Tag: Halmos College of Arts and Sciences

HCAS Chemistry Research Grant Gains Supercomputer Time

This year, Halmos College chemistry professors Brian Van Hoozen, Ph.D. and Maria Ballester, Ph.D. received a grant from the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), a division of the National Science Foundation. XSEDE is a single virtual system that scientists can use to interactively share computing resources, data and expertise. People around the world use these resources and services — things like supercomputers, collections of data and new tools — to improve our planet.

This grant allows three undergraduate biology majors (Rade Jibawi Rivera, Senior; Anthony Bianco, Junior; and Ramson Munoz, Junior) to do computational chemistry research which focuses on trying to model a pathway by which the body may naturally avoid skin cancer by simulating molecular vibrational coupling between model systems for DNA base pairs and nearby water molecules. The project is also supported by a President’s Faculty Research and Development Grant.

NSU Launches Bee Conservation Campaign: “Save the Bees at NSU”

The Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the NSU Office for Alumni Relations and Annual Giving is partnering to support NSU’s sanctuary for bee habitat, which houses dozens of beehives to promote educational activities for students of all ages on campus.

Bees have a very important role in the conservation of our planet, not to mention other medicinal and economic purposes, such as pollination of crops, fruit plants, and flowers, for example. Unfortunately, these honeybee beehives and colonies are severely threatened locally, nationally, and globally. They are dying at alarming rates, at times reaching nearly 50%, from several causes including pesticides, invasive species, loss of habitat and food, and others.

The loss of honeybees can have disastrous outcomes for our food web and environmental health. This is the reason why NSU aims to teach students about environmental stewardship and raise awareness of the importance of honeybees.

Dr. Vic Shanbhag, a professor in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, volunteers his time to maintain and develop a beekeeping initiative at NSU, purchasing equipment and supplies needed to keep the students and the bees safe. He is a certified apiarist and maintains a fair amount of beehive boxes (5-10) on campus.

Shanbhag does this out of his own pocket, which is expensive and limits the educational and conservationist impact of the project.

The Halmos College of Arts & Sciences and University Advancement are collecting donations for the “Save the Bees at NSU” crowdfunding campaign. With these donations, we will be able to cover the costs of the needed supplies and expand on the education experiences for our students.

Some of the needed supplies include two (2) storage bins ($200 each), two (2) beekeeper suits ($100), five (5) additional beehive boxes ($200 each), and other supplies.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, the campaign offers wonderful incentives for all donors who donate to it by February 10 at 5:00 p.m. ET. For every $5.00 gift, NSU will email a valentine’s card to your valentine; for every $10.00 gift, we will mail them a scratch-off valentine’s card; and for every $25.00 gift, we will ship them a special bee charm pendant.

To support this initiative, please share our campaign and donate at: https://www.givecampus.com/ghlii4

Let us help the next generation to preserve our bees and our environment. Any just maybe, make some Shark honey as well.

New Year/New Dance, Feb. 12

The Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts presents “New Year/New Dance” on Friday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m. on Zoom. Join us for an evening of dance created and performed by NSU students. This event provides a new platform for our emerging choreographers and dancers to share their talent and creativity with the community.

For more information, visit nova.edu/arts or contact Elana Lanczi, associate professor of dance, at lanczi@nova.edu

2021 Art + Design Senior Exhibition Features Work of Senior Students in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts

The 2021 Art + Design Senior Exhibition opens with a virtual reception on Wednesday, Feb. 17, at 5 p.m. and features the work of senior B.A. Art + Design students within the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts in the Hamos College of Arts and Sciences.

The exhibit, titled “EMANON,” features a range of designs from five female artists – Gianna Allison, Amanda Glaser, Dyane Oliva, Sol Santecchia and Juliana Speranza – who share a story of five names brought together under one title. Their work is available for viewing through April 16 in Gallery 217, which is located on the second floor of the Don Taft University Center in the Performing and Visual Arts wing.

Both the virtual reception and the exhibition are free and open to the public.

To RSVP for the virtual reception, visit tinyurl.com/2sdm23uc

For more information about the exhibition, visit www.nova.edu/arts

HCAS Alumnus is Named Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at University of Pittsburgh-Bradford

Tony Gaskew, Ph.D., doctoral graduate of the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies (DCRS) in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and Guy Harvey Oceanographic Institute (HCAS) has been named Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh Bradford, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences.

Gaskew is a Professor of Criminal Justice and served as the Director of the Criminal Justice Program. He spent over 20 years in law enforcement. In 2016, he was one of ten US educators invited to the White House to participate in a Roundtable on Criminal Justice Reform.  Gaskew was a recipient of the 2014 NSU Distinguished Alumni Award. His honors include the Fulbright-Hays Fellow for a research project in Egypt and the Academic Fellow in Terrorist Studies in Israel by The Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He was named a University of Pittsburgh Faculty Diversity Fellow and Teacher of the Year by The National Society of Leadership and Success. Gaskew is the founding director of the nationally recognized UPB Prison Education Program. Gaskew received the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (DHS) Beacon of Dignity Award at Columbia University in 2015 for his outstanding dedication to equality and human rights. He is the book series editor of Critical Perspectives on Race, Crime, and Justice. He has been a featured speaker at DCRS’ Social Justice Roundtable.

