CarnegieScience The Newsletter of the Carnegie Institution SPRING 2012

EMBRYOLOGY N GEOPHYSICAL LABORATORY N GLOBAL ECOLOGY N THE OBSERVATORIES N PLANT BIOLOGY N TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM N CASE: CARNEGIE ACADEMY FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

On the Inside 4 New Superhard Carbon Debuts 5 Jumpin’ Genome 10 Double Bonanza for Exoplanets 13 The Plant Pump LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN

FOR 110 YEARS CARNEGIE’S BOARD OF TRUSTEES has successfully charted the course of the institution—in good times and in bad. The very first board, assembled in 1902, in- cluded the secretary of state, the secretary of war, the commissioner of labor and, to the delight of Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt, the president of the United States as an ex-officio member. Subsequent trustees have included a host of diverse and out- standing individuals: Presidents William H. Taft and Herbert Hoover, banker Henry S. Morgan, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, David Rockefeller, DuPont CEO Richard Heckert, astronaut Sally Ride, and William Hewlett, cofounder of Hewlett-Packard, to name a few. The main goal of the first board was to secure America’s global leadership in sci- entific research. But the means to find and nurture “exceptional” people was left to the trustees and president with precious little guidance. As it turned out, the key was flexibility. Carnegie had the foresight to include a clause in the deed of trust specify- ing that the trustees could change funding practices to accommodate “the changing Carnegie Institution for Science conditions of the time.” 1530 P Street, NW In the early years, the Executive Committee ran the institution. They assembled an ad- Washington, D.C. visory board of experts to identify the most important academic questions of the day. Ini- 20005-1910 tially, they supported extraordinary researchers with individual grants. Just a short time 202.387.6400 later, however, they established research facilities, and by 1907 there were 10 depart- www.CarnegieScience.edu ments. During those early years the board also learned how to terminate work that no longer showed promise. Flexibility would prove to be the foundation for success. President During the Great Depression, the institution had to contend with hard choices. Richard A. Meserve Rather than retreat, the board realized that basic research was vital to pull humanity Director, out of its current “emergency,” as it was called. The Executive and Finance commit- Department of Embryology tees preserved the most promising programs and eliminated the least. They left va- Allan C. Spradling cancies open and froze salaries. The strategy worked, and the institution remained Director, strong and productive. Geophysical Laboratory Russell Hemley World War II brought a different problem. The trustees sought to support the na- tional war effort. The entire enterprise moved from basic research to applied research, Director, Department of Global Ecology with nearly every staff member advancing war-related projects. The administration Christopher Field building became home to the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the cen- tral hub of the government’s efforts over a wide range of technological advances. Director, The Observatories Carnegie president Vannevar Bush directed the department. Flexibility was crucial Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair again after the Allied victory. Rather than maintain the current course of applied re- Wendy L. Freedman search, the trustees made a rapid adjustment back to fulfill Carnegie’s original mis- Director, sion of basic science. Department of Plant Biology Wolf Frommer Board members in more recent years have also had to adjust strategies to bolster the institution. In the 1970s, in response to a declining endowment, they authorized ef- Director, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism forts to secure federal funds for some Carnegie projects. In the late 1980s board mem- Linda Elkins-Tanton bers embarked on the institution’s first capital campaign, which began a fundraising Acting Director, trend that continues today. Administration and Finance Today’s board is a diverse and talented group from business, academia, public Marjorie Burger service, and even the film industry. Each member brings a unique perspective to the Chief Advancement Officer challenge of advancing the institution’s mission through the pursuit of exciting new Rick Sherman projects. It is clear that after 110 years of adapting well, even thriving under changing Chief Information Officer circumstances, Andrew Carnegie’s emphasis on flexibility has proven pivotal. Gotthard Sághi-Szabó Michael E. Gellert, Chairman Director, External Affairs Susanne Garvey

Editor Tina McDowell The president and the chairman of the board will Science Writer alternate roles in presenting an introductory letter. Natasha Metzler Trustee News

stem cells of preimplanted mice embryos “in the wild.” FISH, Imaging techniques were also featured in the Bortvin lab to observe how germ cells— FLIES, those that develop into egg and sperm—grow into egg and sperm and fuse into a zygote. The Bortvin lab is particularly interested in Members of one trustee tour group examine MICE, the time at which so-called jumping genes are some of the tanks where different varieties of zebrafish are cared for. active. These genes are DNA segments that AND are able to move from one location to an- other. The research could help in the study of MORE infertility problems. The Spradling lab studies the fruit fly. On this tour stop the trustees looked at how tis- at the sue is built and repaired in the ovary of the fruit fly, using novel imaging techniques de- Trustees veloped in the lab that can track stem cells in live tissue. Studies of the fruit fly affect re- Meetings search into how human stem cells could be ...... Predoctoral fellows Pavol Genzor (left) used to treat injury, disease, and aging. and Valeriya Gaysinskaya of the Bortvin Finally, the trustees got a lesson on lab describe the process by which egg BioEYES, the educational and outreach pro- and sperm fuse into a developing zygote. The135th gram founded by Steve Farber. BioEYES meeting of the Carnegie Institution for has two programs created for K-12 students Science board of trustees took place over with great success in Baltimore and else- two days, November 17 and 18, 2011, at the where. In the first, a week program, the chil- Maxine F. Singer Building of the Depart- dren husband zebrafish from the egg into ment of Embryology in Baltimore. After the a clear embryo, where they can study the first session of the board, the trustees broke organs at work inside. Older students use the into groups and were conducted on two- fish for genetics studies. The second pro- and-a-half hour tours of the labs guided gram, Your Watershed, Your Backyard, is two by pre- and postdoctoral fellows. weeks long. It looks at the health of the wa- First on one tour was the Farber lab’s ze- terways in the region by collecting samples Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoc- brafish facility. Here the trustees learned to monitor water quality and to subject toral associate Lucy Morris of the Spradling how the lab uses the tiny, clear, developing zebrafish to area water to see if it is healthy lab, using novel imaging techniques devel- oped in the lab, describes how tissue is built zebrafish to study how lipids are metabo- enough for the fish to survive. and repaired in the ovary of the fruit fly. lized and how cholesterol and lipids are After the tours department staff, trustees, Trustee Stephen Fodor looks on. packaged into cells. They saw how the lab is and guests dined at the Glass Pavilion on the organized for genetics studies and how the Johns Hopkins campus. The featured fish are cared for. speaker was staff member Joe Gall. His talk, Tracking estrogen in waterways was the “Basic Research or Technology—Who Is in topic at the Halpern lab. Its researchers have the Driver’s Seat?” looked at whether sci- developed mutant zebrafish that can detect ence drives technology or technology drives estrogen in water by glowing fluorescent science. Gall described how, beginning in green when the hormone is present. The the 1600s, the field of optics drove the sci- achievement is potentially important for de- ence of astronomy. He then turned to the termining estrogen pollutants, which can history of the microscope. Initially the tech- alter the reproductive organs of fish. nology drove the science, but in the mid- to Steven Farber (foreground, with vest) What prompts muscle stem cells in mice late 19th century questions in biology began presides over visitors to the BioEYES lab. to jump into action after injury was fea- to drive the technology. He noted how little The tour group looked into microscopes with tured in the Fan lab. That group explained the microscope had changed until about a zebrafish at varying stages of development, just as BioEYES students do during the how they look at satellite cells in muscles to decade ago when changes led to viewing at BioEYES program. determine their relationship to stem cell a smaller and smaller scales. That, in turn, has ctivity. The Zheng lab showcased how novel pushed new scientific discoveries in genetics, imaging techniques enable tracking the development, and more. „ New Superhard Carbon Debuts

arbon, one of the most abundant elements in the uni- verse, takes on a wide variety of forms called al- lotropes, ,with hardness ranging from diamond to graphite. Scientists at the Geophysical Laboratory are part of a team that has discovered a new form of car- bon that is capable of withstanding extreme pressure stresses that were previously observed only in dia- mond. The discovery, published in Physical Review Letters, could lead to new ultradense, strong materials. The team was led by Stanford University’s Wendy L. Mao and her graduate student Yu Lin and includes Carnegie’s Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao (Wendy’s father), Li Zhang, Paul Chow, Yuming Xiao, Maria CBaldini, and Jinfu Shu. The experiment started with a form of carbon called glassy carbon, which was first synthesized in the 1950s and was found to com- bine desirable properties of glasses and ceramics with those of graphite. The team created the new carbon by compressing glassy carbon to above 400,000 times normal atmospheric pressure. This new carbon form was capable of withstanding 1.3 million times nor- mal atmospheric pressure in one direction while confined under a pressure of 600,000 times atmospheric levels in other directions. No substance other than diamond has been observed to withstand this type of pressure stress. However, unlike diamond and other crystalline forms of carbon, the structure

of this new material is not organized in repeating atomic units. Its structure lacks This research was funded in part by the U.S. the long-range order of crystals, making it amorphous. This amorphous, Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy superhard carbon would have a potential advantage over diamond if its hard- Sciences Division of ness were equally strong in all directions because diamond’s hardness is highly Materials Sciences and Engineering and EFree, dependent upon the direction in which the crystal is oriented. HPCAT is funded by DOE- BES, DOE-NNSA, NSF, “These findings open up possibilities for potential applications, including and the W. M. Keck Foundation. APS, is superhard anvils for high-pressure research, and could lead to new classes of supported by DOE-BES. ultradense and strong materials,” said Russell Hemley, director of Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory. „

The new superhard form of carbon could rival diamonds in strength.

