,” one student said during an interview conducted through the window of their car. “Every time you think you’re going to get a spot, it turns out a car was already parked there.” Some students have taken to double-stacking their cars. Despite the space-efficiency, such an approach has already ruined countless vehicles and — worst of all — parking spaces.

In an effort to keep their students happy, UMBC has taken a stand against the long waits, crowded hallways and packed parking lots. Using a lottery-style system which even Thanos would balk at, UMBC has decided to roll out a “selective extinction program” to remove eight in ten UMBC students.

They call this draconian policy “Operation Bubonic Plague.” Many are unhappy with this name, claiming it to be a misnomer given that the Bubonic Plague only wiped out 30 to 50 percent of the population.

The administration is still working out some of the details. They have confronted issues in finding enough headsmen to expedite the process. They are also struggling to get a hold of enough whetstones for when the axes go dull from all of the severed students’ heads. Nonetheless, they plan to complete this little project by the end of November.

“It’ll be great,” said Jefferson, “I won’t have to wait in line for an average quality food experience.” When asked if it would be lonelier, Jefferson just shrugged. “It’s already lonely,” he explained. “Rather than having to stand alone and awkwardly eat my lunch, now I can sit alone and eat my lunch.” When asked about the possibility of befriending someone who was also sitting alone, Jefferson just laughed and shook his head. “I’ll wait for them to get executed, thanks.”

Of course, this all assumes that Jefferson even makes it past Operation Bubonic Plague. And let’s be honest, folks — he almost certainly will not.

For those curious, the list of those who are going to be executed has been posted on myUMBC. After noticing a suspicious trend in the data, we approached the higher-ups to see what was going on. When asked why the only students selected to be executed in this supposedly random lottery were non-STEM majors, the administration declined to comment. “Don’t call it execution,” one administrator said. “It’s selective extinction.”