Cutting Edge

Wen Chyan won the 2008 competition for his role in developing a new method to create antimicrobial coatings for stents, catheters, and other medical devices. Winners of this year's competition will be announced Monday.

(Credit: University of North Texas)

First, 2,151 high school students registered to compete. Then 414 regional and semifinalists were chosen. Today, an elite group of just 20 finalists is gathering in New York for the highly prestigious--not to mention high stakes--Siemens Competition in Math, Science, & Technology.

The grand prize, at $100,000, could actually put one of these kids through about half of college, if they don't already have other scholarship offers flooding their mailboxes.

The 20 student presentations are scheduled for live broadcast on Sunday, December 6, at 1 p.m. EST, while the press conference announcing the winners will be held Monday, December 7, at 9:30 a.m. EST. Tune in here for the Web cast.

Wen Chyan, who won last year's competition as a 17-year-old high school senior at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science in Denton, took home the $100,000 top prize for developing a new method to create antimicrobial coatings for stents, catheters, and other medical devices. Such devices are leading culprits in the estimated 2 million annual U.S. hospital-acquired infections that lead to 100,000 deaths.

This year's finalists are presenting research into mostly medical areas as well, from a urine test for the early detection of colorectal cancer, to a novel and biologically compatible material for protein drug delivery.

Ruoyi Jiang, a senior in East Setauket, New York, is one of just six individual finalists (the other 14 are on teams). Jiang, who calls AP Physics his favorite subject, investigated the molecular basis of a prominent mechanism of chemotherapy drug resistance with his mentor, Dr. Carlos Simmerling, at Stony Brook University, where Jiang volunteers in his spare time. According to his research synopsis:

The project uses state-of-the-art computational techniques to develop a molecular understanding of how Taxol functions to kill tumor cells. Mr. Jiang's results allowed him to predict the long range effects of drug binding on the structure of that protein. The technique was validated using Taxol, showing that his computational results are consistent with experimental data. These results suggest that this method may have an important contribution in the development of a new class of pharmaceuticals.

Simmerling tells me Jiang's work is highly interdisciplinary, and that this particular research is called computational biophysics. "When you look at people who win these competitions, they typically end up being internationally known," he says. "But they are just good, creative kids. They don't know all of the stuff they need to know, because they haven't had all the classes, but they're really curious."

As you'll see on the Siemens finalists page, most of the students are bilingual and into such extracurricular activities as playing the violin, tennis, and ballroom dancing, all while juggling research and volunteering. Curious-minded indeed. Tune in this Sunday and Monday and cheer on these young science superstars.

Switzerland's Solar Impulse solar plane has finally taken flight.

The first plane designed to fly day and night without fuel, the Solar Impulse HB-SIA lifted off for the first time on Thursday at 13:11 Swiss time, reported its promoters and co-founders Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg. The plane took to the air from its home at Dubendorf Airfield, near Zurich, Switzerland, traveling 1 meter (3.2 feet) off the ground and landing successfully after flying 350 meters (1,148 feet).

The Solar Impluse lifts off for first test flight

(Credit: Solar Impulse/Stephane Gros)

The first flight of the Solar Impulse prototype evoked a huge wave of applause from its team, who had spent the past several weeks running ground tests to check acceleration, braking, and engine power. After those tests passed with flying colors, the word was given for pilot Markus Scherdel to man the plane for the test trip.

The flight came after years of research, testing, and labor to design and construct the Solar Impulse.

"This is the culmination of six years of intense work by a very experienced team of professionals," said Borschberg in a statement. "This first "flea hop" successfully completes the first phase of Solar Impulse, confirming our technical choices."

As part of its initial test flight, the Solar Impulse's solar panels were not yet connected or used. Following this positive outcome, the plane is set to be dismantled and moved to an airfield at Payerne, almost two hours away. Early next year, the team plans to launch the Impulse on its first solar test flights, slowly increasing the distance each time until the craft is ready to take its first night flight using solar energy.

Though the Impulse is as wide as a Boeing 747, it weighs only around 1.7 tons. The 12,000 solar cells mounted on the wing are designed to provide renewal solar power to the plane's four electric motors. The solar panels also charge the craft's batteries by day, allowing it to fly at night.