His latest book recently published by Lexington Rowman & Littlefield is Stop Trying to Fix Policing: Lessons Learned form the Front Lines of Black Liberation. For more information please see: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498589505/Stop-Trying-to-Fix-Policing-Lessons-Learned-from-the-Front-Lines-of-Black-Liberation

 

NSU Researcher Part of Team Studying Impact of Rising Sea Temperatures on Marine Life

Global warming or climate change. It doesn’t matter what you call it. What matters is that right now it is having a direct and dramatic effect on marine environments across our planet.

“More immediately pressing than future climate change is the increasing frequency and severity of extreme ‘underwater heatwaves’ that we are already seeing around the world today,” Lauren Nadler, Ph.D., who is an assistant professor in Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) Halmos College of Arts and Sciences . “This phenomenon is what we wanted to both simulate and understand.”

Lauren Nadler, Ph.D.

Nadler is a co-author of a new study on this topic, which you can find published online at eLife Science Journal.

As a way to further document how increasing temperatures in our oceans are impacting marine life, Nadler and a team of researchers collected two common coral reef fishes – the five-lined cardinalfish and the redbelly yellowtail fusilier – from the northern Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Then, under controlled laboratory conditions, the team gradually increased temperatures by 3.0˚C above the average summer temperatures for the area. But don’t worry, they didn’t boil the fish, rather, they increased the temps so they could measure realistically how each species responded to these warmer conditions over a five-week period.

The researchers point out that these underwater heatwaves can cause increases of up to 5˚C above seasonal average temperatures over the course of just days and can last for several weeks. This rise in temperature can lead to rapid physiological changes in these reef fishes, which could have long-term effects on survival.

“We found that the fusilier rapidly responded to thermal stress, with nearly immediate changes detected in gill shape and structure and blood parameters, however, the cardinalfish exhibited a delayed response and was far less able to adjust to the elevated temperatures,” said Jacob Johansen, Ph.D., a co-author of the study who is an assistant research professor at the University of Hawaii’s Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at Manoa.

“More importantly, we identified seven parameters across both species that may be useful as biomarkers for evaluating how fast and to what extent coral reef fishes can cope with increasing temperatures. Our findings greatly improve our current understanding of physiological responses to ongoing thermal threats and disturbances, including which species may be most at risk,” said Johansen.

The research team emphasizes that the study is timely, given the rapid decline of tropical coral reefs worldwide, including the repeated mass coral bleaching and mortality events on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016, 2017, and 2020 – all caused by summer heatwaves. Nadler indicated that climate change ‘winners and losers’ will ultimately be determined by the capacity to compensate for thermal stress in both the short term of days, weeks, and months, such as in response to heatwaves as we have demonstrated, and over the longer term of years, decades, and centuries.

Five-Lined Cardinalfish Credit: Jodie Rummer

“Our findings are immensely useful for scientists but also for managers, conservation planners, and policy makers charged with protecting important ecosystems, such as coral reefs, as well as communities who rely on coral reefs for food, culture, jobs, and their livelihoods,” said Jodie Rummer, Ph.D., an associate professor at James Cook University’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and a co-author of the study. “Collectively, we need to be able to predict which species are going to survive and which will be most vulnerable to climate change so we can take action, as the decisions we make today will determine what coral reefs look like tomorrow.”

HCAS Faculty is Panelist in Webinar Hosted by the University of West Indies

Ismael Muvingi, Ph.D., faculty in the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies (DCRS) in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS) participated in a virtual seminar for the Caribbean region, hosted by the University of West Indies. The seminar was entitled, “Toward Conflict Transformation and Peace Building in the Caribbean Region”. Muvingi’s presentation was “Defining Conflict Transformation and Peace Building.” The other seminar presenters were; Talia Esnard, Ph.D., (Head of Department, Behavioral Sciences, UWI) , Hon. Elizabeth C. Solomon (Judge, Industrial Court of Trinidad and Tobago), Hon. Donna Parchment Brown (Office of Political Ombudsman, Jamaica), Terry Savage, Ph.D., (Researcher and Practitioner, University of Leuven, Switzerland) and Mr. Srdan Deric (RCO Team Leader, United Nations, Trinidad & Tobago).

The seminar was moderated by Ann Diaz, MSW, the head of the Mediation Unit at UWI, and DCRS Ph.D. student.  The event had about 55 attendees. The organizers have indicated follow up sessions and a desire to collaborate on development of conflict transformation programs in the Caribbean soon.

