Feb. 1, 2011

Science educator Judy Scotchmoor

Watch archived webcasts Shifting the Paradigm in Our Teaching: Proving Dobzhansky Correct How Science Works: Investigating the Real Process of Science

DAVIS--Judy Scotchmoor, a national award-winning science educator who helps classroom teachers and others understand the nature and processes of science and its value to society, will present two lectures on Friday, Feb. 11 in 122 Briggs Hall, UC Davis.

Her first talk, from 12:15 to 1 p.m., is on “Shifting the Paradigm in Our Teaching: Proving Dobzhansky Correct.” She will cover results from an award-winning National Science Foundation (NSF)-initiative on teaching evolution. T. G., Dobzhansky (1900-1975), was a prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist.

Her second talk, from 3:30 to 5 p.m., is titled “How Science Works: Investigating the Real Process of Science.” She will offer reasons and methods for an innovative way of communicating the scientific process. Her topic is applicable to all sciences.

The UC Davis Department of Entomology/Bohart Museum of Enotmology will videotape both lectures and post online.

Scotchmoor taught math and science for 25 years to middle-school students before joining the UC Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, as assistant director in charge of education and public outreach. Her primary role at the museum is using paleontology and technology as vehicles for improving science education in the classroom.

Scotchmoor manages the NSF-funded “Understanding Evolution and Understanding Science" websites, which recently won the prestigious Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE).

Her UC Davis lectures are funded by the Undergraduate Instructional Improvement Program and co-sponsored by the Bohart Museum of Entomology and the Department of Entomology; Department of Evolution and Ecology; Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology and the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology; Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning; and REACH IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship.)

Scotchmoor received her bachelor of science degree in biological sciences from UC Berkeley in 1966 and her secondary teaching credential from Hayward State University the following year.

She serves as the project coordinator of four NSF-funded programs — Understanding Evolution, Understanding Science, the Coalition on the Public Understanding Science, and The Paleontology Portal — and  as the educational advisor to the GK12 project of the Berkeley Natural History Museums.

Scotchmoor is editor and co-author of three resource books for teachers, Learning from the Fossil Record, Evolution: Investigating the Evidence, and Dinosaurs: the Science behind the Stories.” She received the 2006 Education Award presented by the American Institute of Biological Sciences and the 2004 Joseph T. Gregory Award for outstanding service to the welfare of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

More information on the lecture is available from Tabatha Yang at tabyang@ucdavis.edu or (530) 754-9464. Yang serves as education and outreach coordinator, Bohart Museum of Entomology, Department of Entomology; and the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology.

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--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894

March 2, 2011

Bonnie Blaimer has received an NSF grant to study Crematogaster ants in Madagascar.

DAVIS--Bonnie Blaimer, a graduate student in the Phil Ward lab, has just received a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant for $13,794 to help support her doctoral dissertation research on the systematic and evolution of Malagasy ants of the genus Crematogaster in Madagascar.

The grant is titled "Aligning Ant Diversity with Conservation Priorities in a Biodiversity Hotspot: Systematics and Biogeography of the Arboreal Ant Crematogaster in Madagascar."

Crematogaster ants are a species-rich, world-wide occurring group of ants with a notoriously difficult species-level taxonomy, Blaimer said. 

“I will mostly use the NSF funds to perform DNA sequencing of the Malagasy species and also a variety of species from other biogeographical regions,” Blaimer said.

Crematogaster

“This enables me to investigate and revise species boundaries within Crematogaster in Madagascar, and to establish a framework phylogeny for the genus upon which I can explore the evolution of the genus in the Malagasy region. A smaller portion of the grant will further allow me to travel to Madagascar to do some outreach and education work.”

Blaimer, who holds a master’s degree in Forest Sciences from Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany, first became interested in the Crematogaster ants while doing field work as an intern for the CalAcademy of Sciences in Madagascar.

“This genus fascinates me particularly because of its species diversity and dominance in tropical forests, and its intriguing natural history,” she said. “Most species are canopy-nesting in dead twigs and branches or under bark, or they make elaborate independent carton-nest from wood fibers. Some species are suspected to be temporary social parasites, and many tend scale insects or mealybugs. In short, many different aspects remain still open for investigation beyond my dissertation work!”

Blaimer is listed as the co-principal investigator of the grant, and Ward, her major professor, serves as the principal investigator.

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--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894

March 8, 2011

Linepithema humile

DAVIS--“The Ants Go Marching On” will set the theme for the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, March 13 at 1124 Academic Surge, California Drive, UC Davis campus. Admission is free.

Ant specialist and doctoral candidate Bonnie Blaimer of the Phil Ward lab will engage the visitors with a slide show of a collecting trip to Madagascar. She and fellow doctoral candidate Marek Borowiec, also of the Phil Ward lab, will be discussing characteristics of ants and answering questions.

The Bohart is home to more than seven million insects.

“Hymenoptera (bees, ants and wasps) form about 30 percent of the Bohart collection,” said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.

The Bohart Museum also has a live “petting zoo” that includes Madagascar hissing cockroaches and walking sticks; and a gift shop where visitors can purchase such items as t-shirts, sweat shirts, posters, jewelry and insect candy.

Bonnie Blaimer

Marek Borowiec

To accommodate families and other area residents who are unable to attend the regular visiting hours, Mondays through Thursdays, the Bohart began offering special weekend hours last year.

The first weekend opening of the year was Jan. 23 and featured the theme, "Butterflies."

Upcoming events include:

Saturday, April 16: “UC Davis Picnic Day,” all day

Saturday, May 7: “Moth-ers Day,” featuring moths, 1 to 4 p.m.

