Cilia — short, hair-like fibers — are widely present in nature. Single-celled paramecia use one set of cilia for locomotion and another set to sweep nutrients into their oral grooves. Researchers at Brown have discovered that those two cilia sets operate at different speeds when the viscosity of the environment changes. That suggests different molecular motors driving them, which could help explain how cilia have come to be used for so many different tasks in nature.
Virtual Reality Design for Science is a co-listed class at Brown and RISD that unites artists, designers, computer scientists, and experts in scientific visualization. The goal: to create tools for immersive interaction with scientific data. Test case for the course: the flight mechanics of bats.
A massive impact on the Moon about 4 billion years ago left a 2,500-km. crater, among the largest known craters in the solar system. Smaller subsequent impacts left craters within that crater. Comparing the spectra of light reflected from the peaks of those craters may yield clues to the composition of the Moon's lower crust and mantle - and would have implications for models of how the Moon formed.
BEAST — Brown Engineering After School Team — is in its fourth semester of providing after-school instruction for Providence High School students. In "Crash Course" its current offering, students from the Brown School of Engineering help high school students build small elastic-powered cars from readily available materials. It's really all about engineering: friction, torque, power-to-weight ratios, and so forth.
A Russian mission to the Martian moon Phobos, launching in 2020, would return samples from Phobos that contain bits and pieces of Mars itself. A new study calculates how much Martian material is on the surface of Phobos and how deep it is likely to go.
Nineteen researchers from Brown and seven from MIT, together with researchers from four other institutions and seven other countries are part of NASA’s new Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI). The Brown/MIT team will focus on the environment and evolution of the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, and the two Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, helping to develop scientific goals and exploration strategies.
Two plasma mass spectrometers, acquired with funding from Brown University and the National Science Foundation, are providing researchers in the region — at Brown, and other universities, government agencies, and companies — with access to some of the most precise research equipment in the nation.
Fifth graders from Vartan Gregorian Elementary School in Fox Point were on campus on Halloween to explore geological sciences. The labs were fascinating, the scientists were great, but what really grabbed their attention was the controlled explosion of a watery volcano — an unforgettable demonstration of the powerful forces inside the Earth.
The first 90-day run of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment showed the detector to be the most sensitive in the world. The experiment did not detect dark matter particles during its initial run, but it has ruled out “possible” findings elsewhere. The research team will fine-tune the detector’s sensitivity and begin a 300-day run in 2014.
It’s a 21st-century alchemist’s dream: turning Earth’s superabundance of carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — into fuel or useful industrial chemicals. Researchers from Brown have shown that finely tuned gold nanoparticles can do the job. The key is maximizing the particles’ long edges, which are the active sites for the reaction.
