NIST Gives Pitt $15 Million Grant to Expand Nanoscience, Experimental Physics Facilities by Morgan Kelly
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INSIDE Study links hypertension, dementia in women......... 5 PITT ARTS Cheap Seats program................. 6 PittNewspaper of the University of PittsburghChronicle Volume XI • Number 3 • January 25, 2010 NIST Gives Pitt $15 Million Grant to Expand Nanoscience, Experimental Physics Facilities By Morgan Kelly A $15 million grant Pitt recently electronic devices and technologies; better square feet in new laboratories in received from the National Institute of understanding of large-scale storms and “The project focuses on Allen Hall, the Nuclear Physics Standards and Technology (NIST) is the hurricanes; improved telecommunication strengthening Pitt’s research Laboratory, and Old Engineering keystone of a four-year, $27.8 million devices; and the ability to provide first-class Hall, as well as an open-floor, inter- expansion of the University’s nanoscience graduate education and training for addi- in applying advanced phys- disciplinary physics machine shop. and experimental physics facilities. The tional graduate students and postdoctoral It also includes 27,000 square renovation—to which Pitt will contribute researchers.” ics—including nanosci- feet of laboratory space for $12.8 million—encompasses four build- N. John Cooper, the Bettye J. and Ralph which Pitt will pursue U.S. ings and will provide the School of Arts E. Bailey Dean of Arts and Sciences, stated, ence, semiconductors, Green Building Council and Sciences’ Department of Physics and “The science of the smallest objects requires LEED™ (Leadership in Astronomy with 13 new or significantly large facilities, and the generous support and quantum phys- Energy and Environmen- enhanced laboratories, including space for from NIST will lay the foundation for next- ics—to areas ranging tal Design) certification. three new faculty members. generation facilities for our experimental The University has “The project focuses on strengthen- physicists.” from energy and significantly expanded ing Pitt’s research in applying advanced The renovation is one of only 12 major its infrastructure to sup- physics—including nanoscience, semicon- “shovel-ready” construction projects nation- information technol- port experimental phys- ductors, and quantum physics—to areas wide that NIST—which supplies and over- ics in recent years by ranging from energy and information tech- sees the nation’s standards of measurement, ogy to health care establishing the Petersen nology to health care and climate change including the official time—funded with Institute of NanoScience study,” said George Klinzing, Pitt’s vice $123 million available through the 2009 and climate change and Engineering housed provost for research. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. study.“ in the Swanson School of “The Department of Physics and Pitt is the only institution in Pennsylvania Engineering with the associ- Astronomy is home to the nanoscience to receive an award and joins such other —George Klinzing ated NanoScale Fabrication and experimental physics research that is institutions as Columbia, Georgetown, and and Characterization Facility. critical to the University’s 2005 NanoSci- Purdue universities. The projects NIST stream faculty working in Pitt has also established the ence and Technology Initiative,” Klinzing funded were chosen from 167 proposals. these areas will be expanded Center for Oxide-Semiconductor added. “We project that these new facilities Pitt’s renovation will provide state-of- from eight to 11 with a new Materials for Quantum Computa- and associated faculty recruitments will the-art labs, research support areas, and chaired professorship, a junior tion in the physics and astronomy lead to a significant increase in sponsored offices for current and prospective faculty hire in nanoscience, and a department. research funding; the creation of new tech- members specializing in condensed matter junior hire in biological phys- nologies in scientific measurements; novel and nanoscience. The number of tenure- ics. The plan calls for 75,000 George Klinzing Video Gamers: Volume of Brain Structures Predicts Success strategies, and adapt to a quickly changing accumbens (ah-COME-bins) in the ventral environment. striatum. “This is the first time that we’ve been “Our animal work has shown that the able to take a real-world task like a video striatum is a kind of learning machine— game and show that the size of specific it becomes active during habit formation brain regions is predictive of performance and skill acquisition,” Graybiel said. “So it and learning rates on this video game,” made a lot of sense to explore whether the said Erickson, the study’s lead author. striatum might also be related to the ability Ann Graybiel, an Institute Professor at the to learn in humans.