Master Tip Sheet

March Meeting 2024

How Birds Navigate with Quantum Mechanics: It’s How You Spin It
Pre-recorded presentation available on-demand throughout the meeting.

One of biology’s greatest mysteries is how birds use Earth’s electromagnetic field to find their migratory flight paths. A leading hypothesis suggests that special light-sensitive molecules, called cryptochromes, in bird eyes absorb light particles from the environment, detect their relative spin directions, and allow the birds to effectively “see” the magnetic fields. One problem with this idea, however, is that Earth’s magnetic field is extremely faint relative to what a single bird’s eyes might detect. In this pre-recorded talk that is available on-demand,, the presenter will discuss how chirality, or handedness, of the cryptochrome molecules might enhance their sensitivity to such low electromagnetic input, allowing the birds to detect the faint changes over space and time. The presentation will also explore how this finding could be applied to artificial systems in quantum technology.

How Jellyfish Grow Their Primitive Networks That Transport Nutrients
March 4, 8:36-8:48 a.m. CT, Room 103D

In biological organisms, transport networks like the cardiovascular system and its blood vessels ferry nutrients in and waste out of the vertebrates and invertebrate bodies alike. In this talk, researchers will share insights from in vivo experiments tracking how Aurelia jellyfish grow their evolutionarily primitive transport networks, called gastrovascular canal systems. The findings will spotlight how hydrodynamic factors, like pressure in the canals, and tissue elasticity, influence canal formation in jellyfish. The presentation will also highlight the ways in which looping structures — a type of network with multiple paths between two points, which makes it less vulnerable to damage — appear. The results presented will help preserve transport network resiliency when engineering tissues.

A More Strategic Way to Combine Cancer Therapies and Deter Treatment Resistance
March 4, 9:24-9:36 a.m. CT, Room 205C

A new method for strategically designing targeted therapeutic approaches could minimize the likelihood of treatment resistance emerging over time. Through experiments modeling drug resistance to the antibiotic Puromycin in mammalian cells and chemotherapy resistance in human cancer cell lines, scientists discovered that DNA amplification plays a huge role in driving treatment resistance. This talk will discuss their efforts to combat the evolution of DNA amplification-based resistance to chemotherapy. Results will include how they targeted problem-causing DNA regions with sequence-specific binding molecules called triplex-forming oligonucleotides (TFOs) — and what combination of TFOs worked best alongside chemotherapy.

Three Decades of Data Shows Antarctic Oceans Are Warming Even More Rapidly
March 4, 9:48-10 a.m. CT, Room 211AB

A comparison of shipboard data collected starting in the 1990s from the World Ocean Circulation Experiment and from Deep Argo floats deployed in 2023 reveals an acceleration in the warming of Antarctica’s coldest waters. During this talk, researchers will present findings including their calculations of an average warming rate of 2.9 millidegrees Celsius per year in the Antarctic Bottom Water between the 1990s and 2023, with a substantial increase in that warming rate from the late 2010s to 2023. The three decades of measurements will also show an accelerating decrease in cold water inflow and the shortening of vertical ranges for the deepest, coldest waters. These results could help enhance the accuracy of models designed to predict marine patterns related to climate change.

Weak Magnetic Fields Cause Pigmentation in Tadpoles, Highlighting Quantum Spins in Biology
March 4, 11:42-11:54 a.m. CT, Virtual Room 02

Many animals have the ability to sense and respond to exposure to weak magnetic fields. It’s been difficult for scientists to identify the biophysical mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Research suggests that some animals may possess magnetically sensitive molecules that facilitate a quantum effect known as the radical pair mechanism. In this talk, scientists will share experimental results showing how tadpoles exposed to weak magnetic fields for five days developed eye-cheek pigmentation and expressed proteins associated with skin pigments and photoreceptors. The findings add to growing evidence that quantum effects like the radical pair mechanism influence biological processes.

Scientists Have Recreated Jupiter’s Deep Jets and Floating Vortices in the Lab
March 4, 12:42-1:18 p.m. CT, Room 211AB

Jupiter’s characteristic spots and bands, including its persistent, swirling storm known as the Great Red Spot, have baffled scientists for more than four centuries. Since 2016, NASA’s Juno space probe has been orbiting the massive gas giant to uncover details about the Jovian system, such as the flow dynamics responsible for the planet’s cloud patterns. In this talk, researchers will share the results of laboratory experiments that could explain the dynamical forces responsible for the formation of deep jets, the shape and stability of the Great Red Spot, and the emergence of geometric clusters of cyclonic vortices at Jupiter’s poles — informed by ongoing observations from Juno.

