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But a magnet-controlled “switch” in superconductor configuration provides unprecedented flexibility in managing the location of vortex filaments, altering the properties of the superconductor, according to a new paper in Nature Nanotechnology.

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“We work on superconductors and how to make them better for applications,” said , professor in the at the University of Notre Dame and co-corresponding author on the paper. “One of the major problems in superconductor technology is that most of them have these filaments, these tiny tornadoes of supercurrent. When these move, then you have resistance.” ��

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Researchers have been trying to design new devices and new technologies to “pin,” or fasten, these filaments to a specified position. Previous efforts to pin the filaments, such as irradiating or drilling holes in the superconductor, resulted in static, unchangeable arrays, or ordered arrangements of filaments. A new, dynamic system discovered by Jankó and collaborators will enable ongoing adjustments, altering the material’s properties over time. The results of the research were published June 11 in Nature Nanotechnology in a paper titled “.”

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The collaborators’ solution overlays the superconductor with an artificial spin ice consisting of an array of interacting nanoscale bar magnets. Rearranging the magnetic orientations of those nano-bar magnets results in a real-time rearrangement of the pinning on the superconducting site. This makes possible multiple, reversible spin cycle configurations for the vortices. Spin is a particle’s natural, angular momentum.

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“The main discovery here is our ability to reconfigure these spinning sites reversibly and instead of having just one spin cycle configuration for the vortices, we now have many, and we can switch them back and forth,” Jankó said. The magnetic charges have the same pinning effect as drilled holes in other systems but are not limited to a static configuration, he described. For example, the magnets could be arranged to create more or less resistance in the superconductor. The elementary unit potentially could be combined into a circuit capable of logic manipulation.

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, research assistant professor in the Department of Physics and co-first/co-corresponding author on the paper, who is also affiliated with Argonne National Laboratory and Nanjing University, , or magnetic charge ice, which could be tuned to various relatively stable configurations. The structures are called ice because they involve patterned atomic deformations similar to that of oxygen bonds when water freezes. In the current study, Jankó proposed applying the system to superconductors.

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“We demonstrated that unconventional artificial-spin-ice geometries can mimic the charge distribution of an artificial square spin ice system, allowing unprecedented control over the charge locations via local and external magnetic fields,” Wang said. “We show now that such a control over magnetic charges can be exploited in the control of quantum fluxes in a spin-ice/superconductor heterostructure.” He added that the success resulted from close collaboration between experimentalists and theorists. ��

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Because the control of the quantum fluxes is difficult to visualize in an experiment, simulations were required to successfully reproduce the results, said Xiaoyu Ma, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics who conducted the computer simulation in the study and is the co-first author on the paper. The simulations allowed researchers to see the detailed processes involved. “The number of vortex configurations that we can realize is huge, and we can design and locally reconfigure them site by site,” Ma said. “This has never been realized before.”

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The research is expected to provide a new setting at the nanoscale for the design and manipulation of geometric order and frustration — an important phenomenon in magnetism related to the arrangement of spins — in a wide range of material systems, Wang noted. These include magnetic skyrmions, two-dimensional materials, topological insulators/semimetals and colloids in soft materials.

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“This could lead to novel functionalities,” Wang said.�� “We believe this work will open a new direction in application of geometrical frustrated material systems.”

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In addition to Jankó, Wang and Ma, other authors on the paper include Jing Xu, Zhi-Li Xiao, Alexy Snezhko, Ralu Divan, Leonidas E. Ocala, John E. Pearson and Wai-Kwong Kwok of Argonne National Laboratory.

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This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. Use of the Center for Nanoscale Materials, an Office of Science user facility, was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

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Deanna Csomo McCool and Tammi Freehling contributed to this article.

Similar reports often aggregate cases of disease, but do not identify high-incidence areas within the country. Researchers mapped the disease in order to enable targeted application of cholera elimination strategies to high-incidence areas for immediate and effective control. The study was published in .

“We need a better understanding of where the current cholera burden is highest so we can target prevention and control efforts,” said , research assistant professor in the and the at the University of Notre Dame, and co-author of the study. “This burden estimate can also serve as a baseline so we can compare results moving forward. You don’t know how good an intervention is unless you know where you started.”

Long-term solutions to cholera include access to clean water, effective sanitation and improved hygiene. Recently developed low-cost vaccines protect users for three to five years and provide the possibility of disease reduction while appropriate infrastructure is established. Outside of recent epidemics in Haiti and Yemen, most reported cholera outbreaks and epidemics occur in Africa.

Researchers gathered data from government agencies, WHO and nongovernmental organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF to map incidence from 2010 to 2016 and estimated that 151 of 3,751 districts are at high risk of cholera — including a total of 87 million people.

Vaccines have been used only during outbreaks and at high-risk refugee camps in the past, and fine-tuned targeting among those districts is critical.

Vaccinating that many people would require more than 160 million doses of vaccine — and annual production only recently reached 20 million doses. Targeting districts that account for less than 4 percent of the population could eliminate half the cholera in the region.

Co-authors of the study include Justin Lessler, Francisco J. Luquero, Heather S. McKay, Elizabeth C. Lee ��and Andrew S. Azman, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg 91��Ƶ of Public Health; ��Rebecca Grais, Epicentre; Myriam Henkens, Medecins Sans Frontieres International Office; Martin Mengel, Agence de Medecine Preventive; Jessica Dunoyer, UNICEF West and Central Africa Regional Office; Maurice M’bangombe, Malawi Ministry of Health; Mamoudou Harouna Djingarey, WHO Office for Africa; Bertrand Sudre, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control; Didier Bompangue, Ministry of Health, Kinshasa; Robert S. M. Fraser, International Federation for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; Abdinasir Abubakar, WHO Office for the Eastern Mediterranean; and William Perea and Dominique Legros, WHO Geneva.

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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding for the project.

