April 10, 2008, 9:19 PM CT

Hurricane Forecasters Adopt NCAR Radar Technique

The National Hurricane Center will implement a new technique this summer, developed by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), to continually monitor landfalling storms in the United States. The system, which relies on existing coastal Doppler radars, provides details on hurricane winds and central pressure every six minutes, indicating whether a hurricane is gathering strength in its final hours before reaching shore.

The technique, known as VORTRAC (Vortex Objective Radar Tracking and Circulation), was successfully tested by the National Hurricane Center last year.

"VORTRAC will enable hurricane specialists, for the first time, to continually monitor the trend in central pressure as a dangerous storm nears land," says NCAR scientist Wen-Chau Lee. "With the help of VORTRAC, vulnerable communities can be better informed of sudden changes in hurricane intensity".

Lee collaborated with NRL's Paul Harasti and NCAR's Michael Bell to develop VORTRAC. Funding came primarily from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NHC is part of NOAA's National Weather Service.

One of VORTRAC's strengths is that it can use radar data to estimate the barometric pressure at the center of a hurricane, a key measure of its intensity......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

April 10, 2008, 9:05 PM CT

Grand Canyon may be as old as dinosaurs

New geological evidence indicates the Grand Canyon may be so old that dinosaurs once lumbered along its rim, as per a research studyby scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the California Institute of Technology.

The team used a technique known as radiometric dating to show the Grand Canyon may have formed more than 55 million years ago, pushing back its assumed origins by 40 million to 50 million years. The scientists gathered evidence from rocks in the canyon and on surrounding plateaus that were deposited near sea level several hundred million years ago before the region uplifted and eroded to form the canyon.

A paper on the subject would be reported in the recent issue of the Geological Society of America Bulletin. CU-Boulder geological sciences Assistant Professor Rebecca Flowers, lead author and a former Caltech postdoctoral researcher, collaborated with Caltech geology Professor Brian Wernicke and Caltech geochemistry Professor Kenneth Farley on the study.

"As rocks moved to the surface in the Grand Canyon region, they cooled off," said Flowers. "The cooling history of the rocks allowed us to reconstruct the ancient topography, telling us the Grand Canyon has an older prehistory than a number of had thought".

The team believes an ancestral Grand Canyon developed in its eastern section about 55 million years ago, later linking with other segments that had evolved separately. "It's a complicated picture because different segments of the canyon appear to have evolved at different times and subsequently were integrated," Flowers said......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

April 10, 2008, 8:08 PM CT

Forecasters Implement New Hurricane-Tracking Technique

A new technique that helps forecasters continuously monitor landfalling hurricanes, giving them frequent and detailed images of a storm's location, will be implemented this summer.

The new system, developed by National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., will be implemented at the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The technique, known as VORTRAC (Vortex Objective Radar Tracking and Circulation), was successfully tested by the hurricane center last year.

"VORTRAC is an excellent example of the application of basic research to help improve short-term hurricane warnings," says Steve Nelson, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences.

The system, which relies on existing Doppler radars along the U.S. coast, provides details on hurricane winds and central pressure every six minutes, indicating whether the storm is gathering strength in the final hours before reaching shore.

"We are very gratified by the decision of the National Hurricane Center to adopt this new now-casting tool," says NCAR scientist Wen-Chau Lee. "VORTRAC will enable hurricane specialists, for the first time, to continuously monitor the trend in central pressure as a dangerous storm nears land. With the help of VORTRAC, vulnerable communities can be better informed of sudden changes in hurricane intensity."......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

April 8, 2008, 10:28 PM CT

Don't Create the Wonder Pollutant

Carbon nanotubes are 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, yet stronger than steel and more durable than diamonds. They conduct heat and electricity with efficiency that rivals copper wires and silicon chips, with possible uses in everything from concrete and clothes to bicycle parts and electronics. The have been hailed as the next "wonder material" for what could become a multi-billion dollar manufacturing industry in the 21st century. But as useful as nanotubes may be, the process of making them may have unintentional and potentially harmful impacts on the environment.