Cutting Calories for Longevity: It’s All About the Proteins
March 4, 2:18-2:30 p.m. CT, Room 103D

Science has long suggested that reducing caloric intake can help healthy adults live longer lives. The biological mechanisms behind this idea, however, have been much tougher to pin down. In this talk, researchers will explore how proteostasis, a state of effective protein regulation within the body, plays a crucial role in aging for humans and mice. The presenter will then share new experimental results suggesting that our bodies are more likely to tip towards instability and protein dysregulation — a hallmark of aging — when over-fueled with calories.

Slow-Growing Marine Bacteria Thrive in Higher Temperatures
March 4, 3-3:12 p.m. CT, Room 103C

A study explores the structure of marine bacterial communities across marine seasons, latitudes, and depths, revealing that slow-growing bacteria become more abundant in seawater at higher temperatures. In a talk covering the paper, researchers will describe how slow-growing bacteria expand during summer, at the tropics, and at the ocean surface. The insights — which have implications for understanding marine microbial species’ interactions and mortality — complicate a canonical oceanographic idea that argues nutrients alone drive community structure. The authors say this work will be particularly pertinent in the face of global warming and marine ecosystem upheaval.

Analysis of 2021 Heat Wave Suggests Climate Extremes May Be ‘Typical’ Under Certain Atmospheric Dynamical States
March 4, 3:36–3:48 p.m. CT, Room 211AB

Researchers are trying to find better ways to understand how anthropogenic climate change could contribute to extreme weather events, like the unprecedented heat wave that caused devastation throughout western North America in June and July of 2021. In this talk, the presenter will describe a dynamical and statistical model framework used to examine the “typicality” of the 2021 heat wave. Although the event was rare, the researchers found that it may have been typical of the atmospheric dynamical setting in which it took place. The model framework could be useful for investigating precursors of unlikely, but perhaps expected, extreme events by considering the dynamical weather regimes under which they’d be most likely to occur.

Recreating the Gentle, Sensitive Caress of an Octopus
March 4, 4-4:12 p.m. CT, Room 103D

Of all the feelers and phalanges in the animal kingdom, the arms of an octopus are perhaps the most sensitive and precise of all. Their boneless arms work in all directions, detect myriad chemical signals, and work just fine with or without visual cues. Surely they’d make a great model for soft-bodied robots, right? In this talk, scientists will present an octopus-inspired control model for soft-bodied robots that is computationally simple, yet highly effective at a variety of tasks. Like an octopus in water, it relies on chemosensory input rather than visual cues alone, offering potential for search-and-rescue missions, space exploration, and medical applications.

Bioinspired Robot Makes Waves to Move Like Real Snails
March 4, 4:12-4:24 p.m. CT, Room 103D

A new, soft snail-inspired robot design exhibits rippling pedal-like wave motions normally found in snails that must move with only one “foot” — a flat, adhesive and dexterous muscular structure. This talk will detail the two step process that roboticists used to create the snail-like robot. First, the researchers will explain the importance of wavelength and amplitude in enabling pedal wave locomotion. Then, they will discuss how the thin mucus layer of the bottom of the foot generates adhesion and supports locomotion across a variety of terrain. The applications for this robot stem from its design, which could be adapted to support autonomous mobile robots’ movement in various settings.

New ‘Double Superionic’ Simulation Reveals Makeup of Ice Giant Interiors
March 4, 4:36-4:48 p.m. CT, Room M101ABC

Ice giants like Uranus and Neptune are thought to contain highly pressurized, icy mantles of water, methane, and ammonia. These compounds are predictable near the surfaces of the planets, but deep in the interiors they behave in fascinating, yet poorly understood ways. To understand the internal layers of these planets, researchers simulated the ionic activity of several hydrogen-carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (H-C-N-O)-based ices under extreme temperature and pressure conditions. They found not only superionic behavior, where hydrogen ions move through a lattice of heavier nuclei, but also a double superionic phase — never observed before in H-C-N-O systems — where other ions flow with hydrogen through the lattice. In this talk, the team will share the novel findings and their potential applications, including the prediction of exoplanet compositions, discerning magnetic field origins, and the development of liquid ion batteries and superconductors.

