December 20, 2007, 8:49 PM CT

About Methane Bubbling Up From the Ocean Floor

Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is emitted in great quantities as bubbles from seeps on the ocean floor near Santa Barbara. About half of these bubbles dissolve into the ocean, but the fate of this dissolved methane remains uncertain. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered that only one percent of this dissolved methane escapes into the air -- good news for the Earth's atmosphere.

Coal Oil Point (COP), one of the world's largest and best studied seep regions, is located along the northern margin of the Santa Barbara Channel. Thousands of seep fields exist in the ocean bottom around the world, as per David Valentine, associate professor of Earth Science at UC Santa Barbara. Valentine along with other members of UCSB's seeps group studied the plume of methane bubbles that flows from the seeps at COP.

Their results will soon be published as the cover story in Volume 34 of Geophysical Research Letters. This research effort is the first time that the gas that dissolves and moves away from COP, the plume, has been studied.

The amount of methane release from COP seeps is around two million cubic feet per day, as per Valentine. About 100 barrels of oil oozes out of this area as well. Methane warms the Earth 23 times more than carbon dioxide when averaged over a century. Thus the fate of the methane bubbles from the seeps is an important environmental question......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 18, 2007, 10:10 PM CT

CMS tracking detector successfully installed

Installation of the world's largest silicon tracking detector was today successfully completed at CERN1. In the early hours of Thursday 13 December the CMS2 Silicon Strip Tracking Detector began its journey from the main CERN site to the CMS experimental facility. Later that day it was lowered 90 metres into the CMS cavern. Installation began on Saturday 15 December and was concluded this morning.

"This achievement completes the installation of sub-detectors inside the CMS magnet, which was lowered into the cavern on 28 February," said CMS technical coordinator Austin Ball. "It's a big milestone for us."

With a total surface area of 205 square metres, about the same as a singles tennis court, the CMS Silicon Strip Tracking Detector is by far the largest semiconductor silicon detector ever constructed. Its silicon sensors are patterned to provide a total of 10 million individual sensing strips, each of which is read out by one of 80,000 custom designed microelectronics chips. Data are then transported via 40,000 optical fibres into the CMS data acquisition system.

"The complete system operating at the LHC will produce data at a higher rate than the entire global telephone system," said project manager Peter Sharp.

The silicon sensors are precision mounted onto 15,200 modules that are in turn mounted onto a very low mass carbon fibre structure that maintains the position of the sensors to less than the diameter of a human hair (100 microns)......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

December 18, 2007, 8:14 PM CT

Powerful carbon-based electronics

Bypassing decades-old conventions in making computer chips, Princeton engineers developed a novel way to replace silicon with carbon on large surfaces, clearing the way for new generations of faster, more powerful cell phones, computers and other electronics.

The electronics industry has pushed the capabilities of silicon -- the material at the heart of all computer chips -- to its limit, and one intriguing replacement has been carbon, said Stephen Chou, professor of electrical engineering. A material called graphene -- a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice -- could allow electronics to process information and produce radio transmissions 10 times better than silicon-based devices.

Until now, however, switching from silicon to carbon has not been possible because technologists believed they needed graphene material in the same form as the silicon used to make chips: a single crystal of material eight or 12-inches wide. The largest single-crystal graphene sheets made to date have been no wider than a couple millimeters, not big enough for a single chip. Chou and scientists in his lab realized that a big graphene wafer is not necessary, as long they could place small crystals of graphene only in the active areas of the chip. They developed a novel method to achieve this goal and demonstrated it by making high-performance working graphene transistors......... Posted by: Sarah      Read more         Source

December 18, 2007, 8:11 PM CT

Research could give the Beach Boys a new surfing song

Blacksburg, Va. Surfers in Hawaii had better beware. Four Virginia Tech engineering science and mechanics (ESM) students have completed Surf Green for their senior design project, and conclude that they can technically improve the surfboards performance.

