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VOLUME LXII • NUMBER 4 • April 2013 • $3.75

Energy Production

Advances Require

Improved Power Grid

For the Specifier — Cost Benefit.

• ATU is affordable, compact and lightweight. • Easy to install and operate. • NSF results show performance significantly exceeds the listing requirements for NSF/ANSI Standard 40, Class 1.• No moving parts — no complicated control panel to be programmed or adjusted, no wires to chaff and short, no internal pumps to clog and break, no costly onsite fabrication work, no form works on site, and no costly delivery and installation charges that exceed the value of the system.

Operating in Europe since 1992, the Bluewater Advanced Treatment Unit (ATU) is a proven system offering the greenest wastewater treatment technology currently available for a fraction of the cost of many competitor systems. The Bluewater ATU is the next step in the Green process as environ-mental concerns, coupled with regulatory requirements, increase demand for an affordable, cleaner solution for processing wastewater.

Our Unique ProcessStep 1: InfluentChamber contains plastic

media designed to provide a large surface area to

which naturally occurring micro-organisms contained in the influent become attached.

Step 2: AerationAn air blower mounted on a plinth at ground level pumps air into a diffuser located in this inner cham-ber. The extra oxygen acceler-ates the growth of naturally oc-curring micro-organisms which break down all of the organic waste.

Step 3: CirculationInner chamber contents circu-late through access points into

the top of an outer, settle-ment chamber. The contents slowly sink and re-enter the

inner chamber at the system’s bottom where bacteria contin-ue organic matter breakdown. Process repeats breaking down 100% of all organic waste.

Step 4: DischargeAfter 100% of the waste has been broken down by the micro-organ-isms, the polluting strength of the wastewater and the total solids that remain in suspen-sion will have been reduced 40-fold, and the effluent is a clear, odor-free liquid.

www.bluewateratu.comTo see all the facts about our unique process and benefits, please visit the Bluewater website

804-240-8395 • 1-800-350-8114Or contact Bill Howard, Virginia Authorized Dealer at

For the Developer — Increased Yield.

• Units can be installed in an area as small as 60’ x 30’, subject to survey. • Provides an affordable and practical solution for properties with perculation issues. • Large multi-unit systems, operating in se-ries or in parallel, are available for applications where common sewerage may be beneficial.• Effluent clean enough for potential reuse as ‘gray’ water for irrigation and other non-pota-ble uses.• Provides environmentally benign option to meet increasingly stringent regulations.

www.vaeng.com –

Changing Coal Technology 14 Focus On Improved Energy Production

Professional Directory 22

Improving Biofuels and Bio-products 18 Research To Advance Biomass Usage

Engineers On The Move 12

Bits and Pieces 21

Index to Advertisers 25

The Outer Edge 26

Energy Production Advances 4 Integration and Improved Grid Required

Music May Hold Key 13 Increasing Interest In STEM Majors

Air Cleaning Technology 9 Improved Infection Prevention

Fuel Systems Design 16 New Model Enables Computer Testing

Asteroid Impacts 10 Mitigating Threat To Earth

THE TOP OF THE NEWSVolume LXII Number 4 April 2013

The Virginia Engineer (ISSN 0504-4251/USPS 900-720) is published monthly, all rights reserved. Tel: 1-877-779-3527. Postmaster: Forward address changes to 7401 Flannigan Mill Rd., Mechanicsville, VA 23111. Address all correspondence to Richard O. Carden, II, at the address above. Subscriptions: 1 year-$20.00; 2 years-$38.00; 3 years-$55.00; single copy, $3.75 plus S&H, except January Annual Directory Issue, $25.00 plus S&H. Editorial and advertising deadline: 20th of month prior to the month printed. Periodical postage paid at Mechanicsville, VA and other offices.

THE BEST OF THE FEATURES

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– April 2013 The Virginia Engineer

THE VIRGINIA ENGINEER

With the cost of energy continuing to skyrocket as the world’s economies make a valiant attempt to regain ground, two related issues have increasingly become fo-cal points: alternate energy creation and grid integration; and creation of a reliable dis-tribution system or power grid.

Recognition that faster paced new research into the efficient creation and integration of al-ternate energy production is steadily gaining momentum.

But why the renewed sense of urgency now? The issue of energy independence has been a much debated topic for years. Besides, reports abound regard-ing seemingly vast worldwide deposits of coal, natural gas, and oil. Enough, according to some estimates, to last for decades.

Fortunately taking a lon-ger view, it is increasingly ac-knowledged that long term en-ergy production based, solely or primarily, on finite fossil fuels for energy generation, is a losing proposition as an en-vironmental issue and as a vi-able solution for solving antici-pated and expected growth in energy demands in the future.

Energy production in the future will need to take mul-tiple factors into consideration as plants are designed and con-structed such as environmental impact, available fuel sources, and connectivity to the nation-al grid. It must be efficient de-

spite the availability vagaries of sources like wind and solar.

The National Center for At-mospheric Research (NCAR), applying its atmospheric exper-tise to solar energy, is spearhead-ing a three-year, nationwide project to create what seems to be the impossible — unprec-edented, 36-hour forecasts of incoming energy from the Sun for solar energy power plants.

The research team is de-signing a prototype system to forecast sunlight and resulting power every 15 minutes over specific solar facilities, thereby enabling utilities to continu-ously anticipate the amount of available solar energy. The work, funded primarily with a $4.1 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, will draw on cut-ting-edge research techniques at leading government labs and universities across the country, in partnership with utilities, oth-er energy companies, and com-mercial forecast providers.

Much of the focus will be on generating detailed predictions of clouds and atmospheric par-ticles that can reduce incoming energy from the Sun.

“It’s critical for utility man-agers to know how much sun-light will be reaching solar en-ergy plants in order to have confidence that they can supply sufficient power when their cus-tomers need it,” notes Sue El-len Haupt, director of NCAR’s Weather Systems and Assess-

ment Program and the lead re-searcher on the solar energy project. “These detailed cloud and irradiance forecasts are a vital step in using more energy from the Sun.”

The project takes aim at one of the greatest challenges in me-teorology: accurately predicting cloud cover over specific areas. In addition to helping utilities tap solar energy more effective-ly, detailed cloud predictions can also improve the accuracy of shorter-term weather forecasts.

The project expands NCAR’s focus on renewable energy. NCAR designed a highly de-tailed wind energy forecasting system with Xcel Energy that saved Xcel ratepayers an esti-mated $6 million in a single year. The center is also creating ad-vanced prediction capabilities to enable wind farm developers to anticipate wind energy potential anywhere in the world.

“Improving forecasts for re-newable energy from the Sun produces a major return on investment for society,” says Thomas Bogdan, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR on behalf of the National Science Foundation. “By helping utilities produce energy more efficiently from the Sun, we can make this market more cost competitive.”

More than half of all states in the U.S. have mandated that utilities increase their use of re-newable energy as a way to re-duce dependence on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, which affect air quality and re-lease greenhouse gases associ-

Energy Production AdvancesRequire Improved Power Grid

The Virginia Engineer www.vaeng.com –

ated with climate change. But the shift to energy sources such as solar or wind means relying

on resources that are, to say the least, difficult to predict.

Because large amounts of electricity cannot be stored in a cost-effective manner, power generated by a solar panel or any other source must be promptly consumed. If an electric utility powers down a coal- or natu-ral gas-fired facility in anticipa-tion of solar energy, those plants may not be able to power up fast enough if clouds roll in. The only option in such a scenario is to buy energy on the spot mar-ket, which can be very costly.

