Date: 10/31/2008
EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — Marguerite Stewart, 89, was fatally injured when the car she was riding in struck a pickup truck belonging to the Vanderburgh County Coroner’s office. Coroner Don Erk said the cause of death appeared to be head trauma, but that the Warrick County coroner would handle the investigation and follow-up with family because one of Erk’s staff vehicles was involved.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
Ex-Illinois gym coach faces drunk-driving charge
Date: 10/28/2008
By DAVID MERCER
Associated Press Writer
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
By DAVID MERCER
Associated Press Writer
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) _ A former University of Illinois gymnastics coach resigned because of personal issues, including a pending drunk-driving charge in Wisconsin, and is cooperating with an investigation into a video camera found in a locker room, his attorney said Tuesday.
Jon Valdez, who trained Beijing Olympic bronze medalist Justin Spring, resigned as an assistant coach from the Illinois men’s team on Oct. 17.
“I can’t go into the details of his resignation other than to say he was undergoing some serious personal issues, and that was one of them,” said attorney Lance Northcutt of Chicago, who is not representing Valdez in the DWI case.
Court records from Waukesha County in Wisconsin indicate the 39-year-old Valdez was charged with operating while under the influence after a Sept. 18 arrest. He’s pleaded not guilty.
Someone who answered a call to Valdez’s cell phone Tuesday hung up and a real estate agent who answered the door at his Urbana home said he wasn’t there. The agent said she was showing the home, which is for sale.
Northcutt and university officials have declined to say whether the video camera investigation was a factor in Valdez’s resignation, which the attorney said was voluntary. University police hope to finish their investigation into the video camera by the end of the week and send it to Champaign County prosecutors, who would decide whether to file charges.
“Right now, no charges have been filed. And we have not been told by anyone that charges will be filed,” Northcutt said.
A student found the small wireless camera inside a locker Sept. 25, university police Lt. Roy Acree said. It was pointed out of the locker through a small opening and “would be able to capture images of people changing their clothes,” he said.
He declined to say which locker room the camera was in, other than that it wasn’t a room used by students outside the university’s athletics programs. Acree said the camera wasn’t transmitting images to a computer or over the Internet, but wouldn’t say whether investigators found any stored images.
Northcutt declined to discuss the investigation’s details.
“We are cooperating with the investigation, and will continue to cooperate as best as we can,” he said.
In the DWI case, Valdez was pulled over Sept. 18 by a Wisconsin state trooper in Brookfield, Wis., about 10 miles west of Milwaukee, according to the Waukesha County District Attorney’s office. A spokeswoman for the office said Valdez has no prior criminal record.
He pleaded not guilty on Oct. 20 and is due in court again on Nov. 17.
Attorney Christopher Strohbehn of Waukesha, Wis., is representing Valdez in that case. He didn’t immediately return a call for comment Tuesday.
Illinois head gymnastics coach Yoshi Hayasaki said Tuesday that he didn’t think Valdez resigned over the arrest, but referred further questions to Assistant Athletic Director Kent Brown. Brown declined to comment on the resignation.
Valdez had been on the Illini coaching staff since 2000 and is Spring’s personal coach. He accompanied Spring to the Beijing Olympics, where the U.S. men won the bronze medal.
Efforts to reach Spring and several members of the Illinois men’s team Tuesday by telephone and e-mail were not successful.
“USA Gymnastics will follow the progress of this investigation and address the issue accordingly,” USA Gymnastics President Steve Penny said.
On April 25, the UI announced Valdez had been promoted from assistant coach and would succeed Hayasaki as head coach when Hayasaki retired following the 2008-09 season. The university now says it is looking for an assistant to replace Valdez.
Associated Press National Writer Nancy Armour contributed to this report from Chicago.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
GUYANA: River boat capsizes, kills at least 3 on river that borders Suriname
Date: 10/25/2008
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — Police say seven people likely drowned when a speed boat capsized on a river along the Guyana-Suriname border.
Deputy Commander Simon McBean says the boat flipped as it was crossing the Corentyne River. He says a survivor was hospitalized and cannot provide details.
McBean says police found the bodies of three women on Saturday and are still searching for four people.
Passengers often rely on speedboats to make the 20-minute trip across the river instead of using the ferry.
