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(12/05/12 11:42pm)
Scale is one of the miracles of modern technology. The earliest computers took up entire rooms and had less computing power than the smart phones we now carry around in our pockets. But is this as good as we can get?
There are those who say no, it’s not. We can go smaller, faster, and more efficient.What if you could build a nanocircuit made out of molecular wires with only ahandful of atoms in each molecular component of the wire?
The technology is a long way off, but Phillip Battell/Sarah Stewart Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Jeff Byers and his thesis students Travis Stoll ’13 and Peter Hetzler ’14 are laying the groundwork.
Byers hasn’t always been thinking about nanowires. In fact, it’s an area he’s only recently moved into.
“A lot of the work that I did for about my first 25 years fell into the category of making small molecules — small molecules being things on the order of a dozen carbons, molecules that are used to make drugs or pesticides or for commercial purposes,” said Byers. “My work was driven more towards understanding processes rather than creating final products.”
In the early 2000’s, a chemist by the name of Robert H. Grubbs developed a specific type of catalyst that could polymerize (turn into a chain) the type of monomer (single-unit) molecule that Byers works with.
With the discovery of this catalyst, Byers began to think about potential applications for polymers made of his molecules.And he realized that the molecules that he had been working with — a class of carbon molecules containing chromium atoms – could potentially be used in nanowire construction.
“Nick Jansen ’05 was a thesis student of mine, and he was working on a project making some molecules for my old studies,” said Byers. “These molecules he was making were being used to test some of my mechanistic theories. But looking at them in a different light, I realized that molecules like that might be valuable building blocks for very different kinds of target-based synthesis, rather than process-based chemistry. What I realized is that some of the molecules that I was working with, with some slight changes and with some understanding of the mastery of this Grubbs catalyst approach to things, might be valuable as precursors for making polymeric materials because, frankly, some molecules very similar to what I was working with were precursors to polymeric materials.”
Think of the catalyst as the factory worker who assembles strands of Christmas tree lights. Byers thinks that his light bulbs, when assembled with this new catalyst, will make a nice strand of Christmas tree lights that will also have potential applications.
The Byers molecules are easily excited by visible light, which suggests they will make good conductors of electricity in polymer form.
They’re also relatively stable — some of them have been sitting around the lab for 10 years and have hardly changed. Both of these characteristics suggest that, in theory, the Byers molecules will be good candidates for molecular wires.
Hetzler and Stoll are playing around with two different versions of the Byers monomers to determine whether or not this theory will play out in reality.
“[Stoll] and I are essentially doing the same thing. I’m just working on making different light bulbs, with a different molecular formula,” said Hetzler.
“Ideally, I’d like to have a polymer made for my thesis project,” said Stoll. “If it works, someone else will have to pick up where I left off and find a way to analyze its conductivity. It’s a long-term project that will in all likelihood run through several thesis projects, but such is the nature of research.
But that doesn’t deter Byers.
“At the beginning of my career I took an area in organic synthesis, and now I’m one of the 30-40 people who took an area of modest importance and brought it to maturity — radicals in organic synthesis,” Byers said. “People know that’s what that guy at Middlebury does with a handful of undergraduates. People use some of the stuff I do. They completely ignore some of the other stuff I’ve done. But now I’ve been there and done that. I read the literature, and what I’m seeing now is that [my old work has] gotten to the stage where, largely due to the work of many of my good friends and to a minor degree me, a lot of the kinds of stuff that I wanted to prove in the 80’s and 90’s is now routine. Or as routine as its going to get. I could be routine for another 10 years. I don’t want to be. Coming into lab is still fun. I want to keep it that way.”
Listen to Professor Jeff Byers discuss his work with the Campus’ Will Henriques.
(11/29/12 6:08am)
Environmental chemistry is broad field that spans the study of chemical processes in the atmosphere, earth, water and biological world. Associate Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Environmental Studies Molly Costanza-Robinson has found her niche in the study of contaminant fate and transport.
A contaminant is any sort of chemical substance that is not naturally found in an environment or is found in low concentrations naturally that can cause harm to the organisms living in that environment when the concentration increases. DDT, Agent Orange, carbon monoxide and lead are all contaminants, and are harmful once they reach a certain concentration in the environment.
Contaminant fate and transport is the study of how the contaminating substance moves through and interacts with the environment. Costanza-Robinson is primarily interested in organic (hydrogen- and carbon- containing) human-generated contamination in the environment. She studies the fate and transport of contaminants generated by industry, agriculture and transportation.
“Over the course of my career, some of my work has focused on chlorinated solvents," she said. "These are solvents that everybody in industry loves. They’re huge in the computing industry, for example, because they clean all the oils off of silicon wafers. Dry-cleaners use chlorinated solvents too, to remove stains from your clothes. But many of these solvents are carcinogenic, and they’re so heavily used in industry that they are one of the most ubiquitous groundwater contaminants in the United States. I did a lot of my earlier work in Tucson, Arizona, related to a field site where the city and others had dumped chlorinated solvents for years. TCE (trichloroethylene) had seeped out into drinking water supplies, and in some areas, the detection level in wells was pretty much 100%. The largely Hispanic and less affluent community became a cancer hotspot and more $100 million has been paid out in environmental justice settlements, not to mention the cost of cleanup."
