University News
UMTRI Wins $25 Million Contract to Help Drivers Avoid Crashes
The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) has been awarded a US$25 million contract by the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop technologies to help drivers avoid crashes.
UMTRI, along with partners Visteon Corp., Eaton Corp., AssistWare Technology Inc., Honda R&D Americas Inc., Battelle and the Michigan Department of Transportation, will develop and test a new, integrated crash warning system in a fleet of 16 passenger cars and 10 heavy-duty trucks.
UMTRI will serve as the primary contractor, coordinating the work of the partnership and conducting the field experiments. The partners will contribute an additional $6.6 million.
The program, Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety Systems Program Field Operational Test, is a cooperative agreement with three offices of the U.S. Department of Transportation: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office of the Federal Highway Administration, and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
The program will develop integrated, advanced technologies that will warn drivers when they are about to leave the roadway, are in danger of colliding with another vehicle while attempting a lane change, or are at risk of colliding with the vehicle in front of them. It will use information gathered by inertial, video and radar sensors, plus a global positioning system module to prevent or lessen the impact of some crashes.
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U. T. Dallas’ Dr. Marion Underwood Recognized by National Institutes of Health
Dr. Marion K. Underwood, a professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and a former teacher of the year at the university, has received a $597,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the origins, development and outcomes of social aggression in children. The stipend will be awarded over a five-year period.
Under the terms of her grant, which is formerly known as the Independent Scientist Career Award, Underwood will spend 75 percent of her time conducting research in her areas of expertise — anger, aggression, gender and children’s peer relationships.
Specifically, she will conduct a longitudinal study of social aggression beginning with two- and- three- year-old children. The long-term goals of Underwood’s research are to better understand the role of social aggression in the developmental psychopathology of girls and boys and to determine whether reducing social aggression might be helpful in preventing the development of externalizing disorders, internalizing problems, personality disorders and eating disorders.
Underwood, who is a recognized national authority on aggression among girls and has been quoted on the subject in numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, said the results of this project could promote positive social outcomes for children.
“Careful analyses of how aggression unfolds, both developmentally and in real time, will guide the future development of prevention and intervention programs that could help reduce social aggression,” Underwood said.
Underwood is also the principal investigator on a similar effort, called the Friendship Project, which is currently in its third year. That endeavor involves a sample of 281 children, ages 9–14, and investigates developmental origins and outcomes of how children express anger in peer relationships. In that study, Underwood is examining how children use social aggression in various contexts, such as face-to-face, behind-the-back and online.
Prior to joining UTD in 1998, Underwood earned her Ph.D. in child clinical psychology from Duke University. Her approach to understanding gender and aggression is described in her recent book, Social Aggression among Girls.
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FDA Approves Jaw Joint Prosthetic Developed by University of Pennsylvania Dental Professor
After a 10-year clinical trial of a jaw joint replacement developed by Peter Quinn of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, the Food and Drug Administration has given it a thumbs-up.
Because of almost ceaseless motion a human jaw moves about 700,000 times a year as a person chews, talks, swallows and yawns the jaw, or temporomandibular joint, can become a problem for as many as 20 million Americans, said Quinn, chairman of oral and maxillofacial surgery at Penn Dental Medicine. Teeth grinding and injuries also take their toll.
"Temporomandibular disease is almost a uniquely female disease. Almost 90 percent of the people in the trial were female, and most had TMD as a result of slippage of a disc in the joint," Quinn said. "TMD in male patients is mostly due to injury."
"What we set out to do was get approval for a stock prosthesis," said Quinn, whose stock device is the first in history to get FDA approval through a rigorous pre-market approval process.
In 1991, Quinn paired with an orthopedic company called Biomet to design the appliance and do the requisite materials testing. Biomet later acquired a maxillofacial surgical company, W. Lorenz Surgical Inc., and the prosthesis is marketed as the Lorenz TMJ replacement system. The clinical trials got under way in 1995 at Penn, where 75 percent of the surgeries were performed, and Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, which accounted for the rest. The trials involved 285 patients and 403 joints. Both joints were replaced in some patients.
Quinn's TMJ prosthesis is constructed of the materials found in the more common knee and hip replacements, a polyethylene socket and a cobalt-chromium-molybdenum alloy ball, which avoids s high wear-rate problems but presents other challenges, such as its mechanics. Unlike knees and hips, the jaw moves differently by coming out of the socket, and each joint contains a disc that can slip or wear down. Also, it is much harder to fit a stock prosthesis in the jaw since the bone structure does not allow much room.