The Solar Impulse returns to the ground.

(Credit: Solar Impulse/Stephane Gros)

For now, the team is basking in the success of this small but critical first step, yet is thinking of the future and the challenge ahead.

"For over 10 years now, I have dreamt of a solar aircraft capable of flying day and night without fuel--and promoting renewable energy," said Piccard in a statement. "Today, our plane took off and was airborne for the very first time. This is an unbelievable and unforgettable moment! On the other hand, I remain humble in the face of the difficult journey still to be accomplished--it's a long way between these initial tests and a circumnavigation of the world."

Solar Impulse aircraft flies, briefly (photos)

For centuries, humans have looked for signs of diseased tissue and organs by tapping the outside of the body to measure stiffness. Obviously such a method is only so effective, especially when trying to evaluate someone's liver, say, or heart. And more modern biopsies, while highly effective, are invasive procedures that involve removing tissue for examination.

Since 2007, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., have been working with magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), a medical imaging technique developed to non-invasively diagnose and monitor disease.

The black and white images on the left are traditional images, while the color images on the right are MRE scans that show relative stiffness, from purple (the softest) to red (the hardest).

(Credit: GE Healthcare)

The device they use, MR-Touch, uses low-frequency sound waves for just 15 seconds at the tail end of a typical MRI procedure to measure tissue elasticity. It is essentially touching the tissue through vibration instead of surgery.

"Abnormal tissue stiffness can actually be a cause of some disease processes," Richard L. Ehman, professor of radiology who heads up the team that developed MRE at the Mayo Clinic, said in a GE statement:

Many regions of the body are not accessible to palpation, and conventional diagnostic imaging technologies do not allow physicians to assess tissue stiffness. The introduction of MR elastography...is an important milestone. It will also allow physicians around the world to explore new applications of this unique diagnostic imaging technology.

Recently cleared by the Federal Drug Administration, the MR-Touch has been licensed to GE Healthcare, which announced the device for commercial use at the 2009 meeting of the Radiologic Society of North America in Chicago this week.

MRE has been mostly used at the Mayo Clinic to diagnose liver disease because the disease is so widespread and, if detected in time, the resulting scarring (fibrosis of the liver) can be treated before the tissue becomes so stiff that it leads to cirrhosis, which is irreversible and requires a transplant for the patient to survive.

Also, because MRE provides a complete view of the liver, as opposed to smaller, individual samples, clinicians can better monitor disease progression and provide more informed preventative guidance. And, of course, the non-invasive approach is more comfortable and less risky than traditional biopsies.

This virtual palpation technology might even allow for the early detection of liver cancer, Eham says, not to mention monitoring the heart and brain, organs that have required major surgery to reach.

Intel's 48-core Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC) processor

(Credit: Intel)

SAN FRANCISCO--Pushing several steps farther in the multicore direction, Intel on Wednesday demonstrated a fully programmable 48-core processor it thinks will pave the way for massive data computers powerful enough to do more of what humans can.

The 1.3-billion transistor processor, called Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC) is successor generation to the 80-core "Polaris" processor that Intel's Tera-scale research project produced in 2007. Unlike that precursor, though, the second-generation model is able to run the standard software of Intel's x86 chips such as its Pentium and Core models.

The cores themselves aren't terribly powerful--more like lower-end Atom processors than Intel's flagship Nehalem models, Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner said at a press event here. But collectively they pack a lot of power, he said, and Intel has ambitious goals in mind for the overall project.

"The machine will be capable of understanding the world around them much as humans do," Rattner said. "They will see and hear and probably speak and do a number of other things that resemble human-like capabilities, and will demand as a result very (powerful) computing capability."

Osaka, Japan-based Eager Co. is developing recyclable cardboard robots to work as mannequins that show off clothing in retail display spaces.

Eager showed off the female D+ropop mannequins at the recent 2009 International Robot Exhibition (iRex) here in Tokyo. They're billed as the world's most environmentally friendly robots because they're made of corrugated cardboard.

