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TECHNOSTAFF
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Technograph editor Brooke Eberle Assistant Technograph editor Brooks Berish Editor-in-Chief Lillian Barkley Managing editors Joseph Longo Jacob Singleton Creative director Hannah Auten Designers Bercham Kamber Cindy Om Michelle Tam Copy chief Rachael Bolek Assistant copy chief Alex Greulich Writers Isra Rahman Brooke Eberle Mike O’Neill Meral Aycicek Co-publishers Kit Donahue Melissa Pasco Contact (217) 337-8350 technograph@dailyillini.com Technograph 512 E. Green St., 3rd floor Champaign, IL 61820
Research shows similar responses in honeybees, people with autism PAGE 4, 5
Illini EcoConcept aims to rank nationally in car competition PAGE 6, 7
UI team challenged to make anchoring device in space PAGE 8, 9
InSPIRE aims to make long-term impact with solar energy PAGE 11
Q&A with Dawn Haken PAGE 12, 13
CU Hack Night aims to solve community problems
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Research shows similar rEsponses in honeybees and individuals with autism BY ISRA RAHMAN | TECHNOGRAPH WRITER
At
first glance, honeybees and humans could not be more different. However, new research indicates that there may be similarities between the behavioral traits of the two. In a study conducted by the Institute for Genomic Biology, researchers studied reaction trends in honeybees after they were exposed to different stimuli. Postdoctoral fellow Michael Saul and entomology professor Gene Robinson tracked activity of honeybees after two different direct stimuli. The first stimulus placed an intruder bee in a hive and studied the response of the honeybees. The typical response of honeybees would be to gang up and attack the intruder. The second stimulus placed queen larvae in a hive. The response to this would be nursing and caring for the larvae.
In both cases, the bees either reacted as predicted in both or were unresponsive. “These unresponsive honeybees made up 14 percent of the bees in the hive,” Saul said. “In those bees, we determined which genes were responding to which trait through analysis of gene expression.” The method used to compare gene activity was analyzing the brains of the honeybees through RNA sequencing, which looks at the mRNA (the form of RNA that conveys genetic information) in a sample obtained from the honeybee. By looking at the mRNA, one can translate the mRNA codons to amino acid chains, and from amino acid chains to proteins, which are a product of genes. The idea of using animal behavior to understand mental disorders in humans isn’t limited to just honeybees. “This approach is a new way to under-
stand mental health and disorders,” Saul said. “It is called the endophenotype approach, in which certain observable behaviors from human mental disorders are compared to traits within animals to understand the molecular component behind it.” Given the vast spectrum of autism, research grows more complex, with 900 to 1,000 genes relevant to autism, according to Saul. In order to understand the significance of each of these genes, researchers like Saul use comparable genotypes in animals and humans to understand the realm of certain genes. Researchers begin to pick at the 900 to 1,000 genes in order to establish some baseline of understanding. Saul quoted his colleague in saying, “Honeybees are not little people and people are not big honeybees.” Similar genetic structures don’t neces-
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sarily mean clearly apparent similarities in physical appearance. Similarities in genes between honeybees and humans indicate patterns over evolutionary time that can potentially track back to diverging species, according to Saul. The easy misconception from this research is assuming that the unresponsiveness of honeybees indicates an abnormality in their behavior. Unlike in autism, where unresponsiveness is a key part of the autism diagnosis, in honeybees it may be an unexplainable step in their life cycle. “Unresponsiveness may be because we don’t know every role a bee has in the hive and how they differ in their social responses,” Saul said. The behavior in honeybees may be ambiguous, but there are very clear outlines for the diagnosis of individuals with autism.
