Gizmorama
September 13, 2010
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Good Morning,
Scientists at North Carolina State University have learned
how to make an aluminum alloy that is strong as steel and
much lighter. Check out the second article for details on why
making these alloys are so crucial.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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'Traffic cop' brain enzyme identified
ATLANTA - U.S. scientists say a newly identified enzyme
acting as a "traffic engineer" in the human nervous system
could lead to new treatments of neurological diseases.
University of Georgia researchers found that a protein known
as MEC-17 is the traffic engineer in charge of chemically
aiding the flow of signals between neurons in the brain, a
university release said Wednesday. "There was no medical or
any other applied science drive for this project; it was
purely curiosity about how transport inside cells works,"
Jacek Gaertig, a professor in the university's cellular bio-
logy department, said. "But it looks like we have identified
an important enzyme that acts in the nervous system."
Several research groups have previously reported that chem-
ical effects controlled by MEC-17 are altered in human
neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, Parkinson's
and Alzheimer's. With the enzyme identified and its mechan-
ism of action understood, drug manufacturers can begin to
search for compounds that block or enhance its activity,
Gaertig said.
Aluminum 'nanometal' is strong as steel
RALEIGH, N.C. - U.S. researchers say they've learned how
make an aluminum alloy -- a mixture of aluminum and other
elements -- that's as strong as steel. North Carolina State
University scientists say the search for ever lighter yet
stronger materials is important for everything from more
fuel-efficient cars to safer airplanes. Yuntian Zhu, pro-
fessor of materials science at NC State, says nanoscale
architecture within the new aluminum alloys give them un-
precedented strength but also reasonable plasticity to
stretch and not break under stress, a university release
reports. The new aluminum alloys have unique structural
elements called "grains," each a tiny crystal less than
100 nanometers in size, that make them super-strong and
ductile, Zhu says. Bigger is not better in materials, he
says, as smaller grains result in stronger materials. The
technique of creating these nanostructures can be used on
many different types of metals, Zhu says. He says he is
working on strengthening magnesium, a metal even lighter
than aluminum, and is working with the Department of Defense
to make magnesium alloys strong enough to be used as body
armor for soldiers.
Study: Earth's last ice age not worldwide
NEW YORK - U.S. scientists say Earth's last ice age, about
13,000 years ago, saw Europe freezing while the antarctic
was warming up, an anomaly that has long puzzled them. Re-
searchers at Columbia University, in a study published in
the journal Nature, say new evidence from New Zealand sug-
gests the deep freeze up north bypassed much of the Southern
Hemisphere. "Glaciers in New Zealand receded dramatically at
this time, suggesting that much of the Southern Hemisphere
was warming with Antarctica," study author Michael Kaplan, a
geochemist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,
said. "Knowing that the ? cooling in the Northern Hemisphere
was not a global event brings us closer to understanding how
Earth finally came out of the ice age." Ice core data show
warming of the Southern Hemisphere starting 13,000 years ago
coincided with rising levels of the heat-trapping gas carbon
dioxide. The new study links this spike in CO2 to the impres-
sive shrinking of glaciers in New Zealand. Scientists esti-
mate the glaciers shrank by half over 1,000 years in response
to the local climate warming as much as 2 degrees F. Resear-
chers theorize that a weakening Gulf Stream at the start of
the last ice age drove the north into freezing temperatures
while simultaneously affecting the planet's wind patterns
and ocean currents, pushing warm air and seawater south.
Laser backpack measures interiors
BERKELEY, Calif. - A portable laser backpack than can pro-
duce fast, automatic and realistic 3-D mapping of difficult
interior environments has been developed, officials say. The
reconnoitering backpack was developed at the University of
California, Berkeley, and funded by the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research and the Army Research Office, an Air
Force release said Tuesday. The backpack is the first system
designed to work without having to be strapped to a robot or
attached to a rolling cart. Its data acquisition speed is
very fast, collecting data in real time while the human oper-
ator is walking, in contrast to existing systems in which
the data is collected in a stop-and-go fashion, resulting in
days and weeks of data acquisition time, the Air Force said.
The technology will allow military personnel to collectively
view the interior of modeled buildings and interact over a
network in order to achieve military goals like mission plan-
ning, researchers said. The cutting-edge technology has been
successfully tested on the university campus. "We have
already generated 3-D models of two stories of the electrical
engineering building at UC Berkeley, including the stairway,
and that is a first," Avideh Zakhor, lead researcher and pro-
fessor of electrical engineering, said.
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