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Contact: Jessica Sieff, assistant director, media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu

In the basement of Galvin Life Sciences Center, uses the latest in 3-D printing and laser cutting to help campus researchers in their quest for scientific knowledge. Leevy also uses the equipment to produce beauty and goodness – crystal flowers that enshrine Notre Dame landmarks and, now manufactured commercially, raise money to benefit cancer research.

who is also a research associate professor and director of biological imaging within the started to produce and market the flowers last year after students gathered specimens near the “Word of Life” mural (aka Touchdown Jesus) and Notre Dame Stadium to practice their CT scanning. While the imaging technology is traditionally used for noninvasive imaging of lab mice, rats and rabbits, the digital images of flowers were so dazzling that the group decided to 3-D engrave them into crystals.

One of the students mentioned that cancer patients, who can’t enjoy real flowers because their immune systems are compromised from chemotherapy, would especially like the replicas. The idea blossomed in the startup company, a social entrepreneurship venture headquartered in Innovation Park and led by Aislinn Betts, an undergraduate who was part of Leevy’s group. Others involved in the original project were Breelyn Betts, Aislinn’s sister who was in high school; undergraduate Christine Craig; assistant director of the Integrated Imaging Facility; and a research scientist at the Notre Dame Center for Nano Science and Technology.

Handpicked flowers are CT scanned, 3-D rendered and laser etched within ultra-pure glass. Varieties so far are Cone Flowers for a Cure, Love Thee Canna Lily, Our Lady Geraniums, and the Onward to Victory Rose. Trademark rights to these works are the subject of a license with Notre Dame’s Office of Technology Transfer. They are manufactured by a U.S. company and sold online and in local floral and gift shops, with profits going to the Harper Cancer Research Institute. “These are products that we make with cancer patients in mind, although we think the general public will also derive enjoyment from these flowers in crystal,” said Leevy, who also works with Harper and the ESTEEM program.

The company expects to expand the selection when more flowers bloom in the spring and hopes to reach a wider market, especially cancer hospitals in other cities. “We intend to expand to have a catalog of flowers from landmark sites across our campus,” Leevy says. “We are a core of investigators specializing in scientific research and image analysis technologies. We have expanded our efforts in order to give back to the research community and serve the public at large. It truly aligns with the Notre Dame mission to be a force for good in the world.”

The fabrication laboratory, including staff, postdoctoral associates and undergraduates conducts research at the interface of 3-D printing technology and biomedical imaging, creating anatomical models derived from patient data and developing animal anesthesia delivery devices. a design and fabrication specialist, is operations manager of the facility, which includes three CAD workstations, a laser cutter and the most advanced 3-D printer on campus. It offers fabrication of a finished design, consultation on designs in process, and comprehensive design and fabrication based on a back-of-the-napkin sketches. The service is set up within CORES for access to all faculty, staff and students on campus.

Leevy’s lab has made more than a dozen patent submissions in the past three years that are the basis for three startup companies. In Vivo Concepts LLC develops novel anesthesia delivery products to enhance small animal imaging in biomedical research, designed to improve animal handling and technician safety; Biomedical Constructs LLC, which markets anatomical models; and Benefactory Manufacturing and Design, which produces exclusively licensed collegiate goods used by Notre Dame’s development office to thank donors, in addition to Flourish3D.

The University of has trained more than 80 people on campus since it was launched in 2013. The four-day interactive program is designed to train research administrators on the entirety of the research lifecycle, from idea generation and grant writing through budgeting and publication in order to keep Notre Dame researchers and their administrators up to date with the latest information in order to remain competitive in the ever-changing research landscape. The certificate course, a blend of in-person and online learning, is offered twice a year.

The program has grown beyond the original cohort of Notre Dame Research Administration and Research and Sponsored Programs Accounting staff and has since attracted research program coordinators, business managers, departmental administrators and people from central administration, general counsel, central services and others.

The ultimate goal of the program is to reduce faculty administrative burden by building a depth and breadth of research administration competency at the University. Strong research administration allows Notre Dame researchers to focus on their work, rather than the administrative details.

“We have people in various functional roles and functional lines of the business,” says associate vice president for research, explaining that modern research support involves complex cross-functional issues such as preparing proposals for funding, negotiating and awarding grants, hiring staff, buying equipment, complying with regulations, or reporting discoveries to the Office of Technology Transfer where appropriate.

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“In many cases, those people have not had experience outside their functional role. We wanted to have the opportunity for people to learn more about the entire life cycle of research — not to do everything but to understand how their role fits into supporting the University’s research mission.” Sessions begin with a faculty perspective address, where a professor or academic administrator describes their work related to the topic under discussion, such as multi-institutional collaborations, international research, and regulatory compliance.

The course includes videos of two fictitious faculty researchers, a biology professor early in their career with a collaborator in social sciences, and a long-established engineering professor, drawn from real-life stories. Interactive breakouts during each session, group work and a luncheon encourage networking among people with similar jobs on campus that might not otherwise meet each other.

The curriculum, which was developed in collaboration with Luma Brighter Learning, an educational design company based in Innovation Park, includes the creation of eNuggets, which are collections of five to nine details that break complex issues into bite-sized elements that are easily remembered. Participants share their eNuggets at the conclusion, and they are kept online for future reference. To view the existing eNuggets, visit .

For more information about the training program, contact director of research administration policy, training and communications, at 574-631-8305 or kpace@nd.edu or visit .

Collaborative research at the University of Notre Dame has demonstrated that electronic interactions play a significant role in the dimensional crossover of semiconductor nanomaterials. The laboratory of , professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and the condensed matter theory group of , professor of physics, have now shown that a critical length scale marks the transition between a zero-dimensional, quantum dot and a one-dimensional nanowire.

The findings, “,” were published in Nature Communications. Matthew P. McDonald and Rusha Chatterjee of Kuno’s laboratory and Jixin Si of Jankó’s group are also authors of the publication.

A quantum dot structure possesses the same physical dimensions in every direction while a quantum wire exhibits one dimension longer than the others. This means that quantum dots and nanowires made of the same material exhibit different optical and electrical responses at the nanoscale since these properties are exquisitely size- and shape-dependent. Understanding the size- and shape-dependent evolution of nanomaterial properties has therefore been a central focus of nanoscience over the last two decades. However, it has never been definitively established how a quantum dot evolves into a nanowire as its aspect ratio is made progressively larger. Do quantum properties evolve gradually or do they suddenly transition?

