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 Many of us have problems swallowing tablets or capsules, particularly if they taste bad. The worst is for children or the elderly. Researchers at NTNU have previously developed the technology needed to manufacture cod liver oil and omega 3 as chewable tablets. Now, in cooperation with a pharmaceutical company, the researchers have taken this approach a step further.
The idea is to encapsulate bad-tasting medicine in a tasty and chewable “pillow” of alginate and gelatine (biopolymers), from which the bad medicine taste can’t escape until the pill is safely in the patient’s stomach. The use of different types of polymers allows researchers to control the speed of the medicine’s release. The first medicines produced using this approach are expected to be on the market in the next couple of years.
Norwegian corals have changed their appearance and structure over the last hundred years. That’s what scientists at the NTNU Museum of Natural History and Archaeology found when they compared specimens from the museum’s coral collection, which has been assembled over several generations.
Researchers think that the changes can be explained by a more acidic ocean – which is due to an increase in the amount of CO2 being absorbed by the ocean compared to past decades.
Safer use of nanoparticles |
What sort of HSE knowledge do we really need to deal with the new substances that are now found in everything from clothes to cosmetics and electronics? Can nanomaterials damage the environment, or are these invisible particles safer than we tend to believe?
These are among the questions that SINTEF scientist Andy Booth wants to answer. He has taken the initiative to launch a new competence transfer project – SafeNano Norway – on health, safety and environmental aspects of nanotechnology. Traditionally, there has been little close cooperation between the disciplines of HSE and nanotechnology, but the real need for such collaboration has recently become clear.
Nordic master’s degree in seafood |
The Nordic Council of Ministers has given its support to a new Nordic master’s programme in seafood quality, which will
encompass production, processing and distribution.
The programme is being developed by a consortium with participants from Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. NTNU and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences are the Norwegian representatives to this group.
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New ultrasonic method reveals strokes and cancers |
An NTNU/SINTEF research group believes that it has created ultrasonic images that are so clear that they make it easier to identify strokes and different types of cancer. Until now, one of the main problems with ultrasonic imaging has been the amount of noise in the images, which is due to reverberation or multiple echoes.
The new way of creating ultrasonic
images (SURF imaging) uses a transducer that transmits two sets of sound waves rather than one: a low-frequency wave-form that manipulates its high-frequency equivalent, which in turn is used to create the actual image.
Preemies at risk of mental difficulties |
Low birth weight babies have an increased risk of mental difficulties when they are adults, a study conducted at NTNU has shown. The study included normal birth weight children, children born at term but with a low birth weight, and premature babies with quite low birth weights.
Babies in the first group had less than a one-in-ten chance of suffering from mental disorders 20 years later. The risk for children in the second group was one in five, while among the premature babies the risk of having a diagnosed mental disorder was one in three. Anxiety disorders and ADHD were the most common diagnoses.
Commercialization of LedaFlow |
Kongsberg Oil & Gas Technologies (KOGT) has just launched its LedaFlow multiphase simulator on the petroleum industry market. The simulator is the result of an eight-year-long collaboration with SINTEF, Total and ConocoPhillips, which KOGT has further developed into a commercial product. LedaFlow offers significantly improved functionality, flexibility and accuracy in flow simulations.
These improvements mean that the simulator can both reduce risks and improve the
operating performance of petroleum installations. LedaFlow also provides improved resolution in modelling, offering
better, more accurate simulations of multiphase flow than existing products.
Look out for low-frequency vehicle noise |
If you often become tired when you are driving, the culprit may be noise, and in many cases, “audible” noise may be the most dangerous. The acoustic environment inside a car is often dominated by extremely low-frequency noise, and Truls Gjestland, a senior scientist at SINTEF, says that such sounds can be tiring. Even sounds made up of frequencies that are so low that they are not perceived directly by our ears (so-called “infrasound”) also tend to make us drowsy.
Norway as a “green battery”? |
A government-appointed committee in Germany wants to make the country’s electricity sources renewable by using the Norwegian hydropower network as a “battery.”
The Germans want Norway to pour electricity from hydropower into the grid in northern Europe when winds are calm and wind turbines are still - and when electricity demands are low, to use a surplus of cheap wind power to pump water back into Norwegian hydro reservoirs again.
In Norway, this would require the construction of what are called pump power stations. These would have a turbine that can be used as a pump, which could also be reversed to produce electricity. Cedren, the Centre for the Environmental Design of Renewable Energy, one of eight Norwegian national research centres for environmentally friendly energy, is studying what is needed to realize the large-scale development of these pump power stations.
Published November, 2011
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