Award Abstract #0215830
Acquisition of a white light confocal microscope for quantitative characterization of dental microwear surfaces.

NSF Org:	BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
Initial Amendment Date:	July 19, 2002
Latest Amendment Date:	July 19, 2002
Award Number:	0215830
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	John E. Yellen BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences
Start Date:	August 1, 2002
Expires:	July 31, 2003 (Estimated)
Awarded Amount to Date:	$218571
Investigator(s):	Peter Ungar pungar@uark.edu (Principal Investigator) Alan Walker (Co-Principal Investigator) Christopher Brown (Co-Principal Investigator)
Sponsor:	University of Arkansas 120 Ozark Hall FAYETTEVILLE, AR 72701 479/575-3845
NSF Program(s):	MAJOR RESEARCH INSTRUMENTATION
Field Application(s):
Program Reference Code(s):	OTHR, 9150, 0000
Program Element Code(s):	1189

ABSTRACT

A National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation award will allow the purchase a NanoSurf II Pro (NanoFocus Corp) white light confocal microscope for use in dental microwear analysis and other research activities at the University of Arkansas. Dental microwear analysis is the study of microscopic use-wear patterns in teeth to infer diet. The ability to reconstruct diet from dental microwear is important to both bioarcheologists and paleontologists because food preferences provide a key to understanding the biology and ecology of past peoples and fossil species.

While dental microwear has been studied for many living and fossil groups, current techniques are stretched to their limits. Microwear feature measurement error is high, and repeatability is low. This both reduces the power to resolve diet-related differences within studies and limits the ability to compare results among studies. Measurement errors stem from two problems. 1) The scanning electron microscope (SEM) used in most such studies is not ideal for microwear analysis. Because the SEM forms an image by a complex interaction between a surface and an electron beam, different instrument settings can produce different images for a single surface. 2) Because a surface can have hundreds of microscopic scratches and pits with irregular and overlapping boundaries, it can be difficult to identify and measure those features.

Drs. Ungar, Brown and Walker will use the Nanosurf II Pro instrument to solve both problems. This instrument creates a true rendering of a wear surface in 3-D to provide a repeatable, automated procedure to quantify patterns of wear. The microscope measures z-values at fixed x,y intervals and calculates a series of attributes, such as roughness and anisotropy for a microwear surface. This work is important because it will give researchers a new, more repeatable way to characterize dental microwear that should lead to new insights into the diets of past peoples and fossil species.



This NanoSurf II Pro will also be used by researchers and students in other disciplines on the campus of the University of Arkansas. The combination of high resolution, long depth of field and large field of view of this instrument will allow new research in: 1) plant pathology (study of damaged leaves following insect predation); 2) mechanical engineering (study of impact of cutting tools and electronic packaging systems); 3) chemistry (measurement of patterned materials for lab-on-a-chip devices); 4) biological engineering (measurement and analysis of microorganisms for development of biosensors); 5) food science (assessment of effects of processing on food surface structure); and 6) geosciences (measurement and analysis of bedrock surface modifications due to weathering). Limited research infrastructure at Arkansas' universities contributes to a limited science and technology environment in the state. Many students leave Arkansas for their education and employment, contributing to the fact that the state is last in the nation in percentage of its population with a college degree. Access to state-of-the-art major research instrumentation, such as the NanoSurf II Pro, will contribute toward recruiting and training students from geographically underrepresented groups in a broad range of science and technology disciplines.

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