Mystery deepens around dark core in cosmic collision |  |
- Mystery deepens around dark core in cosmic collision
- UT Engineering faculty receive almost $1.4 million in NSF CAREER awards
- World's best measurement of W boson mass points to Higgs mass and tests Standard Model
- AGU: Gasoline worse than diesel when it comes to some types of air pollution
- Notre Dame's Bengal Bouts participants aid in concussion research
- Boys' cynicism towards school increases at upper secondary school
- Cardiovascular societies release heart valve replacement credentialing recommendations
- OU graduate student wins national physics award
| Mystery deepens around dark core in cosmic collision Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) SAN FRANCISCO -- Five years ago, San Francisco State researcher Andisheh Mahdavi and his colleagues observed an unexpected dark core at the center of Abell 520, a cosmic train wreck of galaxy clusters. With new space-based telescope observations, they have confirmed that the core really does exist. But they are no closer to explaining why it is there. When galaxy clusters crash into each other, the bright matter of galaxies sticks together with the mysterious substance called dark matter, leaving behind hot gases. Or at least that is what astronomers have observed in similar cosmic wrecks like the Bullet Cluster. But Myungkook James Jee of the University of California, Davis, Mahdavi and their colleagues say Abell 520 has a definite -- but bewildering -- dark matter core that is completely separated from its usual bright partners. We tried to come up with models that would explain this, but there were not any good models, said Mahdavi, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. There is no way that you could have cold dark matter piling up like this in a region with so few galaxies. The researchers first identified the dark core in 2007 using a technique called gravitational lensing. Even though the dark core isn't visible, astronomers can get an idea of its location and size by observing how light from galaxies behind it is distorted by the core's gravitational pull. We cannot see dark matter because it does not radiate. What we see is the 'effect' of dark matter, Jee explained. It's similar to how we cannot see wind directly, but we can tell the presence of wind by looking at the vibration of leaves on a tree. In this case, the galaxies behind the dark core are the tree leaves. But the 2007 observations came in part from ground-based telescopes, which can detect only a few of the galaxies lurking behind Abell 520. The Earth's atmosphere also distorts the view from the ground, like looking at a tree... http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| UT Engineering faculty receive almost $1.4 million in NSF CAREER awards Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Four faculty members from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have been selected to receive Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards totaling nearly $1.4 million from the National Science Foundation. The awards are the most prestigious offered by the foundation's CAREER Program, and provide up to five years of funding to junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. The four faculty members from the Cockrell School who received awards are: Ying Xu, assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, was awarded for her project Emission and Transport of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) in Indoor Environments. PBDEs are used extensively in the U.S. as flame retardants in consumer products and building materials. The goal of Xu's research is to understand the fundamental mechanisms governing emission and transport of PBDEs. Miryung Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was awarded for her work on Analysis and Automation of Systematic Software Modifications. Kim's research focuses on software engineering, specifically on software evolution. Her research group, Software Evolution and Analysis Laboratory (SEAL), develops innovative program analysis algorithms and software development tools to make it easier to develop and maintain large-scale software systems. SEAL's mission is to improve programmer productivity and program correctness. Kim studies software development practices through user studies with professional software engineers and through rigorous empirical analysis of open source project data. Mikhail Belkin, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was awarded for his work on Terahertz... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| World's best measurement of W boson mass points to Higgs mass and tests Standard Model Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Batavia, Ill. -- The world's most precise measurement of the mass of the W boson, one of nature's elementary particles, has been achieved by scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The new measurement is an important, independent constraint of the mass of the theorized Higgs boson. It also provides a rigorous test of the Standard Model that serves as the blueprint for our world, detailing the properties of the building blocks of matter and how they interact. The Higgs boson is the last undiscovered component of the Standard Model and theorized to give all other particles their masses. Scientists employ two techniques to find the hiding place of the Higgs particle: the direct production of Higgs particles and precision measurements of other particles and forces that could be influenced by the existence of Higgs particles. The new measurement of the W boson mass falls into the precision category. The CDF collaboration measured the W boson mass to be 80387 +/- 19 MeV/c2. The DZero collaboration measured the particle's mass to be 80375 +-23 MeV/c2. The two new measurements, along with the addition of previous data from the earliest operation of the Tevatron, combine to produce a measurement of 80387 +- 17 MeV/c2, which has a precision of 0.02 percent. These ultra-precise, rigorous measurements took up to five years for the collaborations to complete independently. The collaborations measured the particle's mass in six different ways, which all match and combine for a result that is twice as precise as the previous measurement. The results were presented at seminars at Fermilab over the past two weeks by physicists Ashutosh Kotwal from Duke University and Jan Stark from the Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie in Grenoble, France. This measurement illustrates the great contributions that the Tevatron has made and continues to make with... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| AGU: Gasoline worse than diesel when it comes to some types of air pollution Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) WASHINGTON -- The exhaust fumes from gasoline vehicles contribute more to the production of a specific type of air pollution-secondary organic aerosols (SOA)-than those from diesel vehicles, according to a new study by scientists from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) and other colleagues. The surprising result we found was that it wasn't diesel engines that were contributing the most to the organic aerosols in LA, said CIRES research scientist Roya Bahreini, who led the study and also works at NOAA's ESRL. This was contrary to what the scientific community expected. SOAs are tiny particles that are formed in air and make up typically 40 percent to 60 percent of the aerosol mass in urban environments. This is important because fine-particle pollution can cause human health effects, such as heart or respiratory problems. Due to the harmful nature of these particles and the fact that they can also impact the climate and can reduce visibility, scientists want to understand how they form, Bahreini said. Researchers had already established that SOAs could be formed from gases released by gasoline engines, diesel engines, and natural sources-biogenic agents from plants and trees-but they had not determined which of these sources were the most important, she said. We needed to do the study in a location where we could separate the contribution from vehicles from that of natural emissions from vegetation, Bahreini said. Los Angeles proved to be an ideal location. Flanked by an ocean on one side and by mountains to the north and the east, it is, in terms of air circulation, relatively isolated, Bahreini said. At this location, the scientists made three weekday and three weekend flights with the NOAA P3 research aircraft, which hosted an arsenal of instruments designed to measure different aspects of air pollution. Each instrument tells a story... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Notre Dame's Bengal Bouts participants aid in concussion research Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The University of Notre Dame's annual Bengal Bouts student boxing tournament's longtime mantra is Strong Bodies Fight that Weak Bodies May Be Nourished. The unusual mantra is fitting for an unusual competition whose ticket sales proceeds benefit Holy Cross Missions in Bangladesh, part of the ministry of the Congregation for the Holy Cross, Notre Dame's founding religious community. However, this year a large number of Bengal Bouts boxers are going even further to do good by volunteering to participate in post-bout concussion testing. James Moriarty, the University's chief sports medicine physician, notes that boxers are being asked to undergo groundbreaking post-bout concussion testing. His experience with previous years' tournaments and with the Baraka Bouts Women's tournament last fall, suggested that boxers had experienced concussive head injury that was not uncovered during the current recommend clinical testing for concussions. In order to insure the continued safety and longevity of the 82-year-old Notre Dame tradition, the physician developed an innovative concussion testing study which has a number of components. One aspect of the research study revolves around X2 Impact concussion mouth guards and headbands. X2 Impact is a company that produces and researches devices that measure acceleration and rotation in the head during impact. The mouth guards are custom-molded and the headbands fit under the boxing helmets. The devices use nanotechnology accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure and transmit linear and rotational directional g-forces data via cloud computing. From this data, Moriarity and his research team can determine how much force is transmitted to the head with a punch. Another study component involves the pioneering Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) research of Mayland Chang, a researcher in Notre Dame's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Chang points out that an important factor in the pathology of... