Materials Researchers Say Rebooting Soon May Be Thing Of Past

The ferroelectric materials found in today's "smart cards" used in subway, ATM and fuel cards soon may eliminate the time-consuming booting and rebooting of computer operating systems by providing an "instant-on" capability as well as preventing losses from power outages.

Researchers supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) nanoscale interdisciplinary research team award and three Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers at Cornell University, Penn State University and Northwestern University recently added ferroelectric capability to material used in common computer transistors, a feat scientists tried to achieve for more than half a century. They reported their findings in the April 17 journal Science.

Ferroelectric materials provide low-power, high-efficiency electronic memory. Smart cards use the technology to instantly reveal and update stored information when waved before a reader. A computer with this capability could instantly provide information and other data to the user.

Researchers led by Cornell University materials scientist Darrell Schlom took strontium titanate, a normally non-ferroelectric variant of the ferroelectric material used in smart cards, and deposited it on silicon--the principal component of most semiconductors and integrated circuits--in such a way that the silicon squeezed it into a ferroelectric state.

"It's great to see fundamental research on ordered layering of materials, or epitaxial growth, under strained conditions pay off in such a practical manner, particularly as it relates to ultra-thin ferroelectrics" said Lynnette Madsen, the NSF program director responsible for the Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team award.

The result could pave the way for a next-generation of memory devices that are lower power, higher speed and more convenient to use. For everyday computer users, it could mean no more waiting for the operating system to come online or to access memory slowly from the hard drive.

"Several hybrid transistors have been proposed specifically with ferroelectrics in mind," said Schlom. "By creating a ferroelectric directly on silicon, we are bringing this possibility closer to realization."

More research is needed to achieve a ferroelectric transistor that would make "instant on" computing a reality, but having the materials in direct contact, free of intervening reaction layers, is an important step.

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Telescope Funding In Peril

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New Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents, Life Form Discovered

A new "black smoker"--an undersea mineral chimney emitting hot springs of iron-darkened water--has been discovered at 8,500-foot depths by an expedition funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore the Pacific Ocean floor off Costa Rica.

Scientists from Duke University, the Universities of New Hampshire and South Carolina, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts have named their discovery the Medusa Hydrothermal Vent Field.

The researchers chose that name to highlight the presence there of a unique pink form of the jellyfish order stauromedusae. The jellyfish resemble "the serpent-haired Medusa of Greek myth," says expedition leader Emily Klein, a geologist at Duke University.

The bell-shaped jellyfish sighted near the vents may be of a new species "because no one has seen this color before," says Karen Von Damm, a geologist at the University of New Hampshire.

According to Von Damm, stauromedusae are usually found away from high-temperature hydrothermal vents, where the fluids are a little bit cooler, not close to the vents as these are.
Aboard the Research Vessel (R/V) Atlantis, the researchers are studying ocean floor geology of the East Pacific Rise, one of the mid-ocean ridge systems where new crust is made as the earth spreads apart to release molten lava.

"Each new vent site has the potential to reveal new discoveries in interactions between hot rocks beneath the seafloor, the fluids that interact with those rocks and the oceans above, as well as a rich biosphere that depends on vent processes," says Adam Schultz, program director in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the expedition through its Ridge 2000 program. "This discovery has implications for understanding the origin of Earth's crust, its evolution over time and how living organisms adapt to extreme environmental conditions."

Jason II, a remotely-controlled robotic vehicle the scientists are using to probe the vent field, logged water temperatures of 330 degrees Celsius (626 degrees Fahrenheit) at the mouth of one of the vents. Jason II subsequently found a second vent about 100 yards away.

Von Damm said that heat-tolerant tubeworms found living on Medusa's chimneys, a type known as alvinellids, are commonplace in the equatorial Pacific and thrive on high-iron fluids. Jason also has retrieved two other types of tubeworms--tevnia and riftia--from the vent area.

In addition, the camera-studded robot, which can collect biological specimens with the aid of the mechanical arms it uses to remove rock samples, has gathered samples of mussels from the vent area.


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32-Mile Cable Installed for 1st Deep-Sea Observatory

Oceanographers have completed an important step in constructing the first deep-sea observatory off the continental United States. Workers in the multi-institution effort laid 32 miles (52 kilometers) of cable along the Monterey Bay sea floor that will provide electrical power to scientific instruments, video cameras, and robots 3,000 feet (900 meters) below the ocean surface. The link will also carry data from the instruments back to shore, for use by scientists and engineers from around the world.

The Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) observatory, due to be completed later this year, will provide ocean scientists with 24-hour-a-day access to instruments and experiments in the deep sea. The project is managed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Currently, almost all oceanographic instruments in the deep sea rely on batteries for power and store their data on hard disks or memory chips until they are brought back to the surface. With a continuous and uninterrupted power supply, instruments attached to the MARS observatory could remain on the sea floor for months or years.

