| BGSU, Owens students show off their summer research projects |
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| Written by PETER KUEBECK Sentinel Staff Writer | ||||
| Monday, 23 July 2012 09:05 | ||||
Give up? Answer: They were just some of the topics explored by students at the 2012 SetGO Summer Research Roundup Friday at Bowling Green State University. The SetGO (Science, Engineering and Technology Gateway Ohio) roundup caps a 10-week research program for science and math majors allowing them to complete scientific research in collaboration with a faculty mentor. The students each receive a $3,500 stipend as part of the program. More than 35 projects from BGSU and partner Owens Community College were presented at the roundup, covering the areas of biology, neuroscience, computer science, engineering, and beyond. Junior Biology major Kathryn Rapin - with her topic "Investigating the Origins of Ice Nucleation Active Bacteria in Lake Erie" - focused on the bacterium known as 'pseudomonas'. She worked with faculty members Drs. Mike McKay and Hans Wildschutte. It's believed that the bacteria is responsible for ice formation on Lake Erie, and the team decided to work and determine where the bacteria itself came from. Through sampling, she discovered that they come into the lake from its tributary rivers. For Rapin, the project was an oportunity to move out of her academic comfort zone. "I'm more marine biology, and not as much micorbiology," she said, indicting that her work allowed her to learn more about the tiny worlds existing under the microscope lense, and about the high technology involved in working with it. Sophomore Jonathan Yoo, also a biology major, also worked with Wildschutte, and with the same bacteria, but on a different question - varying varieties of pseudomonas are found in water and soil samples throughout the area. How, they wondered, do they get there and survive in these disparate places? Yoo collected the bacteria from soil samples in the Bowling Green area, and also water samples from the central basic of Lake Erie. The work, he said, is ongoing.
For Yoo, who hopes to continue as a researcher when he graduates, "this is my first time doing a research internship." "I had a blast, pretty much." Other researchers allowed their scientific interests to take flight - literally - by identifying how pigeons navigate. Junior Environmental Science major Preston Stevenson worked with Drs. Cordula Mora and Verner Bingman to try and understand the importance of the "trigeminal pathway" nerve in permitting homing pigeons to steer themselves around the globe. Humans, he said, need two things to navigate on the earth's surface - a map and a compass. Homing pideons, on one hand, can use the angle of the sun to help them steer, but they also use a "magnetic compass" based on the magnetic field fo the earth. But how does this compass work and where in their brain is it located? To help find out, Stevenson's work included building a special arena for pigeons to test their nagivational ability, and then conducting surgery on some of them to cut the trigeminal pathway. Those birds who had the pathway cut did indeed have difficulty using magnetic navigation, showing that the pathway is instrumental in their ability to travel. "I think the pigeons trained me as much as I've trained them," he said of the experience with the birds. Merissa Acerbi, a junior psychology and neuroscience major who worked with Mora and Bingman, too, also used surgical techniques on pigeons to look at how they handled nagivation, essentially by turning off the center of the brain scientists believe the birds use to navigate. Without that portion of their brain, she said, the birds faltered. These findings, said Acerbi, could have applications in such wide-ranging areas as alzhermer's research, and even helping with travel in the event of wide-scale power failures where navigation technology such as GPS would be useless. "Im so thankful the university funded me for this," she said. BGSU President Dr. Mary Ellen Mazey, who toured the symposion, called the event "exactly what higher education should be doing today" - getting students involved in research early in their academic careers and pairing them with faculty in their fields. "It's all about student engagement, student involvement," she said. |
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| Last Updated on Monday, 23 July 2012 10:07 |
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