Modeling
New fatigue model could lead to more durable, efficient ships
April 23, 2013 11:14 am | News | Comments
An engineer in Finland has designed a new evaluation model that allows developers to determine how fatigue sets in with various welded steel materials. By considering the differences between traditional welds and structural joining technologies and newer more advanced methods, he model allows for the development of lighter structures, and as a consequence, more energy-efficient ships.
Cells must use their brakes moderately for effective speed control
May 15, 2013 11:34 am | News | Comments
All living cells have a regulatory system similar to what can be found in today's...
Sulfate aerosols cool climate less than assumed
May 15, 2013 10:47 am | News | Comments
Sulfur dioxide has been pegged as a significant cooling element in atmospheric climate...
Computer simulations reveal the energy landscape of ion channels
May 3, 2013 11:55 am | News | Comments
Ion channels are important drug targets. A team of researchers University of Vienna...
Revising Darwin's sinking-island theory
May 13, 2013 7:41 am | by Genevieve Wanucha, Oceans at MIT | News | CommentsThe three different formations of South Pacific coral-reef islands, fringing, barrier, and atoll, have long fascinated geologists. The question of how reefs develop into these shapes over evolutionary time produced an enduring conflict between two hypotheses, one from Charles Darwin and the other from Reginald Daly. But in a recently published paper, researchers use modern measurements and computer modeling to resolve this old conundrum.
Mathematics of popping bubbles in a foam
May 10, 2013 7:42 am | News | CommentsBubble baths and soapy dishwater and the refreshing head on a beer: These are foams, beautiful yet ephemeral as the bubbles pop one by one. Now, a team of researchers has described mathematically the successive stages in the complex evolution and disappearance of foamy bubbles, a feat that could help in modeling industrial processes in which liquids mix or in the formation of solid foams such as those used to cushion bicycle helmets.
Material loss protects teeth against fatigue failure
May 1, 2013 9:07 am | News | CommentsComputer simulations conducted in Germany have shown that the reduction of natural dental wear might be the main cause for widely spread non-carius cervical lesions—the loss of enamel and dentine at the base of the crown—in our teeth. The discovery was made by examining the biomechanical behavior of teeth using finite element analysis methods typically applied to engineering problems.
Computer scientists suggest new spin on origins of evolvability
April 29, 2013 8:53 am | News | CommentsScientists have long observed that species seem to have become increasingly capable of evolving in response to changes in the environment. But computer science researchers now say that the popular explanation of competition to survive in nature may not actually be necessary for evolvability to increase.
U.S. Coast Guard accredits analytical system developed at Purdue
April 24, 2013 7:48 am | News | CommentsIn efforts to prioritize and efficiently manage the repair of boats and stations damaged by Superstorm Sandy, the U.S. Coast Guard has accredited a system called Coast Guard Search and Rescue Visual Analytics (cgSARVA) developed in collaboration with Purdue University.
Decision making in scientific peer review unraveled with modeling
April 22, 2013 11:12 am | News | CommentsA research team from Aalto University has modeled the work processes and human decision making in scientific peer review with the help of statistical physics. Their study will improve understanding of how actions of reviewers and editors during the review work correlate with the decisions to publish or reject article manuscripts.
Bad decisions arise from faulty information, not faulty brain circuits
April 16, 2013 8:11 am | News | CommentsMaking choices involves the evaluation of an accumulation of facts. If a wrong choice is made, Princeton University researchers have recently found, the problem may lie in the facts, or information, rather than the brain's decision-making process. The researchers report that erroneous decisions tend to arise from errors, or "noise," in the information coming into the brain.
Softening steel problem expands computer model applications
April 16, 2013 8:11 am | News | CommentsSandia National Laboratories researchers Lisa Deibler and Arthur Brown had a ready-made problem for their computer modeling work when they partnered with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Kansas City Plant to improve stainless steel tubing that was too hard to meet nuclear weapon requirements.
Plant protein shape puzzle solved by molecular 3D model
April 15, 2013 4:33 pm | News | CommentsResearchers from North Carolina State University believe they have solved a puzzle that has vexed science since plants first appeared on Earth. In a paper published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers provide the first 3D model of an enzyme that links a simple sugar, glucose, into long-chain cellulose, the basic building block within plant cell walls that gives plants structure.
Widely used index may have overestimated drought
April 8, 2013 6:26 pm | News | CommentsFor decades, scientists have used sophisticated instruments and computer models to predict the nature of droughts. The majority of these models have steadily predicted an increasingly frequent and severe global drought cycle. But a recent study from a team of researchers in the United State and Australia suggests that one of these widely used tools—the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI)—may be incorrect.
Thin, low Arctic clouds an important key to Greenland Ice Sheet melt
April 5, 2013 6:06 pm | News | CommentsAccording to a new study by scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), clouds over the central Greenland Ice Sheet last July were "just right" for driving surface temperatures there above the melting point. The 2012 melt illustrates the often-overlooked role that clouds play in climate change. Current models don’t do enough, says researchers, to account for their effects.