"MARS represents the first step in a long-planned process to transform the way the oceans are studied," says Julie Morris, director of NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences. "Marine scientists will no longer be required to go out to the ocean for their studies. The ocean is about to come into their offices."

If something goes wrong with the instruments, scientists will know immediately, and will be able to recover or reprogram them as necessary.

Slightly thicker than a garden hose, the MARS cable is buried about three feet below the sea floor along most of its route, so it will not be disturbed by boat anchors or fishing gear.
The cable itself contains a copper electrical conductor and strands of optical fiber. The copper conductor will transmit up to 10 kilowatts of power from a shore station at Moss Landing, Calif., to instruments on the sea floor. The optical fiber will carry up to 2 gigabits per second of data from these instruments back to researchers on shore, allowing scientists to monitor and control instruments 24 hours a day, and to have an unprecedented view of how environmental conditions in the deep sea change over time.

"After five years of hard work, we are thrilled to bring the age of the Internet to the deep ocean, so we can understand, appreciate and protect the two-thirds of our planet that lies under the sea," says MBARI Director Marcia McNutt. "We are grateful for the help of our talented partners and visionary sponsors. MARS has truly been a team effort."

At the seaward end of the MARS cable is a large steel frame about 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and 15 feet (4.6 meters) on each side. This "trawl-resistant frame" will protect the electronic "guts" of the MARS observatory, which will serve as a computer network hub and electrical substation in the deep sea. The researchers hope to install these electronic components into the trawl-resistant frame in the fall of 2007.

After the electronics package is installed and tested, scientists from around the world will be able to attach their instruments to the observatory using underwater extension cords. These instruments will be carried down from the surface and plugged into the science node using MBARI's remotely operated vehicles.

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Study Says Women, Managers Differ on Career Advancement in Chemical Companies

During this Women's History Month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has released a report called It's Elemental, the results of a three-year study of women's careers in the chemical industry. The first study of its kind, the findings reveal that women and their managers have differing attitudes and perceptions about career advancement.

"While there have been some surveys of women on academic career tracks, no comprehensive work exists on women and their managers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) intensive industrial settings," says Judith Giordan, who is currently on detail from the University of Southern Mississippi as a program director for NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program. "As industry is the largest employer of these graduates, we wanted to determine and share how women can get ahead and what could hold them back from the career success they want."

One finding reveals that managers, particularly male managers, rated the ability to relocate higher than women did as a factor for career success. Whereas women rated two items as high on their list--"blowing your own horn is a key element for success and recognition" and "…to be on highly visible projects where contributions can be recognized and rewarded"--managers rated those components as lower priorities for career advancement.

Another finding was that some women still perceive sexist discrimination, which may impact their career advancement. Women who felt positive about their work environments reported lower levels of discrimination. The results indicate that top-level managers still need to develop and enforce policies and initiatives to combat sexism in the workplace.

"It's very clear from the data that women want to advance, and they're willing to do what it takes," says Ruth Fassinger, principal investigator for the project and professor and interim chair of the Department of Counseling and Personnel Services at the University of Maryland, College Park. "Women stated they want support and opportunities to get ahead. To go along with this, both the women and managers we surveyed said that mentoring is hugely important. We are conducting a follow-up study on mentoring so that we can better understand how it can be successfully structured."

Researchers compared women with their managers in five critical areas: success and advancement; workplace support and climate; mentoring; home-work intersection; and company initiatives. Each chapter includes an analysis of the data. Key points and recommendations for managers and companies are offered at the end of each chapter.

"While women are taking on leadership roles in STEM industries, the number of women in those roles and the rate at which it is happening is disappointingly slow," says Giordan. "Opportunities for the next generation of women to thrive in industrial settings will increase as younger women coming up through the pipeline are better informed and prepared."

Career development workshops are planned for women in undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral positions to help them prepare and learn from the findings. The report has been sent to senior managers at more than 50 companies.

The study was conducted by the University of Maryland, College Park, under a grant from NSF.

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Getting a Feel for the Nano World

When it comes to research at the nanoscale, vision is not necessarily an advantage. The subjects are so small, no one can see them. To encourage people with visual impairments to pursue fields in nanotechnology, educators have developed a way to craft accurate, detailed and touch-friendly models of nanoscale objects like carbon nanofibers, allowing the students to "see" those objects for the first time.

While students have learned from abstract models of chemical structures for decades, the new technique creates 3-D versions of objects as they actually are.

Developed by educators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), the models are about the size of a textbook and are formed using rapid prototyping, a process that "prints" 3-D objects. Each model is a scaled-up replica of tweaked data from a scanning electron microscope. The creators hope they will soon be able to apply the same process to data from other instruments, including the patterns of atoms revealed by atomic force microscopes.