Conversely, if more sunshine

reaches a solar farm than ex-pected, the extra energy can go to waste.

But predicting clouds, which form out of microscopic droplets of water or ice, is also notorious-ly difficult. Clouds are affected by a myriad of factors, including winds, humidity, sunlight, sur-face heat, and tiny airborne par-ticles, as well as chemicals and gases in the atmosphere.

Solar energy output is af-fected not just by when and where clouds form, but also by the types of clouds present. The thickness and elevation of clouds have greatly differing ef-fects on the amount of sunlight reaching the ground. Wispy cir-

rus clouds several miles above the surface, for example, block far less sunlight than thick, low-

lying stratus clouds.To design a system that can

generate such detailed forecasts, NCAR and its collaborators will marshal an array of observing instruments, including lidars (which use laser-based technol-ogy to take measurements in the atmosphere); specialized computer models; and mathe-matical and artificial intelligence techniques. Central to the effort will be three total sky imagers in each of several locations, which will observe the entire sky, tri-angulate the height and depth of clouds, and trace their paths

A new research initiative is designed to lead to unprecedented 36-hour forecasts of incoming energy from the Sun, thereby helping utilities obtain energy more efficiently from solar energy power plants. Photo courtesy of Brookhaven National Lab.



across the sky.The team will test these ad-

vanced capabilities during differ-ent seasons in several geograph-ically diverse U.S. locations: the Northeast, Florida, Colorado/New Mexico, and California. The goal is to ensure that the system works year round in dif-ferent types of weather patterns.

Once the system is tested, the techniques will be widely dis-seminated for use by the energy industry and meteorologists.

“This will raise the bar for providing timely forecasts for solar power, ” Director Haupt says. “It also represents a great opportunity for providing far more detail about clouds in the everyday weather forecasts that we all rely on.”

NCAR is launching the so-lar project with assistance from numerous partners from both the public and private sectors including government labora-tories and test facilities; univer-sities from across the country; regional utility companies; and commercial forecast providers.

Computing time will be pro-vided by the New York State Department of Economic Devel-opment’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation on an IBM Blue Gene supercom-puter located at Brookhaven Na-tional Laboratory.

In Virginia, information released by Gov. Bob McDon-nell’s office has noted that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has re-cently taken a step toward is-suing a lease to Virginia for offshore wind-energy research.

Following review, BOEM

said it found no competitive interest in the area where Vir-ginia’s Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy intends to conduct the research.

According to Gov. McDon-nell’s issued statement, “The quicker the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy can study our coastal areas for their wind-energy production potential, the sooner private companies can gain the data they need to move forward with com-mercial activities in the area.”

In the wake of the findings, the state energy department is now able to submit its research plan for two meteorological and ocean monitoring platforms. The platforms will serve as an instrument base to facilitate data collection on wind speeds, wave height and direction, water lev-els, and bird and bat activities.

Virginia has budgeted funds to initiate the research project, noted Maureen Matsen, Virgin-ia’s deputy secretary of natural resources. The state anticipates using its funds to match funding provided from the federal gov-ernment or possibly from com-mercial developers to ensure completion of the research effort, Secretary Matsen explained.

And in a separate but re-lated initiative, seven projects, including a proposal from Do-minion Virginia Power, have been selected to receive federal matching funds, $4 million each, to undertake initial engineer-ing, design and permitting for a 12-megawatt offshore wind-power demonstration facility.

Of these seven projects, the BOEM will select up to three to

move toward final design, per-mitting and construction. Each of the three finalists will receive up to an additional $47 million, assuming funds are available. The projects must be in opera-tion by the end of 2017.

Current projections from Vir-ginia’s energy officials indicate 2022 as the earliest time frame that commercial development of Virginia’s offshore wind re-sources could occur.

But for all the advances in production opportunities, with-out a reliable distribution net-work, all is for naught.

In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama talk-ed about the future of energy and mentioned “self-healing power grids.” That is a grid able to keep itself stable during nor-mal conditions and also to self-recover in the event of a distur-bance caused by severe weather, for example.

But as the national power-grid network becomes larger and more complex, achieving re-liability across the network is in-creasingly difficult. Now North-western University scientists have identified conditions and properties that power companies can consider using to keep pow-er generators in the desired syn-chronized state and help make a self-healing power grid a reality.

The Northwestern team’s design for a better power grid could help reduce both the fre-quency of blackouts and the cost of electricity as well as offer an improved plan for handling the intermittent power sources of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, which


can destabilize the network.“We will be looking at a com-

pletely different power grid in the future,” said Adilson E. Mot-ter, the Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Northwest-ern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences who led the re-search. “The use of renewable energy is growing. More people will be driving electric cars, and the power grid will be delivering this energy, not gas stations. We need a power grid that is more capable and more reliable. This requires a better understand-ing of the current power grid as well as new ways to stabilize it.”

The crux of the challenge is that for the U.S. power grid to function the power generators in each of its three intercon-nections (Eastern, Western and Texas) must be synchronized, all operating at the frequency of 60 hertz. Out-of-synch power generators can lead to black-outs that affect millions of peo-ple and cost billions of dollars.

Having a network that can synchronize spontaneously and recover from failures in real time -- in other words, a self-healing power grid -- could prevent such blackouts. To help achieve this, power companies could apply the Northwestern guidelines as they add pow-er generators to the network or tweak existing generators.

A paper describing the re-searchers’ mathematical model, titled “Spontaneous synchro-ny in power-grid networks,” was published in a recent issue of the journal Nature Physics.

When a problem develops in

the power-grid network, control devices are used to return pow-er generators to a synchronized state. Prof. Motter likens this to using medicine to treat some-one who is ill. He and his col-leagues are suggesting condi-tions to keep synchronicity in good shape so interven-tions are kept to a minimum.

“Our approach is preven-tive care -- preventing fail-ures instead of mitigating them,” said Prof. Motter, an author of the paper and an executive committee mem-ber of the Northwestern In-stitute on Complex Systems (NICO). “The guidelines we offer could be very useful as the power grid expands.”

The researchers derived a condition under which the desired synchronous state of a power grid is stable. They then used this condition to identify tunable parameters of the power generators that result in spontaneous syn-chronization. This synchro-nization can be autonomous, not guided by control devices.

“The blackout at this year’s Super Bowl was caused by a device that was installed spe-cifically to prevent blackouts,” said Takashi Nishikawa, an au-thor of the paper and a research associate professor of physics and astronomy at Northwest-ern. “A large fraction of black-outs have human and equip-ment errors among the causes.

“Reduced dependence on conventional control devices can improve the reliability of the grid,” he said. “Our analysis also suggests ways to design con-

trol strategies that potentially can improve the existing ones.”

Power generators are very different from each other; some are large and others small. Prof.

Motter and his colleagues iden-tified a “body mass index” for power generators, which they suggest should be kept ap-proximately the same (essen-tially making all generators look identical to the network) in order to strengthen spon-taneous synchronicity in the system. If the body mass in-dices change, they should be changed in a coordinated way.

The researchers demon-strated their model using real power grids of hundreds of power generators, similar to the size of the Texas portion of the U.S. power grid. ##

As the national power-grid network becomes larger and more complex, achieving reliability across the network is increasingly difficult. Now North-western University scientists have identified conditions and properties to keep power generators in the desired synchronized state and help make a self-healing power grid a reality.



