RICHLAND, Wash. –Washington State University Tri-Cities education faculty are part of a new, $2.85 million National Science Foundation grant to develop curriculum and hands-on projects with local high schools that use geospatial technologies to improve STEM literacy and access to the STEM workforce. The four-year project is a collaboration between WSU, Lehigh University and Texas Christian University.

Project members will work with high school faculty and students to develop hands-on STEM projects that use geographic information systems, GPS and related technology to gather and analyze data on important societal issues, said Judy Morrison, academic director for the College of Education at ���سԹ�.

At each of the three university sites, faculty will collaborate with two high schools in their area to form what is called a “research practice partnership” to co-design, develop and implement the data-driven, socio-environmental science investigations, as part of the schools’ regular curriculum.

Leading up to this grant, Lehigh University developed a few hands-on projects with local high schools in their area that investigate topics such as the urban heat island effect, the civic impact of urban trees and the carbon cost of different transportation systems. Morrison said throughout the first year of the four-year grant, WSU faculty will work with six high school teachers in the Tri-Cities to plan the project. They will use the original Lehigh University projects as models to assess how to implement similar projects into their local curriculum.

In the last few years of the grant, the team will work with a larger group of 10 teachers to get the curriculum developed for use in the classroom. They will then collect data on the outcomes of the projects and how they affected students’ STEM abilities and attitudes towards a career in STEM fields. Student projects will be tied to issues specific to the local region. One project, for example, could be studying water quality at or surrounding the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Morrison said.

“The learning activities provide opportunities for students to collaborate, seek evidence, problem-solve, master technology, develop geospatial thinking and reasoning skills and practice communication skills,” she said. “Each are essential for careers in the STEM fields that require students to not only use logical thinking processes, but also develop creative solutions for complex issues.”

Each university partnering on the grant is working with high schools of different sizes and types in their local area. ���سԹ� is specifically working with Chiawana High School, a large traditional high school based in Pasco, as well as River’s Edge High School, a small project-based high school in Richland.

“Each university on the grant has a large comprehensive high school, as well as a smaller high school they are working with,” Morrison said. “We will be looking at different schools and how this model can be used effectively at each.”

Throughout the four-year grant, the three universities will compare results on their projects and discuss the best way to implement them, not only at other high schools across their particular state, but also across the country. Morrison said they will rely heavily on high school teachers to develop and implement projects that make the most sense for their students and region.

“We want it to be ground-up with the teachers,” Morrison said. “We, at ���سԹ�, are going to provide the resources and organization to help get the program up and running, and the teachers will be crucial in designing the curriculum for their own students.”

Morrison is an associate professor of science education At ���سԹ�, she will work with ���سԹ� colleagues Jonah Firestone, assistant professor of science education, and Sarah Newcomer, associate professor of literacy education for the project.

Firestone has a background in working with technology to expand learning opportunities in an effort to supplement learning. Newcomer has a background in working with diverse school populations and relating learning back to the students’ own culture.

“While the use of the technology on this project is important, it is not at the forefront,” Morrison said. “We want the students to see the technology as tools in how they can investigate and answer questions surrounding these local issues. These are vital skills in STEM careers. It is not the technology that is the most important, but how you use the technology for creative investigations and solutions through science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”

Media contacts:

Judy Morrison, ���سԹ� academic director for the College of Education, 509-372-7176, jamorrison@wsu.edu

Maegan Murray, ���سԹ� public relations/communication coordinator, 619-403-3617 (cell), maegan_murray@wsu.edu

By Maegan Murray, ���سԹ�

RICHLAND, Wash. – Reducing synthetic fertilizer use, pollution, farming costs, while freeing up nitrogen, mark possible benefits of a research project by Sarah Roley, assistant professor with the School of the Environment, Washington State University Tri-Cities.

Roley, and her two colleagues, recently landed a $483,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation, to pursue a more detailed understanding of how bacteria work with perennial grasses to fix nitrogen.

Every living organism requires nitrogen to survive, and nitrogen fixation is a critical step in biology. Fixation is the conversion of nitrogen in the atmosphere to ammonia, a form of nitrogen that can be used by plants and microbes, and subsequently move up the food web.

