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Tag: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  • Speech Accessibility Project begins recruiting people who have had a stroke

    Speech Accessibility Project begins recruiting people who have had a stroke

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    BYLINE: Meg Dickinson

    Newswise — The Speech Accessibility Project has begun recruiting U.S. and Puerto Rican adults who have had a stroke.

    Those interested can sign up online.

    Funded by Big Tech companies Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign aims to train voice recognition technologies to understand people with diverse speech patterns and disabilities. The project is also recruiting adults with Parkinson’s disease, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

    “A stroke can cause big changes, including changes to your ability to speak,” said Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, the project’s leader and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. “Our goal is to teach AI to understand you the way you speak right now, so that you can use AI to help you on the job or in activities of daily life. The Speech Accessibility Project is about empowerment; the potential for empowerment of people post-stroke is huge and wonderful.”

    The project has partnered with Lingraphica’s research team to recruit people who have had a stroke. Mentors will connect with those who want to participate, screen their speech, and help them understand and consent to participate.

    Shawnise Carter, Lingraphica’s senior research manager and a speech language pathologist, said she’s thrilled to join the project and called it “ambitious and necessary.”

    “It is essential for individuals with communication impairments to have access to technology in a way that can suit their needs,” Carter said. “The hope is that it will allow people who have had a stroke to access smart devices and smart technology while decreasing frustration resulting from voice recognition technology not recognizing impaired speech.”

    Such technology doesn’t currently account for people with speech impairments, she said.

    “Creating a database that considers this is a huge contribution to the field of communication sciences and disorders and more research of this nature should continue,” she said.

    Clarion Mendes, a clinical assistant professor of speech and hearing science at Illinois and a speech language pathologist, added that the Speech Accessibility Project could also improve quality of life for family members and loved ones of people who have had a stroke.

    “Communication difficulties associated with a cerebrovascular accident, commonly known as stroke, are diverse in both their severity and how they impact individuals and their families. Speech, language, and cognitive processes may be affected,” Mendes said. “Including stroke survivors with aphasia and their caregivers in the Speech Accessibility Project is an exciting new chapter. There’s outstanding potential for increasing quality of life for stroke survivors and decreasing caregiver burden.”



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    Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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  • Speech Accessibility Project now recruiting adults with Down syndrome

    Speech Accessibility Project now recruiting adults with Down syndrome

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    BYLINE: Meg Dickinson

    Newswise — The Speech Accessibility Project is now recruiting U.S. adults with Down syndrome. The project aims to make voice recognition technology more useful for people with diverse speech patterns and different disabilities.

    Those interested in participating can sign up online.

    The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a historic leader in accessibility, is securely recording participants and safeguarding their private information. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are funding the project and are already using participants’ recorded voices to make voice recognition technology more useful.

    The project has so far collected more than 100,000 recordings from participants with Parkinson’s disease. In addition to Down syndrome, the project will also soon be recruiting adults with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and those who have had a stroke.

    Making speech recognition tools accessible to people with Down syndrome could change the way they interact with technology, and could have even more profound effects, as well, said Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UIUC and the project’s leader.

    “The Speech Accessibility Project is fundamentally about human rights,” Hasegawa-Johnson said. “Everyone has the right to seek education, to seek employment, and to seek access to government services.”

    But people with Down syndrome may struggle with those, he said.

    “I think speech technology can help by making information about education, employment, and government services more easily accessible,” he said. “We are at a unique point in human history. With a perfectly reasonable amount of collaboration between the Down syndrome community and the technology community, we can make automatic speech recognition available to people with Down syndrome.”

    Having improved access to speech recognition technology could dramatically improve quality of life for many, said Clarion Mendes, a speech-language pathologist, clinical assistant professor of speech and hearing science, and member of the project team.

    “Down syndrome is the most commonly identified chromosomal difference in the U.S.,” she said. “Nearly all individuals with Down syndrome experience challenges with communication — including speech clarity. By including individuals with Down syndrome in the Speech Accessibility Project, the potential to engage with the world through communication increases.”

    The Speech Accessibility Project team has partnered with Laura Mattie and Marie Channell, both associate professors in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science.

