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Rising Costs Provide Impetus

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Virginia’s Engineering Address - www.vaeng.com April 2008 The Virginia Engineer Page 3

Engineering Eggshells 21 Inexpensively Removing Carbon Dioxide

Professional Directory 29

Combating Cyber Crime 27 Making Online Activities More Secure

Engineers On The Move 12

Bits and Pieces 29

Index to Advertisers 33

Editorial Comment 34

Energy Sources Research 4 Rising Costs Provide Impetus

Fiber-Based Nanogenerators 18 Physical Motion Produces Electricity

Ideal Black Material 9 Absorbs All Colors of Light, Reflects Nothing

Searching For New Dimension 23 Research Seeks To Detect Presence

Power For Developing Nations 15 Smaller Reactors May Be Solution

THE TOP OF THE NEWSVolume LVII Number 4 April 2008

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Page 4 The Virginia Engineer April 2008 Virginia’s Engineering Address - www.vaeng.com

As the cost of petroleum con-tinues to soar, the urgency to de-velop sustainable and economi-cally feasible power generation alternatives becomes increasingly intense. With the general con-sensus that no single technology will suffice, research continues on many fronts focused on under-standing the real-life dynamics of implementing alternatives.

Using smoke, laser light, model airplane propellers and a campus wind tunnel, a team led by Johns Hopkins University researchers is trying to solve the airflow mysteries that surround wind turbines, an increasingly popular source for “green” ener-gy production. The National Sci-ence Foundation (NSF) recently awarded the team a three-year, $321,000 grant to support the project through NSF’s Energy for Sustainability Program.

The rise in oil prices and a growing demand for energy from non-polluting sources has led to a global boom in construc-tion of tall wind turbines that convert the power of moving air into electricity. The technology of these devices has improved dramatically in recent years, making wind energy more at-tractive.

For example, Denmark is able to produce about 20 percent of its electric energy through wind turbines. But important ques-tions remain: Could large wind farms, whipping up the air with massive whirling blades, alter local weather conditions? Could

changing the arrangement of these turbines lead to even more efficient power production? The researchers from Johns Hopkins and Rensselaer Polytechnic In-stitute hope their work will help answer such questions.

“With diameters spanning up to 100 meters across, these wind turbines are the largest rotating machines ever built,” said research team leader Charles Meneveau, the university’s Louis M. Sardella Professor of Mechani-cal Engineering and a turbulence expert in Johns Hopkins’ Whiting

School of Engineering.“There’s been a lot of research

done on wind turbine blade aerodynamics, but few people have looked at the way these ma-chines interact with the turbulent wind conditions around them. By studying the airflow around small, scale-model windmills in the lab, we can develop computer models that tell us more about

what’s happening in the atmo-sphere at full-size wind farms.”

To collect data for such mod-els, Prof. Meneveau’s team is con-ducting experiments in a campus wind tunnel. The tunnel uses a large fan to generate a stream of air moving at about 40 mph. Before it enters the testing area, the air passes through an “active grid,” a curtain of perforated plates that rotate randomly and create turbulence so that air cur-rents in the tunnel more closely resemble real-life wind condi-tions. The air currents then pass through a series of small model airplane propellers mounted atop posts, mimicking an array of full-size wind turbines.

The researchers gather in-formation on the interaction of the air currents and the model turbines by using a high-tech procedure called stereo particle-image-velocimetry. First, they “seed” the air in the tunnel with a form of smoke—tiny particles that move with the prevail-ing airflow. Above the model turbines, a laser generates two sheet-like pulses of light in quick succession. A camera captures the position of particles at the time of each flash.

“When the images are pro-cessed, we see that there are two dots for every particle,” explained Prof. Meneveau.

“Because we know the time difference between the two laser shots, we can calculate the veloc-ity. So we get an instantaneous snapshot of the velocity vector at each point. Having these vector maps allows us to calculate how much kinetic energy is flowing from one place to another, in much greater detail than what was possible before.”

Rising Costs Provide Impetus For Alternative Energy Sources

Using laser pulses and model wind tur-bines, Johns Hopkins researchers are able to collect important data about the airflow that is likely to occur around full-size machines that produce “green” energy. Photo courtesy of Will Kirk/ JHU.


Raul B. Cal, a Johns Hopkins postdoctoral fellow who is work-ing on the project with Prof. Me-neveau, said this data could lead to a better understanding of real wind farm conditions.

“What happens when you put these wind turbines too close together or too far apart? What if you align them staggered or in parallel?” he asked. “All of these are dif-ferent effects that we want to be able to comprehend and quantify, rather than just go out there and build these massive structures, imple-menting them and not knowing what’s going to happen.”

Prof. Meneveau pointed out that dense clusters of wind turbines also could affect nearby temperatures and humidity levels, and cumulatively, perhaps, alter local weather conditions. Highly ac-curate computer models will be needed to unravel the various effects involved. “Our research will provide the fluid dynami-cal data necessary to improve the accuracy of such computer models,” Prof. Meneveau said. “We’d better know what the ef-fects are in order to implement wind turbine technology in the most sustainable and efficient fashion possible.”

Prof. Meneveau and Mr. Cal are collaborating with Luciano Castillo, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aero-space and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,

and Hyung S. Kang, an associate research scientist in the Depart-ment of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins.

And as researchers continue to press forward in their efforts to make wind energy a viable alter-native for electricity production, another often referenced alterna-tive, solar energy, is also receiving

renewed scrutiny.On a perfect winter day —

with the New Mexico sky almost 10 percent brighter than usual — Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net ef-ficiency rate.

The conversion efficiency is calculated by measuring the net energy delivered to the grid and dividing it by the solar energy hit-ting the dish mirrors. Auxiliary loads, such as water pumps, com-puters and tracking motors, are accounted for in the net power measurement.

“Gaining two whole points of conversion efficiency in this type of system is phenomenal,” noted Bruce Osborn, SES president and CEO. “This is a significant advancement that takes our dish engine systems well beyond the capacities of any other solar dish collectors and one step closer to commercializing an affordable

system.”Erected in May

2005 as part of a prototype six dish model power plant at the Solar Thermal Test Facility, each dish unit consists of 82 mirrors formed in a dish shape to cre-ate an intense beam of light.

The solar dish generates electricity by focusing the sun’s rays onto a receiver, which transmits the heat energy to a Stirling engine. The engine is a sealed system filled with

hydrogen. As the gas heats and cools, its pressure rises and falls. The change in pressure drives the pistons inside the engine, producing mechanical power, which in turn drives a generator and makes electricity.

Lead Sandia project engineer Chuck Andraka said that several technical advancements to the systems made jointly by SES and Sandia led to the record-breaking solar-to-grid conversion efficien-cy. In a relationship that spans more than a decade, SES owns the dishes and all the hardware while Sandia provides technical and analytical support.

Mr. Andraka said the first

Sandia and Stirling Energy Systems set new world record for solar-to-grid conversion efficiency. The record establishes a new solar-to-grid conversion efficiency of 31.25 percent. The old record, which has stood since 1984, was 29.4 percent. Photo courtesy of Randy Montoya.


and probably most important ad-vancement was improved optics. The Stirling dishes are made us-ing a low iron glass with a silver backing giving them a highly re-flective quality, focusing as much as 94 percent of the incident sun-light to the engine package. The mirror facets, patented by Sandia and Paneltec Corp. of Lafayette, Colo., are highly accurate with minimal shape imperfections.

Both improvements allow for the loss-control aperture to be reduced to seven inches in diameter — meaning light is highly concentrated as it enters the receiver.

Other advancements to the solar dish-engine system that helped Sandia and SES beat the energy conversion record were a new, more effective radiator that also costs less to build and a new high-efficiency generator.

While all the enhancements led to a better system, one aspect made it happen on a beautiful winter day — the weather.

“It was a ‘perfect storm’ of sorts,” Mr. Andraka says. “We set the record on a very cold and extremely bright day, a day eight percent brighter than normal.”

The temperature, which hov-ered around freezing, allowed the cold portion of the engine to operate at about 23 degrees C, and the brightness means more energy was produced while most parasitic loads and losses are con-stant. The test ran for two and a half hours, and a 60-minute run-ning average was used to evalu-ate the power and efficiency data, in order to eliminate transient effects. During the testing phase, the system produced 26.75 kW net electrical power.

Mr. Osborn said that SES is

working to commercialize the re-cord-performing system and has signed power purchase agree-ments with two major Southern California utilities for up to 1,750 megawatts (MW) of power, rep-resenting the world’s two largest solar power contracts. Collective-ly, these contracts require up to 70,000 solar dish engine units.

“This exciting record shows that using these dishes will be a cost-effective and environmen-tally friendly way of producing power,” Mr. Osborn noted. “SES is actively engaged in the com-mercialization of the system, called the ‘SunCatcher,’ including continuing to prepare it for mass production, completing project site development and precon-struction activities, and establish-ing partnerships with substantial manufacturing and industrial organizations to develop a cost-effective manufacturing process and supply chain. The demon-strated high efficiency means more energy is generated for the given investment, lowering the cost of the energy delivered.”’

But while the production of electricity from alternative sources such as wind and solar certainly has a place in America’s overall energy policy, can these technologies, even if fully imple-mented, provide the power we need while significantly reducing our reliance on petroleum?

Many energy experts agree that these more environmen-tally friendly alternatives will, at best, be supplemental rather than primary sources for power generation. Instead, they point to America’s most abundant fuel source, coal, as the most promis-ing substitute. But burning coal, like any other fossil fuel, releases

large amounts of carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas.

To directly address this prob-lem, researchers have developed a new, low-cost material for capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants and other generators of the greenhouse gas. Produced with a simple one-step chemical process, the new material has a high capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide – and can be reused many times.

Combined with improved heat management techniques, the new material could provide a cost-effective way to capture large quantities of carbon dioxide from coal-burning facilities. Existing CO2 capture techniques involve the use of solid materials that lack sufficient stability for repeated use – or liquid adsorbents that are expensive and require significant amounts of energy.

