1. Foreign Science and Engineering Graduate Students Returning to U.S. Colleges

2. DOE Scraps FUTUREGEN Plan Plans in Illinois and Announces Alternative Approach to Clean Coal

3. NSF Dedicates New South Pole Station

4. Rutgers ORBIT Mobile Computing and Telecon Testing Facility Honored with Innovation Prize

5. Solution Found to Problem of Quantum Dot “Blinking”

6. NIST Demonstrates High Powered Fiberglass Antenna

7. March Conference Focuses on Establishing Trust in Internet Transactions

8. NASA Names New Aerospace Research Head

9. Two Studies Demonstration Potential For Smart-Grid Technologies

10. Agreement Set for Demonstration of High-Temp Superconducting Power Cable

11. Thermoelectric Breakthrough Made With Silicon Nanowires

12. New Kind Of Transistor Radios Shows Capability Of Nanotube Technology

13. Computer Vision May Not Be As Good As Throught

14. Berkeley Scientists Bring Mri/Nmr To Microreactors

15. New Device Zeroes In On Small Breast Tumors

16. Researchers Create World’s Darkest Man-Made Material

FOREIGN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING GRADUATE STUDENTS RETURNING TO U.S. COLLEGES

According to a new report from the National Science Foundation, enrollment of first-time, full-time foreign graduate students on temporary visas studying science and engineering (S&E) grew by 16 percent in 2006, following a 4 percent increase in 2005. The increases in the past two years reflect a reversal of the declines in enrollments of new foreign S&E graduate students experienced after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

"The numbers indicate a rebound of first-time, full-time foreign S&E enrollment in U.S. graduate schools, which declined 19 percent between 2001 and 2004 after 9/11," said Project Officer Julia Oliver, of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which cosponsored the study with the National Institutes of Health.
See report with data at: www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08302/

DOE SCRAPS FUTUREGEN PLANT PLANS IN ILLINOIS AND ANNOUNCES ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO CLEAN COAL

On Jan. 30, U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman announced a restructuring of the Department of Energy’s FutureGen project, which aims to demonstrate cutting-edge carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at multiple commercial-scale Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) clean coal power plants. Under a new strategy, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will providing funding for the addition of CCS technology to multiple plants that will be operational by 2015. According to DOE, this approach builds on technological research and development advancements in IGCC and CCS technology achieved over the past five years and is expected to at least double the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered compared to the concept announced in 2003.

According to Secretary Bodman, “This restructured FutureGen approach is an all-around better investment for Americans. As technological advancements have been realized in the last five years, we are eager to demonstrate CCS technology on commercial plants that when operational, will be the cleanest coal-fired plants in the world. Each of these plants will sequester at least one million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually and help meet our nation’s rapidly growing energy demand.”

The FutureGen concept was originally announced in 2003 as a plan to create a near-zero emissions, 275 MW power plant that produced hydrogen and electricity from coal on a smaller-than-commercial-scale, serving as a laboratory for technology development. The decision effectively quashed this $1.8 billion FutureGen clean-coal project slated for central Illinois. DOE attributed the withdrawal of support to opportunities resulting from advancements in technology and on ballooning cost estimates and concerns about future commercial application of the plant’s design. The decision prompted howls of protest from program supporters, who are challenging DOE’s conclusions and pledging to lobby Congress to continue funding to complete the program.

See DOE press release and fact sheet at: www.doe.gov/news/5912.htm

See the FutureGen Alliances response at: www.futuregenalliance.org/

NSF DEDICATES NEW SOUTH POLE STATION

On 12 Jan., the United States dedicated the new Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the third scientific station at the geographic South Pole operated by the U.S. since 1957. The new station provides a support system for sophisticated large-scale experiments in disciplines ranging from astrophysics to environmental chemistry and seismology. Considered an engineering marvel, the elevated station is the most imposing structure ever built at the Pole and the 12-year reconstruction required extraordinary effort to complete. It required 925 flights by ski-equipped LC-130 aircraft flown by the N.Y. Air National Guard. At 26,000 pounds of cargo per flight, a total of 24 million pounds of cargo were transported.

For more information and photographs, go to: www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110961

RUTGERS ORBIT MOBILE COMPUTING AND TELECON TESTING FACILITY HONORED WITH INNOVATION PRIZE

On 14 January, a research team at the Rutgers Wireless Information Networking Laboratory (WINLAB) received the fourth annual Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological Innovation from the I/UCRC Association. The award, named for the founder of the I/UCRC program, recognizes Rutgers for establishing a unique facility for testing new mobile computing and communications technologies. The facility, known as the ORBIT Open Access Radio Grid Testbed, features a 400-node programmable radio transceiver emulation laboratory and an outdoor field trial system of short- and long-range radios on the university's New Brunswick Campus.