Authorities in both South American countries demand boat operators carry lifejackets and emergency signaling equipment. It is unclear if the boat was properly equipped.
The capsizing occurred late Friday.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
Chicago train teen puts alleged trip on MySpace
Date: 10/24/2008 2:56 PM
CHICAGO (AP) _ Transportation officials in Chicago say they first learned about allegations that an 18-year-old operated a commuter train after the teen apparently put pictures of the unauthorized ride on his MySpace page.
Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet says someone called the agency about two weeks ago to tip them off about the pictures. She says the page has since been taken down.
Pardonnet says the engineer who allegedly let the teen operate the train had been suspended. Two other engineers who allegedly allowed the same teen to enter their locomotive cabs on other routes have also been suspended.
Pardonnet says an investigative hearing is scheduled for next month.
Metra hasn’t confirmed any specifics about the incidents, including on what lines they allegedly occurred.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
Santa Fe Opera settles suit over wrong-way crash
Date: 10/23/2008 7:14 PM
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) _ The Santa Fe Opera and the estate of an employee have reached a settlement with relatives of a family killed in a drunken, wrong-way interstate crash triggered by the worker, who was returning from a business trip.
The attorney for the opera, Michael W. Brennan, characterized the settlements reached this year as “substantial” but said the exact amount is confidential.
Opera employee Dana Papst drove the wrong way on Interstate 25 south of Santa Fe in November 2006 and crashed into a minivan. He died the next morning.
The crash also killed the van’s driver, Paul Gonzales of Las Vegas, N.M.; his wife, Renee Collins-Gonzales and three of their children. Arissa Garcia, then 15, survived.
Tests showed Papst’s blood-alcohol content was four times the legal limit for driving.
Papst had been seen drinking on a US Airways flight to Albuquerque that day, and other passengers said he appeared to be drunk.
Police have said that after the flight landed, Papst bought a six-pack of beer in Bernalillo and drove north, eventually turning off the northbound lanes and driving the wrong way for five miles before striking the van.
The opera’s insurance company chose to settle the case rather than go to trial.
Court records show that Ever Ready Oil Co., Chevron Redi-Mart in Bernalillo and US Airways remain defendants in the lawsuit.
The state Department of Public Safety cited the Chevron Redi-Mart after the crash. The store, which later closed, was owned by Ever Ready Oil.
___
Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.sfnewmexican.com
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
NY county alters internet DWI ‘Wall of Shame’
Date: 10/22/2008 5:14 AM
By FRANK ELTMAN
Associated Press Writer
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) _ Motorists charged with drunken driving will no longer be depicted on Nassau County’s internet “Wall of Shame” in light of a judge’s ruling that posting the arrests on a Web site violates due process.
County Executive Tom Suozzi insists the county is within its rights to distribute the names and photographs of accused drunken drivers but said Tuesday he would wait until suspects are convicted before listing them on the Internet.
Attorneys who represent accused drunken drivers said that is still not acceptable and punishes people beyond what state statutes allow.
Suozzi’s announcement came a day after state Supreme Court Judge William LaMarca ruled that announcing the drunken driving arrests before a suspect has a chance to make his case in court violates due process rights.
The judge’s ruling applied only to an individual who sued over the policy, but Suozzi conceded it is likely to invite additional lawsuits.
Although he plans to appeal the ruling, Suozzi said the county will now only list those convicted of DWI-related crimes after a trial or plea bargain.
Holding up newspapers trumpeting the arrest of New York Yankees star pitcher Joba Chamberlain on suspected drunken driving charges last weekend in Nebraska, Suozzi took issue with LaMarca’s ruling that the Web site creates “limitless and eternal notoriety.” He said he fails to see a difference between publication in a newspaper or the Internet.
“The objective of what we’re trying to do here is to change the culture that exists related to drunk driving, that it’s not just a socially acceptable crime,” Suozzi said.
The county initiated the Wall of Shame effort last Memorial Day weekend after a highway patrol officer who had stopped one suspected drunken driver on the Long Island Expressway was struck and seriously injured by a second driver, also suspected of being under the influence.
Since Memorial Day, about 1,400 drivers accused of being under the influence of alcohol have appeared on the county’s Web site. Police officials also said DWI-related arrests are up 6 percent over the same period a year ago.