Muvingi’s academic interests include human rights, African politics, and transitional justice. His classes include Negotiation Theory and Practice, Violence Prevention and Intervention, Conflict and Crisis Management, and Qualitative Research Methods. He is the faculty advisor to the African Working Group.

Halmos Astronomer Presents at American Astronomical Society Meeting

This January, Halmos College faculty member Stefan Kautsch, Ph.D. presented a talk and poster the virtual 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society about a spectroscopic survey of superthin disk galaxies from my international collaboration.

Kautsch also served as a judge for the prestigious Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Awards.  While at the conference, Kautsch included his NSU students in his physics and astronomy courses to discuss the newest discoveries, which were presented at the ongoing conference.

Halmos Faculty Organize Tiny Earth Conference

In December of 2020, Halmos College faculty member Aarti Raja, Ph.D., co-organized the annual Tiny Earth symposium with researchers from around the U.S. The event had 212 attendees, representing 32 academic institutions from the US and around the world. Faculty members Aarti Raja, Ph.D. and Julie Torruellas Garcia, Ph.D., attended the virtual Tiny Earth International Conference, which was run from the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, Madison, WI. Raja moderated several sessions at the conference. Raja’s students Aysha Patel and Vijay Patel collaborated with NSU University school and presented a poster and talk along with a 11th grade USchool student Dhruv Krishna titled “Bacteria Unearthed”. Garcia mentored Chloe Barreto-Massad, a 9th grade student at the American Heritage School, in her research project entitled, “Using antiSMASH to Compare Antimicrobial Genes of Commensal E. coli (Normal Flora) to Pathogenic E. coli”, which was also presented at the symposium.

Tiny Earth was launched in 2018, however it began six years earlier when Jo Handelsman (former Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Obama) founded a course—then called “Microbes to Molecules”—at Yale University with the goal of addressing both the antibiotic crisis and the shortage of science trainees. In short order, the course grew and became a part of a larger initiative until Handelsman returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and launched Tiny Earth in collaboration with its hundreds of partners worldwide.

 

Halmos Professor Authors an Article in the Journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics

Richard H. Perry, Ph.D.

Recently, Halmos College faculty member Richard H. Perry, Ph.D. authored a research article entitled, “Theoretical study of the adsorption of analgesic environmental pollutants on pristine and nitrogen-doped graphene nanosheets”. A member of the Department of Chemistry and Physics,  his article was published in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

The article’s abstract states: “Interactions of the analgesic medications dextropropoxyphene (DPP, opioid), paracetamol (PCL, nonnarcotic), tramadol (TDL, nonnarcotic), ibuprofen (IBN, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)), and naproxen (NPX, NSAID) with pristine graphene (GN) and nitrogen-doped GN (NGN; containing only graphitic N atoms) nanosheets were explored using density functional theory (DFT) in the gas and aqueous phases. Calculations in the aqueous phase were performed using the integral equation formalism polarized continuum model (IEFPCM). Calculated geometry-optimized structures, partial atomic charges (determined using Natural Bond Orbital analysis), highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO)-lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy gaps, work functions (determined using time-dependent DFT), and molecular electrostatic potential plots showed that the adsorption process is physical in nature (viz. physisorption), primarily due to noncovalent π–π and van der Waals interactions. In addition, calculated adsorption energies (ΔEad) were exergonic, indicating that formation of the analgesic/GN and analgesic/NGN complexes is thermodynamically favorable in the gas (ΔEad values for analgesic/GN and analgesic/NGN were in the range of −66.56 kJ mol−1 to −106.78 kJ mol−1) and aqueous phases (ΔEad values for analgesic/GN and analgesic/NGN complexes were in the range of −58.75 kJ mol−1 to −100.46 kJ mol−1). Generally, for GN and NGN, adsorption was more endergonic in the aqueous phase by as much as +10.41 kJ mol−1. Calculated solvation energies (ΔEsolvation) were exergonic for all analgesic/GN complexes (ΔEsolvation values were in the range of −56.50 kJ mol−1 to −66.17 kJ mol−1) and analgesic/NGN complexes (ΔEsolvation values were in the range of −77.26 kJ mol−1 to −87.96 kJ mol−1), with analgesic/NGN complexes exhibiting greater stability in aqueous solutions (∼20 kJ mol−1 more stable). In summary, the results of this theoretical study demonstrate that the adsorption and solvation of analgesics on GN and NGN nanosheets is thermodynamically favorable. In addition, generally, analgesic/NGN complexes exhibit higher adsorption affinities and solvation energies in the gas and aqueous phases. Therefore, GN and NGN nanosheets are potential adsorbents for extracting analgesic contaminants from aqueous environments such as aquatic ecosystems.”

 Citation: Richard H. Perry *, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D0CP05543C

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