Kuno’s laboratory discovered that a critical length exists where a quantum dot becomes nanowire-like. The researchers achieved this breakthrough by conducting the first direct, single particle absorption measurements on individual semiconductor nanorods, an intermediate species between quantum dots and nanowires. Single particle rather than ensemble measurements were used to avoid the effects of sample inhomogeneities. Furthermore, an absorption approach rather than an often-used emission approach was employed to circumvent existing limitations of modern emission-based single particle microscopy — namely, its restriction to the observation of highly fluorescent specimens.

The discovery marks a significant advance in our understanding of the size- and shape-dependent quantum mechanical response of semiconductor nanostructures. “All of the introductory-level solid state or semiconductor textbooks need to revise what they say about dimensional crossover,” Jankó said. “This is another example where interactions makes things completely different.” Beyond this, Kuno suggests that the single particle absorption approach advanced in the study “has practical, real-world applications, maybe 40 years down the road.” Examples include the generic and label-free ultrasensitive detection of chemical and biomolecular species of paramount interest within the spheres of homeland security as well public health.

Kuno’s group performed the experiments that led to the discovery while Jankó’s group provided theoretical support.

Researchers comparing mouse and macaque brains have found evidence of an evolutionary universal brain structure in mammals that enables comparisons of cortical networks between species. A new study from a researcher at the University of Notre Dame could provide insights into brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia.

, professor of physics at Notre Dame, was lead author on the study, “” published July 21 in PLOS Biology. The work, which also describes differences between the brain networks, shows that the rule that the exponential decay of connection strengthens with distance in the brain, called the exponential distance rule (EDR), is a central feature of their common architecture. Toroczkai and colleagues had previously published evidence of the EDR in a study of macaque brains. However, the general validity of these observations now allows extrapolation to the human brain and insights into brain disorders.

Zoltán Toroczkai

Brain network connectivity structure is especially important because information in the brain is encoded by the spatio-temporal firing patterns of groups of neurons, in contrast with the internet, where a message (e.g., of an email) is encoded into the packet itself and as long as there is a delivery pathway for the packet, the specific structure of the network is secondary. Neurons must interact with each other in a certain way, and different areas of the brain create meanings from these spatio-temporal patterns in a mechanism that is still not fully understood. Scientists believe that the brain identifies relevant patterns from incoming information, stores it and uses it to make predictions — for example, the brain will recognize a familiar face if it sees only part of the image. If links, and especially the long-range links, are disrupted by injury or chemical imbalance (hence disrupting the patterns or the mechanism), a person might lose the ability of predictive recognition, as in Alzheimer’s, or might imagine something that is not present, as in schizophrenia.

Anatomical observations show that increase in brain size in mammals with more neurons leads to a proportionate decrease of long-range connections in the larger brains. The rodent brain, with fewer neurons but a more interconnected network, is smooth, while the macaque brain, like the human brain, is folded to increase surface area and contain more neurons, but contains much fewer long-range connections. Although the actual numbers of neurons are different in different mammals’ brains, their connectivity networks contain statistically similar features, so-called architectural invariants. Toroczkai intends to continue the research by investigating these invariants and certain circuits in the brain and connecting their findings with information from experiments and data on diseases.

Researchers from France, Romania and the United States collaborated in the study. Co-authors of the report are Szabolcs Horvát, Răzvan Gămănuț, Mária Ercsey-Ravasz, Loïc Magrou, Bianca Gămănuț, David C. Van Essen, Andreas Burkhalter, Kenneth Knoblauch and Henry Kennedy. The study can be found online at .

Contact: Zoltán Toroczkai, 574-631-2618, toro@nd.edu

was trying hard to convince her own students — and her frustrated school-age daughter — of the benefits of modern education. It wasn’t working. So Blum, an anthropology professor who came to Notre Dame in 2000, joined her professional expertise with her personal experience to explore why so many people chafe at the classroom and curriculum.

The result is “I Love Learning; I Hate 91��Ƶ: An Anthropology of College,” published recently by Cornell University Press.

“I loved school,” Blum explains. “I didn’t understand why students didn’t like school. I figured if I could just somehow persuade them that this is for your own good, this is fascinating, this is important— if I could convince them of that, they would somehow love school. It turns out it didn’t work that way for a lot of people.”

Anthropology offers some insights into the mismatch between how people learn in general and how the modern industrial-model educational system tries to teach them.

“Human beings are natural learners,” Blum says. “We have evolved to learn. We have to learn how to live our lives because we don’t have enough instincts to guide us. Human society is dependent on learning that is transmitted from one generation to another. In most societies for most of human history, this has been done pretty effortlessly by being integrated with people in their society.”

The vital lessons about such things as food, sex, worship and technical know-how came through observation, trial and error and occasional direction — with immediate and sometimes fatal consequences for failure to learn. By contrast, the value of algebra seems remote.

“With school, what we’re saying to students is, ‘You have to learn this,’” she says. “‘You don’t know why, but we’re telling you, you need to do this.’”

In that environment, the obvious answer to “why learn?” can become: grades. “The motivation becomes extrinsic entirely,” says Blum, whose earlier book, “My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture” (Cornell 2009), dealt with the problem of plagiarism, possibly exacerbated by the implied incentive of high grades, good college and high-paying job.

“Each of these steps is so remote from anything meaningful for life, the only use many students can see for it is to get the grade,” she says. “I call that ‘the game of school.’ It might as well be a board game — how many points can I get? It’s not about learning anything beautiful or fascinating.

“You’re being trained to learn something not for its intrinsic merit but because somebody will reward you for it. If somebody has to reward you for it, obviously you’re doing it for them, not for yourself. Education has to be for the learner. In the classroom I try really hard, but it’s usually a challenge, especially at Notre Dame where our students have thrived in the system. They wouldn’t be at Notre Dame if they hadn’t mastered the game of school.”

The system fails to tap the considerable capabilities of young people who in other times and places have assumed significant roles and responsibilities in society, from work and warfare to domestic chores and child care.