“Nitrogen goes into our protein and DNA,” Roley said. “From bacteria, to plants, to humans, we all need it, and we need a lot of it.”

Little is known, however, about nitrogen fixation in perennial grasses, Roley said. By better identifying how that process occurs, significant progress may be made in reducing the amount of synthetic nitrogen needed for fertilizing crops, as well as the amount of pollution that stems from the creation and use of synthetic fertilizers.

Roley’s research will focus on switchgrass. But, study findings may apply to other perennial grasses — ryegrass, bluegrass, fescues. The research may potentially lead to discoveries about a variety of other plants and how nitrogen fixation occurs within them.

Most of Roley’s research will be conducted at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station in Hickory Corners, Michigan. Roley also is working with Phil Robertson of Michigan State University — who resides at the biological station and will be managing rainfall manipulations and experimental mesocosms, an outdoor system that allows for examination of grasses under controlled conditions  — and with Dan Buckley of Cornell University, who will oversee microbial measurements.

Little known about how nitrogen fixation occurs

While Earth has a lot of nitrogen in its atmosphere, it is tied up in a triple-bonded molecule, which only bacteria can convert to a useable form. Legumes, like soybeans, peanuts and clover, have special root nodules where nitrogen-fixing bacteria live. These bacteria provide the plant with nitrogen in exchange for carbon to eat. But there is a diverse population of bacteria living outside root nodules that also fix nitrogen.

“We’ve known about this phenomenon for a long time, but it’s never been clear how important it is,” Roley said. “We can look at it indirectly by measuring all of the nitrogen coming in and going out of the ecosystem. But in some places, there is more going in than we can account for. We want to figure out how important this process really is.”

In the early 1900s, scientists figured out how to create a synthetic nitrogen fertilizer through the Haber-Bosch process using large amounts of energy, high pressure and the right catalysts. Fertilizer produced through this process boosted crop yields, but also led to secondary effects like greenhouse gas emissions and downstream pollution that leads to devastating algae blooms in lakes, rivers and oceans.

By identifying how much nitrogen fixation occurs naturally with perennial grasses, and by determining how nitrogen-fixing bacteria interact with plants, researchers could potentially discover ways to use less synthetic fertilizer to fertilize crops.

“We would have fewer undesirable effects while saving growers money,” Roley said.

Creating a nitrogen fixation experiment

“So far, we know that fixation appears to occur episodically,” Roley said. “Sometimes the rates are fairly high, and at other times they are not detectable at all.”

“We want to figure out if fixation occurs in response to wet and dry events,” she said. “After rainfall, microbes can get really active, and many microbial processes will increase.”

By measuring nitrogen fixation in a range of conditions, researchers hope to identify when nitrogen fixation occurs and how much nitrogen the process adds to the ecosystem each year.

Scientists will also be measuring fixation at different stages of plant growth to determine if plant processes influence fixation.

“Measuring at a much smaller scale before, we observed high rates in the fall after the plants dried out, so maybe it happens at a time when we don’t expect it,” Roley said. “We plan to take more measurements to determine when and how much fixation occurs.”

 

Contacts:

• Sarah Roley, assistant professor in the WSU School of the Environment, 509-372-7449, sarah.roley@wsu.edu
• Maegan Murray, ���سԹ� public relations specialist, 509-372-7333, maegan_murray@wsu.edu

By Maegan Murray, ���سԹ�

RICHLAND, Wash. – A Washington State University Tri-Cities professor aims to pinpoint underpinnings of evolutionary success by analyzing the skull morphology of a handful of fish species.

“One-third of living vertebrates belong to two fish lineages that independently evolved the ability to project their upper jaws forward from the face during feeding,” said Jim Cooper, ���سԹ� assistant professor of biological sciences. “This jaw protrusion has been massively important to evolutionary success. It is one of the most useful biomechanical abilities to ever evolve.”

Cooper recently received a three-year $250,000 National Science Foundation grant to study the skull morphology of zebrafish and other closely-related fish species. He and his team are analyzing how fish change their development to invade new feeding niches, when it occurs and the overall impact of thyroid hormone on skull development. Their preliminary data demonstrates that changes in thyroid hormone levels can have pronounced effects on the development of protrusion ability, which enhance feeding mechanics among fish.

