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Ralph Milliken: Curiosity’s Mission on Mars

By Guest PostAugust 2, 2012Sciencecuriosity rover project, mars geological history, mars geology, operations on mars, ralph milliken

As Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory rover, gets set to land in the wee hours of Monday morning, Brown geologist Ralph Milliken will be getting ready to get to work. He’s a member of the mission’s science team. His curiosity lies in finding out why Mars is a colder, drier place than it used to be

PASADENA, Calif. [Brown University] — Ralph Milliken, assistant professor of geological sciences, is on the science team of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), which is set to land the rover Curiosity on the Red Planet in the early morning of Aug. 6 Eastern Daylight Time. (more…)

Exeter Physicist Bends Light Waves on Surfboards

By Guest PostJuly 31, 2012Scienceaerospace industry, electromagnetic radiation, invisibility cloaks, light waves, metamaterials, pseudo atoms

A University of Exeter scientist is bringing together his passions for Physics and surfing with research that could inspire a host of new technologies. Dr Matt Lockyear is using foam from inside surfboards to make materials that can manipulate light.

Scientists across the globe are trying to develop materials that can refract light to create ‘invisibility cloaks’, which are of particular interest to the aerospace industry. ‘Invisibility cloaking’ means building properties into a material that allow the device to guide light waves around an object, making it invisible. (more…)

Deadly E. coli Strain Decoded

By Guest PostJuly 30, 2012Health, Science2011 outbreak, achilles heel, bacterium, biofilm, chris waters, e coli o157, e coli outbreak, e coli strain, german outbreak, Germany, michigan state university, o157 infection, shannon manning, shiga toxin, toxic gene

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The secret to the deadly 2011 E. coli outbreak in Germany has been decoded, thanks to research conducted at Michigan State University.

The deadliest E. coli outbreak ever, which caused 54 deaths and sickened more than 3,800 people, was traced to a particularly virulent strain that researchers had never seen in an outbreak before. In the current issue of the academic journal PLoS ONE, a team of researchers led by Shannon Manning, MSU molecular biologist and epidemiologist, suggests a way to potentially tame the killer bacteria. (more…)

Experiments Inform Study of Crowd Motion

By Guest PostJuly 29, 2012Scienceannual pilgrimage, brown university, crowd behavior, crowd cohesion, crowd motion, electromagnetism, experiment, laws, mathematics, mecca, sayles hall, sayles swarm, school of fish, the haj, william warren

To determine how crowd behavior emerges from individual actions, William Warren, professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences, assembled his own crowds and engaged them in an unusual four-day experiment in Sayles Hall. The subjects were equipped with motion capture markers affixed like antennae to bike helmets.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — What must the staid-faced University luminaries in those portraits around Sayles Hall have thought while they watched this scene play out for four days last week? Over and over, two to 20 young men and women in bike helmets adorned with what appeared to be five large antennae walked back and forth across a cardboard-covered floor. En route to goals marked by numbers just beneath the portraits, they dodged each other and arrangements of cardboard pillars. Each time they generated patterns of foot traffic. (more…)

Photovoltaics from Any Semiconductor

By Guest PostJuly 29, 2012Sciencephotovoltaic effect, semiconductor, solar cells, solar energy devices, solar technologies

Berkeley Lab Technology Could Open Door to More Widespread Solar Energy Devices

A technology that would enable low-cost, high efficiency solar cells to be made from virtually any semiconductor material has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. This technology opens the door to the use of plentiful, relatively inexpensive semiconductors, such as the promising metal oxides, sulfides and phosphides, that have been considered unsuitable for solar cells because it is so difficult to tailor their properties by chemical means. (more…)

Entropy Can Lead to Order, Paving The Route to Nanostructures

By Guest PostJuly 28, 2012Sciencedesigner materials, nanoparticles, nanostructures, polyhedral shape, shape shifting skins

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Researchers trying to herd tiny particles into useful ordered formations have found an unlikely ally: entropy, a tendency generally described as “disorder.” (more…)

Some Harmful Effects of Light at Night Can Be Reversed, Study Finds

By Guest PostJuly 27, 2012Sciencebrain, chronic exposure, depression, depressive disorder, depressive symptom, drug, hamster, harmful effects, hippocampus, light, light cycle, light dark cycle, night, protein, randy nelson, rodent, siberian hamsters, tnf, tnf inhibitor, tracy bedrosian, tumor necrosis factor, xpro1595, zachary weil

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Chronic exposure to dim light at night can lead to depressive symptoms in rodents – but these negative effects can be reversed simply by returning to a standard light-dark cycle, a new study suggests.

While hamsters exposed to light at night for four weeks showed evidence of depressive symptoms, those symptoms essentially disappeared after about two weeks if they returned to normal lighting conditions.

Even changes in the brain that occurred after hamsters lived with chronic light at night reversed themselves after returning to a more normal light cycle. (more…)

Study Determines Theoretical Energy Benefits and Potential of Algae Fuels

By Guest PostJuly 26, 2012Environment, Sciencealgae, algae fuels, algae pump, algeternal technologies, austin, austin startup, city of austin, colin beal, electricity, electromechanics, energy benefits, energy input, fertilizers, food, green source, michael webber, openalgae, pharmaceuticals, public policy, robert hebner, university of texas, viability of algae

AUSTIN, Texas — It’s theoretically possible to produce about 500 times as much energy from algae fuels as is needed to grow the fuels, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

However, limited by existing technology, the researchers found in a separate study that their algae growing facility is getting out about one-five hundredth as much energy as it currently puts in to grow the fuels.

“The search for cost-effective biofuels is one of the noble endeavors of our time, and these papers shed insight on where the boundaries are in algae research,” said Robert Hebner, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering and director of the Center for Electromechanics. “One of the responsibilities of a top research university is to discover and explain what the boundaries are so we can innovate within those boundaries or create ways to expand them.” (more…)

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