Salt Lake City Bridges the Gap Between Science and Art

By Fiona Marcelino

Science and art are often positioned at opposite ends of a spectrum; science or art. There exists the common combination of science with medicine, technology or nature; and art with literature, culture, and music; but rarely do people collaborate art with science.

It is that cultural divide that hinders art and science from gaining new insights and perspectives.

The idea that artists and scientists can collaborate, inspire and improve each other’s fields is one that Salt Lake City is running with.

The Leonardo is a contemporary museum that explores the unexpected ways that science, technology, art and creativity connect by holding themed activities that combine art and science.

Previous projects have consisted of creating temporary water art, exploring the science of bubbles, creating lenses out of gelatin to see how it affects light, and drawing with light using a camera, lasers and light bubs.

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts has also found ways to incorporate science with art by collaborating with the Clark Planetarium, The University of Utah’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Utah Museum of Natural History. They have also organized Art and Science Artful Afternoons, where families could enjoy a month of art and science by learning about various science related topics through a series of free family art-making festivals.

Often times the reaction of the science world is that art is too imprecise for the scientific process, but science and art both ask the same questions. What is everything? Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?

String theorist, Brain Greene, recently wrote that the arts have the ability to “give a vigorous shake to our sense of what’s real, jarring the scientific imagination into imagining new things.” He also expressed his thoughts on how artists can make the metaphors of physics tangible, which can provide new mathematical meanings from a different perspective.

In a recent NPR interview with Cormac McCarthy (novelist), Werner Herzog (filmmaker) and Lawrence Kruass (physicist) the idea of how science can be inspiration for art was examined.

Herzog and McCarthy both described their involvement in science as inspiration for their films or novels. Both men explore themes of science in arts and culture and each spoke of how they create an imaginary world related to a real world.

The potential influence that art and science could have on each other seems endless. The combination of these two fields could help answer the world’s deepest questions by providing a broader view of the world.

Bridging the Gap: Using academic research to stimulate the economy

By Krystal Brown

The National Science Foundation (NSF) reports that the state of Utah spent $2.3 billion on research and development (R&D) for science and engineering in 2007.

Utah has a thriving academic research community which has generated a highly educated work force; however, its spending on R&D ranks 28^th in the nation with above average dependence on federal funding. The state is looking to bridge this divide between industry and academia in order to capitalize on existing strengths and grow the economy.

The Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) initiative, chaired by Dinesh Patel of Signal Peak Ventures, aims to use academic research to stimulate economic growth via start-up companies, patents, and eventually large companies.

Cynthia Burrows, Ph.D. and member of the USTAR governing authority, said that USTAR is meant “to bring in the rainmakers… researchers who know how to translate ideas into businesses.”

In its first five years, USTAR has brought 43 “rainmakers” to the University of Utah and Utah State University resulting in 194 patents and 17 start-up companies or industry partnerships. USTAR professor Rajesh Menon of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Utah credits the reliable funding and collaborative culture fostered by USTAR with this initial success.

Professor Menon, who joined USTAR in 2009 after 10 years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), emphasized the difficulty in starting companies. There needs to be “a good ecosystem to help build companies” and USTAR is beginning to create that by injecting creativity and building research resources.

It will be years before this translates to a significant number of industry jobs as bridging the gap between business and academia is no small feat.

Cynthia Burrows explained this disconnect through the origination of the modern university from ancient monasteries. Traditionally, monks were sequestered with their scholarly work in order to investigate life’s basic questions, whether it be “what a star is or how to grow better peas.” The motivation for this work was knowledge.

Although today’s universities are far more complex, research of fundamental importance is rewarded by continued federal funding and academic accolade. Consequently, basic research accounted for 75 percent of the work done at universities and colleges in 2008 according to the NSF. Conversely, motivation for better products at lower cost resulted in 95 percent of research done in industry in 2008 being applied or development.

While this divide between applied and basic research is the norm, schools like MIT and Stanford have a proven history of applying academic research. According to Professor Menon, these schools break down departmental boundaries. “That’s the future. That’s where you get the most interesting research,” He said.

USTAR has begun to do just this by hiring faculty in a range of departments including bioengineering, chemistry, and psychiatry at both the University of Utah and Utah State University. Both schools boast new USTAR buildings where research labs are grouped by interest rather than department.

James L. Sorenson Molecular Biotechnology Building at the University of Utah (photo courtesy of USTAR)

According to Professor Menon, the initial success of USTAR has states like Nevada looking to it as a model for their own research structure.

