First Helicopter Hotel in the world

First Helicopter Hotel in the world, will be inaugurated in the UAE.

 

Inaugural trip will take off Dubai Airport on June 6, 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elliptical Galaxies Are Not Dead

The NGC 5557 galaxy (the subject of the publication), clearly shows the new stellar structures discovered by the MégaCam camera of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (Credit: © Duc/CFHT, CNRS/CNRC/University of Hawaii)

Science Daily — Initial results from research carried out as part of the Atlas3D project on two elliptical galaxies could, if they are confirmed, call into question the current model of the formation of galaxies.

Current models explain elliptical galaxies as "dead" galaxies: the relative age of their stars ranges between 7 and 10 billion years and the observed lack of gas precludes the formation of new stars. However, a completely different history is suggested by the images of two galaxies obtained by the MégaCam camera of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT, CNRS/CNRC/University of Hawaii).An international team of astronomers, including in particular CNRS, CEA, the CFHT, the Observatoire de Lyon, ENS de Lyon and Claude Bernard Lyon 1 et Paris-Diderot universities, are due to publish their initial observations in the journal Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Society.

The researchers,* all members of an international Atlas3D team, have shown that these two elliptical galaxies were formed from the "merger" of two large spiral galaxies, just 1 to 3 billion years ago. During this major event, part of the matter of the galaxies in "collision" was ejected and formed stellar debris. The filaments of gas and stars, which have been detected by the CFHT, form two long tails on either side of the galaxy, extending over more than one million light years (more than 10 times the span of the Milky Way). It is the largest stellar structure ever detected, although it has not been revealed before due to the low surface brightness and considerable spread of its filaments. These filamentary structures were formed during encounters between spiral galaxies, by a gravitational mechanism similar to that of oceanic tides, hence their name of "tidal tails."

The Atlas3D team is conducting a deep optical imaging program on a hundred or so other nearby elliptical galaxies. If the results obtained on these first two galaxies are confirmed and if such extended stellar structures prove to be frequent, the standard model of the formation of elliptical galaxies needs to be revised.

*In France, the laboratories involved are the Laboratoire Astrophysique, Instrumentation et Modélisation (CNRS/CEA/Université Paris Diderot), the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (CNRS/ENS de Lyon/Université Lyon1), working in collaboration with the CFHT (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope)

Scientists Build Battery in a Nanowire: Hybrid Energy Storage Device Is as Small as It Can Possibly Get

Science Daily  — The world at large runs on lithium-ion batteries. New research at Rice University shows that tiny worlds may soon do the same.

In their paper, researchers described testing two versions of their battery/supercapacitor hybrid. The first is a sandwich with nickel/tin anode, polyethene oxide (PEO) electrolyte and polyaniline cathode layers; it was built as proof that lithium ions would move efficiently through the anode to the electrolyte and then to the supercapacitor-like cathode, which stores the ions in bulk and gives the device the ability to charge and discharge quickly. The Rice lab of Professor Pulickel Ajayan has packed an entire lithium-ion energy storage device into a single nanowire, as reported this month in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. The researchers believe their creation is as small as such devices can possibly get, and could be valuable as a rechargeable power source for new generations of nanoelectronics.

The second packs the same capabilities into a single nanowire. The researchers built centimetre-scale arrays containing thousands of nanowire devices, each about 150 nanometers wide. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, thousands of times smaller than a human hair.

Ajayan's team has been inching toward single-nanowire devices for years. The researchers first reported the creation of three-dimensional nanobatteries last December. In that project, they encased vertical arrays of nickel-tin nanowires in PMMA, a widely used polymer best known as Plexiglas, which served as an electrolyte and insulator. They grew the nanowires via electrodeposition in an anodized alumina template atop a copper substrate. They widened the template's pores with a simple chemical etching technique that created a gap between the wires and the alumina and then drop-coated PMMA to encase the wires in a smooth, consistent sheath. A chemical wash removed the template and left a forest of electrolyte-encased nanowires.

