Documenting Village Languages; Battling Biowarfare; Mastering Methane

Tipsheet

Documenting Village Languages: Like an old-time traveling medicine
show, Rice linguist Spike Gildea and his team of graduate students show up every
summer in jungle villages in Brazil playing guitars and offering trade goods.
The deal is simple. Gildea trades fishhooks and cloth for stories and time. He
has two purposes: documenting living languages of indigenous people whose ways
of life are threatened by encroaching Western civilization and spreading word
among natives of the newer threat of AIDS, which caused the first official death
among northern Brazilian Indians last year. Gildea’s research was funded in part
by a three-year National Science Foundation grant to study the Cariban family of
languages in Brazil. Additional grants from Rice allowed him to stretch the
funding through the summer of 1997.

Contact: Spike Gildea, (713) 527-4776.

Battling Biowarfare: A Rice University bioengineer is involved in a $6
million project to research and develop “smart skins,” specially engineered
fabrics that will intercept and counteract harmful chemicals used in biological
warfare. Antonios Mikos, associate professor of bioengineering and chemical
engineering, received part of a two-year grant from the Department of Defense’s
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Mikos is working with
Molecular Geodesics, Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. to develop the material. More than
just a barrier, “smart skins” would capture and neutralize biological threat
agents and chemical toxins, such as gasses, viruses or bacteria, before they can
reach or enter the body. Contact: Tony Mikos, Rice University, (713) 285-5355,
Donald Ingber at Molecular Geodesics, (617) 494-1118.

Mastering Methane: By draining the rice fields once during the growing
season, allowing the soil to be reoxidized, two Rice University professors have
shown that methane emissions can be cut by 50 percent. Draining three times cuts
emissions to nearly zero. And, if they carefully time the drain and control
fertilizer and soil factors, they can even increase rice yields by five to ten
percent. Methane, as a greenhouse gas, can pack a punch. Methane reacts more
than carbon dioxide in the air and its global warming potential is 56 times
greater than CO2 over a 20 year period, says biogeochemist Ron Sass. The
scientists are using airplane and satellite imaging data, in conjunction with
ground sampling, to create a model for rice cultivation that could be used
throughout the world. Contact: Ron Sass, (713) 527-4066, Frank Fisher, (713)
527-4917.

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