Category Archives: Research

$1 Billion for Indian Research University

Anil Agarwal donates $1 billion to set up university

Anil Agarwal, chairman, Vedanta Resources Plc, is keen to establish a world class, multi-disciplinary university in India, with a vision to developing India’s education and research infrastructure.

To be established with an endowment of up to $1 billion, Vedanta University will be of the calibre of institutes like Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, a Vedanta media statement said on Thursday.

Based on a ‘not-for-profit’ philosophy, the university will strive to impart world-class education and drive a cutting-edge research agenda, with an envisaged student population of more than 100,000 in the long term.
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Stanford University’s Research Park has spawned more than 1,200 companies in the Silicon valley, with a combined market capitalisation of more than $300 billion: the vision of Vedanta University is to aspire to be a similar enabler for India, said the Vedanta statement.

It will be interesting to see how much money is actually donated and how effective this effort is.

Algae as Hydrogen Factory

Mutant Algae Is Hydrogen Factory by Sam Jaffe, Wired:

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have engineered a strain of pond scum that could, with further refinements, produce vast amounts of hydrogen through photosynthesis.

The work, led by plant physiologist Tasios Melis, is so far unpublished. But if it proves correct, it would mean a major breakthrough in using algae as an industrial factory, not only for hydrogen, but for a wide range of products, from biodiesel to cosmetics.
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Melis got involved in this research when he and Michael Seibert, a scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, figured out how to get hydrogen out of green algae by restricting sulfur from their diet. The plant cells flicked a long-dormant genetic switch to produce hydrogen instead of carbon dioxide. But the quantities of hydrogen they produced were nowhere near enough to scale up the process commercially and profitably.

“When we discovered the sulfur switch, we increased hydrogen production by a factor of 100,000,” says Seibert. “But to make it a commercial technology, we still had to increase the efficiency of the process by another factor of 100.

Spray-On Solar-Power Cells

Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough by Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News:

The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun’s invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology.
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At a current cost of 25 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour, solar power is significantly more expensive than conventional electrical power for residences. Average U.S. residential power prices are less than ten cents per kilowatt-hour, according to experts.

But that could change with the new material.

“Flexible, roller-processed solar cells have the potential to turn the sun’s power into a clean, green, convenient source of energy,” said John Wolfe, a nanotechnology venture capital investor at Lux Capital in New York City.

Mystery of High-Temperature Superconductivity

photo of magnet levitating above a superconductor

Pseudogaps Are Not The Answer: The Continuing Mystery of High-Temperature Superconductivity. Photo: Because superconductivity repels a magnetic field, this permanent magnet levitates above a cuprate high-temperature superconductor. Scientists were surprised to find the same pseudogap energy signature in both high-Tc cuprates and ferromagnetic manganites.

A phenomenon of solid state physics known as “pseudogaps,” suspected by some scientists of playing a key role in the mystery of high-temperature superconductors, has now been found to occur in materials of a completely different nature. This discovery casts new doubts on any direct link between pseudogaps and high-temperature superconductivity.
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Stanford University physicist Zhi-Xun Shen, a leader in the study of high-Tc superconductivity, says, “I think our findings will add fire to the debate over one of the great scientific mysteries of our time: what is behind the phenomenon of high-Tc superconductivity? Are many of the anomalous properties we see in the cuprates manifestations of high-Tc superconductivity and CMR? What is the underlying physics ingredient that gives rise to these two competing sibling states? These are important questions that future experiments will try to answer.”

This is one of several great articles in the latest issue of Science @ Berkeley Labs

$10 Million for Science Solutions

$10m. To win, just solve these science problems by Ian Sample. Building off the success of the X-prize for a space transport:

Now the foundation is looking to repeat its success in other areas of science. Dr Diamandis is cagey about the finer details of future prizes, but one will offer $10m for the first company to sequence the genetic code of 100 people in a matter of weeks.
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A second prize is aimed at kicking America’s self-proclaimed addiction to oil, by spurring research into greener vehicles. “This is a hot button that can effect our reliance on energy from around the world and our production of pollution
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The foundation is also planning prizes in nanotechnology and education and is considering a second space prize, which could see the first commercial team to put a person into orbital spaceflight win $50m to $100m.

X-prize foundation

Attaching Biological Cells to Non-Biological Surfaces

images of cell adhesion system

Berkeley Researchers Lay Groundwork for Cell Version of DNA Chip

A new technique in which single strands of synthetic DNA are used to firmly fasten biological cells to non-biological surfaces has been developed by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley. This technique holds promise for a wide variety of applications, including biosensors, drug-screening technologies, the growing of artificial tissues and the design of neural networks.

Figure A: To test their cell adhesion system, researchers anchored single-stranded DNA to gold pads inside microfluidic chips. When the pads were washed with a mixture of DNA-coated cells, only those cells with complementary DNA adhered to the pads. Figure B: With a cell adhesion system based on matching DNA sequences, different cell types can be selectively attached to a chip surface in precise patterns.