Big picture: Costanza-Robinson is working to develop a filter that could easily remove such pollutants from a contaminated water supply. She’s working with two thesis students, Annie Mejaes ’13 and Malcolm Littlefield ’13, to characterize an engineered clay that could be used as such a filter.
Littlefield elaborated: “[We’re] characterizing surfactant-modified clay, which is a material that we would like to use as a filtration medium to remove organic contaminants from aqueous systems. By running the contaminated water through this surfactant-modified clay, the contaminants should partition from the aqueous phase into this organic phase that is created at the clay surface. 'Like dissolves like' is a common phrase thrown around in chemistry. All absorption filters use the same fundamental mechanism. It’s like a fish tank, which simply draws water from the tank, runs it through an activated carbon filter to which any organic contaminants (like fish pee) will stick. This would do the same thing, but at much lower cost [than an activated carbon filter].”
In an aqueous environment (i.e. in water) the clay that Costanza-Robinson and her students are using forms layers similar to slices of bread. Normally, the pollutants (think of them as potential sandwich fillings – lettuce, tomato, pickles, peanut butter, etc.) can’t fit in between these clay layers nor would they terribly keen on doing so, even if there were space. This is because the clay has a charged surface, while the pollutants are non-polar, meaning they have no charge, not even a little bit. For the nonpolar organic contaminant to get into the clay would violate the principle of “like dissolves like.” This is a real problem, because the “interlayers” of the clay are where most of the surface area is – if this area isn’t attractive to the contaminants, the filter isn’t going to be very effective.
Ever made a salad dressing and mixed oil and water? The oil won’t dissolve in water because oil is made up of nonpolar organic molecules, while water is a polar molecule. The two different types of molecules simply do not interact. To continue with the sandwich analogy, the fillings will not go in between two slices of dry bread on its own. The surface of the bread needs to be altered to make the environment between the slices favorable for fillings.
The clay the Costanza-Robinson lab uses is a “surfactant-modified clay,” which means that the surface in between the clay layers has been modified so it is only partially charged or not charged at all – in other words, it is now more “like” the contaminants. Surfactant-modified clay might be thought of as bread that has been buttered to create a better environment for the fillings to stick to. Costanza-Robinson, Mejaes and Littlefield want to understand the chemistry governing how the amount and type of “butter” between the clay layers influences the amount of contaminant that can be stuffed inside.
Costanza-Robinson was excited about the work ahead.
“We’re not the first to study these modified clays," she said. "People have been doing this for decades, but the research has focused largely on “this works” or “this doesn’t." We are trying to figure out the mechanism of that explains what works and what doesn’t. My students are studying different surfactants with different alkyl chain lengths and saying: do you need some minimum chain length before things can fit in there? Is there an optimal amount of surfactant coating on the clay surface that maximizes contaminant absorption? So we are starting with some mechanisms that we understand, that some people have figured out in the literature, and then we’re going to play with a few more variables that haven’t been considered before. It’s a brand new project in my lab. We don’t have any data yet. We’re exploring. We’re refining our questions. It’s a fun stage of the project.”
Editorial Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that water is a charged molecule and misrepresented the analogy of buttered bread and the clay layers that the lab examines. The above text has been corrected to reflect water's true nature as a polar molecule and to more accurately utilize the "butter" analogy. The Campus regrets these errors.
(11/14/12 11:27pm)
“I disdain green eggs and green ham.” Easy enough to simplify this sentence down to the classic Dr. Seuss: “I do not like green eggs and ham.” The leap from complexity to simplicity is easy for the human brain. But it’s an entirely different story for a computer, which has no “first language.”
To grasp the scope of the computer’s problem, imagine this scenario: you only speak English, you’re handed a complex sentence in Chinese and you’re told to simplify it to the level of the average Chinese kindergarten student. Not so easy.
This is the problem that Assistant Professor of Computer Science David Kauchak has been working on for the past two years. He works in the field of natural language processing on a problem called “text simplification.” Patrick Adelstein ’14, who worked with Kauchack on his research this past summer, explained that natural language processing is basically “equipping computers to understand language spoken by humans.”
“It’s computer science with linguistics really,” said Kauchak. “The basic premise is this: you give me a document and I’ll try to create a program that automatically simplifies it, in the sense of reducing the grammatical complexity and reducing the complexity of the vocabulary.”
Written material is generally composed at the reading level of the author and not the reader. Communication breakdown occurs when a document is simply to complex for the reader to understand. This can create real communication challenges in the realm of politics, medicine and education.
