Professor Jim Nardi (BS '70 from Purdue) now at the University of Illinois wrote a captivating story for children that stems from his Entomology research. Emeritus Purdue Professor Peter Waser writes this about Jim's book.......

Alumnus James Nardi, Research Scientist at the University of Illinois, has just published "In Mouse's Backyard" (Schiffer Publishing Co), an exploration of all those small critters, plants, and other strange, mysterious, fascinating, and sometimes creepy or squishy living things that the curious child (or parent) will likely find in any midwestern backyard. Lovely drawings are filled with surprises -- inconspicuous beasties that make you realize how much it pays to look again, with your eyes a little wider open, both at the book and at the ordinary world around you. Supplemented with some lovely photos and even electron micrographs of things like stink bugs' beaks, mushroom spores and velvet mite toes, all with the scale marked clearly, but not in the metric system -- the thickness of a nickel and the width of a hair are the units here.

The text is in verse and filled with the sort of details that drew me into natural history as a kid -- introducing you to everything from how mosses reproduce to what the greek words for "toe" and "feathery" tell you about beetles whose scientific names are more imposing than they are. btw, this book just may draw some readers into looking at an earlier book of Jim's, "Life in the Soil", a more traditional guide to all those little organisms, from tardigrades to cup fungi, that live all around us but usually escape our notice. If you're the sort of person who's always wondered where you could find a field guide to the slime molds, Nardi is the author for you.

Peter

The Department welcomes Agustin Avila-Sakar, EM Specialist

We warmly welcome Agustin Avila-Sakar as the new director of the Hockmeyer electron microscopy facility. He is replacing Paul Chipman who left for a warmer climate last July. After Paul left Valorie Bowman took on many of the daily functions that had previously been cared for by Paul. We are grateful for how easily Valorie stepped into Paul's shoes. She will continue to perform many of these duties even with the arrival of Agustin, especially as she is (and has been) knowledgeable of the principle daily problems and the most active miscreants. Thus Agustin will be able to spend more time in teaching and especially for developing the facility for new projects and new techniques. We wish Agustin a new, happy and satisfying life in Hockmeyer, Purdue, Lafayette and Indiana among the Hoosiers.

zipTrips

Jeff Grabowski (PIs Richard Kuhn and Catherine Hill) has just completed participation in shooting the third (and final year) live Purdue zipTrips 7th grade "Disease Detectives" program in the Stewart Center. ZipTrips is an international, worldwide-viewed PBS-broadcasted and web-streamed show that currently (this year alone) involved audiences in Honolulu, Hawaii; Calgary, Canada; Puerto Rico; Shetland, United Kingdom; and Okinawa, Japan. There were 138 schools with 6,184 students registered to participate in this year's show.

A map showing the distribution of participating schools in the U.S. is available here: http://g.co/maps/dkkh7.

There was also a new technology developed by ITaP called "hotseat" for the 2011 show that allows real time, on line interaction between students and scientists. More info about hotseat is available here.

Purdue zipTrips: "Disease Detectives" won the Silver Award for the 2011 ACE Critique and Awards Program in the category of Electronic Media, Video.

The 2010 show (same show as this year) can be found through this link: mms://video.dis.purdue.edu/bns/Agriculture/zipTrips_101118.wmv (mark 25:35 is when our segment begins).

zipTrips is a collaboration between the Purdue School of Veterinary Medicine, Purdue Agriculture, and the Discovery Learning Research Center at Purdue

zipTrips are funded by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Purdue scientists reveal how bacteria build homes inside healthy cells

Purdue associate professor of biological sciences Zhao-Qing Luo, at right, and graduate student Yunhao Tan look at the growth of Legionella pneumophila bacteria in a petri dish. (Purdue University photo provided by Laurie Iten / Rodney McPhail)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Bacteria are able to build camouflaged homes for themselves inside healthy cells - and cause disease- by manipulating a natural cellular process.

Purdue University biologists led a team that revealed how a pair of proteins from the bacteria Legionella pneumophila, which causes Legionnaires disease, alters a host protein in order to divert raw materials within the cell for use in building and disguising a large structure that houses the bacteria as it replicates.

Zhao-Qing Luo, the associate professor of biological sciences who led the study, said the modification of the host protein creates a dam, blocking proteins that would be used as bricks in the cellular construction from reaching their destination. The protein "bricks" are then diverted and incorporated into a bacterial structure called a vacuole that houses bacteria as it replicates within the cell. Because the vacuole contains materials natural to the cell, it goes unrecognized as a foreign structure.

"The bacterial proteins use the cellular membrane proteins to build their house, which is sort of like a balloon," he said. "It needs to stretch and grow bigger as more bacterial replication occurs. The membrane material helps the vacuole be more rubbery and stretchy, and it also camouflages the structure. The bacteria is stealing material from the cell to build their own house and then disguising it so it blends in with the neighboring cellular structures."

Read more here.

HHMI selects Purdue to help create new interdisciplinary science curriculum

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University is part of a team of four universities chosen to participate in a $1.8 million Howard Hughes Medical Institute project to create and share effective models for teaching interdisciplinary science, with Purdue faculty focusing on transforming the chemistry curriculum.

The four-year National Experiment in Undergraduate Science Education, or NEXUS, will develop resources for a national basic science curriculum for premedical and prehealth students.

Marc Loudon, the Cwalina Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Purdue coordinator for the project, said there is a national need for greater biology focus in the physics, mathematics and chemistry courses taken by prehealth students in order to better prepare them to become interdisciplinary scientists and clinicians. Read More here

Visit Purdue-HHMI web site here.

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