UDRF supports innovative research

In 1998, the University of Delaware Research Foundation (UDRF) awarded $406,390 in grants to support early-stage researchers, whose projects ranged from a fundamental study of cataracts to new technologies for monitoring fetal brain activity.

Fourteen UDRF projects last year set the stage for more disease-resistant crop plants; new methods for transmitting data electronically; strategies for fighting poultry viruses, and a host of other innovations. Someday, UDRF-sponsored research might even help pharmaceutical companies develop new medicines for fighting certain types of cancer.

The foundation's 1998 researchers were honored Jan. 23 during an annual luncheon, hosted by University President David P. Roselle, UDRF President Richard E. Emmert and the UDRF Board of Trustees.

Three projects were described during the luncheon by researchers Kenneth E. Barner, electrical and computer engineering; Melinda K. Duncan, biological sciences; and Allan D. Shapiro, plant and soil sciences.

In addition, five poster presentations were offered by Ashfaq A. Khokhar, electrical and computer engineering; Mary Ann McLane, medical technology; Colin Phillips, linguistics; Carl J. Schmidt, animal and food sciences; and Xiang-Gen Xia, electrical and computer engineering.

Brief summaries of the eight presentations are included here, in alphabetical order, by name.

MONITORING BRAIN ACTIVITY

An expert on the use of computer-based signal and image processing, Ken Barner's latest project should result in a non-invasive method for tracking the brain activity of human fetuses in the womb. "Doctors currently can check on a developing baby's movement and heart rate," explained Barner, who is collaborating with Michael Goodman, M.D., of the A.I. duPont Hospital for Children. "But, right now there is no practical way to monitor fetal brain activity." The new system would analyze data from arrays of sensors placed across the mother's abdomen, he said. Computer software, based on a UD "filtering algorithm," would analyze the resulting data to identify brain activity signals, which may be dominated by, or corrupted by, the maternal heart rate. "This signal processing research is designed to extract the fetal brain-activity signals from the transabdominal recording, which contains considerable interference," Barner noted. After a modeling phase of the project has been completed, he said, researchers will begin working with expectant mothers to gather clinical data.

CATARACT RESEARCH

Melinda Duncan is investigating the function of proteins needed to help the human lens focus an image onto the retina. In studies of birds and mammals, she explained, researchers have identified a family of six genes that encode abundant proteins found in the lens. When one of these genes contains a mutation, the proteins made by the other five genes "aggregate" or clump together, forming cataracts that cloud the lens, in a process akin to cooking an egg white, Duncan reported. "Studies of the function of these proteins in the lens can help us understand the molecular interactions responsible for normal lens transparency, and how alterations in or damage to these proteins can lead to cataracts," she added.

PRESERVING MULTIMEDIA DATA

Gone are the days when computer users marveled at being able to ship text-only files from one location to another. Today's web users are more likely to send multimedia data, including full-motion video clips, sound and graphics, as well as text. As all that information strains network bandwidth capacity, significant amounts of data are undergoing sequential or "bursty" losses, explained Ashfaq Khokhar. A new strategy-based on information "interleaving" and protection from errors-can dramatically enhance the quality of images and video, despite losses. The key to this scheme, Khokar said, is that segments of correlated information (or similar neighboring data) can be transmitted far apart from each other. If errors occur, one or the other part can still reach the receiving station. This process, called "decorrelation of information" or "interleaving," allows researchers to predict the missing data, based on the received data, since the parts are highly correlated, said Khokar's doctoral student, Rogelio Hasimoto-Beltran. "If we are transmitting an image of a person, for example, and some information on the cheek is lost due to network errors," Hasimoto-Beltran said, "we can fill up this gap by taking information from its surroundings because we know they have the same characteristics, such as texture, color and so forth. This makes the network errors imperceptible to the human eye." The interleaved data is then "packetized" into two different groups featuring a high level of correlation, he added. In the event of losses or errors within one of the groups, the second correlated group is protected using a "Variable and Selective-Forward Error Protection" process (VS-FEC), which adds redundant information, taking into account the missing packets in the first group. "We protect only the counterpart of the missing packets, or selected information, contained in the second group," Khokar explained. "By using VS-FEC, we don't overprotect the transmitted data, and we don't increase the network load as much as the more conventional, constant-forward error protection approach. This further results in lower network error rate."