The Beach Boys may have sung about surfing but this team of ESM students decided to quantify the feel of surfing, something only engineers would try to do.

Michael Porter and Stephanie Salmons, both of Virginia Beach, Va., Matthew Dunham of Pleasantville, N.Y., and Nandan Shah of Midlothain, Va., worked with their faculty adviser, Jack Lesko, professor of ESM, for a year, submitting a final report at the end of 2007.

Mike Porter lead the effort and completed most of the work this summer while living out of his van and driving up and down the east coast this summer in search of waves, Lesko smiled. He added that the project lasted beyond the spring semester because the surfboards were in his lab in Norris Hall and inaccessible to the students for weeks after the Virginia Tech tragedy last April.

So, beyond the very good technical work, there is a good bit of character and fortitude exhibited by these students that I would like to acknowledge. I am just honored to be a small part of the lives of these talented students, he added......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

December 17, 2007, 9:15 PM CT

A 'Gizmo' That Saves Lives

When Javier Rodriguez Molina visited the Atocha Train Station Memorial in Madrid last summer, the Barcelona native felt a great sadness for the victims of the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings. But he also felt some hope that his advanced emergency technology work at University of California, San Diego can some day save lives in similar disasters.

Police, firefighters and other emergency workers responding to natural or manmade disasters may someday save more lives with the help of "Gizmo," an advanced mobile wireless communications device.

Rodríguez is Gizmo's lead gadgeteer. He's an electrical engineering graduate student and programmer analyst at UC San Diego's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), one of the most advanced, interdisciplinary research institutes in the world. "Gizmo," which looks like a cross between a remote-controlled toy truck and a lunar landing vehicle, may eventually transform disaster response by collecting and transmitting in real time any information that emergency personnel need via any communications system they're using.

"In almost any emergency, the most important thing is immediate, accurate information," Rodriguez said. "Gizmo will eventually be able to go anywhere on its own and send back in real time whatever information you might need"......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

December 12, 2007, 10:02 PM CT

Maps Nanomechanical Properties

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed an imaging system that quickly maps the mechanical properties of materials-how stiff or stretchy they are, for example-at scales on the order of billionths of a meter. The new tool can be a cost-effective way to design and characterize mixed nanoscale materials such as composites or thin-film structures.

The NIST nanomechanical mapper uses custom software and electronics to process data acquired by a conventional atomic force microscope (AFM), transforming the microscope's normal topographical maps of surfaces into precise two-dimensional representations of mechanical properties near the surface. The images enable researchers to see variations in elasticity, adhesion or friction, which may vary in different materials even after they are mixed together. The NIST system, described fully for the first time in a new paper,* can make an image in minutes whereas competing systems might take an entire day.

The images are based on measurements and interpretations of changes in frequency as a vibrating AFM tip scans a surface. Such measurements have usually been made at stationary positions, but until now 2D imaging at a number of points across a sample has been too slow to be practical. The NIST DSP-RTS system (for digital signal processor-based resonance tracking system) has the special feature of locking onto and tracking changes in frequency as the tip moves over a surface. Mechanical properties of a sample are deduced from calculations based on measurements of the vibrational frequencies of the AFM tip in the air and changes in frequency when the tip contacts the material surface......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

December 12, 2007, 9:58 PM CT

Without its insulating ice cap

Record-breaking amounts of ice-free water have deprived the Arctic of more of its natural "sunscreen" than ever in recent summers. The effect is so pronounced that sea surface temperatures rose to 5 C above average in one place this year, a high never before observed, says the oceanographer who has compiled the first-ever look at average sea surface temperatures for the region.

Such superwarming of surface waters can affect how thick ice grows back in the winter, as well as its ability to withstand melting the next summer, as per Michael Steele, an oceanographer with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory. Indeed, since September, the end of summer in the Arctic, winter freeze-up in some areas is two months later than usual.

