Video Interview: Mars Phoenix Lander Ready For Liftoff

Deborah Bass, the deputy project scientist on the mission, talks about the Mars Phoenix Scout Lander's trip to find evidence of past life on the Red Planet. The lander was built by Lockheed Martin. The University of Arizona is leading the mission.

The Phoenix Mars Lander will claw into the icy soil of the Martian northern plains. The robot will investigate whether frozen water near the surface might periodically melt enough to sustain a livable environment for microbes.

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Research May Allow Thirsty Crops to Signal Farmers

Corn and potato crops may soon provide information to farmers about when they need water and how much should be delivered, thanks to a University of Colorado at Boulder invention optioned to AgriHouse Inc., a Berthoud, Colo., high-tech company.

The technology includes a tiny sensor that can be clipped to plant leaves charting their thickness, a key measure of water deficiency and accompanying stress, said Research Associate Hans-Dieter Seelig of CU-Boulder's BioServe Space Technology Center. Data from the leaves could be sent wirelessly over the Internet to computers linked to irrigation equipment, ensuring timely watering, cutting down on excessive water and energy use and potentially saving farmers in Colorado millions of dollars per year, he said.

"We think this is an exciting technology, and the implications for the agriculture industry are enormous," says Seelig. Based in large part on Seelig's 2005 CU-Boulder doctoral thesis in aerospace engineering sciences, the technology was optioned to AgriHouse in March by the University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office, giving AgriHouse the exclusive right to negotiate a license with CU within 12 months.

Richard Stoner, AgriHouse founder and president, said existing technology like soil moisture sensors used to assess a crop's water needs do not always provide an accurate picture of existing plant and field conditions. "What we are developing is a non-intrusive device that gently rests on the plants and lets them interface with the digital world," he says. "Basically, this is a device that will allow plants to talk to humans and communicate their needs, like when to water and apply fertilizer."

Stoner is the principal investigator on a $150,000 Small Business Technology Transfer research grant awarded in May by the National Science Foundation to AgriHouse to develop the new technology. Seelig is an institutional investigator on the effort. In 2006, Seelig was awarded a $10,000 proof-of-concept grant for his research from CU's Technology Transfer Office.

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When It Comes to Delinquency, Boys Exposed to More Risk

Researchers trying to understand why high school-age boys are involved in serious delinquency more often than girls have found that males are exposed to higher levels of risk factors and lower amounts of protective factors.

A new study of more than 7,800 high school sophomores from 40 suburban and rural communities in seven states examined 22 risk and protective factors associated with serious delinquency. It found that boys reported higher levels of risk and lower levels of protection for 18 of the factors than did girls. In addition, boys were twice as likely to engage in seven of the eight serious delinquent behaviors that were measured.

“Boys come into contact with risk factors in their families, school, peers and in their personal attributes more frequently and are sometimes influenced by them more strongly than are girls,” says Abigail Fagan, lead author of the study and an intervention specialist with the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group.

All of the risk and protective factors examined were significantly related to serious delinquency for both boys and girls, according to Fagan.

The students in the study came from communities with populations ranging from 1,600 to 106,000 in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Slightly more than half of the students were girls, and 79 percent were white.

Data were collected from surveys administered in school, including questions about participation in eight behaviors in the past year that are indicative of serious delinquency – being arrested, carrying a handgun, bringing a handgun to school, attacking someone with the intent to do harm, stealing a motor vehicle, selling illegal drugs, being suspended or expelled from school, and being drunk or high at school.

Being drunk or high at school was the most common self-reported offense with nearly 20 percent of the girls and 26 percent of the boys reporting such behavior. Attacking someone was the second-most-common behavior, with 11 percent of girls and 21 percent of boys reporting it. However, the overwhelming majority of teenagers said they did not engage in delinquent acts.
The 22 protective factors measured included the teens’ attachment to each of their parents, rewards for good behavior in school and social skills in dealing with other people. Risks included family conflict, low commitment to school, peer drug use and sensation seeking.

While boys experience higher levels of risk and lower protection for 18 of these factors, girls only reported higher risk for family conflict and less protection from attachment to their fathers. There were no gender differences for exposure to peer drug use and for peer rewards for delinquency.


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Federally Funded Research Targets America's Largest Potential Source of Oil

A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded project has successfully demonstrated the viability of a new technology that could prove to be the key to unlocking America's largest potential source of oil.

If ongoing research continues to confirm the technology's effectiveness, its application offers the potential to dramatically reduce costs and environmental impacts in the extraction of oil from oil shale.

America holds more than three-fourths of the world's estimated 2.6 trillion barrels of oil-in-place of oil shale resources. As much as 1.1 trillion barrels of oil equivalent is believed to be recoverable in the richest single deposit -- the Green River formation of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. That volume is almost 50 percent greater than the combined proved reserves of conventional oil in the entire Middle East, according to DOE.

The oil price collapse of the early 1980s adversely affected earlier efforts to develop this vast unconventional resource. Expectations of continued high oil prices and national energy security concerns have revived interest in developing the U.S. oil shale resource. A mature oil shale industry producing 3 million barrels per day of oil 30 years from now could provide America with direct and indirect economic benefits of as much as $40 billion per year while pressuring oil prices downward, according to one DOE study.

Oil shale contains a substance called kerogen that occurs in sedimentary rock and is thought to be a precursor to petroleum. Kerogen cannot be extracted like oil that is pumped from a reservoir. The oil shale rock must be heated to a high temperature in a process called retorting, and the liquid that results must be separated and collected, with fine particles removed. The liquid product is then upgraded to a synthetic crude oil that is ready for shipment and refining through the existing US petroleum industry infrastructure.

Previous attempts to develop U.S. oil shale resources on a large, commercial scale were costly, complicated megaprojects that entail mining huge volumes of oil shale and processing the mined shale in large, complex plants to yield an upgradeable liquid. A project managed by DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory is pursuing a lower-cost, more environmentally benign alternative to the mining megaprojects of the past. Composite Technology Development Inc. (CTD), Lafayette, Colo., is developing a technology that can heat the oil shale in situ, several thousand feet below the surface, separating the kerogen without mining the oil shale rock. If proven viable, the process could extract the petroleum-like liquid and render it mobile enough to be pumped to the surface.

CTD's project goal is to develop downhole cable heaters 2,000-5,000 feet long that can be deployed in oil shale deposits. These cable heaters would provide high power, at preferably high voltages, to heat the oil shale to about 850 degrees Celsius (1,550 degrees Fahrenheit). There are two main challenges associated with developing this technology:

• Producing electrical insulation material that is stable in the subsurface at high temperatures over time.
• Developing a cost-effective manufacturing method to fabricate the heaters.
  

In the first phase of the project, CTD developed and evaluated high-temperature ceramic-based composite insulation materials that meet the requirements of an in situ oil shale recovery process. Researchers also conducted 2,500 hours of tests of the performance of the new insulation materials in full-power, limited-length cable heater prototypes. The results: much improved insulating qualities that were stable over time when compared with commercially available products.

In the project's second phase, CTD is developing and scaling up a manufacturing process to cost-effectively produce the new-design cable heaters in lengths relevant to an oil shale recovery system.

By eliminating the mining and large-scale processing aspects of oil shale development, such in situ technology could slash its recovery cost by half or more while minimizing disturbance of the land. This bodes well for efforts to develop the world's largest liquid hydrocarbon resource and thus reduce America's dependency on oil imported from unstable regions.


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