MIT/WHOI graduate student Desiree Plata and her mentors-chemists Phil Gschwend of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Chris Reddy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution-recently analyzed ten commercially made carbon nanotubes to identify the chemical byproducts of the manufacturing process and to help track them in the environment. Plata observed that the ten different carbon nanotubes had vastly different compositions; most prior toxicity studies have generally assumed that all nanotubes are the same.

This diversity of chemical signatures will make it harder to trace the impacts of carbon nanotubes in the environment. In prior work (first presented last fall), Plata and his colleagues observed that the process of nanotube manufacturing produced emissions of at least 15 aromatic hydrocarbons, including four different kinds of toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) similar to those found in cigarette smoke and automobile tailpipe emissions. They also observed that the process was largely inefficient: much of the raw carbon went unconsumed and was vented into the atmosphere. The new research by Plata et al was published April 3 on the web site of the journal Nanotechnology. ........ Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

April 8, 2008, 9:55 PM CT

14-year-old CEO makes chemistry a game

Age seems to be no obstacle when it comes to starting a business. Thats the case with 14-year-old Anshul Samar, CEO of Alchemist Empire, Inc., who invented a trading card game, Elementeo, that aims to teach chemistry to students in a fun, unusual way.

At the 235th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans, Samar will present his inventive card game. While other 14-year olds play on their Xbox, this precocious CEO hopes to secure $500,000 in funding so his Silicon Valley-based startup can begin mass producing the game.

I have always wanted to show the world that the youth can start a business and have fun at the same time, says Samar.

Like other popular trading card games, Elementeo casts two players against each other in card-based fantasy combat. But unlike Pokemon or Magic: the Gathering, Samar says that Elementeo educates just as much as it entertains.

The game is based on a 121-card deck of chemical elements, compounds and catalysts. Every card has an explanation of the element or compounds uses and chemical properties. For example, the Oxygen card can rust neighboring metal cards and the Copper Conductor card can shock any metals. The oxidation state of an element is used as its attack power, and its physical state determines its movement on the board. The goal of the game is to reduce the opponents electrons to zero through strategic use of each cards chemical properties......... Posted by: Sarah      Read more         Source

April 8, 2008, 9:49 PM CT

Sea salt worsens coastal air pollution

Air pollution in the worlds busiest ports and shipping regions may be markedly worse than previously suspected, as per a new study showing that industrial and shipping pollution is exacerbated when it combines with sunshine and salty sea air.

In a paper published in this weeks advance online edition of the journal Nature Geoscience, a team of scientists that included University of Calgary chemistry professor Hans Osthoff report that the disturbing phenomenon substantially raises the levels of ground-level ozone and other pollutants in coastal areas.

We found unexpectedly high levels of certain air pollutants where pollution from cities and ships meets salt in the ocean air along the southeast coast of the United States, said Osthoff, who joined the U of Cs Department of Chemistry last August. It only makes sense that this is a problem everywhere industrial pollution meets the ocean, as is the case in a number of of the largest cities around the world. It also changes our view of the chemical transformations that occur in ship engine exhaust plumes, and tells us that emissions from marine vessels may be polluting the globe to a greater extent than currently estimated.

Dr. Osthoff was part of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) team that spent six weeks monitoring air quality in busy shipping areas off the southeastern coast of the United States between Charleston, South Carolina and Houston, Texas, in the summer of 2006. The scientists found unexpectedly high levels of nitryl chloride (ClNO2), a chemical long suspected to be involved in ground-level ozone production along the coast. They then determined that the compound is efficiently produced at night by the reaction of the nitrogen oxide N2O5 in polluted air with chloride from sea salt. With the help of sunlight, the chemical then splits into radicals that accelerate production of ozone and, potentially, fine particulate matter, which are the main components of air pollution. Their findings also show that up to 30 per cent of the ground-level ozone present in seaside cities such as Houston may be the result of pollution mixing with salt from ocean mist......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

April 7, 2008, 10:43 PM CT

Money Doesn't Grow on Trees, But Gasoline Might

Scientists have made a breakthrough in the development of "green gasoline," a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass sources like switchgrass and poplar trees.

