September 18, 2006, 8:32 PM CT

Washington University Hosts Community Forum

Helping St. Louis residents and businesses cope with commuting challenges posed by the planned reconstruction of Interstate 64 (Highway 40) is the goal of a community forum to be held 7:45 - 10:45 a.m. Sept. 22 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom (Room 310), Anheuser-Busch Hall, on Washington University's Danforth Campus.

Sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy and the Missouri Transportation Institute, the event is free and open to the public; advance registration is requested. For more information, contact Melinda Warren at (314) 935-5652; warren@@@wustl.edu; or visit: http://wc.wustl.edu.

Titled "Jobs and Community Life During the I-64 Reconstruction," the forum will explore the project's impact on communities along the highway corridor and across the Metro St. Louis region. The program begins with continental breakfast and a half-hour leadoff presentation by Peter Rahn, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation.

The audience will be invited to take part in a panel discussion led by Kurt Odenwald, County Councilman from the 5th District of St. Louis County, and two nationally known transportation experts - Genevieve Giuliano, professor and senior associate dean for research and technology at the University of Southern California; and Joseph Giglio, a senior academic specialist and executive professor at Northeastern University.........

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September 18, 2006, 8:26 PM CT

Taming Tricky Carbon Nanotubes

Based on a new theory, MIT scientists may be able to manipulate carbon nanotubes -- one of the strongest known materials and one of the trickiest to work with -- without destroying their extraordinary electrical properties.

The work is reported in the Sept. 15 issue of Physical Review Letters, the journal of the American Physical Society.

Carbon nanotubes -- cylindrical carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair -- have properties that make them potentially useful in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and reinforcing composite materials. With an internal bonding structure rivaling that of another well-known form of carbon, diamonds, carbon nanotubes are extraordinarily strong and can be highly efficient electrical conductors.

The problem is working with them. There is no reliable way to arrange the tubes into a circuit, partly because growing them can result in a randomly oriented mess resembling a bowl of spaghetti.

Researchers have attached to the side walls of the tiny tubes chemical molecules that work as "handles" that allow the tubes to be assembled and manipulated. But these molecular bonds also change the tubes' structure and destroy their conductivity.

Now Young-Su Lee, an MIT graduate student in materials science and engineering, and Nicola Marzari, an associate professor in the same department, have identified a class of chemical molecules that preserve the metallic properties of carbon nanotubes and their near-perfect ability to conduct electricity with little resistance.........

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September 18, 2006, 8:18 PM CT

Many Shapes Of Shakespeare

The works of William Shakespeare have a timeless quality, but it would be a mistake to imagine these "classics" have retained their adamantine purity despite the passage of time.

As Diana Henderson, professor of literature, shows in her new book, "Collaborations With the Past: Reshaping Shakespeare Across Time and Media" (Cornell University Press), even those trying "faithfully" to represent Shakespeare cannot do so, because the context in which his works were formed is gone for good. Instead, producers, writers and filmmakers must engage in "Shake-shifting," a collaboration in which both artists and the Bard give and take.

In four case studies, Henderson highlights "the rewards, choices and responsibilities of re-creating culture across time and media, and the ingenuity and difficulties of a collaborative model of artistic process. It is as much about art in the modern world as it is about the figure, legacy and plays of William Shakespeare."

Henderson's first two case studies center on novelists -- Sir Walter Scott, who recast "Othello" as an all-white drama for "Kenilworth," and Virginia Woolf, who made use of "Cymbeline" in "Mrs. Dalloway."

The second pair examines Shakespeare in new media by exploring film versions of "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Henry V".........

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September 18, 2006, 5:44 PM CT

Island Ferries Take on Role

Ferries that connect Cape Cod and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket are taking on another role - research vessels.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) biologist Scott Gallager and colleagues have installed a package of sensors on the 235-foot freight ferry Katama to measure water quality and to photograph plankton as the ferry crisscrosses the western side of Nantucket Sound year-round, several times daily.