Iridescence, or sheen that shifts color depend-ing on your viewing angle, is pretty in peacock feathers. But for engineers trying to mimic the birds' unique color mechanism to make high-res-olution, reflective, color display screens, it’s been a challenge.

Now, researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) have found a way to lock in so-called struc-tural color, which is made with texture rather than chemicals. A paper on the work, “Angle-Insensi-tive Structural Colours based on Metallic Nano-cavities and Coloured Pixels beyond the Diffrac-tion Limit”, is published online in a recent edition of the Nature journal “Scientific Reports”.

In a peacock's mother-of-pearl tail, precisely arranged hairline grooves reflect light of certain wavelengths. Consequently colors appear differ-ently depending on the movement of the animal or the observer. Imitating this system, minus the rainbow effect, has been a leading approach to de-veloping next-generation reflective displays.

The new U-M research could lead to advanced color e-books and electronic paper, as well as other color reflective screens that don't need their own light to be readable. Reflective displays consume much less power than their backlit cousins in lap-tops, tablet computers, smartphones and TVs. The technology could also enable leaps in data storage and cryptography. Documents could be marked invisibly to prevent counterfeiting.

Funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Re-search and the National Science Foundation, and led by Jay Guo, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, the researchers harnessed the ability of light to funnel into nanoscale metal-lic grooves and get trapped inside. With this ap-proach, they found the reflected hues stay true re-gardless of the viewer's angle.

"That's the magic part of the work," Prof. Guo explained. "Light is funneled into the nanocavity, whose width is much, much smaller than the wave-length of the light. And that's how we can achieve

color with resolution beyond the diffraction limit. Also counterintuitive is that longer wavelength light gets trapped in narrower grooves."

The diffraction limit was long thought to be the smallest point to which you could focus a beam of light. Others have broken the limit as well, but the U-M team did so with a simpler technique that also produces stable and relatively easy-to-make color, Prof. Guo said.

"Each individual groove—much smaller than the light wavelength—is sufficient to do this func-tion. In a sense, only the green light can fit into the nanogroove of a certain size," Prof. Guo said.

The U-M team determined what size slit would catch what color light. Within the framework of the print industry standard cyan, magenta and yellow color model, the team found that at groove depths of 170 nanometers and spacing of 180 nanometers, a slit 40 nanometers wide can trap red light and reflect a cyan color. A slit 60 nanometers wide can trap green and make magenta. And one 90 nano-meters wide traps blue and produces yellow. The visible spectrum spans from about 400 nanome-ters for violet to 700 nanometers for red.

"With this reflective color, you could view the display in sunlight. It's very similar to color print," Prof. Guo said.

To make color on white paper, also a reflective surface, printers arrange pixels of cyan, magenta and yellow in such a way that they appear to our eyes as the colors of the spectrum. A display that utilized Prof. Guo's approach would work in a similar way.

To demonstrate their device, the researchers etched nanoscale grooves in a plate of glass with the technique commonly used to make integrat-ed circuits, or computer chips. Then they coated the grooved glass plate with a thin layer of silver. When light—which is a combination of electric and magnetic field components—hits the grooved surface, its electric component creates what's called a polarization charge at the metal slit sur-face, boosting the local electric field near the slit. That electric field attracts a particular wavelength of light.

Right now, the new device can make static pic-tures, and the researchers hope to develop a mov-ing picture version in the near future. ##

Researchers Discover ‘Peacock’ Technology

Improvement


New Device Could Help Prevent

Pathogen InfectionsWashington University engineering research-

ers have created a new type of air-cleaning tech-nology that could better protect human lungs from allergens, airborne viruses and ultrafine particles in the air.

The device, known as the SXC ESP, was created by a team led by Pratim Biswas, PhD, the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Depart-ment of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engi-neering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science.

A recent study of the device, published in Ap-plied and Environmental Microbiology, found that it could help to prevent respiratory and viral infec-tions and inhalation-induced allergic reactions more efficiently than existing filter-based systems.

Asthma, a chronic respiratory disease that can be triggered by inhaling allergens, pollen, pet dan-der and other particles, is one of the most costly health-care expenses in the United States at more than $50 billion.

“Because many people in developed coun-tries spend the majority of time indoors, properly maintaining indoor air quality is an absolute ne-cessity to protect public health,” Dr. Biswas says.

The new device incorporates soft X-ray irradi-ation as a component of the electrostatic precipita-tion process currently used to remove large parti-cles from airflows. By incorporating the soft X-ray enhanced electrostatic precipitation technology, the researchers were able to ensure very efficient charging of the particles over a broad range of siz-es and their capture in the SXC ESP.

They exposed mice with compromised im-mune systems to the downstream air stream pass-ing through the unit that contacted infectious viruses, allergens, anthrax, smallpox and other particles in the air. The sensitive mice survived, indicating that the SXC ESP was very effective in removing these biological agents from the air.

“Traditional air cleaners can trap viruses or other toxic particles in the filter, where they linger

and grow,” Dr. Biswas says. “This device finds the virus or toxic particle or bioterror agent and inac-tivates it in one application.”

Ultimately, this technology could be incorpo-rated into stand-alone air cleaners or scaled for use in aircraft cabins, offices and residential HVAC systems. It also could be used to clean up a diesel engine or power plant exhaust.

According to the researchers, there are many applications for the technology in the coal indus-try, from dust control and safety at the mine to flue-gas treatment at the power plant.

Funding for this research was provided by the National Institutes of Health to the Midwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease Research and Saint Louis University startup funds.

Aerosol Control Technologies (ACT), is based on the patented process Dr. Biswas developed. ACT continues working on a prototype to be test-ed as a diesel particulate filter substitute. ##



Technologies Developed To Mitigate Asteroid Impact On EarthBong Wie has heard the

snickers.You want to protect the Earth

from asteroids? Where were you when the dinosaurs needed you? You want to be like Bruce Willis in that asteroid movie?

Prof. Wie has a serious reply: Af-ter five years of sci-ence and engineering work, Prof. Wie and his small team have a publication list of 40-plus technical papers, $600,000 of NASA re-search support and a proposal for a $500 million test launch of an asteroid intercept system. Plus, Prof. Wie has just been in-vited to show off his research as part of NA-SA's Technology Day on the Hill in Wash-ington, D.C., in April.

“It’s not a laughing matter,” emphasized Wie, the di-rector of the Asteroid Deflection Research Center at Iowa State University and the Vance D. Coffman Faculty Chair and pro-fessor of aerospace engineering.

Recent events have certainly highlighted the threat of aster-oid strikes. In February there was the 15-meter (49-foot) mete-or that exploded an estimated 12 miles over Chelyabinsk, Russia, damaging buildings and injur-ing more than 1,000 people. Also

in February, the 45-meter (148-foot) asteroid 2012 DA14 passed within 17,200 miles of Earth.

“DA14 was a serious near miss,” Prof. Wie noted. “If that impact had happened, it would

have been the equivalent of 160 Hiroshima nuclear bombs.

“Even though I say that so many times, people just laugh.”

Prof. Wie’s studies lead him to believe it will take a one-two nuclear punch to break an aster-oid into harmless pieces when there isn’t sufficient warning to use non-nuclear defenses. His approach would involve:• A satellite carrying a nuclear device would be launched into orbit.

• The satellite’s trajectory would intercept an incoming asteroid that’s 50 to 300 meters (164 to 984 feet) across, the typical size that threatens Earth. The satel-lite could travel up to 30 days to reach the asteroid.• The satellite would hit the as-teroid at a speed of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) per second, creating a large crater in the asteroid.

