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Boulder Magazine Winter/Spring 2009-2010 Boulder Science What Are They Doing in There? Brainy scientists are working on hundreds of landmark research projects inside laboratories all over Boulder County. by Michael Whiteman-Jones Many experts consider scientific research to be Boulder County’s most important industry, in terms of its impact on the local economy and the ways in which it affects lives worldwide. “Without the scientists and all the people who work in related industries, Boulder would be one-third the size it is, and we would have no economy—we’d be totally a town of tourists and students,” says Susan Graf, president of the Boulder Chamber. But it’s not always exactly clear what those scientists are building inside their laboratories, which is why Boulder Magazine decided to pull back the veil and take a peek at a few local projects. Some of the research can be controversial in Boulder’s left-leaning political culture, especially if it receives part or all of its funding from the United States Department of Defense. But far more often than not, the research is not directly related to warfare; it’s designed to further our understanding of the world and improve the quality of our lives.
Although a lot of federal money flows into all the agencies—about $100 million a year at NIST alone—CU-Boulder remains the county’s single biggest player in the research market. Sponsored research awards at CU-Boulder have risen about 67 percent over the last decade, to nearly $340 million in fiscal 2009 from about $204 million in 1999. Last year’s increase in research funding was the largest ever—nearly $60 million—and not because there’s more money available. Of the awards CU Boulder received in 2009, only about 4 percent came from federal stimulus funds. But that’s just the money side of the research picture in Boulder County. What’s really interesting is the science itself. And while we might never know for sure what our researchers are building in their laboratories, here are a handful of projects we think are worth reading about.
Mission to Mars CU-Boulder received the largest research grant in its history last year to study the Martian atmosphere and help determine if the red planet ever harbored life. NASA chose CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) to lead a $485-million orbiting space mission to Mars. The goal of the mission is to try to find out how Mars’ atmosphere changed over the last several billion years and how that affected the planet’s evolution. The mission, set to launch in 2013, is known as the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, or MAVEN for short. LASP will lead a team of scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lockheed Martin and the University of California-Berkeley in the design, construction and operation of the spacecraft. The remote-controlled spacecraft will house equipment that, among other things, should help scientists determine what happened to the planet’s carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water, which are essential building blocks of life. CU-Boulder is the single largest recipient of NASA research funding in the nation, receiving about $75 million for space-related studies last year alone.
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Mastering the Mind
Alice Healy’s research may not be sexy—not like laser-guidance systems or spacecraft, anyway—but it may have more long-term impact on more people’s lives than almost any other research taking place in Boulder County.
Healy, Ph.D., is a professor of distinction in CU’s psychology department who studies ways to improve learning, memory and productivity. Although much of her research is geared toward helping the Department of Defense improve soldiers’ training, her findings apply to broad areas of life, including education, industry and interpersonal communication.
During Healy’s 30-year career at CU, her research has received millions of dollars in funding from the DOD and reached dramatic conclusions that turned many of our preconceived notions about learning on their heads. For example, she says “training is specific. You can learn to perform a task, but our research shows that if you change the conditions or just the context a very small amount, you won’t be able to benefit from your training.” In fact, when people are taught a specific way to do something, they often perform more poorly on related tasks than somebody who wasn’t trained at all.
Some of Healy’s other findings show that people’s ability to learn and remember information greatly improves if they mentally associate facts with friends and family, and that most people can’t remember more than three instructions at a time, and do even worse if they’re asked to repeat them out loud. This is knowledge the parents of teenagers can take to heart.
“Do not give more than three commands at a time,” Healy says, laughing.
As a front-line researcher, Healy rarely knows how—or even if—her work is being applied, but she hopes it’s making a difference. “It really is the case that people give more credit to the hard sciences instead of the social-behavioral sciences,” she says. “That’s a shame, because we can improve the quality of life if we understand how humans function.”
Preconceived notions about how we learn and remember information are being turned on their heads by CU psychology professor Alice Healy. Photo by Michael Whiteman-Jones
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Disease Breathalyzer
A lot of people think of breath tests as bad news, but CU-Boulder physics doctoral student Michael Thorpe is developing a tool designed to detect illnesses like asthma and cancer by analyzing our breath.
Working under a joint agreement between CU-Boulder and a division of NIST, Thorpe and a team of scientists led by CU-Boulder adjoint physics professor Yun Ye have created a unique medical device that uses laser light to analyze molecules in the air we exhale. It identifies the unique rotations and frequencies—or vibrations—of a few molecules among billions that are present in each sample.
“It’s almost like listening to individual radio stations,” he says. “Every time we breathe in, we inhale a complex mixture of gases. Each time we exhale, we blow out a slightly different mixture … a rich collection of more than a thousand types of other molecules, most of which are present in trace amounts.”