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Boys' cynicism towards school increases at upper secondary school Posted: 01 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) According to a recent study, the negative and cynical attitude of boys towards school increases dramatically as they advance in their upper secondary studies. Boys are very enthusiastic about their studies at the start of upper secondary school, but this initial enthusiasm is not sustained throughout the entire three to four years of studies. Their cynicism easily transforms into a negative attitude toward the entire society, thus increasing the risk of marginalisation. This information was gained through a longitudinal youth study that was partly funded by the Academy of Finland. Boys experience a strong crisis concerning a sense of disconnectedness. The school does not offer the boys suitable challenges and so they become bored and begin to turn away from the upper secondary school, describes Professor Katariina Salmela-Aro, who is leading the study. Girls, on the other hand, experience a feeling of inadequacy in upper secondary school, which may lead to depression later in life. The pivotal factor causing stress in the lives of youth is school. All stress is not, however, detrimental for youth; rather, it teaches them that challenges are a part of life. Effective stress management and preparedness towards setbacks build up essential experiences of success for young people. Problems arise when the stress experienced by boys turns into cynicism and, in girls, a sense of inadequacy. Highly functioning social networks and a supportive developmental environment further advance positive growth in children and adolescents and reduce the risk of vulnerability. According to Salmela-Aro, school-related exhaustion manifests differently in boys and girls, and it may also be caused by the particular educational track selected by a young person. Boys and girls react differently to the challenges of upper secondary and vocational schooling. For example, over the course of studies in the vocational track, there is a clear decline in the... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Cardiovascular societies release heart valve replacement credentialing recommendations Posted: 01 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Four leading heart organizations representing cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons released initial recommendations today for creating and maintaining transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) programs. The recommendations are aimed at ensuring optimal care for patients with aortic stenosis, a form of valvular heart disease, as use of the new TAVR procedure grows. Since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of TAVR in November 2011, interest in the procedure has quickly grown among cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons as well as patients, prompting efforts by professional medical societies to identify institutional and physician credentialing criteria for performing the procedure. The recommendations published today represent a joint collaboration of cardiovascular specialty societies, including the American College of Cardiology Foundation (ACCF), the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI), the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) and the Society for Thoracic Surgeons (STS). TAVR is a minimally invasive procedure found by the FDA to be reasonably safe and effective in the treatment of patients with severe aortic stenosis who cannot undergo surgery and have the absence of comorbidities as described in the FDA label. Prior to the availability of TAVR, these patients had few, if any, treatment options for aortic stenosis, which can lead to heart failure and death. During TAVR, physicians use a catheter to thread the replacement valve from a blood vessel in the groin to the heart's diseased aortic valve, which is then replaced with the new valve. As new technologies begin to be incorporated into cardiovascular practice, it is the responsibility of the medical societies to work together to develop standards for optimal patient care, said Carl Tommaso, M.D., chair of the document writing committee and medical director of the cardiac catheterization... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| OU graduate student wins national physics award Posted: 01 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A University of Oklahoma graduate student is the first recipient of a national award from the American Physical Society for outstanding dissertation in theoretical particle physics. Andre Lessa attended OU on the Brazil CAPES Fulbright Fellowship from 2008 to 2011. The APS J.J. and Noriko Sakurai Dissertation Award in Theoretical Particle Physics recognizes exceptional young scientists who have performed original doctoral thesis work of outstanding scientific quality and achievement in the area of theoretical particle physics. Lessa will present results from his thesis at a special awards session of the spring APS meeting in Atlanta, Ga. on April 3. Lessa performed work on his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Howard Baer, Homer L. Dodge Professor of High Energy Physics. During his time at OU, Lessa published 13 scholarly articles on aspects of particle physics and cosmology in various international journals. He defended his thesis in July 2011 and graduated from OU in August 2011. Most in the physics community believe dark matter or the dominant form of matter that fills the universe is comprised of weakly interacting massive particles or WIMP particles. Searches for WIMPS include the IceCube neutrino telescope located at the South Pole, space spaced antimatter and gamma-ray detections, noble liquid detectors located a mile or more deep underground, and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Lessa's thesis explores dark matter as a mixture of two different particles: the axion, which is predicted by an elegant solution (Peccei-Quinn or PQ symmetry) to a vexing problem in nuclear physics known as the strong CP problem and the lightest particle of supersymmetry (LSP) theories. The dark matter that arises out of just PQ symmetry or just supersymmetry (SUSY) seems beset by problems. By including both PQ and SUSY in his thesis, a much more intricate picture of dark matter emerges. Lessa calculates production rates... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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