Engineering grad's skills help set stage for growth of children's care home

August 8, 2012

A private children’s residential care home in Mesa, Ariz., that has been serving its local community for almost 60 years will be better prepared to expand, thanks in part to the expertise of a recent Arizona State University engineering graduate.

During his final semester of study this past spring to earn a professional science master’s degree in the Solar Energy Engineering and Commercialization program, Sage Lopez helped the Sunshine Acres Children’s Home take steps to develop a cost-saving renewable-energy system. Sunshine Acres Solar Project Download Full Image

To meet growing needs, the home plans to expand infrastructure on its 110-acre ranch – from 40 buildings and capacity to serve about 70 children to more than 65 buildings with capacity to house and care for as many as 250 youngsters. But rising electricity costs had been looming as a threat to the viability of such an extensive expansion.

Sunshine Acres Children’s Home is a Christian-based organization supported almost entirely by private donations and resale of donated items.

Sustainable energy source

Last spring, Lopez was working as an intern for TUV Rheinland Photovoltaic Testing Laboratory, a photovoltaic energy technology safety and performance testing lab that operates in partnership with ASU. His manager at TUV, Jonathan Belmont – who is pursuing a master’s degree in alternative energy at ASU – knew about the Sunshine Acres energy-system project. Belmont encouraged Lopez to get involved.

Working with Milt Laflen, a member of a volunteer committee charged with ensuring the home’s future energy needs can be met, Lopez assisted in devising a solar-energy master plan designed to help control energy costs as Sunshine Acres grows.

He installed monitoring systems to provide real-time performance information for the power system.
He also worked with the facility’s power provider, the Salt River Project utility company, and with city of Mesa officials, to help clear the regulatory path for future installation of a “solar loop” that will efficiently distribute power throughout the site.

His work is helping Sunshine Acres get closer to its goals of having a “net-zero” energy system within 10 years. That means supplying all of the facility’s energy needs using only the electricity generated by its solar-power system.

Fulfilling endeavor

Among members of the home’s energy-system committee are Charles Backus, an ASU professor emeritus of engineering and provost emeritus of ASU’s Polytechnic Campus, and David Scheatzle, an ASU professor emeritus of architecture.

Backus says Lopez has made a valuable contribution to the electrical aspects of the energy-system design. Scheatzle explains that Lopez’s work “was meaningful in helping to clarify the layout and specifications of the current power infrastructure, and he proposed alternatives for developing a unique electrical distribution master plan that will incorporate extensive ground-mounted solar arrays.”

The project has been especially fulfilling “because of the respect everyone involved has for Sunshine Acres and the great work done there,” Lopez says.

“There’s been a lot of goodwill coming together to make progress. Sunshine Acres is becoming its own electricity-distribution center, all for the purpose of helping children,” he says.

An Arizona Department of Commerce grant provided for technology to produce 8.2 kilowatts of solar power for Sunshine Acres’ offices and eight solar water heaters. TUV Rheinland donated solar modules and Salt River Project donated a 10-kilowatt system through its Earthwise Project to provide power for a dining hall.

A 300-kilowatt system was installed through a lease agreement with the Green Choice Solar company, and photovoltaic panels providing 167-kilowatts have been donated by Solon, a solar technology manufacturing company.

Sunshine Acres plans to use its expanding green-energy system as an educational tool to teach children about energy engineering and technology, says executive director Sean Sloan.

Opportunity for more students

Lopez says the wide-ranging skill set he honed in his degree program armed him with the combination of managerial, financial, technical and entrepreneurial know-how necessary to take on the Sunshine Acres job.

His education has prepared him to work not only with fellow engineers but with business managers; professionals in building, construction and design industries; policymakers; and utility regulators and social workers, among others, he says.

“There are opportunities for other ASU engineering students to get involved in the project,” Lopez says. “They can get experience applying their technical skills or just doing community service work. Either way, they can have a lasting positive impact on Sunshine Acres.”

Lopez is now using his education in an engineering job he landed in San Diego with Envision Solar. He’s designing next-generation technology – products called the Solar Tree Array and the Solar Tree Socket – for charging electric vehicles and electrical network metering.

Interest in solar studies increasing

The Solar Energy Engineering and Commercialization program, which offers a professional science master’s degree, is administered through the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

It kicked off in the 2011 spring semester with the aid of a National Science Foundation grant. Five of the six students initially enrolled in the program have since earned degrees. Six more are graduating this summer. Eleven new students will begin studies in the 2012 fall semester, bringing current enrollment to 17.

This program enables students with undergraduate training in STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and math – to expand their education across areas as such as energy engineering, project management, energy policy, utility regulation, professional ethics, and related fields.

The curriculum is guided by an industrial advisory board that helps to ensure courses provide knowledge and skills relevant to the solar-energy industry. Students benefit from an industry advisor in addition to a faculty advisor to guide their work on course projects in which they apply what they’re learning.

In partnership with ASU’s Consortium for Science and Policy Outcomes, students also participate in a week-long energy policy seminar held in Washington, D.C., to gain insight into energy policy making at national and international levels.

Learn more about the program.