    “The opportunity to promote inclusion and accessibility for people with Down syndrome is incredibly important,” Mattie said. “We jumped right on board. We can see the future impact that it can have on their lives.”

    Channell studies independence and transitions to adulthood in people with Down syndrome.

    “They go through all of life and school with educational supports, therapy, and services,” 

    she said. “As soon as they leave high school and hit early adulthood, these supports abruptly stop.”

    The so-called “service delivery cliff” means those individuals suddenly need to navigate services for adults, and many systems aren’t built for people with Down syndrome or who have intellectual disabilities.

    “Finding ways to support people who want to live independent lives and gain meaningful employment are limited,” she said. “Some of our research has found that about 50 percent are employed at some level, and most are under-employed. The Speech Accessibility Project will provide them with access to more tools to help them communicate and navigate through adult spaces in the community, just like everyone else.”

    Graduate students working with Channell and Mattie will walk potential participants and their caregivers through the process of signing up and participating in the project.

    Participants can receive up to $180 and caregivers can receive up to $90 in Amazon gift cards.

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    Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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  • Protein p53 regulates learning, memory, sociability in mice

    Protein p53 regulates learning, memory, sociability in mice

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    BYLINE: Jenna Kurtzweil

    Newswise — Researchers have established the protein p53 as critical for regulating sociability, repetitive behavior, and hippocampus-related learning and memory in mice, illuminating the relationship between the protein-coding gene TP53 and neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders like autism spectrum disorder.

    “This study shows for the first time that p53 is linked directly to autism-like behavior,” said Nien-Pei Tsai, an associate professor of molecular and integrative biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

    In living systems, genes act as a biological version of binary code, using the letters A, C, G, and T instead of ones and zeroes to spell out cellular marching orders. Some genes — called coding genes — instruct cells to create proteins with specific functions. For example, the gene TP53 instructs cells to create the protein p53; its job is to regulate how other genes are expressed.

    In this study, Tsai and his colleagues lowered hippocampal p53 levels in mice, looking for changes in gene expressions related to behavior. They observed that the decreased p53 levels:

    • Promoted repetitive behavior in mice.
    • Reduced sociability in mice.
    • Impaired hippocampus-dependent learning and memory, especially in male mice.

    The researchers also observed that p53 levels were elevated after a period of active communication between hippocampal neurons called long-term potentiation. Flexible neuron firing — known as plasticity — is related to positive learning and memory outcomes.

    In a 2018 study, Tsai and his colleagues identified p53 as a key protein involved in the irregular brain cell activity seen in ASD and epilepsy. In future studies, they aim to explore how p53 coordinates the expression of those autism-linked genes to guide behavior.

    Editor’s notes:

    The paper associated with this study is titled “Tumor suppressor p53 modulates activity-dependent synapse strengthening, autism-like behavior and hippocampus-dependent learning” and appears in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

    Research reported in this press release was supported by the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R01NS105615, R01MH124827, and R21MH122840. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

    Access the free paper online: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-02268-9

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    Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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  • An antiracist approach to intelligence research: Q&A with LaTasha Holden

    An antiracist approach to intelligence research: Q&A with LaTasha Holden

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    BYLINE: Melinh Lai

    Newswise — Intelligence can mean many things. For most people, it describes the general ability to learn and use knowledge in different areas, such as technology, science, and even personal relationships. At the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, researchers study the origins of human intelligence, develop artificially intelligent systems, and even question what it means to be intelligent at all.

    LaTasha Holden, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Beckman researcher, studies intelligence from a different perspective. She looks at how intelligence is perceived socially and explores the impacts of those perceptions on people’s lives. She is particularly interested in how social notions of intelligence can have lasting consequences for students, both during their school years and in their lives outside the classroom. 

    Traditional perceptions of intelligence may have created unfair limitations for students, especially those from historically marginalized communities, but Holden believes that changing our fundamental understanding of what intelligence is can help develop antiracist practices and build a more equitable society. She elaborates in this Q&A.

    How do you define intelligence? Does that differ from how the average person might define it?

    I think the average person would define intelligence somewhere along the lines of natural smarts or book smarts: innate or unchangeable intellectual ability, or mental abilities that are assessed.

