Latest Virginia Tech Stories
Blacksburg, Va. -- Students at Virginia Tech's Unmanned Systems Laboratory are perfecting an autonomous helicopter they hope will never be used for its intended purpose. Roughly six feet long and weighing 200 pounds, the re-engineered aircraft is designed to fly into American cities blasted by a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb.The helicopter's main mission would be to assist military investigators in the unthinkable: Enter an American city after a nuclear attack in order to detect radiation...
Poor air quality apparently affects the running times of women in marathons, according to a study by Virginia Tech civil and environmental engineer Linsey Marr.Marr's findings come from a comprehensive study that evaluated marathon race results, weather data, and air pollutant concentrations in seven marathons over a period of eight to 28 years. The top three male and female finishing times were compared with the course record and contrasted with air pollutant levels, taking high temperatures...
In a paper appearing in the Feb. 24 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, Virginia Tech Engineering Science and Mechanics Professor Hassan Aref, and his colleague Johan Roenby at the Technical University of Denmark shed new light on the chaotic motion of a solid body moving through a fluid. They claim to have discovered two basic mechanisms that lead to chaotic motion of the body as it interacts with its vortex wake. The work may lead to better understanding and control...
Math-based computer models are a powerful tool for discovering the details of complex living systems. John Tyson, professor of biology at Virginia Tech, is creating such models to discover how cells process information and make decisions."Cells receive information in the form of chemical signals, physical attachments to other cells, or radiation damage, for instance," Tyson said. "On the basis of this information, the cells must make the correct response, such as to grow and...
As researchers around the world hasten to employ nanotechnology to improve production methods for applications that range from manufacturing materials to creating new pharmaceutical drugs, a separate but equally compelling challenge exists.History has shown that previous industrial revolutions, such as those involving asbestos and chloroflurocarbons, have had some serious environmental impacts. Might nanotechnology also pose a risk?Linsey Marr and Peter Vikesland, faculty members in the Via...
New advances for the detection of cancer led by Rafael V. Davalos of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Science (SBES) are featured as the cover story in the January 19, 2010 Royal Society of Chemistry's magazine, "Lab on a Chip," the premier journal for researchers in microfluidics. http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/lc/index.aspMicrofluidics is the behavior of fluids at the microscale level. A relatively new technology, it had already shown...
Novel research on improving the simulation performance of hardware models created in a language called SystemC, often used to shorten manufacturing design cycles to improve the time it takes to bring a product to the marketplace, has garnered a best paper award at the 15th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC) for a team led by Sandeep Shukla, Virginia Tech associate professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE), and three of his students....
A team made up of mental health professionals, emergency response experts, and researchers from several universities, including Virginia Tech, has published the results of a study that shows serious emotional disturbances among children who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Category 3 storm ravaged the Gulf Coast in August 2005.The study, published in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, showed the estimated prevalence of serious...
Glaciers along the Gulf of Alaska are enriching stream and near shore marine ecosystems from a surprising source "“ ancient carbon contained in glacial runoff, researchers from four universities and the U.S. Forest Service report in the December 24, 2009, issue of the journal Nature*.In spring 2008, Eran Hood, associate professor of hydrology with the Environmental Science Program at the University of Alaska Southeast, set out to measure the nutrients that reach the gulf from five glaciated...
An unusual bowstring truss iron bridge that carried traffic across Roaring Run in Bedford County, Va. for almost 100 years is now a picturesque footbridge at the I-81 Ironto, Va. rest stop. Built in 1878, it is the oldest standing metal bridge in Virginia. In early December, a Virginia Tech undergraduate conducted a load-bearing analysis of the structure.It may have been the first such test on the bridge. "There was no documentation of a structural analysis from when the bridge was...
