Joint Study Finds New Clues to the Origins of Brain Tumors
Caltech researchers in collaboration with UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center have discovered that brain tumors may be derived from the cells that form the nervous system. These cells, called neural stem cells, may help researchers understand how this cancer begins, which could one day lead to improved diagnosis and treatment.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12462.html
"Bubbloy:" the Latest Invention from Caltech Materials Scientists
From the same Caltech lab that brought you "liquid metal," now used in the latest golf clubs and tennis rackets, comes bubbloy, a bulk metallic glass that has the stiffness of metal but the springiness of a trampoline. "You can squish it and the metal will spring back," says graduate student Chris Veazey, who has given the stuff the tentative name "bubbloy," a combination of "bubble" and "alloy." "One possible use is for the crumple zone of a car," he says. "It should make a car safer than one where the structures in the crumple zone are made of conventional metals."
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12426.html
Engineers Announce More Promising Fuel Cell Electrolyte
The quest for a cheap and robust fuel cell for future cars may be a bit closer now that Caltech scientists announced they're getting promising results with a new material that solves various limitations of previously tested fuel cells. "It's a whole new way of doing fuel cells that opens up tremendous possibilities for system simplification," says Sossina Haile, a leading authority on fuel cell technology.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12461.html
Caltech Geophysicists Gain New Insights on Earth's Core-Mantle Boundary
Earth's core-mantle boundary is a place none of us will ever go, but researchers using a special high-velocity cannon have produced results showing there may be molten rock at this interface at about 1,800 miles. Further, this molten rock may have rested peacefully at the core-mantle boundary for eons.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12467.html
New Technique for Groundwater Cleanup
Until it was recently banned, methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) was added to gasoline to meet the oxygenate requirements established by Congress in the Clean Air Act Amendments. However, the benefits of MTBE came at a price. Leaks from storage containers and spills during transportation led to a growing problem of MTBE contaminating groundwater, including drinking-water sources.
Caltech's Michael Hoffmann and two colleagues applied the established technique of ultrasonic irradiation to the removal of MTBE from a crude sample of contaminated groundwater. They first analyzed the mechanism of ultrasonic degradation in pure water spiked with MTBE, and then compared the degradation in the spiked sample to that in water collected beneath JFK International Airport, New York. They demonstrated that the destruction of the MTBE in the crude sample occurred efficiently.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12437.html
Old Caltech Telescope Yields New Science
Meet Sarah Horst, throwback. The planetary science major, a Caltech senior, used an old teaching telescope--the hoary 14-inch Celestron telescope located on top of Caltech's Robinson Lab--to do cutting-edge science that couldn't be done at the largest telescopes in the world.
Thanks to her initial work, Caltech astronomer Michael Brown was able to provide definitive proof that weather in the form of clouds exists on Saturn's moon Titan.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12433.html
$12 Million Grant Boosts Efforts of "WormBase"
The Caltech-led WormBase project, an ongoing multi-institutional effort to make genetic information on the experimental animal known as C. elegans freely available to the world, has been augmented with a new $12 million grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute.
Improved knowledge of how a gene is expressed in one species--and as time goes on, how two or more genes interact--will provide new approaches for dealing with human disease and will almost certainly be the foundation for some important medical advances.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12434.html
Gamma-Ray Bursts, X-Ray Flashes, and Supernovae Not As Different As They Appear
For the past several decades, astrophysicists have been puzzling over the origin of powerful but seemingly different explosions that light up the cosmos several times a day.
Now Caltech graduate student Edo Berger and an international group of colleagues have found that all three flavors of these cosmic explosions--gamma-ray bursts, X-ray flashes, and certain supernovae of type Ic--are in fact connected by their common explosive energy, suggesting that a single type of phenomenon, the explosion of a massive star, is the culprit. The main difference between them is the "escape route" used by the energy as it flees from the dying star and its newly born black hole.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12453.html
Cosmic-Ray Detectors Installed at L.A. Middle School
Last November, a large crane lifted two 250-pound, white, funnel-shaped cosmic-ray detectors on top of a science building at San Fernando Middle School. The detectors are the 50th to be installed in an array of cosmic ray detectors that are located at schools throughout Southern California.
In order to detect cosmic-rays, detectors must be deployed, like a large fishing net, over many square miles to capture signs of the incoming rays. Ultimately, the goal is to shed light on the identities of these mysterious travelers from far beyond our galaxy.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12459.html
Length of Gaze Affects Human Preferences
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but a psychophysical study suggests that the length of the beholding is important, too.
Caltech biology professor Shinsuke Shimojo and his colleagues report that human test subjects asked to choose between two faces will spend increasingly more time gazing at the face that they will eventually choose as the one more attractive. Also, test subjects will typically choose the face that has been preferentially shown for a longer time by the experimenter. The results indicate that active gaze shifting is wired into the brain and that humans use it all the time, albeit subconsciously, Shimojo says.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12457.html
Atmospheric Scientists Acquire Samples the Old-Fashioned Way
Just as Ishmael always returned to the high seas for whales after spending time on land, an atmospheric researcher always returns to the air for new data.
At Caltech, where atmospheric science is a major interest, the collection of data is considered important enough to justify the maintenance of a specially equipped plane dedicated to the purpose. In addition to the low-altitude plane, several Caltech researchers who need higher-altitude data are also heavy users of the jet aircraft maintained by NASA for its Airborne Science Program based at the Dryden Flight Research Center in California's Mojave Desert.
"The best thing about using aircraft instead of balloons is that you are assured of getting your instruments back in working order," says Caltech's Paul Wennberg.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12447.html
New Computer Network Performance Mark Achieved
In a collaborative effort, Caltech scientists joined forces with other supercomputing facilities around the world to win the 2003 Supercomputing Bandwidth Challenge. The team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers from showed the future of computer grid systems whereby communities of scientists around the globe will be able to access, process, and analyze terabyte-sized data samples, drawn from data stores thousands of times larger. A new generation of grid systems is being developed in the United States and Europe to meet these challenges, and to support the next generation of high-energy physics.
This would not only benefit scientists, but it could eventually have profound implications for integrating information sharing and on-demand audiovisual collaboration in our daily lives, with a scale and quality previously unimaginable.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12465.html
Thirty-Meter Telescope Takes Another Step Forward
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation awarded $17.5 million to the University of California for collaboration with Caltech to further the building of the world's most powerful telescope. A 30-meter-diameter optical and infrared telescope, complete with adaptive optics, will result in images more than 12 times sharper than those of the Hubble Space Telescope. The TMT will have nine times the light-gathering ability of one of the 10-meter Keck Telescopes, which are currently the largest in the world. With such a telescope, astrophysicists will be able to study the earliest galaxies and the details of their formation, and pinpoint the processes that lead to young planetary systems around nearby stars.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12470.html
Caltech, JPL Researchers Unveil Details on New Type of Light Detector Based on Superconductivity
A new way to measure light has been unveiled that exploits the strange but predictable characteristics of superconductivity, and has a number of properties that should lead to uses in a variety of fields, from medicine to astrophysics.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12443.html
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