    I define intelligence as our ability to solve new problems, or the ability to adapt to our ever-changing environments. Scientifically, I define intelligence as something that emerges from general-purpose and domain-specific abilities, the latter of which are specialized and involve crystallized knowledge (for example: vocabulary knowledge).

    In my opinion, the second definition I provided is more appropriate. The key thing to remember is that intelligence in terms of a scientific construct has been defined and studied largely from a certain cultural perspective, which impacts how it was viewed historically and how it is viewed today. In any case, the notion of intelligence has a challenging history filled with forms of bias and injustice.

    Can you elaborate on this history?

    Studying intelligence usually involves testing people’s mental abilities in different ways, such as with memory tests or tests of visuospatial processing. Often, a person will have similar performance on many different tests — when they’re good at one test, they often perform well on many other tests. Historically, intelligence researchers have used a metric called the g (or general) factor to represent a person’s general ability to perform well on these cognitive tasks. The problem with many early theories of intelligence is that they believed that this factor was an innate, common cause for all intelligent behavior. Modern research shows that that is simply not the case.

    In addition, early intelligence assessments were developed from mostly white Europeans from higher social classes in the late 19th century. It is difficult to imagine that theories based on observations of only one group of people would translate well in other contexts with different groups. These early forms of intelligence assessments were also linked with eugenics, and this — in tandem with the mistaken views that intelligence is innate — often led to the outcomes of these assessments being used to further disenfranchise marginalized and racialized communities, including with legalized sterilization.

    How has this history impacted intelligence research and the modern pursuit of the science of intelligence?

    In many ways, traditional methods of studying intelligence have been viewed as out of line with supporting marginalized communities. I think even now a lot of people still view IQ tests this way. This history has led to some cognitive scientists avoiding the study of intelligence altogether. Others focus on concepts that seem related to intelligence, like executive function. I have argued that focusing on intelligence-related concepts doesn’t grant the same depth of prediction as specific aspects of intelligence, like working memory, which is the ability to control our attention.

    The most important aspects of intelligence appear to be domain-general processes like working memory. Even though we know that intelligence involves a mix of general and specialized abilities, we can focus on the general processes when we develop new ways to improve intelligence.

    In a new paper, my Ph.D. student Gabriel Tanenbaum and I wrote about diversity, equity, and inclusion-based considerations for the topic of intelligence and how we can study it for social good. The hope is that we can change how we study intelligence and apply it in future work to be more amenable to our current demographics of students, as we know the U.S. population has been becoming increasingly diverse in terms of cultural, racial ethnic and neurodiversity over the last several decades.

    How can intelligence be changed, or even improved?

    From my perspective, intelligence test scores are improvable — but the approach we take to improve them should be informed by, and largely depends on, differences in people’s needs. For example, if someone has challenges from ADHD, dyslexia, or dyscalculia we might think about different forms of tailored intervention to fit their specific needs.

    One possible route is to use common assessments of intelligence to get an initial sense of different students’ broad and narrow abilities. Once we’ve identified the areas where students are quite strong or may benefit from additional help, we can tailor an education strategy to fit their specific needs.

    What is the relationship between intelligence research and social equity?

    I think people view the relationship between intelligence research and social equity as a negative one. In other words, focusing more on the practical and scientific importance of intelligence is thought to not align with supporting social equity goals.

    Acknowledging the fraught history of intelligence research is important, and that means accepting that intelligence tests haven’t been used necessarily to focus on equity, but I argue that they can be used this way. In order for this to happen we have to both acknowledge that problematic history and work very intentionally to ensure that intelligence tests — and really, any tests of mental ability — are used in ways that align with equity goals.

    How can intelligence research be used to rectify these areas of inequality?

    The suppression of intelligence research has contributed to inequality because it has made people uncertain about whether it’s possible to align the study of intelligence with the pursuit of equity. Focusing on the sub-measures of intelligence is the best way to start in future work. The sub-measures allow us to think about more specific forms of tailored intervention to support our most vulnerable students.