Plant-Inspired, Touch-Sensitive Smart Skin Enables Soft Robot Arm to ‘Feel’
March 4, 5-5:12 p.m. CT, Room 103D

Soft robots are used for tasks that require flexibility and dexterity, such as in automation and robotic surgery. However, most soft robots lack the ability to sense and respond to touch — unlike plants, which can “feel” mechanical stimuli using a variety of mechanoreceptors like specialized cells or fine hairs. In this talk, scientists will introduce a touch sensitive smart skin that mimics plant mechanoperception, designed for a 3D-printed soft robot arm. The skin contains liquid-filled channels reminiscent of poroelastic networks in plants, which can sense and transmit pressure changes when the arm grabs an object. This development could be useful for designing more sensitive surgical devices and manufacturing tools.

Robot Smaller Than a Grain of Sand Can Communicate and Explore Its Surroundings Autonomously
March 5, 8:36-8:48 a.m. CT, Room 103D

A new, easily re-programmable robot operates functionally and autonomously — and does so in a body that is smaller than a grain of sand. The microrobot can perform many tasks as directed through wireless optical communication and uses energy collected from solar cells to move. In this talk, roboticists will present examples of the autonomous microrobot moving in a variety of ways, incorporating sensor feedback to change its behavior, and collecting data about its surrounding environment. The system costs fractions of a penny and can be mass manufactured, enabling widespread use.

How Fire Ants Feed During Floods
March 5, 9:12-9:24 a.m. CT, Room 103B

If you’ve watched enough nature documentaries, you know that some ant species survive floods by linking limbs to create floating ant rafts. This is impressive collective behavior in its own right, but new research has found that fire ants also form bridges along the surface of water to reach floating food. This seems like a natural next step for ant survival in wet environments, but the fire ants’ behavior and communication mechanisms have not been reported on previously. In this talk, scientists will discuss insights on how fire ants coordinate locally and across long distances to form such structures, and how their behavior could inform collective communication in other species and systems.

Entangled Aquatic Worm Blobs Use Surface Tension To Reach Oxygen at the Water's Surface
March 5, 9:24-9:36 a.m. CT, Room 103B

Self-organized floating masses of California blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) are able to get enough oxygen to survive by forming “worm buoys,” harnessing surface tension to attach to the air-water interface on bodies of water. This talk will address how such worm buoys respirate cooperatively. The team behind this work will delve into their 3D topological simulations and analyses based on information theory that led to the discovery that worms collectively stick their tails up out of the water to reach more oxygen and hold the collective buoy in place. The findings yield new information about aquatic survival strategies and could have applications in bioinspired engineering for floating devices and sensors.

Worms, Weeds, and Entanglement Theory
March 5, 9:48-10 a.m. CT, Room 103B

Studies in recent years have brought California blackworms out of the mud and into the limelight as researchers tease apart their tangly behaviors. The worms’ collective movement abilities are intriguing from a physical and mathematical perspective, but what about their ecological implications? In a video-driven presentation on recent observational work, researchers will share newly recorded worm behaviors similar to rafting fire ants. But in this case, the worms are surfing on waves of floating plant roots. Might this discovery inspire robotics that can do the same?

What Happens When Ants March on Crowded Trails
March 5, 10:24-10:36 a.m. CT, Room 103B

When gathering food, ant colonies often move along highly crowded trails. Yet, each individual insect somehow forages efficiently while moving along these highly populated networks. During this talk, scientists will share experiments and computational models that explain how Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) avoid traffic jams as they scurry to a food source and bring food back to their nests. Beyond exploring this ant-specific foraging phenomenon, the discussion will provide a window into how collective intelligence manifests within groups of individuals — with potential applications for developing autonomous robotic swarms.

Simulations Leverage Large Language Models to Predict Human Behavior in Different Social Scenarios
March 5, 1:30-1:42 p.m. CT, Room 102C

Unlike physical processes, human behavior is difficult to simulate. Researchers have yet to identify universal laws and constants for social dynamics, which are driven by an immeasurable variety of personalities, backgrounds, and cultures that are difficult to model and predict. In this talk, researchers will present a computational approach that leverages large language models to examine the behavior of human actors in social systems. The simulations use mathematical models to iteratively generate and then test social science hypotheses. The researchers demonstrate the approach with several social scenarios: a negotiation, a bail hearing, a job interview, and an auction. The results uncover realistic causal relationships in these scenarios by simulating human interactions with AI.