Brian Griffin, an attorney who represented the person who sued the county, said the revised policy still violates state law. Griffin contends that if Suozzi wants to list convicted drunken drivers on the Web site, he will need legislative approval.
He cited a 1995 state Court of Appeals ruling that found a judge was wrong to order a repeat drunken driver to display a “CONVICTED DWI” license plate.
In that ruling, the state’s highest court said: “While innovative ideas to address the serious problem of recidivist drunk driving are not to be discouraged, the courts must act within the limits of their authority and cannot overreach by using their probationary powers to accomplish what only the legislative branch can do.”
___
On the Net:
http://www.nassaucountyny.gov
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
By FRANK ELTMAN
Associated Press Writer
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) _ Motorists charged with drunken driving will no longer be depicted on Nassau County’s internet “Wall of Shame” in light of a judge’s ruling that posting the arrests on a Web site violates due process.
County Executive Tom Suozzi insists the county is within its rights to distribute the names and photographs of accused drunken drivers but said Tuesday he would wait until suspects are convicted before listing them on the Internet.
Attorneys who represent accused drunken drivers said that is still not acceptable and punishes people beyond what state statutes allow.
Suozzi’s announcement came a day after state Supreme Court Judge William LaMarca ruled that announcing the drunken driving arrests before a suspect has a chance to make his case in court violates due process rights.
The judge’s ruling applied only to an individual who sued over the policy, but Suozzi conceded it is likely to invite additional lawsuits.
Although he plans to appeal the ruling, Suozzi said the county will now only list those convicted of DWI-related crimes after a trial or plea bargain.
Holding up newspapers trumpeting the arrest of New York Yankees star pitcher Joba Chamberlain on suspected drunken driving charges last weekend in Nebraska, Suozzi took issue with LaMarca’s ruling that the Web site creates “limitless and eternal notoriety.” He said he fails to see a difference between publication in a newspaper or the Internet.
“The objective of what we’re trying to do here is to change the culture that exists related to drunk driving, that it’s not just a socially acceptable crime,” Suozzi said.
The county initiated the Wall of Shame effort last Memorial Day weekend after a highway patrol officer who had stopped one suspected drunken driver on the Long Island Expressway was struck and seriously injured by a second driver, also suspected of being under the influence.
Since Memorial Day, about 1,400 drivers accused of being under the influence of alcohol have appeared on the county’s Web site. Police officials also said DWI-related arrests are up 6 percent over the same period a year ago.
Brian Griffin, an attorney who represented the person who sued the county, said the revised policy still violates state law. Griffin contends that if Suozzi wants to list convicted drunken drivers on the Web site, he will need legislative approval.
He cited a 1995 state Court of Appeals ruling that found a judge was wrong to order a repeat drunken driver to display a “CONVICTED DWI” license plate.
In that ruling, the state’s highest court said: “While innovative ideas to address the serious problem of recidivist drunk driving are not to be discouraged, the courts must act within the limits of their authority and cannot overreach by using their probationary powers to accomplish what only the legislative branch can do.”
___
On the Net:
http://www.nassaucountyny.gov
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
NY congressman convicted of drunken driving
Date: 10/17/2008 9:11 PM
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) _ Rep. Vito Fossella was convicted Friday of drunken driving in suburban Virginia, another blow from a late-night traffic stop that exposed secrets of his personal life and wrecked his career.
After a daylong trial at Alexandria General District Court, Judge Becky Moore found Fossella guilty of driving under the influence when he was pulled over for running a red light shortly after midnight on May 1. The arrest led to revelations that he had fathered a child from an extramarital affair, and he decided not to seek re-election. Fossella, New York City’s only Republican congressman, was first elected to the House in 1997.
The judge said she would hold a hearing Dec. 8 to determine if prosecutors had met the legal threshold for high blood alcohol content, which would mean a mandatory five-day jail sentence.
Crying friends hugged Fossella in the courtroom after the verdict.
“Don’t worry. It’ll be OK,” he told them.
The congressman declined to speak to reporters as he left the courthouse but issued a statement saying he was grateful the trial gave “an honest and straightforward account” of the events.
“I made a serious mistake and I want to again apologize for setting the wrong example,” he said. “I believe we live in a nation of laws, that no one person is above the law and I look forward to the judge’s final determination in December.”
