First edition

Faculty and students at UTSA are involved in a wide variety of research projects. We have collected some of their publications over the past year to highlight the scope and depth of this work. You will discover that these individuals are involved in the cutting edge of neuroscience explorations, they are creating novel medical devices utilizing nanotechnology and lasers, they are exploring the universe through NASA satellites, and they are probing the depth of the human experience through literature, music and social interactions. As UTSA moves toward Tier One status, this evidence of their academic productivity will scale up rapidly.

In Nature Neuroscience, Todd Troyer from the Department of Biology describes his findings with songbirds. Research indicates that sleep influences learning, but little is known about the mechanisms involved. Troyer’s article suggests that sleep modifies the firing patterns of sensorimotor neurons before there is improvement in performance.

From the Department of Physics, David McComas (UTSA/SwRI) and Robert Ebert report the data they received from NASA’s Ulysses deep space probe, which indicate that the sun has seasonal long-term variations in the solar wind output. Their article was published in the Geophysical Research Letters journal.

In his article published in the prestigious journal Psychology of Music, Stacey Davis, associate professor in the Department of Music, concludes that Johann Sebastian Bach’s solo violin pieces utilized rubato. Performers communicate various aspects of musical structure through the use of slight variations in tempo and rhythm, a practice that is typically called tempo rubato.

From the Department of Biology, Peter Hemond’s findings on how brain cells respond in unison during tasks such as walking and talking were published in The Journal of Neuroscience. This research utilized computational modeling and experimental work with living neurons to reveal that factors affecting the sensitivity of single neurons could impact the network as a whole.

Jose Lopez-Ribot from the Department of Biology and UTSA’s South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases reports in Nature Protocols about the use of a high throughput system to test for evidence of fungal infections on surfaces. This is a critical problem in hospitals and is applicable to wound care clinical cases or where metal devices are placed under the skin such as in knee replacement surgery.

Donald Robin from the Honors College provides evidence in the journal Brain & Language that apraxia of speech is a central deficit in motor programming, which cooccurs with other non-speech motor deficits. These findings suggest a number of possible therapeutic interventions for stroke patients with this disorder.

Hamid Beladi from the Department of Economics published an article in A Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. The article demonstrates how an interaction between ownership rules and trade policies provides a rationale for a host government to impose a local equity investment requirement on a foreign multinational company. It is shown that this requirement for local investment can raise national welfare by removing distortions in the process.

In an article published in the Journal of American History, Daniel Gelo, dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts, reviews the fate of the Comanche society. Since the 1930s, anthropologists have been verifying aspects of humanity previously denied the Comanches, namely a structured social and political organization, law and religion. Gelo concludes that increasingly these prototypical plains buffalo hunters have materialized as sophisticated actors with their own manifest destiny.

Andrey Chabanov from the Department of Physics and Astronomy reports in the journal Physical Review B about the behavior of microwave pulses.

In The Astrophysical Journal, Eric Schlegel from the Department of Physics explores the dynamic behavior of black holes based on data obtained from the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer Mission which continues in a low earth circular orbit.

Gelu Popescu, professor in the Department of Mathematics, reports in the journal Advances in Mathematics about the validity of classical mathematical transforms of relevance to estimations of the behavior of conformable maps.

Two articles were published by UTSA faculty in the January 2009 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The first article by biologist Jurgen Engelberth explores how plants use various defense mechanisms to reduce attacks by insects. In contrast, the second article, written by biologist Jose Lopez-Ribot, reveals the biological inner workings of cellular elements in a major fungal pathogen.

In the highly cited journal Neuroscience Letters, George Perry, dean of the College of Sciences, reports about a unique way of treating Alzheimer’s disease with precisely defined nanoparticles. Amyloid-beta is a protein that kills neurons in the brain and this approach attempts to reduce the toxicity of this process.

In the journal A Review of Metaphysics, Alistair Welchman from the Department of Philosophy explores the classic work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling (1775–1854), who is widely regarded as an enduring yet enigmatic figure in German Idealism.

In an article published in the journal Nanotechnology, an innovative ecologically friendly technique is described to extract nanoparticles from natural sources such as oak and wheat. This collaborative project was completed by Miguel Yacaman from UTSA’s Department of Physics.