The device still needs to be tested in clinical trials, but those trace particles can show that we’re ill. “Just as bad breath may indicate dental problems, excess methylamine can be used to detect liver and kidney disease,” Ye explains. “Ammonia on the breath may be a sign of renal failure, elevated acetone levels in the breath can indicate diabetes, and nitric oxide levels can be used to diagnose asthma.”
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Ultrafast Lasers
You have to think fast to keep up with CU physics professor Margaret Murnane, Ph.D. In femtoseconds and attoseconds, in fact.
In case those units of time are unfamiliar, a femtosecond is approximately one-quadrillionth of a second, an attosecond about one-quintillionth of a second. Still not clear? Well, a femtosecond is to a second what a second is to about 420 million years. An attosecond is even quicker—the amount of time it takes light to travel the distance of three hydrogen atoms.
Oh, never mind. Let’s just say that in the esoteric world of high-powered, ultra-fast laser research, Murnane is a world-class sprinter—the Usain Bolt of her field. That’s why the DOD decided to give Murnane a $3.6 million research fellowship in 2009. She was one of eight fellows selected by the DOD in a nationwide search from 150 institutions. The money will fund about five years of her work.
Much of Murnane’s work is what scientists refer to as pure research, which means it has implications that are difficult to explain or might not even be known yet. But ultrafast lasers can be used to make highly accurate next-generation microscopes that don’t need lenses, and they are useful in other areas such as creating smaller, faster computer processors and making more efficient solar photovoltaic panels. They’re also used in the rapidly growing field of nanotechnology, which is the science of controlling matter at the molecular and atomic levels to do things like build miniature machines and create new chemical compounds.
Not a person who sits still for long, Murnane also is a fellow at JILA, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NIST, and a member of CU’s physics department and the electrical and computer engineering department. She runs a joint research group with her husband, physics professor Henry Kapteyn.
Ultrafast laser research being done by CU physics professor Margaret Murnane will help scientists build more accurate microscopes and faster computers. Photo courtesy University of Colorado
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Next-generation Timekeepers
Quantum physicists Till Rosenband and Jim Bergquist are building super-accurate atomic clocks for NIST.
How accurate? Rosenband says that if you traveled the distance from the Earth to the moon and then added the space of a single atom to your trip, you’d be close to being in synch with their clocks. That means their timepieces are about 1 billion times more precise than a well-made quartz wristwatch, and would lose or gain less than 1 second of time over 1 billion years.
It’s a level of precision that boggles ordinary minds. But Bergquist says accurate timekeeping is critical to the success of many everyday tasks we take for granted, including synchronizing telecommunications networks, enabling deep-space communications and making Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) systems functional.
The clocks also have more esoteric applications, such as proving or disproving Albert Einstein’s theories about space and time, and improving Internet communications and security. They also help scientists link sophisticated telescopes in ways that give us sharper images of distant galaxies, solar systems and planets, and enable better mapping of the Earth, including tracking subtle topographical changes brought about by the shifting of the planet’s tectonic plates.
The scientists’ clocks are about 10 times more accurate than the best atomic clocks now in use in the U.S., and are so technologically advanced that they’re difficult to describe. They don’t rely on traditional gears and motors, for example, but tap the vibrations of single atoms that are suspended in special chambers and blasted with laser light.
Bergquist admits their work puzzles some people. But he says he loves it, partly because they’re helping science answer fundamental questions such as how the universe got started.
NIST scientist Jim Bergquist says more accurate atomic clocks are needed to improve telecommunications and improve Internet security. Photo © Paul Trantow/Altitude Arts
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Big Brother is Watching
You probably can’t see them, but there are four satellites in the sky above you, circling the planet twice a day and taking pictures of the entire world for the DOD’s Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.
They’ve been there since 1992, and all that data—about 8.5 gigabytes a day—is beamed backed to a computer in a building hidden at an undisclosed location at NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center in south Boulder, where it’s stored and analyzed.
But for what?
“That is pretty much the extent of the information we have available because it is pretty much a specialized DOD program,” says John Leslie, a spokesman for NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service.
Hmmm.
In other words, Leslie says, the data—much of it weather-related—is used to enhance national security and is top-secret. But he acknowledges it’s safe to assume the U.S. military finds it useful to know whether to expect rain, snow or sun at a particular time, in a particular place, and for a particular mission.
To be fair, not all the data collected by the satellites is top secret. Companies and individuals can download some of it for free from NOAA’s website, and NOAA also sells some of it, including maps and images of city lights taken at night from high above the planet.