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It’s been a busy month for Dr. Robert Beichner, professor of physics and director of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Initiative at North Carolina State University.

Cementing his reputation as an innovative instructor, Beichner on Thursday was named North Carolina Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

That award comes on the heels of a national honor announced last month, as Beichner received the Outstanding Undergraduate Science Teacher Award from the Society for College Science Teachers, an affiliate of the National Science Teachers Association.

Beichner’s contributions to science education, from co-authoring a leading physics textbook to literally changing how students are educated in the classroom through his SCALE-UP project, are the reasons for all the accolades. SCALE-UP borrows methodology and teaching efforts proven to be successful in small class settings – such as hands-on activities, simulations and roundtable discussions – and adapts them for use in larger classrooms. It represents a  radical departure from ordinary science lecture classes.

“Bob has devoted his career to improving the way we teach – and students learn – science at the university level,” said Dr. Daniel Solomon, dean of NC State’s College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. “His very presence has allowed us to attract other STEM education experts to NC State, creating a community of faculty whose research will put the university at the forefront in this area and further improve postsecondary STEM education for generations to come.”

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North Carolina State University senior Brittany Boudreaux has been awarded a $10,000 scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF). The scholarship will be presented to Boudreaux by Apollo 16 astronaut and moonwalker Charlie Duke during a free public ceremony to be held on Wednesday, Sept. 23, at 12:30 p.m. in 210 Park Shops on the NC State campus.

Boudreaux is completing double majors in civil engineering and applied mathematics. After Hurricane Katrina, she spent the summer of 2006 as an engineering aide at the New Orleans District Corps of Engineers assisting project managers overseeing reconstruction on non-invasive techniques for evaluating non-porous materials. She co-authored an article accepted for publication in Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering. Boudreaux plans to pursue a Ph.D. and aspires to forestall future disasters such as the levee failure in New Orleans.

Boudreaux is one of  17 students nationwide to receive this scholarship. The Astronaut
Scholarships are awarded annually to students who show exceptional performance in the fields of science, engineering or mathematics. Recipients must exhibit motivation, imagination and intellectual daring, as well as exceptional performance, both in and outside the classroom.

The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation is a non-profit organization established by the Mercury Astronauts in 1984 with the goal of aiding the United States in retaining its world leadership in science and technology. The ASF has awarded more than $2.8 million in scholarships to date, including $188,000 to NC State students.

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Researchers at North Carolina State University have received a three-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Center for Chemical Innovation (NSF-CCI) to pursue research in the emerging field of  molecular spintronics. The grant will fund a center for molecular spintronics at NC State and support a research coalition between scientists at NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill with the aim of using this technology to develop smaller, faster, more energy-efficient electronic devices with increased storage capability.

Dr. David Shultz, professor of chemistry, is the principal investigator. NC State co-PIs include Drs. Dan Dougherty, Marco Buongiorno-Nardelli, Jack Rowe (physics), Joe Tracy (materials science and engineering) and Gail Jones (math, science and technology education). The grant is one of four awarded nationally by the NSF.

Molecular spintronics refers to the use of designed molecules containing electrons that are not involved in chemical bonds. These electrons have small magnetic fields which can then be    utilized to power electronic devices with more memory storage capability, faster operation and lower energy usage.

“This is a combination of materials science and chemistry that goes beyond mere  nanotechnology,” Shultz says, “and that has the advantage of taking the field of electronics beyond the current limitations we have when working with materials like silicon.”

The grant also allows the research team to focus on outreach and training for a new generation of scientists specializing in this technology by providing funding for graduate courses and other educational activities.

“It is an effort not only to use designed molecules to build new devices, but also to train future researchers and workers who can bring this technology into the world and marketplace,” Buongiorno-Nardelli says.

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A North Carolina State University researcher has received an $800,000 grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to explore ways to reuse or otherwise safely dispose of waste from nuclear power plants.

Dr. Gary Mitchell, professor of physics at NC State, will serve as lead investigator on the project titled, “Cross Sections, Level Densities and Strength Functions.”

“Nuclear energy is easier to utilize than solar or wind energy, but if we want to start thinking about building more reactors to help alleviate our dependence on fossil fuels, we have to have a solution to dealing with the byproducts from those reactors,” Mitchell says. “What we’re looking at is an alternate fuel cycle that produces a different sort of waste, and at reusing this waste in order to reduce the total amount of nuclear waste.”

The award is part of more than $20 million in NNSA grants awarded to 28 researchers from 18 states. This award was made possible through the NNSA’s Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) program.

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North Carolina State University experts can shed light on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement April 17 that carbon dioxide and five other “greenhouse gases” are contributing to global climate change and therefore pose a threat to human health and welfare. While utilities, factory farms and other industry sectors are key contributors to overall greenhouse emissions, EPA specifically focused on cars and trucks as a source of greenhouse gases, saying, “motor vehicle engines contribute … to the threat of climate change.” Experts view EPA’s announcement as a first step toward regulations that will attempt to address emissions from automobiles and their related health and ecological concerns.

NC State has greenhouse gas emissions experts who can offer insight into the risks posed by greenhouse gases and the role motor vehicles play in emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Their understanding of the issues will help outline the questions EPA will face as it moves forward with its regulatory development process.

Dr. Christopher Frey, professor of civil engineering, 919/515-1155 or frey@ncsu.edu, is an expert on transportation and air quality issues who has studied greenhouse gas emissions for more than a decade. Frey is an internationally recognized expert on air quality and health risks, and also sits on EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.