“At one point, I began to realize how incredibly competent college students are,” Blum says.

“Our students show this when they run clubs or they do sports or they coach younger kids or they’re in band or they write music. In the classroom … it seems to be tragically wasteful to have all this ability submerged so they can passively say, ‘OK, tell me what to do.’ The system creates that.”

Alternatives to such a system — which likely contributes to cheating, depression and suicide among college students — are difficult to identify. Experiential learning, such as internships and service, embed students in society, but even that risks the extrinsic motive of resumé-padding.

“I don’t have an easy answer,” Blum says. “I don’t think everybody should follow the same curriculum. I would like to see a lot more hands-on learning, a lot more integration into the world outside of school where students see what they’re learning has consequences in the world.

“You have to begin with curiosity and a thirst for learning. Our schools are not set up that way at all. The challenge is to reintegrate learning with life.”

In an interview with John 
Warner in in late March, Blum was asked, if she had a magic lamp and a genie granted her three wishes, what she would change about education. Here is her answer:

“My first wish is that education would take place in the context of the actual world in which it will be used, rather than isolated from any need or application. Not deferred until someday, and not a game of school. Not even age-graded; this narrow age-grading of industrial schools impoverishes the amount of peer learning that is enabled in most societies where children learn from “near-peers.” Of course at community colleges and some universities this is less the case.

The second is that students would not enter universities and colleges straight from high school. (High schools are really problematic too, but this is Inside Higher Ed…) The conflation of growing up and academic learning makes both more problematic. It would make sense to have students set off and learn to be on their own, and then if they needed it, or wanted it, they could enroll in an academic institution. Many would find other ways of learning what they want or need, perhaps in training programs.

The third is that there would be no grades. In that way, the measure of success would have to come from elsewhere — from application, satisfaction, from how well the learning actually works. As another of my touchstones, Frank Smith, says in his wonderful “The Book of Learning and Forgetting,” most learning — aside from in school — is continuous, effortless, independent of rewards and punishments, and never forgotten. It is only in schools that learning becomes so difficult, dependent on rewards and punishments, and easily forgotten.

The changes can’t be done one at a time, because they are interconnected, and it would take real political and social will to challenge the dominant model of schooling that we have all naturalized. But there are so many experiments being done in so many different domains, that it seems clear we are ripe for a genuine revolution in learning. In that sense, perhaps students can celebrate their love of learning, which is, after all, part of the human endowment.”

Contact NDWorks at 574-631-0455 or email Carol Bradley, NDWorks editor, at bradley.7@nd.edu

A collaboration between the Office of the Registrar and the Alumni Association has heightened security and accelerated delivery of student transcripts and diplomas. The process, with applicants authenticated through Alumni’s myNotreDame portal to guard against identity theft, provides same-day service for electronic transcripts.

“For decades, alumni could only order transcripts by completing a paper form on our website,” says Registrar Chuck Hurley (’93, ’01, ’07). “It was not the most elegant solution. We were really interested in trying to collaboratively construct a secure application with our friends over at the Alumni Association and increasing services to alumni.”

The transcript service came online in late 
2013. Once the system was in place, the process for requesting diplomas was implemented last fall. Both systems automatically fill out the request form with most of the person’s information. For diplomas, the applicant can choose sheepskin (for graduates up to 2011) or paper, delivered by Federal Express.

“By collaborating on transcripts, that laid the foundation for integrating the Registrar system with the myNotreDame portal,” Hurley says. “All the pipes were essentially there. We just had to hook them up, so to speak. We do not receive that many diploma requests in comparison to transcripts.”

The office processes a few hundred diploma requests a year compared to some 50,000 transcript requests — about half from seniors applying to jobs or graduate schools, half from alumni who are changing jobs, returning to school or fulfilling requirements for visas, background checks and other processes that involve such documentation.

“Most people want the transcript sent from the registrar’s office to the receiver directly — to the grad school, to the law school, to the employers, to the person requesting the background check,” Hurley says. “They want to remove the opportunity for potentially tampering with the transcript. We have a secure electronic PDF transcript that we send to those recipients directly. In the majority of instances, electronic delivery and receipt have become the expectation for alumni, and we are pleased to provide such a service.”

Hurley initiated the move to a new transcript request process in 2012, partnering with Mark Welch (’04), Alumni’s director of information technology. Assistant Registrar Paul Ullrich (’08), App Integration Architect Brandon Rich, Alumni Association Interactive Specialist Paul Weikel and Senior Associate Registrar Amika Micou helped establish it. Commencement and Records Specialist Amy Jennings (’95) helped add the diploma service.

Contact NDWorks at 574-631-0455 or email Carol Bradley, NDWorks editor, at bradley.7@nd.edu

A team led by , the Frank M. Freimann Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, has discovered a rare brown dwarf, a faint object with properties in between that of a star and planet. In addition to taking its picture for the first time, Crepp’s team also determined the brown dwarf’s mass, age and composition — essential information that can be used to “benchmark” the study of these elusive objects.

Brown dwarfs are objects thought to have initially begun the process of forming a star but were somehow interrupted before they accumulated sufficient mass and core pressure to ignite nuclear fusion — the process by which the Sun ultimately releases energy in the form of light. An important developmental bridge between bona fide stars and exoplanets, brown dwarfs are very difficult to study because their faint glow fades with time due to a lack of sustained nuclear reactions. The discovery of the object, which goes by the name HD 4747 B, was facilitated by 18 years of precise spectral measurements of the star that indicated it hosts an orbiting companion.

“We suspect that these companions form at the same time and from the same material,” Crepp said. “As such, you can infer physical properties of the brown dwarf from its parent star, like age and composition. There are no other objects for which we know the mass, age and the metallicity simultaneously and also independent of the light that the companion gives off. We can therefore use HD 4747 B as a test-bed to study brown dwarfs, enabling precision astrophysics studies for a directly imaged substellar object.”