Fossella’s day in court featured hours of dry, technical testimony, but also talk about a White House party, an Intoxilyzer 5000 breath-test machine and the congressman’s bowels.
The afternoon before his arrest, Fossella had been at the White House celebrating the New York Giants’ Super Bowl victory, but witnesses insisted no alcohol was served or consumed there.
Later, he went to dinner with friends where he had “no more than a glass and a half” of wine, he testified, plus a few more sips at a tavern.
Police officer Jamie Gernatt said he stopped Fossella’s car that night for running a red light, and the driver, Fossella, appeared to be drunk.
“There was a strong odor of alcoholic beverage coming from the car and his lips were stained red,” Gernatt testified. The police officer said Fossella told him he’d had two or three glasses of wine, but had bloodshot eyes and made mistakes in sobriety tests.
Police say his blood-alcohol content level was 0.17 percent, more than twice the legal limit, and under state law anyone convicted of having a BAC above 0.15 must serve a mandatory five-day jail term.
In announcing her verdict, the judge said she would hear arguments on that issue later.
Through the day’s evidence, Fossella listened glumly but intently to the evidence. At one point, he looked incredulous as Gernatt described one of their conversations on the night of the arrest, but otherwise he showed little reaction.
Another officer, Richard Sandoval, described strange behavior by Fossella when he was brought to a police station to submit to a breath test by the Intoxilyzer 5000.
At one point, according to Sandoval, Fossella asked to go to the bathroom and was told he couldn’t. At that point, the congressman said he would have to defecate in the room.
Sandoval said he told Fossella they were “guests” at the police station, and “he wasn’t going to defecate” in it.
On the witness stand, the congressman denied the story, saying that the officer had yelled at him and mocked him at times during the breath testing.
Defense lawyer Jerry Phillips challenged the types of field sobriety tests given to Fossella and spent hours trying to prove the Intoxilyzer 5000 machine gave bad readings due to interference from police radios and because Fossella used a hand sanitizer.
The judge rejected a defense claim the first officer had no grounds to arrest Fossella.
Police said the married 43-year-old told them when he was pulled over that he was headed to see his sick daughter. Given that his wife and children live in New York, that statement set off alarms and eventually led to the revelation he had secretly fathered a daughter, now 3 years old, with a Virginia woman, Laura Fay, a former Air Force officer and congressional liaison.
After admitting the relationship, Fossella announced he would not seek re-election, a drastic fall for a politician once viewed as a potential mayor of New York City. His downfall has also created an opportunity for Democrats to gain a seat in Congress in November.
Fossella’s troubles have only further hurt his state party’s election chances next month. If a Democrat wins Fossella’s seat, it will mark the first time in 35 years that all of New York City has been represented by Democrats.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Summary
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) _ Rep. Vito Fossella was convicted Friday of drunken driving in suburban Virginia, another blow from a late-night traffic stop that exposed secrets of his personal life and wrecked his career.
After a daylong trial at Alexandria General District Court, Judge Becky Moore found Fossella guilty of driving under the influence when he was pulled over for running a red light shortly after midnight on May 1. The arrest led to revelations that he had fathered a child from an extramarital affair, and he decided not to seek re-election. Fossella, New York City’s only Republican congressman, was first elected to the House in 1997.
The judge said she would hold a hearing Dec. 8 to determine if prosecutors had met the legal threshold for high blood alcohol content, which would mean a mandatory five-day jail sentence.
Crying friends hugged Fossella in the courtroom after the verdict.
“Don’t worry. It’ll be OK,” he told them.
The congressman declined to speak to reporters as he left the courthouse but issued a statement saying he was grateful the trial gave “an honest and straightforward account” of the events.
“I made a serious mistake and I want to again apologize for setting the wrong example,” he said. “I believe we live in a nation of laws, that no one person is above the law and I look forward to the judge’s final determination in December.”
Fossella’s day in court featured hours of dry, technical testimony, but also talk about a White House party, an Intoxilyzer 5000 breath-test machine and the congressman’s bowels.
The afternoon before his arrest, Fossella had been at the White House celebrating the New York Giants’ Super Bowl victory, but witnesses insisted no alcohol was served or consumed there.