Reporting in the cover article of the April 7, 2008 issue of Chemistry & Sustainability, Energy & Materials (ChemSusChem), chemical engineer and National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER awardee George Huber of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass) and his graduate students Torren Carlson and Tushar Vispute announced the first direct conversion of plant cellulose into gasoline components.

In the same issue, James Dumesic and his colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison announce an integrated process for creating chemical components of jet fuel using a green gasoline approach. While Dumesic's group had previously demonstrated the production of jet-fuel components using separate steps, their current work shows that the steps can be integrated and run sequentially, without complex separation and purification processes between reactors.

While it may be five to 10 years before green gasoline arrives at the pump or finds its way into a fighter jet, these breakthroughs have bypassed significant hurdles to bringing green gasoline biofuels to market......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

April 7, 2008, 10:39 PM CT

NOAA Aircraft to Probe Arctic Pollution

NOAA researchers are now flying through springtime Arctic pollution to find out why the region is warming - and summertime sea ice is melting - faster than predicted. Some 35 NOAA scientists are gathering with government and university colleagues in Fairbanks, Alaska, to conduct the study through April 23.

"The Arctic is changing before our eyes," said A.R. Ravishankara, director of the chemistry division at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. "Capturing in detail the processes behind this large and surprisingly rapid transformation is a unique opportunity for understanding climate changes occurring elsewhere."

Observations from instruments on the ground, balloons, and satellites show the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe. Summer sea-ice extent has decreased by nearly 40 percent in comparison to the 1979-2000 average, and the ice is thinning.

Industry, transportation, and biomass burning in North America, Europe, and Asia are emitting trace gases and tiny airborne particles that are polluting the polar region, forming an "Arctic Haze" every winter and spring. Researchers suspect these pollutants are speeding up the polar melt.

Called ARCPAC (Aerosol, Radiation, and Cloud Processes affecting Arctic Climate Change), the project is a NOAA contribution to International Polar Year 2008. The experiment will be coordinated with the agency's long-term climate monitoring station at Barrow, Alaska, and with simultaneous projects conducted by NASA and the Department of Energy......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

April 7, 2008, 9:16 PM CT

'Revolutionary' CO2 maps zoom in on greenhouse gas sources

Where CO2 is being emitted interactive map of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has observed that the emissions aren't all where we thought.

"For example, we've been attributing too a number of emissions to the northeastern United States, and it's looking like the southeastern U.S. is a much larger source than we had estimated previously," says Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric science at Purdue University and leader of the project.

The maps and system, called Vulcan, show CO2 emissions at more than 100 times more detail than was available before. Until now, data on carbon dioxide emissions were reported, in the best cases, monthly at the level of an entire state. The Vulcan model examines CO2 emissions at local levels on an hourly basis.

Scientists say the maps also are more accurate than prior data because they are based on greenhouse gas emissions instead of estimates based on population in areas of the United States.

To create the Vulcan maps, the research team developed a method to extract the CO2 information by transforming data on local air pollution, such as carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide emissions, which are tracked by the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and other governmental agencies......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

April 6, 2008, 8:51 PM CT

As nanotech goes mainstream

Nanotechnology is now available in a store near you.

Valued for its antibacterial and odor-fighting properties, nanoparticle silver is becoming the star attraction in a range of products from socks to bandages to washing machines. But as silvers benefits propel it to the forefront of consumer nanomaterials, researchers are recommending a closer examination of the unforeseen environmental and health consequences of nanosilver.

The general public needs to be aware that there are unknown risks linked to the products they buy containing nanomaterials, scientists Paul Westerhoff and Troy M. Benn said in a report scheduled for the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Westerhoff and Benn report that ordinary laundering can wash off substantial amounts of the nanosilver particles from socks impregnated with the material. The Arizona State scientists suggest that the particles, intended to prevent foot odor, could travel through a wastewater therapy system and enter natural waterways where they might have unwanted effects on aquatic organisms living in the water and possibly humans, too.

This is the first report of anyone looking at the release of silver from this type of manufactured clothing product, said the authors......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source