In the past, brown dwarf masses have been estimated using theoretical evolutionary models. Crepp’s team instead calculated the mass of HD 4747 B directly using observations of its orbit in an attempt to help refine brown dwarf models. It is expected that this work will in turn help to inform models for extrasolar planets. Based on a three-dimensional orbit analysis, HD 4747 B has a mass of about 60 Jupiters (a mass of 80 Jupiters is required to ignite nuclear fusion), well below the theoretical estimate of 72 Jupiters, although still within uncertainties. Forthcoming measurements acquired by Crepp’s team will provide yet more stringent tests of the models used by astronomers for brown dwarfs.

“This field is transitioning from ‘Hey, I found something neat’ to ‘Hey, I know the mass to within a few percent.’ Now, we can test theoretical models,” Crepp said.

The team detected the object using the Keck telescopes in Hawaii, and published their results in a .

The study has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. Co-authors of the study include Erica Gonzales and Eric Bechter, both in the at the University of Notre Dame; Benjamin Montet at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the California Institute of Technology; John Asher Johnson at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Danielle Piskorz at the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology; Andrew Howard at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii; and Howard Isaacson at the University of California Berkeley.

Contact: Justin Crepp, 574-631-4092, jcrepp@nd.edu

Green Dot, a national program that promotes bystander intervention in the fight against sexual assault and violence on campus, unites the array of other initiatives to address the problem in a way that builds a safe culture by enlisting everyone – staff, faculty and students – to do their part for the cause.

Increasing the display of the symbol – a custodian’s pin, a dining hall poster, a classroom mention or email signature line – fosters a sense of safety and support that attracts more participation in an upward spiral of community solidarity. Green Dot also uses red dots for choices that harm others by word or action and foster a culture of violence that Green Dot resists.

“Everybody has some part in it,” says Christine Caron Gebhardt, co-chair of the Committee on Sexual Assault Prevention (CSAP) and director of the Gender Relations Center. “Nobody has to do everything, but everybody has to do something. It helps people to realize that you have to send a cultural message as a campus that violence is not OK – that students, faculty and staff are supporting that.

“A custodian may not ever talk to a student about bystander intervention, but he or she can wear a green dot to help keep violence prevention visible to them. The message is that this is about all of us. The students begin to realize that there is a culture that is supporting them and encouraging them to look out for one another.”

The approach, created at the University of Kentucky in 2008, was launched at Notre Dame this fall, after CSAP decided it offered a needed common language and broad access.

Already, more than 40 people from a cross-section of the campus community, from ROTC, Student Activities, Campus Ministry and Residential Life to the Graduate 91��Ƶ, Counseling Center and libraries as well as colleges and centers such as Mendoza and Kroc, are engaged in spreading the word.

Twenty-one people took 40 hours of training in May to become Green Dot facilitators. Thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and staff have heard overview speeches, which can be tailored from 20 to 90 minutes to fit a group’s needs.

Some committee members visit campus units to introduce the program while others give overview speeches to those who ask, and a six-hour bystander training is also available. A social media campaign supports the outreach to students.

The program provides an umbrella for organizations that support victims, provide resources or focus on prevention or intervention.

“All of those are important, but we have to have a common language, a common vision, a way in which we can unite as a community,” Gebhardt says. “This binds it all together. It gives it a vision that people can be invited to do, and they can engage at the level they’re comfortable with.

“It’s an amazing way in which different people across campus are coming together. It’s Notre Dame’s message and not one department’s message.”

For more information,

Since astronomers discovered the Smith Cloud, a giant gas cloud plummeting toward the Milky Way, they have been unable to determine its composition, which would hold clues as to its origin. University of Notre Dame astrophysicist and his collaborators have now determined that , which means the cloud originated in the Milky Way’s outer edges and not in intergalactic space as some have speculated.

The Smith Cloud, discovered in the 1960s, is the only high-velocity cloud in the galaxy for which its orbit is well-determined, thanks in particular to studies with radio telescopes like the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The starless gas cloud is traveling at nearly 700,000 miles per hour and is expected to crash into the Milky Way disk in 30 million years. If it were visible, the Smith Cloud would have an apparent size of about 30 times the diameter of the moon from tip to tail.

Astronomers long thought that the Smith Cloud might be some starless galaxy or gas falling into the Milky Way from intergalactic space. If that were the case, the cloud composition would be mainly hydrogen and helium, not the heavier elements made by stars.

The team used the Hubble Space Telescope to determine for the first time the amount of heavier elements relative to hydrogen in the Smith Cloud. Using Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, the researchers observed the ultraviolet light from the bright cores of three active galaxies that reside billions of light-years beyond the cloud. The Smith Cloud absorbs some of its light in very small wavelength range, and by measuring the dip in brightness of these galaxies behind the cloud, the chemical makeup of the cloud can be estimated.

Nicolas Lehner

The researchers looked specifically for absorption from the sulfur element, which is a good gauge of how many heavier elements reside in the cloud. “By measuring sulfur, you can learn how enriched in sulfur atoms the cloud is compared to the Sun,” said team leader Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. The team then compared Hubble’s sulfur measurements to hydrogen measurements made by the GBT.

The astronomers found that the Smith Cloud is as rich in sulfur as the Milky Way’s outer disk, a region about 40,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center and about 15,000 light-years farther out than our sun and solar system are. This means that it was polluted by material from stars. This would not happen if it were pristine hydrogen from outside the galaxy. Instead, the cloud appears to have had an intimate relationship with the Milky Way, but was somehow ejected from the outer Milky Way disk about 70 million years ago and is now boomeranging back onto its disk.

Astronomers believe the Smith Cloud, has enough gas to generate two million suns when it eventually hits the Milky Way disk. “We have found several massive gas clouds in the Milky Way halo that may serve as future fuel for star formation in its disk, but, for most of them, their origins remain a mystery. The Smith Cloud is certainly one of the best examples that shows that recycled gas is an important mechanism in the evolution of galaxies,” said Lehner.

The study, titled “” was published this month in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Fox, Lehner and co-author Jay Lockman of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory discussed the discovery during the Space Telescope Science Institute on Thursday (Jan. 28). More information is available .