• Just before impact, the nuclear device would be released from the back of the satellite, creating a slight delay in detona-tion and allowing the device to fly into the middle of the crater.• The explosion from inside the crater would blast the aster-oid apart.

“The overall effect of an explosion under the surface is 20 times larger than an explo-sion on the surface,” Prof. Wie said.

The asteroid chunks would spread into a large debris cloud. By the time

Earth reached the cloud, Prof. Wie said less than .1 percent of the chunks would enter the at-mosphere. And those should only be 5-meter (16-foot) pieces that, comparatively, aren’t likely to do much harm.

“We have all the technology,” Prof. Wie said. “We don’t need anything new. But we need to engineer, integrate and assemble these technologies. And we need practice.”

Prof. Wie came to Iowa State

An intercept satellite races toward an asteroid. Studies by Iowa State University's Bong Wie indicate such a vehicle could blast apart asteroids that threaten Earth. Image courtesy of Iowa State University’s Asteroid Deflection Research Center.


in 2007 after a successful academic career research-ing spacecraft control and guidance. (He’s the au-thor of a textbook, “Space Vehicle Dynamics and Control,” published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.)

He was looking for a new research direction and in 2008 was able to use some money from his Coffman Faculty Chair position to establish the Asteroid Deflection Research Center. Money from the Iowa Space Grant Consortium also supported the center during its early days.

There wasn’t much of a research budget until the center won a $100,000 Phase I grant from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) in 2011. The center won a $500,000 NIAC Phase II grant last fall.

Even with the grants, it’s still not a big opera-tion: There’s Prof. Wie, there’s John Basart, a pro-fessor emeritus of electrical and computer engi-neering who’s volunteering his time, and there are eight graduate students.

Center researchers have published and de-livered papers such as “Conceptual Design of a Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle (HAIV) and Its Flight Validation Mission” and “Guidance Algorithms for Asteroid Intercept Missions with Precision Targeting Requirements.”

Prof. Basart has been busy studying and calcu-lating the potential use of the Yarkovsky Effect to slowly redirect the orbital motion of an asteroid. The phenomenon takes into account heating cy-cles of an asteroid and how that solar energy can actually cause an asteroid’s orbit to shift slightly.

“An intercept mission is not a trivial thing,” Prof. Basart said. “It’s terribly complicated. If we learn an asteroid is going to hit in a year, we don’t have a lot of time to prepare.”

“One thing we’ve learned in science over the last 50 years is how violent our universe is,” Prof. Basart said. “Yes, we have a violent universe and it’s important for our human race to plan for this. It’s not a matter of if; it’s when.”

To date, Prof. Wie, his Iowa State research team and Brent Barbee of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland have been working with data generated by computer simulations. Prof. Wie said it’s time to integrate the necessary technology, build an unarmed prototype satellite

and launch an actual test to see if a target asteroid can be hit.

He thinks the answer is yes because NASA en-gineers and scientists have already accomplished a very similar mission.

In July 2005, the impactor from NASA’s Deep Impact Mission crashed into Tempel 1, a comet that measures 7.6 by 4.9 kilometers (4.7 by 3 miles). The impact was designed to create a crater 25 me-ters deep (82 feet) and 100 meters wide (328 feet), exposing the comet’s interior. The mission’s flyby spacecraft passed over the crater to take pictures and collect spectroscopy data.

“We have done that with a large comet,” Prof. Wie said, “but not with a 300-meter or a 50-meter asteroid.”

To emphasize the urgency of addressing the is-sue, Prof. Wie is writing up a proposal for a $500 million test mission.

“Now is the time to talk about a test mission,” he said. “It is time to develop a plan and demon-strate this concept.” ##

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Pennoni Associates is pleased to announce that Veron-ica “Vicki” White has joined the Virginia region as senior busi-ness development associate. She previously worked in business development for Syska Hen-nessy Group. A graduate of the University of Nebraska at Oma-ha, Ms. White has 20 years of experience and has participated extensively in industry associa-tions, having held numerous po-sitions within each organization ranging from committee mem-ber to local chapter president.

GAI Consultants, Inc. (GAI) welcomes Director of Engineer-ing Mark C. Burris, P.E. to its Richmond, Va. office as part of the Transportation Business Unit. Mr. Burris brings over 29 years of engineering experience with civil, roadway, drainage, and structural design projects to

his new position. He served as Project Manager on numerous Virginia Department of Trans-portation (VDOT) projects over the past 18 years and holds a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Old Dominion University.

Dewberry has recently re-hired Jack Vega, P.E., as a man-ager of site/civil services in the firm’s Fairfax, Va. office. Mr. Vega’s primary duties will in-clude integrating the firm’s full-service site/civil engineering, land planning, and land devel-opment capabilities through-out Northern Virginia; growing the firm’s private- and public-sector client base. He began his engineering career at Dewberry in 1988. In 1999 he transitioned to a position at Toll Brothers, where he supervised engineer-ing, planning, and land survey-ing professionals for more than

13 years. He also guided the en-gineering group’s expansion to other markets. Mr. Vega holds a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Jon Greene has been named associate director for strategic planning and development at the Institute for Critical Technol-ogy and Applied Science at Vir-ginia Tech. Mr. Greene came to the university in September 2009 as the institute’s program man-ager responsible for facilitating innovative research projects and activities devoted to national defense. Prior to his arrival at Virginia Tech, he spent 28 years with the Navy where he rose to commanding officer of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dam Neck, Virginia Beach, Va. Mr. Greene received a master’s degree in National Security Af-fairs from the Navy Postgradu-ate School and a bachelor’s de-gree in Political Science from the United States Naval Academy.

Chun-YI Su, a doctoral can-didate from Virginia Tech’s De-partment of Computer Science, has been selected for the presti-gious Lawrence Scholar Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. One of only a dozen doctoral students to be selected nation-wide, he will focus his re-search on memory locality mod-els for supercomputers while completing his thesis. Mr. Su received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan and a master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the National Cheng Kung Univer-sity, Taiwan. ##

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To students in Jennifer Burg’s computer science classes, mak-ing music is the main objective. But her goal is to get them to understand how the underlying technology works – and to love it so much they decide on a sci-ence-based career path.

And that, Dr. Burg’s study has shown, has helped Wake Forest University fulfill the na-tional imperative to increase the number of majors in the STEM disciplines of science, technol-ogy, engineering and math.

The results of Dr. Burg’s re-search, “Computer Science ‘Big Ideas’ Play Well in Digital Sound and Music,” was published dur-ing the recent Special Interest Group on Computer Science Ed-ucation conference, in Denver. The study was funded through two National Science Founda-tion grants totaling $700,000.

“We know that the United States is lagging when it comes to training future scientists and engineers – the people who will keep us at the forefront of de-veloping technology,” Dr. Burg said. “We’re trying to find a way to make our piece of the STEM universe interesting and engag-ing to more students.

“It’s easy to motivate the kids in our classes now, because they get to make music.”

Dr. Burg and her colleagues – Jason Romney of the Univer-sity of North Carolina School of the Arts and sound designer and audio engineer Eric Schwartz –

decided to use music projects to help students in lower-level classes latch onto highly techni-cal concepts in digital media.

They had to “flip” the class-room more than once, Dr. Burg said, throwing the traditional lecture structure out the win-dow.

She used to make reading as-signments about computer sci-ence concepts, and then lecture on those concepts and, lastly, test students’ knowledge.

“I was trying to give them this foundation of knowledge first, so they could go in there to learn the tools,” she said. “But I bored a lot of the kids before I got there.”

