Tune in to 60 Minutes this Sunday. Lesley Stahl reports on Jack Horner, the Montana State University paleontologist, and the work he has done with NC State paleontologist Mary Schweitzer. She’s the researcher who has attracted attention for her discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur fossils.
Wired magazine wrote about Schweitzer earlier this year, and we wrote about her in a 2005 cover story.
h/t to @NCStateNews
Who would have thought that one of the biggest complaints firefighters have about their job is the gloves? It’s a problem researchers in the College of Textiles are trying to solve with the help of a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant. News Services reports that they’ll be working to make gloves “with less bulk and greater hand dexterity” without sacrificing fire protection.
“Firefighters frequently say that bulky gloves impede their ability to pick up things and turn knobs – which can be critical in emergency situations,” says Dr. Roger Barker, professor of textile engineering chemistry and science, director of the Textile Protection and Comfort Center (T-PACC), and lead researcher on the study. “There have been improvements in fabrics over the years. What we need now are advances in the functional design of the glove itself, to go along with the advances in glove materials.”
They’ll be testing the material on the PyroHands Fire Test System, which “is part of a sophisticated facility that features computerized, animated analysis of the response of heat sensors to permit the study of garment and body reaction to intense heat and flames.”
NC State News Services posted a couple of YouTube clips recently that give you an idea of the breadth of work done here. The first, above, is from a forensics discovery and recovery course that’s part of the N.C. Program for Forensic Science, which trains state law enforcement officers and medical examiners. Warning: There is an image of a dead pig in the clip.
The second looks at the work of forestry doctoral student Chris Hopkins ’05 MR, who’s part of a group here looking at ways to turn woodchips into a substitute for coal. Pretty cool stuff!
NC State students and faculty have made the news recently with their work. First, a Discovery Channel clip on a lunar rover developed by NC State engineering students, who modeled their design after a tumbleweed (unfortunately there’s no embed code for the clip). It’s a neat segment, and you get to see their prototype in action.
Next, a Salon.com story on a recent study by political science professor Steve Greene that found that “parenthood makes moms more liberal and dads more conservative.” men become more conservative when they become fathers but women become more liberal when they become mothers.
“Basically, women with children in the home were more liberal on social welfare attitudes, and attitudes about the Iraq War, than women without children at home,” Greene says, “which is a very different understanding of the politics of mothers than captured by the ‘Security Mom’ label popular in much media coverage. But men with kids are more conservative on social welfare issues than men without kids.” Men with kids did not differ from men without kids in their attitudes towards Iraq.
Thanks to NC State News Services for pointing us to these.
Editor’s note: Because of a coding problem, we moved the WRAL interviews off the front page. You can find them after the jump.
Last weekend’s Jimmy V Classic raised about $500,000 for cancer research and attracted more than 11,000 people to the Lonnie Poole Golf Course on Centennial Campus. The N&O has a small gallery of photos, and WRAL, which produced the Sidney Lowe ’83 and Terry Gannon ’85 videos after the jump, has a story and interviewed many of the participants, including Arnold Palmer, Rod Brind’Amour, Bucky Waters ’58, Erik Cole and Bob Valvano. An interview with is after the jump. You can read about the Jimmy V-NC State Cancer Therapeutics Training Program here. (more…)
Today, we were pointed to two neat articles in the press that feature NC State experts and make for good Friday afternoon reading. . .
The first, from CNN, is about an expected battle in Congress over buying American when purchasing uniforms for the military. Producers visited the College of Textiles, where materials were tested, and talked with Roger Barker, a professor who studies the thermal protective performance of fabrics and clothing. If they ever put up the video from the piece, we’ll post it.
And from Wine Spectator, an article on the effort at NC State to decode the brettanomyces genome.
Brettanomyces, aka brett, can be a winemaker’s worst enemy. A yeast species that contaminates wine and corrupts the entire fermentation process, brettanomyces can lead to flavors best described as sweaty horse, manure, Band-Aid and burnt plastic. At lower levels, some find it pleasantly spicy, with cedar and earth undertones. But higher concentrations ruin a wine completely.
NC State News Services has posted two interesting research stories on the university’s home page. The first, which went up today, describes robotic bats that engineers are developing to use “for everything from indoor surveillance to exploring collapsed buildings.”
They’re modeling micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) after bats, which offer increased maneuverability and performance. “We are trying to mimic nature as closely as possible because it is very efficient,” Stefan Seelecke, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, told News Services. They have already assembled the skeleton (which weighs less than 6 grams) and are completing the joints, muscular system and wing membrane.
Over in the College of Veterinary Medicine, efforts to compare human and canine tumors to narrow the search for genes involved in human brain cancer have paid off. Researchers have found that a gene believed to be involved in meningiomas — tumors that grow between the brain and the skull — is not as key to tumor formation as previously thought. Genomics professor Matthew Breen talks about studying cancer in dogs and humans:
“By looking at tumors seen in both humans and dogs we have a simple way to narrow the search: we compare the affected areas of a human chromosome with related areas on dog chromosomes. This works because dogs and humans are genetically similar and both get the same kinds of cancers. While we share much of our genetic material, the DNA of a dog is organized differently to our own and this makes it possible to isolate smaller ’shared’ regions of genetic data rather than looking at an entire chromosome.”
(Photograph by Gheorghe Bunget, NC State)
News
The National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators will honor the late Kay Yow with its 2009 NACWAA Award of Distinction. . . The New York Giants sign former NC State running back Andre Brown ’09. . . . Linebacker Nate Irving has successful surgery after suffering broken leg, collapsed lung in car accident. . . . The practice tee at the Lonnie Pool Golf Course opens to the public. . . . Alumnus chosen as president-elect of the N.C. Bar Association. . . . Former Wolfpack baseball player Aaron Bates ’07 making climb to the majors. . . . Biology professor Rob Dunn talks about coextinction of Earth’s small species.
Research
Study shows that moderate-to-low exposure to the commonly used chemical bisphenol-A can affect reproductive health. . . . Researchers discover that binding copper to loose prion proteins might help prevent prion-related diseases like Cruetzfeldt-Jakob or Alzheimers. . . . New computer model can help doctors predict when to put diabetes patients on therapy to prevent heart disease and stroke. . . . Researchers get $1.2 million grant from National Science Foundation to study video games and create one that boosts memory, thinking skills in elderly.
NC State releases additional documents related to the Mary Easley hiring. . . . Wired magazine has feature article on an NC State researcher’s dinosaur discoveries. . . . NCSU Libraries launches online reference resource, NC Architects & Builders. . . . Alumnus, pioneer landscape architect who designed the Brickyard starts blogging. . . . The Caldwell Program’s month-long trip to China draws to a close. . . . NC State magazine cover project digs into the ’80s.
And don’t forget to visit our Photo of the Day page!
NC State will receive $5.9 million from the U.S. Department of Energy for nuclear-energy research. . . . Two more NC State students have been diagnosed with H1N1. . . . The Wilmington Star-News catches up with Russell Wilson, who’s playing baseball this summer for the Gaston Grizzlies. . . . State law enforcement agencies hold terrorism training exercise on campus. . . . Gov. Beverly Perdue appoints Randall C. “Randy” Ramsey, founder of Jarrett Bay Yacht Sales, and reappoints E. Norris Tolson ’62, president and CEO of the N.C. Biotechnology Center, to the NC State Board of Trustees.
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