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The caudate nucleus and putamen are Investigator in the McGovern Institute for involved in motor learning, but research has Brain Research, and Arthur Kramer, a pro- shown they are also important to the cog- fessor of psychology at the Beckman Institute nitive flexibility that allows one to quickly for Advanced Science and Technology at shift between tasks. The nucleus accum- the University of Illinois, were coprincipal bens is known to process emotions associ- investigators on the study. Walter Boot of ated with reward and punishment. Florida State University also The researchers began contributed to the research, with a basic question about which was conducted at the these structures: Is bigger University of Illinois. better? Research has shown that They used high- expert video gamers outper- resolution Magnetic form novices on many basic Resonance Imaging (MRI) measures of attention and per- to analyze the size of these ception, but other studies have brain regions in 39 healthy found that training novices on adults ages 18-28, 10 of video games for 20 or more them male, who had spent hours often yields no mea- less than three hours a By Diana Yates surable cognitive benefits. week playing video games These contradictory findings in the previous two years. Researchers can predict a person’s per- among men and women trained on a new suggest that pre-existing indi- The volume of each brain vidual differences in the brain structure was compared formance on a video game simply by mea- video game could be predicted by measur- Kirk Erickson suring the volume of specific structures in ing the volume of three structures in their might predict variability in to that of the brain as a that person’s brain, according to a study by brains. The study adds to the evidence that learning rates, the authors wrote. whole. a multi-institutional team led by Pitt psy- specific parts of the striatum, a collection Animal studies conducted by Graybiel Participants were then trained on one chology professor Kirk Erickson. of distinctive tissues tucked deep inside and others led the researchers to focus on of two versions of Space Fortress, a video The new study, published in the journal the cerebral cortex, profoundly influence three brain structures: the caudate (CAW- game developed at the University of Illinois Cerebral Cortex, found that nearly a quar- a person’s ability to refine his or her motor date) nucleus and the putamen (pew-TAY- ter of the variability in achievement seen skills, learn new procedures, develop useful min) in the dorsal striatum and the nucleus Continued on page 3 2 • Pitt Chronicle • January 25, 2010 Technique to Study Galaxies Earns Pitt Researcher U.S. Department of BrieflyNoted Energy Grant for Young Scientists Astronomy and a former vice provost for graduate stud- ies, honors outstanding teaching by graduate students in the School of Arts and Sciences. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 12. Nominations can be submitted by Pitt faculty, teaching assistants, teaching fellows, as well as graduate and undergraduate students. To be eligible for the $250 award, an instructor must have been enrolled as a graduate student and teaching a class in any semester of the previous calendar year, 2009. More information is available at www.pitt. Stephen Rapp edu/~asgso/teachingawardnomination.html. U.S. Ambassador-at-Large For War Crimes Issues to Speak at Pitt Jan. 28 The University of Pittsburgh School of Law’s Center for International Legal Education will feature Stephen Rapp, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, in a lecture titled “The Role of the United States in International Criminal Justice,” at noon Jan. 28 in the Barco Law Building’s Teplitz Memorial Courtroom. Appointed by President Barack Obama, Rapp, an Iowa native, assumed his duties on By Morgan Kelly Sept. 8, 2009. Previously, Rapp served as prosecu- Staff Association Council tor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, beginning Goes Green A Pitt researcher developing a better pull on the universe than dark matter. New- in January 2007, where he led the prosecutions of technique to gauge the distance from Earth man’s work on the LSST is essential in The University of Pittsburgh’s Staff Association to some of the most distant galaxies in the former Liberian President Charles Taylor and those studying these cosmic components and for Council (SAC) is eliminating the paper newsletters visible universe recently received a five- determining how far back in the universe’s allegedly responsible for the atrocities committed that have been sent to Pitt staff for more than 20 year, $750,000 grant under a newly estab- history the telescope is looking for each during Sierra Leone’s civil war. lished federal program intended to support galaxy observed. years. Beginning this month, SAC will e-mail electronic During his tenure as prosecutor, Rapp and young scientists. He also is on the execu- newsletters to staffers’ in-boxes on a monthly basis. his colleagues achieved the first-ever convictions Jeffrey Newman, a pro- tive committee of the All- Staff members who would like to receive the fessor of physics and astron- for sexual slavery and forced marriage as crimes wavelength Extended Groth newsletter should visit SAC’s Web site, www.sac.pitt.