Written by Joe Kullman and Rosie Gochnour

Joe Kullman

Science writer, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

480-965-8122 Joseph.Kullman@asu.edu

Study of fruit fly chromosomes improves understanding of evolution, fertility

An ASU researcher's analysis of Drosophila genes sheds light on the evolution of sperm structure and function, and has implications for the study of human infertility.

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Study of fruit fly chromosomes improves understanding of evolution, fertility

August 8, 2012

The propagation of every animal on the planet is the result of sexual activity between males and females of a given species. But how did things get this way? Why two sexes instead of one? Why are sperm necessary for reproduction and how did they evolve?

These as-yet-unresolved issues fascinate Timothy Karr, a developmental geneticist and evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute. To probe them, he uses a common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, an organism that has provided science with an enormous treasure-trove of genetic information. Download Full Image

“My research focuses on the evolution of sex and in gamete function,” Karr says. “I focus primarily on the sperm side of the sexual equation. I’m interested in how they originated and how they are maintained in populations.”

Karr’s current study, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Chicago, recently appeared in the journal BMC Biology. The study reexamines an earlier paper that analyzed the sex chromosomes of fruit flies during spermatogenesis – the process that produces mature sperm from germ cells.

While the previous paper, by Lyudmila M Mikhaylova and Dmitry I Nurminsky, argued against the silencing of sex-linked genes on the X chromosome in Drosophila during meiosis—a process referred to as Meiotic Sex Chromosome Inactivation (MSCI)—the reanalysis presented by Karr suggests MSCI is indeed occurring.

The work sheds new light on the evolution of sperm structure and function, through an analysis of Drosophila genes and gene products. As Karr explains, the research has important implications for humans as well: “The more direct, biomedical aspect is that when we learn about the function of a gene that encodes a protein in Drosophila sperm, we can immediately see if there’s a relationship between these genes and their functions and known problems with fertility in humans.”

Super fly

Perhaps no other model organism has yielded more insights into human genetics than the tiny fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In 1906, Thomas Hunt Morgan of Columbia University began work on D. melanogaster, (one of over 1500 species contained in the Drosophila genus) capitalizing on the species’ ease of breeding, rapid generation time and ability to readily produce genetic mutants for study. Morgan’s efforts with Drosophila led to the identification of chromosomes as the vector of inheritance for genes, and earned him the 1933 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Drosophila are yellow-brown in color, have reddish eyes and transverse black rings across their abdomen (see image). Females are about 2.5 millimeters long, while males are slightly smaller and may be easily identified by their darker color.

Most importantly, the similarity in the genetic systems of fruit flies and other eukaryotic organisms including humans makes these model organisms extremely useful analogues for the study of common genetic processes including transcription and translation.

Roughly 75 percent of known human disease genes have recognizable correlates in the fruit fly genome and 50 percent of fly protein sequences have mammalian homologs. (The complete genome of D. melanogaster was completed in 2000.)

Chromosomes: genetic storehouses

Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, or 46 chromosomes in all. Of these, 44 are known as autosomes and consist of matched pairs of chromosomes, known as homologous chromosomes. Each homologous chromosome contains the same set of genes in the same locations along the chromosome, though they may appear in differing alleles, which can affect the passing of genetic traits.

The current study however, focuses not on the autosomes but on the remaining pair of chromosomes, known as sex chromosomes. Females contain two X chromosomes, which are homologous, as in the case of the autosomes. By contrast, males are identified as having one X chromosome and one (much smaller) Y chromosome.

While drosophila only have a total of four chromosomes, they too display sexual dimorphism, with females carrying the double X chromosomes and males carrying XY. The two X chromosomes in female fruit flies, as in mammals, make them a homozygous sex as compared with the XY condition in males, known as heterozygous.

“There are certain aspects to the composition of these sex chromosomes that have intrigued evolutionary biologists for a long time,” Karr notes. One such issue involves an apparent reduction in the number or the level of expression of sex-linked genes on the X chromosome during spermatogenesis. It is believed that this reduction or silencing of genes on the X chromosome may have profound implications for the evolution of sex chromosomes.

During meiotic development of a sperm cell, nature attempts to compensate for the fact that females have two X chromosomes and therefore enjoy a numbers advantage in terms of genes, compared with males. To overcome the bias for female X-linked genes, the X chromosome undergoes inactivation during meiotic sexual differentiation of male gametes, resulting in an underrepresentation of sex-specific genes on the X chromosome. Some of these genes, which may be beneficial to males, are moved from the X chromosome, to the autosomes, where they may be expressed.

The relocation of male-biased genes to the autosomes may be due to a selective advantage favoring genes that move off the X chromosome and therefore avoid X-inactivation during meiosis. Such theories remain controversial however, as statistical analyses are used to evaluate gene frequencies and expression levels, making the proper categorization of genes particularly challenging. “The data we create and generate to support our ideas and hypotheses are messy, there’s noise in them,” Karr says. “Such noise is inherent in the history of evolution.”

In addition to the steady stream of insights into chromosome evolution, Drosophila are being used as a genetic model for a variety of human diseases including Alzheimer's, neurodegenerative disorders, Parkinson's, Huntington's, as well as extending knowledge of the underlying mechanisms involved in aging, oxidative stress, immunity, diabetes, and cancer.