Author: cware

A research poster dated Dec. 9, 2015, hangs just outside Nicole Hashemi’s Iowa State University laboratory. It introduces a major project for Hashemi and her research group. And it’s evidence that scientific persistence sometimes equals scientific advancement. Hashemi, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, and her students have been working all these years to develop a “placenta-on-a-chip.” In this case that’s a thin, rectangular, clear, polymer block with two tiny microchannels – just millionths of a meter wide and high – and a porous membrane in between. One channel represents maternal blood flow. The other represents fetal blood flow. And the membrane between represents the placental barrier, especially when it’s lined with growing endothelial or barrier-forming cells. By pumping fluids through […] Read Moreabout Researchers Advance ‘Placenta-on-a-Chip’ With Sensing, Imaging Technology

When a hurricane-like derecho knocked down corn plants across Iowa in August 2020, it was devastating for farmers. But it also presented a natural experiment for an Iowa State University research team, which fanned out across flattened fields in the days after the storm to record how crops held up. High winds caused widespread lodging, which happens when a corn plant’s stalk breaks or its roots fail to keep it upright. The genetic makeup of corn stalk strength is well-studied, but little research has looked at what makes roots more resistant to lodging. By analyzing post-derecho observations of their genotyped test plots, searching for hereditary causes of root lodging, Iowa State researchers identified 118 genes that may affect corn root […] Read Moreabout ISU Researchers Hunt for Hard-to-spot Genetic Links to Improve Crop and Livestock Breeding

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is looking for materials that “revolutionize and engineer our future.” Researchers at Iowa State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara think they can do just that by fundamentally changing Digital Light Processing – a type of 3D printing that users light rather than heat to quickly cure and harden liquid resin into plastic layers – to enable multi-material printing. “We want to produce two material properties with the same resin,” said Adarsh Krishnamurthy, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and leader of the project at Iowa State. “That’s revolutionary in terms of materials for 3D printing.” The researchers are using their expertise in materials chemistry, computational science, machine learning and materials characterization to find resins that, when exposed to different wavelengths […] Read Moreabout Researchers Developing ‘Revolutionary’ Multi-Material for Light-based 3D Printing

At a chalkboard in his office, Rana Parshad draws a vertical y-axis for aphids and a horizontal x-axis for time. Under an exponential growth model, the associate professor of mathematics at Iowa State University explains aphids multiply quickly and indefinitely. He represents this by dragging the chalk into a sharp, upward curve. But reality is more complicated, says Parshad. Aphid populations often crash when soybeans, their preferred host plant, dry out or “senesce” before harvest. He draws a straight line across the top of the graph; the “carrying capacity” changes the j-shaped curve into an “s.” It’s also possible to have multiple boom-and-bust cycles over a growing season, Parshad adds. Intense competition for food, which causes a drop in aphid numbers followed by a […] Read Moreabout Combining Math and Entomology to Predict, Mitigate Soybean Aphid Outbreaks