Carnegie Science | Spring 2012 5 Genome ’

Jumpin Image courtesy the National Human Genome Research Institute

THE GENOME IS A HOPPING PLACE. It contains numerous “jumping genes,” or transposons, which move from place to place on the chromosomes within a cell. An astounding 50% of human DNA comprises both active transposons and remains of former transposons that were active thousands to millions of years ago. If all of this mobile and formerly mobile DNA were not myste- rious enough, every time a plant, animal or human cell prepares to divide, the chromosome regions richest in transposon-derived sequences, even elements long deceased, are among the last to du- plicate. The reason for their delayed duplication has eluded biol- ogists for more than 50 years. New research led by Carnegie’s Allan Spradling and published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pro- vides potential insight into both these enigmas. The scientists used the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. They focused on one particular transposon, called the P element, which has an unsurpassed ability to move. Remarkably, P elements have only been present in Drosophila melanogaster for about 80 years, at which Chromosomes are packages of DNA, genetic time they were acquired from the genome of a dis- material, in the nucleus of all cells. Transposons, tantly related fruit fly species by an unknown process. also known as jumping genes, can jump around P elements remain highly “infective” today. By adding and become inserted into different locations in a chromosome. Some 50% of human DNA consists just one copy to one fly’s genome, all the flies with of active and relic transposons. which it breeds acquire 30 to 50 P elements within a few generations. The original goal of the Spradling Allan Spradling at left, is the director of Carnegie’s Department of Embryology. team’s research was to learn why P elements insert at some locations in the genome but not others. Spradling and his colleagues, who oversee the NIH-funded Drosophila Gene Disruption Project, used a database that they built over the last 20 years containing more than 50,000 genomic sites cycle—once in the first location and a second after the jump. where P elements have inserted. If the elements get a late start, however, only the last segments of P elements insert into DNA very selectively. Nearly 40% of new the chromosome to duplicate will be left for their second duplica- jumps occur within just 300 genes and always near the beginning tion. This explains the tendency of such regions to be transposon of the gene. But the genes seemed to have nothing in common. rich. However, the researchers found that two other Drosophila When these sites were compared with data about the Drosophila transposons, known as piggyBac and Minos, do not insert at repli- genome, particularly recent studies of Drosophila genome duplica- cation origins, so this mechanism is far from universal. Further- tion, the answer became clear. What many P insertion sites share in more, Spradling cautioned that it is particularly difficult to exper- common is an ability to function as starting sites for DNA dupli- imentally test hypotheses about evolution. cation. This association between P elements and the machinery “By gaining insight into one specific transposon’s movements, of genome duplication suggested that they can coordinate their we may have begun to glimpse mechanisms that have profoundly movement with DNA replication. influenced genome evolution for nearly all animals,” Spradling Spradling and his team propose that P elements—and likely other commented. „ transposons as well—use a replication connection to spread more rapidly through genomes. These elements would only jump after repli- cating, and then preferentially insert themselves into portions of DNA Spradling’s coauthors on the paper are Hugo Bellen of Baylor College of Medicine and Roger Hoskins of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Funding for this research was that have not yet become activated. This would allow them to dupli- provided in part by the National Institutes of Health. cate twice rather than just once during the genome duplication 6 Carnegie Science | Spring 2012

lthough the composition core directly, so we have to learn of the Earth’s solid inner about it through improved labora- core is a mystery, sci- tory experiments combined with entists know that the modeling and seismic data,” Fei said. liquid outer core is High-speed impacts can generate mainly iron. Cur- shock waves that raise the tempera- rent models show that in addition to ture and pressure of materials, melt- Alarge amounts of iron, the outer core ing them at pressures corresponding contains small amounts of so-called to those in the outer core. The team light elements; possibly sulfur, oxy- carried out shock-wave experiments gen, silicon, carbon, or hydrogen. on mixtures of iron, sulfur, and oxy- Since oxygen is the most abundant gen. Once these mixtures were liquid element on the planet, it was at outer-core conditions, the team thought that oxygen might be one of measured their density and the speed the dominant light elements. New of sound traveling through them. laboratory experiments by a team The researchers compared their including Carnegie’s Yingwei Fei, data with observations and found however, show that oxygen does not that the experiments on oxygen- have a major presence in the outer rich materials do not align with geo- core. This finding, published No- EARTH’S physical observations. They conclude vember 24, 2011, in Nature, could that oxygen cannot be a major light- alter our understanding of Earth’s element component of the Earth’s formation. OXYGEN- outer core, supporting recent models In this research Fei, from the Geo- of core differentiation in early Earth physical Laboratory, worked with DEPRIVED under less oxidized environments, Chinese colleagues, including lead leading to the presumption of a core author Haijun Huang from China’s that is poor in oxygen. Wuhan University of Technology. CORE “The research revealed a powerful The team mimicked pressure and way to decipher the identity of the temperature conditions of the outer light elements in the core. Further core in the lab. research should focus on the potential Pressure and heat increase with in- presence of elements such as silicon in creasing depths, and materials act the outer core,” Fei said. „ differently at these depths than they do at the surface. The light elements (Top) This cutaway of Earth shows are thought to play an important role the crust (black), the mantle (light in driving the convection of the liq- orange), the liquid outer core (dark orange), and the solid inner core uid outer core, which generates the (yellow). Earth’s magnetic field. The Geophysical Laboratory’s Scientists know the variations in Yingwei Fei, at left, works in the density and speed of sound as a high-pressure lab. function of depth in the core from seismic observations, but to date it Portions of this work were supported by grants has been difficult to measure these from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Fundamental Research Funds for the properties in proposed iron alloys at Central Universities, and the National Basic Research Program of China, as well as the core pressures and temperatures in National Science Foundation and the Carnegie Institution for Science. the laboratory. “We can’t sample the Carnegie Science | Spring 2012 7

Another Stem Cell Surprise Image courtesy Peidong Yang, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

UNTIL NOW, SCIENTISTS THOUGHT The role of B-type lamins in the differen- are important in facilitating the integration that proteins called B-type lamins were es- tiation of embryonic stem cells into special- of different cell types into the complex ar- sential for embryonic stem cells to replicate ized cells, depending on where in a body they chitectures of various developing organs,” and differentiate into different varieties of are located, was thought to be crucial. The Kim, the lead author, said. “We have set the cells. New research from a team led by the lamins were thought to use their DNA-bind- stage to dissect the ways that a cell’s nuclear Department of Embryology’s Yixian Zheng ing suppression abilities to tell a cell which lamina promotes the tissue organization indicates that B-type lamins are not neces- type of development pathway to follow. process during development.” „ sary for stem cells to renew and develop But the team—which included Carnegie’s after all. But they are necessary for proper Youngjo Kim, Katie McDole, and Chen- organ development. The team’s work was Ming Fan—took a hard look at the func- published in the November 24, 2011, Sci- tions of B-type lamins in embryonic stem ence Express. cells and in live mice and found that they (Above) This color-enhanced Nuclear lamina is the material that lines were not essential for embryonic stem cells mouse embryonic stem cell was the inside of a cell’s nucleus. Its major struc- to survive, nor did their DNA binding di- cultured on a silicon nanowire tural component is a family of proteins called rectly regulate the genes to which they were and is viewed via a scanning lamins, of which B-type lamins, or lamin- attached. However, mice deficient in B-type electron microscope. Bs, are prominent members and thought to lamins were born with improperly devel- be absolutely essential for a cell’s survival. oped organs—including defects in the Other members of the team were Alexei Sharov and Mutations in lamins have been linked to a lungs, diaphragms, and brains—and were Minoru Ko of the National Institutes of Health and Melody Cheng, Haiping Hao, and Nicholas Gaiano of number of human diseases. Lamins are unable to breathe. The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. This thought to suppress the expression of certain “Our work seems to indicate that while research was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Aging genes by binding directly to the DNA within B-type lamins are not part of the early (AAS, MSHK) and the Howard Hughes Medical the cell’s nucleus. developmental tissue-building process, they Institute. 8 Carnegie Science | Spring 2012