High School Students Shoot Lasers to Date Pennies From 1934 Onwards
March 5, 2-5 p.m. CT, Poster Session I, Hall BC

Penny composition over the past 100 years has changed several times. Machine learning and laser spectroscopy offer a way to peek at their past lives. Performed by high school students as part of a physics outreach initiative and presented in a poster session, this research identifies the metal compositions of pennies circulated from 1934 to 1958 and 2005 to 2014. The analyses also pinpoint metals in uncirculated minted pennies from 1970 to 2009. The authors emphasize that the project’s novelty not only lies in its results, but also in its multidisciplinary approach that invites the next generation to engage with physics, chemistry, history, and more.

Can Ultra-Short Laser Pulses Tip Space Junk Out of Orbit?
March 5, 2-5 p.m. CT, Poster Session I, Hall BC

The low Earth orbit — where the International Space Station and most satellites roam — is an increasingly cluttered space. As decommissioned instruments collide and break, more debris forms, creating an evermore hostile environment for new missions. Solutions for the space junk problem have been proposed since the late 1970s and include nets, slingshots, electrical tethers, sails, and more. But these fixes require launching more material into space, which is both costly and risky. In this poster presentation, researchers will explore the potential of beaming ultra short laser pulses to destroy or alter the trajectories of space debris objects. shorter laser pulses on the order of femtoseconds, the research suggests, could offer far more control.

Helium is Running Out, But Solutions Don’t Have to be Pricey
March 5, 2-5 p.m. CT, Poster Session I, Hall BC

Beyond filling balloons and squeakifying our voices, helium has long been used in the physical sciences for a variety of applications. Its unreactive and super-coolable properties make it useful for arc welding and fiber optics, as well as for chilling nuclear reactors, MRI machines, and even the Large Hadron Collider. But helium is a finite resource and we are running out. Helium prices have risen more than 250% in the last several years, forcing many small research labs to scale back operations. But help is on the way for scientists with smaller budgets. In this poster session, researchers will present a new cost-effective helium recapture system with recovery rates above 94 percent. The system’s adaptability, affordability, and homemade-friendly design could offer a solution for a wide range of experimental measurements where liquid helium is used as a coolant.

The Detangling Power of ‘Shake the Crap Out of It’
March 5, 2-5 p.m. CT, Poster Session I, Hall BC and March 7, 1:06 –1:18 p.m. and 1:18-1:30 p.m. CT, Room 102F

Whether it’s hair, power cables, or fishing line, everyone deals with tangled systems. We all have our own tactics to untangle our belongings, but one method might actually work best. In this poster presentation and two-part talk, researchers will share experimental results suggesting that shaking or vibrating one element in a tangle can help it pull free faster — assuming the shaker finds the right vibration frequency. The presenter will also expand on the fascinating principles of tangles that underlie this new finding, and how this detangling mechanism might apply to robots, tire construction, and materials science.

It’s Alive! How Wound-Up Worms Could Inspire Living Robots
March 5, 2-5 p.m. CT, Poster Session I, Hall BC and March 7, 12:18–12:30 p.m. CT, Room 102F

Imagine a modeling clay that moves, reshapes, and responds to stimuli all by itself. This sounds like some far-off technology, but nature has already invented it: blackworm blobs. When California blackworms get together, they entangle their filamentous bodies to regulate their temperatures, oxygen, and moisture. But their behavior goes beyond basic body maintenance. It is also a means of collective locomotion, and they’re quite good at it. For this poster session and talk, scientists will share how blackworms avoid stimuli as a group, why researchers need to study their communication tactics, and how this controllable behavior might be applied to robots made of living matter.

Synthetic ‘Malaria In a Petri Dish’ Safely Models Host-Virus Dynamics of a Vector-Borne Disease in E. Coli
March 5, 4:12-4:48 p.m. CT, Room L100FG

Public health decisions require a better understanding of how diseases spread. In this talk, researchers will describe a model system that emulates vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and Lyme disease, in the laboratory. Unlike human diseases, this "malaria in a petri dish" system utilizes harmless viral strains that only grow in bacteria. The virus requires two alternating strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli to grow, like how vector-borne diseases in humans require a second host — often bloodsucking insects. Lab experiments and modeling demonstrate how infections in bacteria respond to herd immunity and physical separation between the two host types. The results could offer a new approach for examining vector-borne diseases in humans, and the efficacy of different strategies to combat epidemics.