Now, she doesn’t approach her class in that traditional, lin-ear way. She lets students im-mediately use the tools, such as applications including Audacity and Sonar, while she asks ques-tions and performs demonstra-tions. Then she assigns textbook readings, followed by a quiz. After that, the students use the technology again – but this time, they have a project to complete, instead of just trying to get the technology to work.

Across the board, students in Dr. Burg’s Digital Sound and Media course reported increased understanding of such topics as sampling and quantization; sound synthesis for MIDI; and aliasing. On average, those stu-dents also showed increased ap-titude and interest in electronics,

physics and math, among other topics.

“Students don’t learn lin-early anymore,” Dr. Burg said. “They are of a much more need-to-know nature, because there is so much more information out there. It’s accessible in a web-like fashion, and they go out there and learn what they need to know when they need to know it.

“Educators need to fill in the gaps between those webs of in-formation, without boring the students.”

Dr. Burg now uses this ap-proach in higher-level classes, as well.

Burg, Romney and Schwartz created an interactive, online text to accompany the coursework, and the team is working on modes of publication. The eight-chapter text and accompanying tutorials are accessible for free at digitalsoundandmusic.com. The package, which has been used in classes at Carnegie Mellon Uni-versity and UNC Asheville, also includes demos and exercises, keyed to the chapters.

Dr. Burg also plans to ex-pand the curriculum concepts she introduced in this study into a program dedicated to increas-ing STEM majors at Wake Forest. A 20003 study by the Organiza-tion for Economic Cooperation and Development showed that, among 15-year-olds in 30 of the world’s developed nations, the U.S. ranked poorly: 18th in math and 24th in science. In 2007, the National Academy Sciences challenged the U.S. to increase the number of STEM undergrad-uate degrees awarded. ##

Scientists Use Music To Increase Interest In STEM Majors



Taking advantage of vast coal reserves for U.S. energy produc-tion is, at least in the compara-tively short term, a foregone conclusion. But many challeng-es must be overcome to ensure both environmental integrity as well as process efficiencies.

Virginia Tech’s Virginia Cen-ter for Coal and Energy Research has announced a new partner-ship with CONSOL Energy Inc. to explore potential carbon stor-age alternatives to be conducted in Buchanan County, Va.

The overall focus of the re-search project will be to test the potential of unmineable coal seams to serve as storage sites for carbon dioxide. The project between the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research and the Cecil Township, Pa.-based CONSOL Energy is being fund-ed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Tech-nology Laboratory.

CONSOL Energy will donate the use of three coal-bed meth-ane wells in the pilot project to be conducted by Virginia Tech’s Department of Mining and Min-erals Engineering, part of the College of Engineering.

“We are pleased to be a part of this important research, which will serve to further de-fine carbon storage alternatives and continue our collaborative efforts to develop clean coal technologies,” said Steve Win-berg, vice president of CONSOL Energy’s research and develop-

ment department.Using three coal-bed meth-

ane wells donated by CONSOL Energy’s CNX Gas Virginia op-erations, plans call for injecting and storing as much as 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide, a natu-rally occurring odorless, color-less atmospheric gas and major contributor to global warming, into underlying coal seams at the identified site this fall.

The injection will be per-formed during a one-year pe-riod and builds on a recently completed 1,000-ton injection test that took place in neighbor-ing Russell County, Va., in 2009.

For this current research pro-gram, a comprehensive plan to monitor injected carbon dioxide has been established by the Vir-ginia Center for Coal and Energy Research and National Energy Technology Laboratory to better understand the feasibility of car-bon dioxide storage in unmine-able coal seams and to explore the potential for enhanced coal bed methane recovery.

It is expected that the coal seam will adsorb the carbon di-oxide and potentially release even more methane for collec-tion and use, as occurred in the smaller scale test in Russell County. The current test is part of a larger effort funded by the National Energy Technology Laboratory for carbon capture, utilization, and storage projects.

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage projects are the pro-

cess of capturing carbon dioxide from large stationary sources, such as power plants, and us-ing that captured gas to produce more oil or natural gas from an existing field and simultaneous-ly storing the carbon dioxide in a way that prevents its release into the atmosphere.

“The research will test the ability to inject carbon dioxide into coal seams that cannot be mined, as well as the potential to enhance coal-bed methane recovery,” explained Michael Karmis, the Stonie Barker Pro-fessor of Mining and Minerals Engineering at Virginia Tech and director of the research center. “I must praise the tremendous cooperation of the gas operator, CONSOL Energy’s CNX Gas; and the mineral owner, Harri-son-Wyatt LLC, whose generos-ity helps make this most impor-tant research possible.”

For this pilot test, the three existing coal-bed methane wells will be converted for carbon di-oxide injection, and three new wells will be drilled to monitor reservoir pressure, gas compo-sition and the carbon dioxide’s path. The targeted coal seams are in the Pocahontas and Lee formations and range from 900 feet to 2,200 feet in depth and from 0.7 feet to 2.5 feet in thick-ness. The pilot project is expect-ed to begin this fall.

“The results of this test will be vital to assess the potential of geologic storage in Appala-chian coal seams as a safe and permanent method to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions while enhancing coal-bed methane re-covery,” Prof. Karmis said.

Researchers Seek To Improve Energy Production From Coal


The Buchanan County tech-nical research site team is com-prised of members from the Virginia Center for Coal and En-ergy Research at Virginia Tech; Cardno MM&A; CONSOL Ener-gy’s research and development department; the Virginia De-partment of Mines Minerals and Energy; Southern States Energy Board; Gerald R. Hill Ph.D. Inc.; Geological Survey of Alabama; Sandia Technologies; and Det Norske Veritas.

And now, with the success-ful operation of a research-scale combustion system at Ohio State University (OSU), a new form of clean coal technology has reached an important milestone.

With research funding pro-vided by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Liang-Shih Fan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and director of OSU’s Clean Coal Research Laboratory, has pio-neered the technology called Coal-Direct Chemical Looping (CDCL), which chemically har-nesses coal’s energy and effi-ciently contains the carbon di-oxide produced before it can be released into the atmosphere.

“In the simplest sense, com-bustion is a chemical reaction that consumes oxygen and produces heat,” Prof. Fan ex-plained. “Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment. So we found a way to release the heat without burning. We carefully control the chemical reaction so that the coal never burns—it is con-sumed chemically, and the car-bon dioxide is entirely contained

inside the reactor.”The key to the technology

is the use of tiny metal beads to carry oxygen to the fuel to spur the chemical reaction. For CDCL, the fuel is coal that’s been ground into a powder, and the metal beads are made of iron oxide composites. The coal par-ticles are about 100 micrometers across—about the diameter of a human hair—and the iron beads are larger, about 1.5-2 millime-ters across.

The coal and iron oxide are heated to high temperatures at which point the materials react with each other. Carbon from the coal binds with the oxygen from the iron oxide and creates car-bon dioxide, which rises into a special chamber where it is cap-tured. The hot iron and the coal ash are left behind as by-products. Because the iron beads are so much larg-er in size than the coal ash, they are eas-ily separated from the ash, and delivered to a cham-ber where the heat en-ergy would normally be h a r n e s s e d for electricity product ion. The coal ash is removed from the system for recycling or

disposal.The carbon dioxide is sepa-

rated and can be recycled or se-questered for storage. The iron beads are exposed to air inside the reactor, so that they become re-oxidized and can be re-used almost indefinitely, or recycled.

