Advances

Advances gives a glimpse of the many significant research projects at the university. Tell us about your discoveries. E-mail: wisweek@news.wisc.edu.

Laboratory focuses on traffic
A basement room in Engineering Hall crowded with traffic signals, stop signs and computer equipment is the new Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory.

Here, assistant professor David Noyce and associate professor Bin Ran, both in civil and environmental engineering, conduct research on transportation systems in a joint effort between the university and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

DOT has a long history of utilizing traffic research done at the university for safety and transportation system improvements. But Ran said establishment of the laboratory allows for more consistent and timely interaction between university researchers and the transportation agency.

The 15 computer workstations are outfitted with traffic operations, geometric design, transportation planning, geographic information system and traffic simulation software.

They can simulate real-time traffic conditions, so researchers can gather data on driver reactions and responses. Noyce and Ran anticipate conducting detailed crash investigations and analysis, studying new traffic signaling methods, and assessing intelligent transportation systems.

Bad vibrations: Research mixes stable, unstable materials
An ear-splitting, bone-jarring ride in a small, propeller-driven airplane illustrates the need for better materials that deaden vibration, says engineering physics professor Walt Drugan.

While materials with such extreme properties, including high stiffness and high damping, don’t yet exist, Drugan and colleagues Rod Lakes, Rob Carpick and Reid Cooper hope to create them.

They are studying how to couple stable and unstable materials to yield new high-performance materials, with a four-year, $800,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Directorate-Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems.

In the structural stiffness sense, says Drugan, if you push on a stable material, it will push back, like a spring. An unstable material pushes away or reverts to a form in which stable, stiffness governs.

While the idea of composite materials has been around forever — for example, bricks of mud and straw — combining two opposite-reacting materials in just the right quantities and geometries to get super-high performance is very new, he says.

Epstein-Barr virus found to contribute to lymphoma
Epstein-Barr virus contributes directly to the survival of Burkitt’s lymphoma tumors, a malignancy endemic in African children, UW Medical School researchers report in the Nov. 5 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online.

This improved understanding of how the virus, generally associated with infectious mononucleosis, aids the tumors’ survival opens the door to the development of targeted therapies for all Epstein-Barr-virus-associated tumors.

A vaccine could be developed to trigger immune responses that neutralize the virus, says Bill Sugden, professor of oncology at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research. Another therapy could be to cripple viral gene products that maintain cells as tumors.

“If you can find viral gene products that contribute not just to creating the tumor but also to maintaining it, you can conceivably destroy those gene products — and kill the tumor — without harming other tissues,” says Sugden, the paper’s senior author.

Lead author Greg Kennedy, a surgery resident at UW Hospital and Clinics, and former post-doctoral fellow Jun Komano also worked on the research.