    For example, working memory capacity is an important domain general sub-measure of intelligence. It is related to test performance and achievement and processing of information. Many studies have shown that in racialized and marginalized students, working memory is an important factor in terms of the mental resources involved in performing their best. Having higher working memory resources shows that students are able to better maintain their performance in the face of identity-threatening situations, suggesting to me that this is a really important factor when we consider social equity and think about helping vulnerable students maintain their cognitive resources.

    What do you think is the most important thing that someone can take from your research and apply to their own life in the pursuit of thinking more equitably and flexibly?

    First, I want people to understand the approach I am choosing to take in focusing on equity. Science has a history of prioritizing and serving some groups more than others. This has contributed to various forms of societal inequality and inequity. I am choosing to re-envision how we think about and conduct research on topics that have historically been used in problematic ways. I think we should take what can be useful about cognitive ability research and use it for social good. We should acknowledge what has been problematic and harmful in this history and continue to root out and revise practices that could perpetuate these problems today.

    Second, I think the cognitive psychology and intelligence literature has consistently shown that cognitive processes involve “mental energy and mental resources,” and certain experiences can weigh on mental energy and how well individuals are able to leverage and deploy different cognitive abilities and skills. From my perspective, societal bias and inequity have contributed to and caused forms of mental exhaustion. Instead of viewing the most vulnerable and marginalized from a deficit perspective, where people are inherently thought of as lacking something, we should take the view that differences in experiences create differences in needs. We should be using the science conducted on these topics both to combat form of bias and to meet the needs of the most vulnerable — not to contribute to further forms of marginalization.

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    Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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  • Renewable solar energy can help purify water, the environment

    Renewable solar energy can help purify water, the environment

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    BYLINE: Jenna Kurtzweil

    Using electrochemistry to separate different particles within a solution (also known as electrochemical separation) is an energy-efficient strategy for environmental and water remediation: the process of purifying contaminated water. But while electrochemistry uses less energy than other, similar methods, the electric energy is largely derived from nonrenewable sources like fossil fuels.

    Chemists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated that water remediation can be powered in part — and perhaps even exclusively — by renewable energy sources. Through a semiconductor, their method integrates solar energy into an electrochemical separation process powered by a redox reaction, which manipulates ions’ electric charge to separate them from a solution like water.  

    Using this system, the researchers successfully separated and removed dilute arsenate — a derivative of arsenic, which is a major waste component from steel and mining industries — from wastewater.

    This work represents proof-of-concept for the applicability of such systems for wastewater treatment and environmental protection.

    “Global electrical energy is still predominantly derived from nonrenewable, fossil-fuel-based sources, which raises questions about the long-term sustainability of electrochemical processes, including separations. Integrating solar power advances the sustainability of electrochemical separations in general, and its applications to water purification benefit the water sector as well,” said lead investigator Xiao Su, a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

    This work appears in the journal Small at https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202305275.

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  • Researchers propose new structures to harvest untapped source of freshwater

    Researchers propose new structures to harvest untapped source of freshwater

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    Newswise — An almost limitless supply of fresh water exists in the form of water vapor above Earth’s oceans, yet remains untapped, researchers said. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the first to suggest an investment in new infrastructure capable of harvesting oceanic water vapor as a solution to limited supplies of fresh water in various locations around the world.

    The study, led by civil and environmental engineering professor and Prairie Research Institute executive director Praveen Kumar, evaluated 14 water-stressed locations across the globe for the feasibility of a hypothetical structure capable of capturing water vapor from above the ocean and condensing it into fresh water – and do so in a manner that will remain feasible in the face of continued climate change.

    Kumar, graduate student Afeefa Rahman and atmospheric sciences professor Francina Dominguez published their findings in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

    “Water scarcity is a global problem and hits close to home here in the U.S. regarding the sinking water levels in the Colorado River basin, which affects the whole Western U.S.,” Kumar said. “However, in subtropical regions, like the Western U.S., nearby oceans are continuously evaporating water because there is enough solar radiation due to the very little cloud coverage throughout the year.”

    Previous wastewater recycling, cloud seeding and desalination techniques have met only limited success, the researchers said. Though deployed in some areas across the globe, desalination plants face sustainability issues because of the brine and heavy metal-laden wastewater produced – so much so that California has recently rejected measures to add new desalination plants.

