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Event highlights UH research projects

by Saba Jamali
The Daily Cougar

UH faculty and student researchers had the chance to showcase their cutting-edge work on topics ranging from air pollution to heart disease Friday during the University's fifth annual Research and Scholarship Day.

Among the projects shown was one aimed at improving the water quality in Houston's waterways. A team led by associate civil engineering professor Hanadi Rifai is looking into concentrations of e.coli in White Oak and Buffalo bayous.

E.coli is often associated with consuming undercooked meat, but it can also be found in sewage-contaminated water. Tina Peterson, one of the project researchers, said almost all water samples from the bayous in the past 30 years have shown above-standard 

amounts of e.coli.

Peterson said recreational water sports like swimming and canoeing might be possible in Houston's bayous if the water quality is improved.

Another project, led by Dow Chair Professor and Chemical Engineering Department Chairman Michael P. Harold, focuses on improving air quality and reducing nitric oxide emissions and soot in conjunction with the city of Houston.

Harold's group is testing different technologies on the city's heavy-duty diesel vehicles, which emit 25 percent of nitric oxide in the city. Vehicles that will be tested for compliance with ozone standards include garbage trucks, dump trucks, fire engines and buses.

The Houston area has received a federal mandate to improve its air quality by 2015 or risk losing highway funding.

In the field of medicine, Alberto Santamaria presented research from the Department of Computer Science determining the shape and motion of the left anterior coronary artery. Santamaria's team hopes to compare the healthy dynamics of the artery to non-healthy dynamics, information that could be used to diagnose coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death for Americans.

"(The research is) not only computer science and mathematics, but it's merged with medicine and biomedicine," Santamaria said. "There's a social need, and we feel we're committed to this social need."

The day's keynote speaker was Arnold Eskin of the Department of Biology and Biochemistry, who was named the first John and Rebecca Moores Professor in 2003, when he also received the University's Esther Farfel Award for career excellence.

Eskin's research is focused on the mechanisms of long-term memory. His pioneering research on sea slugs revealed that protein synthesis is involved in long-term memory and that neurons, or nerve cells, change shape by growing additional synapses, the connection points through which messages are sent.

Just as humans can change the strength of muscles through exercise, Eskin said the brain can also be changed by the mental exercises of thinking and learning.

"Be careful what you think," he said. "It could change you forever."

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