Raindrops Are Random...Right? Small-scale Experiments Aim to Find Out
March 6, 10:12–10:24 a.m. CT, Room 103F

If you’ve ever watched rain fall on a puddle’s surface, you might conclude that raindrops fall with complete randomness. Scientists across many disciplines assume the same, but is this actually true? There is some evidence that rain follows patterns at large, storm-sized scales, but at smaller scales (think centimeters), researchers still know very little about this common weather phenomenon. In this talk, the presenter will share results from the first experiment designed to measure raindrop clustering patterns from different storm types. Understanding these arrangements could open our eyes to a variety of natural mechanisms such as reproduction in splash-dependent plants and fungi, as well as erosion and pathogen dispersal.

Snow Fleas Use their ‘Jumping’ Organ and Body Deformation To Move on Snow and Melting Ice
March 6, 10:36–10:48 a.m. CT, Room 103B

Snow fleas, also called dark blue springtails, are tiny arthropods that flourish on snow and ice in the winter, making use of their prong-shaped organ known as a furcula to catapult into the air — hence the name. In this talk, the presenter will show how springtails can rapidly spring from snow into the air, but how it’s difficult for them to take off from liquid water. Instead, observations show that the arthropod deforms its body on water to create capillary forces with its mouth and furcula, enabling it to climb a water meniscus. It also uses its sticky and expansive anal glands to firmly adhere to icy surfaces. These strategies could inform future designs for bioinspired robots that move across snow and melting ice in cold and rapidly changing climates.

Vegan Foods: Searching for a Better Texture
March 6, 11:30-2:30 p.m. CT, Poster Session II, Hall BC

With the human population passing 8 billion, scientists and conservationists around the world are increasingly encouraging plant-based diets for the sake of sustainability. Vegan substitutes for meat and dairy products offer promising alternatives, but their widespread adoption is dependent on how well they emulate the real thing in flavor, nutrition, and texture. Texture, whether it’s mouthfeel, spreadability, or dispensing ability has been a major hurdle for vegan food scientists seeking to replace eggs as emulsifiers in products like mayonnaise, dressings, and dips. This poster will explore the challenges and opportunities associated with eggless emulsions, and discuss key differences in the rheology, or flow, of plant and animal-based products.

Decoding Dog Agility to Design Better Robots
March 6, 11:30-2:30 p.m. CT, Poster Session II, Hall BC

For most creatures, navigating uneven terrain on foot comes easily and seemingly automatically. By adjusting stride length, balance, and posture, animals can — perhaps subconsciously — maneuver with impressive agility. Robots, however, need precise programming and effective mechanics to gracefully maintain their trajectories — technologies that are yet to be perfected. In a study inspired by previous robot research, researchers examined how dogs make their way through the same obstacles given to robots. While the team observed the canines primarily adjusting their stride length to overcome obstacles, this poster presentation will focus on two other surprising tricks the dogs had up their coat sleeves: “reset” steps, and zig-zagging. Teasing out navigation strategies in a variety of animals broadens the toolbox for designing more agile and resilient robots, while expanding our understanding of animal behavior and biomechanics.

Gecko-Inspired Sticky Limb Helps Sea Star-Like Crawling Robot Ascend Steep Slopes
March 6, 11:42-11:54 a.m. CT, Room M100D

Inspired by the adhesive properties of gecko feet, scientists have designed a soft robotic air-powered limb and incorporated it into an amphibious sea star-like crawling robot. The gecko adhesion design helped the sea star crawler move on both wet and dry slopes. In this talk and accompanying poster session, researchers will share how they evaluated variously shaped, soft polymer microstructures and determined the best way to maximize adhesion. In tests, the robotic crawler used its adhesive limbs to climb inclines of 25 degrees and cling to slopes of 51 degrees.