    “Eventually, we will need to find a way to increase the supply of fresh water as conservation and recycled water from existing sources, albeit essential, will not be sufficient to meet human needs. We think our newly proposed method can do that at large scales,” Kumar said.

    The researchers performed atmospheric and economic analyses of the placement of hypothetical offshore structures 210 meters in width and 100 meters in height.

    Through their analyses, the researchers concluded that capturing moisture over ocean surfaces is feasible for many water-stressed regions worldwide. The estimated water yield of the proposed structures could provide fresh water for large population centers in the subtropics.

    One of the more robust projections of climate change is that dry regions will get drier, and wet areas will get wetter. “The current regions experiencing water scarcity will likely be even drier in the future, exacerbating the problem,” Dominguez said. “And unfortunately, people continue moving to water-limited areas, like the Southwestern U.S.”

    However, this projection of increasingly arid conditions favors the new ocean vapor-harvesting technology.

    “The climate projections show that the oceanic vapor flux will only increase over time, providing even more fresh water supply,” Rahman said. “So, the idea we are proposing will be feasible under climate change. This provides a much needed and effective approach for adaptation to climate change, particularly to vulnerable populations living in arid and semi-arid regions of the world.”

    The researchers said one of the more elegant features of this proposed solution is that it works like the natural water cycle.

     “The difference is that we can guide where the evaporated water from the ocean goes,” Dominguez said. “When Praveen approached me with this idea, we both wondered why nobody had thought about it before because it seemed like such an obvious solution. But it hasn’t been done before, and I think it is because researchers are so focused on land-based solutions – but our study shows other options do, in fact, exist.”  

    The researchers said this study opens the door for novel infrastructure investments that can effectively address the increasing global scarcity of fresh water.

    The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Lovell Professorship in the department of civil and environmental engineering, The University Scholar Program and the National Science Foundation supported this research.

     

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    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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  • Study Identifies Key T Cells for Immunity Against Fungal Pneumonia

    Study Identifies Key T Cells for Immunity Against Fungal Pneumonia

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    Newswise — Researchers at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine have demonstrated in a mouse model that a specific type of T cell, one of the body’s potent immune defenses, produces cytokines that are necessary for the body to acquire immunity against fungal pathogens. This finding could be instrumental in developing novel, effective fungal vaccines.

    Despite vaccines being hailed as one of the greatest achievements of medicine, responsible for controlling or eradicating numerous life-threatening infectious diseases, no vaccines have been licensed to prevent or control human fungal infections.

    This lack proved especially deadly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In countries where steroids were widely used to suppress inflammation of the lungs, COVID-19 patients with preexisting conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes showed a greater likelihood of developing lethal fungal infections. 

    T Cells Could Produce Protective or Pathological Response

    “A particular type of T cell [TH17 cells] that expresses GM-CSF [granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor] was linked to greater severity of illness in people infected with the virus that causes COVID-19,” said Dr. Som Nanjappa, an assistant professor of immunology at the University of Illinois.

    “Our study shows that IL-17A+ CD8+ T cell (Tc17), which also expresses GM-CSF, is necessary for mediating fungal vaccine immunity without instigating hyperinflammation. So clearly, the antigen specificity of T cells—whether they target viral vs. fungal or bacterial pathogens—has a huge impact on whether they play a protective or detrimental role.”

    The article, “GM-CSF+ Tc17 cells are required to bolster vaccine immunity against lethal fungal pneumonia without causing overt pathology,” appeared in Cell Reports on October 25. Dr. Nanjappa’s coauthors on the study are Srinivasu Mudalagiriyappa, a former graduate student now a scientist with Insmed Incorporated, a global biopharmaceutical company focused on serious and rare diseases; Jaishree Sharma, a graduate student in the Department of Pathobiology; and Miranda D. Vieson, a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Pathobiology as well as a boarded veterinary pathologist in the college’s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.