“This is something that you could imagine scaling up for commercial use,” said Christo-pher Jones, a professor in the School of Chemical and Biomo-lecular Engineering at the Geor-gia Institute of Technology. “Our material has the combination of high capacity, easy synthesis, low cost and a robust ability to be recycled – all the key criteria for an adsorbent that would be used on an industrial scale.”

Details of the new material, known as hyperbranched alumi-nosilica (HAS), appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The research was sup-ported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Growing concern over in-creased levels of atmospheric car-bon dioxide has prompted new


erates considerable amounts of heat, which must be managed and thermally recycled. Removal of the carbon dioxide requires heating the adsorbent.

“How to manage this heat is one of the most critical issues controlling the economics of a po-tential large scale process,” Prof. Jones added. “You must control the production of heat by the adsorption step, and you don’t want to put any more energy into the desorption process than

necessary.”Because of their chemical

structure, the amine groups provide three different classes of binding sites for carbon dioxide, each with a different binding energy. Optimizing the production of binding sites is a goal for future research, Prof. Jones noted.

In addition to advances in the material, the various other components of the carbon separation and sequestration process must also be improved and optimized before it can be-come a practical technique for removing CO2 from flue gases. Research to determine the most effective method of exposing the flue gases to the adsorbent material is also a key issue.

“There are many pieces that must fit together to make the overall economics of carbon di-oxide capture and sequestration work,” Prof. Jones added. “The biggest challenge for this whole

field of research right now is to do this as inexpensively as possible. We think that our class of mate-rials – a hyperbranched amine polymer bound to a solid support – is potentially ideal because it is simple to make, reusable and has a high capacity.” ##

interest in techniques for remov-ing the gas from the smokestacks of such large-scale sources as coal-fired electric power plants. But to minimize their economic impact, the cost of adding such controls must be minimized to avoid a significant rise in the price of electricity.

Once removed from the stack gases, the CO2 might be seques-tered in the deep ocean, in mined-out coal seams or in depleted petroleum reservoirs. If the CO2 capture and sequestration process can be made practical, America’s large resources of coal could be used with less im-pact on global climate change.

Working with Department of Energy scientists Daniel Fauth and McMahan Gray, Prof. Jones and graduate stu-dents Jason Hicks and Jeffrey Drese developed a way to add CO2-adsorbing amine polymer groups to a solid silica substrate using covalent bonding. The strong chemical bonds make the material robust enough to be reused many times.

“Given the volumes in-volved, you must be able to recycle the adsorbent material for the process to be cost-ef-fective,” explained Prof. Jones. “Otherwise, you would be cre-ating large and expensive waste streams of adsorbent.”

Production of the HAS ma-terial is relatively simple, and requires only the mixing of the silica substrate with a precursor of the amine polymer in solution. The amine polymer is initiated on the silica surface, producing a solid material that can be filtered out and dried.

To test the effectiveness of their new material, the Georgia

Tech researchers passed simu-lated flue gases through tubes containing a mixture of sand and HAS. The CO2 was adsorbed at temperatures ranging from 50 to 75 degrees Celsius. Then the HAS was heated to between 100 and 120 degrees Celsius to drive off the gas so the adsorbent could be used again.

The researchers tested the material across 12 cycles of ad-sorption and desorption, and did not measure a significant loss

of capacity. The HAS material, which performs well even in the presence of moisture created in the combustion process, can ad-sorb up to 5 times as much carbon dioxide as some of the best exist-ing reusable materials.

Adsorption of the CO2 gen-

Georgia Tech graduate student Jeffrey Drese assembles a fixed-bed flow system by loading a tubular reactor into a heating chamber. The equipment is used to test the new adsorbent material for its ability to capture carbon dioxide. Georgia Tech Photo courtesy of Gary Meek.


Like X-rays let doctors see the bones beneath our skin, “T-rays” could let art historians see murals hidden beneath coats of plaster or paint in centuries-old buildings, University of Michi-gan (U-M) engineering research-ers say. T-rays, pulses of terahertz radiation, could also illuminate penciled sketches under paint-ings on canvas without harming the artwork, the researchers say. Current methods of imaging un-derdrawings can’t detect certain art materials such as graphite or sanguine, a red chalk that some of the masters are believed to have used. The team of researchers, which includes scientists at the Louvre Museum, Picometrix, LLC and U-M, used terahertz imaging to detect colored paints and a graphite drawing of a but-terfly through 4 mm of plaster. They believe their technique is capable of seeing even deeper.

A paper called, “Terahertz imaging for non-destructive evaluation of mural paintings” was published in a recent edi-tion of Optics Communications. “It’s ideal that the method of evaluation for historical arti-facts such as frescoes and mural paintings, which are typically an inherent part of a building’s in-frastructure, be non-destructive, non-invasive, precise and appli-cable on site. Current technolo-gies may satisfy one or more of these requirements, but we

believe our new technique can satisfy all of them,” said John Whitaker, an author of the paper who is a research scientist and adjunct professor in the Depart-ment of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at U-M. Terahertz imaging can reveal depth and detail that other tech-niques cannot, Prof. Whitaker said. And it’s not potentially harmful like X-ray imaging be-cause terahertz radiation is non-ionizing. Its rays don’t have enough energy to knock elec-trons off atoms, forming charged particles and causing damage, like X-rays do. While terahertz radiation is all around us in nature, it has been difficult to produce in a lab because it falls between the capabilities of electronic devices and lasers. “Terahertz is a strange range in the electromagnetic spectrum because it’s quasi-optical. It is light, but it isn’t,” said Bianca Jackson, first author of the paper who is a doctoral student in ap-plied physics. The device used for this re-search is a hybrid between elec-tronics and lasers. It was devel-oped by the Ann-Arbor based company Picometrix. It’s called the T-Ray™ system, and it uses pulses from an ultra-fast laser to excite a semiconductor antenna, which in turn emits pulses of terahertz radiation. The rays permeate the plas-ter, and some reflect back when

there is a change in the materi-al. When they bounce back and how much energy they retain depends on the material they hit. Different colors of paint, or the presence of graphite, for ex-ample, cause tell-tale differences in the amount of energy in the re-turning waves. A receiver mea-sures this energy, and the scien-tists can use the data to produce an image of what lies beneath, Ms. Jackson explained. A similar device made by Picometrix is used routinely to examine the foam on the space shuttle’s fuel tanks for under-lying damage, said Irl Duling, director of terahertz business development at Picometrix and an author of the paper. This pa-per discusses a new application, rather than a new device. Gèrard Mourou, the A. D. Moore Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Electri-cal Engineering and Computer Science, said he believes this technique will be especially use-ful in Europe, where historic regime changes often resulted in artworks being plastered or painted over. This was common in places of worship, some of which switched from churches to mosques and vice versa over the centuries. “In France alone, you have 100,000 churches,” Prof. Mourou said. “In many of these places, we know there is something hid-den. It has already been written about. This is a quick way to find it.” And Leonardo DaVinci’s “The Battle of Anghiari,” for example, is believed to lurk be-neath other frescos at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, Prof. Mourou said. ##

New Imaging Technique Could Reveal Hidden Art


Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University have created the darkest material ever made by man. The material, a thin coating comprised of low-density ar-rays of loosely vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes, absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light and one day could be used to boost the effectiveness and efficiency of solar energy conversion, infra-red sensors, and other devices. The researchers who developed the material have applied for a Guinness World Record for their

efforts. “It is a fascinat-ing technology, and this discovery will allow us to increase the absorption ef-ficiency of light as well as the overall ra-diation-to-electricity efficiency of solar en-ergy conservation,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Fu-ture Chips Constellation, who led the research project. “The

key to this discovery was finding how to create a long, extremely porous vertically-aligned carbon nanotube array with certain sur-face randomness, therefore min-imizing reflection and maximiz-

ing absorption simultaneously.” The research results were published in the journal Nano

Researchers Develop Ideal Black Material

A photograph of a 1.4% NIST reflectance standard (left), a sample of the new darkest material with a 0.045% reflectance (center), and a piece of glassy car-bon (right), taken under a flash light illumination. Photo courtesy of Rensselaer.


Letters. All materials, from paper to wa-ter, air, or plastic, re-flect some amount of light. Scientists have long envisioned an ideal black material that absorbs all the colors of light while reflecting no light. So far they have been unsuccessful in en-gineering a material with a total reflec-tance of zero. The total reflec-tance of conventional black paint, for ex-ample, is between 5 and 10 percent. The darkest manmade material, prior to the discovery by Prof. Lin’s group, boasted a total reflectance of 0.16 percent to 0.18 percent. Prof. Lin’s team created a coating of low-density, verti-cally aligned carbon nanotube arrays that are engineered to have an extremely low index of refrac-tion and the appropriate surface randomness, further reducing its reflectivity. The end result was a material with a total re-flective index of 0.045 percent – more than three times darker than the previous record, which used a film deposition of nickel-phosphorous alloy. “The loosely-packed forest of carbon nanotubes, which is full of nanoscale gaps and holes to collect and trap light, is what gives this material its unique

properties,” Prof. Lin said. “Such a nanotube array not only reflects light weakly, but also ab-sorbs light strongly. These com-bined features make it an ideal candidate for one day realizing a super black object.” “The low-density aligned nanotube sample makes an ide-al candidate for creating such a super dark material because it allows one to engineer the opti-cal properties by controlling the dimensions and periodicities of the nanotubes,” said Pulickel

Ajayan, the Anderson Professor of Engineer-ing at Rice Univer-sity in Houston, who worked on the project when he was a mem-ber of the Rensselaer faculty. The research team tested the array over a broad range of visible wavelengths of light, and showed that the nanotube array’s total reflectance remains constant. “It’s also interest-ing to note that the reflectance of our nanotube array is two orders of magnitude lower than that of the glassy carbon, which is remarkable because both samples are made up of the same ele-ment – carbon,” said Prof. Lin. This discovery could lead to appli-cations in areas such as solar energy con-version, thermalpho-tovoltaic electricity generation, infrared detection, and astro-

nomical observation. Other researchers contribut-ing to this project and listed au-thors of the paper include Rens-selaer physics graduate student Zu-Po Yang; Rice postdoctoral research associate Lijie Ci; and Rensselaer senior research scien-tist James Bur. 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. ##

The researchers attempting the Guinness world record. On the left is the witness, Prof. Peter Persans, representing the Guinness Book. On the right is the other witness, Dr. Theeradetch Detch-prohm, a research associate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In the center is Zu-Po Yang, a Rensselaer graduate student and one of applicants. Photo courtesy of Rensselaer.


