{"id":28686,"date":"2014-01-21T15:32:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T22:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=28686"},"modified":"2014-03-14T11:02:02","modified_gmt":"2014-03-14T18:02:02","slug":"analysis-salamander-jump-reveals-unexpected-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/analysis-salamander-jump-reveals-unexpected-twist\/","title":{"rendered":"Analysis of salamander jump reveals an unexpected twist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A small, secretive creature with unlikely qualifications for defying gravity may hold the answer to an entirely new way of getting off the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Salamanders\u2014or at least several species of the <i>Plethodontidae<\/i> family\u2014can jump, and humans would like to know a lot more about it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis particular jump is unique in the world,\u201d said graduate researcher <strong>Anthony Hessel<\/strong>. \u201cThat\u2019s why I think a lot of people are finding this very interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Northern Arizona University student calls the move a \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/alhlabbench.wordpress.com\/research\/jumping-salamanders\/\">hip-twist jump<\/a>\u201d that powers a \u201cflat catapult,\u201d describing the biomechanics in language the public can access. But the work has caught the attention of a highly technical crowd.<\/p>\n<p>Hessel, who studies muscle physiology and biomechanics, recalled the moment he fully grasped the reach of his findings. An email from a premier journal reached him over the holiday break with the subject line \u201c<i>Science<\/i> is interested in your work.\u201d The contact arose from his presentation at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology symposium. There will likely be more who are interested.<\/p>\n<table width=\"10%\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"5\" cellpadding=\"5\" align=\"right\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/file\/d\/0B3X39JzcR0z3SVE1UEhDRmc1aUU\/preview\" height=\"400\" width=\"400\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<small>Watch the salamander&#8217;s hip-twist jump in Anthony Hessel&#8217;s video above.<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a new way to get vertical lift for animals,\u201d Hessel said. \u201cSomething that is flat on the ground, that is not pushing directly down on the ground, can still get up in the air. I\u2019d say that hundreds of engineers will now toy with the idea and figure out what cool things can be built from it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hessel used high-speed film, a home-built cantilever beam apparatus, some well-established engineering equations and biomechanical analysis to produce the details of how a slippery little amphibian with short legs can propel itself six to 10 times its body length into the air.<\/p>\n<p>The key is that the salamander\u2019s legs don\u2019t provide the push that most creatures would require.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey transfer energy from their torso into the ground in a very special way,\u201d Hessel said. \u201cIt\u2019s all about how the energy is transferred into the ground efficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In describing the movement frame-by-frame from the high-speed film, Hessel said the salamander bends its body, then rapidly pushes that bend\u2014a \u201cC\u201d shape, down through the torso\u2014and this movement can \u201ccreate a lot of elastic energy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the interesting things about the salamander is that the mechanism moves the center of mass in a way that allows this really inefficient-looking mechanism to have a lot of efficiency,\u201d Hessel said.<\/p>\n<p>The next stage of the research is \u201cgetting down to the structures of the stiffness properties,\u201d Hessel said. \u201cWhen you see that there\u2019s more power in the jump that can come from the muscles, then you know there are other places where you have to look, like stored elastic energy, connective tissue stretching and bones moving.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of those factors may be the protein <a href=\"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/researcher-sees-spring-like-protein-as-key-to-muscle-behavior\/\">titin<\/a>, an active loader mechanism that is the focus of research by Hessel\u2019s mentor, Regents\u2019 Professor <strong>Kiisa Nishikawa<\/strong>. Her interdisciplinary lab group has provided valuable input throughout the project, Hessel said.<\/p>\n<p>For now, the student from Long Island, N.Y., will write and publish his findings to complete his master\u2019s degree, with plans to pursue a doctorate at NAU. Although the salamanders he brought with him from Allegheny College, his undergraduate institution, are not making a return trip to Pennsylvania, the same species is being studied at a lab there to continue the research, which Hessel will oversee himself this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/analysis-salamander-jump-reveals-unexpected-twist\/\">A small, secretive creature with unlikely qualifications for defying gravity may hold the answer to an entirely new way of getting off the ground. Salamanders\u2014or at least several species of the Plethodontidae family\u2014can jump, and humans would like to know a lot more about it. \u201cThis particular jump is unique in the world,\u201d said graduate&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":28690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,11],"tags":[577,574,575,578,38,24,576,579],"class_list":["post-28686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors","category-research-academics","tag-anthony-hessel","tag-biomechanics","tag-flat-catapult","tag-kiisa-nishikawa","tag-nau","tag-northern-arizona-university","tag-plethodon","tag-titin"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}