Terrestrial Magnetism’s Diamonds Reveal Steve Shirey, Eloise Gail- lou, and Jianhua Wang, Deep Carbon Cycle in addition to Andrew Steele from the Geo- physical Lab. The scien- tists analyzed tiny (one- to two-hundredths of a millimeter) mineral

Image courtesy U.S. Geological Survey, the Smithsonian Institution, and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory grains from six dia- monds from the Juina region in Brazil. They found that diamond in- clusions initially crystal- lized as a single mineral that could form only at depths of greater than 435 miles (700 km). But the inclusions recrystal- lized into multiple min- erals as they were carried up to the surface—first probably from a mantle upwelling known as a plume, then as they erupted to the surface in kimberlites. CIENTISTS HAVE SPECULATED The diamonds were analyzed for carbon at Carnegie. Four of the for some time that the Earth’s carbon cy- diamonds contained low amounts of carbon-13, a signature not cle extends deep into the planet’s interior, found in the lower mantle and consistent with an ocean-crust ori- but until now there has been no direct ev- gin at Earth’s surface. “The carbon identified in other superdeep, idence. The mantle—Earth’s thickest lower-mantle diamonds is chiefly mantlelike in composition,” said layer—is largely inaccessible. Shirey. “We looked at the variations in the isotopes of the carbon A team of researchers, including atoms in the diamonds. Carbon originating in a rock called basalt, Carnegie scientists, analyzed diamonds which forms from lava at the surface, is often different from that that originated from the lower mantle at which originates in the mantle with relatively less carbon-13. These depths of 435 miles (700 kilometers) or more superdeep diamonds contained much less carbon-13, which is and erupted to the surface in volcanic rocks called kimberlites. most consistent with an origin in the organic component found in The diamonds contain mineral inclusions—what gemologists call altered oceanic crust.” Simpurities. Analysis shows compositions consistent with the min- “I find it astonishing that we can use the tiniest of mineral eralogy of oceanic crust. This finding is the first direct evidence that grains to show some of the motions of the Earth’s mantle at the slabs of oceanic crust sank or subducted into the lower mantle and largest scales,” concluded Shirey. „ that material, including carbon, is cycled between Earth’s surface and depths of hundreds of miles. The research was published in the September 15, 2011, online Science Express. This diagram above shows the oceanic crust sliding under the continental crust in a process The mantle extends from as little as 5 to 1,800 miles (10 to 2,900 called subduction. This new study is the first direct kilometers) beneath the Earth’s surface. Most diamonds are free evidence that slabs of oceanic crust sank into the from inclusions and come from depths of less than 120 miles (200 lower mantle and that various materials, including km). But in a few localities researchers have found superdeep dia- carbon, are cycled between the planet’s surface monds from the depths of the convecting upper and lower mantle as and depths hundreds of miles below. well as the transition zone in between. Whereas inclusions in dia-

monds from the depths of the upper mantle and the transition zone The researchers on the paper are M. J. Walter, S. Kohn, G. Bulanova, and C. Smith of the University of Bristol, U.K.; D. Araujo of Universidade de Brasilia-DF Brazil; A. Steele of have been consistent with a surface-rock origin, none from the lower Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory; and S. Shirey, E. Gaillou, and J. Wang of Carnegie’s mantle have borne this signature until now. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation in the U.S., the National Environmental Research Council in the U.K., and the The team was led by former Carnegie postdoctoral fellow Michael Carnegie Institution for Science. Walter, now a professor at the University of Bristol, U.K., and included Carnegie Science | Spring 2012 9

Image courtesy Stanford News Service sponses to climate change. We know that when they occur, they make a huge difference. But we are at the early stages of being able to predict occurrence,” said Field, director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology. The team found no evidence of significantly decreased carbon reserves in SAD-affected aspens. This undercuts the starvation theory, although it is possible that carbon starvation had oc- curred and had already been rectified. However, the team did Trembling find notable losses of function in the trees’ water-transporta- tion systems, especially in the roots. SAD-affected trees Aspens showed about a 70% loss of water conductivity. Potted trees exposed to a summer’s worth OVER THE PAST 10 YEARS, ing a drought. One theory pro- of drought exhibited significant the death of forest trees due to poses that the trees starve be- root mortality. drought and increased tempera- cause of decreased photosynthe- “Our study provides a snap- tures has been documented on sis. The other proposes that shot of what future droughts all continents except Antarctica. death occurs because the system could hold for the emblematic This can drive global warming for transporting water within a tree of the American West. by reducing the amount of car- tree is damaged beyond repair Our results indicate that an bon dioxide removed from the by stress. Without knowing impaired ability to transport atmosphere by trees and by re- which theory is correct, it is dif- water due to drought damage leasing carbon locked up in ficult for researchers to build played an important role in their wood. New research led models and make projections the recent die-off of aspens,” by Carnegie researcher and about the larger impact of William Anderegg said. Stanford University Ph.D. stu- drought-induced forest mortal- The team’s work will provide dent William Anderegg offers ity. The team focused their ef- guidance for scientists seeking to evidence for the physiological forts on climate-induced die- build models and projections of mechanism governing tree death offs of trembling aspen trees in forest mortality as a result of cli- in a drought. The work was North America, looking di- mate change. „ published by the Proceedings rectly at the relationship of of the National Academy of Sci- both carbon starvation and (Above) William Anderegg ences. In addition to Anderegg, water-transportation stress to prepares to measure the the authors included Carnegie’s ongoing forest deaths. aspen canopy. Chris Field and Joe Berry, The aspen die-off, called William’s brother Leander, and Sudden Aspen Decline, or SAD, Funding and equipment for this Duncan Smith and John Sperry began after severe droughts be- research were provided by Stanford of the University of Utah. tween 2000 and 2004 and af- University’s Bill Lane Center for the American West, the Morrison Forests store about 45% of fected about 17% of aspen Institute, the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Association, the the carbon found on land. Their forests in Colorado as well as Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, the Stanford University Department of mortality can radically trans- in parts of the western United Biology, and the U.S. Department of form ecosystems, affect biodi- States and Canada. SAD contin- Energy Office of Science Graduate Fellowship Program. This program versity, harm local economies, ued through 2010, the year the was made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of pose fire risks, and increase research was conducted. 2009 and is administered by the Oak global warming. Scientists have “Large-scale mortality events, Ridge Institution for Science and Education, managed by the Oak Ridge had two competing theories to such as we see with aspens, are Associated Universities for DOE. explain how forest trees die dur- the dynamite in ecosystem re- (Right) This illustration shows the new habitable- zone planet’s solar system compared with ours. The new planet has been dubbed Kepler-22b. ------(Far right) This artist’s conception shows a planet in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star in the region around a star where liquid water could exist at the surface. NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the existence of such a planet for the first time. It is 2.4 times the size of Earth—the smallest planet yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a G star like our Sun.

Double Bonanza for Exoplanets

(Left) The artwork shows a planet orbiting its two suns. ------(Right) The foreground planet orbits two stars in this illustration. An observer on the planet would experience two sunsets. Carnegie Science | Spring 2012 11

The host star lies about 600 light-years away from us toward the con- stellations of Lyra and Cygnus. The star, a G5 star, has a mass and a ra- dius only slightly smaller than that of our Sun, a G2 star and is about 25% less luminous than the Sun. The planet orbits the G5 star with an orbital period of 290 days, compared with 365 days for the Earth, at a distance about 15% closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. This gives the planet its balmy temperature. It orbits in the middle of the star’s habitable zone, which is where liquid water is expected to be able to exist on the surface of the planet. Liquid water is necessary for life as we know it, and this new planet might well be not only habit- able but perhaps even inhabited. First Habitable-Zone Super-Earth Numerous large, massive gas giant planets have been detected previously in habitable-zone orbits around solar-type stars, but gas proliferation of extrasolar planet discoveries has kept giants are not thought to be capable of supporting life. This new ex- Terrestrial Magnetism’s Alan Boss particularly busy of oplanet is the smallest-radius planet discovered in the habitable late. He served on a team that discovered the first super- zone of any star to date. It is about 2.4 times larger than the Earth, putting it in the class of exoplanets known as super-Earths. Images courtesy NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of a star similar to Athe Sun. It appears to be a large, rocky planet with a surface tem- While the mass of this new planet is not known, it must be less than perature of about 72°F. This discovery, published in the Astrophysi- about 36 times that of the Earth, based on the absence of a measur- cal Journal, is the first detection of a possibly habitable world in or- able Doppler (radial velocity) wobble in the host star. The masses of bit around a Sun-like star. several other super-Earths have been measured with the Doppler The discovery team, led by William Borucki of the NASA Ames Re- technique and determined to lie in the range of about five to 10 times search Center, used photometric data from the NASA Kepler space that of the Earth. Some appear to be rocky, while others probably telescope, which monitors the brightness of 155,000 stars. Earth-size contain major fractions of ice and water. But none of these planets planets whose orbital planes are aligned such that they periodically is in the habitable zone. pass in front of their stars result in tiny dimmings of their host star’s “This discovery supports the growing belief that we live in a universe light, which can only be measured by a highly specialized space tel- crowded with life,” Boss said. “Kepler is on the verge of determining the escope like Kepler. actual abundance of habitable, Earth-like planets in our galaxy.”