Contact: Nicolas Lehner, 574-631-5755, nlehner@nd.edu

This graphic depicts how the researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to view three distant galaxies through the Smith Cloud, a technique that helped them determine the makeup of the cloud

This graphic shows the location of the Smith Cloud as seen from Earth, if it were visible

Physicists around the world were puzzled recently when an unusual bump appeared in the signal of the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, causing them to wonder if it was a new particle previously unknown, or perhaps even two new particles. The collision cannot be explained by the Standard Model, the theoretical foundation of particle physics.

, assistant professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, said he and other theoretical physicists had heard about the results before they were released on Dec. 15, and groups began brainstorming, via Skype and other ways, about what the bump could mean if confirmed — a long shot, but an intriguing one. He and some collaborators from Cincinnati and New York submitted a pre-peer-review on Dec. 23.

This graph illustrates black dots that show events in experiment records compared along a red line that depicts the number expected through Standard Model processes. Two black dots don’t fall in with the red line. Adam Martin says the bump at 750 is “the most exciting.”

“It was so weird that people were forced to chuck their favorite theories and start from scratch,” Martin says. “That’s a fun area of particle physics. We’re looking into the unknown. Is it one new particle? Is it two new particles?”

The paper considers four possible explanations for the data, including the possibility that it could indicate a heavier version of the Higgs boson, also commonly known as “the God particle.” Further research could yield mundane explanations, Martin says, and the excitement could fade as it has many times in his career. Or it could open up new insights and call for new models.

“People are still cautiously optimistic,” he says. “Everybody knows that with more data, it could just go away. If it stays, it’s potentially really, really, really exciting.”

Authors of paper, “” are Martin, Wolfgang Altmannshofer, Jamison Galloway, Stefania Gori, Alexander L. Kagan and Jure Zupan.

Contact: Adam Martin, 574-631-6466

, an assistant professor in anthropology and Fellow of the (ILS), sees parallels between longstanding Latino migration to the United States and the current crisis of Middle Eastern and North African migration to Europe. He was part of a group of ILS faculty fellows who met with Italian scholars to discuss immigration at Notre Dame’s Global Gateway Center in Rome in October.

Chávez, a son of Mexican immigrants who grew up in Texas and earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, focuses on ways that transnational migrants use expressive culture to create senses of home and belonging in places where they may not be welcome. His work situates these expressions in relation to the global geopolitical and economic factors that impact migrants’ everyday life, often overlooked by those who label immigrants as criminals.

“That’s a really impoverished understanding of how transnational migration occurs,” says Chávez, whose book, “¡Huapango!: Mexican Music, Bordered Lives, and the Sounds of Crossing,” will be published by Duke University Press. “Most people that come here, particularly from Latin America, are labor migrants. Intensified labor migration from Latin America is directly linked to transnational economic integration between the United States and Latin America, and it’s nothing new. These circuits of migration, at times braced by active labor recruitment efforts on the part of the United States, are decades in the making, in some instances dating back to the 19th century.

“How do people claim home and belonging in places where they are unwanted? Part of the work, too, is to tell that story because, unfortunately, within the much broader set of political discourses surrounding immigration in this country, migrants are usually reduced to a sociological abstraction. However, these are real people, part of vibrant communities, and the challenge in my work is to demonstrate how they live out their lives under these extreme circumstances.”

The immigration context in the United States, while longer-term — for instance, parts of the United States were settled by Mexicans before Europeans — is in some cases equally as catastrophic, particularly considering escalating migrant deaths along the U.S.–Mexico border over the past 20 years. These realizations could help inform understanding of the European crisis, and reflection on the European situation could help Americans attain a comparative perspective with which to temper our immigration discussions, Chávez says.

“What’s happening in the Mediterranean is also about migrant incorporation, globalized economies, state violence and displacement,” he says. “There are parallels we can draw, certainly. Extending our vision outward could sharpen our lens for reading similar issues at home. And as a researcher, I ask how my scholarship and that of my colleagues working on similar issues can help people inside and outside the academy understand this issue as they reflect on what’s happening abroad.”

If a tumor is like a seed, the soil around it plays a significant role in its growth, a new study finds.

According to the study’s results, the microenvironment of a tumor cell has significant impact on cancer metastasis. This discovery by at the University of Notre Dame and a team at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has focused attention on fighting cancer in the tumor cell’s microenvironment.

Zhang, who earned an M.D. from the Peking University Health Science Center in China and a Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore, was recruited in 2007 to the Texas team that expected to see an increase of brain metastasis when PTEN, a known tumor-inhibiting protein, was artificially deleted in a tumor cell. Results were perplexing — sometimes there was even less metastasis in the brain — but the group unexpectedly discovered that PTEN was reduced in tumor cells when they arrive in brain tissue. That suggested critical importance of the tissue environment, what Zhang calls the “seed and soil” model: Tumors that grow in one kind of tissue won’t grow in another easily. They need to adapt to the new “soil.”

“By changing the soil, we potentially can suppress metastasis,” he says. “The microenvironment has tremendous impact on how the gene is expressed, what type of gene will be expressed. It’s definitely not due to genetic mutation. The point of this paper is we should not overlook the huge influence of the tissue architecture, the tissue environment, the tissue composition. It’s a dynamic process.”

Zhang’s laboratory now seeks to understand the mechanisms of the tissue-environment influence, opening the possibility that the environment could be altered in a way that fights cancer by preventing tumor cell growth. Zhang, the Nancy Dee Professor of Cancer Research, has published the breakthrough, “,” this month in Nature.

Contact: Siyuan Zhang, 574-631-4635, szhang8@nd.edu

Memphis native Leo McWilliams came to Notre Dame as an undergraduate in the late 1970s, earning a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1981, a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1982, and a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1985. That was before the Minority Engineering Program (MEP) started on campus in 1987, although he participated in the National Society of Black Engineers chapter.

McWilliams stayed in South Bend for a 16-year career at Honeywell International—and earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1993—before he returned to campus in 2001 as co-course coordinator and an instructor for first-year engineering students. He became director of MEP in 2009.