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“A key component of autism diagnosis are communication problems and repetitive behaviors. Those two qualifications can place an individual on the spectrum depending on the extent to which they are present,” said Khalid Arshad, child psychiatrist at Duke University. The spectrum diagnosis of autism makes it a very difficult disorder to tie to certain genes or parts of the brain. According to Arshad, there are so many molecular and genetic targets that the multifactorial causes lead to countless research obstacles. Applying animal genetics to human disorders such as autism is one attempt by researchers to gain a deeper understanding of how social behavior relates to genetic irregularities. “Recently, people have tried streamlining programs of early intervention in an attempt to correct social behavior before it becomes
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“This approach is a new way to understand mental health and disorders.” MICHAEL SAUL POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW ingrained in molecular structure,” Arshad said. “However, until we can tie these to specific parts of the brain, we are still shooting in the dark.” irahman@readtechno.com
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Illini EcoConcept aims to rank nationally in car competition
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ach year, an RSO called Illini EcoConcept builds a new car in six to seven months to compete in the Shell Eco-marathon competition. It’s not just any car: one that is eco-friendly and does not run on traditional gas. Illini EcoConcept submits their car into the hydrogen fuel cell class of the Urban Concept division. The car must look like a normal vehicle with four wheels, and it must run on hydrogen gas. The team is known to rank high nationally each year, and were even interviewed by Jay Leno in 2015. The team won first place five years ago, second place four years ago and fifth place three years ago. However, last year they were disqualified on a technicality. “Usually, we are one of the top in the whole United States in our division for the competition, but we got disqualified because Shell forgot to give us a tracking
BY BROOKE EBERLE | TECHNOGRAPH EDITOR chip, so there was no way of validating that we had completed a run,” said Adrian Tovar, junior in Engineering. “It was very hectic last year. That year they changed the rules a bit and it was very hard to pass technical inspections, so no one in our division was able to complete a run even though we technically did, but it didn’t count.” There are 12 leadership positions in the club, including electronics, body, steering and suspension, and power train; there are 30 to 40 people in Illini EcoConcept. However, the total fluctuates as members come in and out. “We’ve learned from our mistakes. Honestly, on top of building the car correctly (what is important) is communicating with the judges and making sure that our car passes tech inspection,” Tovar said. Richard Mauge, sophomore in Engineering, is in charge of designing and
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building the body and the chassis for the car. He said he was drawn to the project because he could build the car to look any way he wanted. He started out by drawing concepts for cars, and was excited by the idea of seeing them come to life in a competition. Tovar said he first learned about the club from Engineering 100, an introductory class required for all engineering majors. “The Engineering 100 teacher, he was the president at the time so he kind of recruited me to visit. I joined as a freshman, and little by little I became a lead for one of the designs,” Tovar said. Tovar said he did not have a lot of knowledge about cars coming into college, but was more drawn to bikes. He would repair friends’ bikes and also customize his own. Now the mechanical design lead, Tovar is responsible for overseeing all work on
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the brakes, suspension and steering. He makes sure the car is able to move on its own. “We were using the same design specs for previous years, but this year we’re going to build a whole new car,” Tovar said. Tovar said he is currently working at Caterpillar, and that “it’s a really good talking point.” “Other employers that I’ve heard say, ‘If you’re on the car team, you’re pretty much one of the top people we look for, especially if you’re in a lead position,’” Tovar said. “It’s a really great way to network as well. At the competition last April, we got to talk to some of the Shell executives and representatives.” Mauge said recruiters look for the skills needed for the competition. “A lot of recruiters like the ability to not only design something, but also build
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something. The fact we’re designing an actual car that can technically be legally driving on the road is a big accomplishment in itself,” Mauge said. Tovar said he is unsure about whether he wants to work with cars after he graduates, but is excited to see where car innovation goes in the future. Although the club is mainly geared toward those in mechanical engineering, Mauge said that it welcome all majors, especially those in engineering or computer
science. They are also looking for several business majors that would be interested in searching for sponsors for the club. The car takes approximately $35,000, and the club received this from the Student Sustainability Committee. However, the club still needs extra money to cover the cost of traveling to Detroit, Michigan, for the competition, as well as other additional costs. beberle2@readtechno.com
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SPACE ANCHOR UI team challenged to design tools to use in space
BY BROOKE EBERLE | TECHNOGRAPH EDITOR
PHOTO COURTESY OF ALLISON BILLS
The Illinois Space Society builds tools for space in six different projects. The group will launch their project through the Neutral Buoyancy Lab.