Natural flyers like birds, bats and insects out-perform man-made aircraft in aerobatics and ef-ficiency. University of Michigan engineers are studying these animals as a step toward design-ing flapping-wing planes with wingspans smaller than a deck of playing cards. A Blackbird jet flying nearly 2,000 miles per hour covers 32 body lengths per second. But a common pigeon flying at 50 miles per hour covers 75. The roll rate of the aerobatic A-4 Skyhawk plane is about 720 degrees per second. The roll rate of a barn swallow exceeds 5,000 degrees per second. Select military aircraft can withstand gravita-tional forces of 8-10 G. Many birds routinely expe-rience positive G-forces greater than 10 G and up to 14 G. “Natural flyers obviously have some highly varied mechanical properties that we really have not incorporated in engineering,” said Wei Shyy, the Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson Collegiate Profes-sor of Aerospace Engineering and an author of the new book, “The Aerodynamics of Low Reynolds Number Flyers.” “They’re not only lighter, but also have much more adaptive structures as well as capabilities of integrating aerodynamics with wing and body shapes, which change all the time,” Prof. Shyy said. “Natural flyers have outstanding capabili-ties to remain airborne through wind gusts, rain, and snow.” Prof. Shyy photographs birds to help him understand their aerodynamics. Pressure generated during flight cause the flap-ping wings to deform, he explained. In turn, the deformed wing tells the air that the wing shape is different than it appears in still air. If appropri-ately handled, this phenomenon can delay stall, enhance stability and increase thrust. Flapping flight is inherently unsteady, but that’s why it works so well. Birds, bats and insects fly in a messy environment full of gusts traveling at speeds similar to their own. Yet they can react almost instantaneously and adapt with their flex-

ible wings. Prof. Shyy and his colleagues have several grants from the Air Force totaling more than $1 million a year to research small flapping wing air-craft. Such aircraft would fly slower than their fixed wing counterparts, and more importantly, they would be able to hover and possibly perch in order to monitor the environment or a hostile area. Prof. Shyy’s current focus is on the aerodynamics of flexible wings related to micro air vehicles with wingspans between 1 and 3 inches. “These days, if you want to design a flapping wing vehicle, you could build one with trial and error, but in a controlled environment with no wind gusts,” Prof. Shyy said. “We are trying to fig-ure out how to design a vehicle that can perform a mission in an uncertain environment. When the wind blows, how do they stay on course?” A dragonfly, Prof. Shyy says, has remarkable resilience to wind, considering how light it is. The professor chalks that up to its wing structure and flight control. But the details are still questions. “We’re really just at the beginning of this,” Prof. Shyy said. ##

Natural Flyers Inspire Aerospace Design

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Don Baird, professor of chemical engineering in Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, is the 2008 recipient of the Jack Breslin Life Achievement Award from the Michigan State Univer-sity Alumni Varsity Club. Dr. Baird, who holds the Harry C. Wyatt Professorship of Chemical Engineering, has re-search interests in polymer pro-cessing and rheology, composite materials and processing, and polymeric materials and proper-ties. He is a member of the Vir-ginia Tech Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute. Dr. Baird re-ceived his B.S. degree in Chemi-cal and Materials Engineering from Michigan State University in 1969 and his M.S. degree in Materials and Mechanics in 1971. In 1974, he received his doctor-ate in Engineering Science and Mechanics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Thompson & Litton (T&L) is pleased to announce that Chuck Forbes, has become a Certified Land Surveyor in the state of Virginia. Mr. Forbes is a 1999 graduate of Virginia Tech receiv-ing a B.S. Degree in Forestry and brings 8 years of experience in the field of surveying. He has served T&L for three years as the Radford office Senior Survey Technician and received a Li-censed Surveyor registration in

2007 from the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Board of Directors of T&L is pleased to announce three new Associates of the firm. They are James Baker, Jennifer Dawson, and Charlotte Sacre. James Baker, P.E. is a 1981 graduate of Virginia Tech with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering and is located in the firm’s Wise office. Mr. Baker joined T&L in 2000 and has 26 years of experi-ence in the design and construc-tion of engineering projects. Jennifer Dawson, P.E. is a 1995 graduate of Virginia Tech with a B.S. degree in Civil Engi-neering. Ms. Dawson received her A.A.S. in Civil Engineering from Southwest Virginia Com-munity College before attending Virginia Tech. She joined T&L in 1996. She is located in the firm’s Wise office where she serves as a Project Engineer. Charlotte Sacre has served as Director of Sales for T&L for 10 years. Mrs. Sacre received a B.S. degree cum laude in Education from the University of Georgia in 1971. In 1974, she received a Master of Arts degree in Edu-cation from Furman University and in 1995 she earned a post-graduate specialist degree in ad-vanced graduate studies with an emphasis in administration, or-ganizational management, and

Educational Leadership and Pol-icy Studies from Virginia Tech. T&L is pleased to introduce the following new personnel. The firm’s Clintwood office has welcomed: Survey Technicians, Forrest Gilley, Ray Counts, Lucas Sa-lyers and CADD Technician, Christina Jones. Mr. Gilley, Mr. Counts, and Mr. Salyers serve as Rodman on the Clintwood Sur-veying Team. Ms. Jones is a 2006 graduate of Mountain Empire Community College where she received an Associate of Applied Science degree in Computer As-sisted Drafting and Design. New faces at T&L’s Radford office include: Survey Technician, Philip Sowers; Senior Architect, Dar-rell Gilmore, AIA; Construction Contract Administrator, Kim Fisher; Intern Architect, Holly Lebarre; Survey Technician, Nick Norman, E.I.T., Design En-gineer, Barry Anders; Survey In-strument II, Jason Jordon; Struc-tural Engineer, Patricia Arav; Survey Technician, Richard Hel-dreth; Party Chief of Surveying, Michael Melton; and CADD Technician, Ryan Holcomb. Welcome new additions to T&L’s Wise office staff are: John Polly, Technician, is a 2002 graduate of the Universi-ty of Virginia’s College at Wise with a B.S. degree in Computer Science as well as an Associates degree in Science from South-west Virginia Community Col-lege in 1999. Stacey Dotson, Technical Of-fice Assistant, is also a graduate of the University of Virginia’s College at Wise with a B.A. de-gree in English Literature. Robin Lee, P.E., Project En-

In-depth coverage of Engineers and Their Colleagues On The Move including photographs is available at www.vaeng.com


gineer, is a graduate of Bluefield State College with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering Technology and brings over 15 years experi-ence as a structural engineer to his new position. Tim Johns, P.E., Design En-gineer, is a 1996 graduate of Vir-ginia Tech with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering. Andrew Monk, Design En-gineer, is also a Virginia Tech graduate earning his B.S. degree in Civil and Environmental En-gineering in 2007. Randall (Randy) A. Neu-haus, P.E., has been named Pres-ident of S&ME, Inc. He joined the firm in 1988 to open S&ME’s office in Knoxville, Tenn. Mr. Neuhaus was named a vice pres-ident in 2000 and executive vice president in 2005. He earned his B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Oklaho-ma. Mr. Neuhaus succeeds John R. Browning, P.E., a 31-year S&ME veteran, who has been president the past seven years. Mr. Browning will remain CEO and chairman of S&ME’s Board of Directors until April. EEE Consulting, Inc. has re-cently announced that Ryan Day has joined the Blacksburg office as Environmental Scientist. He was previously with Simon As-sociates; and Rhiannon Chan-dler has also joined the Blacks-burg location as Environmental Scientist. She was previously with the Conservation Manage-ment Institute at Virginia Tech. Anderson & Associates, Inc. would like to welcome Jared Wilson, LSIT, as Johnson City Design Technician; Stephen Tay-lor, as Johnson City Party Chief; Darryl Merchant, LS, as Middle-town Assistant Survey Manager;

and Michael Harris, as Blacks-burg Design Technician. The firm also congratulates Joe Parrish on his promotion to Blacksburg Environmental Proj-ect Manager. Wiley & Wilson, Inc. is pleased to announce that Byron L. Cook, P.E. recently joined the Structural Engineering Depart-ment as a senior engineer. Mr. Cook focuses on structural de-sign for federal, state and pri-vate projects. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech. Draper Aden Associates is pleased to announce the addi-tion of DeWayne A. Craddock, E.I.T. to the Site Planning and Engineering Team in the Hamp-ton Roads office. Mr. Craddock has engineering experience as a project engineer for site design, stormwater management and public and private utility system design. He is a 2002 graduate of Old Dominion University with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering. The firm also announced the addition of Gregory A. Brazeau, E.I.T. to the Site Planning and Engineering Team in the Blacks-burg office. Mr. Brazeau brings seven years of engineering ex-perience in site design for com-mercial and industrial facilities to the firm. He is a 2002 gradu-ate of Virginia Tech with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering. Draper Aden Associates is also pleased to announce Susan A. Estes P.E. has earned her Pro-fessional License in Tennessee. Ms. Estes is a Project Engineer on the Solid Waste Team and earned her Professional License in Virginia in 2005. She earned a B.S. degree in Civil and En-vironmental Engineering from

Virginia Tech and a B.A. degree in Business Administration from Mary Baldwin College.