Effectively capturing nearly all the carbon dioxide, the pro-cess exceeds the DOE’s goals for developing clean energy. New technologies using fossil fuels should not raise the cost of electricity more than 35 percent, while still capturing more than 90 percent of the resulting carbon dioxide. Prof. Fan and his team believe that they can meet or ex-ceed that requirement based on the results of current tests with the research-scale plants. ##

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Engineers will be able to de-sign better fuel systems for ev-erything from motorcycles to rockets faster and more inexpen-sively because of a mathemati-cal fuels model developed at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UA-Huntsville).

The fuels model will in-crease the pace of injector de-sign for greater efficiency, bet-ter gas mileage and more horse-power in cars and trucks. But the beauty of this approach is that it works for all combustion pro-cesses and fuels, from mopeds to missiles and from gasoline, etha-nol and diesel fuel to decane/hexadecane.

Instead of costly real-world modeling, which requires the de-sign, machining and production of parts before they can be bench tested and performance mod-eled, the mathematical model lets designers test their ideas on computers first. The model also brings research into alternative fuels into the computer before it needs to be prototyped.

“That’s the reason we are so excited about this research, is that it cuts down on the expense

of the calculations to model fuel efficiency,” said Dr. Chien-Pin Chen, chair of UAHuntsville’s chemical engineering depart-ment, who along with gradu-

ate student Omid Samimi Abi-aneh wrote a research paper, “A discrete multicomponent fuel evaporation model with liquid turbulence effects,” on the fuels model. Chemical engineering professor, Dr. Ramon Cerro and Dr. Shankar Mahalingam, dean of the College of Engineering, are also involved in the research.

“If somebody wants to do a numerical diagram of an inter-nal combustion engine – and I’m a numbers guy – the first thing they need to study is the fuel,” Dr. Chen emphasized. But be-cause fuel is a highly complex substance, a researcher would

need a supercomputer to com-plete the project. Gasoline, for example, contains hundreds of substances with different evapo-ration rates and ignition points.

“So we designed a surrogate fuel with three components in-stead of hundreds,” Dr. Chen said. “It performs the same but it is not as complex to study.”

While it can be creat-ed as a physical sub-stance, in the model the fuel is represent-ed mathematically. “That model is our contribution,” he said, and it works across all fuels, from rocket fuel to com-mon ethanol/gaso-line mixtures and the new E85 ethanol fuels. Their research has been funded by NASA and Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative grants.

In modern en-gines, injectors

spray fuel into the combustion chamber at precisely timed in-tervals for combustion. The size, composition, behavior, tempera-ture and pressure of those drop-lets all determine how efficiently the fuel will perform, Dr. Chen said. The model can demon-strate how fuel droplets from different injector designs will behave as far as their evapora-tion characteristics and combus-tion efficiency in the combustion chamber. All fuel types are certi-fied by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and that was the database used to validate the research results, Dr.

New Mathematical Fuels Model Enables Design Testing Via Computer

Doctoral candidate Omid Samimi, left, and Dr. C. P. Chen discuss their computer simulation of evaporating fuel sprays. Photo cour-tesy of Aaron Sexton / University of Alabama in Huntsville.


Chen said.“We are already changing

the injector designs,” Dr. Chen noted, adding that the fuels model allows engineers to bet-ter answer the question, “What is the best injector design to give you the best flame propagation?

The new model has led to an increase in additional research in fuel turbulence, the rich to lean swirl of fuel in a combus-tion chamber that provides for even flame propagation.

In car and truck engines, it is important that fuel burns and expands in a controlled fashion rather than exploding. Explosions cause detonation, that pinging or clunking sound drivers sometimes hear that sig-nals premature engine wear and

eventual engine failure.To accomplish even propaga-

tion, modern gasoline engines are designed to layer the fuel so that it has a higher density in re-lation to the available air (a rich mixture) near the spark plug and swirls to a lower density (a lean mixture) near the top of the piston. The plug’s spark can more easily start combustion in the rich fuel, and the leaner mix underneath is more efficiently burned. Injector nozzle design and placement in the chamber are both important to this pro-cess. This summer at a Korean conference, Dr. Chen will pres-ent a paper and discuss the re-search done at UAHuntsville on how the turbulent swirling process affects the fuel droplet

evaporation process.The UAHuntsville research-

ers are also working to develop a combustion flame propagation model that could bring that pro-cess, too, inside the computer first before real-world testing is undertaken and result in gains in efficiency. “We are studying the flame front and how they wrinkle as the fuel burns,” said Dr. Chen, who plans to submit a proposal to the U.S. Dept. of Energy to further that study. The research could increase the efficiency of future combustion chamber designs.

“The long-term goal,” Dr. Chen explained, “is to find a way to burn fuel more efficient-ly for more power and cleaner combustion.” ##



Working to advance biomass as a leading source for more effi-cient drop-in biofuels, bio-power and animal feed, a Kansas State University biochemical engineer will help lead new research as part of a national collaboration.

Typically made from plant materials, biomass is a renew-able energy source. It can be converted into biofuels, such as drop-in renewable biodiesel, and a variety of other energy sources. Structurally similar to current transportation fuels, drop-in biofuels can be devel-oped with the existing technol-ogy and infrastructure used to make petroleum-based fuels, saving on fiscal overhead for new technology.

Praveen Vadlani, the Gary and Betty Lortscher associate professor of renewable energy in Kansas State University's de-partment of grain science and industry, is a co-principal inves-tigator in a more than $6.5 mil-lion biomass research project involving several universities, industries and federal agencies. The three-year project, a jointly funded effort by the U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agricul-ture and the U.S. Department of Energy, seeks to refine and im-prove the conversion of biomass into better drop-in biodiesel, bio-lubricants, jet fuel and other value-added products.

"This is a high-risk, high-re-ward project," Prof. Vadlani said.

"The goal is to increase com-mercial industries' interest in the products that are developed from biomass by adding value to those products. It will be a tech-nical challenge because we want to optimize every component used in the production cycle and make sure that the production cycle is done in a closed-loop system without any emissions since we're using a renewable energy source."

The project is being led by Ceramatec Inc., a ceramic, fuel and electrochemical research and development company in Salt Lake City. In addition to Kansas State University, collabo-rators include Texas A&M, Rice University, Drexel University and the Chevron Corporation.

Prof. Vadlani and colleagues are studying biomass made from switchgrass and sorghum, both bioenergy-rich crops. Switch-grass is a warm season grass that can be converted into large amounts of biomaterial, while sorghum is a major grain crop, livestock feed and the primary source for biofuels production. Biomass was selected because it is a more cost-efficient sustain-able energy source to produce.

Researchers are evaluating biomass made from these grass-es, starting from their growth in the field throughout the produc-tion cycles.

Prof. Vadlani is focusing on pretreatment and fermen-tation steps in the production

cycle to convert biomass into drop-in biodiesel, jet fuel and bio-lubricants. This includes de-constructing biomass to its core components; separating the sug-ars from the bio-contaminants; fermentation of useful products; scaling up the production lev-els from test tubes to liters; and evaluating the energy efficiency of the biofuels produced from the modified production cycle.

"My critical expertise comes in the form of essentially con-necting the dots of all of the in-dividual processes in order to make sure that the whole pro-duction cycle works efficiently from the first step all the way until the end," Prof. Vadlani said. "Each step in the production cy-cle may work by itself, but once they are put together there may be conflicts and inefficiencies. That results in lower-quality bio-products being produced."