Later, he went to dinner with friends where he had “no more than a glass and a half” of wine, he testified, plus a few more sips at a tavern.
Police officer Jamie Gernatt said he stopped Fossella’s car that night for running a red light, and the driver, Fossella, appeared to be drunk.
“There was a strong odor of alcoholic beverage coming from the car and his lips were stained red,” Gernatt testified. The police officer said Fossella told him he’d had two or three glasses of wine, but had bloodshot eyes and made mistakes in sobriety tests.
Police say his blood-alcohol content level was 0.17 percent, more than twice the legal limit, and under state law anyone convicted of having a BAC above 0.15 must serve a mandatory five-day jail term.
In announcing her verdict, the judge said she would hear arguments on that issue later.
Through the day’s evidence, Fossella listened glumly but intently to the evidence. At one point, he looked incredulous as Gernatt described one of their conversations on the night of the arrest, but otherwise he showed little reaction.
Another officer, Richard Sandoval, described strange behavior by Fossella when he was brought to a police station to submit to a breath test by the Intoxilyzer 5000.
At one point, according to Sandoval, Fossella asked to go to the bathroom and was told he couldn’t. At that point, the congressman said he would have to defecate in the room.
Sandoval said he told Fossella they were “guests” at the police station, and “he wasn’t going to defecate” in it.
On the witness stand, the congressman denied the story, saying that the officer had yelled at him and mocked him at times during the breath testing.
Defense lawyer Jerry Phillips challenged the types of field sobriety tests given to Fossella and spent hours trying to prove the Intoxilyzer 5000 machine gave bad readings due to interference from police radios and because Fossella used a hand sanitizer.
The judge rejected a defense claim the first officer had no grounds to arrest Fossella.
Police said the married 43-year-old told them when he was pulled over that he was headed to see his sick daughter. Given that his wife and children live in New York, that statement set off alarms and eventually led to the revelation he had secretly fathered a daughter, now 3 years old, with a Virginia woman, Laura Fay, a former Air Force officer and congressional liaison.
After admitting the relationship, Fossella announced he would not seek re-election, a drastic fall for a politician once viewed as a potential mayor of New York City. His downfall has also created an opportunity for Democrats to gain a seat in Congress in November.
Fossella’s troubles have only further hurt his state party’s election chances next month. If a Democrat wins Fossella’s seat, it will mark the first time in 35 years that all of New York City has been represented by Democrats.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Summary
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
Future planes, cars may be made of ‘buckypaper’
Date: 10/17/2008 12:03 PM
By BILL KACZOR
Associated Press Writer
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) _ It’s called “buckypaper” and looks a lot like ordinary carbon paper, but don’t be fooled by the cute name or flimsy appearance. It could revolutionize the way everything from airplanes to TVs are made.
Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass.
“All those things are what a lot of people in nanotechnology have been working toward as sort of Holy Grails,” said Wade Adams, a scientist at Rice University.
That idea — that there is great future promise for buckypaper and other derivatives of the ultra-tiny cylinders known as carbon nanotubes — has been floated for years now. However, researchers at Florida State University say they have made important progress that may soon turn hype into reality.
Buckypaper is made from tube-shaped carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Due to its unique properties, it is envisioned as a wondrous new material for light, energy-efficient aircraft and automobiles, more powerful computers, improved TV screens and many other products.
So far, buckypaper can be made at only a fraction of its potential strength, in small quantities and at a high price. The Florida State researchers are developing manufacturing techniques that soon may make it competitive with the best composite materials now available.
“If this thing goes into production, this very well could be a very, very game-changing or revolutionary technology to the aerospace business,” said Les Kramer, chief technologist for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, which is helping fund the Florida State research.
The scientific discovery that led to buckypaper virtually came from outer space.
In 1985, British scientist Harry Kroto joined researchers at Rice for an experiment to create the same conditions that exist in a star. They wanted to find out how stars, the source of all carbon in the universe, make the element that is a main building block of life.
Everything went as planned with one exception.
“There was an extra character that turned up totally unexpected,” recalled Kroto, now at Florida State heading a program that encourages the study of math, science and technology in public schools. “It was a discovery out of left field.”
The surprise guest was a molecule with 60 carbon atoms shaped like a soccer ball. To Kroto, it also looked like the geodesic domes promoted by Buckminster Fuller, an architect, inventor and futurist. That inspired Kroto to name the new molecule buckminsterfullerene, or “buckyballs” for short.