"Hitchhiking science on a ferry provides a terrific opportunity for us to better understand how water quality and ocean life change over time," Gallager said. The measurements for the Nantucket Sound Ferry Scientific Environmental Monitoring System began in May.

With the interest and cooperation of the Woods Hole, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority, which operates the ferry service between Cape Cod and the islands, Gallager and colleagues developed a sensor package to measure water temperature, salinity, oxygen, chlorophyll, and water clarity, and take images of plankton living in the water column. Real-time data from the sensors travel over a wireless connection to Gallager's shore-based lab, where he and WHOI colleagues Steve Lerner, Emily Miller, Andrew Girard, Andy Maffei, and collaborator Kevin Fall from Intel Corporation make them available to scientists and the public on the project Web site, http://4dgeo.whoi.edu/ferries.........

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September 18, 2006, 5:40 PM CT

Remote Island Provides Clues On Population Growth

Halfway between South America and New Zealand, in the remote South Pacific, is Rapa. This horseshoe-shaped, 13.5 square-mile island of volcanic origin, located essentially in the middle of nowhere, is "a microcosm of the world's situation," says a University of Oregon archaeologist.

Until only recently, little was known about the French Polynesian Island, where the current population is less than 500. Archaeological, linguistic and genetic data suggest that the island, like much of East Polynesia, was inhabited in a final pulse of colonization by seafaring travelers who originated from Island Southeast Asia. New research, led by the University of Oregon's Douglas Kennett, has shed fresh new light on Rapa, especially on what life may have been like for as many as 1,500 to 2,000 people who lived there before the arrival of European explorers.

Kennett's team, which included researchers from three institutions, reported in the recent issue of the journal Antiquity that Polynesians arrived on the island around A.D. 1200, much later than long assumed. The settlers spread across the island, splintering from a shoreline-based society into competing groups that built and likely defended a growing number of spectacular fortifications carved from mountaintops in the years before English explorer George Vancouver sailed by in 1791, ushering in European contact.........

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September 17, 2006, 10:31 PM CT

Demoting Southeast Asia's Forest Ox

It was one of the most famous discoveries of the 20th century. Shrouded in mystery since its recognition as a new species in 1937, the kouprey -- an ox with dramatic, curving horns -- has been an icon of Southeast Asian conservation. Feared extinct, it's been the object of perilous expeditions to the region's jungles by adventurers, scientists and journalists.

Now, in a paper published by the Journal of Zoology (London), Northwestern University biologists and a Cambodian conservationist present compelling genetic evidence that the kouprey may never have existed as a wild, natural species.

The researchers compared a published DNA sequence from the kouprey with sequences obtained from a true Cambodian wild ox, the banteng. The researchers had predicted, based on a study of kouprey anatomy, that the kouprey was a hybrid form and would show mitochondrial DNA similar to that of the banteng. The prediction was confirmed by their analysis.

The kouprey, which is now the national animal of Cambodia, may have originated as a domestic hybrid, between banteng and zebu cattle, that later became wild. ("Kouprey" means "forest ox" in the Khmer language.).

"The kouprey has acquired a rather romantic, exotic reputation," said Gary J. Galbreath, senior author of the paper and associate director of Northwestern's Program in Biological Sciences. "Some people would understandably be sad to see it dethroned as a species".........

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September 17, 2006, 10:02 PM CT

Poor Countries And Childhood Vaccine

Boston, MA -- The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) was created in 1999 with the goal of enabling even the poorest countries to provide vaccines to all children. A study by researchers associated with the Harvard Initiative for Global Health set out to measure the extent to which GAVI funding had succeeded in raising the percentage of children who received the combined diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine (DTP3) and whether the cost had been close to GAVI's original estimates of $20 per additional child immunized.

Their analysis appears in advance online in the September 21, 2006 issue of the Lancet www.thelancet.com.

