Researchers Find a Friend in Zorka

Old Dominion University’s first teraflop compute cluster, which has been given the name Zorka, was installed in the fall of 2008 on the fourth floor of the E.V. Williams Engineering and Computational Sciences Building and is already winning rave reviews from the university’s research community.

A teraflop equals 1,000 gigaflops, and this is a measure of performance that Zorka can attain when running even at partial capacity. (An average desktop system peaks near 5 gigaflops.) The new, Dell high-performance cluster can handle the data crunching required for complex studies and simulations in fields such as aerospace engineering, mathematics, oceanography and bioelectric engineering.

Michael Sachon, assistant director for research computing in ODU’s Office of Computing and Communications Services (OCCS), said the Zorka cluster is rated at 1.5 teraflops and offers the nifty combination of high-performance computing and fast disk space within the cluster to allow applications to run at very high speed and with low latency. This setup solves a problem akin to traffic congestion that researchers have encountered with the university’s older equipment. Sachon refers to it as a “bottleneck” in the link between the compute processors and the external disk space that, during peak usage, was like the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel on a Friday afternoon in the summer.

Michael Dinniman, a research scientist with ODU’s Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography, is an example of a satisfied customer. He moved quickly to begin using Zorka in his computer modeling to simulate the ocean circulation and sea-ice dynamics on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. His simulations, which will provide valuable information about effects of climate change, are running on Zorka more than four times faster than they did on the university’s aging Orion cluster.

Other than Sachon, the university’s Research Computing Group includes Ruben Igloria, who focuses on high-performance computing applications and is the lead systems administrator; Mahantesh Halappanavar, who focuses on parallel programming and grid computing; Amit Kumar, who focuses on parallel applications and cluster and research storage; and George McLeod, a systems engineer for Geographic Information Systems.

Case Studies at Heart of Special Education Text

It was a daunting task to combine 39 years of professional experience and the first eight years of a child’s life into one textbook, but Old Dominion University professor Sharon Raver-Lampman said she loves a challenge. Her new textbook, “Early Childhood Special Education—0 to 8 Years: Strategies for Positive Outcomes” (Merrill/Pearson), does just that, providing strategies for intervention and aiding the development of children with special needs.

Applying her professional knowledge and experience to 12 case studies of special education students, Raver-Lampman presents a great amount of information in a manageable and interesting way. “Before I came to ODU I taught in public schools for 17 years, so I have a very practical view about what teachers in training need,” said Raver-Lampman.

Applied strategies, family case studies and end-of-chapter application exercises are some of the features she built into her textbook to aid these future teachers. It is designed to be an introduction and strategies text for preservice teachers who want to teach children with special needs from birth to age 8.

For two years, the book was all Raver-Lampman thought about. “I actually turned it in early, which very few ever do,” she said. “In the summers, I’d do nothing but get up, write and go to bed.”

She characterizes her book as more “applied” than many others that focus primarily on theory. “I saw what was out there and thought I could do better,” she said.

Currently, nearly 40 universities are reviewing the book for possible adoption. “I’m optimistic. I’m hoping it will be well received. My last book, ‘Intervention Strategies for Infants and Toddlers with Special Needs: A Team Approach,’ was used by Eastern Virginia Medical School, Johns Hopkins University and Vanderbilt University, and so I think this book has a good chance of adoption,” she said.

—Bryoney Hayes

Researcher on Trail of Ancient DNA

Old Dominion University faculty member Alex Greenwood had a busy fall of 2008 because of his research into the disease-related extinction of island-bound rats 100 years ago and related research into the woolly mammoth, which became extinct 10,000 years ago.

Greenwood, who is widely known for his research with ancient DNA, was a source for an Associated Press story distributed internationally in November. The story noted his expertise in exploiting DNA retrieved from preserved bits of long dead animals and quoted his assessment of the recent work of other scientists to decipher much of the genetic code of the woolly mammoth.