Sunday, June 5: “June Bugs,” 1 to 4 p.m.

The R. M. Bohart Museum of Entomology, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, was founded in 1946 by noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart. Dedicated to teaching, research and service, it houses the seventh largest insect collection in North America.

The museum holds specimens collected worldwide and is the home of the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity of California’s deserts, mountains, coast and great central valley.

The museum’s regular hours are from 8:30 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday.  It is closed on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free.

More information is available on the Bohart website or by contacting Tabatha Yang at tabyang@ucdavis.edu or (530) 752-9464. Due to limited space, group tours will not be booked during the weekend hours.

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--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894

March 8, 2011

Bora Inceoglu of the Bruce Hammock lab led the research. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

DAVIS—Researchers at the University of California, Davis have discovered a “cross-talk” between two major biological pathways that involve pain—research that may pave the way to new approaches to understanding and controlling chronic pain.

And they did it with something old, new, practical and basic.

The newly published research reveals that analgesia mediated by inhibitors of the enzyme, soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH), is dependent on a pain-mediating second messenger known as cyclic adenosinemonophosphate  or cAMP.

“The interaction of many complex biological pathways is essential for the development of persistent pain, whether inflammatory or neuropathic,”  said lead researcher Bora Inceoglou of the Bruce Hammock lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology.   Inflammatory pain includes arthritis, and neuropathic pain is linked to diabetes and other diseases, and trauma.

 “Pain is a major health concern and painkiller medications or analgesics do different things,” Inceoglu said. Painkilling medications may target the pain, but have side effects or lack a broad-spectrum efficacy.

Bruce Hammock, distinguished professor of entomology. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The collaborative study, the work of scientists in the UC Davis Department of Entomology, UC Davis Cancer Research Center, UC Davis School of Medicine and the School of Veterinary Medicine, is published in the March 7th early edition of  the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  

An estimated 9 percent or 30 million adults in the United States suffer from moderate to severe non-cancer related chronic pain, according to the American Pain Society.  

The messenger, cAMP, relays responses and mediates the action of many biological processes, including inflammation, and cardiac and smooth muscle contraction.

The research, done on rodents and funded by the National Institutes of Health, confirmed earlier studies at UC Davis that showed stabilization of natural epoxy-fatty acids (EFAs) through inhibition of sEH reduces pain. “However, in the absence of an underlying painful state, inhibition of sEH is ineffective,” Inceoglu said.

"This permits normal pain responses that serve to protect us from tissue damage to remain intact, while alleviating debilitating pain,” said co-author and pain neurobiologist Steven Jinks, associate professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine, UC Davis School of Medicine.

“Another advantage of inhibition of sEH is that it does not impair motor skills in several tests, unlike other analgesics,” said graduate student researcher Karen Wagner of the Hammock lab research team.

Nils Helge Schebb, postdoctoral researcher.

While conducting the research, the scientists found something they weren't looking for. "To our surprise, we found that cAMP interacts with natural EFAs and regulates the analgesic or pain activity of sEH inhibitors," Inceoglu said.

“This demonstrates the power of using advance instrumental analysis techniques to better understand the molecular mechanism of biological effects," said Nils Helge Schebb, a postdoctoral researcher from the Hammock group who worked on the quantification of the oxylipins in this project. Schebb leaves UC Davis this week to accept a position as junior research group leader at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, Germany.

 “This is like something old, something new, something practical and something basic, too,” said Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Cancer Research Center.   

Old? The research, Hammock said, involves “an old class of drugs known as phosphodiesterase inhibitors that likely exert part of their action by increasing the levels of natural compounds in the body called EETs (epoxyeicosatrienoic acids).   Rolipram, Viagra, Theophyline, and Ibudilast are all in the phosphodiesterase-inhibitor  class.”

New? The Hammock lab previously reported that a new class of experimental drugs called soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors (sEHIs) stabilize and also increase EETs.

Practical and basic? “A practical application of this work demonstrated by Bora Inceoglu is that the combination of this old and new class of drugs are highly effective in controlling pain,” said Hammock, senior author of the paper. “Of course, the basic aspects of the work include new insights in how EETs, cyclic nucleotides and the enzymes that degrade them interact to regulate a variety of biological functions.”

Both the old and the new class of drugs are based on inhibiting enzymes which degrade potent natural chemical mediators.

Steven Jinks, associate professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine.

Inceoglu, Hammock, Jinks, Schebb, and Wagner co-authored the paper with veterinary anesthesiologist Robert Brosnan, associate professor of surgical and radiological sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine; and Christophe Morisseau, Arzu Ulu, Christine Hegedus and Tristan Rose, Department of Entomology and the Cancer Research Center.

The Jinks lab played a major role in the earlier UC Davis studies that showed a stabilization of EFAs through inhibition of sHE reduces pain.  The Hammock lab works closely with the Jinks lab.

The pain discovery would not have been possible without sophisticated mass spectrometry equipment which allowed the analysis of the vanishingly small amounts of natural compounds that control pain and inflammation in the body, the researchers agreed. 

Hammock described the potential practical applications of these fundamental discoveries as  exciting.  “We all have both suffered pain and have friends with unrelenting chronic pain problems,” he said. “The possibility of combining members of an old class of drugs with our new sEHI and actually providing relief for pain is very exciting.”   

From his time as a graduate student, Hammock and his laboratory have focused on xenobiotic metabolism and largely on esterases and epoxide hydrolases. Current projects involve examining the role of esterases in insecticide resistance and human metabolism of pyrethroids. His laboratory is exploiting inhibitors of epoxide hydrolases as drugs to treat diabetes, inflammation, ischemia, and cardiovascular disease.

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--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894