New research findings
Archived article from Dec 15, 2003
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Building nanoparticle structures
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Stones, bones and behavior
There is more to prehistory than just stones and bones, so says a group of anthropology graduate students at Rutgers. Purity Kiura, Joanne Tactikos and Jackson Njau are using novel approaches to explore stone-age lifestyles on the African continent and provide insight into human behavior.
Kiura’s research examines one of the most fundamental human behaviors: the search for food. Using hair samples collected from three native groups in northern Kenya, she determined the isotope levels of carbon and nitrogen characteristic of their different ways of life — fishing, raising livestock or shepherding combined with farming. “These people haven’t had much influence from the outside, so these groups constitute a good model for reconstructions of the past,” said Kiura. She can now use the isotope profiles to assess levels in ancient bones to determine ancestral food habits.
Tactikos uses “experimental archaeology” crafting rudimentary tools to gain clues about ancestral needs and capabilities. “The significance of stone tools lies in the fact that their manufacture is perhaps the earliest behavior that is distinctly human,” she says. In one particular experiment, Tactikos created tools from African stone, and then tested them to see how well they worked in butchering animal carcasses. This enabled her to gauge the ease of tool manufacture as well as the tools’ efficiency: true measures of function. To date, Tactikos has performed hundreds of experiments using tools of different materials, sizes and shapes in different food preparation tasks.
Jackson Njau sifts through the remains of meals scavenged by our earliest ancestors from neighborhood predators. His experiments with modern crocodiles in Africa — home to both Njau and Kiura — have enabled him to distinguish between their tooth marks and those of mammalian carnivores. Njau applied this model to his analysis of fossil bones from sites millions of years old. “This kind evidence at archaeological sites shows that crocodiles were active here — it was not a good place to spend time,” said Njau. Archeologists had long considered some of the African sites ‘home bases.’ Given the presence of crocodile remains and the threat they represent, Njau’s analysis presents a compelling argument for much briefer visits made by hominids than long-term encampments.
—Joseph Blumberg
Building nanoparticle structures
Imagine: Harnessing the power of the largest body in our solar system – the sun – may depend on realizing the full potential of nanoparticle semiconductors measuring one-ten thousandth the thickness of a human hair.
Bolstered by a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, an investigative team led by Elena Galoppini, an associate professor of chemistry at Rutgers-Newark, is developing new nanoparticle structures that are hybrids of organic and inorganic materials.
In the past, scientists specializing in organic chemistry, surface science and physical chemistry worked independently on solar-cell studies. “The interdisciplinary notion is crucial in nanoparticle investigations,” says Piotr Piotrowiak, a professor of chemistry at Rutgers-Newark and a principal investigator on the team.
As a specialist in synthetic organic chemistry, Galoppini can design and build nanostructures, while Piotrowiak, a specialist in laser spectroscopy, can measure the electrical communication between the nanostructures’ organic and nonorganic components.
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