In that battery, the encased nickel-tin was the anode, but the cathode had to be attached on the outside.

The new process tucks the cathode inside the nanowires, said Ajayan, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. In this feat of nanoengineering, the researchers used PEO as the gel-like electrolyte that stores lithium ions and also serves as an electrical insulator between nanowires in an array.

After much trial and error, they settled on an easily synthesized polymer known as polyaniline (PANI) as their cathode. Drop-coating the widened alumina pores with PEO coats the insides, encases the anodes and leaves tubes at the top into which PANI cathodes could also be drop-coated. An aluminium current collector placed on top of the array completes the circuit.

"The idea here is to fabricate nanowire energy storage devices with ultrathin separation between the electrodes," said Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, a research scientist at Rice and co-author of the paper. "This affects the electrochemical behaviour of the device. Our devices could be a very useful tool to probe nanoscale phenomenon."

The team's experimental batteries are about 50 microns tall -- about the diameter of a human hair and almost invisible when viewed edge-on, Reddy said. Theoretically, the nanowire energy storage devices can be as long and wide as the templates allow, which makes them scalable.

The nanowire devices show good capacity; the researchers are fine-tuning the materials to increase their ability to repeatedly charge and discharge, which now drops off after about 20 cycles.

"There's a lot to be done to optimize the devices in terms of performance," said the paper's lead author, Sanketh Gowda, a chemical engineering graduate student at Rice. "Optimization of the polymer separator and its thickness and an exploration of different electrode systems could lead to improvements."

Rice graduate student Xiaobo Zhan is a co-author of the paper.

The Hartley Family Foundation, Rice University, National Institutes of Health, Army Research Office and Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative supported the research.

Chemists Transform Acids Into Bases: Research Offers Vast Family of New Catalysts for Use in Drug Discovery, Biotechnology

Guy Bertrand is a distinguished professor of chemistry at UC Riverside. (Credit: L. Duka.)

Science Daily — Chemists at the University of California, Riverside have accomplished in the lab what until now was considered impossible: transform a family of compounds which are acids into bases.

The research, reported in the July 29 issue of Science, makes possible a vast array of chemical reactions -- such as those used in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, manufacturing new materials, and research academic institutions.As our chemistry lab sessions have taught us, acids are substances that taste sour and react with metals and bases (bases are the chemical opposite of acids). For example, compounds of the element boron are acidic while nitrogen and phosphorus compounds are basic.

"The result is totally counterintuitive," said Guy Bertrand, a distinguished professor of chemistry, who led the research. "When I presented preliminary results from this research at a conference recently, the audience was incredulous, saying this was simply unachievable. But we have achieved it. We have transformed boron compounds into nitrogen-like compounds. In other words, we have made acids behave like bases."

Bertrand's lab at UC Riverside specializes on catalysts. A catalyst is a substance -- usually a metal to which ions or compounds are bound -- that facilitates or allows a chemical reaction, but is neither consumed nor altered by the reaction itself. Crucial to the reaction's success, a catalyst is like the car engine enabling an uphill drive. While only about 30 metals are used to form catalysts, the binding ions or molecules, called ligands, can number in the millions, allowing for numerous catalysts. Currently, the majority of these ligands are nitrogen- or phosphorus-based.

"The trouble with using phosphorus-based catalysts is that phosphorus is toxic and it can contaminate the end products," Bertrand said. "Our work shows that it is now possible to replace phosphorus ligands in catalysts with boron ligands. And boron is not toxic. Catalysis research has advanced in small, incremental steps since the first catalytic reaction took place in 1902 in France. Our work is a quantum leap in catalysis research because a vast family of new catalysts can now be added to the mix. What kind of reactions these new boron-based catalysts are capable of facilitating is as yet unknown. What is known, though, is that they are potentially numerous."

