April 16, 2003
A Quarterly Summary of Caltech Research and Notable Events
LIGO Begins Quest to Detect Gravitational Waves
Armed with one of the most advanced scientific instruments of all time, physicists are now intently watching the universe for the first evidence of gravitational waves. A new generation of detectors, led by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), is coming into operation and promises sensitivities that will be capable of detecting a variety of catastrophic events, such as the gravitational collapse of stars or the coalescence of compact binary systems.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12367.html April 7
Go Figure! Ice-Skating Team Wins Pacific Regional Championship
On a campus best known for rocket scientists, one wouldn't normally expect to find a championship ice-skating team. But four young Caltech students claimed first-place honors at the Pacific Regional Collegiate Figure Skating Competition.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12363.html March 27
Chess Team Wins National Championship
Caltech's chess team has won the U.S. Amateur Team Chess Championship, which was played on the U.S. Chess Federation's online server.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12361.html March 24
Caltech Coders Are North American Region Champs
Wags call the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest the "geek Olympics," but to the three undergraduates who placed 13th overall to become the North American Region Champions, the phrase is a badge of honor.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12358.html March 19
New Insights Into Mysterious Gamma-Ray Bursts
Scientists "arriving quickly on the scene" of an October 4 gamma-ray burst have announced that their rapid accumulation of data has provided new insights about this exotic astrophysical phenomenon. The researchers have seen, for the first time, ongoing energizing of the burst afterglow for more than half an hour after the initial explosion.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12359.html March 19
"Waveguide" to Bypass Diffraction Limits for New Optical Devices
Caltech researchers have devised a fundamentally new approach for nanoscale optical devices in which the problem of light diffraction is no longer a barrier.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12360.html March 19
Computer Scientists Develop FAST Protocol to Speed Up Internet
Caltech computer scientists have developed a new data transfer protocol for the Internet fast enough to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12356.html March 18
Author Reveals Her "Gut Feelings"
Merrill Joan Gerber, a lecturer in creative writing at Caltech, has written her 24th book--Gut Feelings: A Writer's Truths and Minute Inventions, a collection of highly personal essays and powerful tales that verge on memoir. In these writings Gerber reveals the truths and inventions of a writer's vision, and the use of life as the raw material of art. Her personal essays range widely, from the mysteries of love and marriage to painful encounters with suicides and family deaths.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12350.html March 5
Words Do Matter
Every field of science has its own language, every scientist a way of speaking that, unless you are in the know, is packed with jargon and mystery. The Institute's Words Matter project is intended to foster literary activities at Caltech, cultivate students' interest in writing in its varied forms, and help undergraduates appreciate the many ways in which words, indeed, matter.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~words/
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12351.html March 5
All 200 Varsity Athletes Named Sports Ethics Fellows
"I don't think I've ever observed an athletic program that better defines sports' most virtuous qualities than that of Caltech," said Daniel E. Doyle, Jr., founder and executive director of the Institute for International Sport. "I met a group of young people who face formidable academic pressure and who value their sports experience for reasons that transcend winning. . ."
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12346.html February 28
Antarctic Landmarks Named After Caltech Experts
There aren't too many living individuals who can go to the mall and buy a globe with their name printed on it, but Caltech just added two. Barclay Kamb and Hermann Engelhardt, longtime researchers on the workings of the Antarctic ice streams, have been honored by the American Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN) with the renaming of two features near the gigantic Ross Ice Shelf, a Texas-sized mass of floating ice. Hereafter, the feature informally called "ice stream C" will bear the formal name Kamb Ice Stream, and "ice ridge BC" will be formally named the Engelhardt Ice Ridge.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12348.html February 28
Martian Polar Caps Are Almost Entirely Water Ice
For future Martian astronauts, finding a plentiful water supply may be as simple as grabbing an ice pick and getting to work. Caltech planetary scientists now think that the Martian polar ice caps are made almost entirely of water ice--with just a smattering of frozen carbon dioxide, or "dry ice," at the surface.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12342.html February 13
Caltech Historian Studies Trust in Financial Markets
If studying the capital markets of France in the 1790s sounds like some arcane, dusty research, it is, laughs Philip Hoffman, an economic historian. "We spend most of our time in damp archives, pouring over handwritten ledgers that are more than 200 years old." But his research into how trust evolves and its implications on long-term financial growth has an eerie resonance with today's times, he says, "due to such events as the violation of trust due to Enron, the Arthur Andersen auditing mess, and the like."
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12339.html February 12
Clean Water: The Oil of the 21st Century
Water is a basic necessity of life, of course, for all living things. In the developing world, lack of access to safe drinking water is a major cause of illness and death, especially in children. In the arid southwestern United States, water resources are coming under increasing pressure as a result of population growth and the competing needs of cities, farms, and sensitive ecosystems. Janet Hering, professor of environmental science and engineering, conducts research into what factors affect water quality, the technologies for improving it, and the possible strategies for meeting future water-supply needs.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12340.html February 12
Researchers Find Human Longevity Marker
In a study of nonrelated people who have lived for a century or more, Caltech's Giuseppe Attardi and colleagues found that a group of centenarians was five times more likely than the general population to have the same mutation in their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). That mutation, the researchers suggest, may provide a survival advantage by speeding mtDNA replication, thereby replacing that portion of mtDNA which has been battered by the ravages of aging.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12341.html February 12
Measuring Subatomic Shrapnel
They stream out of deep space, traveling at speeds close to that of light, constantly bombarding Earth and literally passing through our bodies: subatomic shrapnel, as one magazine described them, energetic bits of matter known as cosmic rays. Students and teachers have teamed up with Caltech physicist Robert McKeown to create a networked system of 30 Southern California high schools to, in a sense, "catch" these ultrahigh-energy rays on their own campuses. The project is called the California High School Cosmic-Ray Observatory (CHICOS). http://www.chicos.caltech.edu/
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12334.html January 27
Fuel Cells: Powering Progress in the 21st Century
Continuing tensions in the Middle East make it clear that we face long-term challenges in meeting our ever-increasing energy demands, while still maintaining the quality of our natural environment and ensuring our national security. Fuel cells offer a possible solution. The most common type of fuel cell--the kind that powers prototype cars--is a polymer electrolyte fuel, but Caltech's Sossina M. Haile is taking a different tack, developing an alternative type of fuel cell based on a so-called solid acid.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12335.html January 27
Force of Blood Flow Crucial to Embryonic Heart Development
In a triumph of bioengineering, Caltech researchers have imaged the blood flow inside the heart of a growing embryonic zebrafish. The results demonstrate for the first time that the very action of high-velocity blood flowing over cardiac tissue is an important factor in the proper development of the heart--a result that could have profound implications for future surgical techniques and even for genetic engineering.
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12330.html January 9