Dr. Nagui Rouphail, professor of civil engineering, 919/515-1154 or rouphail@eos.ncsu.edu, is an expert on transportation systems and their interaction with mobile sources of air pollution and related greenhouse gas emissions. Rouphail’s research focuses on how vehicle and traffic operations affect emissions of greenhouse gases. Rouphail is also the director of the Institute for Transportation Research and Education.

Dr. Viney P. Aneja, professor of air quality and environmental technology, 919/515-7808 or viney_aneja@ncsu.edu, is an expert on air quality and environmental policy issues. Aneja’s research focuses on issues related to air quality, including emissions, transport and the
fate of pollutants in the atmosphere. Aneja also serves on the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Environmental Engineering Committee. “Emissions from utilities and an array of other sources, including concentrated animal feeding operations, are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, so they are facing new regulatory challenges as well,” Aneja says.

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New NC State chemical compounds break up biofilms, make antibiotics work again

It started out as a research project focused on getting rid of harmful bacterial accumulations called biofilms.

Now it has the potential to make conventional antibiotics work against stubborn, drug-resistant bacteria.

This unexpected development might have come as a surprise to the North Carolina State University researchers involved in the project, Dr. Christian Melander, assistant professor of chemistry, and Dr. John Cavanagh, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Molecular and Structural Biochemistry.

What’s not surprising, however, is the researchers’ willingness to try seemingly unusual or unconventional methods to solve common problems. After all, getting rid of biofilms meant figuring out something odd to people who aren’t chemists: how to safely and efficiently mimic a sea sponge.

Sponging Away Biofilms
Bacteria have a number of ways of protecting themselves from antibiotics, including casing themselves in a protective barrier known as a biofilm. Biofilms comprise about 80 percent of the world’s microbial environment and are, according to statistics from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, responsible for up to 80 percent of all bacterial infections.

In addition to medical concerns – certain biofilms in the lung kill cystic fibrosis patients, for example – biofilms also have enormous impacts in agriculture and industry. Biofilms destroy crops, foul ship’s hulls and coat medical devices. Biofilms also coat – don’t be alarmed – your teeth. As anyone who has had plaque scraped from their teeth knows, getting rid of biofilms once they adhere to a surface is really difficult.

To create chemical compounds that can scrub away biofilms, Melander and Cavanagh looked to a particular sea sponge, Agelas conifera, that lives in the Caribbean Sea.

“Somehow, this sponge that can’t run away and that has no immune system stays remarkably clean while everything around it is covered in biofilms, so the sponge has some molecular way of keeping them at bay,” Cavanagh said. “We’ve never seen a sea sponge up close, but we understand the chemical processes going on. So Christian devised chemical compounds to mimic the sponge compound, ageliferin, that keeps the sponge free of biofilms. Our compounds are not toxic to mammals like ageliferin is, though, and we can make the compounds in enormous quantities.”

The NC State chemical compounds don’t kill biofilms outright, but cause them to revert to their single-celled form. Common antibiotics are then able to do their job of eliminating the single-celled bacteria.

Melander and Cavanagh have had great success achieving the original goal of their research, as every targeted biofilm has been defeated.

Working with researchers at Wake Forest University Medical School, for example, Melander and Cavanagh demonstrated they can break up deadly biofilms in a mimic of a cystic fibrosis lung. In collaboration with Dr. David Ritchie, professor of plant pathology at NC State, the researchers successfully eliminated bacterial spot disease from a field of pepper plants. Melander and Cavanagh have also dissolved their compound in marine paint and, working with Dr. Peter Moeller at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have shown in ocean tests that it assists in keeping marine biofilm growth to a minimum.

Rebooting Antibiotics
While thrilled with their successes, Melander and Cavanagh wondered if their compounds might do more than overcome biofilms. Could their molecules stop bacteria from protecting themselves in other ways? Was it possible to make multi-drug resistant bacteria susceptible to antibiotics once more?

“There are a lot of antibiotics lying around useless these days because bacteria have learned to resist them. We wondered if we could give antibiotics a new lease on life,” Cavanagh says.

The researchers certainly didn’t aim low. They decided to tackle two of the most insidious problems known today; methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MDRAB). MRSA needs no introduction – it is a widespread and dangerous infection resistant to more than a dozen common antibiotics, including methicillin, penicillin and amoxicillin. MDRAB is arguably scarier. Up to 1,000 times more resistant than MRSA, it is found in hospitals and attacks patients who have compromised immune systems. MDRAB has become notorious recently since it plagues the military. Wounded soldiers are taken to hospitals where they become infected with MDRAB, often with fatal results.

Melander and Cavanagh showed that their compounds were able to overcome the multi-drug resistance of two nasty strains of MRSA and MDRAB. The MRSA strain from a hospital in Portugal was resistant to 16 antibiotics. The MDRAB strain was taken from a Canadian serviceman. In both cases, the NC State compounds enabled conventional antibiotics to work again. As Cavanagh puts it, “We have, in effect, taken the MR out of MRSA.”

Now, Melander and Cavanagh have formed a start-up company called Agile Sciences that is producing more of the chemical compounds and partnering with several drug companies to do further testing. The Research Triangle Park company is the “vehicle for the masses – the way to get things out to the general public to see if we can help,” according to Cavanagh, while he and Melander get back to work on “building a better mousetrap,” or making the compounds even better. Is it possible to make a chemical compound that stops bacteria from forming biofilms, for example, or place a chemical on surfaces so biofilms don’t attach? Those are the types of questions the NC State scientists are now examining.

“Meanwhile, there are a lot more biofilms to destroy,” Melander says “and we need to see whether we can make even more antibiotics work again.”

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