“There’s a lot of applications for this,” Kauchak said. “One of the most interesting is in the medical domain. There’s a lot of information out there on diseases, treatments, diagnoses. But there have been a number of studies that show that a lot of people don’t have the reading ability to comprehend most of the literature that’s available. There’s a study that said 89 million people in the US — that’s a little over a quarter of the population — don’t have sufficient reading skills to be able to read the documentation that is given to them.”
One solution to this problem would be to simply have the authors of the literature write the material at a lower reading level. But that would require a massive systemic overhaul of medical writing standards.
“That’s a non-trivial overhaul, and that’s just not going to happen in the near future,” said Kauchak. “The goal of this project is to be able to do that sort of simplification automatically. For example, one could take a medical pamphlet about cancer or diabetes, and be able to produce similar content but in a way that’s easier to understand for somebody who doesn’t have that higher reading level.”
According to the 2010 United States Census, a little under 40 million residents in the United States (over 12% of the total population) are foreign-born, and of those 30.1 percent speak English “Not well” or “Not at all” Text simplification technology has incredible potential to facilitate communication for U.S. residents with English as a second language by creating simplified documents. To automatically generate content — official paperwork, online news articles, information pamphlets — for these audiences is undeniably beneficial.
But going back to the earlier scenario: how does one train a computer to simplify a document in a language of which it has no fundamental understanding? It all comes down to statistics, probability and creative programming.
Kauchak used a language translation analogy — easier to understand than the text simplification explanation — to explain the process. If there is a list of sentence pairs — one sentence in Chinese and its English equivalent — you would tell the computer to use the list to establish a probability that one word will translate to another.
“I see this word in Chinese in let’s say 100 sentences, and in 70 of the English sentences I see exactly this other word,” said Kauchak. “And in the other 30 English cases, there’s a different word. Based on these ratios, I can establish the probabilities of how a word will be translated. Then you try and “teach” your model these different types of probabilities. So there’s two steps: the training, where you try and learn these probabilities from your data that’s aligned, and the translation step, where you take a new sentence, and based on what you’ve seen before, ask: what are all the possible ways I could put the words and phrases in this sentence together, and which of those is the most likely? It’s all about probability, establishing numerical relations. You can’t do this manually. Because from a decent-sized data set you’re going to end up with a few hundred thousand, maybe a million words. And so for each of those words, you’re going to end up with maybe 10 or 20 — it depends on the word — possible translations. It’s not something you’re doing manually. It’s a lot of data.”
That’s how to train a computer to translate from one language to another. Training it to simplify a complex sentence is a little trickier, and it involves analyzing the grammatical structure of the sentence, and determining what is superfluous and what isn’t.
Kauchak was attracted to natural language processing because of its intuitive nature.
“It’s easy to get excited about,” he said. “People do it on a day-to-day basis. It’s very tangible, very human. And being able to look at a problem and understand the input and the output. It’s very satisfying.”
Listen to Professor David Kauchak discuss his work with the Campus’ Will Henriques.
(11/07/12 11:38pm)
The hallway of the sixth floor of the McCardell Bicentennial Hall, home to the computer science department, is lined with posters with titles like “3D Capture of Complex Real-World Images” and “Game Development in Java.” The department proudly displays the accomplishments of past and present majors on its website. Anne Blasiak ’07, is featured in the alumni section for her 2008 National Science Foundation Fellowship award, and David Fouhey ’11 took a trip to Istanbul in 2010 to present his summer research project findings at an international conference.
Less prominent online is mention of the Middlebury Vision Benchmark, an internationally renowned collection of test data for stereovision research that has been built and maintained by Professor of Computer Science and Department Chair Daniel Scharstein.
Initially, Scharstein avoided discussion of the Middlebury Vision Benchmark. He focused instead on the other two main threads of computer vision research upon which he and his students have focused for the past several years: vision-based robot navigation and cell phone navigation.
Eventually though, Scharstein opened up about the Middlebury Vision Benchmark.
“Actually, the thing that I’m most known for in the computer vision computing community is the Middlebury Benchmark,” he said. “If you just Google “Vision at Middlebury” you’ll get to this collection of test data that I maintain here.”
Scharstein’s primary research interest is in stereovision: the ability to obtain three-dimensional information from two overlapping two-dimensional images. This is the process humans use to navigate, and it has proved difficult to replicate in computers. In fact, research on the problem of recreating human vision with a computer has been ongoing since the 60’s and 70’s.
Current methodology uses an algorithm — an ordered list of commands with which a computer executes a program — to measure the distance that any one pixel moves between two overlapping images. That information is used to create a “depth map” of the scene portrayed in the two images. Algorithms can do this with varying degrees of accuracy. The problem is that without some sort of benchmark data (a control), researchers cannot be sure how close to the ground truth — the true answer — their algorithm is.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science David Kauchack explained that a benchmark data set “allows researchers from around the world to easily and quantitatively compare new algorithms to previous state of the art approaches. In many other fields, where standardized benchmarks don’t exist, this can be a very painful and error-prone process.”