The Lorenz prosthesis is already approved for use at two sites in Canada and eight in Europe, where Quinn has trained the surgeons. There will be 12 to 20 sites in the U.S. and six in South America.
"We had an agreement with the FDA that it would be approved with the condition of training, so it could not just be sold," Quinn said. "You want surgeons who do enough of these since it is so technique sensitive. We are identifying surgeons who do a lot of TMJ surgery through the American Society of Temporomandibular Joint Surgery."
Recuperation from the procedure takes four to six weeks.
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Princeton Nanotech Discovery Could Have Radical Implications
It has been 20 years since futurist Eric Drexler daringly predicted a world where miniaturized robots would build things one molecule at a time. The world of nanotechnology is beginning to come to pass, with scientists conjuring new applications daily.
Now Princeton scientist Salvatore Torquato is proposing to turn a central concept of nanotechnology on its head. If the theory bears out -- and it is in its infancy -- it could have radical implications for the computer and telecommunications industries.
Torquato and colleagues published a paper in the Nov. 25 issue of Physical Review Letters, the leading physics journal, outlining a mathematical approach that would enable them to produce desired configurations of nanoparticles by manipulating the manner in which the particles interact with one another.
This may not mean much to the man on the street, but to the average scientist it is a fairly astounding proposition.
“In a sense this would allow you to play God, because the method creates on the computer new types of particles whose interactions are tuned precisely so as to yield a desired structure,” said Pablo Debenedetti, a professor of chemical engineering at Princeton.
The standard approach in nanotechnology is to come up with new chemical structures through trial and error, by letting constituent parts react with one other as they do in nature and then seeing whether the result is useful.
Nanotechnologists rely on something called “self-assembly,” which refers to the fact that molecular building blocks do not have to be put together in some kind of miniaturized factory-like fashion. Instead, under the right conditions, they will spontaneously arrange themselves into larger, carefully organized structures.
As the researchers point out in their paper, biology offers many extraordinary examples of self-assembly, including the formation of the DNA double helix.
But Torquato and his colleagues, visiting research collaborator Frank Stillinger and physics graduate student Mikael Rechtsman, have taken an approach not seen in nature, which they call “inverse statistical mechanics.”
Instead of employing the traditional trial-and-error method of self-assembly that is used by nanotechnologists and which is found in nature, Torquato and his colleagues start with an exact blueprint of the nanostructure they want to build.
Paul Chaikin, a physicist at New York University and a former Princeton professor, said the Torquato paper “presents a first major success in the solution to an inverse problem.”
While Torquato is a theorist rather than a practitioner, his ideas may have implications for nanostructures used in a range of applications in sensors, electronics and aerospace engineering.
So far Torquato and his colleagues have demonstrated their concept only theoretically, with computer modeling.
They illustrated their technique by considering thin films of particles. If one thinks of the particles as pennies scattered upon a table, the pennies, when laterally compressed, would normally self-assemble into a pattern called a triangular lattice.
But by optimizing the interactions of the “pennies,” or particles, Torquato made them self-assemble into an entirely different pattern known as a honeycomb lattice (called that because it very much resembles a honeycomb).
Why is this important? The honeycomb lattice is the two-dimensional analog to the three-dimensional diamond lattice -- the creation of which is somewhat of a holy grail in nanotechnology.
Diamonds found in nature self assemble from carbon atoms that undergo a type of “directional bonding” that is hard to achieve in laboratory experiments. The researchers created their pattern with “non-directional bonding,” which was not previously thought to be possible. This advance should give experimentalists much more flexibility in creating useful structures, Torquato said.
Materials with diamond lattice structures are used in high-speed optical communications devices.
To create the honeycomb lattice, the researchers employed techniques of optimization, a field that has burgeoned since World War II and which is essentially the science of inventing mathematical methods to make things run efficiently.
Torquato and his colleagues hope that their efforts will be replicated in the laboratory using particles called colloids, which have unique properties that make them ideal candidates to test the theory. Chaikin said he is planning to do laboratory experiments based on the work.
Torquato said that he and Stillinger initially had trouble attracting research money to support their idea. Colleagues “thought it was so far out in left field in terms of whether we could do what we were claiming that it was difficult to get funding for it,” he said. The work was ultimately funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy.
