Tag Archives: steven chu

When Cells Hit the Wall: UCLA Engineers Put The Squeeze on Cells to Diagnose Disease

If you throw a rubber balloon filled with water against a wall, it will spread out and deform on impact, while the same balloon filled with honey, which is more viscous, will deform much less. If the balloon’s elastic rubber was stiffer, an even smaller change in shape would be observed.

By simply analyzing how much a balloon changes shape upon hitting a wall, you can uncover information about its physical properties.

Although cells are not simple sacks of fluid, they also contain viscous and elastic properties related to the membranes that surround them; their internal structural elements, such as organelles; and the packed DNA arrangement in their nuclei. Because variations in these properties can provide information about cells’ state of activity and can be indicative of diseases such as cancer, they are important to measure. (more…)

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Clean Vehicle Energy Technology to be Focus of new U.S-China Research Center

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— A partnership to advance technologies for clean energy vehicles led by the University of Michigan will receive $12.5 million over the next five years under the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced.

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Global Model Confirms: Cool Roofs Can Offset Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Mitigate Global Warming

Can light-colored rooftops and roads really curb carbon emissions and combat global climate change?  

The idea has been around for years, but now, a new study by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that is the first to use a global model to study the question has found that implementing cool roofs and cool pavements in cities around the world can not only help cities stay cooler, they can also cool the world, with the potential of canceling the heating effect of up to two years of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions.

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