eclipsed each other from the perspective of the Kepler spacecraft. These stars have two eclipses: a primary eclipse, in which the larger star is partly blocked by the smaller star, and a secondary eclipse, in which the smaller star is fully blocked by the larger star. But the researchers also noticed other times when the brightness of the two stars dropped, even when they were not in an eclipse po- sition. This pattern suggested that there was likely a third object in- volved. The fact that these so-called tertiary and quaternary eclipses recurred after varying intervals of time, and were of different depths, indicated that the stars were in different positions in their orbit at each instance. This result showed that the tertiary and quaternary eclipses were being caused by something circling both stars, and not an ob- ject circling one or the other star. Measurements of the variations in the timing of all four types of Tatooine-like Planet Discovered eclipses, resulting from the mutual gravitational interactions of the two stars and the third body, demonstrated that the third object was, oss was also part of a team that found the first planet to indeed, a planet. Their work indicates that the planet is less massive orbit two suns, as in the Star Wars film series. This dis- than Jupiter, possibly comparable in mass to Saturn, and that the covery is the first direct evidence of a so-called cir- larger of the two binary stars is smaller than our Sun. cumbinary planet. A few other planets have been sus- “This discovery is stunning,” Boss said. “Once again, what used to Bpected of orbiting around both members of a dual-star system, but be science fiction has turned into reality.” The findings were published no previous transits of a circumbinary planet have been detected. in Science. „ The team, led by Laurance Doyle of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute, also used photo- Funding for the Kepler Discovery mission was provided by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Some of the data used were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a metric data from the NASA Kepler space telescope. The astronomers scientific partnership between the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, found the binary star system by detecting a system where the stars and NASA. The Keck Observatory was made possible with the support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. 12 Image courtesy NASA/Michael Rauch

This image, from the Hubble Space Telescope archive, reveals a galaxy that is highly distorted, with extended stellar tails to the left and right. The distortion appears to be from a collision with another galaxy.

Michael Rauch (below) is a staff astronomer at the Observatories.

GA LACTIC ECOSYST E M

A team of scientists led by Michael Rauch from the Carnegie Observatories has discovered a distant galaxy that may help us understand how galaxies take in matter and how they give off energetic radiation. During the epoch when the first galaxies formed, it is believed usual, distorted shape of the newly observed galaxy. It appears that they radiated energy, which hit surrounding neutral hy- that the object had recently been hit by another galaxy, creat- drogen atoms and excited them to the point that they were ing a hole in its halo, allowing radiation to pass through. stripped of electrons. This produced an ionized plasma that “The loss of radiation during galactic interactions and col- today fills the universe. But little is known about how this lisions like the one seen here may be able to account for the high-energy light was able to escape from the immediate reionization of the universe,” Rauch said. “This galaxy is a left- surroundings of a galaxy. The galaxies we observe today tend over from a population of once-numerous dwarf galaxies. And to be completely surrounded by gaseous halos of neutral hy- looking back to a time when the universe was more dense, drogen, which absorb all light capable of ionizing hydrogen crashes between galaxies would have been much more com- before it has a chance to escape. mon than today.” Rauch and his team, using the Magellan telescopes at Las The new observation also helps scientists better understand Campanas Observatory and archival images from the Hubble the flow of inbound matter from which a galaxy originally Space Telescope, discovered a galaxy with an extended patch of forms. In the present case, the escaping ionizing radiation il- light surrounding it. The object’s appearance means that luminated a long train of incoming gas, which is feeding new roughly half of the galaxy’s radiation must be escaping and ex- matter into the galaxy. The existence of such structures had citing hydrogen atoms outside of its halo. been predicted by theory, but they had not been seen previously The key to the escape of radiation can be found in the un- because they barely emit any light of their own. „

The work, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, had the following coauthors: George Becker and Martin Haehnelt from the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at Cambridge University, Jean-Rene Gauthier from the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Swara Ravindranath from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Wallace Sargent from the Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology. THE Carnegie Science | Spring 2012 13 FOOD PRICES ARE SOARING at the same time that the population is exploding; PLANT thus the need for increased crop yields is becoming more and more important. New research led by Carnegie’s Wolf Frommer identified a missing link responsible for PUMP moving sugar from the leaves of crop plants to harvested portions and other parts—a finding that could be crucial for addressing the food problem. The work was published December 8, 2011, in Science Express. Plants do not have a heartlike pump to move their vital energy sources around. Instead, they use a molecular pump. Twenty years ago the Frommer team identified one of the key components of this molecular pump, which actively loads a sugar called sucrose into the plant’s veins, a tissue called phloem. But how sucrose produced in the leaves via pho- tosynthesis is delivered to the transporters that move it into the phloem has re- mained a mystery. Thus, a critical piece of the molecular pump was unknown— the protein that moves the sucrose into position inside the leaf cell wall, so the second, earlier-discovered component can transport it into the phloem. Frommer’s team included Carnegie’s Li-Qing Chen, the paper’s lead author, Xiao- Qing Qu, Bi-Huei Hou, and Davide Sosso, as well as Sonia Osorio and Alisdair The image above shows the Fernie of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology. In this new localization of the identified protein in the molecular research, the team identified the missing piece of the molecular pump system. pump in the vasculature “Like engineers, we can now fine-tune the pump components to address one of a plant leaf. of the major challenges for our future—namely, to increase the translocation of (Right) Wolf Frommer, sugars toward seeds to increase crop yield,” Frommer said. “The identification of leader of the study, is the these critical transporters is a major step toward developing strategies to ensure food sup- director of Carnegie’s plies and keep food prices in check.” Department of Plant Additionally, pests abuse these transporters and use them to gain access to the plant’s su- Biology. crose pools. Understanding the role of these transporters in plant infections provides a new perspective on plant pathology and a totally new way of protecting plants from pathogens, further increasing crop yields and food security. The identification of the function of this missing piece of the molecular pump involved in transporting sugar in plants makes it highly likely that the animal-cell version of this same protein fulfills a similar role in animals and humans. This finding, if true, would be a major breakthrough for diabetes and obesity research, since a yet-unidentified transporter protein is responsible for essential steps in the movement of sugars from the intestine into the blood as well as the flow from liver cells to maintain blood glucose levels. „

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the Scholarship Program of the Chinese Scholarship Council, and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. 14 History Uncovered at Plant Biology

by WINSLOW BRIGGS and JAN BROWN

THE YEAR BEFORE staff member Jan Brown retired from the Department of Plant Biology in 1987, she put more than 600 Kodachrome slides, which she had taken between 1962 and 1982, into three metal boxes and created a computer file to catalog them. They were carefully put into storage, but after several years nobody—including the director who had stored them—could remember what had happened to them. They were then largely forgotten until the fall of 2010 when an archaeological investigation, in the guise of a thorough reor- ganization of the basement vault, uncovered the boxes. Plant Biology staff member Jens Clausen Perhaps that long storage period was fortuitous. During was a renowned pioneer the interim, the quality of computer scanning vastly im- in evolutionary and proved. Nearly 500 slides were carefully sorted and culled ecological genetics. down to a group of 400. These 400 were then professionally scanned and yielded fair to excellent photos that could be now be enhanced with Photoshop—especially helpful for faded Kodachromes. A large number of the slides are of former department fellows, but the collection

