Research Achievements Highlighted at Showcase

Washington State University’s annual celebration of faculty, staff and student achievement, Showcase 2007 (http://showcase.wsu.edu/ ) will be held Friday (March 23) on the Pullman campus. An important component of the day is the Academic Showcase, held from 9 a.m. to noon at Bohler Gymnasium. On display will be posters explaining 333 research projects, which represent the work of 727 authors, including 456 faculty members, 175 graduate students, 64 undergraduates and 32 staff members.

Here are a few highlights.

Climate-friendly farming
To better understand agricultural sustainability in the context of climate change, the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources has initiated the Climate Friendly Farming Research and Demonstration Project. The goal is to develop agricultural practices that reduce the production of greenhouse gases, increase the storage of carbon in the soil and develop energy derived from biomass. The five-year project is funded by a variety of agencies and organizations, including the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. For more on the project, see http://cff.wsu.edu/Project/index.html

Contact: Chad Kruger, cekruger@wsu.edu

Need a back-up generator? Flick on the Ficus
Searching for a new way to tap into the sun’s power, researchers at Washington State University are turning to a source that literally makes its living by capturing solar energy: plants. Chemist Jeanne McHale’s lab is testing natural light-harvesting pigments obtained from plants for their potential as components of solar cells. Conventional solar cells use mineral-based chemicals that respond to sunlight by ejecting electrons to produce an electrical current. At this year’s Showcase, the McHale team presents its work with two classes of photosensitive pigments from red beet root. The pigments were coated onto wafers of titanium dioxide, then exposed to sunlight and observed for the release of electrons. One kind of pigment, called yellow betaxanthins, responded with an unprecedented photon-to-current conversion efficiency, ejecting six electrons for every photon of light that struck it. The researchers are now developing ways to stabilize the pigments for use in commercially-available solar cells.

Contact: Jeanne McHale, jmchale@wsu.edu

Hey you! Here’s a great on-line deal
Almost everyone with an e-mail account has had the experience of clicking on what seems to be a personal message, only to find a generic sales pitch for one product or another. Ryan Wright, a graduate student, working with Kent Marett, assistant professor in the Department of Management Information Systems, has studied these deceptive e-mail techniques, known as phishing, to determine which ones are most successful at eliciting personal or sensitive information from unwary subjects. Preliminary results indicate that those personalized e-mails are proliferating for the most straightforward of reasons, because they are more effective in achieving results than non-personalized messages.

Contact: Ryan Wright, ryantwright@wsu.edu

Making sensors that can take the heat
Greenhouse gases, air pollutants, industrial smog: the first step in tackling these problems is finding out how much of each harmful chemical is put into the air. Monitoring the sources of pollution seems basic, but it’s not easy. Industrial smokestacks are tough environments. Sensors must be sensitive to small changes in the amounts of various chemicals, yet tough enough to withstand the corrosive effects of those chemicals and the intense heat of the smokestack environment. Zachary Seeley, a graduate student in the lab of Susmita Bose, is developing gas sensors using titanium dioxide powders. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) works as a sensor by changing its electrical resistance based on the chemicals present in the air. It’s strong and durable in the smokestack environment, but lacks sensitivity to trace amounts of gas and has trouble when faced with a mixture of gases. Seeley is making nano-structured TiO2 powders and combining them with small amounts of other elements to improve their ability to selectively sense oxygen and carbon monoxide at very high temperatures.

Contact: Zachary Seeley, seeleyzm@wsu.edu