D
esigning tools that could one day be used in space is quite a lofty goal, but one small group on campus aims to do this every year. The Illinois Space Society has six different projects that an interested student can join. One of these projects is a yearly NASA challenge called Micro-g. Students are given the challenge of designing a tool or machine that can be used in space.
The group designs and builds the device all school year. In June, a team of six are flown out to Houston to test it out at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab of the Johnson Space Center. At the lab, specialists try out the tool inside of a pool — in order to simulate zero gravity — and drill it into a box of sand and rock to test how far it will go into a surface. If the tool works better than any previous tool they have seen, it could be used one day in space. Sara Legg, junior in Engineering, is one of the students who worked on the project. “The way this competition works is we basically sign away a statement of rights so that NASA can use whatever they like,” Legg said. “They collect a collection of all of these tools, and if SARAH LEGG they like any designs, they can use JUNIOR IN ENGINEERING them for other tools that they After going over all of the options, like.” the group has chosen to work on an The University has anchoring device that could be used taken a team to the for exploring a new asteroid by being NASA challenge dug into the ground and then hooking for three years on a tether. now. Accord-
“We basically sign away a statement of rights so that NASA can use whatever they like.”
ing to Legg, the tool from the team two years ago worked so well that it was tested on the ocean floor. She said her team submitted a proposal for the competition in November and made design changes until February. In March, they built it in the manufacturing lab on campus and then ran tests and made changes up until June. The team met once a week during the fall semester to work on designs. As they started putting it together in the spring semester, they would schedule meetings when necessary. Destiny Fawley, sophomore in Engineering, who also worked on the project, said several papers were due through-
out the year for the project. “When the papers were due, we all had to really crack down,” she laughed, saying the team would pull all-nighters in order to finish them on time. Legg said finally presenting their tool to the judges was quite an experience. “We basically pitched our idea to the staff that was there and showed them how it worked, literally how everything worked down to the tiniest screw,” she said. She said she was worried about their tool because they had made changes just two days beforehand, but it ac-
tually turned out better than expected. “When we went down to test it, all of the divers were like, ‘This is such an easy tool to use,’ because instead of having to continue to twist, all you have to do is move it back and forth,” Legg said. Fawley said visiting the NASA lab was a great way to network and get advice. The team members were emailed and told to put Micro-g on their resume because it would notify NASA employers about their experience. They also got to talk to teams from other schools, ranging from community colleges to other large schools, about their designs. Fawley said she hoped to get the same challenge this year so they could improve the same device and enter it again. Unfortunately, they will have to pick a new challenge and start from scratch. The five challenges the team can choose from next year include a module leak repair
system, sharp edge detection, neutralizing, zip tie cutters and under ice sampler. Legg said the team has yet to meet and decide which challenge to start designing for. She said she hopes to volunteer next year, but Fawley is unsure. Because NASA wants new faces to experience the challenge each year, only two team members are allowed to return. Because of this, the club is looking for new members to help out and hopefully travel down to Houston at the end of the year. They brought out a device from a past year for Quad Day to show students what they do. They hope to get a team together soon so they can start planning and designing their next device. “We hope that our design gets used for actual space tool application because we think it’s pretty and that it’s a good design," Legg said. "We had a lot of fun working on it." beberle2@readtechno.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF ALAN LABISCH, FREEPIK, NASA
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InSPIRE aims to make impact with solar energy
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BY MIKE O’NEILL| TECHNOGRAPH WRITER
D
uring Welcome Week in August, thousands of students went to Quad Day to find the RSOs that were right for them. Booths ranged from club sports to professional fraternities, religious groups to social clubs. As engineering students pushed through the swarms of people, they may have missed a small booth for a club called the Institute for Solar Photovoltaic Innovation, Research, and Edu-training (InSPIRE), situated right outside Lincoln Hall. InSPIRE is a student organization with the goal of informing the community about the importance of using solar energy and renewable energy technology. They also encourage students to get involved in science, technology, engineering and math fields at a young age. The group is most well-known for winning first place for their exhibit at the Engineering Open House last year. The