Images courtesy Jan Brown also includes many of the senior visitors who made shorter visits to the department Stacy French (right) attended a meeting in during those years. In addition, Brown frequently snapped photos of colleagues and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in 1970. French invented the French pressure cell, which major figures in photosynthesis and plant physiology at the various scientific meet- was used to study cellular structure and ings and labs she visited. Finally, the photos include most of the employees—both processes in plants. French’s biophysical scientific staff and support personnel—at the department during that 20-year approach to the work was a major period, as well as several visitors from Carnegie’s administration. The plan is to innovation. make this archive available to anyone who is interested. „

changes in the diversity of plants and animals, ocean acid- The Face-off with Carbon ification, the need to address social concerns, and how best to communicate scientific results to the public and deci- Image courtesy Anna Michalak RESEARCHERS HAVE LEARNED sion makers. The new plan is the culmination of a three-year effort a lot about the carbon cycle in the last with input from hundreds of scientists about the current needs of the decade, but there is a lot more to do. A research community. group of scientists, including Global The team developed four science elements to drive the research. Ecology’s Anna Michalak, have devel- The backbone of the strategy is to strengthen the network of oped a new, integrated, 10-year science observations to better monitor and track carbon as it winds its way plan to better understand the carbon through the atmosphere, ecosystems, oceans, and society, and to cycle and the role of humans in it. find out how this journey changes over time. Other elements The first carbon science plan for the include studies of the processes that control the flows and trans- Global Ecology’s Anna U.S., published in 1999, resulted in nu- formations of carbon, and the development of numerical models Michalak was a lead merous breakthroughs for understand- to predict future behavior. author of the plan. ing the carbon cycle and how it is Another important aspect of the plan is its increased emphasis on changing in response to human pres- communication and making research more accessible to policy sures. For instance, researchers discovered that the huge quantities of makers and the general public. It is hoped that this will lead to CO2 absorbed by the oceans are causing ocean acidification, which is rational and well-informed decisions on how best to manage the harming sea life and affecting the food chain. Research also charac- global carbon cycle, especially the human impacts on it. „ terized the large uptake of carbon by plants and soils in the Northern Hemisphere, and found that understanding land use and disturbance patterns is integral to understanding the global carbon cycle. The report, A U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Plan, was published by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research supported by NASA, DOE, USDA, USGS, NOAA, NSF, and NIST. The new plan identifies new research areas such as the role of hu- Global Ecology’s Anna Michalak, Duke University’s Rob Jackson, Appalachian State mans as agents and managers of carbon cycling and climate change, University’s Gregg Marland, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Christopher Sabine led the work. the direct impact of greenhouse gases on ecosystems, including TRUSTEES AND ADMINISTRATION

ᕡ Carnegie president Richard A. Meserve attended a meeting of the InBrief Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on Sept. 30-Oct. 1 and participated in meetings of the Harvard Board of Overseers on Oct. 1-2, Dec. 3-4, and Feb. 3-5. He spoke at the Bipartisan Policy Center Nonproliferation Workshop in Carnegie president Richard A. Meserve was asked by Washington, DC, on Oct. 3, participated the Japanese government to advise two of the commissions that in a meeting of the visiting committee were formed to investigate the Japanese Fukushima nuclear acci- to the MIT Nuclear Science and dent. He is among those in this group at the plant wearing protec- Engineering Dept. Oct. 4-5, and spoke tive gear. The Prime Minister formed the commission chaired by Dr. at a meeting of the MIT Research Yotaro Hatamura and the Japanese Diet formed the commission Initiative on Oct. 6. He participated in chaired by Kiyoshi Kurowawa. Meserve toured Fukushima and then the ceremonies for the award of the spent several days in consultation with each of the commissions. Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in New He also interacted with several members of the Japanese Diet York City on Oct. 20. He cochaired a and with the Minister for the Environment, Goshi Hosono. He had meeting of the National Academies’ previously met with Hosono, who visited Carnegie to discuss the Committee on Science, Technology, and Japanese plans to create a new independent regulator. Law in Washington, DC, on Oct. 24-25. „ He participated in a panel at the opening ᕡ From left to right, Yale University plenary session of the American Nuclear president Richard Levin, Carnegie Medal Society Winter Meeting in Washington, recipient Fred Kavli, and Carnegie DC, on Oct. 31. He spoke at a president Richard A. Meserve pose for symposium on nuclear power in Japan Joe Gall presented the 2011 Tracy M. Arrivals: Postdoc Matt Sieber joined the a photo at the Carnegie Medal event. hosted by the Japan Science and Sonneborn Lecture at Indiana U., “Tran- Spradling lab, postdocs Elim Hong and scription during the Lampbrush Chro- Troy Horn joined the Halpern lab, and Image courtesy Carnegie Corporation of New York Technology Agency in Tokyo on Nov. 7. He chaired a meeting of the IAEA’s mosome Stage of Oogenesis.” technician Blake Caldwell joined the International Nuclear Safety Group in — Farber lab. The MacPherson lab wel- Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 9-11. He ᕢ Marnie Halpern was recently elected comed technician Michael Rongione. participated in a board meeting of to the board of directors of the Genetics Animal technician Lauren Burkowske Carnegie Canada in Montreal on Nov. 21 Society of America. She gave seminars at joined the fish facility. The Bortvin lab with board member William Turner. U. Toronto and Temple U. in Philadelphia welcomed research specialist Ivana He participated in meetings of the Blue and in Nov. was a Meet-the-Expert Celic. Technicians Hemi Ryu and Lynne Ribbon Commission on America’s speaker at the Society for Neuroscience Hugendubler joined the Ingolia lab. Nuclear Future in Washington, DC, on Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Dec. 2 and Jan. 4. He traveled to Tucson Graduate student Abhignya Subedi for the casting of the second mirror for spoke at the Mid-Atlantic Regional ᕢ Marnie Halpern ᕢ Abi Subedi the Giant Magellan Telescope on Jan. Zebrafish Meeting in Dec. 14. Meserve participated in council — Microbes meetings of the National Academy of ᕣ Yixian Zheng attended the 2011 Engineering on Feb. 8-9. He served on a ASCB meeting along with lab members Everywhere! panel of international advisory experts Youngjo Kim and Shusheng Wang. Kim Every year Embryology postdoc- to the Investigation Committee on the presented his work at the “Nuclear toral fellows and graduate stu- Accident of the Fukushima Nuclear Periphery” minisymposium. Graduate dents organize a small meeting Power Station in Tokyo on Feb. 23-25 student Katie McDole gave an invited about a topic of interest. The 40th and then testified before a similar talk at the Mouse Molecular Genetics Carnegie Symposium on Oct. 27- committee chartered by the Japanese Wellcome Trust Meeting in England. 28 was “Microbes—Invisible Diet on Feb. 27. — Partners in Health.” The human ᕣ Youngjo Kim Steve Farber presented the Simkins body is host to diverse bacterial Lecture on “How Science Outreach communities. Recent advances EMBRYOLOGY Impacts Urban Science Education” on suggest that symbiotic microbes Carnegie president Richard A. Meserve was elected Oct. 24 at Longwood U. and spoke at St. significantly influence develop- a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sci- Director Allan Spradling Mary’s College of Maryland as part of ment and physiology, which is ences in Jan. He has engaged in extensive activities attended the Nov. 2011 their natural science colloquium series. not surprising given that there with the Russian Academy over the years on proj- Packard Meeting in Mon- He also spoke to the TriBeta undergrad- are more than 10 times more ects undertaken by the U.S. National Academies of terey, CA. He coorganized uate biological honors society about his microbial cells in and on our Sciences and Engineering. He was elected in the and presented work at the work and his career path as a scientist body than there are human section covering radiation safety, energy develop- Cold Spring Harbor Stem and educator. cells. Speakers talked about the ment, and environmental protection. The Russian Cell meeting, and pre- — composition and dynamics of Academy has approximately 250 Foreign Members. sented his work at U. Alex Bortvin presented his work at the microbial communities and their On Feb. 8 the Federation of American Scientists Texas-Austin and at MIT. 2nd EMBO conference on “Meiosis” in effect on the immune system, presented Meserve with the inaugural 2011 Richard He was also the invited Paestum, Italy. gastrointestinal tract, develop- L. Garwin Award for “his distinguished service and speaker for the 2011 — ment, and disease. The organiz- significant contributions to nuclear safety as chair- William J. Larsen lecture Nick Ingolia presented a talk, “Genome- ers of the symposium were man of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and for at U. Cincinnati. Wide Profiling of Translation Initiation Tagide deCarvalho, Lei Lei, more than 30 years of leadership in science policy.” — and Protein Synthesis,” at the Interna- Safia Malki, and Vanessa The award “reaffirms his work at the intersection of tional Institute of Molecular and Cell Matos-Cruz. „ law, science, and technology.” „ Biology, Warsaw, Poland, in Sept. In Oct. he presented a seminar at North Car- olina State U. in Raleigh. — 16 Lawrence (Pat) Patrick, a longtime employee at the Broad Julia Pongratz gave two invited talks Branch Road (BBR) campus died in at the iLEAPS conference in Garmisch, December. Pat worked at Carnegie Germany, in Sept. She has also been for over 30 years, starting at GL then awarded the AGU Editors’ Citation for later joining the BBR engineering excellence in refereeing for reviews of and maintenance department when geophysics. the two departments colocated at — BBR in May, 1990. Pat retired from ᕧ Ken Caldeira appeared on the PBS the institution in 2002. „ NewsHour on Dec. 5 to describe the development of tethered kites designed to harness wind energy. — Kenny Schneider, Kate Ricke, Julia Pongratz, Ben Kravitz, and Ken GEOPHYSICAL LABORATORY they are able to metabolize and recycle Caldeira participated in a field expedi- the nitrogen and phosphorus, enabling tion to One Tree Island, Australia, where Director Russell J. Hemley presented a dense mat communities. This serves they conducted experiments to detect plenary talk at the 23rd International as an analog to early Earth conditions the influence of ocean acidification on Conference on High Pressure Science when nutrients were in very low coral reefs. Kenny Schneider and Ben and Technology (AIRAPT-23) in Mumbai, concentrations, but microbes were able Kravitz also performed experiments India, Sept. 25-30, on “Single-Crystal Dia- to colonize and diversify. In addition, involving sea cucumbers grown under mond: New Developments and Applica- Smith presented a talk at the James high-CO2 conditions. The group made tions.” In Oct. he gave a talk at the Scott Memorial Session of the Fall AGU a number of YouTube videos of this Advanced Diamond Science and Technol- Meeting in San Francisco. expedition, which are available at ogy Meeting in Detroit. He also spoke at — http://www.youtube.com/user/ the International Conference Celebrating On Nov. 7 research scientist Jinfu Shu CarnegieGlobEcology/. the 50th Anniversary of the Synthesis of gave a talk at the School of Physics, — Stishovite in Moscow on Nov. 10. Astronomy and Computational Sciences, A paper published on climate-induced — George Mason U. The talk title was aspen forest die-off written by William Robert Hazen received the 2012 Virginia “High Temperature (HT) and High Anderegg (with Joe Berry and Chris Outstanding Faculty Award, the highest Pressure (HP) Research with Diamond- Field as coauthors) was on the cover such honor in Virginia. Hazen was intro- Anvil Cell (DAC) by Synchrotron Light of the Proceedings of the National duced to the Virginia State Legislature Source (SLS).” Academy of Sciences. See page 9. on Feb. 16, prior to the awards ceremony — — in Richmond. He presented numerous High Pressure Collaborative Postdoc Joseph Mascaro joined journal- invited lectures on mineral evolution, Access Team (HPCAT) ist and author Emma Marris, chief sci- origins of life, and the Deep Carbon Beamline scientist Stanislav Sinogeikin entist of the Nature Conservancy Peter Observatory at Hampshire College, attended the Goldsmith 2011 conference Kareiva, and Carnegie alumnus Erle U. Massachusetts-Amherst, Montana in Prague in Aug. 2011. He organized Ellis in a defense of the Anthropocene State U., and at conferences in Italy, and chaired the session “Advanced concept on the Dec. 8, 2011, op-ed page Korea, and San Francisco. Study of the Physical Properties of the of the New York Times. — Mantle Materials, and Applications to — Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao presented an the Earth’s Structure, Composition, and Arrivals: Monalisa Chatterjee joined invited talk at the China Academy of Dynamics.” He also presented the talk Chris Field’s lab as a postdoc and Patri- Engineering Physics, Mianyang, and presented a poster at the APS 2011 cia Mastrandrea joined it as a temporary ᕤ (Top) Marilyn Fogel in Belize. Sichuan, China, in Sept. user meeting. worker. The Caldeira lab welcomed (Bottom) These mats in Belize are — — postdocs Kate Ricke, who finished her teaming with microbes, which can Douglas Rumble helped to organize the ᕥ Tomasz Kolodziej from AGH U. Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon U., Ben metabolize and recycle the small 80th-birthday celebration for trustee and Science and Technology in Poland, Kravitz, a Ph.D. from Rutgers U., and concentrations of available nitrogen GL alumnus W. Gary Ernst at Stanford on supported by U. Nevada-Las Vegas and Katherine Marvel. Carnegie Fellow and phosphorus. Dec. 3-4. Ernst was a Carnegie Fellow mentored by Barbara Lavina, HiPSEC Mark Higgins from Duke U. is the Images courtesy Marilyn Fogel from 1955 to 1957. Rumble presided at and Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, newest member of the Asner lab as sessions held in honor of Ernst at the arrived at HPCAT Sept. 30 and left Nov. of Oct. 3. Jessica Reilly and Gabriela AGU meeting in San Francisco Dec. 5. 30. He studied the properties of the Meckler joined the Asner lab as interns On Dec. 12 Rumble served as rapporteur new high-pressure iron oxide, Fe4O5. in Nov.; Eric Slessarev became an intern on the examining board for the thesis in Joe Berry’s lab on Dec. 1. defense of Matthieu Galvez at the École — Normal Supérieure de Paris. GLOBAL ECOLOGY Departures: A send-off party was held — for Larry Giles, who ran the mass spec- The Year 9 Carnegie/DOE Alliance Cen- ᕦ Chris Field spoke at the 7th annual trometer facility for the past 11 years, ter (CDAC) Review took place on Oct. 25 meeting of the Global Climate and on Nov. 30. He is moving back to at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne Energy Project at Stanford. Alum Durham, NC, where he is setting up a National Laboratory. Talks were given David Lobell, also in attendance, business, Bryotronics Research, with his by Carnegie’s Russell Hemley, Stephen moderated a session. own mass spectrometer. Jan Brown en- Gramsch, Ho-kwang Mao, Guoyin Shen, — tered her second retirement at the end and Wenge Yang. Ben Kravitz, Julia Pongratz, Long Cao, of 2011 after 50 years of working for — Ken Caldeira, Chris Field, Kris Ebi, Carnegie. She started at Plant Biology, ᕤ Marilyn Fogel, David Baker, and Kyla Dahlin, William Anderegg, Re- retired in 1987, and returned as a volun- predoctoral fellow Derek Smith visited becca Hernandez, Jennifer Johnson, teer editor in 2002. James Jacobson left the Smithsonian Research Station on Amelia Wolf, Naupaka Zimmerman, the Asner lab on Nov. 18 for NASA Ames. ᕥ Tomasz Kolodziej and Carrie Bow Cay in Belize for two weeks. Lee Love-Anderegg, Joe Berry, Ted mentor Barbara Lavina Smith studied microbial mats in Raab, Michael Mastrandrea, and mangroves on cays along the barrier Katharine Mach all presented talks or reef. The water column is depleted in posters at the American Geophysical nitrogen and phosphorus, but the Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco microbial communities thrive because on Dec. 5-9. — THE OBSERVATORIES

