A gecko climbs the smooth wall of a museum exhibit. Less than a few feet away is a robot designed by Carnegie Mellon's Casey Kute and a team of students in the university's NanoRobotics lab — climbing another smooth wall with similar ease.

The exhibit — at the Museum of Science in Boston — lets visitors watch live geckos in their habitat next to gecko-inspired climbing robots from Carnegie Mellon University.

"Visitors can actually control one of the robots and make it climb around on a moveable platform," said Kute, a 2009 National Science Foundation Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate. "They are also able to see images of the fibers developed at the NanoRobotics lab that some robots use to climb smooth walls, as well as test their adhesive strength."

Most of the work in the university's NanoRobotics lab varies in size but is predominantly inspired by biology.

"In nature, so many animals are able to accomplish great feats in everyday actions. We work to port the information about their actions into engineering," Kute explained. "We focus on the principles rather than simply copying nature. By starting with ideas from nature, we are able to more quickly achieve a more optimized engineering design."

By building miniature robots with great locomotion capabilities, Kute hopes that her work will be used for search and rescue and to obtain information about hazardous environments.

"The small robots will be able to go into difficult places and gather valuable information that could save people's lives," she said.

Kute encourages high school students interested in the field of nanorobotics to consider enrolling at Carnegie Mellon.

"Carnegie Mellon has a vast knowledge base, both from students and professors," she said. "And since the university strives to foster cross-discipline communication, it is very easy to work on robotic systems, which require electrical, computer and mechanical engineering."

She added, "Working on biologically-inspired robotics has definitely gotten me more interested in the world around me and allowed me to better appreciate the amazing functions of animals."

Photo by Joseph Rivers of the Museum of Science in Boston

Carnegie Mellon has earned a spot on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) list of the top 50 green power purchasers in the United States.

"Carnegie Mellon is committed to creating a sustainable environment through our research, education and actions," said Carnegie Mellon President Jared L. Cohon. "Nine years ago, we made what was, at the time, the largest purchase of wind-generated electricity in America. This represented 5 percent of the university's total use of electricity. Each year we have increased that pledge and are now purchasing 75 percent of our energy from renewable sources. I am honored that the EPA has recognized our efforts."

Carnegie Mellon is purchasing nearly 87 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power annually, which is enough green power to meet 75 percent of the organization's purchased electricity use.

The EPA says the purchase is equivalent to avoiding the carbon dioxide emissions of nearly 12,000 passenger vehicles per year, or the equivalent amount of electricity needed to power more than 8,000 average American homes annually. Carnegie Mellon is also buying renewable energy certificates from Community Energy.

This ranking reflects the university's increased purchase of green energy and further demonstrates Carnegie Mellon's commitment to protecting the environment and building upon its existing partnership with the U.S. EPA's Green Power Partnership.
      
"EPA's Green Power Partners are raising the bar for clean, renewable energy use," said EPA Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy. "By using green power, Carnegie Mellon University is doing its part to fight climate change and proving every day that sound environmental practices can also be economically sound."

Green power is electricity that is generated from environmentally preferable renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, biogas, biomass and low-impact hydro. These resources generate electricity with a net zero increase in carbon dioxide emissions, while offering a superior environmental profile compared to traditional power generation sources. Green power purchases also support the development of new renewable energy generation sources nationwide.

In addition to ranking 41 on the National Top 50 List, Carnegie Mellon also ranks second on the EPA's Top 20 College & University List.
      
Carnegie Mellon is committed to the study of environmental sciences and the deployment of sustainable practices, making environmental research and practices a university-wide priority.

Among its accomplishments, Carnegie Mellon is home to the first green dormitory in the United States, has eight LEED certified building projects with more under construction and presented the first course in green chemistry. Research under Carnegie Mellon's Steinbrenner Institute seeks to find answers to some of the most pressing problems facing the environment through projects in a wide array of fields, including CO2 sequestration, green chemistry, alternative energy and sustainable design.

Carnegie Mellon University's Philip R. LeDuc and his collaborators in Massachusetts and Taiwan have made discovery that could ultimately unlock the mystery of how proteins play a central role in the mechanics of biological processes in people.
                
"What we have done is find a new function of a protein that helps control cell behavior from a mechanics perspective," said LeDuc, an associate professor of mechanical engineering with courtesy appointments in the Biomedical Engineering, Biological Sciences and Computational Biology departments.

"For over 15 years, researchers have been mainly focusing on a protein called Integrin to study these cell functions, but our team found that another lesser known protein called Syndecan-4 is extremely important in cell behavior in a field called MechanoBiology (a field linking mechanics and biology). Syndecan-4 is known to play an essential role in a variety of diseases like cancer," LeDuc said.

In cancer and wound healing, LeDuc explains, one of the critical factors between more treatable primary cancer and secondary cancer, which has spread throughout the body is the ability for cells to leave the primary tumor and crawl to other places in the body through the blood stream.

"The process of cell crawling is heavily influenced by MechanoBiology and this protein, Syndecan-4, is part of that," LeDuc said. "If MechanoBiology can be better understood, new directions for cancer and wound healing treatments could be made."