The ORBIT facility, funded by a $5.45 milion, four-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, is the world's largest open, programmable wireless network facility for use by academic and industry researchers worldwide. Approximately 200 research teams have conducted more than 5,000 experiments since the lab became widely available to researchers in October of 2005. Studies have included computer networks that can be automatically reconfigured on-demand, networking for security and environmental sensors, vehicular data communications and wireless networking security.

ORBIT is also being used as a proof-of-concept prototyping platform for wireless aspects of GENI, the future $300 million Internet research infrastructure being planned by the U.S. networking research community. In addition, it has been selected as the experimental wireless networking platform of choice for key future Internet projects in Europe.

The I/UCRC Association is a voluntary, independent organization of past and present members of the National Science Foundation's Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) program.

SOLUTION FOUND TO PROBLEM OF QUANTUM DOT ‘BLINKING’

Quantum dots—tiny, intense, tunable sources of colorful light—are illuminating new opportunities in biomedical research, cryptography and other fields. But these semiconductor nanocrystals also have a problematic tic, they mysteriously tend to “blink” on and off like Christmas tree lights, which can reduce their usefulness.
Scientists at JILA (http://jilawww.colorado.edu/) have found one possible way to solve the blinking problem and have induced quantum dots to emit photons (the smallest particles of light) faster and more consistently. The advance could make quantum dots more sensitive as fluorescent tags in biomedical tests and single-molecule studies and steadier sources of single photons for “unbreakable” quantum encryption. JILA is a joint venture of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder. The JILA research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and NIST.

For more information, see: V. Fomenko and D. J. Nesbitt. Solution control of radiative and nonradiative lifetimes: a novel contribution to quantum dot blinking suppression.

Nano Letters. Published online 21 Dec. 2007.

NIST DEMONSTRATES HIGH POWERED FIBERGLASS ANTENNA

Radio station WWVH in Hawaii, operated since 1948 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to broadcast time, frequency and other announcements, recently powered up innovative replacement antennas. NIST has installed new antennas encased in fiberglass instead of traditional steel supports to resist corrosion from the salty ocean air. The fiberglass design will reduce maintenance and repair costs as well as climbing hazards to staff. NIST time and frequency experts believe the project is the first demonstration of high-powered, high-frequency fiberglass antennas on land.

For more information, see www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wwvh_antenna.html.

MARCH CONFERENCE FOCUSES ON ESTABLISHING TRUST IN INTERNET TRANSACTIONS

Establishing trust in Internet transactions is a mutual process between user and service provider. In bank transactions, for example, customers want to be sure that their browser is taking them to their bank and not to a fake website. For its part, the bank needs to verify that the logged-in user is their customer and not an imposter. An upcoming conference co-sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will feature the latest technical information on establishing trust on the Internet. Known as IDtrust 2008, the conference will be held 4-6 March 2008, at NIST’s Gaithersburg campus.

See: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/confpage/080304htm.htm

NASA NAMES NEW AERONAUTICS RESEARCH HEAD

Dr. Jaiwon Shin has been named as NASA's associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, with responsibility for managing the agency's aeronautics research portfolio including research in the fundamental aeronautics of flight, aviation safety and the nation's airspace system.

Prior to this appointment, Shin served as the deputy associate administrator for aeronautics. Before coming to NASA Headquarters in 2004, Shin served as chief of the aeronautics projects office at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. In this position, he had management responsibility for all aeronautics projects managed at the center. Prior to that, he was the deputy director of aeronautics at the center, providing executive leadership for the planning and implementation of the aeronautics program at Glenn. Dr. Shin received his doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg.

TWO STUDIES DEMONSTRATE POTENTIAL FOR SMART GRID TECHNOLOGIES

In Jan., the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory announced the results of a year-long effort to put the power grid in the hands of consumers through technology. The Pacific Northwest GridWise™ Demonstration Project found that advanced technologies enable consumers to be active participants in improving power grid efficiency and reliability, while saving money in the process. On average, consumers who participated in the project saved approximately 10 percent on their electricity bills.

The project was funded primarily by DOE, with other support provided by utilities and manufacturers. It involved two separate studies to test demand-response concepts and technologies. The Olympic Peninsula Project found homeowners are willing to adjust their individual energy use based on price signals -- provided via information technology tools. The Grid Friendly™ Appliance Project demonstrated that everyday household appliances can automatically reduce energy consumption at critical moments when they are fitted with controllers that sense stress on the grid. Both studies helped reduce pressure on the grid during times of peak demand.