We Can Herd Sheep, What About Robots?
March 6, 12:42–12:54 p.m. CT, Room 103B

Robot swarms sound like the start of a sci-fi thriller plot, but if scientists can figure out how to control their movement, swarms of simple robots might offer more scalable, flexible solutions over their complex, all-in-one counterparts for things like search and rescue missions and micro-scale medical procedures. By studying the interactions of sheep and herding dogs, researchers are beginning to understand how randomness in a swarm can be exploited for better herding and control. This talk will expand on the value of programming randomness into robot swarms, overcoming the challenge of splitting swarms into subgroups, and how this bio-inspired behavior might be applied to cancer treatments, public policy, and more.

Blowing Bubbles That Last: How Temperature Could Replace Surfactants
March 6, 12:42–1:18 p.m. CT, Gallery of Soft Matter, Room 101DE

Bubbles are perhaps defined by their ephemeral nature. In contexts where bubbly, foamy behavior is valuable like fire-retardants, food product experience, or drug delivery, this instability can be a problem. Surfactants can help maintain bubble films, but recent research shows that a mere temperature gradient can do the trick without the need for toxic chemical additives. Not only that, the experiments extended oil bubble lifespans from tens of milliseconds to nearly an hour. This talk will explore the mechanisms behind this discovery, and the broad potential for surfactant-free foams.

Bees Use Thin Hairs To Collect Static Electricity From the Air, Attracting Them to Flowers
March 6, 3-3:36 p.m. CT, Room 101J

Static electricity, also known as triboelectricity, occurs when two objects become charged from frictional contact. Research has shown that spiders use static electricity to “balloon” through the air with the help of silk. A recent study suggests that static electricity may passively attract ticks to potential hosts. In this talk, scientists will describe how bees may also benefit from static electricity, by using thin innervated hairs to detect electric fields and collect positive charge as they fly, which helps to draw them to negatively charged flowers. The findings add to growing evidence that bees and other arthropods could have a “sixth sense” for detecting electrical signals, and may use electroreception for a variety of ecological benefits.

Aerial Drift Alongside Electrostatic Pull Helps Jumping Parasitic Worms Reach Their Insect Hosts
March 6, 5:12-5:24 p.m. CT, Room 101J

Jumping nematodes — or small parasitic worms — often travel from insect host to insect host by self-catapulting and drifting in the wind. During this talk, scientists will describe how nematodes employ aerial drift and electrostatic induction to reach their moving hosts. Beyond defining the roles that electrostatic charge, launch angle, and jumping velocity play in determining a nematode’s success in reaching its host, the researchers will reveal how these forces and the wind similarly help nematodes attach to rain droplets and disperse in the atmosphere. Such findings could have relevancy for pest management strategies.

Experiments Show How Underwater Dunes Cruise Past Giant Obstacles
March 6, 5:36-5:48 p.m. CT, Room 102C

Barchans are crescent-shaped dunes found in deserts, oceans, riverbeds, and even beyond Earth, like on Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan. Underwater barchans are shaped by the persistent flow of water, which erodes them on one side and deposits sand onto the crest, causing them to migrate in the direction of the flow. In this talk, the presenter will describe experiments investigating how underwater barchans respond to obstacles of similar sizes, demonstrating how they get blocked by or bypass large objects, sometimes even splitting into two forms to cruise past them. The findings illuminate how underwater dune behavior could impact submarine structures, such as bridge pillars and retaining walls.

How a Water-Stalking Insect Moves Like E. coli
March 7, 9:12-9:24a.m. CT, Room 101H

Water-stalking insect predators called Rhagovelia use a run-and-tumble motion — previously only seen in the bacteria E. coli — to track and catch prey on the water’s surface. This motion includes a run in a single direction and then a seemingly random change in direction called a tumble, leading to sharply patterned movements scientists describe as “reminiscent of the way the coast guard performs the Victor Sierra search pattern.” In this talk, scientists will share how they came to this finding, why the environment impacts surface tension during the Rhagovelia’s run-and-tumble, and how these insights could inform robotics research.

Why Researchers are Watching a Massive, Dying Star Spew Salt Into Space
March 7, 10:12 -10:24 a.m. CT, Room 103E

Beyond the perception of the naked eye, a star larger than Jupiter’s orbit is quietly dying. Most giant stars explode dramatically into supernovae at the end of their lives, but the hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris is steadily ejecting enormous arches, clumps, and knots of gas and dust into the surrounding space. This behavior is relatively uncommon, but what’s more intriguing is the salty composition of the star’s ejecta. In this talk, researchers will share surprising findings and discuss how table salt and other similar compounds ejected from the surfaces of dying stars can help us answer a number of open questions, such as how black holes form, how salts can survive such extreme conditions, and how biologically important elements like phosphorus and carbon are distributed throughout the universe.