VIPER-VENOM PROTEINS

Mary Ann McLane studies proteins found in the venom of viper-type snakes, which may someday suggest new medicines for blocking the spread of cancerous tumors. When a viper bites, McLane explained, venom proteins known as "disintegrins" bind with receptors on cell surfaces (integrins), so that the sticky protein, fibrinogen, can't latch onto platelets. With collaborators from Temple University and the University of Western Ontario, McLane learned in 1995 that a disintegrin from Macmahon's Viper, eristostatin, prevents the spread or metastasis of tumors in mice. In a petri dish, eristostatin also seems to block the metastasis of human melanoma cells, said McLane, who has been working with departmental colleague Mary E. Miele. The researchers are comparing eristostatin with another disintegrin, echistatin, to pinpoint its binding site and learn more about its functions.

BIOMAGNETIC SPEECH PROCESSING STUDIES

Understanding spoken language involves many rapid, complex brain processes. Listeners must map continuous sound waveforms, extracting "phonemes" (such as k, t and ae), and combining them to form words (such as "cat"). To learn how the brain processes different sounds, Colin Phillips measures the magnetic fields generated by neural activity. The technique, known as magnetoencelphalography, or MEG, "tracks the brain mechanisms involved in mapping continuous soundwaves onto discrete phonemes," Phillips said. Such research promises to provide new insights into how the human brain supports higher mental functions, and may help researchers understand how older people with partial hearing loss retain surprisingly good spoken language understanding, he explained.

INVESTIGATING POULTRY DISEASE

The Marek's Disease Virus (MDV), a form of herpes, can be deadly to chickens and, therefore, results in major losses for Delmarva's large poultry industry. Carl Schmidt's UDRF project may help reveal exactly how the viral proteins spread from cell to cell, eventually causing malignant tumors. Such information ultimately could suggest new strategies for preventing or treating MDV, he said. To track the movement of viral proteins, Schmidt attached MDV gene products to a green, fluorescent (glowing) protein known as GFP. When excited by laser light, this protein emits a green light, which can be observed in the laboratory, Schmidt explained. In this way, Schmidt said he plans to study the behavior of four different MDV proteins. One of them seems to regulate the formation of tumors after a chicken has been infected with the virus.

DISEASE-RESISTANT PLANTS

Working with undergraduate researchers Christina Williams and Katy Guhl, as well as UD technician Cindy Boettger, Allan Shapiro said his long-term goal is to "engineer plants capable of resisting a broad spectrum of pathogens." On Dec. 12, 1997, Shapiro and collaborators at the University of California-Berkeley reported in the journal, Science, that they had discovered a plant gene known as NDR1, which seems to coordinate the disease-resistance response within a model plant system, Arabidopsis thaliana, a common mustard weed. To identify NDR1, Shapiro used mutant plants that did not have the gene. Now, his research team is using the mutants as a tool to identify other genes involved in a plant's resistance to bacteria and fungi. An approach called "suppressor screens" allows the researchers to "look for the rare plant that is disease- resistant, or able to kill off selected cells to protect other cells from an invading pathogen," Shapiro explained. "We also look for plants that can undergo pathogen-induced gene activation."

HIGH-SPEED COMMUNICATIONS

To improve next-generation communications systems-from telephones and computers to wireless devices for cars, Xiang-Gen Xia is studying a problem called "intersymbol interference mitigation." When data is transmitted at high speeds, he explained, sound and image quality can be compromised "if the current and past signal values overlap," in an echo-like fashion. Xia has proposed a new approach to coding, based on an algorithm that puts the signals in sync, thereby optimizing communications quality. The research should prove especially important for wireless communications devices, he said. Someday, he noted, it may be possible to transmit text, speech and images from an automobile. As transmission speeds increase to accommodate all that data, signal quality must improve, too. "The final goal to transmit anything, anywhere, anytime!" Xia said.

Other researchers whose work was funded by the UDRF in 1998 included Daniel K. Cha, civil and environmental engineering; Pamela T. Plotkin, entomology and applied ecology; Dennis Prather, electrical and computer engineering; Mark VanGessel and Yan Jin, both plant and soil sciences; and Qing Xiang, mathematical sciences.

--Ginger Pinholster