    T Cells for Fungal Vaccine Immunity

    In the study, colonies of mice were given an experimental fungal vaccine. The mice were then exposed to virulent fungal pathogen to cause lethal pulmonary infection. Researchers could determine the necessity of GM-CSF+ Tc17 cells to mediate vaccine immunity. Further, they found that IL-1 and IL-23 cytokines are necessary for eliciting GM-CSF+ Tc17 cells to vaccine. While IL-23 is dispensable for the long-term memory homeostasis of these cells, it is essential for vaccine immunity against pulmonary fungal infection.

    This study identifies a beneficial subset of T cells for fungal vaccine immunity that bolsters efforts to develop a vaccine platform containing suitable adjuvants to potentiate such a T cell subset.

    “In line with this, we have identified a functional phenotypic marker that could be targeted to enhance this subset to augment vaccine efficacy,” said Dr. Nanjappa. He recently received NIH-R01 funding to pursue this strategy for a fungal vaccine.   

    Read the study online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111543

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  • How Regional Public Colleges Benefit Their Communities

    How Regional Public Colleges Benefit Their Communities

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    Many regional public colleges were hit hard by the pandemic. At a few such institutions, enrollment declines and financial distress have been so serious that questions have emerged about their relevance and longevity.

    But these colleges serve a crucial population: low-income students. And they serve as economic engines in their regions.

    Those are the key findings of new research by two economists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who explored the benefits of these institutions for their local communities. The researchers found that regional public colleges improve educational attainment and economic outcomes for residents in their area.

    The study was an extension of previous research conducted by Russell Weinstein, an assistant professor of labor and employment relations and of economics, and two co-authors, Greg Howard, also an assistant professor of economics at Illinois, and Yuhao Yang, an economics graduate student. The latest paper was written by Weinstein and Howard.

    The researchers compared counties that had state-funded mental asylums with counties that had “normal schools” — colleges established in the late-19th and early-20th centuries by the state government to educate schoolteachers. In the mid-20th century, many of these normal schools were converted into regional universities. As for the asylums, many became psychiatric hospitals or rehabilitative facilities.

    The researchers found that children who grew up in counties with the regional public colleges received more education and experienced better economic and social outcomes than did children in counties that had the former state-funded mental asylums. Children who came from lower-income families were most positively affected by the regional public institutions.

    The research found that living in proximity to these universities led to increases in high-school graduation rates among residents, as well as to improvements in other economic factors, including employment, household income, marriage rates, and geographic mobility.

    The Chronicle spoke on Thursday with Weinstein about the implications of his research , and what leaders of these universities can learn from his findings. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    In your research, you compared counties with “normal schools” to counties with state-funded mental asylums to determine the impact of regional public universities on local residents. How did you and your co-author determine this approach?

    We started reading about the history of universities and how it was determined where universities were located.

    Oftentimes state legislatures were deciding about where to locate schools at the same time as they were deciding where to locate these asylums.

    Some counties effectively randomly got a normal school, and some counties effectively didn’t get a normal school. But they got a different state institution: an insane asylum. What determines whether they got one or the other seemed like it was often due to political deals, and it could have ended up the other way around as well.

    Your research finds that living in counties with regional public universities leads to positive effects for residents. How did you attribute these effects to the colleges?

    On a wide range of economic and social-mobility indicators, we see that these regional public universities are affecting the people who grow up next to them.

    If we want to know the effect of regional public universities on their local market, we want to know what economic mobility of people in the county would have looked like if the county never got the university. What is that counterfactual?

    We argue that we can learn this counterfactual by comparing the counties that got these insane asylums instead of the normal schools, because these counties looked remarkably similar before these institutions were assigned. It’s just that one got an institution that randomly turned into a regional public university.

    What do your research findings say about the role of regional public colleges compared with that of other types of colleges?

    The people who grow up in a county with a regional public university, instead of one of these other private, smaller, more expensive universities, we see that they’re more likely to get a college degree and have all these other economic, social, and mobility effects.

    We’re not making an argument that the colleges in these asylum counties are representative of all private universities. But we do see that growing up next to a regional public university has these positive mobility effects relative to growing up next to the other colleges, which are less likely to be public, and are more expensive and smaller.

    This research helps demonstrate the importance of regional public universities. How can leaders at these colleges use these findings to make the case for more state funding?

    The central mission of regional public universities, since the time that they were established, has been to increase access to higher education for people who live nearby.