Bertrand explained that acids cannot be used as ligands to form a catalyst. Instead, bases must be used. While all boron compounds are acids, his lab has succeeded in making these compounds behave like bases. His lab achieved the result by modifying the number of electrons in boron, with no change to the atom's nucleus.

"It's almost like changing one atom into another atom," Bertrand said.

His research group stumbled upon the idea during one of its regular brainstorming meetings.

"I encourage my students and postdoctoral researchers to think outside the box and not be inhibited or intimidated about sharing ideas with the group," he said. "The smaller these brainstorming groups are, the freer the participants feel about bringing new and unconventional ideas to the table, I have found. About 90 percent of the time, the ideas are ultimately not useful. But then, about 10 percent of the time we have something to work with."

The research was supported by grants to Bertrand from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

An internationally renowned scientist, Bertrand came to UCR in 2001 from France's national research agency, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). He is the director of the UCR-CNRS Joint Research Chemistry Laboratory.

A recipient of numerous awards and honors, most recently he won the 2009-2010 Sir Ronald Nyholm Prize for his seminal research on the chemistry of phosphorus-phosphorus bonds and the chemistry of stable carbenes and their complexes.

He is a recipient of the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science Award, the Humboldt Award, the International Council on Main Group Chemistry Award, and the Grand Prix Le Bel of the French Chemical Society. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, Academia Europea, and Academies des Technologies.

He has authored more than 300 scholarly papers and holds 35 patents.

Bertrand was joined in the research by Rei Kinjo and Bruno Donnadieu of UCR; and Mehmet Ali Celik and Gernot Frenking of Philipps-Universitat Marburg, Germany.

UCR's Office of Technology Commercialization has filed a provisional patent application on the boron-based ligands developed in Bertrand's lab

Manipulating Light at Will: Research Could Help Replace Electronic Components With Optical Technology

This is Alec Rose and Da Huang of Duke University. (Credit: Duke University Photography)

Science Daily — Electrical engineers at Duke University have developed a material that allows them to manipulate light in much the same way that electronics manipulate flowing electrons.

The breakthrough revolves around a novel artificial structure known as a metamaterial. These exotic composite materials are not so much a single substance, but an entire structure that can be engineered to exhibit properties not readily found in nature. The structure used in these experiments resembles a miniature set of tan Venetian blinds.The researchers say the results of their latest proof-of-concept experiments could lead to the replacement of electrical components with those based on optical technologies. Light-based devices would enable faster and more efficient transmission of information, much in the same way that replacing wires with optical fibers revolutionized the telecommunications industry.

When light passes through a material, even though it may be reflected, refracted or weakened along the way, it is still the same light coming out. This is known as linearity.

"For highly intense light, however, certain 'nonlinear' materials violate this rule of thumb, converting the incoming energy into a brand new beam of light at twice the original frequency, called the second-harmonic," said Alec Rose, graduate student in the laboratory of David R. Smith, William Bevan Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.

As an example, he cited the crystal in some laser pointers, which transforms the normal laser light into another beam of a different color, which would be the second-harmonic. Though they contain nonlinear properties, designing such devices requires a great deal of time and effort to be able to control the direction of the second harmonic, and natural nonlinear materials are quite weak, Rose said.

"Normally, this frequency-doubling process occurs over a distance of many wavelengths, and the direction in which the second-harmonic travels is strictly determined by whatever nonlinear material is used," Rose said. "Using the novel metamaterials at microwave frequencies, we were able to fabricate a nonlinear device capable of 'steering' this second-harmonic. The device simultaneously doubled and reflected incoming waves in the direction we wanted."

The research results were published online in the journalPhysical Review Letters. It was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Smith's team was the first to demonstrate that similar metamaterials could act as a cloaking device in 2006 and a next generation lens in 2009.

"This magnitude of control over light is unique to nonlinear metamaterials, and can have important consequences in all-optical communications, where the ability to manipulate light is crucial," Rose said.

