2008 Funded Projects

Management of Woodland Biodiversity in Chicagoland: Using Agent-Based Modeling to Understand the Dynamics of a Linked Social Ecological System

David Wise
Biological Sciences and Institute for Environmental Science & Policy

Moira Zellner
Urban Planning and Policy, CUPPA; and Institute for Environmental Science & Policy

Most woodlands in the Chicago region are heavily degraded due to human interference and the proliferation of invasive, nuisance plant species that severely reduce plant and animal biodiversity. In the restoration and management of these degraded woodlands in order to enhance biodiversity there are two major challenges: the ecological challenge of removing and preventing re-invasion of shrubby species, European buckthorn in particular; and the social challenge of integrating diverse attitudes towards habitat restoration and management. European buckthorn was introduced in the 1800s as a hedgerow planting because it formed a thick, almost impenetrable barrier. This characteristic is favored by some people today, who object to buckthorn removal because the visual barrier that separates their homes from highways and highly developed areas has been removed. There also has been opposition by segments of the public to controlled burning of nature preserves as a technique for suppressing buckthorn and enhancing the diversity of native flora. In fact, opposition to restoration activities in the Chicago region became so politically charged that ten years ago all ecological restoration in Cook County was banned. This research project will involve constructing two types of agent (individual)-based models to simulate hypothesized interactions in this complex, linked social ecological system. One model will be primarily ecologically based, structured to explain how different land management plans affect the biodiversity of habitat patches in the landscape. The second model will be a model of social-political interactions among the major constituencies, with patterns of patch biodiversity being one of the driving variables in the model. The approach is interdisciplinary because an ecologist and a social scientist will collaborate in the development of both models, with the ultimate goal being that the disciplinary insights of each will shape the structure of both models. The underlying motivation is that through this initial process, ideas for further, externally funded research by the PI’s and the two graduate students working on the project will be generated, including the collection of empirical data to inform and validate the preliminary models.



Regulation of mammalian brain chemistry and behavior by cystine-glutamate transporters

David E. Featherstone
Biological Sciences

Thomas Park
Biological Sciences

Michael Raggozino
Psychology

Scott Shippy
Chemistry

Our LAS interdisciplinary award is being used to determine whether xCT proteins affect brain function.  The role that xCT proteins play in brain function is not well understood, and altered xCT protein function might contribute to human neurological disorders.  For example, xCT levels are altered in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of human schizophrenic patients, and xCT inhibitors ameliorate the psychomimetic effects of phencyclidine (PCP) in rats.  To determine whether xCT proteins regulate brain function, we have obtained mutant mice that have no xCT protein, and are using a variety of technical approaches from several disciplines (biology, chemistry, psychology) to measure brain chemistry and behavior in these mice.  Our project helps reveal how the brain processes information, and will determine whether xCT proteins might make a good drug target for treating neurological disorders.



Triggers of Deadly International Conflict: A Social Informatics Early Warning and Monitoring System for Territorial Disputes  

Brandon Valeriano
Department of Political Science

Clement Yu,
Department of Computer Science

Philip S. Yu
Department of Computer Science

Douglas Gibler
Department of Political Science, University of Alabama

Territorial issues are clearly one of the most difficult issues for leaders to resolve peacefully.  However, what causes active and dormant territorial claims to escalate remains unstudied and, hence, not well understood.  This research will result in a model that will be able to predict the social and behavioral correlates of territorial disputes.  The goal of this project is to advance the field of socio-informatics to address the issues at stake between states as they develop by engaging interdisciplinary collaboration between computer scientists and international relations scholars.  With our territorial dispute early warning system, we hope to be able to predict which territorial disputes are the most conflict prone, which are ripe for escalation, and which are open for negotiation and settlement. This project is a seed grant for an NSF application.



Pleasure, perception and aesthetic appreciation

Anne Eaton
Department of Philosophy

David Hilbert
Department of Philosophy

Colin Klein
Department of Philosophy

Dave Wirtshafter
Department of Psychology

Good art is often pleasant, and there is clearly some connection between the pleasure that an artwork brings and the aesthetic value of that work. Spelling out this connection has proven difficult. Many have tried to illuminate it by focusing on the difficult notion of aesthetic value, but the pleasure side of the equation remains equally obscure. We hope to illuminate one type of aesthetic pleasure, perceptual pleasure, by drawing on the scientific study of perception, especially fundamental neuroscientific investigations of perceptual processes.  We will organize a series of workshops involving philosophers, neuroscientists and artists that will investigate the nature of perceptual pleasure, its neural basis, and its relation to aesthetic value.



Nutrient farming: A market-based strategy that links air and water quality improvement with restoration of natural areas, recreation and policy.

Miquel Gonzales-Meler
Department of Biological Sciences

Emily Minor
Department of Biological Sciences

Neil Sturchio
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Moira Zellner
Urban Planning and Policy Program, CUPPA

Donald Hey
The Wetland Initiative

We propose an interdisciplinary approach in which field data, current state of the science, and potentially competing interests and ecosystem services are incorporated into landscape models to aid in the complex decision making process of environmental solutions that involve environmental groups, landowners, stakeholders, policy makers and market strategists.

This research project will create a body of knowledge useful for predicting wetland reactions and outcomes over a wide range of conditions. With this fuller understanding of wetland optimization, economists can evaluate the market feasibility of nutrient farming over that same range of wetland conditions while preserving habitat and wildlife and reducing the risks of unforeseen environmental consequences.



Chicago Institute on Engaged Scholarship and Social Justice Research

Barbara Ransby
Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, African American Studies, and History

Lynette Jackson
Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, and African American Studies

Since 2000, at least thirteen universities have established special centers or offices to advance the practice of engaged scholarship.  We want to create a space at UIC for linking, stimulating, and supporting interdisciplinary scholarship and dialogue on participatory democracy, civic engagement, public policy reforms, and social racial, gender and economic justice movements.  A group of Chicago scholars and students have identified four sets of critical questions that we propose to collectively examine over the course of the next 14 months.  Through readings discussions, workshops, public forums and video-conferencing, we will consider four key sets of questions: translation, epistemology, methodology and pedagogy and imagined futures.  The outcome will be a video archive of our deliberations as well as at least two co-authored working papers.  This work builds upon a two year-long conversation and a successful day-long institute involving some fifty scholars from different disciplines and different Chicago institutions. 



Proposed Conference on Development and Democracy in Post-conflict African Nations

Paul Zeleza
Department of African American Studies

Dick Simpson
Department of Political Science

We are proposing to bring together at a conference Development and Democracy in Post-conflict African Nations, to be coordinated by UIC professors Cassandra Veney, Gender and Women’s Studies, Lynette Jackson, Gender and Women’s Studies, Dick Simpson, Political Science, and Paul Zeleza, African American Studies. Approximately twenty-five conference participants will hail both the U.S. and Africa, and represent a wide variety of disciplines including history, political science, economics, law, anthropology, and gender and women’s studies as well as public officials with the responsibility of governing the major cities in post-conflict nations. The conference will include scholars from the U.S. who study African countries as well as at least five UIC scholars and five UIC graduate students. We will also seek participation from five scholars from different African nations who have had recent civil wars or violent conflicts, who will be joined by five mayors from major African cities who cope first hand with the practical problems of development and democracy. These mayors will also be attending the Richard Daley Urban Conference, which will take place on the UIC campus immediately following our conference.