Leigh M. Dicks, Executive Director of the Virginia Society of Professional Engineers, has recently earned the Certified As-sociation Executive designation from the American Society of Association Executives.

Groundwater & Environ-mental Services Inc., is pleased to announce the promotions of Erin Nugent as a project man-ager; and Melissa Orndorff as an associate geologist.

Froehling & Robertson Inc. has recently announced that Rommel Tamayo has joined the firm’s professional staff as an en-gineer. ##

Finding just the right profes-sional to join your team is an ongoing challenge, but we can help. Whether in print, over 5,000 readers each month, or electronically, over 800 visitors each month to the vaeng.com Jobs Board, or a combination of the two, we can provide the expo-sure you want to the engineering professionals you seek.

Call 804.779.3527 for the facts.

Locating That Special Someone


Peter Reilly pointed to the framed journal covers decorat-ing his office. Each of the six showed the swirling, twisting, complicated structure of an enzyme. Those bright and colorful illustrations are the work of his lab. And they’re part of Reilly’s work to understand how the structure of an enzyme influences its mecha-nism and its activity. In other words, he’s trying to figure out “how is it that these things work,” said Reilly, a pro-fessor of chemical and biological engineering and an Anson Mar-ston Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Iowa State Uni-versity. That’s important because en-zymes do a lot for all of us. Enzymes are proteins pro-duced by living organisms that accelerate chemical reactions. They, for example, work inside the human digestive system to break starch or protein molecules into smaller pieces that can be absorbed by the intestines. En-zymes are also used to produce bread, they’re added to deter-gents to clean stains and they’re used to treat leather. And be-cause enzymes break down cel-lulose into simple sugars that can be fermented into alcohol, they’re a big part of producing ethanol from cellulose. Prof. Reilly is particularly interested in the enzymes that work on cellulose. He has a

three-year, $306,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agricul-ture to develop a basic under-standing of how they work. Those enzymes are known as cellulases. They’re commonly produced by fungi and bacteria. And they’ve got a very hard job. Cellulose is tough stuff. It’s in the cell walls of plants. It’s what gives a plant its structure. “It’s why trees stand up,” Prof. Reilly said.

He also said, “Nature has done its best to break down cel-lulose.” So different enzymes have developed different ways of at-tacking cellulose. One enzyme Prof. Reilly has studied and illustrated – a cel-lobiohydrolase enzyme – has an extension that works like a little plow. It rips up one cellulose chain from a cellulose crystal and feeds it into a tunnel on the main enzyme surface so that it

can be chopped up. Prof. Reilly, who can’t resist a lesson in biochemistry, likes to explain how enzymes attack and break chemical bonds. He’ll dis-play diagrams on his office com-puter that show the bonds in cel-lulose molecules. He’ll point out where enzymes attack some of those bonds. He’ll say the chem-ical reactions create high-energy transition states that scientists are working hard to understand. And he’ll get back to the bottom line. “These different enzymes all do the same thing,” Prof. Reil-ly said. “They all break down bonds between the sugars that make up cellulose.” And, he said, “For something that’s not alive, enzymes are aw-fully sophisticated.” Prof. Reilly’s students use a lot of computing power to fig-ure out how enzymes are put together. They routinely work with CyBlue, Iowa State’s su-percomputer capable of 5.7 tril-lion calculations per second, and Lightning, an Iowa State high-performance computer capable of 1.8 trillion calculations per second. By adding to the basic un-derstanding of enzymes, Prof. Reilly is opening doors for new and better applications of en-zymes. Better enzymes, for ex-ample, could be the key to mak-ing the production of cellulosic ethanol more efficient and more economical. There’s still a lot for chemical engineers to learn about the spe-cialized proteins. After all, Prof. Reilly said, “Nature has tried over and over to find ways to break down cel-lulose.” ##

Understanding How

Enzymes Work

This illustration shows the structure of an endoglucanase enzyme. The arrows indicate’ straight beta-strands. You can also see the twisted alpha-helices. Pe-ter Reilly’s lab discovered the enzyme structure by producing and crystalliz-ing the enzyme shooting-rays through it and analyzing the resulting difrac-tion pattern. This particular enzyme breaks down cellulose by attacking bonds in the middle of sugar chains. Photo courtesy of Peter Reilly, FIorida State University.


With a proposed fiscal year 2009 budget of $20 million, the effort by the Department of En-ergy (DOE), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and part-ners to develop grid-appropriate reactors is gaining steam.

Grid-appropriate reactors are typically between 250 mega-watts and 500 megawatts, mak-ing them far more affordable and practical for developing nations than the typical 1,300-megawatt commercial light-water reactor. This is in part because these na-tions have smaller power grids and less well-developed techni-cal infrastructures.

“These reactors hold the promise of economic develop-ment because they are projected to be able to be built in just a little more than half the time required to build a large power plant,” said ORNL’s Dan Ingersoll, a member of the Nuclear Technol-ogy Programs Office and Global Nuclear Energy Partnership na-tional campaign director.

With a staggered build strat-egy, two or more reactors can be built in a series, which minimiz-es cash outlay and provides for quicker return on investment. Many nations have entered the nuclear age using reactors of

this size range, Mr. Ingersoll noted, and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership sees this as a strength to build on as it works to facilitate the global expansion of nuclear energy.

“The ultimate goal is energy security for parts of the world that are facing rapidly rising needs for electricity,” Mr. Inger-soll said. “Next-generation ap-propriately sized reactors will be safer, simpler to operate, highly secure and will reduce prolifera-tion risk.”

Making nuclear power an option for developing countries is of great importance, he said, because their energy demand will be met regardless of wheth-er they use nuclear energy. By using nuclear energy, countries can offset negative consequenc-es -- such as higher prices caused

Grid-Appropriate Reactors May Help Power Developing Nations

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by increased demand -- of expanded use of fossil fuels. Nuclear power also could slow the rate of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Equally important is the fact that affordable electricity translates into a stronger economy, a more skilled workforce and improved quality of life for people living in these countries,” said Mr. Ingersoll, adding that global energy demand is ex-pected to be 50 percent higher in 2030 than it is today. Seventy percent of this growth is expected to come from developing countries, according to the International Energy Agency.

Issues of grid capacity, capital project financ-ing, project risk and other factors limit the majority of the targeted countries to consider only nuclear power plants with less than 700 megawatts capac-ity. The problem is that for economic reasons, in-cluding economies of scale, only large plant de-signs are commercially available from traditional vendors. That will change if the grid-appropriate reactors campaign is successful.

“This campaign aims to remove the barriers by speeding the development, demonstration and deployment of appropriately sized reactors that

can help developing parts of the world safely meet their growing energy needs,” Mr. Ingersoll said.

While the benefits of nuclear power are ob-vious, he noted that such an endeavor has to be done correctly.

During the coming year, members of the grid-appropriate reactor campaign will develop a so-licitation for a public-private partnership to select a U.S.-based light-water reactor design for safety and licensing support beginning in fiscal year 2009. The first reactor could be ready for construc-tion in 2015.

Over the next five years, the target is for DOE to cost-share about 20 percent of the estimated half-billion dollar effort to achieve design certi-fication by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). This government investment is necessary to offset the additional investment risk associated with developing countries, to level the playing field with other supplier countries and to address unique regulatory and infrastructure issues, Mr. Ingersoll said.

“A U.S.-based reactor design with a world-respected Nuclear Regulatory Commission de-sign approval coupled with reliable fuel services would ensure that reactors that meet the highest standards of nuclear safety and security are avail-able to meet this growing demand,” Mr. Ingersoll said.

Because of the worldwide respect for the NRC, an NRC-certified design will also enable U.S. in-dustry to rapidly gain and hold a competitive ad-vantage in this growing world market, according to Mr. Ingersoll.

On the home front, aside from the benefits of decreased world demand for fossil fuels, this re-search effort could lead to specialized uses such as an independent power source for military bases, more cost-effective biofuel production and eco-nomical oil shale and tar sand recovery. Mr. Inger-soll also expects utilities in many parts of the na-tion to supplement their power generation needs using these reactors.

Partners for the project include Brookhaven, Pacific Northwest and Idaho national laborato-ries. Mr. Ingersoll expects additional laboratories and universities to join the partnership next year.

Global Nuclear Energy Partnership provided funding. UT-Battelle manages Oak Ridge Nation-al Laboratory for the Department of Energy. ##

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Making Connections


Engineers at Florida State Uni-versity’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have successfully tested a groundbreaking new mag-net design that could literally shed new light on nanoscience and semi-conductor research.

When the magnet, called the Split Florida Helix, is operational in 2010, researchers will have the abil-ity to direct and scatter laser light at a sample not only down the bore, or center, of the magnet, but also from four ports on the sides of the magnet, while still reaching fields above 25 tesla. By comparison, the highest-field split magnet in the world at-tains 18 tesla. “Tesla” is a measure-ment of the strength of a magnetic field; 1 tesla is equal to 20,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field.

Magnetism is a critical com-ponent of a surprising number of modern technologies, including MRIs and disk drives, and high-field magnets stand beside lasers and mi-croscopes as essential research tools for probing the mysteries of nature. With this new magnet, scientists will be able to expand the scope of their experimental approach, learning more about the intrinsic properties

of materials by shining light on crystals from angles not previously available in such high magnetic fields. In materials research, scien-tists look at which kinds of light are absorbed or reflected at different crystal angles, giving them insight into the fundamental electronic

structure of matter.The Split Florida Helix de-

sign represents a significant accomplishment for the magnet lab’s engineering staff. High magnetic fields exert tremen-dous forces inside the magnet, and those forces are directed at the small space in the middle . . . that’s where Mag Lab engineers cut big holes in it.

“You have enough to worry about with traditional magnets, and then you try to cut huge holes from all four sides from

which you can access the magnet,” said lab engineer Jack Toth, who is spearheading the project. “Basically, near the midplane, more than half of the magnet structure is cut away for the access ports, and it’s still supposed to work and make high magnetic fields.”