The device, which measures six inches by eight inches and about an inch high, is made of individual pieces of the same fiberglass material used in circuit boards arranged in parallel rows. Each piece is etched with copper circles. Each copper circle has a tiny gap that is spanned by a diode, which when excited by light passing through it, breaks its natural symmetry, creating non-linearity.

"The trend in telecommunications is definitely optical," Rose said. "To be able to control light in the same manner that electronics control currents will be an important step in transforming telecommunications technologies."

Duke graduate student Da Huang was also a member of the team.

Oxygen Molecules Found in Nearby Star-Forming Cloud

 Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team)

Science Daily  — The European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory has found molecules of oxygen in a nearby star-forming cloud. This is the first undisputed detection of oxygen molecules in space. It concludes a long search but also leaves questions unanswered.

Even the observed amount of atomic oxygen is far less than that expected and this created an oxygen 'accounting problem' that can be roughly voiced as "where is all the oxygen hiding in the cold clouds?"The oxygen molecules have been found in the nearby Orion star-forming complex. While atomic oxygen has been long known in warm regions of space, previous missions looking for the molecular variety -- two atoms of oxygen bonded together -- came up largely empty-handed.

NASA's Submillimetre Wave Astronomy Satellite and Sweden's Odin mission have both searched for molecular oxygen and established that its abundance is dramatically lower than expected.

One possibility put forward to explain this was that oxygen atoms freeze onto tiny dust grains found floating in space and are converted to water ice, effectively removing them from sight.

If this is true, the ice should evaporate in warmer regions of the cosmos, returning water to the gas and allowing molecular oxygen to form and to be seen.

Paul Goldsmith, NASA's Herschel project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and an international team of investigators went looking for it with Herschel.

They used Herschel's HIFI far-infrared instrument and targeted Orion, where they reasoned that the forming stars would heat the surrounding gas and dust.

Using three infrared frequencies of the instrument, the Herschel Oxygen Project team were successful. They found there to be one molecule of oxygen for every million hydrogen molecules.

"This explains where some of the oxygen might be hiding," said Dr Goldsmith. "But we didn't find large amounts of it, and still don't understand what is so special about the spots where we find it. The Universe still holds many secrets."

Oxygen, in all its forms, is the third most abundant element in the Universe and a major ingredient of our planet. It is found in our atmosphere, oceans and rocks, and is critical for life itself because we breathe the molecular form.

Although the search continues for it in space, Göran Pilbratt, ESA's Herschel Project Scientist, believes this is a breakthrough moment: "Thanks to Herschel, we now have an undisputed confirmation that molecular oxygen is definitely out there. There are still many open questions but Herschel's superior capabilities now enables us to address these riddles."

Microbes Consumed Oil in Gulf Slick at Unexpected Rates, Study Finds

A new technique for determing the concentration of oxygen in a liquid sample uses a laser (coming from the green fiber, right) and an oxygen-sensitive sticker called an optode (pale spot) inside the sample bottle. When struck by the laser, the sticker fluoresces; the wavelength of the light it gives off indicates the concentration of oxygen in the fluid around it. WHOI chemist Ben Van Mooy used this method to monitor microbial activity in samples of water taken from within and outside the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (Credit: Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Science Daily  — More than a year after the largest oil spill in history, perhaps the dominant lingering question about the Deepwater Horizon spill is, "What happened to the oil?" Now, in the first published study to explain the role of microbes in breaking down the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers have come up with answers that represent both surprisingly good news and a head-scratching mystery.

At the same time, the researchers observed no increase in the number of microbes inside the slick -- something that would be expected as a byproduct of increased consumption, or respiration, of the oil. In this process, respiration combines food (oil in this case) and oxygen to create carbon dioxide and energy.In research scheduled to be published in the Aug. 2 online edition of Environmental Research Letters, the WHOI team studied samples from the surface oil slick and surrounding Gulf waters. They found that bacterial microbes inside the slick degraded the oil at a rate five times faster than microbes outside the slick -- accounting in large part for the disappearance of the slick some three weeks after Deepwater Horizon's Macondo well was shut off.