The approach was conceived by Andrew Greenberg, education and outreach coordinator for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center on Templated Synthesis and Assembly at the Nanoscale at UW-Madison and for the university's Institute for Chemical Education. He thought of the idea during a visit to the Indiana School for the Blind, which uses 3-D models of chemical structures in the classroom.

Greenberg partnered with two collaborators from the university's Center for Biology Education: undergraduate biochemistry student Mohammed Farhoud, who is skilled with the rapid-prototyping equipment, and the center director, David Nelson.

On March 27, Greenberg and Farhoud presented their novel approach at the 233rd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

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Survey Reveals Family Ties, Traditional Activities Keep Arctic Communities Vital

A newly released survey of indigenous Arctic people indicates that an overwhelming majority of the region's native people think traditional pursuits such as hunting, boat-building and manufacturing crafts are important to their identity. Unique because it measured quality of life and involved them in data gathering, the survey also says a substantial portion engages in traditional activities in addition to working in the cash economy, according to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

"Four decades ago, as wage work rapidly became more common in the north, scientists and policymakers assumed that indigenous people would take advantage of opportunities to participate in the cash economy, abandoning harvest and traditional food processing activities," report notes.

The survey results indicate that despite lifestyle changes that have swept into northern communities as non-natives move to remote areas, traditional values still are important to native peoples, and they are willing to use their earnings in the cash economy to support those ways of life. Despite historical efforts by national governments to assimilate native peoples and encourage them to give up native traditions in favor of wage labor, nine out of 10 Inuit continue to think traditional activities are important to their identity.

The findings come from the "Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic (SLiCA)," which was produced through a partnership of indigenous peoples and researchers from the United States, Canada, Greenland, Russia, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Researchers hope the study results will provide Native organizations and local governments across the Arctic with information to help make policy decisions. As a major step toward that goal, the team is hosting an international meeting with indigenous policy makers March 22 in Anchorage, Alaska.

The survey results will be posted on the Web on March 22 at http://www.arcticlivingconditions.org/.

"In Alaska, most products of hunting, fishing and gathering do not enter the market economy. Rather, subsistence products are directly consumed by the harvesting household, given away or exchanged," the report says. "Cash plays an important role in the Alaska mixed economy, however. Money buys snow machines, gas and ammunition."

More than 7,000 interviews were conducted between 1998 and 2001 to gather the survey data. In short, the survey concludes, "it takes money to pursue traditional activities. But households with higher incomes can, and do, choose to spend income on these activities."

"Unlike previous attempts to sample and quantify information about the lives of indigenous Arctic peoples, SLiCA aims to measure the quality of life conditions in ways that Arctic residents find important," says Jack Kruse, the U.S. project team leader. "It also documents and compares living conditions among the indigenous peoples of various regions of the Arctic and improves the understanding of living conditions in ways that will benefit Arctic residents."

Kruse also noted that the International Polar Year (IPY)--a two-year, concentrated campaign of field science across a broad spectrum of disciplines which began earlier this month--provides an unmatched international framework for conducting such research by encouraging scientists to work across both national and disciplinary borders.

"I am excited to see the results of this very ambitious effort that is quintessentially the kind of work that IPY should be about, especially through its circumpolar Arctic scientific and community collaboration," says Anna Kerttula de Echave, director of the Arctic social sciences program in NSF's Office of Polar Programs.

"A key element of the project was the inclusion of indigenous people in conceptualizing the survey instrument and collecting data. This research is an excellent example of NSF's efforts to increase the participation of traditionally underrepresented groups in the sciences," she says.
NSF is the lead U.S. government agency for IPY.

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NSF, DHS Team to Address Nuclear Threats

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) have issued a joint solicitation to encourage long-term, transformational advances in nuclear detection technology.

The agencies envision the research leading to next-generation detection systems for identifying nuclear weapons, nuclear material, radiation dispersal devices and related threats, they say.

"Five NSF directorates and two offices will be participating in the initiative," says NSF program director Bruce Hamilton. "Expertise will span multiple academic disciplines, necessary for forming a comprehensive platform to guide fundamental research on domestic nuclear detection."

DNDO intends to provide $58 million over 5 years to fund the effort with proposals going to NSF for review through the agency's merit-based process. Peer-review panels will consist of experts recruited jointly by NSF and DNDO.

The funding will grant opportunities for colleges and universities that will focus on detection systems, individual sensors or other research relevant to the detection of nuclear weapons, special nuclear material, radiation dispersal devices and related threats, DHS says. The program is called the Academic Research Initiative and will foster frontier research and build the nation’s intellectual capital in nuclear sciences.

“This Academic Research Initiative is a critical element in building the nation’s intellectual capital in nuclear detection capability,” says DNDO Director Vayl Oxford. “Continued advances in science and technology are a key element in the long-term effort to protect the Nation against nuclear attacks.”


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