Magnet engineers worldwide have been trying to solve the prob-lem of creating a magnet with side access at the midsection, but they have met with little success in higher fields. Magnets are created by packing together dense, high-performance copper alloys and running a current through them, so carving out empty space at the heart of a magnet presents a huge engineering challenge.

Instead of fashioning a tiny pin-hole to create as little disruption as possible, as other labs have tried, Mr. Toth and his team created a design with four big elliptical ports cross-ing right through the midsection of the magnet. The ports open 50 percent of the total space available for experiments, a capability the laboratory’s visiting scientists have long desired.

“It’s different from any tradi-tional magnet that we’ve ever built before, and even the fabrication of our new parts was very challeng-ing,” Mr. Toth said. “In search of a vendor for manufacturing the prototypes, I had phone conversa-tions where people would promise me, ‘Jack, we looked at it from every possible angle and this part is impos-sible to machine.’”

Of course, that wasn’t the case, and the model coil, crafted from a mix of copper-beryllium blocks and copper-silver plates, met expecta-tions during its testing in a field higher than 32 tesla with no damage to its parts.

Though the National Science Foundation-funded model has reached an important milestone, years of work remain. The lab hopes to have a working magnet for its User Program by 2010, and other research facilities have expressed interest in having split magnets that can gener-ate high magnetic fields. ##

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Magnet Coil. Photo courtesy of Florida State University.

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Nanotechnol-ogy researchers are developing the per-fect complement to the power tie: a “power shirt” able to generate electric-ity to power small electronic devices for soldiers in the field, hikers and others whose phys-ical motion could be harnessed and converted to elec-trical energy.

A recent issue of the journal Na-ture details how pairs of textile fi-bers covered with zinc oxide nanowires can generate electrical current using the piezoelectric effect. Combining current flow from many fiber pairs woven into a shirt or jacket could allow the wearer’s body movement to power a range of portable elec-tronic devices. The fibers could also be woven into tents or other structures to capture energy from wind motion, sound vibration or other mechanical energy.

“The fiber-based nanogen-erator would be a simple and economical way to harvest en-ergy from physical movement,” said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the School of Mate-rials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technol-ogy. “If we can combine many of these fibers in double or tri-

ple layers in clothing, we could provide a flexible, foldable and wearable power source that, for example, would allow people to generate their own electrical cur-rent while walking.”

The research was sponsored by the National Science Founda-tion (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy and the Emory-Geor-gia Tech Nanotechnology Center for Personalized and Predictive Oncology.

The microfiber-nanowire hybrid system builds on the nanowire nanogenerator that Prof. Wang’s research team an-nounced in April 2007. That system generates current from arrays of vertically-aligned zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires that flex beneath an electrode containing conductive platinum tips. The

nanowire nanogenerator was designed to harness energy from environmental sources such as ultrasonic waves, mechanical vi-brations or blood flow.

The nanogenerators de-veloped by Prof. Wang’s research group take advan-tage of the unique coupled piezoelec-tric and semicon-ducting properties of zinc oxide nano-structures, which produce small elec-trical charges when they are flexed.

After a year of development, the original nanogen-erators – which are two by three milli-meters square – can produce up to 800 nanoamperes and 20 millivolts.

The microfiber generators rely on the same principles, but are made from soft materials and designed to capture energy from low-frequency mechanical energy. They consist of DuPont Kevlar fibers on which zinc ox-ide nanowires have been grown radially and embedded in a poly-mer at their roots, creating what appear to be microscopic baby-bottle brushes with billions of bristles. One of the fibers in each pair is also coated with gold to serve as the electrode and to de-flect the nanowire tips.

“The two fibers scrub togeth-er just like two bottle brushes with their bristles touching, and the piezoelectric-semiconductor process converts the mechanical motion into electrical energy,” Prof. Wang explained. “Many

Physical Motion Generates Electricity Using Fiber-based Nanogenerators

Georgia Tech Professor Zhong Lin Wang shows a microfiber nanogen-erator composed of a pair of entangled fibers. Both fibers are coated with zinc oxide nanowires; one fiber is additionally coated with gold. When rubbed together, they generate electrical current. Georgia Tech Photo courtesy of Gary Meek.


of these devices could be put together to produce higher power output.”

Prof. Wang and collaborators Xudong Wang and Yong Qin have made more than 200 of the fi-ber nanogenerators. Each is tested on an appara-tus that uses a spring and wheel to move one fiber against the other. The fibers are rubbed together for up to 30 minutes to test their durability and power production.

So far, the researchers have measured current of about four nanoamperes and output voltage of about four millivolts from a nanogenerator that included two fibers that were each one centimeter long. With a much improved design, Prof. Wang estimates that a square meter of fabric made from the special fibers could theoretically generate as much as 80 milliwatts of power.

Fabrication of the microfiber nanogenerator begins with coating a 100-nanometer seed layer of zinc oxide onto the Kevlar using magnetron sput-tering. The fibers are then immersed in a reactant solution for approximately 12 hours, which causes nanowires to grow from the seed layer at a tem-perature of 80 degrees Celsius. The growth pro-duces uniform coverage of the fibers, with typical lengths of about 3.5 microns and several hundred nanometers between each fiber.

To help maintain the nanowires’ connection to the Kevlar, the researchers apply two layers of tet-raethoxysilane (TEOS) to the fiber. “First we coat the fiber with the polymer, then with a zinc oxide layer,” Prof. Wang explained. “Then we grow the nanowires and re-infiltrate the fiber with the poly-mer. This helps to avoid scrubbing off the nano-wires when the fibers rub together.”

Finally, the researchers apply a 300 nanome-ter layer of gold to some of the nanowire-covered Kevlar. The two different fibers are then paired up and entangled to ensure that a gold-coated fi-ber contacts a fiber covered only with zinc oxide nanowires. The gold fibers serve as a Shottky bar-rier with the zinc oxide, substituting for the plat-inum-tipped electrode used in the original nano-generator.

To ensure that the current they measured was produced by the piezoelectric-semiconductor ef-fect and not just static electricity, the researchers conducted several tests. They tried rubbing gold fibers together, and zinc oxide fibers together, neither of which produced current. They also

reversed the polarity of the connections, which changed the output current and voltage.

By allowing nanowire growth to take place at temperatures as low as 80 degrees Celsius, the new fabrication technique would allow the nano-structures to be grown on virtually any shape or substrate.

As a next step, the researchers want to com-bine multiple fiber pairs to increase the current and voltage levels. They also plan to improve conductance of their fibers.

However, one significant challenge lies head for the power shirt – washing it. Zinc oxide is sen-sitive to moisture, so in real shirts or jackets, the nanowires would have to be protected from the ef-fects of the washing machine, Prof. Wang noted.

The research is supported by the NSF’s Divi-sion of Materials Research through grant 0706436. “This multi-disciplinary research grant enables materials scientists and engineers from varied backgrounds to work together toward translating basic and applied research into viable technolo-gies,” noted Harsh Deep Chopra, NSF’s program manager. ##

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Movie characters from the Terminator to the Bionic Woman use bionic eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their field of view, or create virtual crosshairs. Off the screen, virtual displays have been proposed for more prac-tical purposes – visual aids to help vision-impaired people, ho-lographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go. The device to make this hap-pen may be familiar. Engineers at the University of Washington (UW) have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights. “Looking through a com-pleted lens, you would see what the display is generating super-imposed on the world outside,” said Babak Parviz, a UW assis-tant professor of electrical engi-neering. “This is a very small step toward that goal, but I think it’s extremely promising.” The results were presented recently at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ inter-national conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems by Harvey Ho, a former graduate student of Prof. Parviz’s now working at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Ca-lif. Other co-authors are Ehsan Saeedi and Samuel Kim in the UW’s electrical engineering de-partment and Tueng Shen in the UW Medical Center’s ophthal-

mology department. There are many possible uses for virtual displays. Driv-ers or pilots could see a vehicle’s speed projected onto the wind-shield. Video-game companies could use the contact lenses to completely immerse players in a virtual world without restrict-ing their range of motion. And for communications, people on the go could surf the Internet on a midair virtual display screen only they would be able to see. “People may find all sorts of applications for it that we have not thought about. Our goal is to demonstrate the basic technol-ogy and make sure it works and that it’s safe,” said Prof. Parviz, who heads a multi-disciplinary UW group that is developing electronics for contact lenses. The prototype device con-tains an electric circuit as well as red light-emitting diodes for a display, though it does not yet light up. The lenses were tested on rabbits for up to 20 minutes with no adverse effects. Ideally, installing or remov-ing the bionic eye would be as easy as popping a contact lens in or out. Once installed, the wear-er would barely know the gad-get was there, Prof. Parviz said. Building the lenses was a challenge because materials that are safe for use in the body, such as the flexible organic materi-als used in contact lenses, are delicate. Manufacturing electri-cal circuits, however, involves inorganic materials, scorching temperatures and toxic chemi-

cals. Researchers built the cir-cuits from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick, about one thousandth the width of a hu-man hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes one third of a millimeter across. They then sprinkled the grayish powder of electrical components onto a sheet of flexible plastic. The shape of each tiny component dictates which piece it can attach to, a microfabrication technique known as self-assembly. Cap-illary forces – the same type of forces that make water move up a plant’s roots, and that cause the edge of a glass of water to curve upward – pull the pieces into position. The prototype contact lens does not correct the wearer’s vi-sion, but the technique could be used on a corrective lens, Prof. Parviz explained. And all the gadgetry won’t obstruct a per-son’s view. “There is a large area outside of the transparent part of the eye that we can use for placing instrumentation,” Prof. Parviz said. Future improvements will add wireless communication to and from the lens. The research-ers hope to power the whole system using a combination of radio-frequency power and so-lar cells placed on the lens, Prof. Parviz said. A full-fledged display won’t be available for a while, but a version that has a basic display with just a few pixels could be operational “fairly quickly,” ac-cording to Prof. Parviz. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and a Technology Gap Innova-tion Fund from the University of Washington. ##

Contact Lenses May Provide User With Superhuman Vision


Engineers at Ohio State University have found a way to turn discarded chicken eggshells into an alternative energy resource.