The homeowners who participated in the Olympic Peninsula project received new electric meters, as well as thermostats, water heaters and dryers connected via Invensys Controls home gateway devices to IBM software. The software let homeowners customize devices to a desired level of comfort or economy and automatically responded to changing electricity prices in five-minute intervals. To reduce usage in peak periods, when electricity is most expensive, the software automatically lowered thermostats or shut off the heating element of water heaters to the pre-set response limits established by individual homeowners.

Participants received constantly updated pricing information via the Internet. The ability to connect the homes with energy providers as well as the grid was made possible through IBM technology known as a service oriented architecture (SOA). A "virtual" bank account was established for each household and money saved by adjusting home energy consumption in collaboration with needs of the grid was converted into real money kept by the homeowners. With the help of these tools, consumers easily and automatically changed how and when they used electricity, for their own financial benefit and the benefit of the grid.

"As demand for electricity continues to grow, Smart Grid technologies such as those demonstrated in the Olympic Peninsula area will play an important role in ensuring a continued delivery of safe and reliable power to all Americans," said DOE Assistant Secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability Kevin Kolevar.
For more information, see: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/dnnl-doe010908.php

AGREEMENT SET FOR DEMONSTRATION OF HIGH TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTING POWER CABLE

On 9 January, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) announced that SuperPower Inc., a Schenectady, N.Y., superconducting wire manufacturer, has signed a license agreement to use an ORNL-developed technology that can lower the cost of producing superconducting wires for more efficient transmission of electricity.

SuperPower’s pilot manufacturing facility has yielded the world’s longest 2G wire with world-record performance. 10,000 meters of the wire have been fabricated into an HTS power cable which has been installed into the power grid in Albany, N.Y., the world’s first “on-the-grid” device demonstration of this technology.

Patricia A. Hoffman, DOE principal deputy assistant secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, said incorporating these high temperature superconducting wires and power equipment into the nation’s electric grid will help meet rapidly growing demand for energy in an energy-efficient, cost-effective manner.

Today's agreement builds on DOE’s recent announcement to provide up to $51.8 million for five-cost shared projects that aim to advance the development and application of high-temperature superconductors that will help modernize the U.S. electric grid system. SuperPower Inc. was among one of the companies selected by DOE to receive funding for these cost-shared projects.

For more information on the DOE’s efforts to modernize the electric grid, visit: www.oe.energy.gov.

NEW KIND OF TRANSISTOR RADIOS SHOWS CAPABILITY OF NANOTUBE TECHNOLOGY

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have built the world’s first all-nanotube radios, which represents “important first steps toward the practical implementation of carbon-nanotube materials into high-speed analog electronics and other related applications,” said John Rogers, a Founder Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois.

The radios were based on a heterodyne receiver design consisting of four capacitively coupled stages: an active resonant antenna, two radio-frequency amplifiers, and an audio amplifier, all based on nanotube devices. Headphones plugged directly into the output of a nanotube transistor. In all, seven nanotube transistors were incorporated into the design of each radio.

Rogers paper, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the design, fabrication and performance of the nanotube-transistor radios, which were achieved in a close collaboration with radio frequency electronics engineers at Northrop Grumman Electronics Systems in Linthicum, Md.

“These results indicate that nanotubes might have an important role to play in high-speed analog electronics, where benchmarking studies against silicon indicate significant advantages in comparably scaled devices, together with capabilities that might complement compound semiconductors,” said Rogers, who also is a researcher at the Beckman Institute and at the university’s Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory.

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

THERMOELECTRIC BREAKTHROUGH MADE WITH SILICON NANOWIRES

Energy now lost as heat during the production of electricity could be harnessed through the use of silicon nanowires synthesized via a technique developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley. The far-ranging potential applications of this technology include DOE’s hydrogen fuel cell-powered “Freedom CAR,” and personal power-jackets that could use heat from the human body to recharge cell-phones and other electronic devices.

“This is the first demonstration of high performance thermoelectric capability in silicon, an abundant semiconductor for which there already exists a multibillion dollar infrastructure for low-cost and high-yield processing and packaging,” said Arun Majumdar, a mechanical engineer and materials scientist with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, who was one of the principal investigators behind this research.

“We’ve shown that it’s possible to achieve a large enhancement of thermoelectric energy efficiency at room temperature in rough silicon nanowires that have been processed by wafer-scale electrochemical synthesis,” said chemist Peidong Yang, the other principal investigator behind this research, who also holds a joint Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley appointment.