ᕨ On Oct. 17-18 Wendy Freedman participated in the GMT Exoplanet Workshop at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. On Oct. 28 she presented “Results from the Carnegie Hubble Project” at the Carnegie Science Day in Pasadena, CA. She gave an invited colloquium at UCLA on Nov. 9. She also gave the introduction to the GMT on Nov. 20 at the event “A Night on the Giant Magellan Telescope” hosted by U. Chicago alumni association in Los Angeles. Kathryn Barton taught a freshman seminar on hunger for — Stanford students. The course covers the neurophysiology of what ᕩ Staff astronomer Luis Ho organized makes us feel hungry, the state of food security in the world, world the Carnegie Science Day in Nov. He agriculture and food sources, plant pests and famines, eating disor- gave a colloquium at UC-Riverside and ders, the discovery of vitamins and their biochemistry, and the history invited talks at the Institute of High- of experimentation on starvation. This year the course also covered Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of the famine in Somalia. Students used social media to highlight news Sciences, in Beijing. on this tragedy, which has seen little coverage in traditional media. — Barton is on the far right in this image of her class. µ In Dec. senior research associate „ Barry Madore gave the seminar “What Is This Thing Called the Schmidt Law?” at Boston U. He also presented a colloquium at NRAO in Charlottesville, VA. Tanya Berardini and Donghui Li, cura- ᕦ Chris Field ᕧ Ken Caldeira — Workshop held in Lake Tahoe, NV. On ¸ Staff astronomer Joshua Simon gave Oct. 18-19 Frommer gave a talk at U. tors in the TAIR group, attended the a talk at the event “A Night on the Giant North Texas-Denton about fluorescent Gene Ontology Consortium Meeting Magellan Telescope” hosted by U. biosensors, and on Oct. 20 he presented and Ontology Development Meeting Chicago alumni association in Los the same talk as the invited seminar Nov. 7-11 in London. Angeles Nov. 20. speaker at the Samuel Roberts Noble — — Foundation in Ardmore, OK. He gave Postdoctoral fellow Alexander Jones Postdoctoral research associate Nimish another biosensors talk at the Plant gave a talk at the Sept. 28-29 NSF meet- Hathi was invited to serve on a Normal Gene Expression Center in Albany, CA, ing on Plant Protein Phosphorylation Galaxies panel for the NASA on Nov. 3. On Nov. 6-9 he presented a held at Granlibakken, Lake Tahoe, NV. Astrophysics Data Analysis Program poster at the Grantees Workshop DOE in — ᕨ Wendy Freedman ᕩ Luis Ho (ADAP) proposal review in Aug. 2011. He Baltimore, MD. gave a talk in Sept. 2011 at the “Young — and Bright: Understanding High Redshift On Aug. 30 Zhiyong Wang presented the Structures” conference in Potsdam, talk “The Brassinosteroid Signaling Net- Increasing Germany, and was awarded the work: From Receptor Kinasis to Tran- Awareness for American Astronomical Society scription Network” at the 57th Brazilian International Travel Grant to attend. Congress on Genetics in Sao Paulo. Plant Science He also spoke at the Phosphorylation In early 2011 four institutions, Workshop held Sept. 30 in Tahoe City, the Donald Danforth Plant PLANT BIOLOGY NV. On Oct. 28 he was the invited semi- Science Center, the Samuel nar speaker at UC-Davis on brassinos- Roberts Nobel Foundation, µ Barry Madore ¸ Josh Simons ¹ Wolf Frommer spoke at the GARNET teroids. He also gave a seminar at the Carnegie’s Dept. of Plant Biol- Annual Meeting at Murray College, Plant Science Center, RIKEN, Yoko- ogy, and the Boyce Thompson Cambridge, UK, on Sept. 6-7. On Sept. hama, on Nov. 7. He spoke at the 3rd Institution for Plant Research 8-9 he gave a talk at U. Düesseldorf on International Symposium on Frontier formed the Association of In- “Fluorescent Biosensors,” and on Sept. in Agriculture Proteome Research, dependent Plant Research In- 12-13 he attended the Association of Tsukuba, Japan, on Nov. 9. He gave the stitutes (AIPI), whose major Independent Plant Research Institutes plenary talk at the Plant Biotechnology objectives are to increase ¹ Wolf Frommer (right, sitting (AIPI) meeting in St. Louis and talked Conference, Fuzhou, China, on Nov. 19. awareness of and support for on wall) with his lab members about the role of sugar. On Sept. 22-24 — plant science discovery at a he attended the Plant Kathy Barton attended the meeting of national level and to foster Science Summit held at the Association of Independent Plant collaborative activities involv- HHMI in Chevy Chase, Research Institutes (AIPI) in St. Louis ing the participating institu- MD, and contributed a and also gave a talk, “Generation of a tions. AIPI holds annual White Paper on Deletion Mutant Resource OR How to meetings to encourage the “Technology to the Occupy Negative Space,” at the “Plant conception and promotion of Summit” with David Genomes & Biotechnology: From Genes collaborative research. The Ehrhardt, a member of to Networks” meeting on Nov. 30-Dec. 3 2011 annual meeting was held the writing committee. at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY. Sept. 12-13 in St. Louis and On Sept. 28-29 — was attended by all Plant Biol- Frommer attended the Matt Evans gave a talk at the Sept. 6-9 ogy staff members. The initia- NSF meeting on protein meeting “The Science of Gene Flow in tive also provides seed funding phosphorylation and on Agriculture and Its Role in Coexistence” for collaborative projects be- in Washington, DC. Sept. 29-Oct. 1 he gave tween the four institutions. „ a talk at the Plant — Protein Phosphorylation 18

