 |
|
|
Next time you're eating lunch at your desk, consider
this: a laptop powered by a spinach sandwich. Massachusetts
Institute of Technology researchers have figured a way to
harness the energy conversion prowess of the vegetable every
kid hates. Leafy green plants like spinach are extremely efficient
machines for converting sunlight into energy. Scientists have
had difficulty using plant proteins that control photosynthesis
because plant cells need water and salt to survive for more
than a few hours. And water and salt are anathema to electric
circuits. The solution turned out to be a membrane of peptide
surfactants, basically soap. MIT bioengineer Shuguant Zhang
manipulated the peptides to form a new natural emollient that
keeps the spinach proteins alive and working on a dry surface
for three weeks. How? He's not sure, but Zhang thinks
the peptides carry small amounts of trapped water inside them.
The spinach proteins are then sandwiched between gold-coated
glass and a soft, organic semiconductor. A laser beam activates
the veggie power cell. Early versions converted about 12 percent
of the light to power, and Zhang thinks that can be boosted
to 20 percent or more by stacking additional layers atop one
another. In other words, by supersizing the spinach sandwich.
—Thomas K. Grose
|
Is Harvard University falling down on the job when it comes
to granting tenure to female professors? That's the
considered opinion of many women academics at the Ivy League
school. The issue came to a head early in the fall when 26
female senior professors from 17 departments wrote a letter
to Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers citing a worsening
trend in the tenuring of female faculty that's contemporaneous
with his appointment. In the 2000-01 academic year, the last
before Summers came on board, 37 percent of Harvard's
tenure offers to professors in the arts and sciences went
to women. Last year, the percentage fell to 11. In October,
more than 50 faculty members met with Summers. They presented
him with a two-page set of recommendations to improve diversity
at the Cambridge campus. Summers has noted that Harvard has
implemented a $25 million outreach fund to improve minority
hiring, and pointed out that three of the school's deans
are females, as are four of its six vice presidents. He termed
the meeting "very constructive," and said improving
diversity would be a "major focus" in future recruitments.
—TG
|
 Seconds
count when someone is injured and has internal bleeding. So
researchers at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln are
developing a "mini-robot" that could be inserted
into an incision in a patient's abdomen and transmit
images to surgeons back at a hospital. Ideally, the robots
would be 5 to 15 mm in diameter and 30 to 50 mm in length.
Depending on what images the robot sends back, a doctor could,
if necessary, give paramedics instructions to stop dangerous
internal bleeding. "The first step is getting the little
guys inside to look around," says Shane Farritor, a
professor of mechanical engineering. But the ultimate goal
is tele-surgery. Future versions of the robots will likely
be remote-controlled by surgeons to carry out basic clamping,
cauterizing, or clotting procedures. And, Farritor adds: "They
may also be of use in operating rooms to give surgeons an
extra point of view." —TG
|
LONDON—Certainly nanotechnology is becoming megapopular,
in both academic and industrial labs. Researchers see huge
potential benefits in the manipulation of materials at the
atomic, molecular, and macromolecular levels. Their results
could lead to improved and new drugs, better ways to fight
water pollution, and stronger, lighter materials. But how
much risk to the environment and human health do nanoparticles
and nanotubes pose? Britain's Royal Academy of Engineering
and Royal Society looked into that issue. Their recent study
concludes that although most current nanotechnologies probably
pose no new threats, there hasn't been enough research
to fully determine what if any dangers are lurking in the
labs. So it recommends that until there is a better understanding
of the risks involved, the release of nanoparticles in the
environment "be avoided as far as possible." Manufacturers
should treat free (as opposed to embedded) nanoparticles as
hazardous materials and keep them out of waste streams. It
does not, however, think that a moratorium on the development
of nanoparticles is warranted. The study further recommends
the creation (in the UK) of an interdisciplinary, independent
research center dedicated to studying potential risks so that
health, safety, and environmental practices can keep pace
with developments in the field. —TG
|
Cybercrime is on the increase. The FBI estimates that computer-generated
crime, including identity theft and fraud, costs business
and government $11 billion annually. And that's probably
a very conservative number since the majority of cybercrimes
go unreported. Moreover, computers often contain evidence
about other more traditional crimes, including murder and
drug trafficking.
