M-File, TERP Magazine Fall 2009

Powerful Ideas on Energy Storage

IMAGINE A NEW breed of all-electric cars that can travel 300 miles or more before needing a quick recharge—almost three times farther than current hybrid models that rely on gasoline as a backup.

Innovative science in the university's recently launched Energy Frontier Research Center may lead to such a vehicle within a decade, says Gary Rubloff, the Minta Martin Professor of Engineering and director of the center.

Working with Sang Bok Lee, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Rubloff is developing "super batteries" that can store more energy, deliver more power and recharge much faster than existing devices can. The key, says Rubloff, is exploiting the honeycomb patterns of nanoscale pores in aluminum oxide, using arrays of these nanowires to build compact yet extremely efficient batteries.

Linking faculty from engineering, chemical and life sciences and computer science, the energy research center was funded with $14 million from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a new program that brings together groups of leading scientists to address fundamental energy issues. -TV

Where Have All the Frogs Gone?

Lips's research on exotic frogs was featured in a Nature documentary.

FROGS AND OTHER amphibians are mysteriously disappearing from the planet, and biologist Karen Lips is racing against time to save them. One-third of the 6,300 species of amphibians are in decline and 168 have gone extinct in the last 20 years, with more disappearing each day. The crisis has required Lips and her colleagues to act as detectives at a crime scene, investigating sites where they find the bodies of thousands of dead frogs to unravel what went wrong.

The golden frog used to be common in Panama. Photocredit: Andrew Young Copyright ©1995 - 2008 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). All Rights Reserved

While pollution and other environmental factors are taking their toll on frogs, Lips and others discovered that it's an unusual fungus, called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, that's causing massive frog die-offs in locations as disparate as Panama, Australia and the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, these experts don't know where this fungus originated and don't know how to stop it. They do know that it likes cool, wet climates, where frogs also thrive, and that it spreads rapidly.

After Lips documented the disease's rapid and devastating impact on frogs in Costa Rica and Panama, her colleagues rushed to evacuate frogs from the forests of Central Panama to save them from the advancing fungus. Today, their facility shelters 58 species of frogs—including some of the rarest on earth.

Lips is also investigating the fungus's impact in the U.S. and whether it has caused the decline of several species of salamanders in Appalachia, which has the highest biodiversity of salamanders in the world. In addition, she is documenting the impact that these extinctions are having on ecosystems.

"Once amphibians are eliminated from an ecosystem, everything else changes," she explains. "Snakes disappear, algae grows, sediments accumulate and affect water quality. We don't know yet how many of these changes are irrevocable." -KB

Researchers Team Up to Fight Alzheimer's Disease

A UNIVERSITY OF Maryland neuroscientist is collaborating with experts at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to advance a treatment for Alzheimer's disease, the debilitating neurological disorder that afflicts more than 5.3 million Americans and is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States.

Hey-Kyoung Lee, an associate professor of biology in the College of Chemical and Life Sciences, links her previous work in neuroplasticity—the brain's ability to reorganize neural pathways—with Johns Hopkins scientists who are studying innovative treatments for Alzheimer's.

Current Alzheimer's treatment relies on medications that can only delay or manage the disease's most prevalent symptoms: the loss of

memory and thinking skills. In research funded by the National Institutes of Health, Lee and the Johns Hopkins researchers are attempting to actually stem the disease by preventing the action of an enzyme called BACE1, which produces linked amino acids called peptides.

Many scientists believe that an over-production of a peptide called A-beta is the cause of Alzheimer's. The concern is that by eliminating the BACE1 enzyme in laboratory mice, some of the test animals became confused and aggressive.

Lee and her students pinpointed these abnormalities, and the researchers are now searching for a pharmaceutical solution that can eliminate the behavioral side effects caused by BACE1 inhibition.

"Learning what is happening at the cellular level gives us the tools to circumvent what is causing the brain to function abnormally," Lee explains.

Ultimately, Lee says the research team is hoping to discover a cure for Alzheimer's. "That's the holy grail—to be able to first show we can safely inhibit the production of A-beta peptides in laboratory animals, and then move on to clinical trials that can lead to an effective treatment," she says. -TV

For more details, go to
www.chemlife.umd.edu/biology/leelab#.

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