Dr. Kang-Ling Liao, a postdoctoral research associate in Alan Jones’ and Tim Elston’s labs, discovered a 鈥淪hadow detector鈥� and published the work in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. This shadow detector, comprised of a number of G-protein signaling molecules, is used by plants to control photosynthetic efficiency. The problem of detecting changes in signals in a noisy environment is widespread from bird calls to T cell activation and Dr. Liao鈥檚 mathematical model teaches us principles underlying a general mechanism solving the problem.