Scharstein was working on the problem with Richard Szeliski (who currently works for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington) in the 90’s. The two of them realized the need for benchmark data in the field of stereovision, so they created the first Middlebury Vision Benchmark in 2003.
“We had the idea to create ground truths for test data using alternative techniques that give us more information than can currently be generated with stereovision algorithms,” said Scharstein. “We basically have more information than all the researchers that we give the test data to. Then they can run our images with their methods, upload their results, and compare their results to other researchers around the world with our database. So the Middlebury Vision Benchmark is basically a performance indicator for researchers in the field.”
In the 10 years that the database has been in existence, it has become the premier benchmark for stereovision research around the world.
“Right now we have 150 methods submitted to our database,” Scharstein said. “Anyone working in this field around the world accesses this database, and they’ve all heard of Middlebury.”
Students have also become involved in this project in recent years. This past summer Nera Nesic ’13 and Xi Wang ’14 worked with Scharstein to create a new set of ground truths that will be published sometime in the coming year.
“Our goal was to add more realism to our scenes,” said Nesic. “Previous data sets have been built in the lab and can generally be described as an unlikely gathering of visually interesting objects. We wanted to move to environments a stereovision application would be more likely to encounter in the real world.”
Scharstein noted that by setting targets for researchers to strive for, the Middlebury Vision Benchmark is driving stereovision research forward. Ultimately, this project becomes a valuable experience for both professor and student researchers.
According to Scharstein the processing of designing a new dataset “involves a lot of experimentation. The students have really built these systems for me, systems that track pixels or tell the projectors to project patterns, or cameras to take pictures. And what’s unusual and valuable about this is how that student effort is impacting the field of stereovision.”
Listen to Professor Daniel Scharstein discuss his work with the Campus’ Will Henriques.
(11/01/12 2:56am)
Listen to the Campus' Will Henriques discuss JusTalks' with organizers Josh Swartz, Kate McCreary and Hudson Cavanagh. Alternatively, a video explanation from the group can be viewed above.
(10/31/12 4:01pm)
Standing in front of a crowd of some 50 faculty, students and community members during lunch last Thursday, Oct. 25, Executive Director of Équiterre and Ashoka Fellow Sidney Ribaux explained how his organization, Équiterre, built the greenest building in Canada with no money, land or building experience.
The process began some 10 years after Équiterre’s inauguration. The organization was founded in 1993 by a young group of idealists infused with energy from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro.
For the first 10 years of their existence, as they began to grow and establish themselves in Québec as one of the leading advocates for climate and energy solutions, environmental education, food system reform and policy change, the non-profit was based out of a decrepit building that leaked in heavy rains. They were focused on using their limited budget for their projects, as any office space would do.
But in 2002, Équiterre’s Board of Directors decided it was time for an upgrade.
“The board told me ‘You can’t go on working in these conditions,’” said Ribeaux. They gave me that mandate to move the organization to a new building. And then they added: ‘And you’re going to make this an educational project, and you’re going to make sure that your move is exemplary.’”
“We didn’t own land,” Ribeaux continued. “[We were] not a large non-profit, [nor] a large land-owner. I had no money. Our annual budget was a million dollars, but we weren’t accumulating anything. We had no loose money to invest, and had no idea how to go about building anything concrete really, apart from an educational campaign. The only thing we did have that helped was community. All we had, as a non-profit organization, was the ability to mobilize people and organizations — governments, non-profits and businesses.”
Ribaux spent the next 30 minutes explaining how Équiterre and its partner organizations went about building the greenest building in Canada, la Maison du Développement Durable — a building constructed to LEED Platinum standards — which opened its doors on Oct. 6, 2011.
Ribaux was invited to the College as a guest lecturer in the Howard E. Woodin Colloquium Series, a speaker series sponsored by the environmental studies program.
The series is named in honor of Professor Howard Woodin, one of the four founders of the College’s environmental studies program. The Colloquium’s purpose is to bring in people who are working on advanced or innovative projects in the environmental field and foster discussion and conversation around environmental problems and solutions.
“In some ways it’s the centerpiece of environmental studies and environmental affairs in the sense that every week its a gathering place for students, staff, faculty and community members to learn from each other,” said Director of Environmental Studies, Faculty Director of the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Professor of Economics Jon Isham.
“We have people from far away, people from the region, faculty and students themselves present; it’s a chance to talk about challenges and opportunities in the area of environmental studies and sustainability. We’re insanely proud of it. Everyone on this campus should know about this opportunity. Grab a lunch, come to Hillcrest from 12:30 to 1:30 on Thursday, and you’ll learn something.”
Virginia Wiltshire-Gordon ’16 has only missed one of the Woodin lectures this year and spoke enthusiastically of the series.
“I love going to the Hillcrest talks,” she said. “They’ve covered a broad range of environmental topics — a discussion about collaboration, the presentation of a river management study, conversations about public environmental education — the range really reflects the scope of the environmental studies program.”