“An amazing achievement” is how the ODU researcher described the work of the other scientists, who studied DNA from mammoth hair that was found frozen in the Siberian permafrost.

News media were quick to seize on the possibility that the deciphering of the full genetic code a decade or so from now could result in the recreation of a woolly mammoth. Greenwood received inquiries from several reporters seeking his evaluation of the report. After he talked with the AP reporter, he also did an interview to be broadcast on a television station in Washington, D.C.

Earlier in November, Greenwood was featured in another widely distributed AP story about his research, again utilizing ancient DNA techniques, that shows disease was responsible for the extinction of rats native to Christmas Island in the late 19th and early 20th century. The findings were the first to demonstrate that disease can lead to the extinction of a mammal. The study of Christmas Island rats also involved Greenwood’s colleagues in ODU’s Department of Biological Sciences, Kelly Wyatt, a graduate researcher, and Wayne Hynes, interim chair and professor of biological sciences, as well as researchers at the American Museum of Natural History.

Exhibition of New Curator Mines Self-Taught Art Collection

Ramona Austin, who became curator of Old Dominion University’s Gordon Galleries in 2008, got right to work by producing the exhibition “In Depth: the Hand of the Self-Taught Artist” from the collection donated by Baron and Ellin Gordon, for whom the facility is named. “In Depth” will run through Sept. 21, 2009.

The exhibition launched with a reception at which members of the ODU art faculty discussed artists in the collection and their place in contemporary art, giving scope to the collectors’ vision that has shaped this unique body of contemporary self-taught art. Housed in a dedicated gallery, the Gordon Self-Taught Art Collection is a donation of approximately 350 works in all media by many of America’s leading self-taught artists.

Austin is responsible for the accessioning, care and interpretation of the self-taught collection; planning and installing exhibitions in each of the facility’s galleries; and overseeing the documentation and registration of the university’s general art collection of more than 300 works dispersed around the campus.

The curator has considerable curatorial and directorial experience. She has been the director of the Hampton University Museum and Archives; the Margaret McDermott Associate Curator for African Art at the Dallas Museum of Art; and associate curator for African art, Department of Africa, Oceania and Americas, at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is finishing her dissertation for a doctorate in the history of art at Yale University.

The Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries are located at 4509 Monarch Way in the University Village. The galleries are open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Parking is available in the 45th Street garage.

Tiny Protists May Hold Clues About Climate Change

Old Dominion University oceanographer Alex Bochdansky has received a $540,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a three-year study of microbes that live in the deep oceans and how these tiny creatures may play a role in the oceans’ reaction to climate change.

Eukaryotic microbes—also called protists—of the deep-sea water column, most of which are flagellates that feed on bacteria, are important to the study of the carbon cycle. But they have resisted study because they live so far below the surface, and because their activities and very existence may be severely impacted if they are hauled up three or four miles onto a research vessel.

To counter this, Bochdansky and his colleagues at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research have designed and built a pressure culture system that allows them to incubate deep-sea samples and then monitor the microbes at the same pressure and temperature that they encounter in nature. Bochdansky said a seed grant of $50,000 from NSF in 2005 enabled the development of the culture chambers and helped in the formulation of the hypotheses that will be tested in the three-year study.

“Our main hypothesis is that the abundance and taxonomic composition of protists serve as sensitive indicators of the strength and type—particulate or dissolved—of input of organic carbon into the deep ocean system,” said the ODU assistant professor of ocean, earth and atmospheric sciences.

The oceans sequester large amounts of carbon that otherwise might be the atmospheric carbon dioxide that is a major constituent of greenhouse gases. For example, phytoplankton and other organisms on the ocean surface absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. Death and decay of this organic growth results in carbon sinking into the deep ocean. Decay is facilitated by bacteria, and the bacteria may be consumed by protists. So Bochdansky and his colleagues at the Netherlands institute believe that the distribution and ecology of the protists serve as indicators of how much carbon is present in these vast, dark zones.