Nearly all of the world’s electrical power, approximately 10 trillion Watts, is generated by heat engines, giant gas or steam-powered turbines that convert heat to mechanical energy, which is then converted to electricity. Much of this heat, however, is not converted but is instead released into the environment, approximately 15 trillion Watts. If even a small fraction of this lost heat could be converted to electricity, its impact on the energy situation would be enormous.

“Thermoelectric materials, which have the ability to convert heat into electricity, potentially could be used to capture much of the low-grade waste heat now being lost and convert it into electricity,” said Majumdar. “This would result in massive savings on fuel and carbon dioxide emissions. The same devices can also be used as refrigerators and air conditioners, and because these devices can be miniaturized, it could make heating and cooling much more localized and efficient.”

This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Science, through the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/dbnl-fth011008.php

COMPUTER VISION MAY NOT BE AS GOOD AS THOUGHT

For years, scientists have been trying to teach computers how to see like humans, and recent research has seemed to show computers making progress in recognizing visual objects. A new MIT study, however, cautions that this apparent success may be misleading because the tests being used are inadvertently stacked in favor of computers.

Computer vision is important for applications ranging from “intelligent” cars to visual prosthetics for the blind. Recent computational models show apparently impressive progress, boasting 60-percent success rates in classifying natural photographic image sets. These include the widely used Caltech101 database, intended to test computer vision algorithms against the variety of images seen in the real world.

However, James DiCarlo, a neuroscientist in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, graduate student Nicolas Pinto and David Cox of the Rowland Harvard Institute argue that these image sets have design flaws that enable computers to succeed where they would fail with more authentically varied images. For example, photographers tend to center objects in a frame and to prefer certain views and contexts. The visual system, by contrast, encounters objects in a much broader range of conditions.

This study was supported by the National Eye Institute, The Pew Charitable Trust and The McKnight Foundation.

For more information, see: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/miot-mcv011808.php

BERKELEY SCIENTISTS BRING MRI/NMR TO MICROREACTORS

In a significant step towards improving the design of future catalysts and catalytic reactors, especially for microfluidic “lab-on-a-chip” devices, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, have successfully applied magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to the study of gas-phase reactions on the microscale.

Lead by Alexander Pines, faculty senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, a team of researchers that included chemists Louis Bouchard and Scott Burt have developed a technique in which parahydrogen-polarized gas is used to make an MRI signal strong enough to provide direct visualization of the gas-phase flow of active catalysts in packed-bed microreactors. This work, the first application of gas-phase MRI to microfluidic catalysis, shows that parahydrogen-enhanced MRI can be used to track gases and liquids in microfluidic devices as well as in the void spaces of a tightly packed catalyst reactor bed.

Since nearly all manufacturing processes that involve chemistry start with a catalytic reaction, there is a premium on the design of new and better catalysts and catalytic reactors. This is especially true for the growing field of microfluidic chip technology. MRI and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), its sister technology, are among the most powerful analytic tools known to science and could be immensely valuable for characterizing catalytic reactors and reactions in microfluidic devices. However, the low sensitivity of conventional MRI/NMR techniques has limited their applicability to microscale catalysis research. For the results reported in their Science paper, Pines, Bouchard and Burt were able to overcome the inherent low sensitivity of MRI/NMR through the use of parahydrogen.

This work was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division of the U.S. Department of Energy. Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. For more information on the research of Alexander Pines and his research group, visit the Website at http://waugh.cchem.berkeley.edu/

NEW DEVICE ZEROES IN ON SMALL BREAST TUMORS

A new medical imager for detecting and guiding the biopsy of suspicious breast cancer lesions is capable of spotting tumors that are half the size of the smallest ones detected by standard imaging systems, according to a new study.

The results of initial testing of the PEM/PET system, designed and constructed by scientists at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, West Virginia University School of Medicine and the University of Maryland School of Medicine were published in the journal “Physics in Medicine and Biology” on 7 Feb.

RESEARCHERS CREATE WORD’S DARKEST MAN-MADE MATERIAL

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University have created a new material consisting of a thin coating comprised of low-density arrays of loosely vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes, which absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light. The new techonlogy is projected to one day boost the effectiveness and efficiency of solar energy conversion, infrared sensors, and other devices. The researchers who developed the material have applied for a Guinness World Record for their efforts.

The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences and the Focus Center New York for Interconnects.

For more information, see: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/rpi-rdd012208.php

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