Wiltshire-Gordon also noted that, in addition to the many interesting speakers, the series can help students connect with professors.
“It’s also a great time to get to know my professors outside of class,” she said. “I’ve seen both my biology and economics professors there and have been able to talk with them about what we heard. It’s great to see that they are so engaged in the community, [and it is] great to have the opportunity to learn alongside of them.”
Community engagement is an integral piece of the Woodin Colloquium, and it was a sentiment echoed by Ribaux as he wrapped up his presentation:
“We [built la Maison du Développement Durable] because of the partnerships that we created, because of the community that we mobilized.
We ended up with the building, but more importantly, we’ve ended up with a much stronger community, that’s now supporting everything we’re doing and helping us move forward.”
(10/25/12 5:11pm)
Of any of the isolated silos in the world of academia disciplines that seem to have little overlap — the natural and physical sciences and the social sciences seem quite disparate. One gave us “Team of Rivals” and the study of constitutional law and the other gave us the title: “Intrahippocampal Infusions of K-ATP Channel Modulators Influence Spontaneous Alternation Performance: Relationships to Acetylcholine Release in the Hippocampus.”
One tends to be qualitative. The other is strictly quantitative. One studies political structures and the history of countries. The other studies the molecular interactions within various cell systems.
But perhaps the metaphor of the silo is inaccurate. In fact the dividing walls between the social sciences and the sciences are dissolving, thanks in part to the field of psychology.
Psychology is the link between the hard science of physics, chemistry and biology, and the more humanistic fields of political science, economics, history and even literature.
“If you think about what we’re learning about the brain, and how our knowledge of the brain informs our understanding of behavior, they’re integrally connected. [Understanding the brain], that’s a really important way to understand human behavior, human beliefs, human values,” said Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Psychology Department Barbara Hofer.
Assistant Professor of Psychology Mark Stefani focuses on the biological side of the brain.
He studies the neurobiology of memory and cognition, focusing particularly on executive functioning — our working memory, our ability to allocate our attention to specific stimuli, our ability to shift from task to task as our needs and goals change (known as cognitive flexibility) and our ability to inhibit behaviors that are counterproductive.
Stefani is not just studying the neurobiology of healthy individuals, “but also the executive cognitive functions as they are impaired in psychiatric conditions. So in our lab, we’re interested in schizophrenia, which is very much associated with impaired executive function,” said Stefani.
“We use rats as a model organism and induce cognitive problems that are like those in schizophrenia and then we look for changes in the brain, and we look for ways to reverse those impairments.”
By using rats as model organisms, Stefani hopes to understand the mechanism by which certain compounds induce psychotic side-effects, and with that knowledge, begin exploring compounds that could potentially reduce the imbalances in the human brain that create psychosis and cognitive problems.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Kimery Levering recently graduated from Binghamton University with a Ph.D in Cognitive Psychology. Her research focuses on the organization of mental concepts rather than the biology of the brain, but she pointed out that the distinction merely reflects two different levels of analysis.
“We go through the world experiencing a lot of things: a lot of objects, a lot of people, a lot of ideas,” Levering said. “What I study is how you take all of that information and abstract from it, or boil it down into useful and meaningful concepts. And then I’m interested in how we use those concepts and apply them to future situations.”
Levering explained the link between the mind and the brain, and its potential in the field of psychology.
“There’s an important connection to neuroscience in the study of how we organize information,” she said. “In trying to figure out mental processes and representations (cognitive psychology) and how they match up with the biology of the brain, I believe the field of concept learning is an important piece of the puzzle. Cognitive psychologists study how our mental representations are organized. Neuroscientists study how the brain is organized. At some point, the intersection between them is where a lot of action will be.”
The interface between the biology of the brain and the structure of the mind is integral to understanding how an individual functions. But an individual never functions independently of the society in which they live. That’s where the research of Associate Professor of Psychology Carlos Velez-Blasini comes into play. He examines social norms and how they influence an individual. His research has focused on the College’s population, and he recently published an article exploring the social norms related to the hook-up culture that permeates campus.
“We’ve examined the relationship between those normative influences — what we think people are doing, that’s what we call social norms — and behavior,” Velez said. “In other words, how does our perception of what others do and whether they approve of it or not and to what extent people engage in that behavior because they think everybody else is doing it influence an individuals decision to engage in a behavior. We break down the behavior by different levels of the sexual behavior. We look at sexual behavior that is relatively less intimate and we look at behavior that is more intimate, and try to see to what extent people’s behavior is affected by what they think others are doing.”
Hofer examines the psychology of the individual from a different perspective. She studies the beliefs individuals have about knowledge and the development of how people think. She’s been working under a grant from the National Science Foundation for the last four years, studying the beliefs that middle school and high school students have about knowledge and knowing, using both quantitative and qualitative methodology.
Hofer has also been studying emerging adults college students and how technology has changed their relationship to their parents and how that has affected development.