The patented process uses eggshells to soak up carbon dioxide from a reaction that produces hydro-gen fuel. It also includes a unique method for peeling the collagen-containing membrane from the inside of the shells.

L.S. Fan, Distinguished University Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State, said that he and former Ohio State doctoral student, Mahesh Iyer, hit upon the idea as they were trying to improve a method of hydrogen production called the water-gas-shift reaction. With this method, fossil fuels are gasified to produce carbon monoxide gas, which then combines with water to produce carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

“The key to making pure hydrogen is separating out the carbon dioxide,” Prof. Fan said. “In order to do it very economically, we needed a new way of thinking, a new process scheme.”

That brought them to eggshells, which mostly consist of calcium carbonate, one of nature’s most absorbent materials. With heat processing, calcium carbonate becomes calcium oxide, which will then absorb any acidic gas, such as carbon dioxide.

Calcium carbonate, a key ingredient in eggshell, captures 78 percent of carbon dioxide by weight, Prof. Fan explained, so given equal amounts of carbon dioxide and eggshell, the eggshell would absorb 78 percent of the carbon dioxide. That makes it the most effective carbon dioxide absorber ever tested.

Energy experts believe hydrogen may become an important power source in the future, primarily in the form of fuel cells. First, researchers must de-velop affordable ways to produce large quantities of hydrogen, which means finding ways to deal with the chemical reaction byproducts.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, nearly 91 billion eggs were produced in 2006, or approximately 455,000 tons of shell that could be used in hydrogen production.

Still, Prof. Fan said, even if all that shell were utilized, it would only provide a portion of what the United States would need to seriously pursue a hydrogen economy.

“Eggshell alone may not be adequate to produce hydrogen for the whole country, but at least we can use eggshell in a better way compared to dumping it as organic waste in landfills, where companies have to pay up to $40 dollars per ton disposal cost,” he said.

Prior to grinding the egg shell, the collagen-containing membrane that clings to the inside needed to be removed; they developed an organic acid that does the job. About 10 percent of the membrane consists of collagen, selling for about $ 1000/gram. This extracted collagen can be used in food or phar-maceuticals, or for medical treatments. Doctors use collagen to help burn victims regenerate skin; it’s also used in cosmetic surgery.

“We like that our technology can help the egg industry to dispose of its waste, and at the same time convert the waste to a useful product,” Prof. Fan said.

“And in the long term, we’re demonstrating that carbon-based fuel sources, like coal or biomass, can be efficiently converted to hydrogen and liquid fuel. The goal is an energy conversion system that uses a dependable fossil energy source, but at the same time has very little environmental impact.” ##

Eggshells Could Facilitate Hydrogen Fuel Production

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When researchers at the Na-val Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) in Newport began to investigate how to create a covert network of widely-distributed underwater sensors, they imag-ined attaching the sensors to arti-ficial jellyfish that could maintain their place in the water while passing information from one sensor to the next.

So the scientists turned to the Center of Excellence in Undersea Technology at the University of Rhode Island (URI), which was established last year in partner-ship with NUWC to collaborate on a wide range of innovative research and education initia-tives. The Center linked NUWC with two URI oceanographers and a Providence College expert in jellyfish locomotion to explore this novel idea.

“To maximize the utility of these sensor systems and deploy a large number of them, it’s im-portant to put them on an inex-pensive platform. That’s where the jellyfish idea came from,” explained Malcolm Spaulding, director of the Center and a URI professor of ocean engineering. “An artificial jellyfish would need to be made of simple materials and be acoustically transparent. The key is understanding how jellyfish move and whether they can stay in one place despite tidal currents and waves.”

While still in its early stag-es, this project is a particularly unique example of the diverse

initiatives under way just nine months after the Center of Excel-lence was established.

“Rhode Island and the rest of southern New England has a wealth of marine and defense companies and an abundance of oceanography and ocean engi-neering researchers to call upon for assistance on almost any underwater project that could be imagined,” Prof. Spaulding said. “We’re one of the hubs of undersea technology research in the country.”

Among the other projects in progress are:• a chemical sensor that can de-tect minute quantities of explo-sives in the water (a mine on the hull of a ship or a diver carrying a bomb, for instance);• a battery that uses the chemi-cal reactions from bacteria liv-ing in the seabed to generate small amounts of electricity to power offshore sensors or other devices;• an emergency radio beacon powered by a seawater battery that harvests the motion energy of waves to extend the life of the signal; and• a non-toxic method of pre-venting organisms from fouling underwater equipment and ve-hicles.

One of the Center ’s initial projects, led by the Rhode Island Economic Development Corpo-ration (RIEDC) and involving a number of Rhode Island-based businesses, was the initial phase

of development of a prototype of an undersea perimeter defense system with the capability to detect, classify and respond to undersea threats against critical infrastructure such as ports and bridges as well asπ military facili-ties on shore.

In addition, testing began last fall in Narragansett Bay on an integrated system of undersea sensors and data management tools that are being linked to oceanographic measurement devices and underwater vehicles in a high-tech project called the Ocean Response Coastal Analysis System. Initial demonstrations of the project, led by URI Marine Re-search Scientist Al Hanson, have shown the capability to monitor dissolved oxygen levels using remotely controlled sensors de-ployed on bottom-mounted ver-tical profilers and autonomous underwater vehicles. When completed in five years, it will provide real-time data, analysis and visualizations of a wide range of coastal conditions and observations. Further testing is planned for the spring.

“Few of these projects would have advanced as quickly as they have without the support of the Center of Excellence to coordinate funding, formation of research teams, and associated administrative details,” said Prof. Spaulding. “The Center has be-come a vital vehicle for fostering collaboration between academic institutions, industry and the Navy.”

Funding for these projects comes mostly from NUWC, with additional support provided by URI, RIEDC, the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Na-val Research Laboratory. ##

Center Uses Novel Technique For Sensor Deployment


The universe as we currently know it is made up of three di-mensions of space and one of time, but researchers in the De-partment of Physics and the De-partment of Electrical and Com-puter Engineering at Virginia Tech are exploring the possibil-ity of an extra dimension.

Sound like an episode from the "Twilight Zone?" Almost, but not quite; according to John Simonetti, associate professor of physics in the College of Science and Michael Kavic, graduate stu-dent and one of the investigators on the project, whose research was featured in a recent edition of “Nature News Online” and in New Scientist Magazine.

"The idea we're exploring is that the universe has an imper-ceptibly small dimension (about one billionth of a nanometer) in addition to the four that we know currently," Mr. Kavic said. "This extra dimension would be curled up, in a state similar to that of the entire universe at the time of the Big Bang."

The group is looking for small primordial black holes that, when they explode, may produce a radio pulse that could be detected here on Earth. These black holes are called primordial because they were created a frac-tion of a second after the begin-ning of the universe.

Black holes are expected to evaporate over time, losing mass and therefore shrinking. A black hole larger than the extra dimen-sion would wrap around it like a thick rubber band wrapped around a hose. As a black hole shrinks down to the size of the extra dimension, it would be stretched so thin it would snap, causing an explosion.

The explosion could produce a radio pulse. Under a National Science Foundation grant, the Virginia Tech group is preparing to set up an Eight-meter-wave-length Transient Array radio telescope in Montgomery Coun-ty to search the sky for these ra-dio pulses from explosions up to 300 light years away. They have a similar telescope in southwest-ern North Carolina that has been looking for events for several months.

"We have a number of things in mind that have been predicted to produce radio pulses, which have not been seen," Prof. Simo-netti said. "One of them is a pri-mordial black hole explosion."

"Basically we're looking for any exotic, high-energy explo-sion that would produce radio waves," Prof. Simonetti said. He said the establishment of the sec-ond radio telescope would help the two telescopes validate one another.

"If a pulse is detected in both instruments at about the same time, that's a good indication we're talking about something real as opposed to a pulse from manmade interference," Prof. Si-monetti said.

Why search for extra dimen-sions? One reason has to do with string theory, an area of physics that postulates that the

fundamental building blocks of the universe are small strings of matter that oscillate much like a guitar string, producing various harmonics.

"String theory requires extra dimensions to be a consistent theory," Mr. Kavic said. "String theory suggests a minimum of 10 dimensions, but we're only considering models with one ex-tra dimension."

Some theorists believe the Large Hadron Collider, a giant particle accelerator being con-structed near Geneva, Switzer-land, might be able to detect an extra dimension. The Virginia Tech group hopes to detect them via radio astronomy, a much less elaborate and costly endeavor.

The Virginia Tech research team plans to run the search for at least five years. ##

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We all have negative baggage from our past-abuse from fam-ily members, name-calling from school friends, and destructive self-talk, just to name a few. And while these negative events oc-curred in our childhood, many adults allow their past baggage to dictate their present and guide their future.

For example, perhaps when you were in elementary school a group of classroom bullies con-stantly called you "a dummy." Their words hurt you and got ingrained in your mind. Now that you're an adult and rarely, if ever, think back to your elemen-tary school days, you still believe you're too dumb to handle many situations. As a result, you don't try as hard as you could at work, and your results suffer.

No matter what your past burdens are, you need to be able to walk away from them instead of letting them control your pres-ent. To help you do so, consider these strategies.

1. Do a life assessment.

The majority of people don't realize that something from their past is holding them back. Instead, they make excuses for why their life or situation is the way it is. They are so used to be-ing in a negative or non-optimal state that they don't realize they

are living out a pattern that start-ed in their youth. Therefore, the first step is to do an assessment of your life. Look back at the some of the messages you received and revisit major events that happened to you. Write down key phrases or words that you remember, and that you still say today. Describe any events that seem memorable or life chang-ing. Chances are you'll see some sort of a pattern emerge. Then you can start putting meaning to those phrases and events. By doing this, you'll be better able to see why you do certain things today.