The mannequin bots only have a few servomotors but can still move their arms and heads gracefully. Each weighs about 13 pounds and is nearly 6 feet tall. They can also be painted and printed with logos for other advertising purposes.

The dummy bots will go on sale this month in Japan, priced at $5,400 and up. They can be rented for about $1,800 per week.

Eager envisions them being used in storefronts, and at events and other venues to attract attention. The company apparently aims to capture 1 percent of the global retail mannequin market, not easy for an obscure start-up in this economy.

But who knows? If Old Navy can cause a stir with its SuperModelquin mannequins, there's hope for the D+ropop gals.

A new DARPA contest is using balloons to test our social-networking skills.

After kicking off the Internet 40 years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is again tapping into the Net for a new challenge. The DARPA Network Challenge will award $40,000 to the first person who can identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 red weather balloons positioned at different parts of the sky across the continental United States.

The 8-foot balloons are scheduled to lift off on Saturday at 7 a.m. PST and remain in their locations throughout the day, until sunset. The contest will be open until December 14, so contestants will have a little more than a week to gather up and submit their answers.

But the contest has a twist. Since no one person can identify all 10 balloons across the States in one day, challengers will need to rely on social networks to team up with others to pinpoint the locations of the balloons. DARPA's goal here is not to see if people can answer the question but to gauge how we use social networks to resolve a problem.

DARPA plans to launch 10 red weather balloons, somewhat larger than the one shown here, around the continental United States, and competitors are invited to try to identify the precise latitudes and longitudes of all 10 balloons to win a $40,000 prize.

(Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Chief Master Sgt. Gary Emery)

"We are not interested in the balloons. We already know where those are," Norman Whitaker, DARPA's deputy director of transformational convergence technology, said in a statement. "It's the techniques people use to solve the challenge we're focused on. We have people who are going to be actively watching from the sidelines to see how this plays out."

Whitaker is hoping the contest will offer insight into how the Internet and social networks can help people build teams and collaborate with each other to solve real problems and challenges.

DARPA is leaving it up to the contestants to best figure out how to work with others to track the balloons. One example posed by Whitaker is that of using a Web site to offer a portion of the prize to anyone who shares info about the locations of the balloons. Another idea is to work with a charity and donate your winnings. People can also naturally ask for help through Web-based tools such as Facebook or Twitter, connecting via computers or smartphones.

Although the challenge may be tough, Whitaker believes that at least one person will be able to solve it, whether it takes five minutes or all day. But if no one responds with the locations of all 10 balloons by the December 14 deadline, the agency will reward the $40,000 to the first person who tracked down at least five of them.

DARPA isn't sure yet what it will do with the information it finds. But that's never stopped the agency before. "We're DARPA," Whitaker said. "We like to do things that are really out of the box."

The agency enjoys a history of out-of-the-box challenges. Past contests have set up races between unmanned, robotic vehicles, including DARPA's 2005 Grand Challenge and its 2007 Urban Grand Challenge.

Are you willing to take the DARPA challenge? How would you use the Internet and social networks to win the prize?

The Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft undocks from the International Space Station.

(Credit: NASA TV)

Outgoing space station commander Frank De Winne, cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, and Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk strapped into a Russian Soyuz capsule, undocked and fell back to Earth on Tuesday, braving icy weather in Kazakhstan to close out a 188-day stay in space.

Descending under a large orange-and-white parachute, Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft made a rocket-assisted touchdown about 50 miles northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, at 2:15:34 a.m. EST, about three hours and 20 minutes after undocking from the International Space Station.

Recovery forces, including U.S. and Russian flight surgeons, were near the landing site to help the returning spacemen out of the spacecraft's cramped descent module. Despite icy weather that forced authorities to ground the helicopters normally used, recovery crews in all-terrain vehicles reached the spacecraft within about 15 minutes of touchdown.

It was the first December landing of a Soyuz since 1990, but the Russians said the weather was acceptable for a safe descent.

Russian recovery teams surround the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft, helping extract the crew members.

(Credit: NASA TV)

Monitoring the re-entry and landing from the International Space Station were Expedition 22 commander Jeffrey Williams and flight engineer Maxim Suraev, who arrived at the outpost in early October.