Once it was established that cell surfaces could be coated with single-stranded DNA, Chandra worked with Douglas to demonstrate that this adhesion system could be used to attach cells to a non-biological surface. Douglas is a student under Mathies, director of UCB’s Center for Analytical Biotechnology. Chandra and Douglas used a commercial chemical handle, the sulfur-based thiolate ion, to anchor single-stranded DNA onto gold pads, which were incorporated into microfluidic chips through standard photolithography. After the DNA-coated Jurkat cells were rinsed over the chips, fluorescence microscopy revealed that only those cells coated with single-stranded DNA complementary to the anchored DNA adhered to the gold pads. Cells that were otherwise identical but bearing mismatched DNA sequences were washed away.

2004 National Medal of Science and Technology

Dr. Borlaug receives National Medal of Science

The United States National Medals of Science and Technology were presented today at the White House. The photo shows Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, Texas A&M, receiving the National Medal of Science from President Bush. Eight National Medals of Science were presented (Dr. Dennis P. Sullivan, City Univ. of NY; Dr. Phillip A. Sharp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Robert N. Clayton, The University of Chicago; Dr. Stephen J. Lippard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University; Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, Texas A&M University; Dr. Edwin N. Lightfoot, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine). George Lucas, of Star Wars fame, received a National Medal of Technology awarded to his company: Industrial Light & Magic.

UW’s Lightfoot to get major science award:

Developers of heart-lung machines, kidney dialysis equipment and pressure chambers to simulate the deepest oceans have used Edwin N. Lightfoot’s research.

The 80-year-old UW-Madison chemical and biological engineering professor is to receive the National Medal of Science today from President Bush at the White House.

“Ed’s work formed the foundation for a great deal of the work in chemical and biomedical engineering,” said Tom Kuech, 51, chairman of the UW Chemical and Biological Engineering Department.

“What’s even more remarkable is that he can run circles around most people. He’s a very sought-after speaker for his views on changes in engineering education.”

National Technology Medals were awarded to: Roger L. Easton, Ralph H. Baer, Motorola, IBM, Gen-Probe Inc., Industrial Light and Magic and PACCAR Inc.

MIT Energy Storage Using Carbon Nanotubes

Images of different types of carbon nanotubes

MIT Researchers Fired up Over New Battery

Image / Michael Ströck, Images of different types of carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are key to MIT researchers’ efforts to improve on an energy storage device called an ultracapacitor. Larger image

Work at MIT’s Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) holds out the promise of the first technologically significant and economically viable alternative to conventional batteries in more than 200 years.
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The LEES ultracapacitor has the capacity to overcome this energy limitation by using vertically aligned, single-wall carbon nanotubes — one thirty-thousandth the diameter of a human hair and 100,000 times as long as they are wide. How does it work? Storage capacity in an ultracapacitor is proportional to the surface area of the electrodes. Today’s ultracapacitors use electrodes made of activated carbon, which is extremely porous and therefore has a very large surface area. However, the pores in the carbon are irregular in size and shape, which reduces efficiency. The vertically aligned nanotubes in the LEES ultracapacitor have a regular shape, and a size that is only several atomic diameters in width. The result is a significantly more effective surface area, which equates to significantly increased storage capacity.

Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance

Inhibition of Mutation and Combating the Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance from the Public Library of Science Biology Journal:

The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria poses a serious threat to human health. In the case of several antibiotics, including those of the quinolone and rifamycin classes, bacteria rapidly acquire resistance through mutation of chromosomal genes during therapy. In this work, we show that preventing induction of the SOS response by interfering with the activity of the protease LexA renders pathogenic Escherichia coli unable to evolve resistance in vivo to ciprofloxacin or rifampicin, important quinolone and rifamycin antibiotics. We show in vitro that LexA cleavage is induced during RecBC-mediated repair of ciprofloxacin-mediated DNA damage and that this results in the derepression of the SOS-regulated polymerases Pol II, Pol IV and Pol V, which collaborate to induce resistance-conferring mutations. Our findings indicate that the inhibition of mutation could serve as a novel therapeutic strategy to combat the evolution of antibiotic resistance.

Neutrino Detector Searching for String Theory Evidence

Excellent 10 minute podcast presents details on search for evidence of string theory via Project IceCube.

Main IceCube web site – “IceCube is a one-cubic-kilometer international high-energy neutrino observatory being built and installed in the clear deep ice below the South Pole Station.”

South Pole Neutrino Detector Could Yield Evidences of String Theory:

Researchers at Northeastern University and the University of California, Irvine say that scientists might soon have evidence for extra dimensions and other exotic predictions of string theory. Early results from a neutrino detector at the South Pole, called AMANDA, show that ghostlike particles from space could serve as probes to a world beyond our familiar three dimensions, the research team says.