Models will enable safer deepwater oil production
April 1, 2013 11:08 am | News | CommentsRice University researchers are developing a comprehensive model that will predict how brine, oil, and gas drawn from ultradeep wells react to everything encountered on the way up to the surface and to suggest strategies to maintain the flow.
New models predict drastically greener Arctic in coming decades
March 31, 2013 6:48 pm | News | CommentsResearchers from several universities, AT&T Labs, and the American Museum of Natural History have built new models that show a widespread redistribution of Arctic vegetation. They say their findings predict a massive “greening” in the Arctic, as much as 50% in over the next few decades. This transition will help accelerate climate warming, they add.
Meeting the computing challenges of next-generation climate models
March 27, 2013 7:47 am | News | CommentsLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently hosted an international workshop that brought together top climatologists, computer scientists, and engineers from Japan and the United States to exchange ideas for the next generation of climate models as well as the hyper-performance computing environments that will be needed to process the data from those models. It was the 15th in a series of such workshops that have been taking place around the world since 1999.
New model accurately predicts 3D sand flow
March 26, 2013 7:52 am | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsResearchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a model of granular flow in three dimensions. The team found the model accurately predicts the results of granular flow experiments, including a flow configuration that has long puzzled scientists. The model may also be useful for improving the flow of drug powders, tablets, and capsules in pharmaceutical manufacturing.
How proteins read meta DNA code
March 19, 2013 10:40 am | News | CommentsThree-quarters of the DNA in evolved organisms is wrapped around proteins, forming the basic unit of DNA packaging called nucleosomes, like a thread around a spool. The problem lies in understanding how DNA can then be read by such proteins. Nowphysicists have created a model showing how proteins move along DNA, in a paper just published in EPJ E
Drug-resistant MRSA bacteria here to stay
March 18, 2013 9:07 am | by Catherine Zandonella, Office of the Dean for Research | News | CommentsThe drug-resistant bacteria known as MRSA, once confined to hospitals but now widespread in communities, will likely continue to exist in both settings as separate strains, according to a new study. Researchers at Princeton University used mathematical models to explore what will happen to community and hospital MRSA strains, which differ genetically.
Plasmonics: Model makes light work of nanocircuits
March 13, 2013 5:36 pm | News | CommentsAs computer manufacturers cram ever more processing power onto tiny chips, the connections between electronic components that measure just a few billionths of a meter across allow electrons to leak. One promising solution is to replace those electrons with photons of light. Researchers in Singapore have now developed a numerical model to simulate the performance of circuits that rely on light
The science of clouds
March 13, 2013 1:14 pm | News | CommentsClouds can both cool the planet, by acting as a shield against the sun, and warm the planet, by trapping heat. But why do clouds behave the way they do? And how will a warming planet affect the cloud cover? Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist David Romps has made it his mission to answer these questions.
Mechdyne licenses CAVE2 from University of Illinois at Chicago
March 12, 2013 9:27 am | News | CommentsMechdyne Corporation has recently announced that it has licensed the CAVE2 hybrid reality environment developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at University of Illinois at Chicago. The licensing agreement was signed in January of 2013, and continues the strong working relationship that began in 1994 when Mechdyne licensed the EVL-designed original CAVE technology.
Volcanic aerosols, not pollutants, tamped down recent Earth warming
March 1, 2013 2:38 pm | News | CommentsA research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder had been looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010. They now think the culprits are hiding in plain sight—dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide. The study results essentially exonerate Asia, including India and China, two countries that are estimated to have increased their industrial sulfur dioxide emissions by about 60% from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning.
An atlas of the human heart is drawn using statistics
February 26, 2013 10:17 am | News | CommentsResearchers at Pompeu Fabra University (Spain) have created a high resolution atlas of the heart with 3D images taken from 138 people. The study demonstrates that an average image of an organ along with its variations can be obtained for the purposes of comparing individual cases and differentiating healthy forms from pathologies.
Supercomputers journey to limits of spacetime
February 21, 2013 1:19 pm | News | CommentsResearchers have used the 3D simulation capabilities of the supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center to predict the formation of accretion disks and relativistic jets that warp and bend more than previously thought, shaped both by the extreme gravity of the black hole and by powerful magnetic forces generated by its spin. Their highly detailed models of the black hole environment contribute new knowledge to the field.
Chemistry trick kills climate controversy
February 12, 2013 7:48 am | News | CommentsVolcanoes are well known for cooling the climate. But just how much and when has been a bone of contention among historians, glaciologists, and archeologists. Now a team of atmosphere chemists, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen, has come up with a way to say for sure which historic episodes of global cooling were caused by volcanic eruptions.
New modeling approach transforms imaging technologies
February 5, 2013 12:09 pm | by Emil Venere, Purdue University | News | CommentsResearchers are improving the performance of technologies ranging from medical computed tomography scanners to digital cameras using a system of models to extract specific information from huge collections of data and then reconstructing images like a jigsaw puzzle. The new approach is called model-based iterative reconstruction, or MBIR, and it is helping to greatly reduce the noise in data, providing great clarity at lower radiation intensities.