    Our research shows that regional public universities are doing this. They are increasing access to higher education, and all kinds of other economic and social-mobility effects for people who grow up next to them.

    There are lots of other ways that regional public universities might contribute to the state, and to their local markets. We’re quantifying one of those ways, and there are also lots of trade-offs involved in any funding decision. So we hope our research is useful to leaders in quantifying this one key benefit, and that it’s useful for policy makers in thinking about these trade-offs, for funding.

    What else should leaders at regional public universities take away from this work?

    We still see a gap in the likelihood of obtaining a college degree for people growing up in a county with a regional public university versus not growing up in a county with such a college. It’s important to know that there does seem to be this friction in college attendance based on geography. It’s important to understand why that is.

    Once people have a good understanding of what the reasons are that are leading to this gap, then university leaders can start to think about policies that might help people in those farther areas.

    Some public regional colleges have experienced major enrollment declines. Do we need as many public regional colleges as we have now?

    These universities are educating a really large fraction of college students. Regional public universities are anchor institutions in their local markets. They’re helping their local economy a tremendous amount. They’re also engines of economic mobility.

    Those arguments have already been out there and discussed. Our key contribution is to provide causal evidence that regional public universities are having these specific effects and that those benefits should be useful when thinking about the costs and benefits of funding these institutions.

    How does this new research build upon research you’ve done before? How does it cover new ground or add evidence to established research?

    Our previous research showed that regional public universities make their local economies more resilient to negative economic shocks.

    Our main contribution with this paper is providing causal evidence for the effects these universities have on their local communities. That’s been a challenge in the literature, to attribute causality to the regional university. This causal evidence is just so important for policy makers when determining funding for universities, and for understanding what would happen if funding were to change in this market.

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    Grace Mayer

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  • Model calculates energetics of piercing fangs, claws and other biological weapons

    Model calculates energetics of piercing fangs, claws and other biological weapons

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    Newswise — CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers have created a model that can calculate the energetics involved when one organism stabs another with its fangs, thorns, spines or other puncturing parts. Because the model can be applied to a variety of organisms, it will help scientists study and compare many types of biological puncturing tools, researchers said. It also will help engineers develop new systems to efficiently pierce materials or resist being pierced.

    The new findings are reported in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

    “The idea behind this was to come up with a quantitative framework for comparing a variety of biological puncture systems with each other,” said Philip Anderson, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor of evolution, ecology and behavior who led the research with postdoctoral researcher Bingyang Zhang. “An initial question of this research was how do we even measure these different systems to make them comparable.”

    “It’s a challenging problem to predict the properties of biological systems,” Zhang said.

    Animals and plants deploy a variety of strategies for stabbing prey or defending themselves from other organisms, and even those that use similar strategies or tools alter those tools to meet their specific needs, the researchers said. Their targets also differ.

    “In vipers, for example, some bite mammals, which means they must puncture through soft tissues encased in skin, while others target reptiles, which have scales, making them stiffer and harder to pierce,” said Anderson, who studies the mechanics and energetics of biological puncturing systems.

    Other organisms, like parasitoid wasps, may use their ovipositors to burrow through the hides of caterpillars but also can penetrate fruit or even wood, he said.

    To develop a model that can be applied to a variety of systems, Zhang determined the key factors that must be included in any calculations of the energetics involved. These include changes in the kinetic energy as the puncturing tool is used, but also take into account the material properties of the target tissue.

    This involves calculations describing how the initial kinetic energy drives a puncturing tool into a material, opening up new surfaces in the material as the fracture propagates. It also takes into consideration the frictional resistance and elasticity of the target tissue.

    The calculations were aimed at tapered puncturing tools, which are common in biological systems, the researchers said.

    Anderson is deploying the new model to aid his studies of puncturing organisms like viper fangs, stingray spines and parasitoid wasp ovipositors.  

    “If we know the morphology or the shape of the damage created by a puncture tool, we can use this model to predict how much energy was expended during a puncture scenario,” Zhang said. “Or we can predict different aspects of the material’s property, for example, how it will fracture, which will be useful in both engineering and biological applications.”

    The National Science Foundation supports this research.

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    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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