March 21, 2012
Good Morning,
Volkswagen looks to more ambitious transports for safety features on their automobiles. Check out the second article for details on how spacecraft technology is giving this auto maker an edge in safety.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Early Earth had 'flip-flop' atmosphereNEWCASTLE, England - A "see-saw" effect in Earth's atmosphere 2.5 billion years ago may have set the stage for the development of complex life, British and U.S. researchers say. The Earth's early atmosphere periodically flipped from a hydrocarbon-free state into a hydrocarbon-rich state, and this switch between "organic haze" and a "haze-free" environment was the result of intense microbial activity that would have had a profound effect on the climate, they said. The findings provide clues to Earth's surface environment prior to oxygenation of the planet, a release from Britain's Newcastle University said Monday. "Models have previously suggested that the Earth's early atmosphere could have been warmed by a layer of organic haze," Newcastle researcher Aubrey Zerkle said. "Our geochemical analyses of marine sediments from this time period provide the first evidence for such an atmosphere. "However, instead of evidence for a continuously 'hazy' period we found the signal flipped on and off, in response to microbial activity." The conditions that enabled the organic haze to switch on and off ended when the atmosphere became oxygenated about 100 million years ago, researchers said. "What is most surprising about this study is that our data seems to indicate the atmospheric events were discrete in nature, flip-flopping between one stable state into another," researcher James Farquhar of the University of Maryland said. "This type of response is not all that different from the way scientists think climate operates today, and reminds us how delicate the balance between states can be."
Space tech helps create safer automobilesPARIS - A thin foil sensor developed to detect the pressure on a spacecraft's wings during re-entry is now helping build safer cars, European researchers say. German automaker Volkswagen is using the flexible "space foil" as a super-thin and accurate sensor to measure every deformation sustained by cars during crash tests, a release from the Paris headquarters of the European Space Agency reported. In the early 1990s, European engineers turned to "piezoelectric" foil, intended for spacecraft use, because regular instruments were too bulky and added too much drag. Piezoelectric materials can convert physical effects such as vibration and pressure into minute electric pulses, making them ideal as extremely lightweight sensors able to cover an entire surface without distorting the results by adding drag. VW was attracted to the material because the space sensors would solve a problem encountered in crash tests: sensors on cars are often destroyed upon impact, making it difficult to collect highly accurate data throughout the crash process. The thin, flexible piezoelectric sensors are simply applied to the car's surfaces and move with the metal as the car crashes rather than being destroyed by the impact. "We wanted to know at which moment which parts of the car are deformed," VW engineer Jens Weinrich said. At the end of each strip, a thin, flexible printed circuit board records the electrical impulses created by the mechanical deformations. "We wanted not just qualitative, but also quantitative results," Weinrich said. "We wanted to know where it folded, and how much it folded."
Satellite images become archaeology toolCAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A U.S. researcher says he's improved the process of using computers to examine satellite images for the telltale signs of early human settlements. Harvard archaeologist Jason Ur and his colleagues developed a system to identify human habitation from factors such as soil discolorations and the distinctive mounding that results from the collapse of mud-brick settlements. They have used it to uncover thousands of new sites that could be from the earliest complex human societies, a university statement released Monday said. Ur used a computer to examine satellite images of an 8,800-square-mile area of northeastern Syria and said he's identified about 9,000 possible settlements. "I could do this on the ground," Ur said about the results of the computer-aided survey. "But it would probably take me the rest of my life to survey an area this size. "With these computer science techniques, however, we can immediately come up with an enormous map which is methodologically very interesting, but which also shows the staggering amount of human occupation over the last 7,000 or 8,000 years. "What's more, anyone who comes back to this area for any future survey would already know where to go. There's no need to do this sort of initial reconnaissance to find sites. This allows you to do targeted work, so it maximizes the time we have on the ground." To create the system described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ur worked with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Study: Carbon can be stored undergroundCAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The United States has enough deep saline aquifers to store a century's worth of carbon dioxide emissions from its coal-fired power plants, a study shows. While efforts to reduce greenhouse gases have focused on sources of clean energy, such as wind or solar power, "one thing that's not going away is coal" because it's such a cheap and widely available source of power, Ruben Juanes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said. Some researchers have proposed systems for capturing emissions from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, then compressing and storing the waste in deep geological formations, an approach dubbed carbon capture and storage. While deep saline aquifers -- at more than half a mile below the surface safely below the freshwater sources used for human consumption and agriculture -- are attractive storage possibilities, the capacity of U.S. aquifers has been the subject of much debate. The MIT researchers used computer modeling to estimate the capacity of the available aquifers across the country, which they say is enough for at least a century's worth of carbon capture and storage. Though questions remain about the economics, it should be a part of any greenhouse gas reduction proposals, the researchers said. "I really think CCS has a role to play," Juanes said. "It's not an ultimate salvation, it's a bridge, but it may be essential because it can really address the emissions from coal and natural gas."
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