students of InSPIRE used the open house to exhibit what they are doing to take advantage of renewable energy. During the weekend of the open house, InSPIRE president Melissa Goetter accepted the Go Green Award from the Engineering Council for her organization’s exceptional practices of sustainability. She thinks it is important to educate people on the benefits of the alternatives to fossil fuels. “We focus on outreach. We like to educate the public on green energy, specifically solar energy,” Goetter said. “We run workshops where we go to the (middle) schools and teach them about solar energy through building a solar powered cell phone charger, which they get to take home and use.” Recently, the engineering RSO took on a project much larger than an individual green phone charger. Goetter, who is the final cofounding member of the organization still
on campus, and her group want to provide the community with a fully sustainable, solar powered cell phone charging station. “This is the biggest project we’ve taken on,” Goetter said. “It’s the first publicly funded project as well. The motivation behind it is to make a lasting impact. The goal is to continue to educate people about solar energy without us even having to be there.” Goetter imagines that the charging station will be covered in educational panels that teach users about solar energy’s advantages. The station will also teach users how solar panels create energy. Members of InSPIRE plan for their sustainable charging station to make a lasting impact years after they have moved on from Illinois. Goetter expects the project to near completion by the end of 2017. maoneil2@readtechno.com
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Q&A with Dawn Haken BY MIKE O’NEILL | TECHNOGRAPH WRITER
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awn Haken is a junior studying electrical engineering at the University. While many students spend their time outside of class as leisurely as they can, Haken and a small team of engineering students strategize the best way to power their NASA-funded satellite, which is set to launch in 2018. Haken and her three-man crew are constructing solar panels in a way that will provide the shoebox-sized satellite with sufficient usable energy while also sustaining the conditions of outer space. In this interview, Haken shares more about the substantial project of constructing a functioning cube satellite.
solar panels which will provide the satellite with power once it is out of the atmosphere and up in space.
Does the crew have any sort of guidance outside of just students? We basically build everything from scratch. So, all the (circuit) boards, all of the electronics are designed by students. We don’t fabricate the boards ourselves, though. We send them out of house to get fabricated. We have oscilloscopes and power supplies that we use for checking electronics. We have soldering stations so we can make small changes to the boards and put together various things as well.
Building a satellite must take plenty of work. Who works on this project with you?
How large is your satellite, and what is inside it?
There are dozens of students who have their hands in on this satellite project. I lead the solar panel team for this satellite in particular. Our objective is to construct the
Our cube satellite is composed of three units, or 3U’s, and each unit is about 1,000 cubic centimeters. Each unit weighs about 1.3 kilograms, so it’s right around 4 kilo-
grams. Like I said, we pretty much build everything from scratch. Inside the cubes is a load of batteries and circuit boards, then the solar panels extend on the exterior of the satellite.
What are some key things to pay attention to when assembling your satellite? First off, everything on the spacecraft must be kept really clean. We don’t want to get anybody’s finger grease on it because … when you’re in space, that stuff won’t stay stuck to the surface of the satellite. It’ll sort of fly off and then come back and land on other parts. If our satellite was very dirty and we put it up in space, even if the solar cells were clean, we are allowing the grease to come off, land on the solar cells and possibly fog them up. We also don’t want any larger bits, whether it be aluminum or debris, to go up with the satellite because they could get loose and short the boards.
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What role do the vacuum chambers play in constructing the satellite? We can basically remove all of the air from this vacuum, which is very helpful because we can help replicate a space-like setting before we get the satellite up there. There is also a nitrogen shroud in the vacuum, which can fill the space with liquid nitrogen and get the temperature down to about minus 80 degrees Celsius. So that’s essentially simulating space right there — really cold plus no air. There are some materials that would just fall apart when put in a vacuum, so it’s nice to test them out first. For example, some glues may just turn into jelly if they don’t have any atmospheric pressure on them like they do on Earth. We have to be really careful and aware of that stuff when we’re choosing materials.We also have a smaller vacuum with another use. If we apply glue to something and need to get
the air bubbles out, then we can just toss it into the vacuum for a few minutes.
