North Carolina State University
News Services
Box 7504
Raleigh, NC 27695-7504
(919)515-3470
May 22, 1997
NC State News Tips
A roundup of NC State University research, teaching and outreach activities.
For use by the media as briefs or as background for stories.
Media Contact:
Tim Lucas, 919/515-3470 or [email protected]
Life and Death Among the Headhunters of Borneo -- The legendary Ngaju Dayak people, a tribe of former headhunters once known as the "wild men of Borneo," has long seemed fearsome to Western society. Yet it is now the Ngaju themselves who have reason to fear due to the encroachment of modern culture into their remote rain forests. NC State anthropologist Dr. Anne Schiller has studied their changing lifestyle since 1982, and made four trips to Borneo to live among the tribe. The Ngaju, she says, are no longer headhunters, but do perform animal sacrifice and use human blood in elaborate rituals celebrating kinship and honoring the dead. Their use of such rituals to maintain an ethnic and religious identity is the subject of Schiller's new book, Small Sacrifices: Religious Change and Cultural Identity Among the Ngaju of Indonesia, published in March by Oxford University Press.
"These are not wild men. They are a people who feel their culture is on the line," she says. At a time when Coke cans and Marlboros are becoming common sights in jungle villages, she says, "the Ngaju are calling upon their oldest rituals to help define themselves in a new way."
A Caution Flag for Transgenic Cotton -- Agricultural pests could build resistance to a pesticide implanted in genetically altered cotton sooner than anticipated, according to a five-year study led by NC State entomologist Dr. Fred Gould. The study, published in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that a cotton-eating moth called Heliothis virescens could become resistant within 10 years to Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a naturally occurring, pest-killing soil bacterium that has been encoded into the transgenic cotton.
Gould's team studied 2,000 mated moth couples and two generations of their offspring, and found that about 1.5 of every 1,000 moths carry a gene for Bt resistance. Previous estimates had put the frequency at one in a million. "This underscores the need for caution in deploying transgenic cotton to control pests," Gould says. Some scientists worry that overuse of Bt in transgenic crops may speed pest resistance to it, robbing organic growers, who rely on it, of one of their best means of pest control.
Detox' Treatment for Harmful Fumes -- NC State chemical engineers have found a new way to detoxify fumes from furniture-finishing plants, petroleum refineries and other industries. They've devised a two-step process that uses beneficial bacteria to eat toxins in the exhaust and convert them into harmless carbon dioxide, cell mass and water. Laboratory tests show that the process, called biomembrane treatment (BMT), can clean up the fumes at a lower cost and in less space than other technologies, without generating secondary pollution.
"Manufacturers told us they needed a system flexible enough to comply not only with current EPA standards but also with future ones, which are likely to be more stringent," says lead researcher Dr. Steven Peretti. "They also said it shouldn't affect production rates or product quality, or require big investments in equipment. MBT fits the bill." MBT will be field-tested this summer at Pulaski Furniture Corp. in Pulaski, Va. NC State has filed for a patent on the system.
A New Slant on Static Cling -- Blinds hang in millions of windows worldwide. Unfortunately, many of them hang askew, are covered in dust and have long since stopped working properly. But NC State mechanical engineer Dr. Larry Silverberg has found a clever solution to the problem. He's created the world's first fully automated blinds sealed in insulated glass and powered by static cling, the annoying but harmless electrical charge that makes socks stick together when they come out of the dryer.
His blinds, which are installed in lieu of regular windows and operated by a wall-mounted dimmer switch, never get dusty and can't harbor allergens because they're inside glass. The slats are controlled by static electricity and held up by thin metal rods, so they can't hang askew. And since the blinds have no mechanical parts, there are no parts that can break. Silverberg estimates that a 3-foot-by-3-foot window system would use about one cent of electricity a year. He has filed for a patent on his invention, and has formed a company, Blind Rage Inc., to market it.
Smog Alert -- Too often, cities get all the blame for air pollution. But a recent article in Science magazine, coauthored by NC State air-quality researcher Dr. Ellis Cowling, suggests that rural areas also contribute to and suffer from unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone, or smog.
Based on air-quality data collected at 85 remote monitoring sites over a six-month period, the article concludes that under newly proposed, more stringent Environmental Protection Agency standards for ozone pollution, 41 rural counties in the eastern United States would join about 100 cities nationwide on the nonattainment list. Among other things, the data "suggests that the detrimental health effects associated with prolonged exposure to smog are more ubiquitous than previously believed, extending beyond the confines of cities and suburbia," Cowling says. He says addressing the problem will necessitate major change in the nation's pollution control strategies.
Designing Students -- With age comes wisdom. But often, advanced years also bring physical frailty that limits a person's ability to perform once-simple tasks. Now, 16 industrial design students at NC State, led by professor Percy Hooper, have joined forces with residents of Springmoor Life Care Retirement Community in Raleigh to design products to address older adults' needs. Among their creations are a tool to help persons with low dexterity put in earrings; a bathing chair that lets the user lie in a semi-reclining position while water gently shoots over her body; a walker with an attached seat, allowing users who suffer sudden lapses in strength to quickly sit down; and, to reduce the risk of nighttime falls, a bedside motion sensor that detects when a person puts his foot on the floor and automatically alerts the nurses' station while turning on lights to illuminate his bedroom floor.