Whittecar Takes Leading Role in Wetlands Project

When a permit is issued to allow wetlands to be filled for a construction project, the developer is often required by the permitting agency, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to create elsewhere a comparable tract called mitigation wetlands. But questions exist about the efficacy of these tradeoffs, and Old Dominion University geologist Richard Whittecar has received a grant to examine reasons why mitigation wetlands sometimes produce disappointing results.

Whittecar is part of a team, which also includes researchers from Virginia Tech, that received $600,000 from the Peterson Family Foundation for a 36-month study on behalf of the Piedmont Wetlands Research Program.

The researchers will assess existing procedures and models for their effectiveness in predicting groundwater and surface water flows in mitigation wetland sites typically constructed in the Virginia Piedmont. The models that prove to be most effective will be packaged as modules and incorporated into a software package that will be easy for wetland developers to use. In addition, the researchers will develop training materials and offer workshops to teach others to use the new software product.

Center for Accelerator Science Is Launched

Old Dominion University has established a Center for Accelerator Science that will tap into the rapid growth of particle accelerator technologies for atom-smashing experiments, as well as for materials processing, medical imaging and radiation therapies against cancer. The center will receive personnel and funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News.

As its central mission, the center will train the next generation of accelerator and light-source scientists and engineers. The center also promises to bring more research funding to ODU and more high-technology economic development to southeastern Virginia, according to university officials.

Chris Platsoucas, the dean of the ODU College of Sciences, noted that the Jefferson Lab will participate in the design of a so-called “4th generation light source” facility that is expected to be built by the DOE somewhere in the Southeast. This facility, which is projected to cost upwards of $1 billion and produce the most brilliant light yet for laser and other applications in research, industry and medicine, will employ technologies already in use at Jefferson Lab.

Two years ago, ODU launched an accelerator physics instructional program with the help of Jefferson Lab, which agreed to provide three of its research scientists to serve as part-time members of the ODU faculty. The new center will strengthen ODU’s position as one of just a handful of universities—Cornell, Michigan State and Stanford are among them—that offer graduate programs in accelerator physics. Louisiana State University is the only other Southern institution that has such a program.

Andrew Hutton, Jefferson Lab’s associate director for the Accelerator Division, said the center will foster new research and enhance educational opportunities at ODU. “We have been collaborating with ODU for many years, and the center will enable even closer interactions,” Hutton said. “Jefferson Lab is committed to increasing educational opportunities in accelerator science and technology, and the new center will provide a way for students at ODU to enter this exciting field.”

The university’s Board of Visitors approved a resolution Sept. 19, 2008, creating the center effective Oct. 1.

Core members of the new center will include three full-time faculty members in the ODU Department of Physics: Professor Lepsha Vuskovic, Assistant Professor Alexander Godonov and Research Professor Svetozar Popovic. In addition, ODU’s three Jefferson Lab professors in accelerator physics, Jean Delayen, Geoffrey Krafft and Hari Areti, will be members of the center. Affiliated faculty will retain their full-time tenure track appointments in their home ODU academic departments.

ODU Releases 9th Annual State of the Region Report

The ninth annual State of the Region report examined a wide array of Hampton Roads issues, ranging from the economy to care for the mentally ill.

Published by ODU’s Regional Studies Institute, the report also looked at how local television stations cover crime and violence, and offered a review of the region’s housing markets. In addition, the 114-page report considered why women earn less than men in Hampton Roads; highlighted the economic contributions of German firms in the area; and analyzed the methodologies of the two most respected guides of metropolitan livability, paying particular attention to how Hampton Roads fares and compares in their latest rankings.

James V. Koch, Board of Visitors Professor of Economics and President Emeritus, serves as editor of the report, which received financial support from Old Dominion and a number of local organizations and individuals. Koch notes that the report does not constitute an official viewpoint of the university.