Postdoctoral research associate Lee Former staff member Roy Britten, Chae gave a talk at the Plant Genome initially a physicist and then a pioneering mo- Evolution 2011 conference in Amsterdam. lecular biologist, died on January 21 at the — age of 92. He joined DTM in 1951 as a member Sue Rhee gave a talk at the Plant of the biophysics group. He was interested in Genome Evolution conference on Sept. the fundamental organization and evolution of 4-6 in Amsterdam. On Sept. 30-Oct. 4 animal DNA. In 1971 he went to Caltech as a she attended the 27th Asilomar Confer- Distinguished Carnegie Senior Research As- ence on Mass Spectrometry held in sociate in molecular biology. Pacific Grove, CA, and gave the talk In 1954 Britten wrote to Merle Tuve, then DTM director, “I feel that the “Reconstruction and Application of time I have spent here has been the most fruitful period of my life and I ex- Plant Metabolic Networks.” pect it to grow more fruitful.” — Britten received his B.S. from the University of Virginia, his master’s Martin Jonikas attended the Stanford degree from The Johns Hopkins University (1940-1941), and his Ph.D. CMB retreat on Sept. 18 and presented a from Princeton in 1951. During the war, he worked with the mass spec- talk, “Novel Genetic Tools to Transform trograph activities on the Manhattan Project. While at Hopkins he worked Our Understanding of Photosynthesis.” at the Bureau of Standards on isotope separations. „ He also gave a talk at the Carnegie board of trustees meeting on Nov. 18 at the Dept. of Embryology titled “Changing the Pace of Photosynthesis Research by Ƹ Jessica Warren ƹ John Chambers Doing 100,000 Experiments at Once.” studies. Lab assistant Sairupa Pa- Ames Research Center in Mountain View, — duchuri left the Rhee lab, and program- CA. He also gave an invited talk about the Postdoctoral research associate Guido mer April Wensel left the TAIR group to formation of gas giant planets at the Grossmann attended the ASCB meeting join a startup company. Graduate stu- Workshop on Exploring Giant Planets on in Denver, CO, on Dec. 3-12 and pre- dent Rafael Arenhart returned to Brazil NIF: A New Generation of Condensed sented a talk on “RootChip.” on Nov. 30 to continue his studies. Matter, held at the Lawrence Livermore — National Laboratory in Livermore, CA. Ƹ Jessica Warren (formerly a DTM Boss gave radio interviews about Kepler’s postdoc and currently an assistant TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM first habitable-zone super-Earth around professor in Stanford’s Dept. of a Sun-like star for the Voice of America. Geological and Environmental In Oct. Lindy Elkins-Tanton spoke at a In Jan. he gave an invited colloquium at Sciences) is collaborating with Plant Harvard U. workshop on “Water and Car- the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Biology on electron microscopy. bon Delivery to Terrestrial Planets: Pri- in Greenbelt, MD. Warren’s lab is fitting the scanning mary and Late Accretion.” In Jan. she — electron microscope with an electron presented that talk at the Carnegie Ob- ƹ In Dec. John Chambers gave a talk ƺ Michael Crawford photographed backscatter diffraction (EBSD) servatories and at UC-Santa Cruz. In Dec. at James Madison U. in VA, “Stellar the lava flow from Mt. Etna. detector. EBSD capability will allow she gave two talks at the American Geo- Elemental Abundances and Planet Formation.” Image courtesy Michael Crawford Warren to study the microanatomy of physical Union (AGU) 2011 Fall Meeting. thin sections of rocks. These — — anatomical details can then be used Sean Solomon organized and chaired In Oct. Larry Nittler presented seminars to understand how the rocks formed. special sessions on MESSENGER orbital at Argonne National Laboratory and U. — observations of Mercury at the joint Chicago. In Nov. he gave talks at the 6th Arrivals: The Frommer lab welcomed meeting of the Division for Planetary Biennial Geochemical SIMS Workshop, visiting researcher Yibing Hu on Nov. 5 Sciences of the AAS and the European in Honolulu, HI; at the Workshop on For- from Nanjing Agricultural U., China; visit- Planetary Science Congress in Nantes, mation of the First Solids in the Solar ing graduate student Alejandro San Mar- France, in Oct. Solomon chaired the System, in Kauai, HI; and at the 11th In- tin from Centro de Estudios Cientificos 24th meeting of the MESSENGER Sci- ternational Symposium on Origin of Mat- (CECS), Valdivia, Chile, on Nov. 11; and on ence Team, in Annapolis, MD, in Nov. He ter and Evolution of Galaxies, in Tokyo. Dec. 11 visiting scholar Shingo Kikuta ar- gave five seminars on MESSENGER He also gave a seminar at U. Maryland. rived from the Japan Society for the Pro- findings: at Boston College in Oct., the In Dec. Nittler gave a talk at the work- motion of Science. Carnegie Fellow Naval Research Laboratory and the shop “Isotopes in Astrochemistry: An In- Cheng Hsun Ho arrived on Nov. 16 from Philosophical Society of Washington in terstellar Heritage for Solar System the Institute of Life Sciences, China, as Nov., and the Geological Society of Materials?” in Leiden. He also gave a did Wei Chuan Kao, a graduate student Washington, the Lunar and Planetary seminar at DTM that month. from Stenden U., Netherlands. Arriving Institute in Houston, and U. Maryland, — from Temasek U., Singapore, to finish all in Jan. He also attended a meeting In Oct. Scott Sheppard gave a talk at the their graduate studies in the Dinneny lab for the GRAIL Science Team in Irvine, American Astronomical Society Division were Yu Geng on Sept. 16 and Rui Wu on CA, that month. for Planetary Sciences meeting in Nov. 1. Arriving from UC-Berkeley, — Nantes, France. In Nov. he presented at Alexandra Grote joined the Bhaya lab as In Oct. Alan Boss spoke at the Workshop the emergency meeting on collisional a lab technician on Sept. 12. The Rhee lab on the Formation and Early Evolution of hazards around Pluto for the New Hori- welcomed Tam Tran in Oct. as a lab tech- Very Low Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs, zons mission to Pluto in Boulder, CO. nician. The Jonikas lab added postdoc- held in Garching, Germany. Boss also — ƺ The DTM team installs a toral research associate Leif Palleson chaired a meeting of the NASA Advisory In Oct. Diana Roman spent two weeks at strainmeter near the Etna volcano. from U. Illinois on Sept. 14. Council’s (NAC) Astrophysics Subcom- Kilauea Volcano doing fieldwork at the — mittee (APS) at NASA HQ, and presented Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory. During Departures: Departing interns were the APS Letter Report to a meeting of the that time she gave a colloquium talk and Jarod Nixon on Sept. 9, Duncan Oja on NAC Science Committee at NASA later presented another colloquium talk that Oct. 15, Rick Kim on Dec. 15, and Bran- that same month. In Nov. he gave an in- month at NASA Goddard. In Dec. Roman don Araki, Tara Chandran, and Hilary vited talk at the Workshop on the Forma- and her students presented four posters Vance on Dec. 31. On Dec. 31 lab techni- tion of the First Solids in the Solar at the AGU Meeting. cian Doriann Moss left the Ehrhardt lab System, held in Kauai, HI. In Dec. he — and lab technician Sam Parsa departed chaired the opening sessions of the First the Frommer lab to pursue graduate Kepler Science Conference at the NASA Carnegie Science | Spring 2012 19

