Research Roundup
From studying space dust to solving a decades-old math problem, here’s what DU researchers have been up to lately.
Carbon dust discoveries in space
University of Denver astronomers have revealed new insights into how carbon-rich dust—which is crucial for planet formation—forms and expands in space.
Led by doctoral student Emma Lieb, the research team, including DU professor and astronomer Jennifer Hoffman, used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study time-lapse images of the Wolf-Rayet 140 system taken in 2022 and 2023. This system is made up of two stars which orbit each other over an eightyear cycle and, as they move past each other, winds collide and create dust. Wolf-Rayet 140 is seen as a meaningful contributor to the “dust budget,” which, as Lieb describes it, is the number one factor to consider when determining how many planets are formed in a galaxy in a certain region of the universe.
“We're starting to have the capability to measure these very short time scales of what's going on around us in our neighborhood of the universe,” Hoffman says. “It makes it feel like we’re in a much more dynamic cosmic neighborhood.”
WHY IT MATTERS: This discovery helps researchers better determine how much carbon-rich material there is in the galaxy and, therefore, where and when planets will form.
Game-changing device for detecting cancer
Detecting malignant cells is a crucial first step in improving health outcomes for the approximately 2 million Americans diagnosed with cancer each year. That's why Dali Sun, associate professor in the Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, and his fellow researchers are developing a new, miniature elliptical dichroism spectrometer, a device that determines the structure and number of molecules by measuring how they absorb polarized light.
Such a device is used to detect cancer cells, a job that has traditionally required the use of a circular dichroism spectrometer, which takes up a lot of space— requiring a table for the machine, a nitrogen tank and a computer—costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and requires specialized training to operate.
The miniature spectrometer uses an innovative approach that combines structural and absorption analysis and, along with a compact design and a far lower cost (up to 300 times less than a traditional spectrometer), the device is shaping up to be a game changer.
WHY IT MATTERS: The new spectrometer will equip a wide range of researchers, students and entrepreneurs with the tools to study cells and molecules quickly and accurately
Unlocking how HIV spreads
Virologist and biophysicist Schuyler van Engelenburg is one step closer to understanding how HIV spreads once it enters the human body, thanks to a new grant from the National Institutes of Health. For years, his team has developed new microscopes so they could visualize the virus replication process on a single-molecule basis.
“Surprisingly, this has been a challenging aspect of the viral infection cycle to study, and it's really because it requires a multidisciplinary kind of approach—bringing in aspects of cell biology, virology, biochemistry and, in my laboratory, optical imaging,” he says.
WHY IT MATTERS: This research will help others create antiretroviral treatments that specifically target and disrupt the process in the early stages. There are currently no drug treatments that target this stage of assembly.
Solving a 70-year-old math problem
Associate Professor Mandi Schaeffer Fry will be the first faculty member since the 1880s to be published in the Annals of Mathematics, widely seen as the industry’s most prestigious journal. Schaeffer Fry helped complete a problem that dates back to 1955—mathematician Richard Brauer’s Height Zero Conjecture. Over the years, number crunchers have worked on the problem at universities across the globe, and some found partial solutions; however, the problem was not completed until now.
Fry and her collaborators—University of Kaiserslautern professor Gunter Malle, University of Valencia professor Gabriel Navarro and Rutgers University professor Pham Huu Tiep—worked around the clock over the course of three months in eight-hour shifts during the summer to find a solution. In 2023, the work was accepted for publication.
The problem relates to groups, or collections of things that follow certain rules when combined, kind of like the way numbers follow rules in addition or multiplication. Mathematicians wanted to know if you could look at a table of data about a group and use it to f igure out something about smaller pieces of that group, called “defect groups.” These smaller pieces are like mini groups that help us understand the bigger group.
Brauer's Height Zero Conjecture was the first conjecture that led to the study of “local-global” problems, which seek to relate properties of groups with those of smaller subgroups, Schaeffer Fry says—“letting us 'zoom in' on the group using just a specific prime number and simplify things."
WHY IT MATTERS: Fry and her colleagues proved the conjecture is true, which helps mathematicians understand more about how groups work and makes solving other problems easier.
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