"What did they do with the energy they gained from this increased respiration?" asked WHOI chemist Benjamin Van Mooy, senior author of the study. "They didn't use it to multiply. It's a real mystery," he said.

Van Mooy and his team were nearly equally taken aback by the ability of the microbes to chow down on the oil in the first place. Going into the study, he said, "We thought microbe respiration was going to be minimal." This was because nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus -- usually essential to enable microbes to grow and make new cells -- were scarce in the water and oil in the slick. "We thought the microbes would not be able to respond," Van Mooy said.

But the WHOI researchers found, to the contrary, that the bacteria not only responded, but did so at a very high rate. They discovered this by using a special sensor called an oxygen optode to track the changing oxygen levels in water samples taken from the slick. If the microbes were respiring slowly, then oxygen levels would decrease slowly; if they respired quickly, the oxygen would decrease quickly.

"We found that the answer was 'quick,'" Van Mooy said. "By a lot."

Bethanie Edwards, a biochemist in Van Mooy's lab and lead author of the paper, said she too was "very surprised" by the amount of oil consumption by the microbes. "It's not what we expected to see." She added that she was also "a little afraid" that oil companies and others might use the results to try to convince the public that spills can do relatively little harm. "They could say, 'Look, we can put oil into the environment and the microbes will eat it,'" she said.

Edwards, a graduate student in the joint MIT/WHOI program, pointed out that this is not completely the case, because oil is composed of a complex mixture molecules, some of which the microbes are unable to break down.

"Oil is still detrimental to the environment, " she said, "because the molecules that are not accessible to microbes persist and could have toxic effects." These are the kinds of molecules that can get into the food web of both offshore and shoreline environments, Edwards and Van Mooy said. In addition, Edwards added, the oil that is consumed by microbes "is being converted to carbon dioxide that still gets into the atmosphere."

Follow-up studies already "are in place," Van Mooy says, to address the "mysterious" finding that the oil-gorging microbes do not appear to manufacture new cells. If the microbes were eating the oil at such a high rate, what did they do with the energy? Van Mooy, Edwards, and their colleagues hypothesize that they may convert the energy to some other molecule, like sugars or fats. They plan to use "state-of-the-art methods" under development in their laboratory to look for bacterial fat molecules, a focus of Van Mooy's previous work. The results, he says, "could show where the energy went."

Van Mooy said he isn't sure exactly what fraction of the oil loss in the spill is due to microbial consumption; other processes, including evaporation, dilution, and dispersion, might have contributed to the loss of the oil slick. But the five-fold increase in the microbe respiration rate suggests it contributed significantly to the oil breakdown. "Extrapolating our observations to the entire area of the oil slick supports the assertion microbes had the potential to degrade a large fraction of the oil as it arrived at the surface from the well," the researchers say in their paper.

"This is the first published study to put numbers on the role of microbes in the degradation of the oil slick," said Van Mooy. "Our study shows that the dynamic microbial community of the Gulf of Mexico supported remarkable rates of oil respiration, despite a dearth of dissolved nutrients," the researchers said.

Edwards added that the results suggest "that microbes had the metabolic potential to break down a large portion of hydrocarbons and keep up with the flow rate from the wellhead."

Also participating in the study from WHOI were researchers Christopher M. Reddy, Richard Camilli, Catherine A. Carmichael, and Krista Longnecker.

The research was supported by RAPID grants from the National Science Foundation.

In the Battle to Relieve Back Aches, Researchers Create Bioengineered Spinal Disc Implants

From left, a natural rat IVD was compared with a tissue-engineered IVD. (Credit: Bonassar lab)

Science Daily — Millions contend with lower back and neck discomfort every year. To ease their pain, Cornell University engineers in Ithaca and doctors at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City have created a biologically based spinal implant that could someday relieve these countless sufferers.