2. Decide to be a conqueror.

There are two kinds of peo-ple in the world: Victims and conquerors. Victims blame ex-ternal factors for the results of their life right now. For example, a victim would say, "I can't get a promotion at work because I'm a woman." Everything is always someone else's fault. Victims often have low self-esteem and low self-confidence, and they are often afraid to take action or take risks.

Conquerors, on the other hand, learn from their past and take responsibility to change their life. For example, a con-queror would say, "I didn't get the promotion at work because I don't have the advanced train-

ing I need, so I'm going to enroll in the college program and get additional training." Conquerors know that the key to changing their life is within themselves. As a result, they do what they need to do to make a difference in their life. These people know they are worthy of great things, and they are willing to work to achieve those things.

Your goal is to create the best life possible with what you have. Yes, you will face challenges, but if you press on, you will make it. Therefore, do whatever you can to take yourself out of the victim mindset and be a conqueror.

3. Don't be a complainer.

When you complain, you in-dicate that there is an alternative-something better. For example, you might complain about being overweight. The alternative is losing the excessive weight. So now that you know the alterna-tive, you can stop complaining and do the necessary steps to lose the weight.

Take an inventory of your complaints. The next time you start complaining, stop yourself. Go to paper and write down ev-erything you wanted to say. Now you can see the pattern in your complaints and pinpoint the al-ternatives that are available. If you are sincere with yourself, you will find that you complain about things you can do some-thing about.

Many people complain in-stead of taking action because taking action involves taking risks that may be uncomfortable,

Is Your Past Holding You Back? How to Move Forward to Find Success

By Guerline Jasmin


difficult, or confusing. The fact is that we tend to remain in our comfort zone, even if our com-fort zone is dysfunctional. In or-der to get out of a negative com-fort zone, we need to be willing to change something and take a risk. For example, you may need to let go of the negative people in your life, which could mean you'd be alone until you make new friends. You may feel scared by this proposition, but that's what change is all about.

It boils down to choice. Ac-cept that you are making the choice to be a complainer, take responsibility for that choice, and then stop being a complain-er. A better alternative is to take the risks to create the life you want.

4. Learn new habits.

Everything we do in life is based on some sort of routine or habit. Therefore, you have to get rid of the old and destruc-tive routines and replace them with new and positive ones. For example, you may hope for a promotion at work, but you are always late, you procrastinate, and you don't take criticism very well. Those are learned habits. To be considered for the promotion, you have to replace the bad hab-its with new habits. You could get up an hour earlier to get to work on time, buy a planner or a calendar and use it daily, write down your tasks with a deadline to keep yourself from procrasti-nating, and write in a journal when you feel like saying some-thing inappropriate.

Studies show that you need to do something consistently for at least 21-30 days to make it a habit. Doing something for this long puts you on track to keep doing it for the long term. By taking your negative habits and turning them into positive be-haviors, you can control your situation and make it better than before.

5. Choose to help others.

When you help others, you to take the focus off of yourself. By focusing on yourself and your own situation so much, you can quickly forget that there's a whole world of people out there who have experienced the same things you have…or even worse. However, when you start look-ing outside of yourself and real-ize that people who are worse off than you have overcome and survived, you begin to see the possibilities for your own life. Additionally, by sharing your story with others, you can moti-vate people to make a change intheir life. So search out support groups that pertain to your situ-ation, offer to be a mentor to oth-ers, or simply start sharing your experiences with others in an attempt to help them. By doing so, you'll quickly realize all the good you have to offer.

Your Bright Future Awaits

Changing your life can be overwhelming, but you can do it. You can overcome your past and create a bright future. No matter what happened to you in the past-whether it was abuse from a loved one or schoolyard

bullying-remember that the past is the past and has no correlation to your present or future. You are in control of your destiny and can take the appropriate action steps to create the best future possible. So be a conqueror, stop complaining, learn some new habits, and help others along the way. Keep enduring and don't give up. You will reach the life you want. ##

Guerline Jasmin is President of Success Strategies Unlim-ited, a consultancy helping individuals and organizations achieve their highest poten-tial. A passionate leader who helps others overcome adver-sity, Guerline has a Masters degree in human resource de-velopment, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in education and lead-ership. She is also author of the forthcoming book, "How to Keep Your Past from In-vading Your Present and De-stroying Your Future." To sign up for her free 12 week email mentoring program, contact her at [email protected] or visit www.guerlinejas-min.com.

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Yong Guan had scribbled 12 arrows across his office whiteboard, each black line going from one little box he had drawn to another little box. He had written five long formulas up there, too.

And that was bad news for cyber criminals.Guan, the Litton Assistant Professor of Electri-

cal and Computer Engineering at Iowa State Uni-versity, and his students are developing technolo-gies to fight cyber crime and make online activities such as shopping more secure for everyone.

Prof. Guan and the Iowa State University Re-search Foundation have filed a patent on one tech-nology that detects “click fraud” – falsely driving up hits to ads posted on Web sites. Those false hits result in higher costs for pay-per-click advertising. Prof. Guan said the invention will help online ad-vertising companies such as Google and Yahoo re-duce click fraud.

He said his research could also help millions of computer users who don’t have the time or exper-tise to protect their machines with the latest secu-rity patches and safeguards.

“There are a lot of security issues and research-ers have worked on them from the early 1980s,” Prof. Guan said. “And 30 years later we’re still working on them. These are hard problems.”

In that time the nature of cyber crime has changed considerably, Prof. Guan said. It used to be hackers attacked systems for the thrill of it. Since the late 1990s, as more and more commerce happens online, he said money has become the major motivation for cyber crime.

And so he and his collaborators are working on several projects to make computing more se-cure and hold cyber criminals accountable:

• Digital forensicsProf. Guan is developing technology and tech-

niques for extracting criminal evidence from com-puters, network hardware, cell phones and other electronic devices. The work is focused on three

projects: Network attack attribution to help inves-tigators find the real origins of cyber criminals and attackers; click fraud detection to protect Inter-net advertising; and auction fraud technology to quickly identify the people and their accomplices who run bogus Internet auctions.

Prof. Guan is working on the projects with James Davis, Iowa State’s chief information officer; Doug Jacobson, a professor of electrical and com-puter engineering; Thomas Daniels, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Julie Dickerson, an associate professor of elec-trical and computer engineering. David Baldwin and Todd Zdorkowski, leaders of the Midwest Fo-rensics Resource Center at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory on the Iowa State cam-pus, have also helped establish collaborative rela-tionships with local and state police agencies.

The projects are supported by a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. intelligence community’s Dis-ruptive Technology Office, a $220,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and fund-ing from Iowa State.

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• Wireless securityProf. Guan is working on

three projects to improve the se-curity of working with wireless networks.

The first is looking at how a new secure network coding model can be protected from at-tacks while it transmits network traffic. The old system sent each individual message hop by hop until it reached its destination. The new way, based on network coding and cooperative relaying schemes, sends and combines messages in groups. He said it’s like loading up a freight train and sending big loads down the line together. It’s a way to in-crease capacity and save energy. But putting all that network traf-fic together makes it easier for attackers to hit more targets with a single attack.

The second project will de-velop location-based security systems for wireless technology. That means a person would have

to be working in a specific place before gaining access to docu-ments over a wireless network. That would be useful for gov-ernment employees who need to work with classified documents over wireless connections. Prof. Guan’s security system would only allow those documents to be viewed in designated secure rooms.

The third project will help secure wired and wireless mul-ticasts over the Internet by pro-tecting and managing lists of Internet accounts. It could, for example, help a software com-pany limit the delivery of securi-ty patches to paying customers. It could also help webcasters manage and limit access to their content.

Working with Prof. Guan on the wireless security projects are Ahmed Kamal, a professor of electrical and computer engi-neering; and Sang Kim, an asso-ciate professor of electrical and

computer en-gineering.

The work is supported by a $400,000 early career d e v e l o p -ment grant from the NSF and anoth-er $350,000 grant from the NSF.

• Privacy protection

P r o f . Guan has been work-ing on a proj-ect that will help protect the identity of

Internet users. One application could protect the identities – and medical records – of people who use online pharmacies. Another application could preserve the anonymity of people using an online voting system.

And what about all those ar-rows and formulas covering his office whiteboard?

It turns out they’re a key to figuring out the reliability of his technology to detect the crimi-nals and their accomplices who run bogus Internet auctions. Be-fore evidence uncovered by his technology can be used in court, Prof. Guan said error rates need to be quantified.

Judging by the ink stains Prof. Guan has left on the wall next to the whiteboard, he and his students spend a lot of time making those kinds of analyses and calculations.

And that’s some more bad news for cyber criminals. ##

Yong Guan, Iowa State University’s Litton Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineer-ing, is developing technologies to track down cyber criminals and make Web transactions more secure. Photo courtesy of Bob Elbert/Iowa State University.


Numerous other news items, updated weekly, are available at www.vaeng.com

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A SINGLE GENERATOR can emit several hundred times more poi-sonous carbon monoxide than a modern car’s exhaust. To help quantify the dangers of improperly used portable generators, and evaluate pos-sible technical solutions to the problem, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has enlisted the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The CPSC recently mandated explicit labels warning consumers of the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning associ-ated with operating a portable generator in or near a home. To learn more about the consequences of operating a gasoline-powered portable generator in the attached garage of a home, NIST researchers will collect data that quantifies carbon monoxide infiltration into a sensor-equipped house during different weather and house conditions. They will look at effects of variable outdoor temperatures and wind speeds, as well as dif-ferent garage door positions and the influence of indoor HVAC systems. They then will attempt to duplicate experimental results with a model of the house created in CONTAM, NIST’s indoor air quality model-ing software. NIST expects to report to CPSC on its study in Sum-mer 2009. Here, NIST researcher Steven Emmerich adjusts a multi-gas analyzer that will measure carbon monoxide, oxygen, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons concentrations produced by such a generator located, against safety advice, in a garage. Photo courtesy of NIST.

