Biosphere 2 receives $400K grant for undergrad research

Published on Friday, July 30, 2010

Inside Tucson Business

The University of Arizona Biosphere 2 received a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build a Research Experiences for Undergraduates program for undergraduate research training over the next three years. 

Each year from early June to mid-August, the funds will support ten undergraduate students in a 10-week residential research program at Biosphere 2.

The first round of students started this year June 7.

“Biosphere 2 offers many important and unique opportunities for undergraduate training,” said Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman, assistant research professor with Biosphere 2 and director of Biosphere 2’s new REU program. “We can show how important Biosphere 2 is as a tool for linking scales – from organisms to ecosystems – and how it can help us better understand the real biosphere.”

The overarching theme of the program is understanding how organisms interact with, and respond to, the environment they live in.

New Navy contract issued for Ratheon missile
Published on Saturday, July 24, 2010

Inside Tucson Business

Raytheon Missile Systems received a $368 million contract from the U.S. Navy to produce the Standard Missile-6 for three years.

The extended-range, anti-aircraft missiles will begin delivery in early 2011. Raytheon also will handle parts and system design engineering under the contract.

The missile is designed to help ships protect themselves against various aircraft, including unmanned aerial vehicles and anti-ship missiles, officials said.

Raytheon shoots down planes with lasers

Published on Saturday, July 24, 2010

Inside Tucson Business

A Raytheon-U.S. Navy team used a high power, solid-state laser combined with a Phalanx Close-in Weapon System to shoot down four UAVs off San Nicolas Island near California last week.

Powered by electricity, the system offers an affordable and almost infinite magazine to stop incoming threats. Once development is completed, the Laser Area Weapon System will give the warfighter a speed-of-light solution for defeating rockets, mortars, UAVs and other targets.

“We actually shot down four of four operational UAVs. They were all destroyed and crashed into the sea,” said Mike Booen, Raytheon’s vice president of Advanced Security and Directed Energy Systems. “Directed energy essentially gives warfighters an unlimited magazine. As long as they have electricity they have photons, and as long as they have photons they have bullets.”

2 Tucsonans hoping to take scopes to space

Tom Beal Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Friday, July 23, 2010 12:00 am

A couple of astronomers from Tucson hope to be among the first telescope operators in space, trading those long nights at the computer screen for the adrenaline rush of a quick, weightless ride outside Earth’s atmosphere aboard a commercial spacecraft.

If all goes well, said Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute, the Atsa Suborbital Observatory will be ready to fly when commercial space flights begin in the next few years.

The program is the brainchild of planetary scientist Faith Vilas, currently director of the UA/Smithsonian Multiple Mirror Telescope on Mount Hopkins in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson, and Luke Sollitt, a former Northrop-Grumman scientist who is now an assistant professor of physics at the Citadel in South Carolina.

Tucson group says lack of space, incentives likely spurred decision

Ala. edges Tucson for missile facility

David Wichner Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 12:00 am

Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems announced Monday it will build a new $75 million missile factory in Huntsville, Ala.

Tucson was a finalist for the site but was bypassed because of limits to expansion at Raytheon’s current missile plant and a lack of development-ready alternative sites, the company said.

The Alabama site will employ an estimated 300 workers at an annual average wage of $60,000. Several Raytheon divisions already employ about 600 people in the Huntsville area.

The plant will be used for final assembly and testing of Standard Missile-3 Block IB, a sea-based missile interceptor, and the Standard Missile-6, an advanced ship-defense weapon, the company said.

Lab on a Chip’ Detects Human, Agricultural Contaminants

The UA’s Jeong-Yeol Yoon is using glass-slide laboratories to detect E. coli in water and vegetables and to monitor disease in livestock.

By Susan McGinley, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, July 19, 2010

Detecting water and foodborne contaminants usually involves collecting a sample, sending it to a laboratory and waiting for it to be filtered, incubated, tested and identified under a microscope. If a critical infection is suspected, say for E. coli, the pathogen may already have multiplied and spread before the report arrives days later. 

A series of “lab on a chip” applications in development at the University of Arizona can identify pathogens in minutes rather than days, using a simple device (which may be attached to a faucet) that can deliver results locally.

UA looks at mine-waste piles, sees potential solar-power site

Tom Beal Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Sunday, July 18, 2010 12:00 am

Researchers are trying to make mountains of mine tailings more productive and easier on the air we breathe, at the risk of making them more visibly apparent.

An experiment by University of Arizona scientists at Biosphere 2 in Oracle and at the Sierrita Mine west of Green Valley will test the efficacy of converting mounds of waste rock into solar power plants.

UA researchers are testing two membranes and three mounting systems that will encapsulate the fine particles that often blow off tailings dumps, and provide stable platforms for photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into electricity.

Mining watchdog Roger Featherstone said the approach is a good idea, given two caveats: that it doesn’t become “an excuse for not doing total cleanup or an opportunity for more subsidies to these giant mining companies.”