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Most Scientists Agree: Humans are Causing Global Climate Change

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:36 -0400

Do most scientists agree that human activity is causing global climate change? Yes, they do, according to an extensive analysis of the abstracts or summaries of scientific papers published over the past 20 years, even though public perception tends to be that climate scientists disagree over the fundamental cause of climate change.

To help put a stop to the squabbling, two dozen scientists and citizen-scientists from three continents--including Sarah Green, professor and chair of chemistry at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich.— analyzed the abstracts of nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers on climate change published between 1991 and 2011. They also . . .

Michigan Tech Research Institute Receives Radar Defense Contract

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:46:46 -0400

The Michigan Tech Research Institute in Ann Arbor, Mich., has signed a six-month, $1 million contract with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to conduct research in adaptive radar countermeasures. The contract could be extended to five years and be worth $9 million if all options are exercised.

MTRI will be developing a new approach to the challenging problem of separating and analyzing radar signals by the function they are intended to perform. Radar—originally an acronym for Radio Detection And Ranging—is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, direction and speed of objects.

MTRI’s expertise in . . .

Student Engineers’ Skin Patch Warns When It’s Time to Get Out of the Sun

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:26:16 -0400

By the time most of us realize we’ve been out in the sun too long, it’s too late. It can take up to 24 hours after exposure before you realize you have a sunburn.

Now, a Michigan Technological University Senior Design team has devised a sensor that tells you when it’s time to seek shelter, long before your skin gets red and tender.

The biomedical engineering seniors developed a skin patch imprinted with a graphic—in this case, a happy face design. The nickel-size patch gradually darkens under ultraviolet light, the type of light that causes sunburn and skin cancer. When you can’t see . . .

Zinc: The Perfect Material for Bioabsorbable Stents?

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:07:20 -0400

In 2012, more than 3 million people had stents inserted in their coronary arteries. These tiny mesh tubes prop open blood vessels healing from procedures like a balloon angioplasty, which widens arteries blocked by clots or plaque deposits. After about six months, most damaged arteries are healed and stay open on their own. The stent, however, is there for a lifetime.

Most of the time, that’s not a problem, says Patrick Bowen, a doctoral student studying materials science and engineering at Michigan Technological University. The arterial wall heals in around the old stent with no ill effect. But the longer a stent . . .

Bear Baiting May Put Hunting Dogs at Risk from Wolves

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:00:00 -0400

Bear hunters will tell you that a good way to attract a bear is to put out bait. And in 10 states, including Michigan and Wisconsin, that’s perfectly legal. Hunting dogs are another useful technique in the bear-hunter’s toolkit, and 17 states say that’s just fine.

But who else likes bear bait? Gray wolves, that’s who. And wolves that are feeling territorial about a bear bait stash can—and sometimes do—kill hunting dogs released at the bait site.

Like most interactions between wildlife and human beings, wolf attacks on hunting dogs illustrate a tangled trade-off: attracting bears for the hunters, attracting danger . . .

Michigan Tech Scientist's Discovery Could Lead to a Better Capacitor

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:58:08 -0400

A new process for growing forests of manganese dioxide nanorods may lead to the next generation of high-performance capacitors.

As an energy-storage material for batteries and capacitors, manganese dioxide has a lot going for it: it’s cheap, environmentally friendly and abundant. However, chemical capacitors made with manganese dioxide have lacked the power of the typical carbon-based physical capacitor. Michigan Technological University scientist Dennis Desheng Meng theorized that the situation could be improved if the manganese dioxide were made into nanorods, which are like nanotubes, only solid instead of hollow. However, a stumbling block has been making manganese dioxide nanorods with the right . . .

3D Printing Slashes Optics Lab Costs

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:57:16 -0400

Just as open-source design has driven down the cost of software to the point that it is accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, open-source hardware makes it possible to drive down the cost of doing science. As part of that movement, a Michigan Technological University lab has introduced a library of open-source, 3D-printable optics components in a paper published in PLOS One from the Public Library of Science.

Joshua Pearce, an associate professor of materials science and engineering and electrical and computer engineering, explains: “This library operates as a free, flexible, low-cost tool set for developing both research and teaching optics . . .

Isle Royale Wolves Fall Prey to Inbreeding Problems

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:53:39 -0400

Michigan Technological University’s annual Winter Study of the wolves and moose of Isle Royale National Park counted eight wolves on the island this winter, down one from last year. And as far as the researchers could tell, no wolf pups were born in 2012.

“This is the first year since 1971, the year reproduction first began being monitored, that we did not detect any sign that pups had been born during the past year,” wrote John Vucetich, the Michigan Tech population biologist who heads the annual study, in the 2012-203 Winter Study annual report released this week

“We failed to detect signs . . .

Invisibility Cloak Research Moves Forward at Michigan Tech

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:40:32 -0400

Michigan Technological University’s invisibility cloak researchers have done it again. They’ve moved the bar on one of the holy grails of physics: making objects invisible.

Just last month, Elena Semouchkina, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, and her graduate student, Xiaohui Wang, reported successful experimental demonstration of the use of non-conductive ceramic metamaterials to cloak cylindrical objects from microwave-length electromagnetic waves. Previously, Semouchkina had designed a non-conductive glass metamaterial cloak that worked with infrared frequency waves, which are shorter than microwaves.

Then, scarcely was the ink dry on their report in the IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, . . .

Researchers Invited to Learn Essentials of Entrepreneurship

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:09:58 -0400

In an effort to help researchers fast-track their technologies to the marketplace, Michigan is launching a new entrepreneurial training program called Michigan I-Corps. Applications for the program, administered by the University of Michigan, opened last week.

Michigan I-Corps is modeled after the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps (Innovation Corps) program. Two Michigan Tech teams have participated in the national I-Corps. Earlier this month a team led by Ezra Bar Ziv, a professor of mechanical engineering-engineering mechanics, was selected as the top team among the 24 participating teams from universities throughout the nation. The first NSF I-Corps team from Michigan Tech was led by . . .