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Birth weight has consequences |
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Photo: www.photos.com |
Your birth weight may shorten your life expectancy, whether you were light or heavy when you were
born. Researchers from NTNU and Yale University in the United States have compared information on both births and deaths in 37 000 adults from three continents, and found a strong statistical correlation between birth weight and causes of adult mortality.
Low birth weight increases the risk of earlier death from heart disease - while high birth weight increases the risk of cancer. Researchers do not yet know why this is so.
NTNU's new laboratory for advanced underwater research, called the AUR Lab, opened in the autumn of 2011. The lab conducts applied research in close collaboration with industry and government agencies, and is comprised of scientific groups from areas such as marine biology, technology and marine archaeology. The cross-pollination from the different disciplines should produce scientific results that have been previously unattainable.
The lab will work with environmental monitoring, marine science and the offshore oil and gas industry, and will contribute to sustainable and environmentally robust solutions. The lab's findings may have implications for the research and management of Norway's important northern and high Arctic areas.
The initiative is a step in the "Ocean Space Centre" which is being planned for Trondheim.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is an advanced tool – in principle - for secure computer-based interactions. In QKD, two parties create a secret key, which enables them to keep communications secure.
Now, however, researchers at NTNU, the University Centre at Kjeller and the National University of Singapore have discovered security holes in this form of cryptography. They made a perfect "eavesdropper" for QKD, which gave outsiders access to the secret key, without the system being notified that there was a security breach. The researchers thus warn against relying unconditionally on quantum key encryption security solutions.
Norway and Iceland will take a larger share of lightly salted cod to Europe. But first, the fisheries industry will have to develop better methods of salting farmed cod, which actually behaves quite differently than wild fish when it is salted. Among other things, it is more difficult to reach the correct salt concentration in the flesh farmed cod than in those of its wild cousin.
Researchers at NTNU have used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to find out more about the problem. They took tissue samples from both wild and domesticated fish and injected them with different salt concentrations, at different times after harvest. Samples were stored frozen, taken out again and examined under an NMR spectroscope. Here, researchers could measure the weight, bacterial content, salt content and the muscle's ability to retain water. The method has proven very useful in future efforts to optimize the handling of farmed cod.
Not bothered by traffic surveillance measures |
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Photo: Knut Opeide |
SINTEF has written a report describing how road users perceive the risk of their personal privacy being compromised when they are out and about in traffic. Most of them have great belief in the effects of video-monitoring as a traffic safety measure, and very few are concerned about privacy in this area. ICT solutions that offer benefits to the individual, such as the ability to pass toll-stations without stopping, also find general acceptance. However, people are sceptical as regards speed-limiting measures and automatic traffic control.
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NEW PRODUCT: If you are hunting or participating in a military operation, you need both a backpack and weapons. When you're not using your weapon, you should be able to carry it in a stable and comfortable manner attached to your backpack. But you also need quick access to it.
Eirik Andersen, who last year received his master's degree in product development at NTNU, has developed a new concept for quickly accessing your rifle. It's called QRR (Quick Release Rifle) and consists of a backpack with a special weapon pocket between the main compartment and back plate. The weapon is placed in a pocket that closes with two hooks. By pulling a trigger on the bag strap, the hooks loosen and the gun can be pulled out of the bag quickly and without much movement – with no more than a second-and-a-half before it is in a position to shoot.
Andersen has worked for nearly three years with Trondheim Technology Transfer (TTO). The system is patented and should be available to Norwegian hunters in the summer of 2012.
Published april, 2012 |
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 NEW BUSINESS: A couple of years ago Håkon Bertheussen left NTNU with a degree in computer engineering. Now he has a full-time job running Bertheussen IT, his own company in Trondheim, which developed the popular Internet word game, Wordfeud. When 2012 is over, his small business expects to have sales of NOK 6–7 million in its first year of life.
Wordfeud is an interactive version of the classic board game Scrabble, where you can play against others over the Internet. It is distributed through the Android Market and the Apple Appstore, and has been a resounding success, with millions of downloads worldwide. Wordfeud can be found in 7 languages, with more under development.
Post-Durban, pre-Rio and Qatar – and what about Kyoto? Seemingly endless negotiations, hardly any measureable progress – and yet we know that action is required. NTNU and SINTEF have joined forces with national and international companies, universities and public organizations to create a dialog among researchers, politicians and business leaders. "Technoport 2012 – Sharing Possibilities", a climate conference on smart technology in the transition to a green economy, is one visible element in this collaboration. The conference will take place in Trondheim, Norway from 16-18 April 2012.
Technoport will explore the opportunities that smart technology offers to change current development trends. Presentations by Professor Edgar Hertwich of NTNU and Dr. Nils Røkke, Vice President CCS at SINTEF that explore alternative green approaches can be seen at www.technoport.no/talks
“Oscar” for superconductivity research |
The discovery of high-temperature superconductors led to a Nobel Prize in 1987. Now, the world has also been given something that the lossless current conductors can actually be used for – thanks to Magne Runde and Niklas Magnussen, two Norwegian scientists at SINTEF Energy Research, who recently received a European “Innovation Oscar” for their pioneering work. Although superconducting materials conduct electricity completely without resistance, they need to be cooled to very low temperatures to do so. “High-temperature superconductors” do not need to be brought to quite such low temperatures. The Norwegian scientists have used materials of this type to develop industrial processes capable of saving energy in the copper and aluminium smelting industries.
Most Norwegians generally have a good understanding of what's in the news, whether they are interested in and follow the news or not. In the US, only those who are initially interested in the news are well informed, while those who are uninterested in the news remain uninformed.
A comparative study conducted in six European countries plus the United States concludes that Europeans are bombarded with information in the media, whether they like it or not, and that they must really make an active effort to avoid the news.
In the US, major national news broadcasts are not that commercially attractive and are run during non-prime time hours. Anyone who wants to follow the news thus has to make an active effort to do so.
Media sociologist Toril Aalberg at NTNU, who was project manager for the survey, believes that democracy requires knowledge, which makes political ignorance a problem for democracy.
Norway goes in for deep geothermal energy |
The Research Council of Norway is putting NOK 24 million into the four-year NEXT-Drill project, in which scientists and industry partners will develop technology and tools for producing geothermal heat from the bowels of the Earth. The expert group that will develop and trial drilling and well technology for this purpose includes scientists from SINTEF, NTNU, the International Research Institute of Stavanger (IRIS) and the University of Stavanger. Their vision is to become a global centre of expertise in exploiting drilling and well technology for conventional and deep geothermal energy.
Little creatures – big damage |
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Photo: Thor Nielsen |
Ectopleura larynx are small but “pushy” creatures – no more than a few centimetres in length. In the course of a few years, the species has evolved from living on rocks and ships’ hulls to being pests that prefer to settle on fish-farm seacages. In the high season, between August and October, farmers have to wash the nets every other week. As fish farms often have as many as ten cages, this absorbs a lot of resources. Scientists at SINTEF are carrying out trials by giving the hydroids a quick bath in hot water at various temperatures or using acetic acid to get rid of the creatures, and the acid has turned out to be very effective with the youngest individuals, even at the lowest concentration.
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