2A — Monday, November 2, 2015
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

THREE THINGS YOU 
SHOULD KNOW TODAY

The Michigan hockey 
team split a two-game 
series 
with 
Robert 

Morris this weekend at Yost 
Ice Arena. The Wolverines 
were shut out Saturday for 
the first time since Feb. 14 
against Minnesota.
2

CAMPUS EVENTS & NOTES

Author lecture

WHAT: Naomi Klein 
will talk about her latest 
book, “Capitalism vs. 
the Climate” followed 
by a reception and book 
signing. 
WHO: Institute for 
Humanities and Gerald R. 
School of Public Policy
WHEN: Today from 4 
p.m. to 6 p.m.
WHERE: Rackham 
Auditorium

Bipolar 
research

WHAT: President of 
Institute for Systems 
Biology will lecture.
WHO: Depression Center
WHEN: Today from 
1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
WHERE: Palmer Com-
mons, Forum Hall

Greek tragedy 
demonstration

WHAT: Two 
undergraduate students 
will perform excerpts 
from a Greek play.
WHEN: Today from 
4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
WHERE: Michigan 
League

A 
Russian 
airliner 

with 
224 
people 

aboard 
crashed 
in 

Egypt 
Saturday, 
Reuters 

reported. 
ISIS 
claimed 

responsibility for the attack, 
but the Russian Transport 
Minister said he is not 
1

Med school 
preparation

WHAT: Representatives 
from the medical schools at 
Duke University and Case 
Western University will 
share tips for preparing for 
medical school.
WHO: The Career Center
WHEN: Today from 9:0 
a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Center 
Center

Ohio State QB J.T. 
Barrett was arrested 
Saturday for driving 
while 
intoxicated, 

ESPN 
reported. 
He 

failed a breathalyzer test 
 

administered 
by 
police. 

In response, head coach 
Urban Meyer suspended 
him 
for 
one 
 
game.

3

KRISTINA PERKINS/Daily

Belleville resident Mallory Frazier participates in arts and crafts 
during the Blood Battle kickoff event at Michigan Stadium on 
Sunday. 

Student voice 
recital

WHAT: Voice students 
will perform their latest 
songs. This event is free to 
the public and no tickets 
are required to enter. 
WHO: School of Music, 
Theatre & Dance
WHEN: Today at 6:45 p.m.
WHERE: Earl V. 
Moore Building, 
Britton Recital Hall

TUESDAY:

Campus Voices

THURSDAY:
Twitter Talk

FRIDAY:

Photos of the Week

WEDNESDAY:

In Other Ivory Towers

MONDAY:

This Week in History

FORTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, NOV. 4 1967
Library extends hours

ARTS & CR AF TS

Director 
of 
University 

Libraries Frederick Wagman 
announced that the Shap-
iro Undergraduate Library 
would 
extend 
its 
hours, 

remaining open to students 
until 2 a.m. each night for a 
trial period later that year.

The library was previously 

only open until midnight dur-
ing the week. Wagman esti-
mated that it would cost an 
additional $20,000 per year 
to keep the library open for 
those extra two hours.

Before a date for this trial 

period could be set, Wagman 
said the University would 
have to find both additional 
funds and employees to work 
the added two hours. He also 

mentioned that to attract the 
necessary 
employees, 
the 

library would offer workers 
$2.00 per hour for the after 
midnight hours instead of the 
usual $1.55 per hour.

Wagman also said they 

still have to consider possibly 
limiting use of the library to 
only one floor after midnight 
and only allowing books to 
be checked out before mid-
night. This would cut costs 
and make it easier for them 
to keep the library open for 
those additional two hours.

In 2012, the University 

announced the library would 
remain open at all hours. Pre-
viously, it had closed at 5 a.m.

Sixteen years ago this 
week (Nov. 2, 1999)

Members of the Univer-

sity’s solar car team returned 
home from Australia after fin-
ishing ninth out of 40 teams 
in the World Solar Challenge 
in Australia.

Solar 
car 
teams 
from 

around the world competed 
in the 1,864 mile race through 
the Australian outback. The 
race tested the endurance of 
each team’s solar car and last-
ed for a total of five days.

“Being in the top 10 of the 

world is a pretty good place 
to be in,” team leader Jed 
Christiansen said at the time. 

—CALEB CHADWELL

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Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327

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Dancers as 
diplomats

WHAT: Clare Croft will 
discuss her book about the 
role of dancers throughout 
the 20th and 21st centuries.
WHO: Institute for 
Research on Women and 
Gender
WHEN: Today from 3:10 
p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
WHERE: Lane Hall, 2239

FBI career 
opportunities

WHAT: The Director’s 
Resource Planning Office 
for the FBI will come 
talk to students about 
opportunities working for 
the agency.
WHO: The Career Center
WHEN: Today from 6 p.m. 
to 7 p.m.
WHERE: Gerald R. Ford 
School of Public Policy

Cotton candy mishap leads to 
new way to model scar tissue

‘U’ team uses sugar 
mold in testing how 
the body responds 
to internal scarring

By DESIREE CHEW

For the Daily

Just before Halloween, the 

University announced that an 
unsuccessful attempt at making 
cotton candy inspired the dis-
covery of a new bioengineering 
technique.

A University team, led by 

Biomedical Engineering Prof. 
Shuichi Takayama, announced 
in a press release last week they 
discovered a new method to 
model extra-soft silicone for cell 
research.

The team’s project studied scar 

tissue formation in soft-celled 
organs like the lung and liver, as 
the body recuperates from inter-
nal scarring caused by diseases 

such as diabetes and cancer.