So cops need some high-tech help. To their rescue come some
top schools like Purdue University, Carnegie Mellon University,
Northwestern University, and Dartmouth College. These schools
are partnering with law-enforcement agencies to fight computer-assisted
crime. Purdue's department of computer technology last
year held three workshops on computer forensics. Department
head Lonnie D. Bentley says interest in those sessions among
law-enforcement officers, students, and academics was keen.
The burgeoning discipline of computer forensics, he says,
"is just exploding."
There is already a waiting list of students who want to enroll
in Purdue's program. Currently, however, there are no
national standards for computer forensics education and certification.
That gives defense lawyers a big loophole to disqualify damning
evidence in court. Marcus K. Rogers, an associate professor
in the department and a former police officer, is focusing
on that issue. He's been involved in setting up Purdue's
computer forensics curriculum and helping to establish national
standards for such programs. Criminals are often early adaptors
of the latest in hardware and software, Bentley says. Authorities
are concerned about Web browsers that don't leave trails
and wireless technology that's highly vulnerable to
hacking. That means that the bad guys will always be somewhat
ahead of the white hats chasing them, he says. But with ongoing
help from academia, the cybergap separating good and evil
can be substantially narrowed. —TG
|
Tokyo—Second only to the United States in the number
of patent applications filed, Japan has always been stingy
about rewarding the employees who dream up breakthrough products.
But the tide has finally started to turn in favor of inventors—a
flurry of recent court rulings has frightened corporations
into raising the bar for compensating innovation. The revolution
was fomented largely by a rebel named Shuji Nakamura, whose
research at a small chemical firm in western Japan led to
the invention of the blue light-emitting diode (LED) used
in DVD players. In a country where engineers were accustomed
to meekly accepting a few hundred dollars for their labors
and lawsuits were unheard of, Nakamura early this year won
a suit against his former employer, earning $183 million in
exchange for handing patent rights to the company.
The Tokyo High Court has since ordered Hitachi Metals to
pay over $100,000 to an ex-employee who devised a method of
using nitrogen for manufacturing permanent magnets. Hitachi's
argument—that it was burdened by the costs of research
and commercializing the idea—didn't wash with
the court.
Such litigation has prompted many firms to act pre-emptively:
The Hiroshima-based Mazda Motor Corp., for instance, has announced
it will abandon a $9,000 limit on compensation for inventions,
and instead reward inventors according to their share of the
research. Mazda and other leading corporations such as Matsushita
Electric and Sony each file nearly 1,000 patents annually.
The pharmaceutical company Takeda Chemical Industries was
also prompted to expand its invention compensation budget
to $1.8 million. —Lucille Craft
|
 Academic
Entrepreneurship: University Spinoffs
and Wealth Creation by Scott Shane; Edward Elgar
Publishing, Inc.; 332 pages.
Next time you're doing a bit of "Googling,"
give thanks to the concept of the university spinoff because
the technologies behind Google and many other successful companies,
including Cirrus Logic and Genentech, were all hatched in
academic labs. The recently published book, Academic Entrepreneurship:
University Spinoffs and Wealth Creation, is a massive
overview of the commercialization of university research.
Written by Scott Shane, an economist at Case Western Reserve
University, it notes that companies formed by spinoffs tend
to be robust: They're 108 times more likely to become
publicly traded than other new businesses. He also finds that
potentially commercial research, while still in the lab, is
very embryonic and typically needs four more years of nurturing
and $4 million of investment money before it's ready
for prime time. Although Academic Entrepreneurship discusses
what's necessary for successful spinoffs, Shane admits
he can't say for sure why some work and some don't,
or how spinoffs affect their schools. "Our knowledge
of spinoffs is still fragmentary and limited." —TG
|
 University
of Delaware chemical engineering professor Norman Wagner spent
10 years conducting government-funded research into liquids
whose viscosity increased when they were agitated. For many
manufacturing processes, like paper coating, the stiffening
of fluids was a major headache because it gummed up machines.
After devising ways to solve those problems, Wagner then wondered
if there was some "good" use for these "shear-thickening
fluids." Meanwhile, after the infamous Blackhawk Down
episode in Somalia, in which U.S. military personnel were
ambushed by urban guerilla fighters, the Pentagon began looking
for ways to improve body armor. One of the most popular fabrics
for stopping bullets is Kevlar, but it's costly, bulky,
and not easy to wear. Moreover, because it's used to
make vests, it doesn't protect arms and legs. Wagner
became convinced the thickening fluids might provide a solution.