“I am glad that I chose to attend Notre Dame,” he says. “It was difficult and challenging work. I am proud to say that both of my bachelor’s degrees were earned with honors. It’s still a lot of work, but now, being on the other [faculty] side, we want students to be successful and we want students to want to graduate in engineering.”

McWilliams fosters that type of environment by working with admissions to help recruit engineering students and by advising the National Society of Black Engineers and the Hispanic Engineers and Scientists student chapters to help them engage in the University. A College of Engineering initiative also supports Native American applicants and students.

The goal of MEP is to help students of diverse backgrounds succeed and become integrated with the college. “We want students to participate in the life of the University, to be leaders at the University,” he says, combining their ethnic identity with their Notre Dame identity.

If students need help, McWilliams says, “We assist them in finding campus support through First Year of 91��Ƶ. If we hear of students who aren’t doing well, we try to connect them to resources. Engineering is one of the most, if not the most, difficult majors on campus. There’s not a lot of flexibility in it for students. It takes a lot of hard work.”

McWilliams gives presentations at admissions events such as spring visits and early-admission weekends. “We want to help students see Notre Dame as an option,” he says. “We’ve seen our enrollments increase over the past 10 years—both overall and minority.”

At the end of the fall 2014 semester, African-American and Hispanic undergraduate student enrollments were approximately 2.9 and 9.9 percent of the total undergraduate enrollment.

University of Notre Dame applied mathematician and environmental biotechnologist have developed a new computational model that effectively simulates the mechanical behavior of biofilms. Their model may lead to new strategies for studying a range of issues from blood clots to waste treatment systems.

“Blood clotting is a leading cause of death in the United States at this point,” said Alber, who is The Vincent J. Duncan Family Professor of Applied Mathematics in the and an adjunct professor of medicine at the Indiana University 91��Ƶ of Medicine, South Bend. “We can now use a very fast and biologically relevant computational model to study deforming structures of the clots growing in blood flow.”

The new model may be adapted to study clot formation in blood vessels, which can pose the risk of detaching and migrating to the lungs, a fatal event. Clots in healthy people usually stop growing and dissolve on their own. The clots, which result from genetic deficiencies, injury, inflammation or such diseases as cancer and diabetes, can grow uncontrollably or develop irregular shapes, threatening to detach under the pressure of blood flowing through the vessels.

Biofilms are found on almost any moist surface including veins, water pipes, ship hulls, contact lenses and hospital equipment. Biofilms are aggregates of bacterial cells embedded in self-produced extracellular polymer substances (EPS). Some biofilms are beneficial, treating wastewater and allowing the biodegradation of environmental contaminants. Others are harmful, fouling industrial equipment, corroding pipes and forming cavities in teeth. Biofilms are of particular concern in human infections, as bacteria in biofilms are much more resistant to antibiotics.

Since biofilms are often found in flowing systems, it is important to understand the effect of fluid flow on biofilms. Biofilms behave like viscoelastic materials. They first stretch elastically, then continue stretching and eventually break, like gum. Most past biofilm models were not able to capture this behavior or predict biofilm detachment. The new model allows for the simulation of this complex behavior. Simulations show that lower-viscosity biofilms are more likely to stretch and form streamers that can detach and clog nearby structures.

The new model can be used to devise new strategies to better manage biofilms. For example, it can be used to promote beneficial biofilms in waste treatment systems, or prevent biofouling layers on membrane filtration systems. It also can help improve dental plaque removal with water irrigators or develop methods to clean catheters or surgical equipment.

“In the past, scientists typically studied bacteria in isolation. In more recent years, they have recognized the importance of biofilm structures and discovered how they are built, but earlier models failed to accurately predict the impact of inhomogeneous multicomponent structure of the biofilm including EPS, on its deformation under pressure from the fluid flow,” said Alber, whose group developed the computational model in collaboration with the members of the Nerenberg laboratory.

“The new model simulations are important because they allow us to more realistically incorporate the viscoelastic properties of the biofilm,” said Nerenberg, whose laboratory focuses on environmental biofilm processes. “This research will lead to major advances in our understanding of biofilm accumulation and persistence in natural and engineered systems.”

Alber’s work was supported by National Institutes of Health and Nerenberg’s work was supported by the National Science Foundation. Their model was published Wednesday (March 25) in the .

Contact: Mark Alber, 574-631-8371, malber@nd.edu

Preliminary testing of more than 850 schoolchildren in the Haitian town of Saut-d’Eau has shown only one child to be infected with the parasite that causes lymphatic filariasis (LF), a milestone in efforts to eradicate the debilitating disease from the island. The results, involving children from 38 schools in the community of 35,000 people 50 miles north of Port-au-Prince, mean that the University of Notre Dame likely will achieve its goal of eliminating LF, also known as elephantiasis, from Haiti by 2020.

“The infection rate of the population in this area was estimated at more than 44 percent when the initial pre-treatment surveys were conducted some 13 years ago,” said , the lead researcher who founded the program nearly 20 years ago. Saut-d’Eau’s rates were among the highest in a nation where an estimated 10 percent were infected and the entire population of more than 10 million was at risk, the most in the Western Hemisphere. The recent results, by comparison, show an infection rate of barely 0.1 percent — more than 99 times lower than seen just over a decade ago.

Recently listed on the World Health Organization’s list of top neglected tropical diseases, LF is an attack on a person’s lymph system that leaves parts of the body grotesquely deformed. Tiny thread-worms colonize lymph vessels and prevent them from fighting bacterial and fungal infections, resulting in pain, fever, scarring, swelling, oozing abscesses and sometimes third-degree burns, usually in the legs, arms, scrotum, breast or part of the trunk. The disfigured person is unable to work and typically shunned by society.

Notre Dame and its collaborators in the fight against LF have conducted mass drug administration (MDA) across Haiti for three years to combat the mosquito-borne parasite as well as intestinal worms. World Health Organization protocols call for two more years of nationwide MDA. The work started earlier in Saut-d’Eau, where seven MDA cycles have been completed. Dr. Luccene Desir, the Haiti Program’s medical director, recently reported the preliminary results of the blood tests in Saut-d’Eau, which are more than 95 percent complete.