In addition to advancing bio-mass research and bio-product development, the project has strong mentorship and educa-tional aspects to it.

Prof. Vadlani’s research team will include a graduate student and postdoctoral research assis-tant, who also will work with undergraduate students and students in the university's sum-mer research experience for un-dergraduates program.

"Along with making ad-vancements to biofuels and in-dustry, I'm looking at this as an opportunity to mentor under-graduate students who will one day go on to make future ad-vancements in biofuels and eco-friendly materials," Prof. Vad-lani said. ##

Researchers Focus On Biomass As Leader In Biofuel Efficiency and

Bio-Products Quality


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If anything bothers Univer-sity of Virginia physicist Lou Bloomfield, it’s a wobbly table. In fact so bothersome that he actually invented a mate-rial to eliminate the prob-lem. The material, a type of silicone rubber that is both rigid and fluid – a “viscoelastic” solid – can be placed under a table leg where it conforms to the shape of the leg bottom and the floor surface, per-fectly filling the gap.

Upon closer examina-tion, it turns out, the mate-rial can do a lot more.

It may have applica-tions as a packaging tape, as a shoe insole, as padding for prosthetics, as a handle material for canes, crutches and sporting goods, and to make an assort-ment of toys, from balls to who knows what.

It shares similar characteris-tics with memory foam, but with strength and bounce-ability.

“I was looking to come up with something cheap and simple to solve an everyday problem – wobbly tables – and ended up finding an amazing new material,” Prof. Bloomfield explained. “I wanted something that could hold its shape while also being elastic.”

What he invented – he calls it “Vistik” – is the result of thou-sands of experiments conducted over about four years. Bloom-field, a professor of physics in

the College of Arts & Sciences, tweaked his formula numerous times and came up with several different iterations of the mate-

rial – modifications for a variety of potential uses.

Currently, MeadWestvaco Corporation, a Richmond pack-aging company, is investigating ways to use Vistik as a reseal-able adhesive for packages. Prof. Bloomfield imagines it as some-day being a direct replacement for the plastic zip strips used on plastic storage bags. Sheets of Vistik bind together on contact, but separate easily when pulled apart. Prof. Bloomfield describes his new material as the “molecu-lar equivalent of Velcro.”

An interesting characteristic of the material is that while it sticks to itself, it does not stick to other materials and objects, and, dust and dirt can be brushed off or washed away, allowing the material to easily re-adhere.

Vistik also regains its original shape after being compressed or imprinted. For example, a Vis-tik ball – which bounces like a super ball because of its elastic-ity – is soft enough that it can be squeezed into a flat disk that will slowly return to its round shape once the pressure is off.

That compliant, adap-tive characteristic likely makes it an ideal material as a shoe insole or contact point for canes, crutches and prosthetics.

“It takes an imprint, conforming to the shape of, for example, a foot, but then returns to its original shape, which can be flat or any shape we design,” Prof. Bloomfield said. “The material can even take imprints as fine as finger-prints.” He said he would

like to someday see Vistik used as an insole for every shoe.

The material is so extremely adaptive, Prof. Bloomfield said, it can be made bouncy or not so bouncy, and it tolerates a range of temperatures and is chemi-cally inert.

“It’s tasteless too,” he added, “I can tell you that.”

Beyond its potential practi-cal uses, Prof. Bloomfield imag-ines that Vistik someday could be made into toys, such as balls with different bounce rates like baseballs or tennis balls.

Still, Prof. Bloomfield's fa-vorite applications involve hu-man health and comfort.

"Imagine if your new shoes adapted to your feet to give you that old-shoe feel just seconds af-ter you put them on," he said. ##

Physicist Develops “Molecular Equivalent to Velcro”

University of Virginia physicist Lou Bloomfield with a new type of silicone rubber he has de-veloped, called Vistik. Photo courtesy of Uni-versity of Virginia.


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Plankton Adapt to Changing Ocean Temperatures

Imagine trying to swim through a pool of honey. Be-cause of their small size, this is what swimming in water is like for tiny marine plankton. So, it was often assumed they would be easy prey, especially in the dense viscosity of colder waters, but that is not necessarily so.

Texas Tech Associate Pro-fessor and Whitacre Endowed Chair in Mechanical Engineer-ing Jian Sheng, along with biolo-gists Brad Gemmell and Edward Buskey from the University of Texas Marine Science Institute,

have discovered new informa-tion that explains how these tiny organisms overcome this dis-tinct disadvantage.

Their paper, titled “A com-pensatory escape mechanism at low Reynolds number” was published in a recent issue of Proceeding of the National Acad-emy of Sciences.

“The purpose of the study was in trying to determine the effects of climate change at the very base of the food chain,” Prof. Sheng said.

As one of the most abundant animal groups on the planet, many species, including many

commercially important fish species, rely on planktonic cope-pod nauplii at some point dur-ing their life cycle. Understand-ing the ability of these animals to respond to changes in the environment could have direct implications into understanding the future health of our oceans.

By independently varying temperature and viscosity, Prof. Sheng recorded their move-ments with 3-D high speed ho-lographic techniques developed by the Sheng lab at Texas Tech.

“At 3,000 frames per second, it was like tracking a racecar through a microscope,” Prof.

RESEARCHERS HAVE LONG OB-SERVED how animals vigorously sniff when they interact, a habit usu-ally passed off as simply smelling each other. But Daniel W. Wesson, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, whose research was published recently in Current Biol-ogy, found that rats sniff each other to signal a social hierarchy and prevent aggressive behavior. Dr. Wesson, who

drew upon previous work showing that, similar to humans, rodents naturally form complex social hierarchies, used wireless methods to record and observe rats as they interacted. He found that, when two rats approach each other, one communicates dominance by sniffing more frequently, while the subordinate signals its role by sniffing less. Dr. Wesson found that if the subordinate didn’t do so, the dominant rat was more likely to become aggressive to the other. “These novel and exciting findings show that how one animal sniffs another greatly matters within their social network,” said Dr. Wesson, an associate professor of neurosciences. “This sniffing behavior might reflect a common mechanism of communication behavior across many types of animals and in a variety of social contexts. It is highly likely that our pets use similar communication strategies in front of our eyes each day, but because we do not use this ourselves, it isn’t recognizable as ‘communication’.” Dr. Wes-son’s findings represent the first new form of communication behavior in rats since it was discovered in the 1970s that they communicate through vocal ultrasonic frequencies. The research provides a basis for understanding how neurological disorders might impact the brain’s ability to conduct normal, appropriate social behaviors. Dr. Wesson’s laboratory will use these findings to better understand how certain behaviors go awry. Ultimately, the hope is to learn whether this new form of communication can help explain how the brain controls complex social behaviors and how these neural centers might inappropriately deal with social cues. Dr. Wesson’s research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Mount Sinai Health Care Foundation and the University Hospitals Case Medical Center Spitz Brain Health Fund.


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Sheng said. “We were able to de-termine that the plankton adapt-ed to changes in viscosity by al-tering the rhythm of its pulsing appendage.”

The response, built-in to its natural muscle fiber, was only triggered by changes in temper-ature, Prof. Sheng said. It could not compensate for changes in viscosity due to environmental pollution, such as algae blooms or oil spills.

Automatic Authorship Detec-tion System Developed

University of Adelaide re-searchers have provided new evidence on the long-debated authorship of two famous texts – the US Federalist Papers and the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament.

The results of a 10-year proj-ect led by Professor Derek Ab-bott, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, was published recently in the journal “PLOS ONE”.

