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Beutel surmises that dissolved oxygen pumped into the bottom of a lake may repress the ability of bacteria to transform inorganic mercury into toxic organic mercury in lake bottom water and sediments. This toxic heavy metal then accumulates throughout the aquatic food web and eventually is passed to people who eat fish. Using one of the Twin Lakes, near Inchelium, Wash., as a reference, Beutel’s group is using an engineered system to add pure oxygen gas to the other lake. The CAREER award provides funds for acquisition of sophisticated laboratory equipment to monitor mercury cycling and to perform related laboratory experiments. High school students from nearby Lake Roosevelt High School will participate in project-based activities related to mercury cycling including using a mobile laboratory to measure levels of the toxic metal in fish collected from throughout the Colville Indian Reservation.
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wireless sensors that have applications ranging from biomedical devices to infrastructure monitoring. Most wireless sensors are currently powered by batteries, which can be problematic when they are placed in a remote environment. The circuitry for sensors is bulky and wasteful, said Heo, so that much of the energy from the battery goes to powering the sensor rather than transmitting data. As a result, many sensors are limited in the amount of data they can transmit or how far they can send it. The researchers will be developing reconfigurable sensors that can use a variety of energy sources. For instance, a monitor located on a bridge might be able to use the vibrational energy created by cars passing overhead.