“I’m particularly interested in how the rise of technology, with cell phones, texting and email, has put parents in a more prominent role during this period of life than they have had in the past and how frequent communication might be impeding autonomy and self-regulation,” she said.
Hofer’s work — and most of the work conducted in the psychology department — involves a team of undergraduate research assistants, who have co-presented findings at conferences and co-authored articles and book chapters.
Moving through the hierarchy of psychological research — from brain function to mind structure to individual behavior to social phenomenon — the connection between Abraham Lincoln and the relationships to acetylcholine release in the hippocampus begin to emerge. In some ways, psychology could be viewed as the quintessential liberal arts discipline, because it forges that link.
As Hofer said, “We bridge both those areas. [In fact], I think one of the most exciting aspects of studying psychology is that it’s both a social science and a natural science and that’s somewhat unusual among all the other disciplines in the College. We have courses that cover both sides of that, courses that integrate both sides of that, and we have faculty that do research across the spectrum of the social sciences and the natural sciences. “
(10/10/12 9:17pm)
In the environmental studies department, students and professors strive to research innovative solutions to environmental issues.
Projects and interests range from building sustainable housing to studying the composition of minerals.
The program is in its 46th year, and is still going strong.
Professor of Geology Peter Ryan works in mineralogy and geochemistry.
Ryan is on academic leave this year, and will travel to for Spain this January to further his research.
“My research is more or less split into two topics: the geochemical and mineralogical analysis of bedrock-derived arsenic and uranium in Vermont ground water, and the mineralogy and geochemistry of soils developed on terraces along the tectonically active Pacific coast of Costa Rica,” said Ryan.
His work with Vermont ground water (in collaboration with his students, as well as Jon Kim of the Vermont Geological Survey) contributed to passage of a new groundwater testing law in Vermont.
In addition, his work in Costa Rica could also have the same impact.
“[It] has implications for understanding the rates and pathways by which young, nutrient-rich soils evolve into the classic nutrient poor oxisols of the tropics,” he said.
Students are also hard at work with their own projects.
Assi Askala ’15 is organizing a conference, scheduled for mid-March, tentatively called “Youth in the New Economy.” She explained the objective of her creation.
“We have the local foods movement,” she said. “We have the Socially Responsible Investment Club. We have the Sunday Night Group, which is very climate oriented. But there’s not a lot of connection between these different groups, there isn’t awareness that they’re all tackling the same problem [and] trying to change the same system.
But they are all part of what our society and economy is going through right now.
So what I want to get out of [this conference] is a link between those groups. [I want to] raise awareness that there is an alternative working economic model out there.”
Both Ryan and Askala embody the all-encompassing environmental ethic that pervades this campus.
From their own unique angles, they are trying to tackle the intertwined economic and environmental challenges faced by this generation.
This isn’t a new phenomenon here at the College.
The environmental studies (ES) program web page boasts of the oldest undergraduate ES program in the country, “with over 900 graduates in 46 years.”
The program declares that “environmental solutions cannot come from one type of knowledge or way of thinking, not just from politics or chemistry or economics or history.
They will come instead from leaders, thinkers and innovators who can draw skills and knowledge from multiple fields of knowledge and work with teams of thinkers from every corner of the campus and the globe.”
Phoebe Howe ’15 is an architecture and environmental studies joint major currently taking core environmental studies courses in addition to the standard courses for her major.
“We aren’t spoon-fed how architecture and the environment overlap,” said Howe.
“It’s about taking classes from two different fields, and then you have to apply the two concepts on your own,” she added. “Even when I’m not focusing specifically on sustainable architecture in an architecture studio, I still end up applying concepts from my environmental studies class.”
Howe noted that this kind of education was essential for both a broad knowledge of both topics, as well as synthesis.
“It’s the epitome of liberal arts education,” she said. “You’re given two disparate topics, and you have to take the initiative to unify your overall education. And it works. It’s effective.”
But the environmental ethic extends beyond the classroom and beyond the environmental studies program.
The level to which the ethic has permeated the campus speaks to the College’s commitment to the environment on a broader scale.
Middlebury’s Solar Decathlon team embodies this commitment.
It’s a team that competes in a challenge set forth by the U.S. Department of Energy: “to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive.”
Howe was also on the Solar Decathlon design team last spring, and she spoke about her personal experience.
“To accomplish something, it involves carving time out of your schedule and making time in your day and in your life to be more conscious and intentional about what you’re doing,” she said.
Middlebury College will be returning October of 2013 to the Orange County Great Park in Irving, California where the next Solar Decathalon will be held.
According to Middlebury’s page on the official Solar Decathalon website, the Middlebury team had this to say; “We see a house as just one piece of larger human and natural ecosystems.
We strive to design a house that embodies the principles of a centralized community that reduces demands on transportation while facilitating greater personal interactions.