The collaboration was part of the School of Design's Industrial Design Community Contact program, which each semester puts students to work solving real-world problems.
Early Detection for Late Blight -- Late blight, the plant disease that caused the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, once again threatens potato, pepper and tomato crops worldwide. The new strains of the fungal pathogen, however, might be harder to control than their famous predecessor because they've developed resistance to metalaxyl, the fungicide most commonly used to control them.
A research team led by Dr. Jean Ristaino, an NC State plant pathologist who studies the fungus that causes late blight, is analyzing DNA fingerprints from infected plant specimens dating back to the 1840s to better understand what mutations or new genotypes of the disease have evolved over the years. The team also has developed a new diagnostic tool, using recombinant DNA techniques, that allows more rapid and accurate detection of the pathogen's presence in plants before they are placed in storage or planted. NC State has applied for a patent on the technique.
Small Wonder -- Testing a new plane can be costly and dangerous. But a new scale-model, remote-piloted test plane developed at NC State with funding from the U.S. Navy may help reduce those risks and costs by letting researchers identify potential problems before they occur in manned flight. The test plane, a 17.5 percent scale version of the Navy's updated F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet strike fighter, was built by a team of NC State aerospace engineers led by Drs. Charles Hall and John Perkins. Measuring 10 feet long, with a 7 1/2-foot wingspan, it is equipped with digital data acquisition and telemetry systems, three full-axis flight control systems and six on-board computers. In the air, it looks, sounds and maneuvers just the same as the full-scale jet.
"The idea is to fly this remote-piloted vehicle through a series of test flights to obtain data that will tell us how the full-scale plane, which has the same aerodynamics, would respond," Hall says. The scale-model plane is powered by two jet engines each supplying 35 pounds of static thrust. It weighs only 140 pounds.
It's Hoi Toime Someone Explained What Fladget Means -- You won't find the word "fladget" in your dictionary, but it's used every day by residents of the tiny North Carolina island of Okracoke. The island's distinctive dialect -- "hoi toide" is the way they say "high tide" -- has its roots in the language of some of the region's earliest English-speaking settlers. Now, after surviving for centuries, the Okracoke brogue is dying out, a victim of cultural assimilation.
Enter Drs. Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes, NC State linguists who study dialects. Since 1992, they've been interviewing Okracoke's older residents, the only ones left who still speak the brogue, and recording and codifying their speech. The result is a new book, Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks: The Story of the Okracoke Brogue, published by University of North Carolina Press. "The brogue will likely die out in the next few generations," Wolfram says. "Getting its history on paper and its sound on tape was a race against time." Proceeds from the book benefit the Okracoke Preservation Society. (Fladget means a small piece of something.)
When Homework's Online, the Dog Can't Eat it -- For years, Dr. Alton Banks, an NC State chemistry professor, has dealt with the logistical nightmare of assigning, correcting and returning homework and quizzes to hundreds of students. Figuring there had to be a better way, he turned to the Internet and enlisted the computer programming expertise of two students, Andrew Puch of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Paul Fisher of Winston-Salem. Now, using the flexibility of the Internet browser Netscape and software developed with the two students, Banks assigns, grades and returns homework and quizzes via computer network -- leaving him no paperwork, no lost assignments and no indecipherable handwriting to deal with.
"The true value of the program is it makes it easier for students to regularly do their homework, and students who do homework on a regular basis have a greater success rate," Banks says. Pugh and Fisher have formed a company, OryxSoft, to market the program and have licensed it to Saunders College Publishing, a subsidiary of publishing giant Harcourt Brace & Co.
The Invisible Gender -- Name a famous scientist. Now, name two or three more. Chances are, few if any of the ones you named are women.
Dr. Donna Cookmeyer, an NC State plant pathologist, has a pretty good idea why that is, and she's joined forces with four colleagues to bring about change. Funded by a grant from NC State's College of Engineering, the five scientists, all women, are jointly teaching a new multidisciplinary course, "Women and Gender in Science and Technology." The class -- the first of its kind at NC State -- meets for three hours once a week. Students and teachers discuss the accomplishments of women in science and how a male perspective shapes the style, language and focus of science and engineering today. In most science and engineering courses, Cookmeyer says, "women are invisible in the course content, but there are men everywhere. We're out to change that."
Shedding New Light on a Supernova -- Astronomers worldwide have for a decade been awaiting the last gasp of the dying star Supernova 1987A. Thanks to computer models developed by two NC State astrophysicists, they now have a much more accurate idea of when the celestial fireworks will start. The models devised by Drs. John Blondin and Kazimierz Borkowski predict Supernova 1987A's death throes will peak in the year 2007, when debris from the explosion will hit a 6-trillion-mile-wide ring of hydrogen gas surrounding the star. The collision of debris with hydrogen gas will cause the ring to light up brilliantly, providing astronomers with the show they've been waiting for. The last supernova to die within study range of Earth was in 1604. Blondin and Borkowski say the 2007 event will provide scientists with more than just a good show. The vast amounts of energy generated when supernovas explode helped to create the component elements needed to form the planets, including Earth, and the elements needed for life. Says Borkowski, "This dying star may yield clues about Earth's beginnings, and our own."
-- lucas --
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