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Cambridge and Oxford Professors Awarded Knighthood
Two leading Oxford academics, Professor John Ball and Professor Averil Cameron, and Cambridge’s Professor Michael Pepper have been recognized this year in the Queen’s New Year Honours list.
Professor John Ball, Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy and a Fellow of The Queen’s College, has received a knighthood for services to Science.
Professor Averil Cameron, CBE, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Warden of Keble College and Professor of Antique and Byzantine History, has been made a Dame for services to Classical Scholarship.
Professor Michael Pepper has been awarded a Knighthood in the New Year's Honours List for his service to Physics. His ground-breaking research has led to the creation of the field of semiconductor nanostructures.
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Yun-Dong Wu Honored as CAS Academician
Yun-Dong Wu, Professor of Chemistry at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), has been elected an Academician of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Prof Wu is a leading expert in computational organic chemistry. His research interests range from organic chemistry and biochemistry to materials science and drug design, and his work has made significant contributions to the design of catalysts and drug development for diseases such as Alzheimer's and AIDS.
Wu's research focuses on three main areas: asymmetric catalysis; secondary and tertiary structures of peptides and proteins and protein-protein interaction; as well as drug design based on natural and non-natural amino acids. He successfully solved the long-debated mechanism of the Sharpless epoxidation reaction, a landmark in asymmetric catalysis, which provides insights into the design of new and efficient catalysts for several important reactions. He also worked with Prof Gong Liu-Zhu from the Chengdu Institute of Organic Chemistry in developing the catalytic asymmetric direct Aldol reaction catalyzed by prolinamide derivatives. This highly acclaimed work has been named the Gong-Wu model.
His research group has also made important contributions to the understanding of conformational features of peptides formed by natural and non-natural amino acids. Wu pioneered the theoretical study of the secondary structures of β-peptides, peptides formed by β-amino acids. These peptides are a major focus of research attention because of their potential applications in molecular design and drug development. Prof Wu's group has been working in collaboration with Prof Yang Dan's group at the University of Hong Kong in the development of a novel class of peptides called aminoxy-peptides. Together they have designed and synthesized several types of peptide with special chemical properties, such as specific anion-binding peptides, which are of great interest in drug design.
Wu's group has recently developed a program to systematically study the cause and the factors that can influence peptide/protein aggregations, the cause of many diseases such as Alzheimer's, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow) and Type II diabetes. The findings are of significant value to scientists who are concerned with the challenging problems of amyloid aggregation. Prof Wu's group is also actively involved in understanding how HIV-1 and HCV viruses gain entry into the human cell, a crucial factor in the development of drugs to treat HIV-1/AIDS and HCV infections.
The 48-year-old scientist received his BS in Chemistry from Lanzhou University in 1982, and his PhD in Theoretical Organic Chemistry in 1986 from the University of Pittsburgh, US. He then continued his research at UCLA and the University of Erlangen, Germany, before joining HKUST in 1992. He was promoted to full professor in 2001. He is a Guest Professor at Peking University, Nanjing University, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, and at Lanzhou University, among others.
Since joining HKUST, Wu has published more than 80 papers in top chemistry journals. His work was recognized by the State Natural Science Award in 1999 and the Croucher Senior Research Fellowship in 2000. He was granted the Outstanding Young Investigator Award by the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2002. He has been a board member of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists since 1999, and has served on the editorial/advisory boards of a number of science journals.
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Scientists Identify Gene Needed for Brain, Cord Connections
A team of Stanford researchers has identified a specific gene that is necessary for the development of connections between the brain and the spinal cord.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in December, could be critical for understanding the development of the human brain and treating spinal cord injuries, said biologist Susan McConnell, the Susan B. Ford Professor and senior author of the study.
During fetal development, specific genes instruct nerve cells on how and where to develop. The Stanford team examined the plasticity of fetal cells in mice to better understand when cells become specialized (limited in their ability to take on new characteristics) or undifferentiated (able to take on new functions or characteristics).