GAVI is a public-private global health partnership that was created when vaccine coverage in many countries was dropping. Countries with a gross national income of less than US$1000 per capita per year and with coverage under 80% were eligible to receive financial support from GAVI to develop immunization services, including personnel, infrastructure and supplies, as part of their national health system. Decisions on how resources are spent are left to the individual countries, but continued authorization of funding is tied to meeting yearly immunization coverage targets set by the countries.........

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September 15, 2006, 1:47 PM CT

Watch Seeds In 3D

Embryonic photosynthesis leads to the production of seed-internal oxygen that is important for seed development and quality. In order to visualise seed-internal structures that could serve for oxygen storage conventional microscopic methods could not be used because they require the seed to be cut thus leading to air escape. By using holotomography at the ESRF, researchers could get the full picture of an arabidopsis seed without any structural modification.

Scientists have identified individual cells within the seed and rendered them to show their three-dimensional organisation. They have also distinguished an intercellular air network, which should represent an important circulation system for air and perhaps water during germination. However, researchers can't yet assure that this is the path the oxygen follows to "feed" the seed: "Solving this question needs a nano-method to determine the exact composition of air in the network during seed formation, but unfortunately this method is not available yet", explains Silva Lerbs-Mache, the corresponding author of the paper.

The researchers used hard X-ray-based quantitative phase tomography at ESRF beamline ID19 to obtain three-dimensional images of an arabidopsis seed. This seed is a model plant for biologists and the first one for which the genome was sequenced. "This approach is to our knowledge the only imaging technique with the penetration capacity and imaged field size suited for an investigation at sub-micrometre resolution of an optically opaque object the size of a seed" explains Peter Cloetens, first author of the paper and scientist at the ESRF. It is applied for the first time to an autonomous living system, observed without object destruction, without staining, in air, and at room temperature.........

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September 14, 2006, 8:52 PM CT

Earliest Writing In The New World Discovered

UC Riverside Anthropologist Karl Taube helped confirm the earliest writing in the New World, carved into the flat surface of a stone block in a in a remote region in southern Veracruz, Mexico. The research would be reported in the Sept. 15 issue of the journal Science.

Taube, a professor at UC Riverside for 18 years, was part of a team of scientists who traveled in the Spring to examine 62 hieroglyphic signs, 28 of them distinct elements. The team determined that they were created by the Olmec people no later than 900 BC, based on nearby art.

"This is extremely important because we never recognized this writing system, until this discovery," said Taube. "This is a whole new ball game when looking at the Olmec. We've known they have very elaborate art, and iconography, but this is the first strong indication that they had visually recorded speech".

The initial discovery was made by two archeologists from Mexico, Maria del Carmen Rodríguez and Ponciano Ortíz, but there was some debate about the significance of the find. Taube was one of the experts brought in to make a positive identification.

A full copy of the report is available through the Office of Public Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Contact: (202) 326-6440 or scipak@@@@@@@aaas.org.........

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September 14, 2006, 8:13 PM CT

Drought as the New Normal

Boulder, Colo. - Droughts are slow, tortuous emergencies that seem to sneak up on us. It doesn't have to be that way, say a climatologist and a political scientist who point to a better way.

It's perfectly possible to plan for droughts and minimize the losses they cause. In fact Australia has set in place policies that blaze a trail for the US follow to some extent, says Linda Botterill, a political scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Botterill is presenting drought policy lessons learned in Australia at the Geological Society of America conference entitled Managing Drought and Water Scarcity in Vulnerable Environments: Creating a Roadmap for Change in the United States. The meeting takes place 18-20 September at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center in Longmont, Colorado.

"In policy terms drought is no longer considered a disaster," said Botterill, of the fundamental change in perspective when Australia adopted a national drought policy in 1989. The shift made perfect sense because of Australia's climate, in which drought is always an issue.

"We have one of the most variable climates on Earth," said Botterill. "We really don't have a 'normal' climate." Therefore it's absurd to treat every drought as an emergency, she said. "It should be managed as any other risk. Farmers need to factor in that they are not always going to get needed rainfall".........

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