The extra ocean warming also might be contributing to some changes on land, such as previously unseen plant growth in the coastal Arctic tundra, if heat coming off the ocean during freeze-up is making its way over land, says Steele, who is speaking Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

He is lead author of "Arctic Ocean surface warming trends over the past 100 years," accepted for publication in AGU's Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors are physicist Wendy Ermold and research scientist Jinlun Zhang, both of the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. The work is funded by the National Science Foundation......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 12, 2007, 9:50 PM CT

Device Generates and Traps Rare Ultracold Molecules

Physicists at the University of Rochester have combined an atom-chiller with a molecule trap, creating for the first time a device that can generate and trap huge numbers of elusive-yet-valuable ultracold polar molecules.

Researchers believe ultracold polar molecules will allow them to create exotic artificial crystals and stable quantum computers.

"The neat thing about this technology is that it's a very simple, but highly efficient method," says Jan Kleinert, a doctoral physics student at the University of Rochester and designer of the new device. "It lets us produce huge quantities of these ultracold polar molecules, which opens so a number of doors for us".

The Thin WIre electroStatic Trap, or TWIST, is the first electrostatic polar molecule trap that works simultaneously with a magneto-optical atom trap. This means Kleinert can use the lasers of the magneto-optical trap, or MOT, to chill atoms to just a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero, then force the atoms to group into molecules, and instantaneously hold them in place with the electrostatic TWIST trap.

Traditionally, a complex process of creating and trapping is mandatory to produce these molecules, akin to repeatedly emptying and refilling the ice cube trays in your freezer, says Kleinert. A MOT with a TWIST, however, can create and store the chilled molecules in one place, instantly-more like a refrigerator with an automatic icemaker......... Posted by: Sarah      Read more         Source

December 11, 2007, 10:21 PM CT

Greenland melt accelerating

The 2007 melt extent on the Greenland ice sheet broke the 2005 summer melt record by 10 percent, making it the largest ever recorded there since satellite measurements began in 1979, as per a University of Colorado at Boulder climate scientist.

The melting increased by about 30 percent for the western part of Greenland from 1979 to 2006, with record melt years in 1987, 1991, 1998, 2002, 2005 and 2007, said CU-Boulder Professor Konrad Steffen, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Air temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet have increased by about 7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1991, primarily a result of the build-up of greenhouse gases in Earths atmosphere, as per scientists.

Steffen gave a presentation on his research at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in San Francisco from Dec. 10 to Dec. 14. His team used data from the Defense Meteorology Satellite Programs Special Sensor Microwave Imager aboard several military and weather satellites to chart the area of melt, including rapid thinning and acceleration of ice into the ocean at Greenlands margins.

Steffen maintains an extensive climate-monitoring network of 22 stations on the Greenland ice sheet known as the Greenland Climate Network, transmitting hourly data via satellites to CU-Boulder to study ice-sheet processes......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 11, 2007, 10:20 PM CT

U.S. middle school math teachers are ill-prepared

Middle school math teachers in the United States are not as well prepared to teach this subject in comparison to teachers in five other countries, something that could negatively affect the U.S. as it continues to compete on an international scale.

The findings of this new Michigan State University study, Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century (MT21), were presented today at a press conference at the National Press Club.

"Our future teachers are getting weak training mathematically and are just not prepared to teach the demanding mathematics curriculum we need for middle schools if we hope to compete internationally," said William Schmidt, MSU Distinguished Professor of counseling, educational psychology and special education, who directed the study.

MT21 studied how well a sample of universities and teacher-training institutions prepare middle school math teachers in the U.S., South Korea, Taiwan, Gera number of, Bulgaria and Mexico. Specifically, 2,627 future teachers were surveyed about their preparation, knowledge and beliefs in this area.

"It is important for us as a nation to understand that teacher preparation programs are critical, not only for future teachers, but also for the children they will be teaching," Schmidt said.

The length of teacher preparation requirements varied from four to seven years among the countries, as per the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation......... Posted by: Jaison      Read more         Source