For their discovery of the buckyball — the third form of pure carbon to be discovered after graphite and diamonds — Kroto and his Rice colleagues, Robert Curl Jr. and Richard E. Smalley, were awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1996.
Separately, Japanese physicist Sumio Iijima developed a tube-shaped variation while doing research at Arizona State University.
Researchers at Smalley’s laboratory then inadvertently found that the tubes would stick together when disbursed in a liquid suspension and filtered through a fine mesh, producing a thin film — buckypaper.
The secret of its strength is the huge surface area of each nanotube, said Ben Wang, director of Florida State’s High-Performance Materials Institute.
“If you take a gram of nanotubes, just one gram, and if you unfold every tube into a graphite sheet, you can cover about two-thirds of a football field,” Wang said.
Carbon nanotubes are already beginning to be used to strengthen tennis rackets and bicycles, but in small amounts. The epoxy resins used in those applications are 1 to 5 percent carbon nanotubes, which are added in the form of a fine powder. Buckypaper, which is a thin film rather than a powder, has a much higher nanotube content — about 50 percent.
One challenge is that the tubes clump together at odd angles, limiting their strength in buckypaper. Wang and his fellow researchers found a solution: Exposing the tubes to high magnetism causes most of them to line up in the same direction, increasing their collective strength.
Another problem is the tubes are so perfectly smooth it’s hard to hold them together with epoxy. Researchers are looking for ways to create some surface defects — but not too many — to improve bonding.
So far, the Florida State institute has been able to produce buckypaper with half the strength of the best existing composite material, known as IM7. Wang expects to close the gap quickly.
“By the end of next year we should have a buckypaper composite as strong as IM7, and it’s 35 percent lighter,” Wang said.
Buckypaper now is being made only in the laboratory, but Florida State is in the early stages of spinning out a company to make commercial buckypaper.
“These guys have actually demonstrated materials that are capable of being used on flying systems,” said Adams, director of Rice’s Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. “Having something that you can hold in your hand is an accomplishment in nanotechnology.”
It takes upward of five years to get a new structural material certified for aviation use, so Wang said he expects buckypaper’s first uses will be for electromagnetic interference shielding and lightning-strike protection on aircraft.
Electrical circuits and even natural causes such as the sun or Northern Lights can interfere with radios and other electronic gear. Buckypaper provides up to four times the shielding specified in a recent Air Force contract proposal, Wang said.
Typically, conventional composite materials have a copper mesh added for lightning protection. Replacing copper with buckypaper would save weight and fuel.
Wang demonstrated this with a composite model plane and a stun gun. Zapping an unprotected part of the model caused sparks to fly. The electric jolt, though, passed harmlessly across another section shielded by a strip of buckypaper.
Other near-term uses would be as electrodes for fuel cells, super capacitors and batteries, Wang said. Next in line, buckypaper could be a more efficient and lighter replacement for graphite sheets used in laptop computers to dissipate heat, which is harmful to electronics.
The long-range goal is to build planes, automobiles and other things with buckypaper composites. The military also is looking at it for use in armor plating and stealth technology.
“Our plan is perhaps in the next 12 months we’ll begin maybe to have some commercial products,” Wang said. “Nanotubes obviously are no longer just lab wonders. They have real world potential. It’s real.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
By BILL KACZOR
Associated Press Writer
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) _ It’s called “buckypaper” and looks a lot like ordinary carbon paper, but don’t be fooled by the cute name or flimsy appearance. It could revolutionize the way everything from airplanes to TVs are made.
Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass.
“All those things are what a lot of people in nanotechnology have been working toward as sort of Holy Grails,” said Wade Adams, a scientist at Rice University.
That idea — that there is great future promise for buckypaper and other derivatives of the ultra-tiny cylinders known as carbon nanotubes — has been floated for years now. However, researchers at Florida State University say they have made important progress that may soon turn hype into reality.
Buckypaper is made from tube-shaped carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Due to its unique properties, it is envisioned as a wondrous new material for light, energy-efficient aircraft and automobiles, more powerful computers, improved TV screens and many other products.