LeDuc's new findings appear in the Dec. 29 edition of the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences along with complementary work that is appearing in another highly respected journal, Nature Protocols.
                
Essentially what his research does is take a look at how a protein's shape and form determines how it functions in the human body from a mechanics perspective. Proteins are composed of long chains of amino acids than can form bonds with other molecules in a chain, kinking, twisting and folding into complicated, three-dimensional shapes, such as helices or densely furrowed globular structures.
                
"These folded shapes are immensely important because they can define a protein's function in the cell," said LeDuc, who is also developing novel biologically inspired diagnostic approaches and materials as well as computational methods to understand molecular behavior.
                 
LeDuc said his research finds that some protein shapes fit perfectly into cell receptors, turning chemical processes on and off, like a key in a lock. With mechanics changing the shape of proteins, LeDuc says the key might no longer fit into the lock, and serious consequences in the body can occur when proteins fail to assume their preordained shapes or fail to connect properly.
    
"Misguided proteins have been linked to disease such as cancer, arthritis and wound healing, among others," LeDuc said. "Our research is looking at how protein shapes affect cells and how cell biomechanics impacts the entire process."

They want to be a part of it — New York, New York — and they are. In fact, alumni from the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon perform on stage in major opera companies, musical theater productions and with world-class ensembles around the globe.

Some of those currently making waves in the Big Apple's most prestigious venues include baritone Liam Bonner (A'03) and tenor Jeffrey Behrens (A'03).

Bonner makes his Metropolitan Opera debut in the February production of "Carmen." Behrens also makes his debut with the Met in its March 2010 production of Shostakovich's The Nose (Die Nase). Both were students of Associate Professor of Music Douglas Ahlstedt.

"One of the most significant confirmations concerning the quality of training we provide our singers in the School of Music is that the basic classical approach to singing serves both areas of Broadway — Times Square and the 42nd Street area, and Lincoln Center, at 66th Street," said Ahlstedt.

Another recent graduate of Ahlstedt's is Graham Fenton (A'05), who is singing the Frankie Valli role in "Jersey Boys."

Other School of Music alums on Broadway include Patricia Phillips (A'85), who is currently starring as Carlotta in "The Phantom of the Opera." Christiane Noll (A'90) has received accolades for her performance in the revival of "Ragtime," which opened in November 2009 and closed with a final performance on January 10, 2010. Alumna Catherine Walker (A'01) is a member of the Ragtime cast.

They join a number of fellow Carnegie Mellon alums from the School of Drama, who are also performing on Broadway. One dramat — Kyle Beltran (A'09) — is in Pittsburgh this week as star of the Broadway musical "In the Heights," which is touring nationally.

Thousands of physicists around the world are cautiously waiting for a decades-long project to unravel some of the mysteries of the universe. Among those excited at the prospect is Tom Ferguson, a Carnegie Mellon professor of physics for 24 years — and a 16-year-long member of the team at work on the groundbreaking project.

Ferguson and his colleagues are participants in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project organized by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It is the world's largest, most complex and powerful particle accelerator, spanning 17 miles in circumference beneath the France/Switzerland border, just outside Geneva — what Ferguson terms, 'the biggest of big science.'

Scientists have been using increasingly higher-energy particle acceleration for more than 80 years in their effort to better understand our world at the sub-atomic, and now elementary, level. With the LHC, they're hoping to make history.

The Carnegie Mellon team has been working on one of the four massive LHC experiments, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), developing complex electronics and software as part of the detector's particle detection system. The team currently includes four faculty members, four research scientists and three graduate students.

After years of development, the LHC began operating in September 2008, but a malfunction and consequent repairs derailed plans for yet another year. It was fired up again this past November, and initial lower-energy collisions were successfully made.

This year, researchers are cautiously hoping to produce collisions at the highest energy levels to date — 7 trillion electron volts (TeV) — and eventual collisions at an unprecedented 14 TeV, where many theorists predict that something 'new' will occur.

While much has been written about proving the existence of an elusive theoretical particle, the Higgs boson, Ferguson expresses the hopes of the physics community more broadly.

"If all we found was the Higgs, we would be bitterly disappointed because it's the last undiscovered particle in a theory we [still] don't understand," he explained. "We're trying to discover why nature made these particles and why they have the properties that they do. We know that nature is telling us something, but what?"

"In the last 20 years," Ferguson added, "there have literally been hundreds of theories predicting what we're going to find.  Many of them are mutually exclusive, so we know that at least 99 percent of them are wrong. And most of us hope that all of them are wrong, because that's the ultimate dream of any experimentalist — to find something that no one's ever thought of."

Ferguson has lived a balancing act for years, alternating between teaching at Carnegie Mellon throughout the school year and spending research summers in Switzerland.

As cautiously excited as he remains for the discoveries of an actual lifetime, Ferguson is especially proud of being a member of such a diverse and expansive team.

"This is really the U.N. of science," he said simply, noting there are thousands of scientists and engineers at work on the project representing more than 80 countries. "We have Pakistanis working with Indians, Israelis working with Jordanians. For us to be able to cooperate and build something this complicated, I think, is a real testimony to humanity."

Photo: Installation of the world's largest silicon tracking detector in the CMS experiment