Newsletter, March 2018
Volume 2, Issue 1
Fundamentally, liquid crystals are all about chemistry … just like the human body. A trio of new patents secured by a Kent State University researcher shows how a novel application of this ever-evolving technology may soon yield answers to some of the world’s most pressing medical dilemmas.
Elda Hegmann, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Liquid Crystal Institute and Department of Biological Sciences in Kent State’s College of Arts and Sciences, recently secured three patents related to the liquid crystal elastomers she is using to facilitate tissue regeneration.
Dr. Hegmann’s lab has created a fully biocompatible and biodegradable liquid crystal elastomers that interacts with human tissue cells.
“When cells align, they respond better,” Dr. Hegmann said. “With these liquid crystal elastomers, we can get stem cells to differentiate to a particular cell line or get any other tissue cells to align and mature faster.”
Dr. Hegmann’s recent patents relate to this elastomer and also how the cells are grown.
In petri dishes, cells will usually form a monolayer, filling up the petri dish. Cells must then be transferred (split) onto more petri dishes, or they will form a second layer that will cut off the first layer from air and nutrients, and expose those cells to the waste products from the second layer, ultimately killing them. This requires scientists to constantly split the cells to maintain healthy cell cultures.
“When growing cells, you want to go to the most natural environment, which is 3-D, not 2-D,” Dr. Hegmann said. “We created a 3-D environment to eliminate the need for constant splitting. Think of it like a parking deck instead of a parking lot.”
Dr. Hegmann has approached this in two ways. The first is by dipping a metal template into a polymer mix that forms a porous foam around it. The metal is then removed, leaving the foam full of channels, like a sponge. The cells then grow either inside or on top of the channels.
The second method is similar, except that it replaces the metal frame with salt, which is easier to dissolve, expediting the process and allowing for custom-engineering to adjust the foam to accommodate larger or smaller cells.
Dr. Hegmann said her lab aims to provide a 3-D tissue model that can help researchers fully understand cell-to-cell interactions in a more appropriate environment, and to find, study and test new therapeutics.
Dr. Hegmann has been working with Kent State colleagues Jennifer McDonough, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences; Ernest Freeman, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the School of Biomedical Sciences; and Robert Clements, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences to apply the new elastomer to the growth of neural cells.
“When neuroblastomas are stimulated with retinoic acid, we can help them to differentiate and mature,” Dr. Hegmann said. 
Dr. Hegmann said her lab can tailor the mechanical properties of the liquid crystal elastomers to match any kind of tissue.
“We are the very first applying it in this way,” she said. “Other research groups in the world are following us.”
Dr. Hegmann’s elastomer foams are the subject of an article recently featured in the journal Soft Matter.
Photo Caption:
Kent State University's Elda Hegman, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Glenn H. Brown Liquid Crystal Institute works with a student in her lab.
Media Contacts:
Dan Pompili, dpompili@kent.edu, 330-672-0731
Emily Vincent, evincen2@kent.edu, 330-672-8595
Return to March 2018 Newsletter
Chemistry Lab Conducts Research for Five-Thirty-Eight Investigation into MLB baseballs
NSF Grant to Study Organic Transistors Also May Help Students to Better Understand Physics
Kent State Study Challenges Conventional Wisdom About Cambodian Genocide
Doctoral Student Publishes Solo Article on Pottery in Top Archaeology Journal
Researchers in Soumitra Basu’s chemistry lab cut open the balls to examine the cores using a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA).
Read the full story at FiveThirtyEight.com.
Photo Caption:
A Kent State University baseball pitcher hurls a ball toward the plate.
Media Contacts:
Dan Pompili, dpompili@kent.edu, 330-672-0731
Emily Vincent, evincen2@kent.edu, 330-672-8595
Return to March 2018 Newsletter
Liquid Crystal Researcher Secures Patents for Cutting-Edge Tissue Regeneration Models
NSF Grant to Study Organic Transistors Also May Help Students to Better Understand Physics
Kent State Study Challenges Conventional Wisdom About Cambodian Genocide
Doctoral Student Publishes Solo Article on Pottery in Top Archaeology Journal
While wearable technology is all the rage among high school and college-aged Americans, the average student may not know much about the science behind their high-tech apparel.