So far, buckypaper can be made at only a fraction of its potential strength, in small quantities and at a high price. The Florida State researchers are developing manufacturing techniques that soon may make it competitive with the best composite materials now available.
“If this thing goes into production, this very well could be a very, very game-changing or revolutionary technology to the aerospace business,” said Les Kramer, chief technologist for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, which is helping fund the Florida State research.
The scientific discovery that led to buckypaper virtually came from outer space.
In 1985, British scientist Harry Kroto joined researchers at Rice for an experiment to create the same conditions that exist in a star. They wanted to find out how stars, the source of all carbon in the universe, make the element that is a main building block of life.
Everything went as planned with one exception.
“There was an extra character that turned up totally unexpected,” recalled Kroto, now at Florida State heading a program that encourages the study of math, science and technology in public schools. “It was a discovery out of left field.”
The surprise guest was a molecule with 60 carbon atoms shaped like a soccer ball. To Kroto, it also looked like the geodesic domes promoted by Buckminster Fuller, an architect, inventor and futurist. That inspired Kroto to name the new molecule buckminsterfullerene, or “buckyballs” for short.
For their discovery of the buckyball — the third form of pure carbon to be discovered after graphite and diamonds — Kroto and his Rice colleagues, Robert Curl Jr. and Richard E. Smalley, were awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1996.
Separately, Japanese physicist Sumio Iijima developed a tube-shaped variation while doing research at Arizona State University.
Researchers at Smalley’s laboratory then inadvertently found that the tubes would stick together when disbursed in a liquid suspension and filtered through a fine mesh, producing a thin film — buckypaper.
The secret of its strength is the huge surface area of each nanotube, said Ben Wang, director of Florida State’s High-Performance Materials Institute.
“If you take a gram of nanotubes, just one gram, and if you unfold every tube into a graphite sheet, you can cover about two-thirds of a football field,” Wang said.
Carbon nanotubes are already beginning to be used to strengthen tennis rackets and bicycles, but in small amounts. The epoxy resins used in those applications are 1 to 5 percent carbon nanotubes, which are added in the form of a fine powder. Buckypaper, which is a thin film rather than a powder, has a much higher nanotube content — about 50 percent.
One challenge is that the tubes clump together at odd angles, limiting their strength in buckypaper. Wang and his fellow researchers found a solution: Exposing the tubes to high magnetism causes most of them to line up in the same direction, increasing their collective strength.
Another problem is the tubes are so perfectly smooth it’s hard to hold them together with epoxy. Researchers are looking for ways to create some surface defects — but not too many — to improve bonding.
So far, the Florida State institute has been able to produce buckypaper with half the strength of the best existing composite material, known as IM7. Wang expects to close the gap quickly.
“By the end of next year we should have a buckypaper composite as strong as IM7, and it’s 35 percent lighter,” Wang said.
Buckypaper now is being made only in the laboratory, but Florida State is in the early stages of spinning out a company to make commercial buckypaper.
“These guys have actually demonstrated materials that are capable of being used on flying systems,” said Adams, director of Rice’s Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. “Having something that you can hold in your hand is an accomplishment in nanotechnology.”
It takes upward of five years to get a new structural material certified for aviation use, so Wang said he expects buckypaper’s first uses will be for electromagnetic interference shielding and lightning-strike protection on aircraft.
Electrical circuits and even natural causes such as the sun or Northern Lights can interfere with radios and other electronic gear. Buckypaper provides up to four times the shielding specified in a recent Air Force contract proposal, Wang said.
Typically, conventional composite materials have a copper mesh added for lightning protection. Replacing copper with buckypaper would save weight and fuel.
Wang demonstrated this with a composite model plane and a stun gun. Zapping an unprotected part of the model caused sparks to fly. The electric jolt, though, passed harmlessly across another section shielded by a strip of buckypaper.
Other near-term uses would be as electrodes for fuel cells, super capacitors and batteries, Wang said. Next in line, buckypaper could be a more efficient and lighter replacement for graphite sheets used in laptop computers to dissipate heat, which is harmful to electronics.
The long-range goal is to build planes, automobiles and other things with buckypaper composites. The military also is looking at it for use in armor plating and stealth technology.