Bits & Pieces

Wormhole Possible The team of mathematicians that

first created the mathematics behind the “invisibility cloak” announced by physicists last October has now shown that the same technology could be used to generate an “elec-tromagnetic wormhole.”

In the study, which was sched-uled to appear in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters, Allan Green-leaf, professor of mathematics at the University of Rochester, and his coauthors lay out a variation on the theme of cloaking. Their results open the possibility of building a sort of invisible tunnel between two points in space.

“Imagine wrapping Harry Pot-ter ’s invisibility cloak around a tube,” says Prof. Greenleaf. “If the material is designed according to our specifications, you could pass an object into one end, watch it disap-pear as it traveled the length of the tunnel, and then see it reappear out the other end.”




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Current technology can create objects invisible only to microwave radiation, but the mathematical theory allows for the wormhole ef-fect for electromagnetic waves of all frequencies. With this in mind, Prof. Greenleaf and his coauthors propose several possible applications. Endo-scopic surgeries where the surgeon is guided by MRI imaging are prob-lematical because the intense mag-netic fields generated by the MRI scanner affect the surgeon’s tools, and the tools can distort the MRI im-ages. Prof. Greenleaf says, however, that passing the tools through an EM wormhole could effectively hide them from the fields, allowing only their tips to be “visible” at work.

To create cloaking technology, Prof. Greenleaf and his collaborators use theoretical mathematics to design a device to guide the electromagnetic waves in a useful way. Researchers could then use these blueprints to create layers of specially engineered, light-bending, composite materials called metamaterials.

Last year, David R. Smith, pro-fessor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke’s Pratt School, and his coauthors engineered an invisibility device as a disk, which allowed microwaves to pass around it. Prof. Greenleaf and his coauthors have now employed more elabo-rate geometry to specify exactly what properties are demanded of a wormhole’s metamaterial in order to create the “invisible tunnel” ef-fect. They also calculated what ad-ditional optical effects would occur if the inside of the wormhole was coated with a variety of hypothetical metamaterials.

Assuming that your vision was limited to the few frequencies at which the wormhole operates, look-ing in one end, you’d see a distorted view out the other end, according the simulations by Prof. Greenleaf and his coauthors. Depending on the length of the tube and how often the light bounced around inside, you might see just a fisheye view out the other end, or you might see an Escher-like jumble.

Prof. Greenleaf and his coau-thors speculated on one use of the electromagnetic wormhole that




sounds like something out of science fiction. If the metamaterials making up the tube were able to bend all wavelengths of visible light, they could be used to make a 3D televi-sion display. Imagine thousands of thin wormholes sticking up out of a box like a tuft of long grass in a vase. The wormholes themselves would be invisible, but their ends could transmit light carried up from below. It would be as if thousands of pixels were simply floating in the air.

But that idea, Prof. Greenleaf concedes, is a very long way off. Even though the mathematics now says that it’s possible, it’s up to engi-neers to apply these results to create a working prototype.

Virginia Tech Receives Petty Enterprises Donation

Virginia Tech has received a do-nation of two retired No. 43 Nextel Cup race cars from Petty Enterpris-es for research tools at the Virginia Institute for Performance Engineer-ing and Research.

Richard Petty and son Kyle have donated the race cars to the foundation for use by mechanical engineering graduate students pur-suing degrees at the premier motor sports research facility, the Virginia Institute for Performance Engi-neering and Research, commonly known as VIPER. The facility is lo-cated at the Virginia International Raceway in Halifax County.

The VIPER is one of four me-chanical engineering/motor sports-related research labs affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research located in Danville, an outreach program of Virginia Tech working in partnership with the local community.

The Petty’s decision was prompted by the Nextel Cup’s move to the “Car of Tomorrow” in 2008, necessitating the retirement of all the circuit’s standard-model race cars following the final Ford 400 Nextel Cup Series race in No-vember 2007. As a result, most of the cup cars were relegated to driv-er-development programs or were sold to Automobile Racing Club of America teams for pennies on the

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dollar. However, Petty Enterprises chose to donate some of their cars to engineering programs designed to produce future racing engineers.

Petty Enterprises General Man-ager Robbie Loomis noted in an ESPN.com article that the first do-nation would be to Virginia Tech for use at VIPER, primarily due to the research already underway there with a well-known motor sports team. Said Mr. Loomis, “In this sport we need an area where we can groom and shape engineers to really fit the racing model. There always seems to be a disconnect between the book engineer and the actual applications engineer at the racetrack. So we hope we can bring that together for the future.”

VIPER Director Steve South-ward couldn’t agree more. Said Mr. Southward, “We are thrilled to have the race cars in the lab for hands-on experience. Working with these cars on our eight-post shaker rig al-lows our students to put what they learned about chassis engineering in class into practice in a way that leads to real know-how.” The insti-tute’s eight-post shaker rig, known as VIPER 8 post, tests vehicular suspension systems and is the only one of its kind in North America for commercial testing.

In addition to the VIPER 8 post, the institute offers cutting-edge test equipment including a shock dyna-mometer, and a driving simulator. The institute is uniquely positioned to provide the latest in vehicle per-formance engineering through technology advancements with its research partners: Virginia Tech, fo-cusing on suspensions and drivers; Old Dominion University, focusing on aerodynamics and power train systems; and the Virginia Interna-tional Raceway, a leading vehicle performance center.

Student Designs Safety Helmet Brycen Spencer, an engineering

student at the University of Mas-sachusetts Amherst, has designed a safety helmet that could help save the lives of thousands of outdoor sports enthusiasts involved in ac-cidents each year. His Wireless Im-pact Guardian, or WIG, which sig-

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nals for help even when the wearer is unconscious, is a giant leap for-ward in helmet safety. “The WIG will be activated when it is buckled on,” says Mr. Spencer. “If you fall and hit your head, the helmet will detect that and beep for a minute or so. If you don’t turn it off, WIG sends for help, either directly to 911 or to a third-party service that relays the emer-gency call to 911. Included with the message will be a GPS location giv-ing your geographical coordinates so the emergency team knows pre-cisely where you are.” Nicknamed “The OnStar of Helmets,” Mr. Spencer’s WIG would be a boon for motorcyclists, bicyclists, ATV enthusiasts and oth-ers, especially those venturing into remote areas. There were 113,900 ATV injuries requiring emergency room treatment in 2002 and 76,000 motorcycle-related injuries in 2004. In many instances, victims had to wait a long time for emergency re-sponse crews to find them. At this time, the WIG has no competition. A similar invention on the market is a personal locator beacon that skiers and others use in case of accidents, but this device must be manually activated. There is also a football helmet that detects if the wearer suffers a concussion, but nothing else on the market phones for help automatically.

Fly, Robot FlyDon’t swat--it’s a robotic fly!

Or it could be one, soon, if Robert Wood and his colleagues at Har-vard University have their way. These engineers have mastered the art of miniaturizing; they’ve invent-ed a new way to make small joints and craft tiny but durable wings for the next generation of robots--those that can fit in the palm of a hand, with features as small as one mi-crometer long.

Dr. Wood hopes that these low-cost, agile flying robots will revo-lutionize rescue operations, for example by flying into a collapsed building in search of survivors. Dr. Wood’s creation is the first man-made machine the size of a normal fly to take flight on its own.

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The Virginia EngineerA IIr Associates Publication

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Richard O. Carden, II, Publisher/General Manager

Tel: (804) 779-3527 • E-mail: [email protected] • Fax: (804) 779-3032 • Internet: www.vaeng.com

Friday, March 21, 2008

Honorable Hillary R. ClintonHonorable Barack H. Obama democratic national Committee430 s. Capitol street, sEWashington, dC 20003

dear Candidates,

Everything that I read and hear, some of which might actually be news, strongly suggests the campaign trail is

now fast becoming the campaign travail of 2008. Charges and countercharges swirl back and forth, too many

campaign stops in an increasingly compressed calendar, all part of an effort to address the overriding political

imperative — inspiring voters to participate while simultaneously instilling in them the confidence that you

and your vision are the right choice for the country. But how is this goal to be reached?

Possibly a good start would be a public debate focused on solutions for issues that will remain formidable

challenges far longer than the next local, state, or federal election cycle. Issues for which developing solu-

tions will require real leadership, not pandering and cute sound bites. Issues that transcend the deafening roar

of voter groups which vie endlessly for the title of most victimized. In short, issues dealing with the pressing

scientific and engineering topics of our time — decaying infrastructure ranging from transportation to water/

wastewater facilities, and electrical transmission, the environment, energy, as well as a multitude of others.

I write to tell you that, fortuitously, such an opportunity exists. A coalition of more than 100 American uni-

versities, businesses, and technical organizations, including the American society of Mechanical Engineers,

the national Academy of sciences, the national Academy of Engineering, the American Association for the

Advancement of Science, and the Council on Competitiveness, have joined together to support a new citizens'

initiative to bring together the presidential candidates to debate science and technology policy.

The initiative, appropriately named science debate 2008, will take place April 18th at the Franklin Institute in

Philadelphia, four days prior to the Pennsylvania primary. The goal of the debate is to help voters determine

where each candidate stands on the pressing science and technology challenges facing this country, including

the need to rebuild national economic competitiveness through innovation and scientific discovery.

As the self-professed ‘change’ candidates, I encourage you to do more than pay lip service to the importance

of these pressing issues by participating in the debate. In terms of the scientific and engineering challenges

facing America, it is indeed 3 AM, there is a real crisis requiring great leadership, and the telephone is ringing.

Who will answer that call?

Best Regards,

Richard o. Carden, II

Documents

The Virginia Engineer