To learn more about crucial developmental stages in the brain, the team removed the gene for Fezl, a DNA-binding protein, to observe its effect on brain development. Mice were used as the animal model because they serve as a powerful genetic representation of human brain circuitry. The results showed that in developing mice that lack Fezl, normal connections to the spinal cord failed to form. Instead, the brain cells that usually form the corticospinal tract, which connects the brain and spinal cord, made inappropriate connections to other parts of the brain. This finding led the researchers to conclude that Fezl is necessary for proper development of neural connections to the spinal cord.
Although these findings have yet to be applied in a clinical setting, McConnell said that the discovery of Fezl's role in neural development might one day prove useful in stem-cell research to stimulate axon growth to the spinal cord in injured adults. Fezl and the gene that controls its production could be essential in understanding how to regenerate connections to the spinal cord that are severed during injury, which results in paralysis, she added.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
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Stardust Nears End of Epic journey; Researchers Await Its Treasure
Donald Brownlee's heart skipped a beat six years ago when the launch of the Stardust spacecraft didn't happen as planned. The University of Washington astronomy professor has experienced many other tense times since the historic mission blasted off a day late, and its return to Earth on Jan. 15 will be just one more white-knuckle moment.
Just before 3 a.m. MST, the spacecraft will jettison its return capsule, which will plunge into Earth's atmosphere at nearly 29,000 miles per hour, the greatest return speed ever recorded. A few moments later, after the capsule slows to just faster than the speed of sound, a parachute will apply the brakes and Stardust will settle to the ground on the Air Force's Utah Testing and Training Range southwest of Salt Lake City.
The return capsule contains tiny bits of dust captured two years ago as it spewed from a comet called Wild 2. The tennis-racquet-shaped collector used a remarkably light and porous material called aerogel to capture the particles, each much smaller than a grain of sand and traveling six times the speed of a bullet fired from a rifle. Earlier, the reverse side of the collector snared interstellar dust grains flowing into the solar system from other stars in our galaxy. In all, the capsule contains tens of thousands of comet grains and about 100 bits of interstellar dust.
Stardust is part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's series of Discovery missions and is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Besides the UW, other collaborators are Lockheed Martin Space Systems; The Boeing Co.; Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics; NASA's Ames Research Center; and the University of Chicago.
After the capsule touches down in the Utah desert, a canister bearing the aerogel collector grid will be removed and taken to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the samples will be cataloged and sent to scientists around the world. Brownlee expects them to provide key information on the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and possibly to shed light on the origins of life on Earth. Scientists are likely to study Stardust's treasure for decades to come.
Stardust was launched on Feb. 7, 1999, and set off on three giant loops around the sun. It began collecting interstellar dust in 2000 and met Wild 2 (pronounced Vilt 2) on Jan. 2, 2004, when the spacecraft weathered a hailstorm of comet particles and snapped exceptional close-up photographs of the comet's surface. During its 2.88 billion-mile voyage Stardust made one pass by Earth to get a speed boost from the planet's gravity, and later staged a dress-rehearsal for the comet encounter when it maneuvered very close to Asteroid 5535 Annefrank.
The tensest moment other than the comet encounter came in November 2000, while the spacecraft was cruising along some 130 million miles from the sun. A huge solar flare, 100,000 times more energetic than usual, engulfed Stardust and its special digital cameras that help the spacecraft know where it is by viewing the stars and making comparisons with a comprehensive star chart stored in the onboard computer. The high-energy solar flare electrified pixels in the cameras, producing dots that the computer interpreted as stars. Suddenly the spacecraft did not know where it was and, in a preprogrammed act of self-preservation, it turned its solar panels toward the sun, losing communication with Earth.
Ground controllers finally found a faint signal and were able to contact Stardust and correct the problem. A little more than three years later the spacecraft finally met the target that scientists had been aiming for since 1974, when a close encounter with Jupiter altered Wild 2's orbit and brought it to the inner solar system. That made the mission feasible.
Scientists have collected thousands of meteorites and cosmic dust particles on Earth, Brownlee noted, but with few exceptions the origin of those materials is unknown. Now there will be samples of material from another known body in space, and those grains can be compared with all the previously collected meteorites and bits of dust to see if there are similar origins. The Wild 2 samples are cryogenically preserved solar system building blocks, kept close to their original state because they have existed mostly at the outer edge of the solar system.
Stardust's photographs of Wild 2 also are cause for further study. Brownlee still marvels at the rugged surface the pictures disclosed, a surface very different from the smoother cores of the other three comets -- Tempel 1, Borrelly and Halley -- that have been photographed up close.