He started working with former Delaware mechanical engineering
graduate student Eric Wetzel, now a researcher at the Army
Research Lab at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. They
developed a fluid that's a mix of superfine particles
of silica glass floating in a liquid polymer. Dip a piece
of cloth in it, dry it, and the material seems no different
than before, just slightly oilier to the touch. But strike
it with a knife or shoot it with a gun, and it instantly stiffens
on impact and can't be penetrated. Talk about faster
than a speeding bullet! It then returns to its usual flexibility.
"The [treated] material is smart," Wagner says.
Initially, his team worked with Kevlar, which can stop bullets
but not knives. Sure enough, the treated Kevlar warded off
knife stabs, too. And they've since shown that the treatment
works with nylon and other materials that are much less expensive
than Kevlar, more comfortable to wear, and could be used to
make clothes that protect more parts of the body. Police officers
and prison guards, for instance, often need stab protection
more than bullet protection. Other civilian uses are in the
works, too, Wagner says, including outfits to protect people
in cars or motorcycle riders, and to toughen sports apparel.
Perhaps someday we'll all routinely be wearing clothes
that keep us covered in every sense of the word. —TG
|
The centerpiece of any future hydrogen economy—in
which energy needs are met by an endless supply of nonpolluting
hydrogen—must be fuel-cell cars that run partially on
gasoline. But while hydrogen is omnipresent in our environment,
there's no ready supply of it. It must be extracted.
One option is reformers that use steam to remove hydrogen
from gasoline. But current versions of reformers take 15 minutes
to produce enough hydrogen to get a car going. No driver is
willing to wait that long. However, researchers at the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have developed a reformer
that starts pumping out hydrogen in 12 seconds. It conducts
the reforming in microchannels, which allows for faster reactions.
But the Department of Energy has since decided to stop funding
reforming technologies and concentrate instead on the onboard
storage of hydrogen, says Larry Pederson, a PNNL lab fellow.
Certainly, reforming is problematic. It's still dependent
upon nonrenewable gasoline, though much less of it. The process
isn't clean, either: carbon is a byproduct. And reformers
need a lot of energy to warm up. But the lab's breakthrough
may not go to waste. Pederson says the lab's working
on a reformer that could be combined with a membrane separator
to produce high-purity hydrogen from clean alcohol fuels at
filling stations. —Lucille Craft
|
 SINGAPORE—An
aging population means more elderly people falling down. But
a Singaporean engineer's invention may ensure that help
arrives quickly after someone takes a bad spill.
The new alarm involves a sensor-transmitter system attached
to a piece of clothing that sends messages even if the wearer
is sprawled unconscious and unable to activate the alarm.
With currently available systems, the injured person must
press a button and a message is relayed through telephone
networks.
"We use Bluetooth wireless technology," says
National University engineering professor Francis Eng Hock
Tay, who developed the device. "The fall is communicated
to the victim's home computer or cellular phone, which
in turn alerts a family member, friend, or a doctor."
A small sensor, which is fitted on the left side of a person's
chest, detects the speed and tilt of the wearer. After a fall,
the device triggers a tiny transmitter attached to the bottom
of the person's garment, and their emergency contact
is notified immediately. —Chris Pritchard
|
America's entire science and engineering workforce
totals 4.7 million, according to statistics recently released
by the National Science Foundation. But surprisingly, more
than a fifth of those workers do not have at least a four-year
degree: 811,000 have associates' degrees, and 225,200
just have high school diplomas. The vast majority of the workforce,
48 percent, have bachelor's degrees. Twenty-two percent
have master's, 7 percent have earned doctorates, and
2 percent professional degrees. Most of those without a four-year
degree, 492,900, work in engineering, although they represent
just 20 percent of the 2.5 million workers classified as having
engineering jobs. Another 454,200 work in computer and math
science jobs, but they make up 40 percent of the1.15 million
workers in that category. Only 29,000 employees in the life
sciences have less than a bachelor's degree. Gender
doesn't seem to matter: About a fifth of the 3.6 million
men employed in science and engineering, and about a fifth
of the 1.1 million women, haven't earned four-year degrees.
—Lucille Craft
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