"Four more months, guys, then it's your turn," De Winne said before departing. "Have a good flight. It's wonderful in space, enjoy it.

The Soyuz descent module landed upright, and recovery crews extracted Romanenko, Thirsk and then De Winne one at a time, transporting them on stretchers to nearby vehicles. All three were reported to be in good condition.

Because NASA is responsible for arranging Canadian, Japanese, and European Space Agency rides to and from the space station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, NASA flight surgeons and managers joined Russian recovery crews to assist the returning station fliers and carry out initial medical checks.

Frank De Winne waves as he is helped from the Soyuz descent module.

(Credit: NASA TV)

With the departure of Romanenko, Thirsk and Belgium's De Winne, the European Space Agency's first station commander, the International Space Station was left in the hands of Williams and Suraev. It is the first time since mid-2006 the station has been staffed by just two crew members.

But the solitude will not last long. Three more crew members--cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, NASA flight engineer Timothy Creamer, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi--are scheduled for launch aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft on December 20. Docking is expected two days later.

I can understand why people are so keen to find alien life. It isn't so much a scientific fascination with what might be out there. It's more a pained hope that what is out there might be more enjoyable than what is down here.

So I am wrestled to the ground by a certain sympathy for Brad Niesluchowski.

According to the Arizona Republic, Niesluchowski was asked to resign after allegedly using his position at the Higley Unified School District to exercise his own (and our) need for an alien encounter.

This was not a case of uploading pictures of potential lady friends from Eastern Europe. No, this was a rather more imaginative downloading of software that searches for extra-terrestrial life.

The Republic's sleuths got their hands on documents that suggest Niesluchowski was encouraged to resign after he downloaded free University of California (the terribly forward-thinking Berkeley branch) software that uses idle computers to examine information collected by radio telescopes.

This would be information that might indicate that ET is, indeed, flying around in a bike basket somewhere out there.

Might someone out there try to correct this situation?

(Credit: Cc Joka2000/Flickr)

Niesluchowski, you see, enjoyed the authority to purchase all sorts of technology for his district. And his alleged downloading of alien-hunting software might well have used additional energy resources and caused other related damage or accelerated depreciation to the hardware. The school district estimates these losses at between $1.2 million and $1.6 million.

Specifically, Niesluchowski stands accused of downloading a program called SETI@home to every computer in the school district.

You might rather enjoy perusing the SETI Web site. One of its recent small steps for man was to launch a site for Iran so that Iranians might also co-operate in accelerating the incidence of Klingon contact.

However, SETI might not have been the only software Niesluchowski donated to Higley. The school district also claimed it had found another program, with the heavenly name of BOINC, that also emanated from Berkeley.

Perhaps Niesluchowski's alleged behavior was not entirely thought through. Perhaps he simply hoped no one would ever notice. But, using the moniker "NEZ" he had reportedly become one of the most active and admired alien hunters. The Republic suggests that he earned 575 million "credits,", representing the enormous hours he spent in the search for the next world.

I would, however, like to offer an alternative theory as to why he might have behaved in the way he allegedly did.

The Polish roots of the name "Niesluchowski" are the words "not" and "listening". It seems perfectly possible to me that Niesluchowski merely wanted to prove that, despite his name, he was doing more future-focused listening that anyone in the world.

(Credit: Crave UK)

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the most ambitious experiments of all time and following a year of shutdown, it's finally started to do its business again. So we thought we'd have a chat to someone directly involved in the experiments to get a sense of what it's like to work in geek heaven.

Paul Jackson is a particle physicist from SLAC and Stanford University, based at CERN. He's working on the Atlas experiment, looking for the Higgs boson--the so-called "God particle." Read on to find out whether he's about to kill us, what would happen to you if you stood in front of the LHC beam and what CERN's favorite snacks are. (Also see our definitive guide to the collider, CERN and the Higgs boson.)

Will the LHC make a black hole in space that kills us?
"Yes, we might create black holes, but they won't be remotely dangerous...

Read more of "Interview: Inside CERN with an LHC scientist at Crave UK.