Researchers Quantify Myelin Damage in the Aging Brain Using New Imaging Techniques
March 7, 10:24-11 a.m. CT, Auditorium 1

Myelin plays a crucial role in brain function by insulating nerves and helping to transmit electrical signals efficiently through the brain and spinal cord. Myelin damage occurs in many nervous system disorders, like multiple sclerosis, and it’s more recently been associated with cognitive decline in age-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. It’s been difficult to map myelin precisely with conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. This talk will discuss the use of MRI to conduct macromolecular mapping — a method to quantify myelin by detecting the water bound up in its protein- and lipid-rich membrane. These developments could transform the way clinicians monitor and characterize myelin damage in the aging brain.

Infectious Disease Transmission Model Adapted to Forecast US Elections
March 7, 12:42–1:18 p.m. CT, Room 205AB

Forecasting election outcomes is complex and involves many choices. With the 2024 elections fast approaching, the ability to think critically about them is becoming increasingly important. This talk will present an election forecasting model that treats voter interactions somewhat akin to how contagion is treated in infectious disease transmission models. Findings show how forecasts shift when data from different polling organizations, thought to have various partisan leanings, are weighted differently. The researchers used the model to forecast the U.S. senate, gubernatorial, and presidential elections in 2020 and 2022, with similar accuracy to popular forecasters — and they’ll use it again to forecast the 2024 presidential race.

Study in Mice Connects the Status of Cardiovascular Health to the Efficiency of Cerebrospinal Waste Removal During Aging
March 8, 11:54 a.m.-12:06 p.m. CT, Room 103F

New in vivo measurements in mice establish a potentially causal correlation between age-related cardiovascular health and the efficiency of cerebrospinal fluid flow — a process during which toxic cellular waste like amyloid-beta, a protein that has been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, leaves the brain during sleep. In this talk, researchers will explore this preliminary data that reveal an age-associated decline in arterial pulsing strength to a decrease in cerebrospinal waste removal rates. The study has implications for understanding the many causes behind neurodegenerative diseases.

Biomechanical Model Explores How Atacama Shrub Overcomes Salty Soil by Secreting Brine From Its Leaves
March 8, 12:30-12:42 p.m. CT, Room 103B

A new project investigates the biomechanics of salt glands found in an Atacaman shrub (Nolana mollis), evaluating how this plant’s organs give it tolerance to soils with high salinity. This talk will go beyond describing the shrub’s physiological traits. It will unveil the mechanical and physical dynamics that help the shrub process and excrete salt from its leaves in a wet brine. The results could inform strategies to combat ongoing periles related to soil salinization from deicing techniques and sea level rise. Moreover, the analyses may aid the development of desalination technologies.

Soft Pectin Hydrogel Strengthens Water-Transporting Cell Walls in Plants, Helping to Prevent Air Bubble ‘Clogs’
March 8, 12:42-12:54 p.m. CT, Room 103B

To understand how trees might respond to drought conditions in a changing climate, scientists have been investigating the structure of their vascular systems — networks of tubes that transport water and nutrients through their roots, stems, and leaves. Trees have learned to cope with drought in part by producing cell walls that prevent the spread of air embolisms — small pockets of air that block water transport through the vasculature. In this talk, scientists will describe experiments in red maple trees that show how a soft pectin hydrogel entangled in the tree’s cell walls adds stability, playing a key role in preventing the spread of air bubbles. The results could help researchers understand how plants will respond to climate change and inform applications for stronger biomaterials.

When Unable to Build Hexagonal Honeycombs, Bees Adapt and Create Alternate Energy Conserving Geometric Patterns
March 8, 2:06-2:18 p.m. CT, Room 102F

When prevented from building hexagonal honeycombs, bees will resort to constructing combs with new, different geometric patterns that promote the most efficient use of beeswax. Sharing results from experiments and computational frameworks, this talk will explore how bees prioritize energy and resource conservation in honeycomb patterns even when thwarted from building lattices. The findings shed light on collective bee behaviors.