With the creative research base being fairly well established in this first phase of USTAR, Cynthia Burrows said she’d like to see a shift in focus to nurture the existing researchers and further encourage collaboration. With this, USTAR could cultivate the ecosystem necessary to grow the economy from homegrown ideas.

University of Utah Isotope Facility Draws International Interest

University of Utah Isotope Facility Draws International Interest

By Allison Chan

We have all learned that an isotope is a form of an element with a different number of neutrons and the same number of protons. While isotopes may have seemed a dry topic in high school chemistry, they are in fact an incredibly valuable tool for research in disciplines spanning from anthropology to atmospheric science. 

Unbeknownst to many, a world-class isotope ratio analysis facility is housed here at the University of Utah.

The Stable Isotope Ratio Facility for Environmental Research (SIRFER) was started in 1986 and has since been providing sample analysis for departments around campus and around the world. 

SIRFER is a re-charge facility, meaning that there is a fee charged for each sample that is run.  The revenue from samples is used to maintain the day-to-day operations of the facility. SIRFER has the capability of analyzing stable isotope ratios of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), and sulfur (S) from organic solids, water samples, or trace gases. 

But the real question is, why are isotopes useful? 

Stable isotopes can be used to track the movement of materials through a system, whether from an individual plant or an entire ecosystem. For example, ecologists used isotopic analysis following the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. By examining how the isotopic composition of microorganisms was changing, they were able to determine to what extent they were picking up the isotopic signature of the oil.

Brad Erkkila, manager of SIRFER, is in charge of running the samples that are sent into the lab and maintaining the instruments. Samples are run against quality control standards in order to ensure good data. In this way, although he does not always know the source of the samples he is analyzing, he can still evaluate whether the instrument is functioning properly and if he is getting correct results.  

Erkkila finds the most exciting part of his job is developing new methods by which to run samples.

The facility that he runs, tries to meet the analysis needs of the faculty members on campus, so sometimes that means having to change the way in which a particular instrument is calibrated or how a sample is treated.

As new technologies become available, SIRFER is continually striving to provide the most up-to-date analysis methods. However, in addition to providing quality isotope analysis, SIRFER is also interested in education and outreach. 

Employees at SIRFER have worked with junior high and high school students through the Salt Lake Center for Science Education. One recent project has been helping high school students on a science fair project to analyze the diet of hawks by examining the stable isotope composition of their feathers. The project was recently selected to continue on to the international science competition. 

Perhaps the biggest educational endeavor that SIRFER undertakes each year is running an intensive two-week long summer course called “IsoCamp.” Graduate students and post-docs from universities across the U.S. and internationally apply for a spot in this highly selective course. About 80-100 students apply, but only 25-30 students gain admission into the course. 

Students in the course have varied academic backgrounds and come from many different departments. 

Danielle Marias, a first-year graduate student in the Forestry department at Oregon State University, is one of the students who will be participating in this summer’s Isocamp.  She explained, “I wanted to come to IsoCamp because it is a unique opportunity to learn about such a versatile tool in ecology and collaborate with and meet others who are also using isotopes in their research. Also, Isocamp's lab portion is appealing to me because OSU’s isotope course does not offer that.”

 

Olivia Miller, a graduate student in the geology department at the University of Utah, corroborates Marias’ excitement to meet new people who share an interest in stable isotopes.

Another geology student at the U, Glynis Jehle, said, “I'd like to know more about what my results mean in terms of ecology and paleoecology, which is basically what this class involves--how to interpret the different isotopic signatures environmental materials give.”

Students in the course will receive lectures from a wide range of experts who use isotopes in their research. The diversity of speakers provides students with a comprehensive perspective of the ways in which isotopic research has been employed. In addition to the lecture portion of the course, students also get the opportunity to spend time working with the instruments in the SIRFER lab. 

They will get hands on experience with the entire process of sample analysis including sample collection, preparation, and interpretation of results.  Importantly, the close-knit community fostered by the IsoCamp course encourages future collaborations among students.  

SIRFER’s commitment to quality isotope analysis, education, and outreach has introduced a diverse group of people to the world of isotope research and has provided the infrastructure needed for today’s researchers to analyze samples with the most up-to-date technologies.

While the SIRFER lab may seem an unassuming space, they are quietly churning out world-class isotopic analysis everyday.  

Inside the SIRFER lab.

Brad Erkkil, SIRFER lab manager.