In Nov. Matt Fouch represented the In- corporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and EarthScope com- munities at the National Science Foun- dation Large Facility recompetition panel. He also gave an invited talk at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Dec. Later that month, Fouch was elected to a three-year term as vice chair of the IRIS board of directors. He also gave two talks at the Fall AGU Meeting. — Postdoctoral associate Nicholas Moskovitz gave a talk and presented a poster at the AAS Division of Planetary Sciences Meeting in Oct. In Nov. he vis- ited the Johns Hopkins Center for Astro- physical Science and gave an invited colloquium, “Origin and Evolution of the Earliest Planetary Bodies in the Solar ƻ Frank Press ƻ Paul Silver System.” Also that month, he gave media interviews regarding the near- Earth flyby of asteroid 2005 YU55 to ƻ Library technical assistant Merri Wolf processes recent Nature, Washington Post, Christian donations of books from Frank Press and Nathalie Valette-Silver. Science Monitor, Chemistry World, and US News and World Report. — In Oct. postdoctoral associate Brian Solomon, Daoyuan Sun, Fouad Tera, fessor and chair of the Dept. of Geology Jackson spoke at the An- Liyan Tian, Shoshana Weider, and and Geophysics at Yale, spent two days nual Meeting of the Division visiting scientist Cecily Wolfe. at DTM to give a special seminar, of Planetary Sciences — “Generation of Plate Tectonics on Earth /European Planetary Sci- Arrivals: Fukashi Maeno, an assistant and Other Planets.” Postdoctoral fellow ence Congress. In Nov. he professor at the Volcano Research Cen- Kelsey Druken joined DTM in Jan. She did fieldwork in Death Val- ter of the Earthquake Research Institute will be working with David James on the ley National Park on the at U. Tokyo, arrived in Oct. He worked High Lava Plains experiment. In Jan. Sailing Stones at Racetrack with Selwyn Sacks and Alan Linde on Marcus Key from Dickinson College and Playa. the analysis of the Montserrat strain- his student Paige Hollenbeck visited — meter data. In Nov. independent re- DTM to work with Conel Alexander The 2012 Geological Society searcher Stephanie Brown visited DTM. and the geochemistry group. of America meeting was Brown completed her master’s at the — held Oct. 9-12 in Minneapo- Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Plane- Departures: In Dec. postdoctoral associ- lis. Presenters included tary Sciences at MIT under the supervi- ates Guillem Anglada relocated to U. Matt Fouch, Christian sion of Elkins-Tanton. Göttingen in Germany, Chin-Wu Chen Klimczak, Larry Nittler, — joined National Taiwan U., and Daoyuan and Sean Solomon. Senior Tuve Fellows Emily Brodsky and Sun left for U. of Southern California. In — Francis Nimmo from UC-Santa Cruz Jan. Eloise Gallou went to the Museum ƺ In Oct. seismologists and Celal Sengor from Istanbul Techni- of Natural History in Los Angeles. Alan Linde and Selwyn cal U. came for the month of Nov. They Sacks, along with Brian collaborated on MESSENGER with Sean On Oct.18 a daylong symposium was Schleigh, Michael Acierno, and Michael Solomon and attended the 24th MES- DTM/GL held in honor of former director Sean Crawford, captured on camera a SENGER Science Team Meeting held Solomon. Twenty speakers recognized spectacular lava fountain spewed by Mt. in Annapolis, MD. Shaun Hardy attended the Geoscience Solomon’s role as director for 19 years Etna, an active stratovolcano on the east — Information Society’s annual meeting and his significant scientific contribu- coast of Sicily. The scientists were in Elkins-Tanton hosted four visitors in in Minneapolis in Oct. tions. DTM staff scientists Erik Hauri, Sicily to install 2 borehole strainmeters Dec.: Danielle Piskorz, Karen Meech, — Scott Sheppard, Matthew Fouch, John close to the volcano. They are working Jonathan Wynn, and Benjamin Black ƻ Frank Press, former Cecil and Ida Chambers, Diana Roman, Paul closely with Alessandro Bonaccorso and for three months to finish a project on Green Senior Fellow at DTM and Butler, Conel Alexander, Larry Nittler, the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e the tectonics of Venus. Piskorz is a re- Geophysical Laboratory and trustee and Alycia Weinberger spoke about their Vulcanologia-Sezione di Catania- cent MIT graduate. Meech, from U. emeritus, donated 250 geoscience current research. All hired by Solomon Osservatorio Etneo. The team expects Hawaii Institution for Astronomy, pre- books and reports to the departments’ during his tenure, they explained his the devices will detect crustal sented a seminar, “Activity in Distant joint library. The research files and crucial role in inspiring their work and deformation due to the magma Comets and the Early Solar System.” professional correspondence of late making their research a possibility. „ movement from such eruptions and Wynn is a biogeochemist at U. South DTM staff member Paul G. Silver were help improve the understanding of Florida studying stable isotope geo- donated to the DTM archives by his wife, magma movement. chemistry, the global carbon cycle, Nathalie Valette-Silver. The collection A daylong symposium and reception — paleoenvironments and paleoclimate, documents nearly three decades of were held in Sean Solomon’s honor Sixteen staff scientists and postdoctoral paleoclimatic forcing of human evolu- Silver’s pathbreaking research in as he stepped down from his fellows attended the 2011 American tion, and the geological record of fossil seismology and geodynamics. Silver’s directorship to become a staff Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San soils. Black, a graduate student in the extensive personal library of geophysics scientist. He is shown at left at the Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sci- books and journals was donated to the reception in the Greenewalt Building. Francisco on 5-9: Paul Byrne, Chin-Wu Chen, director Lindy Elkins-Tanton, ences Department at MIT, is working on Broad Branch Road campus library and Matt Fouch, David James, Christian the Siberian Traps flood basalts with several major universities. „ Klimczak, Diana Roman, Selwyn Sacks, Elkins-Tanton and collaborating with Steve Shirey, Debbie Smith, Sean Erik Hauri. In Dec. Dave Bercovici, pro- The Carnegie Institution for Science Carnegie Institution for Science Nonprofit Org. is committed to the national policy of fair 1530 P Street, NW U.S. POSTAGE treatment of all employees in all aspects Washington, D.C. 20005-1910 of employment. The institution does not PAID discriminate against any person on the Washington, DC basis of race, color, religion, sex, national PERMIT NO.1657 or ethnic origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other basis prohibited by applicable law. This policy covers all programs, activities, and operations of the institution, including the administration of its educational programs, admission of qualified students as fellows, and employment practices and procedures.

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CARNEGIE Ranked Top Charity 11 YEARS RUNNING ####

THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE received the highest rating for sound fiscal management—four stars—from Charity Navigator for the eleventh consecutive year. Only eight organizations out of 5,500 have received the highest rating for that long. The Carnegie Institution for Science is the only Washington, D.C.-based organization to earn this distinction. Charity Navigator is America’s largest charity evaluator. Its rating system looks at two distinct components—the financial health “Andrew Carnegie of an organization and its accountability and transparency. Charities “must excel in both areas to score well overall.” Carnegie would be proud.” received four stars in each category. The ranking is based on analy- ses on the financial information each charity provides annually in its informational tax return (IRS Form 990). During the last year, Carnegie spent 89.5% of its budget on its scientific programs, 9.4% on administration, and 1% on fundraising. “We are exceptionally pleased with this distinction from Charity Navigator,” remarked Carnegie president Richard A. Meserve. “Andrew Carnegie would be proud.” „