The other scientists on the paper are Robby Bowles, Cornell Ph.D. '11, and Harry Gebhard, M.D., of Weill Cornell Medical College.Lawrence Bonassar, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering, and Roger Härtl, M.D., associate professor of neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medical College and chief of spinal surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, have created bioengineered spinal discs that have been successfully implanted and tested in animals.

Their research will be published online Aug. 1, 2011 in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We've engineered discs that have the same structural components and behave just like real discs," says Bonassar. "The hope is that this promising research will lead to engineered discs that we can implant into patients with damaged discs."

Each year, 40 percent to 60 percent of American adults suffer from chronic back or neck pain. For patients diagnosed with severe degenerative disc disease, or herniated discs, neurosurgeons perform surgery called discectomy -- removing the spinal disc -- followed by a fusion of the vertebrate bones to stabilize the spine. In spite of the surgery, the patient's back will likely not feel the same as before their injury.

"The surgery prevents pain, but often limits mobility, which may hinder someone who has an active lifestyle or even end the career of a professional athlete," says Härtl, who is also the team neurosurgeon for the New York Giants.

Human discs look something like a tire, with the outer part, called the annulus, made of a stiff material, and the inner circle, the nucleus, made of a gel-like substance that gets pressurized and bears weight.

Bonassar's lab, which focuses on the regeneration and analysis of musculoskeletal tissue, engineered artificial discs out of two polymers -- collagen, which wraps around the outside, and a hydrogel called alginate in the middle. They seeded the implants with cells that repopulated the structures with new tissue. Remarkably, as opposed to artificial implants today that degrade over time, scientists are seeing that the implants get better as they mature in the body due to the growth of the cells.

"Our implants have maintained 70 to 80 percent of initial disc height. In fact, the mechanical properties get better with time," says Bonassar.

The implants would treat a broad category of illness called degenerative disc disease -- a leading cause of disability worldwide. According to Härtl, more patients need treatment or surgery for intervertebral disc degeneration. A surgical procedure approved by the FDA in 2005 involves obliterating the disc and replacing it with an implant made of metal and plastic, intending to mimic the normal movement of the lumbar and spine.

"Bone or metal or plastic implants are

Sugar Doesn't Melt -- It Decomposes, Scientists Demonstrate

Flying in the face of years of scientific belief, University of Illinois researchers have demonstrated that sugar doesn't melt, it decomposes. (Credit: © milosluz / Fotolia)

Science Daily  — Flying in the face of years of scientific belief, University of Illinois researchers have demonstrated that sugar doesn't melt, it decomposes.

In a presentation to the Institute of Food Technologists about the importance of the new discovery, Schmidt told the food scientists they could use the new findings to manipulate sugars and improve their products' flavor and consistency."This discovery is important to food scientists and candy lovers because it will give them yummier caramel flavors and more tantalizing textures. It even gives the pharmaceutical industry a way to improve excipients, the proverbial spoonful of sugar that helps your medicine go down," said Shelly J. Schmidt, a University of Illinois professor of food chemistry.

"Certain flavor compounds give you a nice caramel flavor, whereas others give you a burnt or bitter taste. Food scientists will now be able to make more of the desirable flavors because they won't have to heat to a 'melting' temperature but can instead hold sugar over a low temperature for a longer period of time," she said.

Candy makers will be able to use a predictable time-temperature relationship, as the dairy industry does in milk pasteurization, to achieve better results, she said.

Schmidt and graduate student Joo Won Lee didn't intend to turn an established rule of food science on its head. But they began to suspect that something was amiss when they couldn't get a constant melting point for sucrose in the work that they were doing.

"In the literature, the melting point for sucrose varies widely, but scientists have always blamed these differences on impurities and instrumentation differences. However, there are certain things you'd expect to see if those factors were causing the variations, and we weren't seeing them," Schmidt said.

The scientists determined that the melting point of sugar was heating-rate dependent.

"We saw different results depending on how quickly we heated the sucrose. That led us to believe that molecules were beginning to break down as part of a kinetic process," she said.