“Very little is known about the controls of cranial formation during late development, yet it is during this period that most organisms begin to remodel their bodies in ways that allow them to occupy their adult ecological niches,” he said. “What we do know is that if you have too much of the thyroid hormone, the lower jaw develops too much and the upper jaw remains normal. If you have too little thyroid hormone, the upper jaw doesn’t develop as much, but the lower jaw develops normally.”

Cooper said what they are particularly interested in is how they can tweak fish skull development to make a fish that is so biomechanically different so that it can invade another feeding niche, but not so much that their feed biomechanics are ineffective.

“This project has the potential to illuminate a developmental period of extreme evolutionary significance that has not yet received much investigative attention,” he said.

The research is also being performed in collaboration with a high school biology teacher and scientist who will incorporate their experiences with the research into their biology courses at a local school district. Through this, students will perform a study of fish skull development in the classroom.

Both undergraduate and graduate students are also actively involved in the research.

“This project presents not only an incredible opportunity for the examination of traits that contribute to evolutionary success, but we also have the opportunity to extend this knowledge out into the world through opportunities to partner with local teachers and by educating our future here at ���سԹ�.”

 

Contacts:

Jim Cooper, ���سԹ� assistant professor of biological sciences, 509-372-7175, jim.cooper@wsu.edu

Maegan Murray, ���سԹ� public relations specialist, 509-372-7333, maegan_murray@wsu.edu

RICHLAND, Wash. – Researchers at Washington State University Tri-Cities have been awarded a National Science Foundation I-Corps grant to explore the market potential of their biojet fuel research.

Bin Yang, associate professor of biological systems engineering and principal investigator for the grant, and his team have spent several years developing a process for transforming lignin, a polymer that makes plants woody and rigid, and currently a waste product in the biofuels production process, into hydrocarbon molecules that can one-day be certified as jet fuel.

Yang said by leveraging research results from projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation and The Boeing Company, he and his team have successfully demonstrated a new, water-based process for deconstructing and recovering lignin from biomass and converting it into jet fuel-range hydrocarbons that may be certified as jet fuel in the near future. Yang currently holds a patent on the process.

“Our ultimate goal is to demonstrate a flexible catalytic process that selectively converts all the carbon in the lignin into jet fuel-range hydrocarbons at minimal cost,” he said.

Libing Zhang, a ���سԹ� postdoctoral research associate and the entrepreneurial lead of the project, said currently commercial airlines are facing pressure to reduce emissions, which is why they may have an interest in seeing a lignin-derived alternative fuel brought to market.

“The airlines see alternative jet fuel as a strategic need, helping guarantee smooth business operations and a long-term and sustainable jet fuel supply,” Zhang said. “Our conversion process can potentially reduce jet fuel cost to end users by using lignin waste from refineries and less expensive catalytic upgrading to jet fuel.”

Zhang said the NSF I-Corps program helps leading researchers develop a business platform for their research and technology that could one-day change the world, while not trying to “reinvent the wheel” by recreating processes and strategies that are already working well within the industry.

For the NSF I-Corps grant, Yang and his team are working under the mentorship of Terri L. Butler from the University of Washington for the business aspects of the project.

“The NSF I-Corps program encourages researchers to step out of the academic environment and listen to the needs of industry,” Butler said. “The researchers can then determine if their technology solves an important problem or if their research efforts should head in a different direction. This is the approach our team has taken as we work on possible business models for our biojet fuel technology while considering the needs of customer segments, key partners, cost structures and revenue streams.”

WSU is leading the nation in biofuel production. In November, Alaska Airlines made the first commercial flight using alternative jet fuel from forest residuals produced through WSU-led Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance. Read more .

WSU also has an NSF I-Corps site led by the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture that provides training and funding to find commercial applications of new business ideas and technologies. The free site program promotes entrepreneurism of faculty, student and staff by preparing participants for submission of a proposal to NSF to become an I-Corps team. Learn more .

 

News media contacts:
Bin Yang, ���سԹ� biological systems engineering, 509-372-7640, binyang@tricity.wsu.edu
Libing Zhang, ���سԹ� postdoctoral research associate, libing.zhang@wsu.edu
Maegan Murray, ���سԹ� public relations, 509-372-7333, maegan.murray@tricity.wsu.edu