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Editor-in-chief SINTEF:
Director of communications Petter Haugan

Editor-in-chief NTNU:
Information Director Christian Fossen

Photo: SINTEF Byggforsk

In her doctoral thesis, Anna Lalagüe of SINTEF has studied potential applications of georadar. She
tested the radar in a number of projects, and documented and evaluated the results in the course of contracts for the public sector and the industry.

In cases of frostheave and on particularly difficult stretches of road, this type of radar is capable of
providing a continuous profile that enables more suitable types of asphalt to be used when the road is being reconstructed.

The radar can also decide whether or not a winter road needs to be salted. During rehabilitation operations, we need to know what lies below the surface before digging begins; up-to-date site maps may not be available, but radar can provide answers. And when flat roofs leak or are losing heat, georadar can scan them and identify the sources of leakages.

Photo: Dynavec

Turbines that get abraded and worn out by sand particles are a big problem at hydropower stations. Researchers at NTNU’s Hydropower Laboratory have now designed a turbine that is particularly resistant to this kind of wear. The impeller is screwed together instead of being welded, which prevents tensions and differences from occurring when the steel warms up during use.

Additionally, the turbine’s surface is coated with tungsten carbide, which makes it more durable in contact with sand.

The turbine has been tested on a large scale in Peru, at a hydropower station that has major sand problems. The new turbine proved to be superior to normal turbines both in terms of its efficiency and resistance to wear. NTNU will now commercialize the new turbine via the turbine manufacturer Dynavec.

The Atlantberry project aims to lay the foundations for commercial soft fruit production in tunnels on Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes. The project is being carried out in collaboration with Njøs Næringsutvikling, SINTEF, Sognabær AS and Nora AS.

The first Icelandic raspberries arrived on the market this summer. The joker among the three producer countries is Greenland, which lies much further north than the other areas, and where the scientists are not quite sure whether production will be successful.

Photo: Helsport AS

Now we know: women do get colder than men, and this has resulted in a newly developed sleepingbag aimed at female outdoor enthusiasts. The Norwegian company Helsport AS asked for a scientific study of freezing female bodies before it started to develop its latest product. Both a literature study and laboratory tests carried out by SINTEF confirmed what had been a myth; that women’s hands and feet get colder than men’s.

While the ladies felt cold and uncomfortable at ten degrees below zero, men slept like logs. But why? Muscule tissue is what generates heat, and women have more fat and less muscle than men. In women, the ratio of body surface area to volume is also greater than in men. The result was a sleepingbag designed to accommodate the female length and body shape, with extra insulation around the shoulders and for the feet.

Photo: Manu Sistiaga

Two SINTEF scientists, Eduardo Grimaldo and Manu Sistiaga, have developed a prototype midwater trawl whose codend automatically closes when it is sufficiently full. It then partially separates from the main part of the trawl, allowing the rest of the fish to escape back into the sea before the net is hauled on board.

The idea is to avoid excessively large hauls so as not to end up with handling or safety problems due to overproduction of fish on board. The new system has just been tested in the Syltefjord in Finnmark, northern Norway, with promising results.

Photo: Geir Mogen/SINTEF

In 2007 and 2008, air quality in the International Space Station ISS was very successfully monitored by the ANITA gas measurement system. Atle Honne, the SINTEF scientist behind this analytical system, has recently been awarded the prestigious SAE Wright Brothers Medal.

Since 1927, this award has been given to scientists who have made important contributions to all aspects of aviation or space technology. ANITA is calibrated to quantify 33 potential trace gases by means of optical measurements. Honne received the bronze medal at the SAE Aerotech Conference in Toulouse in October 2011.

THE TRONDHEIM ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS: Elizabeth Higson is an undergraduate who works primarily with photography and film. She often explores feelings about the limitations of the body and our way of thinking about it. Her work doesn’t necessarily focus on the body itself, but instead on society’s response to it, and thus one’s own understanding and relationship to it. Her work, "Woman in a yellow bathing cap" was inspired by John Cheever's short story "The swimmer".

BA47 is the name of a specific area of the brain in the right and left prefrontal areas of the brain’s cerebral cortex. Brain researchers at NTNU have discovered that Acem meditation, in which the practitioner thinks about a simple sound but with free, relaxed attention, can activate this part of the brain. It then sends impulses elsewhere in the brain to trigger a relaxation response.

Researchers are now studying whether other forms of mediation activate BA47 as well, or whether this response is specific to the Acem method.

NEW BUSINESS: More than 400 kilometres of paper receipts are printed every day in Norwegian shops, which takes time, money and materials. The newly established company dSAFE AS has developed a system for producing electronic receipts that can be used with existing checkout systems.

When a customer has registered for electronic receipts, the system will not print out a paper receipt when they swipe their credit or debit card. But the customer can later call up the receipt whenever he or she likes via the Internet or from a mobile phone. dSAFE grew out of the NTNU Entrepreneur School and the university’s computer science community.

Human rights violations are far fewer in countries with access to mobile phones and the Internet than in countries where television, radio and landline telephones dominate the media landscape. That’s what was shown in an NTNU survey of 137 countries, where researchers examined 26 years of information from 1980 to 2006.

In television-dominated countries, authorities can feed people propaganda, while in countries where the Internet and mobile telephones dominate, the opposite is true: these communication channels give witnesses a way to tell the world what they have seen.

Photo: photos.com

Four minutes of hard exercise three times a week is all it takes to significantly improve cardiovascular fitness, a research group at NTNU has found, among many other findings.

In December 2011, the group was awarded a grant of NOK 4 million annually from the Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Foundation and is now known as the “K.G. Jebsen Centre of Exercise in Medicine.”The centre's goal is to investigate the relationship between fitness and future heart health, and to analyse the interaction between genetic inheritance and physical activity.

Photo: photos.com

Mould has often been used to explain why moisture in a house can make people ill. But the relationship between moisture damage and asthma involves much more than mould and mould spores. That’s among the findings from doctoral thesis work from SINTEF/NTNU, where 400 houses were examined.

Surprisingly, there turned out to be no connection between trace concentrations of mould in a child’s bedroom and asthma or allergy in that child. The researcher concluded that one should look for other components in indoor air if health problems arise.

Congenital heart defects occur each year in about 600 newborns in Norway. A new ultrasound method developed at NTNU will make it easier to diagnose these problems. The method provides better images of blood flow in the pulmonary veins in the newborn and can be an important complement to today's ultrasound.

Published November, 2011