Schmidt said a true or thermodynamic melting material, which melts at a consistent, repeatable temperature, retains its chemical identity when transitioning from the solid to the liquid state. She and Lee used high-performance liquid chromatography to see if sucrose was sucrose both before and after "melting." It wasn't.

"As soon as we detected melting, decomposition components of sucrose started showing up," she said.

To distinguish "melting" caused by decomposition from thermodynamic melting, the researchers have coined a new name -- "apparent melting." Schmidt and her colleagues have shown that glucose and fructose are also apparent melting materials.

Another of Schmidt's doctoral students is investigating which other food and pharmaceutical materials are apparent melters. She says the list is growing every day.

Having disposed of one food science mystery, Schmidt plans to devote time to others. For instance, staling intrigues her. "We could ship a lot more food around the world if we could stabilize it, keep it from getting stale," she said.

Or there's hydrate formation, which can make drink mixes clumpy if they're open for a while. "We've observed the results -- clumping under conditions of low relative humidity -- but we really don't know why it happens," she noted.

Schmidt said that new instruments are making it possible to probe some of the processes scientists have taken for granted in a way they couldn't do before.

Four studies describing Schmidt's research have been published in recent issues of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Co-authors of the first, third, and fourth articles are Joo Won Lee of the U of I and Leonard C. Thomas of DSC Solutions. Joo Won Lee, John Jerrell, Hao Feng, and Keith Cadwallader, all of the U of I, and Leonard C. Thomas of DSC Solutions co-authored the second article.

Ancient Glacial Melting Shows That Small Amount of Subsurface Warming Can Trigger Rapid Collapse of Ice Shelves

Greenland Ice Sheet Icebergs Icebergs spilling out of Jakobshavn Fiord from the Greenland Ice Sheet, seen on the horizon. (Credit: Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)

Science Daily— An analysis of prehistoric "Heinrich events" that happened many thousands of years ago, creating mass discharges of icebergs into the North Atlantic Ocean, make it clear that very small amounts of subsurface warming of water can trigger a rapid collapse of ice shelves.

The findings, to be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide historical evidence that warming of water by 3-4 degrees was enough to trigger these huge, episodic discharges of ice from the Laurentide Ice Sheet in what is now Canada.

The results are important, researchers say, due to concerns that warmer water could cause a comparatively fast collapse of ice shelves in Antarctica or Greenland, increasing the flow of ice into the ocean and raising sea levels. One of the most vulnerable areas, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, would raise global sea level by about 11 feet if it were all to melt.

"We don't know whether or not water will warm enough to cause this type of phenomenon," said Shaun Marcott, a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University and lead author of the report. "But it would be a serious concern if it did, and this demonstrates that melting of this type has occurred before."

If water were to warm by about 2 degrees under the ice shelves that are found along the edges of much of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Marcott said, it might greatly increase the rate of melting to more than 30 feet a year. This could cause many of the ice shelves to melt in less than a century, he said, and is probably the most likely mechanism that could create such rapid changes of the ice sheet.

To find previous examples of such events, scientists reconstructed past ocean temperatures and used computer simulations to re-create what probably happened at various times during Heinrich events of the distant past. It had been known for some time that such events were associated with major climate changes, but less clear whether the events were a reaction to climate change or helped to cause them.

"There is now better evidence that the climate was getting colder prior to the Heinrich events, causing surface ocean waters to cool but actually causing warmer water in the subsurface," Marcott said. "We tried to demonstrate how this warmer water, at depth, caused the base of the ice shelf to warm and collapse, triggering the Heinrich events."

A present-day concern, Marcott said, is that ocean currents could shift and change direction even before overall ocean water had warmed a significant amount. If currents shifted and warmer water was directed toward ice shelves, more rapid melting might begin, he said.

This study was done by scientists from OSU, the University of Wisconsin, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. The lead author was Shaun Marcott, a postdoctoral researcher at OSU. The studies were supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA and other agencies.