A grant from the National Science Foundation will help a Kent State physics professor make progress on both fronts.
Dr. Björn Lussem, an assistant professor of physics in Kent State’s College of Arts and Sciences, recently received a five-year $500,000 Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award honors Lussem as one of the most promising up-and-coming researchers in his field and provides five years of laboratory research educational outreach. He’ll apply the funding toward advancing a little-understood piece of technology and helping students learn more about physics.
Lüssem studied electrical engineering at the RWTH Aachen (Germany) and the University of Bath and obtained his degree as Diplom-Ingenieur in 2003.He prepared his PhD thesis at the Research Center in Jülich, Germany in the field of molecular electronics. He joined Kent State in 2014.
The project, titled “The Working Mechanics of Organic Electrochemical Transistors,” focuses on microscopic- to miniature-sized sensors that can be used to interact with biological tissue.
“Transistors usually are just conducting electronic current. The nice thing about this is that it converts ionic current to electronic current," Lussem said. “In our bodies, it’s all ions. So if you want to interface electronics with the biology, you need this kind of transistor.”
Lussem said the highly-sensitive transistors could, for example, measure the amount of lactic acid in sweat, or even monitor electron excitation in the brain.
Lussem, one of few in the physics world studying the transistors, said he hopes he will be able to advance understanding and use of the technology.
“There is a standard model, but there are many contradictions with it, so many people think it doesn’t work very well,” he said. “But it does work well, up to a certain level. We want to show why it is working, but also find out how we can make it better.”
Lussem said components can be added to the basic transistor to make it more sensitive to certain biomolecules. With any luck, he added, they might even be printable on devices little more sophisticated than the average desktop printer.
An NSF Career grant also comes with an understanding that the researcher will use some of the funds to become a more proficient educator.
Lussem wants to change the way students think about physics research.
“When you’re teaching physics, it’s always been a linear kind of thing — A follows B follows C follows D, and that’s not how physics is,” he said. “And I think students get a completely wrong image of what it means to do physics in real life. It’s being wrong almost all of the time, and being right only about five percent of the time.”
Lussem is working with Kent State’s School of Visual Communication and Design to create short stories and cartoons to illustrate the scientific process and the study of physics.
He said he plans to try the designs in classes at Kent State as well as reaching out to local high schools and even primary schools to test their applications there.
Photo Caption:
Kent state University assistant physics professor Björn Lussem holds one of the many types of organic transistors he studies in his lab.
Media Contacts:
Dan Pompili, dpompili@kent.edu, 330-672-0731
Emily Vincent, evincen2@kent.edu, 330-672-8595
Return to March 2018 Newsletter
Liquid Crystal Researcher Secures Patents for Cutting-Edge Tissue Regeneration Models
Chemistry Lab Conducts Research for Five-Thirty-Eight Investigation into MLB baseballs
Kent State Study Challenges Conventional Wisdom About Cambodian Genocide
Doctoral Student Publishes Solo Article on Pottery in Top Archaeology Journal
A recent publication by Kent State geographers sheds more light on the causes of the Cambodian genocide that wiped out roughly a quarter of the country’s population in the late 1970s.
Co-authored with Kent State geography professor James Tyner in Kent State’s College of Arts and Sciences, doctoral student Stian Rice’s article “The rice cities of the Khmer Rouge: an urban political ecology of rural mass violence” was published in the December issue of Transactions of the institute of British Geographers. 
The article counters a common belief among scholars that the Khmer Rouge were anti-urban and anti-technology.
“One of the points we wanted to make in this study is that re-ruralization and re-urbanization were inextricably linked to each other,” Rice said.
Although the Khmer Rouge evacuated most Cambodian cities immediately after they seized power, they also sought to increase revenues to industrialize the country, which they accomplished by increasing rice production.
They recognized that instead of relying on the rain-fed rice production in a tropical climate, they could increase the amount of arable land by building irrigation systems with forced labor — another of the major contributing factors in the genocide.