“In 
general, 
our 
research 

group is concerned with using 
small tools to understand what 
happens in the body, by doing the 
experiments outside the body,” 
said Engineering graduate stu-
dent Joseph Labuz, a member of 
the team. “This project works on 
measuring the forces exerted by 
cells, as well as the mechanical 
properties of tissue.’’

Their original plan was to 

position cells around tiny pillars 
of soft silicone that acted as scar 
tissue, then apply different treat-
ments to the cells and measure 
the deformation of silicone as the 
cells expand and contract.

But to do so, the team first 

needed to figure out how to 
mold the soft silicone, a mate-
rial known as Sylgard 527, into 
the desired shape — which is 
where the cotton candy came in. 
The team’s initial instrument of 
choice, hard epoxy molds, proved 
unviable because silicone pillars 
were so soft they disintegrated 

upon removal from the mold.

However, a chance encounter 

in the kitchen for a member of 
the team, Christopher Moraes, 
assistant professor of chemical 
engineering at McGill University, 
led to a new idea. Moraes worked 
on the team as a postdoctoral 
researcher at the University.

In the process of making an 

unsuccessful batch of cotton 
candy, Moraes noticed that the 
hard slab of candy he was left 
with captured every detail of the 
pan in which it was molded.

This fueled an idea to make a 

mold out of sugar, cast the Syl-
gard 527 in the candy mold and 
finally, immerse the mold water 
so it will dissolve, leaving only 
the silicon pillars.

“I actually wouldn’t describe 

it as a ‘Eureka’ moment, as much 
as a ‘hmm … that’s odd’ moment, 
before I threw away the candy 
disaster in disgust and went to 
bed,” he said. “I woke up the next 
morning with the idea of what 
that might mean in the lab. This 
accidental process happens quite 
frequently, but perhaps 99 per-
cent of the ideas that I have end 
up failing.”

The team had by then spent 

nine months trying to find the 
right materials for their project 
through repeated trial and error 
— leaving them open to the new 
idea.

After testing Moraes’ conjec-

ture with stunt glass, a common 
feature of Hollywood action 
films and an essentially sugar-
based material, the team formu-
lated the recipe for the perfect 
mold: a simple, sweet-smelling 
concoction made largely of sugar 
and corn syrup.

“For me, this project is unusu-

al in that it really emphasizes the 
fun and surprise of doing science 
and engineering research, an 
aspect that is often overlooked 
when scientists reflect on their 
work,” he said. “I mean — who 
would have thought that candy-
makers would have figured out 
the secrets needed to micro-fab-
ricate tissues?”

Nobel prize-winner discusses 
study of molecules, motion

Harvard professor 

talks complex 
simulations in 

chemistry

By IRENE PARK

Daily Staff Reporter

Nobel Prize-winner Martin 

Karplus, professor emeritus of 
chemistry at Harvard Universi-
ty, delivered the Oncley Lecture 
in Biophysics at the Rackham 
Amphitheater on Friday. 

Karplus received the Nobel 

Prize in Chemistry in 2013 with 
Stanford Biology Prof. Michael 
Levitt and Arieh Warshel, a 
chemistry professor at the Uni-
versity of Southern California, 
for their work on computational 
simulations.

In a talk titled “Motion: The 

Hallmark of Life. From Mar-
supials to Molecules,” Karplus 
explained how the motion of 
molecules makes the motion of 
entire animals possible.

He began by quoting physicist 

Richard Feynman’s “Lectures 

on Physics,” which emphasized 
the importance of understand-
ing the motion of atoms and 
molecules 
in 
understanding 

the motion of living organisms: 
“Everything that living things 
do can be understood in terms 
of the jiggling and wiggling of 
atoms.”

He pointed out several dif-

ferent applications of under-
standing how molecules move 
— applications made possible in 
part by the computation simu-
lations for which he and his 
colleagues received the Nobel 
Prize.

The simulations, which Kar-

plus, Levitt and Warshel began 
in the 1970s, developed an eas-
ier method to replicate chemi-
cal reactions using computers. 
Prior to their work, chemists 
had to use advanced calcula-
tions based on quantum physics 
to simulate reactions. Because 
the calculations were so com-
plex, the simulations required 
enormous computing power, 
meaning chemists could only 
simulate the reactions of small, 
simple molecules.

To address this issue, Karplus 

said he and his colleagues com-
bined quantum physics with the 
simpler, less computationally 
demanding Newtonian physics 
to simulate chemical reactions 
for more complex molecules.

They discovered that while 

quantum physics is required for 
simulating chemical reactions 
at the specific site on the mole-
cules where the reaction occurs, 
the simpler Newtonian physics 
could be used for simulating the 
impact of the reaction on the 
rest of the molecule. Quantum 
mechanics studies the activity 
going on inside an atom.

The computational simula-

tions discovered by Karplus 
and his colleagues are now fre-
quently used in multiple spheres 
of chemistry research, such 
as simulating how synthetic 
drugs interact with proteins in 
a person’s body and how defec-
tive proteins behave differently 
from normal proteins.

KRISTINA PERKINS/Daily

Nobel Prize winner Martin Karplus, professor emeritus of chemistry at Harvard University, discusses the motion of 
cellular molecules at the annual Biophysics Oncley Lecture on Friday. 

CORRECTION 
APPENDED: 
A photo caption that 
appeared in the Daily 
on Oct. 30 incorrectly 
identified Sally Hart 
Petersen as an Ann Arbor 
City Council member. 
She is a former member.

Please report any 
error in the Daily 
to corrections@
michigandaily.com.

See CANDY, Page 3A

Read more online at
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