“This is a great milestone, and one to be very thankful for — not only that by God’s grace, this wretched disease is being eradicated from one of the more challenging environments in our hemisphere, but also for the faithful perseverance of Father Streit and our team, and for our donors, without whose respective vision and resources we would not be able to realize this success story,” said , managing director of the Haiti Program and assistant dean in the .

Contact: Earl Carter, 574-631-5404, Earl.Carter@nd.edu

Estimates of deaths from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in the United States range upwards of 19,000 annually. Around 1960, when Staphylococcus aureus developed resistance to first-generation penicillin, methicillin and other second-generation beta-lactam antibiotics were adopted to fight the illness. The modern variants of the bacterium have developed resistance to the four drugs now used to treat it.

A team of researchers led by and at the University of Notre Dame has discovered a promising new antibiotic, a vital weapon against disease as pathogens evolve to develop resistance to long-used drugs. The antibiotic proved effective in a mouse model infected with MRSA, a bacterium that emerged in hospitals in the 1960s and has spread to the larger population since the 1990s.

Mobashery and Chang adopted an unprecedented strategy in inhibiting the way the pathogen builds its cell wall. They conducted a rapid computational screening of 1.2 million drug-like compounds that might interfere with the process, then refined the filtering in stages until they identified 118 lead compounds to test for antibacterial activity against a range of species. The lead quinazolinone compound that emerged from these efforts underwent additional rounds of synthesis and evaluation, producing the antibiotic, which exhibited activity in a mouse infection model.

The researchers said the discovery has implications beyond MRSA as pathogens continue to evolve resistance to existing drugs. “Antibiotics are losing effectiveness,” Mobashery said. “This means that infections cannot be treated effectively. Some infections by pathogens kill as many as 50 percent of the patients. But the problem goes way beyond this. We depend on antibiotics to a degree that often might not be intuitively obvious. Without antibiotics, we could not perform many medical treatments. One could not have a hip surgery, or an athlete could not have a knee repaired.” Cancer treatment would be virtually nonexistent, and most elective surgeries and some essential ones could no longer be performed in the absence of antibiotics.

Mobashery said, “We assume that antibiotics will always be there, but this is not for certain.”

The breakthrough was published this week in the in an article titled, “Discovery of Antibiotic (E)-3-(3-Carboxyphenyl)-2-(4-cyanostyryl)quinazolin-4(3H)-one.”

Contact: Shahriar Mobashery, 574-631-2933, mobashery@nd.edu

and of the at the University of Notre Dame were among 63 recently announced Fellows of the for 2015. In its third year, the program honors society members who have made exceptional contributions in mathematics.

Professor Gursky was recognized for his contributions to conformal geometry, nonlinear partial differential equations and the geometry and topology of four-dimensional manifolds. “My research is in the area of mathematics known as geometric analysis,” he said. “Many physical phenomena, from the spread of fire to the motion of stars, can be described in purely geometric terms. But the equations one encounters, even when considering something as simple as the soap bubbles made by children at play, are incredibly complex. These nonlinear partial differential equations, as they are called, are ubiquitous in mathematical applications to the physical, social and even life sciences. Remarkably, the same equations that describe soap bubbles also arise when studying black holes in cosmology.”

Grove, the Rev. Howard J. Kenna, C.S.C., Professor of Mathematics, was recognized for contributions to Riemannian geometry. His research focuses on modern differential geometry including topics from closed and isometry invariant geodesics to the construction of important new examples of manifolds with positive curvature. His findings on the nonlinear center of mass and critical point theory for distance functions have made him an international leader in the field. His “Grove Program,” which is used to classify positively curved manifolds by their symmetry group, has become a flourishing research area.

The American Mathematical Society, founded in 1888, launched the Fellows program to expand the number of recognized mathematicians by their peers as distinguished for their contributions to the profession. Notre Dame professors William G. Dwyer, Julia F. Knight, Anand Pillay, Mei-Chi Shaw, Andrew J. Sommese and Nancy K. Stanton were selected as members of the society’s inaugural class of Fellows.

, the Freimann Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, has published a Thursday (Nov. 13) in the journal that details how next-generation planet-hunting instruments will benefit from advancements in infrared technology that change how astronomers capture starlight.

At infrared wavelengths, it becomes possible to sharpen the blurry images normally received by large ground-based telescopes. This influences the design of astronomical instruments. By correcting for Earth’s turbulent atmosphere, researchers can dramatically enhance the sensitivity of techniques that reveal the periodic pull of a planet’s gravity on its parent star.

“For 20 years, we’ve been doing the same thing at visible wavelengths,” Crepp said. “If you move out to the infrared, you can access different types of stars, and you can also build different types of instruments. There are a number of interesting physical effects. One of them is that you can use adaptive optics to correct for distortions caused by Earth’s atmosphere. Using crisp images completely modifies the design of your instrument.”

Adaptive optics act like a pair of glasses for telescopes to improve image quality: “The telescope collects the light; the glasses correct the light,” Crepp said. To find the faint signal of an extrasolar planet, astronomical instruments must also be located far from the telescope’s environment to avoid vibrations, and temperature and pressure changes. “We use optical fibers to accomplish this, much like the telecommunications industry delivers Internet service to your home.” However, most fibers suffer from an internal source of noise, which is called “modal noise,” resulting from the light interfering with itself. Using adaptive optics, scientists can instead direct the light into single-mode fibers, tiny wave-guides whose diameters are smaller than the width of a human hair, to provide a pure signal that avoids modal noise altogether.

“No one has done that until now,” Crepp said. “One of the biggest noise sources for finding planets has been eliminated entirely. When you do that, you can find smaller planets like terrestrial worlds located in the habitable zone.”

The technology means that scientists will be able to calculate the mass and density of planets, comparing their properties to Earth to assess whether they are rocky or have a substantive atmosphere. “Whenever we make instruments that work at other wavelengths, we make discoveries,” Crepp said.

These very same technologies will be used by the , a planet-finding instrument being built in Crepp’s laboratory in the at Notre Dame. The iLocater spectrograph will be installed at the in 2017.

Contact: Justin Crepp, 574-631-4092