Moriah Beck and the Palladin Prompt
Moriah Beck is a WSU assistant professor of chemistry who spends a good part of her work day peering through a microscope in close study of the human protein palladin. Beck’s scientific focus isn’t only of interest to her fellow protein biochemists. It’s of interest to everyone, because palladin just may turn out to be a dastardly actor in metastasis, that mysterious process by which cancer cells migrate from the tumor of origin and spread the disease.
After years of research based on top of years of research by other scientists, Beck, who holds a doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis, began testing the hypothesis that palladin is the protein agent that prompts another protein called actin to do such things as sprout filaments and build structures inside cells that gets those cells moving, extending filaments and migrating on those expanded filaments. In normal cells, this is healthy. But it is deadly activity if the cells that activate and spread are cancerous. If Beck and others prove palladin’s link to metastasis, it could ultimately lead to the discovery of a way to stop it.
Lefever-Davis Is Interim Dean
Shirley Lefever-Davis has been named interim dean of the College of Education effective June 9, according to Keith Pickus, interim provost. She will be interim dean for the 2013-2014 academic year while a national search is conducted for a permanent dean.
Heldman Is Acting Director
Lou Heldman has been named acting director of Wichita State’s Center for Entrepreneurship, effective June 2. “Lou’s extensive management experience and business contacts will be helpful in advancing the center’s mission to encourage entrepreneurial thinking through education, research and community outreach,” says Cindy Claycomb, interim dean of WSU’s W. Frank Barton School of Business.
Futuristic Campus Parking
Assisted by WSU students and Internet companies NetApp and Cisco, Ravi Pendse, vice president of information technologies and director of the Advanced Networking Research Institute, is exploring ways technology can help solve a whole host of seemingly intractable problems – including campus parking.
By coherently linking “smart” devices – such as smart-phones, tablets, laptops and desk computers – to strategically placed sensors, all kinds of tasks could be accomplished. For instance, sensors on garden plants could message irrigation pipes to communicate how much water is needed. Writ large, such technology might save untold volumes of water and billions of dollars through more efficient watering of the world’s lawns and crops.
And Pendse offers up another example: Sensors could be placed in every parking space on campus; anyone who regularly parks at WSU could obtain an app for their smart-phone or car; on their way to campus, the app could talk with the sensors and then let the drivers know precisely where those empty spaces are. What a vision of the future!
Hundley’s Travels
Wichita State Russian history professor Helen Hundley spent last summer in the highlands of Mongolia and Siberia. Since her return, she has been working on two books detailing her research. Landing at Genghis Khan International airport in Mongolia’s capital city of Ulan Batar, Hundley began a month-long study of the resurgence of Buddhism and Buddhist imagery and symbols in the former Soviet Union.
One of the principal reasons for her trip was the study of roadside prayer shrines called oovoos. These structures, which look like a pile of stones and wood covered in strips of brightly colored fabric, are a tangible symbol of the resurgence of Buddhism in the region. She explains that the stones of the shrines could be covered in prayers for a good harvest or that a relative’s chemotherapy treatments go well. In a country where practicing Buddhism openly was once illegal, now signs and images of its practice are everywhere.
Leaving Ulan Bataar, she traveled north to Amarbayasgalant monastery. While Mongolia was under Communist rule, thousands of Buddhist monasteries were destroyed or converted to other uses. Amarbayasgalant was one of the few to survive and was a major stop on her trip. Hundley stayed in a ger camp – a collection of traditional circular wooden latticework buildings covered in layers of felt and painted in bright colors.
Hospitality and thousands of years of history aside, there’s another reason Hundley has been traveling to Mongolia whenever she can since 1992. “I can’t describe how beautiful it is there,” she says.— Alex Poston
