Nurmikko elected to Finnish Academy of Science and Letters

Professor Arto Nurmikko was recently elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters is the largest general scientific and academic society in Finland. It is a learned society covering the full range of academic disciplines which is devoted to the promotion of scientific and scholarly research and serves as a bond uniting researchers engaged in these activities at the highest level. It functions as a traditional learned society in the sense that its membership is limited and it selects its new members on their academic and scientific merits. For more information on the Academy: http://www.acadsci.fi/frontpage.htm

Science News highlights aerial gymnastics of fruit flies

Science News 12 April 2010
Fruit flies make abrupt turns

Postdoctoral research associate in engineering Attila Bergou is part of a research team that discovered that fruit flies’ aerial gymnastics are driven by wing joints that act like wind-up toys, letting the bugs whirl around almost automatically.
Learn more here:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/58108/title/Fruit_flies_turn_on_autopilot

Flies "swim" when they're flying from Science News on Vimeo.

Science Nation profiles NSF collaborative project on bat flight mechanics

Brown University engineer Kenny Breuer and biologist Sharon Swartz are profiled in this week's Science Nation, a science video series commissioned by the NSF Office of Legislative and Public Affairs.
Since 2001, Swartz and Breuer have teamed up to study the mechanics of bat flight. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the two scientists from very different disciplines set up a special facility, including a wind tunnel, to study bats in flight.

Learn more about the project here:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/index.jsp

Gao and his research team discovers new principle in Material Science

A research team led by Brown University engineers has discovered a new mechanism that governs the peak strength of nanostructured metals. The team found that the deformation of nanotwinned metals is characterized by the motion of highly ordered, necklace-like patterns of crystal defects called dislocations. The finding, published in Nature, could lead to stronger and more ductile metals.

Full press release here:
http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2010/04/nanotwins

Hurt and Webster publish "Business and Safety Issues in the Commercialization of Nanotechnology"

Professors Bob Hurt and Tom Webster just published the book "Business and Safety Issues in the Commercialization of Nanotechnology," Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings, Volume 1209, 2010. Editors are: L. Tsakalakos, L. Merhari, S. Mao, J. van Schijndel, T. J. Webster, H. Liu, and R. Hurt. (H. Liu is a recent Ph.D. graduate from Brown engineering).

More information on the book can be found at: http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec_subscribe.asp?CID=24653&DID=271618