They soon selectively re-populated cities to ensure a chain of distribution for rice exports. Rice said the urban centers not only served as export distribution junctions, but also provided the imported resources necessary to maintain the infrastructure.
This economic system also highlights another aspect of the Khmer Rouge’s cruel and murderous reign.
“A lot of the death came through starvation,” Tyner said. “Not because the country was not producing enough rice, but because it was being mass exported to China.”
The study adds to a growing body of work by Tyner, Rice, and other Kent State geographers that suggests capitalist-based economics were responsible for a significant portion of the deaths that occurred under Khmer Rouge rule.
“What we’re presenting here is a radical reinterpretation of how to understand the Cambodian genocide,” Tyner said.
The article’s publication in the flagship journal of the British Royal Geographical Society bolsters Rice’s young career.
“This one probably means the most in terms of impact, and contributes the most to theory,” he said. “At least it feels that way to me, and I hope it’s received that way.”
Photo Caption:
An irrigation canal runs through a Cambodian rice field.
Media Contacts:
Dan Pompili, dpompili@kent.edu, 330-672-0731
Emily Vincent, evincen2@kent.edu, 330-672-8595
Return to March 2018 Newsletter
Liquid Crystal Researcher Secures Patents for Cutting-Edge Tissue Regeneration Models
Chemistry Lab Conducts Research for Five-Thirty-Eight Investigation into MLB baseballs
NSF Grant to Study Organic Transistors Also May Help Students to Better Understand Physics
Doctoral Student Publishes Solo Article on Pottery in Top Archaeology Journal
Research always begins with a question.
In Metin Eren’s archaeology lab at Kent State University, that question seems to be “why did they make it that way?” and the answers often seem to defy conventional wisdom.
The findings of a study published recently in archaeology’s top journal by a doctoral student in the lab are no different.
Eren, assistant professor of anthropology and director of archaeology in KSU’s College of Arts and Sciences, studies Clovis spear points made by Ohio’s earliest inhabitants. Soon after the lab opened, he welcomed Michelle Bebber, an art and anthropology graduate from the University of Akron, who has made ancient pottery a part of the lab’s focus.
Their modus operandus is to make replicas of ancient tools and pottery, then break them to study their strength and structural features.
Bebber’s solo article in the Journal of Archaeological Science presents an argument that pottery was not made the way it was made for the reasons long believed by scholars.
“You want a quality product and there’s many steps that go into making that product,” Bebber said. “People in the past, just like people today, had to make decisions about what to include in the recipe for creating pottery.”
Ancient peoples would make pottery primarily of clay they dug from the ground, then add crushed stones or pieces of shell called temper.
Archaeologists have long believed this temper was added to strengthen the pottery. That’s where the making and breaking MO comes in.
In Bebber’s study, she made pots with the original recipe that included various forms of temper material, and made other pots with only clay.
“It turns out that that clay, just pure, is much stronger, almost twice the strength of some of the comparison samples with what they were adding,” she said. “So there must be some other factor that was driving them to add that temper.”
Bebber said it’s likely the Early Woodland people, who lived well before the pottery wheel, added the temper to help stabilize the raw clay when building by hand.
“Raw clay is very flexible, almost too flexible, so they probably added this temper to help with the formation phase,” she said. “They were trading end-product strength for workability in that earlier step.”
Eren said Bebber’s single-author publication in a top journal, while no surprise to him, is still an uncommon occurrence for a graduate student.
“I cannot tell you how rare that is,” Eren said. “It’s a huge achievement.”
Bebber said a follow-up study is already under way.
Photo Caption:
Kent State University Anthropology Ph.D. student Michelle Bebber works at the pottery wheel in the Eren Lab.
Media Contacts:
Dan Pompili, dpompili@kent.edu, 330-672-0731
Emily Vincent, evincen2@kent.edu, 330-672-8595
Return to March 2018 Newsletter
Liquid Crystal Researcher Secures Patents for Cutting-Edge Tissue Regeneration Models
Chemistry Lab Conducts Research for Five-Thirty-Eight Investigation into MLB baseballs
NSF Grant to Study Organic Transistors Also May Help Students to Better Understand Physics
Kent State Study Challenges Conventional Wisdom About Cambodian Genocide