By realizing the potential of underutilized spaces, we aim to integrate a house into an existing walkable community—to suggest a model of living that is applicable on any scale. With history and nature as our guides, we hope to design a home that reflects a community and a lifestyle for a sustainable society, economy, and environment. “
(10/03/12 9:43pm)
Interest in computer science has been trending upward over the past four years at Middlebury College, but in the past four semesters, the computer science department has seen a massive spike in enrollment. Since 2008, introductory enrollment has quadrupled. The total introductory enrollment during the fall semester of 2008 was 26 students, taught in two sections. This fall semester, enrollment in CS 101, “The Computing Age,” and CS150, “Computing for the Sciences,” is at a record 107 students enrolled in four sections.
This trend is not isolated to the introductory classes. Enrollment in CS 201, “Data Structures,” has nearly tripled in the same time period. The number of newly declared majors has jumped from an average of nine each year to 14.
What is driving this significant increase in interest in the computer science? Professor of Computer Science and Department Chair Daniel Scharstein attributes the spike to several factors.
The first is related to the job market and the projected increased demand for computer science-related jobs. The STEM Report, published by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce in October 2011, projects 51 percent of all jobs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) will be related to computer science. In a recent press conference, Microsoft admitted that it has 6,000 job openings in the United States alone, with 3,400 of those jobs for researchers, developers and engineers. In other words, there is no shortage of jobs in the computing world, and in a shaky job market, students these days are hedging their bets.
Scharstein thinks the second reason for the enrollment spike is the increased association in popular culture of computer science with “cool”. With the advent of the iPhone App, anyone can write a program and make millions if it becomes a hit.
“It’s sexy to be a programmer,” said Scharstein.
“Or maybe it’s the shark,” he admitted, referencing the remote-controlled floating shark that the computer science department used to advertise its courses during arena registration for first-years earlier this semester.
“We’ve been trying to advertise our courses within Middlebury, trying to attract computer science students, especially first years, by doing publicity stunts like the flying shark,” Scharstein said.
As part of the publicity push, the computer science department has made changes in the classroom, too.
“We’ve restructured our introductory curriculum,” said Scharstein. “We’ve changed our programming language from Java to Python, which provides a gentler introduction, and we’ve integrated labs and lectures.”
Increased campus awareness of the computer science department could be one of the reasons other disciplines are seeing increased value in computer science. Half of the enrollment spike is a result of upperclassmen from a wide array of disciplines (from biology and physics to literature and history, according to Scharstein) taking computer science courses to enhance their degrees.
Matt Grossman ’13, a computer science and physics joint major, elaborated on this phenomenon.
“Back when I started [taking computer science courses] the classes were mostly composed of those interested in the natural sciences or mathematics,” he said. “Now, I see many social science and humanities majors taking the introductory courses. More and more people are recognizing that in today’s world a basic understanding of how computers work is essential, regardless of the discipline. I would speculate that this recognition was precipitated by the massive success of companies like Google, Apple and Facebook.”
Andrew Headrick ’16 is enrolled in CS101 and echoed Grossman’s observations. In the long term, he’s considering an cconomics degree.
“Technology is such an integral part of our lives today,” Headrick said. “We’ve got to understand how it works to take advantage of all it has to offer.”
But such a massive increase in interest over such a short period has its downsides. With only four full-time faculty members, the department is feeling short-staffed.
“It’s hard to know what the numbers will do,” Scharstein said. “But right now, the curriculum is built for four professors. We’re trying to make room, and we haven’t had to turn anybody away yet, but if the numbers continue to climb, we’ll definitely need more staffing.”
According to Assistant Professor of Computer Science David Kauchak, 40 percent of those enrolled in introductory level classes are first-years. If those numbers translate into higher enrollments in upper level courses and more declared majors, the four professors of the computer science department will be stretched thin.
Anticipating a faculty shortage, the department filed a request for a fifth faculty position with the Education Affairs Committee last April, but the position has yet to be filled.
Not only is the department short-staffed, but they’re also short on space.
“I have 31 students in CS150A this semester.” said Kauchak. “Our computer lab seats 22.”
Scharstein said that the department is considering renovations for their labs to increase their capacity.
Despite the challenges this interest poses for the department, they are excited about tapping into that potential.
Both Kauchak and Scharstein mentioned being excited about collaborating with the biology department, referencing a bioinformatics course taught by Albert D. Mead Professor of Biology and Director of the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Program Jeremy Ward, and expressed their desire to develop more courses related to the field of bioinformatics.
“We’d like to do more interdisciplinary stuff,” said Kauchack. “For example, my interest lies in computational linguistics, the intersection of computer science and linguistics, and I’d love to teach a course related to the newly developed linguistics minor. [It’s] a blend of language, education and technology that has a lot of promise.”
Though eager and optimistic about interdisciplinary possibilities, Kauchak is also realistic about the department’s current ability to handle the enrollment spike.
“We’re running at bare bones capacity right now,” said Kauchak.