The team has developed an automatic authorship detection system, using advanced soft-ware techniques to analyze au-thor style based on commonly used words.

The Federalist Papers are a collection of 85 influential po-litical essays written in the late 1700s in the lead up to the US Constitution. Their authorship was originally a guarded secret but scholars now accept that Al-exander Hamilton, James Madi-son and John Jay are the authors. Hamilton and Madison eventu-ally provided a list of what they wrote, but 12 of the essays were claimed by both as sole author-ship. Some studies have sug-gested a 13th essay, normally




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attributed to Jay, is actually writ-ten by Madison.

“We’ve shown that one of the disputed texts, Essay 62, is in-deed written by James Madison with a high degree of certainty,” says Prof. Abbott. “But the other 12 essays cannot be allocated to any of the three authors with a similarly strong likelihood. We believe they are probably the result of a certain degree of col-laboration between the authors, which would also explain why there hasn’t been scholarly con-sensus to date.”

The researchers turned their attention to the Letter to the He-brews, traditionally attributed to Saint Paul, but debated since the third century AD with scholars suggesting Barnabas, Luke and Clement of Rome as alternatives.

Testing was done, using the original Koine Greek texts, with these four possible authors, plus the three other gospel authors, Matthew, Mark and John and another possible author, Igna-tius of Antioch.

“What we found is that the Letter to the Hebrews is indeed closest to Paul than to any of these other authors,” Prof. Ab-bott says. “But the sting in the tail is that this positive result had only a weak likelihood weighting. There are two pos-sibilities: Luke was the second closest match so there may have been some collaboration be-tween the two, for example if Paul wrote the letter in Aramaic (the Hebrew language) and then Luke translated it into Greek. Or it may simply mean we have yet to find the true author! If the Vat-ican were to agree to supply us with more extra-canonical texts that we haven’t tried, we would




be happy to do more exhaustive tests.”

The new detection system was originally tested against short stories by seven undis-puted authors in English includ-ing Charles Dickens and Sir Ar-thur Conan Doyle, with greater than 90% accuracy. This system, which uses multidimensional analysis of the frequencies of commonly used words, can be adapted for other languages.

Bioengineered AppendagesCornell bioengineers and

physicians have created an ar-tificial ear – using 3-D printing and injectable molds – that looks and acts like a natural ear, giv-ing new hope to thousands of children born with a congenital deformity called microtia.

In a study published online recently in “PLOS ONE”, Cornell biomedical engineers and Weill Cornell Medical College physi-cians described how 3-D print-ing and injectable gels made of living cells can fashion ears that are practically identical to a hu-man ear. Over a three-month period, these flexible ears grew cartilage to replace the collagen that was used to mold them.

The novel ear may be the so-lution reconstructive surgeons have long wished for to help children born with ear deformi-ty, said co-lead author Dr. Jason Spector, director of the Labora-tory for Bioregenerative Medi-cine and Surgery and associate professor of plastic surgery at Weill Cornell in New York City.

“A bioengineered ear re-placement like this would also help individuals who have lost part or all of their external ear in an accident or from cancer,” Dr.

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Spector said.Replacement ears are usually

constructed with materials that have a Styrofoam-like consisten-cy, or sometimes, surgeons build ears from a patient’s harvested rib. Challenging and painful for children, the ears rarely look completely natural or perform well, Dr. Spector said.

To make the ears, co-lead au-thor Lawrence Bonassar, associ-ate professor of biomedical engi-neering, and colleagues started with a digitized 3-D image of a human subject’s ear, and con-verted the image into a digitized “solid” ear using a 3-D printer to assemble a mold.

This Cornell-developed, high-density gel is similar to the consistency of Jell-o when the mold is removed. The collagen served as a scaffold upon which cartilage could grow.

The process is also fast, Prof. Bonassar added: “It takes half a day to design the mold, a day or so to print it, 30 minutes to in-ject the gel, and we can remove the ear 15 minutes later. We trim the ear and then let it culture for several days in nourishing cell culture media before it is im-planted.”

The incidence of microtia, which is when the external ear is not fully developed, varies from almost 1 to more than 4 per 10,000 births each year. Many children born with microtia have an intact inner ear, but ex-perience hearing loss due to the missing external structure.

If all future safety and effi-cacy tests work out, it might be possible to try the first human implant of a Cornell bioengi-neered ear in as little as three years, Dr. Spector said. ##

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Consider the seemingly impossible: Drive down a road a few times and collect in an hour more data about the surrounding landscape than a crew of surveyors could obtain in months.

Such is the potential of mobile LIDAR, a power-ful technology that promises to change the way we see, study and record the world around us. It will be applied in transportation, hydrology, forest-ry, virtual tourism and construction — and almost no one knows anything about it.

The full exploita-tion of this remark-

able technology, however, faces constraints. Too few experts are trained to use it, too few educa-tional programs exist to teach it, mountains of data are produced that can swamp the computer capabilities of even large agencies, and lack of a consistent data management protocol clogs the sharing of information between systems.

“A lot of people and professionals still don’t even know what mobile LIDAR is or what it can do,” said Michael Olsen, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Oregon State University (OSU), and lead author of a recently presented re-port to the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences. “And the technol-ogy is changing so fast it’s hard for anyone, even the experts, to keep up.

“When we get more people using mobile LI-DAR and we work through some of the obsta-cles, it’s going to reduce costs, improve efficien-cy, change many professions and even help save lives,” Prof. Olsen said.

LIDAR, which stands for light detecting and ranging, has been used for 20 years, primarily in aerial mapping. Pulses of light up to one million times a second bounce back from whatever they

hit, forming a highly detailed and precise map of the landscape. But mobile LIDAR used on the ground, with even more powerful computer sys-tems, is still very much in its infancy.

Mobile LIDAR, compared to its aerial counter-part, can provide 10 to 100 times more data points that hugely improve the resolution of an image. Moving even at highway speeds, a technician can obtain a remarkable, three-dimensional view of the nearby terrain.

Such technology could be used repeatedly in one area and give engineers a virtual picture of an unstable, slow-moving hillside. It could provide a detailed image of a forest, or an urban setting, or a near-perfect recording of surrounding geol-ogy. An image of a tangle of utility lines in a ditch, made just before they were backfilled and cov-ered, would give construction workers 30 years later a 3-D map to guide them as they repaired a leaking pipe.

Mobile LIDAR may someday be a key to driv-erless automobiles, or used to create amazing vi-sual images that will enhance “virtual tourism” and let anyone, anywhere, actually see what an area looks like as if they were standing there. The applications in surveying and for transportation engineering are compelling, and may change en-tire professions.

Some of the newest applications, Prof. Olsen said, will have to wait until there are enough ex-perts to exploit them. OSU operates one of the few programs in the nation to train students in both civil engineering and this evolving field of “geo-matics,” and more jobs are available than there are people to fill them. Through a partnership with Leica Geosystems and David Evans and Associ-ates, OSU has sufficient hardware and software to maintain a variety of geomatics courses. But more educational programs are needed, Prof. Olsen said, and fully-trained and licensed professionals can make $100,000 or more annually.

Other nations have made a much more ag-gressive commitment to using mobile LIDAR and training students in geomatics. It is critical for the U.S. to follow suit, Prof. Olsen emphasized.

The Outer Edge of Engineering Research

Highway image using LI-DAR. LIDAR can capture considerable data on nearby terrain, as seen in this im-age of an ordinary highway. (Credit: Image courtesy of Oregon State University)