Will the satellite go through any other types of tests before it makes its way into the sky? Yes — we also have a cage that can create its own magnetic field within itself. Our satellite figures out where it is by measuring Earth’s magnetic field and also creates its own little magnetic field. Then it pushes on Earth’s magnetic field to re-orient itself. So with this cage, we can cancel out the magnetic field in the room and act like we are in space for a little bit! We also run a test on the solar panels with a solar simulator. This device can help us estimate how much power our panels will actually produce once they get into space. general@readtechno.com
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BY MERAL AYCICEK | ASSISTANT TECHNOGRAPH EDITOR
T
he web has, from its founding, been a source of knowledge. Now, it is more than that — it is a source of data. Open data websites and computerized public records provide free, raw data to any interested party. Additionally, open source software, like Hadoop and WEKA, supplies anyone with an internet connection with free and abundant data analysis tools. A 2016 study by the Pew Research Center found that about 73 percent of Americans have broadband service at home. This, combined with the reality that one can connect to the internet virtually anywhere in the country, shows that Americans have unprecedented access to information. Any motivated person with internet access and adequate computer skills can analyze large quantities of data with little to no marginal costs. Sanford Hess, information technology director of Urbana, is one of the co-founders of CU Hack Night, an initiative that began six months ago to bring together a diverse skill set to solve community problems by “hacking” data sets, literally. CU Hack Night takes place every Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at EnterpriseWorks in Research Park, but the location is changing in the coming months. The group is small, with an average of eight to 10 people per session, according to Hess. Hess said the inspiration for CU Hack Night came from Chi Hack Night, which has been going on for about four years. “The Chicago one is very focused on government. We, ac-
tually, are not so restrictive,” Hess said. “So, for example, one of the projects going on right now is with the Boys and Girls Club, which is just more about getting kids more hands-on access to technology.” Another project the group is working on involves jail data from the police department. “We’re trying to help the sheriff’s office understand the results of changes they’ve put in place in the past five years. So we’re looking at changes in sentencing, trackers for different kinds of crimes, how to free up space in the jails by looking at the busiest times,” Hess said. “They’re looking for some recommendations based on data analysis for changes they made since 2012.” One of the only student attendees, Shreyas Gandlur, sophomore in Engineering, said he had always been interested in going to Chi Hack Night, and that he jumped on board when he saw the C-U version. “I think that (CU Hack Night) can benefit (C-U) in the same way that Chi Hack Night benefited Chicago,” Gandlur said. “There were a lot of useful tools that came out of that. Urbana has a lot of the open data sets that Chicago has. So, for example, you can use that data to look at racial disparities, class disparities, disparities between the county itself ... between Champaign and Urbana, or between urban and rural divides.” Though C-U faces the same kinds of social and economic problems all cities face, Hess said they are having problems
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“We want people to come with problems as well as the motivation to solve those problems.” SANFORD HESS CO-FOUNDER OF CU HACK NIGHT getting people to identify the community’s problems. “We want people to come with problems as well as the motivation to solve those problems. Identifying and bringing attention to the problem is just as important as the technical work we do to solve those problems. Our biggest challenge has been that,” Hess said. “I would like to see Hack Night grow by having lots of projects going on. Instead of having two or three projects at a time, it would be nice to have 10 or 15.” Gandlur echoed Hess’s wish for more projects, adding that he hopes the club will grow in size as well. “If there were more people it would be more lively, more
projects, all of that. There are so many engineering organizations, (computer science) organizations, with all these people doing data related stuff. I’m sure some of them want to help the community in some way,” Gandlur said. According to Hess, the community appreciates, but doesn’t always understand, Hack Night’s efforts. He believes this may have to do with the negative connotation associated with the term “hack.” “People are really interested in this, but sometimes it’s a little confusing and it’s a little hard to follow,” Hess said. “So, it works best when we’ve got an end product that we can show people and say, ‘Look, this is what we’ve done.’” Gandlur said CU Hack Night is also a great networking opportunity for students, providing an informal environment to engage with professionals as equals. “This is a community event,” Gandlur said. “Here you have retired programmers, you have professors, you have people working at the NCSA, you have more than just students. You have the entire community coming together.” aycicek2@readtechno.com
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