“Our plan is perhaps in the next 12 months we’ll begin maybe to have some commercial products,” Wang said. “Nanotubes obviously are no longer just lab wonders. They have real world potential. It’s real.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
State News: North Dakota SUV Accident
Date: 10/14/2008 3:06 AM
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — State Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said he and Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm escaped injury when Stenehjem’s SUV struck a deer while the two were on their way to a political meeting. The collision happened near Anamoose, in north central North Dakota. Stenehjem said a large buck ran from a corn field along the highway and suddenly turned in front of the car.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — State Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said he and Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm escaped injury when Stenehjem’s SUV struck a deer while the two were on their way to a political meeting. The collision happened near Anamoose, in north central North Dakota. Stenehjem said a large buck ran from a corn field along the highway and suddenly turned in front of the car.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
Austrian rightist was speeding at twice limit
Date: 10/12/2008 10:45 AM
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria (AP) _ Far-right politician Joerg Haider was speeding at more than twice the posted limit before the car crash that killed him, investigators said Sunday as his grief-stricken party appointed a successor.
Flowers, notes and other tributes piled up at the scene of the crash that killed the former leader of the Freedom Party, whose anti-immigration stance and provocative praise of the Nazi era once led the European Union to slap Austria with diplomatic sanctions.
Police reconstructing Saturday’s accident in the southern province of Carinthia, where Haider was governor, said the speedometer in the wreckage of Haider’s high-powered Volkswagen Phaeton limousine was stuck at 142 kph (88 mph).
The speed limit at the crash site is just 70 kph (43 mph), and it drops to 50 kph (31 mph) just 100 meters (yards) further down the road in the direction Haider was heading.
Prosecutor Gottfried Kranz said the high speed appeared to be the main factor in the crash that killed the 58-year-old politician.
“Any speculation about other causes of the accident is weak,” Kranz said, adding that the car was technically sound and police had no reason to suspect foul play.
Police said the car veered off the road after Haider overtook another vehicle, then struck a concrete pillar and rolled over. Haider, who was alone in the car, suffered multiple injuries and died while being rushed to a hospital.
Haider left the Freedom Party a few years ago to found the rightist Alliance for the Future of Austria, which captured about 11 percent of the vote in last month’s national elections.
Visibly shaken party leaders gathered in Vienna on Sunday to name the Alliance’s secretary-general, Stefan Petzner, as Haider’s successor.
Haider had expressed a wish that the party carry on should anything ever happen to him, “and we owe it to him to fulfill that obligation,” another Haider deputy, Herbert Scheibner, told reporters.
It remained unclear what impact Haider’s death would have on talks to form a new coalition government.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria (AP) _ Far-right politician Joerg Haider was speeding at more than twice the posted limit before the car crash that killed him, investigators said Sunday as his grief-stricken party appointed a successor.
Flowers, notes and other tributes piled up at the scene of the crash that killed the former leader of the Freedom Party, whose anti-immigration stance and provocative praise of the Nazi era once led the European Union to slap Austria with diplomatic sanctions.
Police reconstructing Saturday’s accident in the southern province of Carinthia, where Haider was governor, said the speedometer in the wreckage of Haider’s high-powered Volkswagen Phaeton limousine was stuck at 142 kph (88 mph).
The speed limit at the crash site is just 70 kph (43 mph), and it drops to 50 kph (31 mph) just 100 meters (yards) further down the road in the direction Haider was heading.
Prosecutor Gottfried Kranz said the high speed appeared to be the main factor in the crash that killed the 58-year-old politician.
“Any speculation about other causes of the accident is weak,” Kranz said, adding that the car was technically sound and police had no reason to suspect foul play.
Police said the car veered off the road after Haider overtook another vehicle, then struck a concrete pillar and rolled over. Haider, who was alone in the car, suffered multiple injuries and died while being rushed to a hospital.
Haider left the Freedom Party a few years ago to found the rightist Alliance for the Future of Austria, which captured about 11 percent of the vote in last month’s national elections.
Visibly shaken party leaders gathered in Vienna on Sunday to name the Alliance’s secretary-general, Stefan Petzner, as Haider’s successor.
Haider had expressed a wish that the party carry on should anything ever happen to him, “and we owe it to him to fulfill that obligation,” another Haider deputy, Herbert Scheibner, told reporters.
It remained unclear what impact Haider’s death would have on talks to form a new coalition government.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.