(09/26/12 2:48pm)
The laboratory of Burr Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Chair of the Chemistry Department Rick Bunt is a small, unobtrusive room tucked about halfway down the north hall of the fifth floor in McCardell Bicentennial Hall. Pinned to a board outside the door are various published papers with long titles, and the lab is a visual maze of complicated instruments: oddly shaped glass tubes, rubber hoses, delicate looking electronics, small vials and large jugs of liquid scattered across shelves and benches.
For the layperson, the veil of visual complexity effectively disguises the important work that’s being done in the Bunt lab these days.
“We’re trying to understand how and why chemical reactions that form molecules with specific shapes work,” said Bunt.
His work at the College is an extension of the work he did in organic chemistry as a graduate student at Stanford University.
“I was trying to build successful chemical reactions and document the structure of the products,” said Bunt. “Now I’m trying to understand how those type of reactions work so that I can control a molecule’s three-dimensional shape when I synthesize it.”
Eric Roberts ’13 is Bunt’s sole thesis student this year and works directly with Bunt on his current project. He and Bunt are trying to understand the synthesis of molecules using a specific palladium-based catalyst, a molecule that makes the reaction work.
“Basically, you have a symmetric molecule that you’re trying to add another molecule to,” said Roberts. “And there are two possible outcomes, or enantiomers, that are non-super-imposable mirror images of each other, much like your left hand and right hand. And you can control which outcome you get with the palladium catalyst. We’re trying to understand how that control works.”
Think of the chemical reaction as the addition of thumbs to four-fingered gloves. The thumb piece can be sewn on to the glove to make either a left-handed glove or a right-handed glove. The final products are mirror images of each other, but not identical.
This type of work has direct applications in the pharmaceutical industry. When a drug is synthesized, there are several possible outcomes (enantiomers) in the chemical structure of the drug, but usually one of those structures is useful or applicable. An example is oseltamivir, a drug on the market with the trade name Tamiflu, which is used to treat symptoms of the flu. It was originally synthesized from shikimic acid, a chemical that is derived from Chinese anise seed. Due to the limited supply of Chinese anise in the world, pharmaceutical companies looked for a different way to synthesize the drug from scratch.
The problem is that the synthesis of the chemical needed to make Tamiflu has eight possible outcomes, and chemists are looking for one specific stereoisomer, or outcome. It’s as if there were eight possible types of gloves, and the chemists are looking for one specific version of the left-handed glove. To isolate the desired stereoisomer, chemists use a catalyst that only created that stereoisomer. The catalyst is like the needle and thread that sews the thumb piece to the glove, except in the case of oseltamivir, the needle and thread were only capable of sewing one type of glove, and that was the specific version of the left-handed glove.
Nathaniel Nelson ’11, who worked in Bunt’s lab for three summers and a full school year, helped explain this phenomenon.
“Compounds that are biologically active are usually stereochemically specific (right-handed or left-handed) to fit with the (right-handed or left-handed) enzymes working in the body,” he said. “For many reactions, if two enantiomers (one right-handed molecule and one left-handed molecule) are possible, you’ll get about 50 percent of each. If you’re making a drug, however, that needs to be only “right-handed,” say, then you waste 50 percent of your starting materials (presumably just throwing away the “left-handed” molecules). That waste is expensive and inefficient to generate. It means throwing out half of the products of a reaction. The key then, is to figure out how to synthesize only the desired stereoisomer (either the right hand or the left hand, but not both), using the right catalyst.”
That’s where the Bunt Lab comes in.
“Bunt’s work focuses on a type of catalyst formed when palladium coordinates with an organic ligand called PHOX ligand that favors one enantiomer over the other, [so] 90 percent “right-handed” molecules, 10 percent wasted “left-handed” molecules,” said Nelson.
Bunt is studying this specific set of reactions in depth to better understand the reaction’s mechanisms, and he’s making progress.
Several years ago when Nelson was working in Bunt’s lab, they had a curious and unexpected result.
“[We found] a single ligand which was totally inconsistent — sometimes forming products with huge preference for the ‘right-handed’ molecule, sometimes forming nearly 50 percent mixtures of the two and sometimes ending up somewhere in the middle … and we began to realize the reaction must be reversible,” said Nelson. This discovery was something no one had noticed before.
That’s where Roberts will pick up with his thesis work this year, trying to explain what Nelson characterizes as a “baffling irreversibility.” But he’s optimistic.
“I’m going to try to figure out how the catalyst breaks down, and hopefully begin to understand the mechanics of this reversible reaction,” Roberts said, acknowledging that it will be a big project. “Ideally 12-15 hours of lab work every week.”
Roberts wants to apply his chemistry major and economics and Spanish double minors at the interface of chemistry and business, which will take him out of the lab. However, what motivates him to put in such a significant chunk of time in the lab this year is an overwhelming sense of curiosity.
“It’s all about that moment of seeing into the universe and understanding fundamentally how it works, and being able to further that understanding with my own work and research,” he said.
Bunt, who has dedicated his life to chemistry, echoed this sentiment.
“I want to know how things work, why they work,” he said. “I’m mesmerized by the elegance of chemical synthesis.”