| 1:00 - 1:45PM |
First Look from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment
Dr. Karl Gebhardt (UT Austin)
We have started a large observational program to quantify the expansion of the universe and understand the nature of dark energy. The universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, currently not understood, and might signify new physics, or a different model of the Big Bang, or something completely unexpected. HETDEX was started over 10 years ago to address dark energy; we are just now starting the observational program. I will update on the latest thinking and potential impact from HETDEX.
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| 1:45 - 2:30PM |
Neutrino Oscillations: From Discovery to Precision Measurements
Dr. Lisa Whitehead Koerner (University of Houston)
The neutrino is one of the elementary particles which make up the universe.
Neutrinos are produced in the fusion reactions inside the sun and other stars, by natural radiation inside the earth, by supernovae, and by charged particles bombarding Earth’s atmosphere. Despite their abundance, they interact very rarely with matter, and sensitive detectors with large masses are required to observe their interactions. Neutrinos come in three types, called flavors, and experimental observations have established that neutrinos undergo flavor oscillations as they propagate due to quantum mechanical mixing between the mass states and flavor states. In this talk, I will discuss the experiments that discovered neutrino oscillations and describe what we hope to learn from current and future experiments.
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| 8:30 - 9:15AM |
The Physics and Chemistry of Molecular Imaging
Dr. Dean Sherry (UT Dallas/UT Southwestern)
MRI contrast agents have become an important diagnostic tool in clinical medicine. The most popular and widely-used agents over the past 30 years have been small chelates of Gd3+ that act as T1 shortening agents after IV administration. These small molecule agents in general lack tissue specificity, quickly enter all extracellular space, and do not respond to changes in physiology or biology. A goal of our lab over the past few years has been to develop newer types of agents for measuring important physiological parameters such as tissue pH, hypoxia or enzyme activity. The recent discovery of a Zn2+-responsive Gd-complex has allowed monitoring of insulin secretion from pancreatic -cells and Zn2+ secretion from prostate, both in response to glucose. A second new imaging contrast mechanism based on chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) is rapidly gaining popularity for detecting in vivo proton exchange processes. Many endogenous proteins and small metabolite molecules have been detected and several new exogenous paramagnetic agents (paraCEST) have been designed that “respond” to specific biological events. Finally, one of the newest areas of molecular imaging applied to biology and medicine is dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), a process by which electron spin polarization is transferred to nuclear spins at low temperature. This process increases the sensitivity of 13C, 15N and other insensitive NMR nuclei by a factor of 10,000 or more thereby offering the exciting possibility of imaging metabolic pathways in real time in humans. Basic physics and chemistry principles have been used to improve the sensitivity of DNP to the point where clinical applications of DNP are rapidly becoming a reality. Examples of the first human metabolic imaging experiments performed in Dallas will be presented.
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| 9:15 - 10:00AM |
Mars 2020 Mission Overview and the Importance of Planetary Protection
Dr. Moogega Stricker (JPL/Caltech)
The M2020 Mission is designed to investigate key question related to the habitability of Mars and will conduct assessments that will help plan for future human exploration of Mars. Per its Program Level Requirements, the project will also acquire and cache samples of rock, regolith, and procedural “blank” samples for possible return to Earth by a future mission. The Planetary Protection Categorization letter assigned the M2020 Mission as a Category V Restricted Earth Return due to the possible future return of collected samples. As indicated in NPR8020.12D, Section 5.3.3.2, as the first leg of potential sample return, Mars 2020 would be expected to meet the requirements of a Category IVb mission. The entire flight system is subject to microbial reduction requirements, with additional specific emphasis on the sample acquisition and caching. Mars 2020 has a very unique biological contamination plan to both protect Mars as well as the scientific integrity of the collected sample. A mission overview and Planetary Protection activities will be discussed.
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| 5:00 - 5:45PM |
Why bacteria care about things you learned in your classical mechanics class
Dr. Vernita Gordon (UT Austin)
Although bacteria are single-celled organisms, they can form interacting, multi-cellular communities known as "biofilms." In biofilms, bacteria and other microbes are bound to each other, and often to a surface, by polymers and proteins. As a result, bacteria in developing and mature biofilms experience mechanical forces, and have mechanical properties, that are unlike those experienced or possessed by single bacteria outside of a biofilm. I will discuss two cases where physical mechanics impact the biological function of bacteria in ways that help promote biofilm development and robustness.
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