Tiny Fish Makes Big Splash
Read about Dr. David Etnier’s Snail Darter legacy here:
by Kayla Benson
Sabine Neal, born and raised in western Montana, graduated with her PhD working with the Musfeldt Lab in May 2021.
“The Musfeldt lab provided me with a lot of opportunity. Musfeldt knew I was a single parent and looked past that, believing in me, and giving me so many invaluable experiences,” Neal said. “I had a chance to work at two national labs, collaborate with scientists all over the world, travel to conferences, and employ cutting edge technology to study two-dimensional systems.”
Neal began working at Brookhaven National Lab in January 2021 as a Research Associate in Materials Science as a part of the Interface Science and Catalysis group at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials.
Neal’s expertise primarily lies in infrared and Raman spectroscopy and currently works on a broad array of instrumentation including both NanoIR, Photothermal, and nanoprobe systems to study high energy materials. She also uses LEEM and LEED to grow and characterize thin films.
“UT’s chemistry graduate program helped me prepare in several ways. First, the hands-on training in the lab was crucial. I know how to trouble shoot, maintain lab equipment, and work independently. Second, the many conferences, visitor presentations, and group talks helped to cultivate my communication skills,” Neal said. “Being a TA also helped me learn how to communicate effectively to different groups/skill levels of people. I really enjoyed working with the students and general chemistry staff. Finally, I had three stand-out professors that aided in my personal journey to obtain my degree: Musfeldt, Sharma, and Kilbey.”
“As a single parent, most people have told me what I couldn’t do. I couldn’t get a bachelor’s degree. I did. I couldn’t get a master’s. I did. And most wouldn’t have believed I could earn a PhD. But I did,” Neal said. “You can do anything that you want if you put your mind to it and work hard. Stand up for yourself. Do what makes you happy. There is no limit!”
by Kayla Benson
The Dai Group published their work “Mechanochemical Synthesis of High-Purity Anhydrous Binary Alkali and Alkaline Earth Chloride Mixtures” in the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (I&EC).
A direct synthesis route for high-purity, anhydrous binary salt mixtures has been developed. This atom efficient, solvent-free process is easily scalable, with the potential to produce salt mixtures that meet the purity standards required for industrial heat transfer and nuclear applications. The essence of the methodology lies in mechanochemical synthesis of carnallite precursors that can mitigate the hydrolysis of MgCl2·6H2O under direct heating. Each dehydrated salt carnallite was then analyzed for purity and oxide content through subsequent powder X-ray diffraction, and strong acid titration. This process presents a more effective alternative route compared to previous methods for obtaining low-oxide, high-purity chloride salt mixtures.
Phillip Halstenberg, graduate student, oversaw all experimentation and writing of this manuscript. Dmitry Maltsev was responsible for pXRD
measurements and data evaluation. Ellie Kim and Dianna
Nguyen performed titrations and calculations to quantify oxide
content as part of their undergraduate research. Sheng
Dai advised and oversaw all experimentation.
by Kayla Benson
by armsworth
The Armsworth Lab has a new open-access publication out in Nature Communications: “Factoring economic costs into conservation planning may not improve agreement over priorities for protection.” It is a collaboration between an interdisciplinary team of UT researchers with scientists at The Nature Conservancy and focuses on how best to identify candidate areas for establishing nature reserves.
Co-authors include Research Assistant Professor Heather Jackson, former graduate students Gwen Iacona (PhD 2014, now a postdoc at the University of Queensland) and Nate Sutton (MS 2014, now a data scientist for MedAmerica), and former postdoc Eric Larson (now faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
The abstract is pasted below.
Conservation organizations must redouble efforts to protect habitat given continuing biodiversity declines. Prioritization of future areas for protection is hampered by disagreements over what the ecological targets of conservation should be. Here we test the claim that such disagreements will become less important as conservation moves away from prioritizing areas for protection based only on ecological considerations and accounts for varying costs of protection using return-on-investment (ROI) methods. We combine a simulation approach with a case study of forests in the eastern United States, paying particular attention to how covariation between ecological benefits and economic costs influences agreement levels. For many conservation goals, agreement over spatial priorities improves with ROI methods. However, we also show that a reliance on ROI-based prioritization can sometimes exacerbate disagreements over priorities. As such, accounting for costs in conservation planning does not enable society to sidestep careful consideration of the ecological goals of conservation.
by armsworth
Austin Milt (PhD 2015, now a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin) won third place in Conservation Biology’s ‘Rising Star’ award for his manuscript, “The Costs of Avoiding Environmental Impacts from Shale-Gas Surface Infrastructure.” The Rising Star award considers all student led papers published in Conservation Biology in 2016. This award is judged by a group of Senior Editors and aims to recognize outstanding student researchers and communicators.
by armsworth
There is an August 23, 2017 article in New Scientist about hallucinogenic mushrooms and their insect-repellent properties. The article mentions work done at Ohio State, and the Matheny Lab helped with the research, particularly former grad student Hailee Korotkin (MS 2017).
There’s a similar article in The Atlantic.
by armsworth
The June 2017 issue of Discover Magazine has an article on play behavior in non-mammalian animals. Called “The Play’s the Thing,” it features interviews with Professor Gordon Burghardt and alumnus Jonathan Pruit (PhD 2010, Riechert Lab, now on the faculty at UC-Santa Barbara). The article references a paper published in 2012 that was written by Burghardt, Pruitt, and Riechert.
The article is now available online. Tennessee Today also has a story about the article
by armsworth
Austin Milt’s PhD (2015, Armsworth Lab) work is featured in a nice, one-page color spread in a new book by Craig Groves and Eddie Game: Conservation Planning: Informed Decisions for a Healthier Planet.
The book “will be very well-read within its field – likely the industry leading text for the next 5-6 years if recent history is anything to go by and widely read by grad students and conservation practitioners the world over,” said Milt’s former advisor, Paul Armsworth.
Read more of NIMBioS’s press release.
Milt is currently a Post Doc at the Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.