Carbon dioxide model could aid in reducing Utah pollution

By Javan Rivera

Salt Lake City, Utah is facing a very serious problem concerning air pollution.

It’s no secret that Utah winters often cause severe inversions that trap large amounts of dirty air in the Salt Lake Valley. However, what’s less widely known is the cause of the problem and what exactly is being done to rectify the situation.

Enter Carolyn Stwertka, a graduate research assistant at the University of Utah who, along with her advisor, are currently developing a model for measuring carbon dioxide movement in the Salt Lake Valley.

Stwertka’s work, which is funded by a GK-12 National Science Foundation grant http://www.gk12.org/ called Think Globally, Learn Locally http://tgll.utah.edu/home.html, is vital to understanding exactly how carbon dioxide circulates through the greater Salt Lake City area and how exactly carbon dioxide emissions can be accurately measured for future Utah policy and legislation.

According to Stwertka, the main cause of Utah’s inversion problem is that the Salt Lake Valley acts as a natural bowl for collecting dirty air. With the Oquirrh and Wasatch mountain ranges hedging in the valley’s south and east sides, the Great Salt Lake trapping air from the west, and the high elevation of the valley’s north end, very little air is able to escape the valley without the aid of significant weather changes such as storms.

“Studying carbon dioxide in an urban environment is of interest to a lot of people because humans are creating a new ‘urban environment’ and this [modeling] provides a way to verify if emissions are decreasing due to [potential future] policy change,” she said.

Salt Lake City provides a very unique testing ground for this research not only because of its natural, inversion-causing barriers, but also because it is home to “the longest standing, consistently running set of [carbon dioxide measuring] stations in a city in the world,” said Stwertka.

The set of stations, mostly owned and operated by University of Utah professor Jim Ehleringer, is the primary source from which Stwertka drew her carbon dioxide measurements of Salt Lake City’s surface layer of air for her case study of the winter of 2010-2011.

Using carbon dioxide measurements along with a set of data points that account for wind forces, biogenic flux as a result of plant life in the valley, man-made emissions, and entrainment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_%28meteorology%29, are all input into Stwertka’s model in an attempt to accurately measure carbon dioxide movement through the valley.

“We have our model data and we can see how well it compares to the carbon dioxide observations around the valley [as measured by Ehleringer’s stations],” Stwertka said.

The real core of Stwertka’s work comes into play when it comes to finding an accurate measurement of not only how carbon dioxide circulates through the valley, but more importantly how those emissions eventually make their way out of the city air, and into the higher parts of the troposphere. Ultimately, what effect that has on the global mean of greenhouse gases.

Based on her observations from her own unpublished research, she’s discovered that in urban environments such as Salt Lake City, carbon dioxide tends to form a concentrated dome over the city similar to the “urban heat island effect.”

“In cities you produce a lot of carbon dioxide because it is concentrated,” Stwertka explained. “This essentially means that cities create a lot of carbon dioxide that stays isolated around the city and doesn’t extend into the surrounding rural environment. The question is, how do you relate the surface measurements to the global mean average?”

If Stwertka’s model can successfully measure carbon dioxide emission dispersal into the greater atmosphere, her model could be vital to creating future Utah policy changes regarding carbon dioxide emission regulation.

Salt Lake City is currently in violation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards, thanks in part, to the valley’s severe inversion problem. With Salt Lake City currently attempting to create a State Implementation Plan (SIP), in order to regulate emissions, Stwertka’s work presents an opportunity to gain accurate carbon dioxide dissemination measurements for the plan.

Not only does Stwertka’s model hold promise for measuring carbon dioxide levels, but it also holds the possibility of measuring additional air pollutants such as PM 2.5 and PM 10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates.

“Understanding the broad pattern [of carbon dioxide emissions] can help you understand the traveling of other pollutants,” Stwertka said. “We would like to further develop the model to track other pollutants as well so that our model can be used for the SIP.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3dxx_RNsbLs

An inversion creeps across the city as Carolyn Stwertka hikes up the Grandeur Trail to gather carbon dioxide density measurements of Salt Lake City’s surface air.

Throughout the hike, the inversion managed to spread all the way to the base of Grandeur Peak, and even enveloped part of the mountain.

Carolyn Stwertka hiked ¾ of the way up the Grandeur Trail during the winter of 2010, carrying a backpack full of electronic equipment designed to take measurements of carbon dioxide emissions throughout the trek.